Community

AM Psalm 97, 99, [100] • PM Psalm 94, [95]
Gen. 49:29-50:14 • 1 Cor. 11:17-34 • Mark 8:1-10

Because our church has recently experienced a couple of very upsetting deaths in the congregation, I have been thinking of the importance of the support that our community provides to its parishioners. For example, my mother loves to tell the stories of her children’s baptism. When she presented me and then my brother to our congregation in my hometown of Magnolia, everyone in that church promised to help raise us and support our family. When I was confirmed at Saint Paul’s, the congregation promised to support me here. She tells me that you always will need more people than you think to help you get through life.

Having people to celebrate with and to mourn with is a blessing. When Jacob died, Joseph, who was the de facto Vice Pharaoh of Egypt at the time, understood that. He did not go away and mourn by himself so that he would seem composed to the people who he led. Instead, he reached out to all of the elders of his household, the elders of Egypt, and his whole family to mourn for his father for seventy days and to bury him together in Canaan, which was a journey of a few weeks away.

This reminds me of Ring Theory, a way to think of tragedy and trauma explained by Susan Silk and Barry Goldman. The general idea is that the person who is experiencing the crisis directly is in the center ring. Those further and further out are in larger and larger concentric rings. People in the further out rings bring support in to the closer rings, and those in the closer rings bring their complaints and needs outwards. The more people these rings fit in them, the more focused support a traumatized person can receive without exhausting any one person. I like to think this is why Joseph invited so many people on the burial journey.

Written by Haley Hixson

I am thankful for the community here and am looking for ways to support those of you in the inner rings of a crisis.