One predictable result of a good retreat is the scramble at the end when people start asking, “How can we keep this great community going?” Then follows a frenzied exchange of emails and phone numbers. 

Equally predictable is that any community formed simply for its own continuance inevitably falls apart.

I find this depressing. I sorted it out enough to determine that community is the result of making space for others in my heart, rather than clinging to “my people.” But I have still wondered why groups that were once energetic become lifeless. 

That was until a few months ago when—on a retreat—I heard an explanation for all those failed attempts at community. “Aim high,” Cynthia Bourgeault said. “If you just aim for joy and fellowship, you’ll end up one notch below that.” 

In his book Inciting Joy, the poet Ross Gay asks, “What if joy, instead of refuge or relief from heartbreak, is what effloresces from us as we help each other carry our heartbreaks?” In other words, joy isn’t that for which we aim; it’s the unintended but inevitable result of caring for others. When our aim is higher than ourselves, joy sneaks in. Relationship is strengthened. These are not the goals, but the gifts.

Gay and Bourgeault are both speaking of collectives, group work together in and on behalf of this glorious world. But I recently saw this same dynamic within myself as I pondered a real-life challenging situation. It’s a conundrum: the other person involved has behaved badly. I am ostensibly in charge, but everything I do seems to make things worse. I have alternately been angry, fearful, ashamed, legalistic and frustrated. The strife is impacting other people. 

When my goal is to make others behave the way they should—even if this would be a good thing—I am aiming too low. If, alternatively, I throw up my hands and say, “I don’t want to deal with this unpleasant person, so I quit,” that also is aiming too low.

When Cynthia Bourgeault spoke about groups aiming high, she also mentioned the challenges. We must be willing to bear each other’s “unpleasant manifestations” and to do our own internal work.

Richard Rohr quoted W.H. Auden this week, just for me: “We would rather be ruined than changed/ we would rather die in our dread/ than climb the cross of the moment/ and let our illusions die.”

Oh, the work of being changed! The cross of recognizing and bearing the other’s offensiveness; the cross of recognizing and bearing my own. The painful dance of allowing my heart opened to another without losing my ethical bearings. The repeated inner commitment to let go of everything in me that stands in the way of the Divine Flow. And the loss of the illusion that I will do this well, or easily.

But for me, I’d rather aim high—climb the cross of the moment—than die lifeless and ruined. I’d rather miss my goal than never try for it.