What Are You Really Hungry For?

I received an email from Oprah this morning.

She wants to know what I'm really hungry for. Usually it's cheese, but I sense Mama O is after something deeper. I have to be honest; it made me roll my eyes for a tenth of a second and then a serious response, subconscious and surprising, bubbled to the surface and spoke itself outloud through my inner voice's sarcasm.

Community. Anchored in faithfulness. To each other. To our children. To our neighbor. To our environment and its inhabitants. To social justice. To God.

I had this. It was beautiful. My heart breaks at the memory because the truth is--no matter how I may seem--I miss it like a lost lover in a violent storm.

I'm told it's not the same. They no longer meet together. Some have moved. Some have moved on. Whatever.

We had the closest I've ever been to authentic community. And apart from miles, we still do. I believe it was born partly from the seed of bitter adversity and pain. We came together after a disastrous "church" thing blew up in our faces. That was good, too, because it was us and we were good and not crazy. We thought we were all that way but we were wrong about that. That's okay. We did our best, and for about a week in the eye of a shitstorm it was really, really good, just like S/He said when S/He looked out over the handiwork of splendorous creation.

So we battered few set to meeting together in a favorite home where love and children dwell. We brought chicken and wine and bibles in a postmodern tongue. We talked and prayed and grew close and tight. We struggled with unanswered questions and resolved to love each other even when no answer came. We moved our location a couple times but wherever we were was home so it didn't matter.

Cement, I'm telling you. These bonds are rock solid. And the bitch of it is that I now live 18 hours away in a place where that kind of connection eludes me save for one family of four (well, six, if you count fur babies, which I do). That bond is growing, too, and we faithfully tend it--all of us together. We're like two kids out on first dates, glad and excited to be there, hopeful for the future (!), wary only from past hurt, and too close to the real thing to back away out of fear. Two years of interaction nurtured the seedling and a friendship sprouted up among us in a rather delightfully surprising way. We carefully check on one another and allow our words to venture into the spiritual. I can feel something calling out from the deep in a low tremor.

And it's about time. I'm starving.

We went for a drive at dusk, and I rediscovered a familiar old love.

Take to the highway won’t you lend me your name
Your way and my way seem to be one and the same

Mamma don’t understand it
She wants to know where I’ve been
I’d have to be some kind of natural born fool
To want to pass that way again
But I could feel it
On a country road

Sail on home to Jesus won’t you good girls and boys
I’m all in pieces, you can have your own choice
But I can hear a heavenly band full of angels
And they’re coming to set me free
I don’t know nothing ’bout the why or when
But I can tell that it’s bound to be
Because I could feel it, child, yeah
On a country road

I guess my feet know where they want me to go
Walking on a country road

Take to the highway won’t you lend me your name
Your way and my way seem to be one and the same, child
Mamma don’t understand it
She wants to know where I’ve been
I’d have to be some kind of natural born fool
To want to pass that way again
But I could feel it
On a country road