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Posted on May 14, 2013 in church stuff, healing, incarnational, leadership, synchroblog, the refuge | 34 comments

what seems to help in the midst of pain

pain is a treasure rumi quote

“when we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. the friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.” – henri nouwen

this month’s synchroblog is centered on pain & how to love & care for others who are in pain.  i laughed this morning because today’s my birthday and it’s a little ironic that somehow even on this day  i ended up talking about pain!  there’s an awful lot of grief & loss & hard stuff in this world and for some reason it feels like it keeps ramping up. so many hard things every direction. what is our responsibility in it?  what should we say or not say? what helps & what hurts?

in our human DNA is a deep desire to avoid pain, either in our own life or in the lives of others.

it’s hard to hurt.  and it’s hard to be around other people who are hurting.

at the refuge, our little faith community, there’s a high degree of pain. but i always tell everyone that really, we are no different from almost any other church or group (except that others might have health insurance & live in bigger houses). we just have a culture of raw honesty, where what’s on the inside is freer to come out on the outside. we are trying to be people who welcome pain to the table instead of run from it.  most humans share many of the same troubles & woes, but many don’t have a safe place to express it out loud.

pain and struggle often create shame. i remember when i first started sharing more of my real story; every part of me wanted to run for the hills, move away, do anything i could to not have to live with relationships where all my stuff was out on the table, exposed.

i’m always learning, too, but here are a few ideas that seem to help in the midst of pain:

1. less words, more presence.  i have a theory that we often have an unconscious hope that if we could  say the right words in the exact right way, it would radically help another person. most people aren’t one sentence away from feeling better when they are in pain.  presence seems to matter more than words.  long-haul-ness goes the furthest for those in pain. many people are eager to help and support at the beginning of pain eruptions, but over time many people drop off and quit wondering how we’re doing. safe people don’t do drive-by pain relief.  they are in it for the long haul, which i keep realizing is sometimes the hardest thing of all.

2. less statements, more questions.  along with the one-sentence-away-from-changing-everything theory, it’s a natural default to talk instead of listen. i don’t mean interrogation (although i can be guilty of asking too many hard questions in one sitting, ha ha), but questions usually save us from advice giving and fixing. they help people process out loud and take a lot of pressure off us coming up with the right words that can’t be found anyway.

3. less anxiety, more trust.  pain creates so much anxiety in us.  this is why when people are hurting, we have an instinct to “fix it” or do-something-anything that will help the hurting person feel better in that moment. i feel it all the time. it’s a weird innate control thing and in so many ways, it’s about us playing God and taking on more responsibility than we need to. it’s why i have a love-hate thing with 12 step groups. i  love that there’s no cross-talk, advice giving and fixing, but inside i sometimes feel a little crazy that we just thank people for sharing and go on to the next person.  however, it models something we need to learn–we can’t fix anyone else.  the best thing we can do is listen, honor the pain ,and trust the long healing path.

4. less perfection, more grace.  relational dynamics like hanging-in-the-thick-of-pain-with-people is not formulaic.  we will screw it up, we will say lame things, we will fail people.  recently i gave unsolicited advice to a hurting friend.  yikes, as soon as the words tumbled out of my mouth, i knew they would hurt instead of help. i was reminded, yet again, how we need grace as friends, as leaders, as people. we’re imperfect people trying to stay present in hard places; we won’t be able to master every moment.  this is messy and sometimes we will have to apologize & ask for grace (and give it to our friends), too.

maybe the best thing we can do to hold the space for others’ pain is to learn to hold the space for ours.  if we are people who push our own pain away, we usually will do the same for others.  if we are hard on ourselves for feeling certain feelings, we will usually be hard on others, too.  i love what the apostle paul says in 2 corinthians 1:3-4, that we comfort others with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.  it’s why i don’t think most people need another Bible study or church service; there are plenty of those.

we need places to practice getting in touch with our story.

i’m going to quote henri nouwen twice in one post because it’s a great reminder:

“the christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self.”

yeah, our biggest strength is our weakness, our pain. 

in the end, that’s all we’ve got.

//

other bloggers writing about pain this month:

 

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Posted on May 7, 2013 in church stuff, friendship, healing, incarnational, relationships | 15 comments

healing shame & division

the church is people collapsing into Goda few weeks ago at the bold boundaries sacred friendship gathering, hugo schwyzer, an amazing writer & speaker  & professor from LA, shared this little gem:  “the church’s witness is to heal shame and division.”

that is what we are meant to do:  heal shame, heal division in this crazy mixed up world. 

for the most part, i don’t think that is what “the church” is known for.  in fact, in so many ways we are known for just the opposite–for creating shame, for promoting division.  i had plenty of shame on my own before i came into the fold of christianity, but the truth is that for a long time, my shame actually ramped up instead of decrease. a lot of my shame came from somehow falling short as a christian, not measuring up to what i was supposed to be doing, and a weird pervasive feeling that somehow being “me” wasn’t really what God had in mind.  the amount of energy i spent on trying to be someone else was really exhausting, and i am ever-grateful for continually breaking free from some of those bonds.

when it comes to division, this has unfortunately become our signature mark.  instead of being peacemakers and bridge builders, we are more often known for promoting who’s in, who’s out, who’s good, who’s bad, who’s on God’s side, who’s not.  as a christian of a more conservative persuasion in my earlier years, i did my share of dividing.  i remember how passionate i was about making sure i wasn’t “of the world” and ways i put myself above other people for self-protection.  what’s interesting, though, is as i have shifted and changed, i can see, too, how some of what i have done has just created a different kind of division.  this time, i am aligned on the other side of things, against some of what contemporary christianity represents.

but division is division.

and the church’s witness is to heal shame and division.

to me, the church is not a building or a system or a program.  it is people gathered together to learn and practice the ways of Jesus and pass on love, hope, mercy, and justice in a broken, weird world.  

our responsibility is to play our part in healing shame and division.  i don’t think that’s a new kind of legalism or asking too much of us. (thanks, jamie).

as far as i can tell, this kind of healing primarily comes through relationship with one another.  healing from shame and division isn’t the kind of transformation that drops out of the sky into the quiet of the night.  it somehow happens when people bump up against each other and give and receive presence, mercy, grace, understanding, challenge, encouragement, love, truth, hope.  

it happens in friendship.  in relationship.

inequality,  deep grooves of hierarchy, and stereotypes of men & women, rich & poor, liberal & conservative, gay & straight, black & white, healthy & sick, educated & uneducated perpetuate shame and division.  the way it is healed is through breaking down divides and finding ways to live together as friends, as brothers & sisters, as human beings. 

i love h. norman crosby’s thought about the church as a place where we collapse into God, collapse into each other. we can’t collapse into God or other people if we are filled with shame and divided from one another, if we shame others and separate ourselves from one another.

our best hope is finding our common humanity in the upside down ways of Jesus.

discovering our shared experience.

our willingness to engage in real, raw relationship with each other.

our becoming-more-honest-about-what’s-really-going-on-inside-our-souls.

learning to be honest about how we feel about ourselves. how we feel about others. how much we are guided by fear. how much we need God’s help to change. how we can’t change the world tomorrow, but we can start with changing us.

some questions we can maybe ask individually & collectively as little pockets of love are:

how are we entering into deeper and more meaningful relationships with other people, even if we are scared? 

how are we building bridges instead of bombing them?

how are we honoring and respecting people who are different from us, even when we don’t agree?

how are we keeping our hands open instead of clenched? our hearts soft instead of protected?

how are we recognizing our shame so it can lose its grip?

how are we becoming better human beings, less divided, more free?

how are we learning to receive and not just give?

and most of all, how are we helping each other feel less shame, less division, so have a much better shot at collapsing into God, collapsing into each other?

//

today i have a post up at sheloves magazine as part of the monthly “down we go” column.  the theme this month is “soar” and my thought is that maybe we could redefine what that means. it’s called flapping, flailing, flying:  ”what might look easy for one person is incredibly hard for another. what might look insignificant to some might be a miracle to another. what looks like flapping, flailing, barely-flying for one is actually soaring for another.”  i’d love to hear what it stirs up for you.

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Posted on Apr 11, 2013 in church stuff, healing, incarnational, the refuge | 21 comments

the open-broken heart

there's no way to be human without having ones heart broken

* i wrote this post earlier this week but hadn’t posted it yet when i received word yesterday morning that we lost a dear refuge family member who had been struggling with a long season of not wanting to live. right now we are aching, struck by the painful realities of life. broken-hearted. and trying to hold on to God’s sustaining hope. i debated posting it this morning, but the reality is that i woke up today needing these words more than ever and if even one other person does, then i guess it’s probably worth it to share. i know we were never meant to suffer alone. 

* * * * *

note: i’m on a parker palmer kick right now.

right after i posted the intra-faith dialogue post i had a whole bunch of other things i wish i had said, like this is different from ecunemical. that is another thing all together; this is about divisions within those of us who come from the same roots and have gone different directions and at this point, i think so many doubt these divides can be crossed so it’s really hard to care about and because a lot of people have had so many unsafe & ugly experiences with certain conversations, there’s no way they are going to go back for more.

but honestly, all of them swept away after a really crazy week filled with news of death & suicide attempts & all kinds of other deep pain around here.

in the real raw moments of our crazy lives, the luxury of theological rambling goes out the window.

it makes me think how the world is crying out for hope while we’re talking about theology and how much time we waste arguing over the dumbest things while the dark is caving in on people all over the place.  it makes me think of what Jesus said to the pharisees, “you hypocrites…you shut the door to the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. you yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to” (matthew 23:13-14).

so many people are pretty darn desperate for some hope.  most people don’t care about the greek meaning of the word “submit” but they sure do care about finding relief, light in the darkness, love in the emptiness, peace in the storm. 

after getting news that a dear friend & lover-of-so-many-hurting-people had died, i pulled out an old handout that he had given me years ago when he facilitated our house of refuge over 4 years ago. i still remember the story he told because it was so good but i wanted to read it again. it was in a chapter called “the open broken heart” by parker palmer.  he says that there are two kinds of broken hearts–one that is “an unresolved wound we carry with us for a long time, sometimes tucking it away and feeding it, sometimes trying to ‘resolve it’ by inflicting the same wound on others.”

but the other is a different way to consider what a broken heart might mean.  he says, “imagine that small clenched fist of a heart ‘broken open’ into the largeness of life, into greater capacity to hold one’s own and the world’s pain and joy.” 

he shares a hasidic tale where a disciple asks the rabbi, “”why does torah tell us to place these words upon our hearts?” why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?  the rabbi answers, “it is because as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. so we place them on top of our hearts.  and there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks, and the words fall in….”

the reality of life this side of heaven is that there is extreme suffering.  so much pain, so much loss, so much heartbreak, so much not-the-way-we-had-hoped-it-would-be. 

life is so tender, so fragile.

yet at the same time, it is so strong.  i see the incredible courage of people who keep going after such extreme loss, laughter through the tears, forgiveness after so much hurt, moving forward after huge setbacks, beauty emerging out of heaps of ashes.

divorce. death. abuse. depression. chronic pain. addiction. bankruptcy. loneliness.

to be human means we will suffer.

parker palmer says that “when we don’t know what to do with our suffering, we turn to violence.” 

and we all know that violence isn’t just toward others, it is toward ourselves, too.

the most important thing is that we somehow don’t suffer alone.   

we were never supposed to suffer alone.

it’s why the church is not supposed to be about singing some songs & listening-to-the-preacher-preach & getting a spiritual fix.

it’s supposed to be a place for collective suffering, collective hope.

this is why i am a nut case when it comes to “church” (remember, i use that term loosely) because our best hope in the darkness is to have others with us who have unclenched fists & open broken hearts to help hold this pain.  people who don’t try to solve or fix or scripturize or try to make sense of what can’t be made sense of.  people with pericardiums that work.  people brave enough to welcome pain.  people who can, as parker palmer says, stand in the ‘tragic gap’, the “gap between what is and what could and should be…”

i’m so thankful for those people in my life, for a God who is close the broken-hearted, for a church that does not minimize suffering and keeps turning toward hope.

God, may we be people with open-broken hearts who honor our own suffering and the suffering of others well–with faith, hope, love, and dignity.

 

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Posted on Feb 18, 2013 in church stuff, incarnational | 17 comments

three things about one word: church

church definition jpeg

i first started going to church on a regular basis when i was in high school. my boyfriend’s family became born-again christians while we were dating and i went with them. i loved it. the inspiration, the music, the challenge. it didn’t change everything for me but it opened me up to a world that i knew little about before. since then, i have been in all kinds of churches–big ones, little ones, weird ones, cool ones.

each of my church experiences have shaped and formed me. it’s where i’ve learned things that i need to learn. it’s where i found new ways to intersect with God. it’s where my soul has become stirred in ways it needed stirring and probably wouldn’t have happened sitting home watching TV.

even though some of my jacked-up-ness related to God has come from church, so much good was born there, too.

i’ve written before on why i love the church. yeah, no matter how hard i’ve tried to escape it, i love the church because i love people. to me, that’s really what the church is–people gathered together to live & learn & love together. we learn things in community that we can never learn on our own. i also think that the word and the idea behind it has become hijacked and that we need to re-frame what church actually means.

this year i started a here-and-there series called “three things about one word” and have talked so far about power & serving. i always think a lot about church, but this week these three things came to mind:

1. church is about people gathered in all kinds of beautiful & crazy shapes and forms (and a service is one small sliver of what that means). services are helpful to people and create an intentional space to connect with God in all kinds of ways, but a service alone is not church. church is people who are connecting eye to eye, heart to heart, sharing life together, breaking bread together, carrying each other’s burdens, being known, making ourselves vulnerable, praying light into darkness, discovering passions, empowering, encouraging, and calling out God’s image in each other. sometimes that happens at all sizes of services, but often church happens one on one, in coffee shops, in hospitals, in support groups, in houses, in shelters, at parties, in 2′s and 3′s and 4′s.  i really wish this kind of church got more credit because it seems that those thin places are where more sustained healing happens, where the great loneliness subsides, where we feel alive and purposeful, where we feel loved & heard, where the holy & the human intersect. we can’t  let the rules of the system define what is church and what isn’t.

2. the end product of church should be vulnerability, not inspiration.  of course, i think part of gathering is getting inspiration & challenge, but that’s only a little piece of what it was meant to be. we can be inspired and never make ourselves vulnerable to another human being. we can get all revved up about God and never actually practice what we intend to. we can become intoxicated with good sermons & liturgies & podcasts & music & ideas but never really expose our hearts. Jesus stuff is vulnerable. it’s practical, not theoretical.  it’s risky not comfortable.  it requires us to give ourselves to others in ways that don’t necessarily make us feel “good” but transform us into God’s image. one of the biggest reasons i haven’t given up on “church” is that it makes me vulnerable in ways i sometimes can’t stand.  and usually, the things i don’t-want-to-do are the things that are often the best for my soul in the end.

3. the world isn’t desperate for another service, but it sure does need the body of Christ, the church, to be what it’s supposed to be.  i always notice it, but after my israel-palestine trip, i’m even more painfully struck with how much we have failed when it comes to bringing peace & hope & love & justice & mercy to this broken and messed up world. the things we perpetuate & spend our money on, the things we are arguing about, and what we are known for are so distant from Jesus’ message that sometimes i wonder if we can ever turn it around. but then i hear your stories and your hearts and see the on-the-ground-work many dear friends are doing and i remember that we’re not completely done for yet. you give me so much hope, not for the system but for the living reality that there’s nothing prettier than God’s spirit flowing through our flesh & blood.

i have said all of these things before. really, these three things are nothing new. but i often write so i can remember, too. sometimes i feel a little dumb, all this passion i have for something that so many people have come to associate as either a country club for the judgmental or a waste of time.  when i revisit it, i seem to always come back to this conclusion: church matters because people do.

there’s too much loneliness, too much depression, too much darkness, too much shame, too much brokenness, too much poverty, too much hunger, too much abuse, too much grief, too much ugliness in this world to ignore.

and no matter how we slice it up, Jesus gave us the great responsibility–together–to reflect his image in his physical absence and to be the bearers of beauty & hope & mercy & peace & justice & kindness & compassion & love here, now.

so here’s to creating little pockets of love & spaces & places & ways for human beings to be with each other–to grow & share & fail & seek & wrestle & create & try & practice & find hope & gain courage & learn-to-love-and-be-loved–no matter how messy or weird or dumb or crazy or small or insignificant it may look or feel.

* * * * *

ps: speaking of “church”, i wanted to let you know, too, that we are running our next walking wounded: hope for those hurt by the church online class starting monday march 4th.  registration details are here.  each time we’ve done it, i am reminded how important it is to have safe spaces to intentionally process some of our pain related to church & faith shifts. it’s a messy process, finding our way out of the muck and mire, and this is a way to get some traction and hope. feel free to email me if you have any questions.

Walking Wounded. Register now.

 

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Posted on Feb 7, 2013 in church stuff, incarnational, injustice | 16 comments

our exceptional unexceptionalness.

plato quote

“you shall love your neighbor as yourself” – mark 12:31

according to wikipedia (the source i always tell students in my online college class never to use for their papers so i feel a little bad using it here), exceptionalism is: “the perception that a country, society, institution, movement, or time period is exceptional (i.e., unusual or extraordinary) in some way and thus does not need to conform to normal rules or general principles.

maybe many of you have heard this term before but it’s not a word i was very familiar with until now. during my trip, it came up several times related to issues between israel & palestine. i heard it from both sides, in the context of  israel, as God’s chosen people, being able to play by different rules because of their specialness.

exceptionalism has deep & wide ramifications for what’s happening in the holy land and in many other places where there is war and strife.

but i think it’s rampant here, too, in much more subtle ways. it is reflected in the attitude of “we’re the ones who are somehow-better or more-special or have-the-market-cornered-on-this-or-that or are-closer-to-God or know-what-God-wants-or-thinks.”  and it’s especially strong in church-y circles.

i wonder if some of it goes back to wanting to be on the winning team. to consider ourselves set apart from the average. to have something to make us feel better about ourselves.

regardless of how we get there, it tends to lead to us tromping on others.

it’s why so many people have big gaping church wounds or are just worn out by church elitism.

the more i reflect on this, i wonder if almost every church hurt somehow stems back to exceptionalism and a feeling of superiority or specialness that someone or some group of people felt over others that caused them to mistreat, malign, neglect, harshly discipline, control, and-a-whole-host-of-not-so-good-things.

when i was on a big rocking church staff, i remember the high of feeling so much better than everyone else.  that we were so amazing, special, smart, cool, progressive, so…. and it meant we could get away with things that really weren’t okay or right because we were doing it for “the sake of the kingdom.”  we could hide behind our “exceptionalness”, our “on-top-ness” and it did make me feel invincible.

until i was on the under side of it.

the one who was less than, the one on the outs, the one who was no longer in the club or special anymore.  i remember one of my coworkers yelling at me that i’d never find anywhere outside of that church that would value me more as a woman, that i’d never be able to influence more women (not people, ha ha) than that place, that the grass was not greener anywhere else, that their specialness could never be surpassed.

once i was out i saw how truly dangerous this select kind of exceptionalism is.  it clouds judgment, it distorts reality. it oppresses. it allows people to do terrible things in the name of God & their specialness.

that’s just one small example and i’m guessing you have many others, not just in church but in life, too.

when it’s all said and done, exceptionalism points to our tendency to stay divided from others, to have a “right” group and a “wrong” group, an “us” and a “them”, a “saved” and an “unsaved”, a “righteous” and an “unrighteous”, a “better than” and a “less than”, an “over” and an “under.”

Jesus made clear that in the kingdom of God that we are all equal, no less or no more than another. 

and maybe the harsh truth is that is the hardest thing of all to embrace in this world. to accept our unexceptionalness no matter what skin color or sexual orientation or gender or socioeconomics or belief system or life experience.

that we are just as sick and normal and broken and human and healthy and whole and free and ugly and beautiful as the person next to us.

that we are all equal & wonderfully special in the sight of God despite our all our differences.

that we are no better nor worse than others.

that when all of our spiritual & physical protections are stripped away, we really are all the same.

maybe part of our group-craziness is that we don’t want to be the same as “those people”, whoever those people might be. in some weird part of our hearts, we want to be better than them, more loved than them, more right than them, more special than them.

but we’re not. we are equally created & loved by God.  none better nor worse than another.  none more worthy than another. none with more specialness-in-the-eyes-of-God-than another.

oh, how i dream of this being our starting point in how we live, how we breathe, how we treat one another, how we see ourselves in the world, how we live out our faith.

and the truth is, we will never ever be able to get there without first bending our knee, confessing the prejudices in our hearts, acknowledging our fears of being equal, laying down our power, and being willing to be perceived as crazy and irresponsible and gone-off-the-deep-end for actually truly, deeply, madly loving our neighbor as ourselves.

God, show us the way.

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Posted on Jan 21, 2013 in church stuff, dreams, equality, incarnational, the refuge | 6 comments

this dream is so possible.

blog dreams are possible mlk day

happy martin luther king day!  i am so grateful for his prophetic voice & the great movement his influence made to shift deep injustices.  we still have a long way to go but his legacy lives on and hopefully will keep inspiring us toward action & hope.  this past week i was dreaming with some refuge friends about our future and it reminded me of this post we wrote for the refuge blog before i had my own blog in 2007.  i have reprinted forms of it before & in down we go, too, but this year i wanted to republish the original post. when i read it this past week, it reminded me of all of the things i care about when it comes to what the church could be & how it could change the world.

* * * * *

dreams – from the old refuge blog, october 2007

we have a dream…

it’s not a small one.
it’s not a huge one (we’re not planning to lead any marches anytime soon)
we think it’s a simple one.

and despite our cynicism about ‘church’ (yes, we know it seeps through!) we are idealists. we wouldn’t be doing this if we had given up.

we are still “foolish” enough to think some of our dreams are possible. we think when Jesus said “your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” he meant that the Kingdom was possible now.

here are a few of our dreams…

we have a dream that we’d be people who took Jesus word’s seriously. this means we don’t get to just talk about it, we actually have to be forgiving, loving, sacrificing, humble. we need to be people willing to give away our stuff, care for the widows and orphans, die to ourself, hug lepers, lay down power, and make peace with our enemies.

we have a dream that all people would be valued. when we look at each other we don’t let color, socioeconomics, gender, theologies, shapes or sizes or social abilities get in the way of seeing the image of God and respecting each other’s worth, value & contribution to this world.

we have a dream that no single parent would feel like they were parenting alone. they’d have other people willing to fill in the gaps, pick up the slack, offer help, prayer, and love so it’s not so damn hard.

we have a dream that no one would feel crippled by their weaknesses. the damage from the past & present would not paralyze us from living out who God made us to be, instead, we’d use our story to help another person.

we have a dream that we’d know our neighbors. actually know them, and notice if they’re hungry or sad or lonely and do something about it if we can.

we have a dream that every child had grownups other than their parents who believed in them. we’d see all that was possible, and cheer them on in really tangible ways.

we have a dream that people of Jesus would be known for the acts of Jesus. when people hear the word “Christian” they did not cringe and immediately think “judgemental”. instead, they’d have warm feelings that were associated with the truth of Christ’s love & kindness because they experienced it from one of us at some point and couldn’t escape its power.

we have a dream that we’d be advocates. we will stand with the marginalized, oppressed, poor & unlovely, that we’d risk our pride. position, and power so that someone with none could get a little.

we have a dream that walls between churches & the community would crumble. walls that have been built because of fear and past ugly experiences would dissolve. that we’d learn to share resources, support each other & let care for human beings supersede our politics & theologies.

we have a dream that every person would feel known, loved & cared for by another human being. that we’d do our little part to help banish loneliness.

we have a dream that we’d be a community of dreamers.

what are some of yours?

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