Saturday, November 24, 2007

Welcome to the Tuesday Night Blog!

Welcome to our blog!

There is a group of people who meet on Tuesday Nights for the sake of fellowship and community, and we're starting our very own blog. I'm not even completely sure how many of us there are (7-8 ??), but be prepared to see blogs coming from lots of different directions, lots of different viewpoints, and lots of different writing styles. We all have the common bond of community, though. I'm hoping that soon we'll be reading all kinds of stories and thoughts - fun stuff, random thoughts, serious discussions, faith stuff, non-faith stuff... the works! Maybe even a few takeaway stories to boot =)

So, Tuesday Nighters, gear up and get ready to blog!

And for the rest of you out there, a word about Tuesday Nights:

They're a little bit hard to describe, but I'm going to do my best. Here is an excerpt from the book I'm working on that makes a bit of an effort at describing exactly what it is we do:

"Tuesday Night is a place to share what we’ve been thinking about, journaling about, and reading. It’s a place to share the art we’ve been working on and the art that’s touched us. Tuesday Night is a place where we mourn the things that are ugly about ourselves and start our journeys into change; a place where we celebrate what is beautiful in us and strive to keep those pieces of ourselves alive. It serves as a sort of spiritual refugee camp for those of us who’ve been hurt deeply by the modern church, yet strive to know God; a place of comfort for those of us who hurt; a place of discovery for those of us who seek. Tuesday Nights have become, not surprisingly, a significant part of each of our lives...

...Tuesday Night is very different from any sort of church group I have ever attended. As we don’t have a common church, or even a common faith, we’ve had to carve out our own definition of community. To us, a community isn’t a group of people who come together once a week to talk about a common book or passage of scripture and then go their separate ways. To us, a community is a group of people who live out their lives together. It is people who live together and eat together and struggle and cry and hurt together and learn about God together. It is people who help each other through the in-between times and the ambiguity and who question together and doubt together and reassure each other and rejoice together. You cannot do this by just meeting once a week for an hour with a specific agenda. You have to live your lives in tandem. You have to interact. You have to participate...

...Sometimes on a Tuesday Night someone will have something heavy on their heart that they must share with the group. Sometimes someone will be pondering a question that we try to help them answer, and support them in their own quest when we don’t have a clue. Sometimes we sit and tell stories. Sometimes we jump around the room to ridiculous dance music and sometimes we play games like the ever popular If I Was a Ghost I Would, in which we detail the mischief we would cause if we were ghosts, or we have whip cream whistling contests. It is a place where we can just be. There is no format or agenda. There is no telling what the tone of the night might be. We simply are, and it works for us."

I don't know if that was at all helpful, but just know Tuesday Nights are a beautiful work in progress of a community that is learning to love better, to live in interdependence, to challenge ourselves and each other, and to grow in every way and shape we can. Not a bad gig, if you ask me. Hopefully our blog will be a beautiful expression of the things that are coming out of this community.

I hope you enjoy the ride. It may be bumpy, but I think its going to be good.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

and it begins!
wahoo...from one who is in texas, I'm excited to hear about what the tuesday night crowd is up to!
thanks for doing this
:o)
flash