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Do I, as a pastor and neighbour, move about my neighbourhood slowly, attentively, patiently, and with a focus to bring life? Do I make things beautiful? Do I ensure that others benefit from the life I lead? Do I start my day intent on leaving it better than I found it? Do I work with others to find creative ways of helping my city thrive? I asked myself, “Am I a keystone person?” Keystone people may not be the most noticeable or celebrated, but through their care and attentiveness they become essential to their neighbourhood. They support and give shape to the health of their community.
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Keystone people are the community connectors, those who see small ideas and bring them to life. They are the eyes of the city, the sages who observe and find patterns. They work to bring pieces together, redeem what is broken, and strive for peace. Keystone people instill a sense of hope that grows beyond themselves, often sacrificially. They love deeply and genuinely, serving with a deep character-shaped influence. They are humble and create a culture of growth, breathing life into everything they do.
Before God could call the world to love its neighbours, it needed to see how deep and wide was God’s love for them.
Their enthusiasm for welcoming God into the daily rhythm of their lives is a beautiful outcome of their belief that God was present and working in their midst. Embracing the small and subtle, as well as the wild and untamed, led them to adore and delight in God and God’s world.
With luscious fruit and fertile land, there is no wonder that it would be flowing with honey. The bees were busy and the people benefited from their hard work. Both honey and milk are harvested resources, and harvesting implies settled times of peace and prosperity. God’s promised land was a land where people could put down roots, enjoy raising a family, care for their livestock, and gather honey from their bees. It was a strong picture that would have made mouths water, not just for the produce, but for the promise of dwelling together in safety.
When we plant gardens and give homes to honey bees, even in our urban or suburban landscapes, we become those who remember and delight in the Promised Land of God. In many neighbourhoods there are those who come and go and don’t care about the soil or the trees, but God’s people bring fertility back to the land. They hopefully long for the Promised Land with a bag full of tulip bulbs, a pile of compost, and a buzzing beehive.
The sound of bees is the sound of redeemed land and thriving neighbourhoods.
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Yet even without this interesting parallel at the end of Luke, we see throughout Scripture the story of God’s ongoing attention to the places, locations, and activities of God’s people. God is interested in blessing the land and giving life to God’s people. The land of milk and honey was truly intended to be a place where the alien and foreigner are safe, where the poor are cared for, where debts are forgiven, and where God’s people reflect the redemptive heart of God.
Imagine if the Church today took the same posture towards their neighbourhood as Rosslyn Chapel took 600 years ago and again today. That God’s people, rooted in particular neighbourhoods, would recognize the role they play to bless the places where they live. Imagine if churches had that kind of small, bee-sized vision for making neighbourhoods lush and fruitful, or that long-term vision to realize that generation after generation will benefit from their creativity.
Whether we are creating grand chapels or serving in simple ways, directing our creativity and efforts towards blessing the neighbourhood around us in small, unseen, and beautiful ways, with a view to the long term, is truly a reflection of God’s work in our midst.
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“As we live with new eyes, we are astounded by the beauty of what we hold in our hearts, no less than the glory of God waiting to be expressed through human frailty.” - Mandy Smith22
God is transforming our neighbourhoods in the most unlikely places (like your home) and in the most creative, surprising, and humble ways (like working with you). We need eyes to see those divine invitations to join in the work of God as it unfolds in front of us.
“Avoid silence, avoid solitude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Concentrate on money, sex, status, health and (above all) on your own grievances. Keep the radio on. Live in a crowd. Use plenty of sedation.” -C.S. Lewis27
The opposite of anaesthetic is aesthetic. The opposite of numb and sleepy is beauty and the sublime.
As a beekeeper, I’m willing to be stung now and then. In exchange for the rare sting, I get a front-row seat to beauty. By opting to ‘feel’ the bad, I get to experience so much that is good. Barbara Brown Taylor wrote that “Because it is so real, pain is an available antidote to unreality - not the medicine you would have chosen, perhaps, but an effective one all the same.”30 She rightly sees the ways in which pain snaps us to attention to the very real world around us.
Eugene Peterson wrote that, “Artists make us insiders to the complexity and beauty of what we deal with every day but so often miss. They bring to our attention what is right before our eyes, within reach of our touch, help us hear sounds and combinations of sounds that our noise-deafened ears have never heard.”
The challenge is not in creating a more awe-inspiring experience, rather that air travellers ought to consider pausing to appreciate what they have just encountered. They need to posture themselves, like kids, in a way that momentarily embraces the magic of the moment.
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” -Henry David Thoreau
When we are so focused on our 50-hour work week and all the preparations needed to secure our world, we cannot see our neighbours, hear their stories, point to the places where God is at work in their lives, or sense where God is leading them and us.
As Eugene Peterson’s The Message version of 1 Peter 5:7 puts it, “Live carefree before God; he is most careful with you.”
A study was done by Dr. Sandi Mann into the value of boredom for creativity. She discovered that certain kinds of boredom lead to daydreaming, and that daydreaming actually increases the mind’s ability to come up with new ideas. She found that the longer researchers engaged their subjects in thoroughly boring circumstances, their ability to come up with new ideas or solutions increased.56 Boredom leads to creativity. In a measurable sense, boredom can be good for our thinking and ability to engage new ideas which then allow for true creativity.
God works in boring places at boring times, and perhaps God is calling us to be present in those places and times so that we might enjoy his presence there.
The Apostle Paul writes to the Galatians about the fruit of the Holy Spirit and settles on a list, which, at first glance, is rather boring. He says, “The Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!”59 It’s not macho. Not particularly adventurous. There is very little that’s initially exciting about a small act of kindness. A loving gesture or pause to offer gentle care will never measure up in any hierarchy of mind-melting entertainment. Yet the neighbour
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The Norwegians have a word that speaks to getting through the winter: ‘koselig.’ There is no easy English equivalent for, it but the closest might be akin to cozy, welcoming, relaxed, tranquil, homey, and friendly. It is the feeling of a warm fire, hot cocoa, the perfect blanket, and good food. But even more than that, it is the sense of getting cozy with others. Researchers are discovering that during the darkest months of the year, many Norwegians are creating special times with friends, huddled around a fire, with the lights down low, and finding happiness in the midst of darkness.
Ask God to join you in a boredom moment. Invite God to sit with you in a wordless time of rest. Consider that God is not put off by your lack of prayer but enjoys sitting with you.
The word we sometimes use to describe the specific qualities of local honey is “terroir.” This is an old French term that reflects the “taste of place.” It refers to all the factors that make honey taste the way it does. From the altitude of the beehives, to the kind of flora to which the bees have access, terroir is a helpful way of understanding the complex qualities of honey. Other factors such as humidity, geography, climate, and even microorganisms native to some parts of the world will all affect the ‘terroir’ of honey.
“being a pastor is the most context-specific work there is,” and “the most dangerous thing is impatience … keep it slow.”
Personal letters declare that the small, the unseen, the personal, and the kind are values we hold dear. From God’s perspective, these activities are never done in vain. In fact, they may be the most life-transforming activities we can engage in. Never underestimate the potency and beauty of deeply context-specific work, like being a pastor with a typewriter.
Coming Home
In a deeply moving way, my work is to help people find their way home. A pastor is someone who sees the small things and reminds the world of their value.
Every small act of place-making we engage in, every time we host a block party, or a barbeque or a kids’ soapbox car derby, we are creating culture. We are giving the names of our streets and parks meaning and history. Moment by moment we are saying that our places matter, and the people who live here are creating a true sense of home.
You’ll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again. -Isaiah 58:12 (The Message)
I was taught years ago to listen for metaphors. Metaphors reveal the true heart, and the heart of this organization was deeply mechanical. I heard nothing about the kind of pastoral work I longed to embrace, to cultivate relationships, water new sprouts, plant hope, and weed out distractions. How could I see and hear the people I was to care for from the cockpit of a bulldozer. This world needs people who are at home out in the garden. As the conversation ended, and the paperwork pushed across the desk with a pen and a smile, I politely declined and walked away.
We’re for Facebook mentions that lead to face-to-face connections. We’re for listening to stories and creating memories. We’re not afraid of crisis or pain, it will come; we’re in this together. We’re expecting mistakes. Grace is the cornerstone of our city. We’re for hand-delivered cards, not trading barbs. We’re for sharing our barbeque steak and our Kraft Dinner. There’s always room at the table. We’re for loving enemies and making allies. We’re for surprising our neighbours with fresh hot biscuits, not bylaw tickets. We’re for kids; we slow down and we get to know them. We’re for joining
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