Meeting a New Friend - Anastasios

As many know my son, Micah, has a practice of noticing children at the park, church, or beach from several hundred feet away. Before he can make out facial details, he has pronounced them his friends and quickly rushes to greet them. I love this about him.

On Saturday night, I had the chance to notice someone I had never met. Before greeting him I had decided he was my friend. For the sake of clarity, we will name him Anastasio and Andy, for short. Andy is a few years older, has a rabbi’s beard, and Ray Bradbury’s Illustrated Man tattoos. He has little current connection to Christian faith, but has a history connected to Christian community. Today, he lives in a compound amidst a forest with his wife, staff members, and random squatters and travelers.

On Sunday night, I was fortunate to meet Andy and his father for a beer at a local tavern (John Weborg talks about the location of God is the tabernacle and tavern). We sat down and his father invited a conversation between the two younger men on our different understandings of community. My community is obviously the church; Andy’s community is the Tree House in the forest.

Andy began by talking about the social identity and values of his people in the forest. He talk about integrity, authenticity, and commitment to the social establishment of the Tree House. He discussed the power of conversation with newcomers, long-serving staff members, the board of directors, and the nature around them. He also shared about the networks and friendships that develop among the dwellers. He ended the first part f his explanation ot the community discussing what happens when visitors come who do not share the values and commitments of the forest. He mentioned that they are socially marginalized, aka ignored. If the visitors continue to dwell, the manager of the community invites the visitor to consider moving on; most often the dweller understands and soon-thereafter departs from the Forest. (I thought this sounded helpfully like Matthew 18 in some ways and more rigid in others).

Andy finished his statement, and I began considering how I would discuss my community. However, before I responded, his father asked if the people in the forest were pagans. The response neither confirmed nor denied, but instead invited a great story of “faith practice,” namely spiritual conversation with the trees in the forest.

Andy said that the tree house community was committed to religious practice. He compared his conversation with the forest to contemplative prayer. His story reminds me of transcendentalist, Henry David Thoreau. Andy enters the forest when life seems to be disconnected, exhausting, and chaotic. He listens to the spirit of the forest - the trees, the earth, the plants speak. He asks them for wisdom, for daily needs, for clarity on relationships. When he returns to the treehouse, the days seem to unfold answers to his petitions. The spirit of the forest responds to him in powerful and providential ways. He gives testimony to peace, reconciliation, and even provision following his times in the forest. Andy clearly has a sense of earthly peace that is both intriguing and inviting.

After Andy shared his wonderful story, he turned to me, and said, “so why the church?” I clarified the question – “Are you asking why a young person like me in a growingly non-churched world would invest himself in such an albatross as the church?” Yes, he said. What is it about the church draws someone like you?

I went on to recount the values, relationships, and commitments of the local churches that have blessed me from an early age. I shared with him that I knew the warts and worries of the church, yet the church was the place that welcomed me to become a man, and despite its warts I wanted to be a part of it. I shared my personal story of having young parents who were welcomed as adults, saved by grace, into the life of a local church. More theologically, I shared of my love for the Triune God and the presence of the Spirit in my life. I unintentionally mirrored his story of praying in the forest to my daily practice of the Divine Hours. I shared that the same sense of belonging and identity that he finds in the treehouse, I find in the church (believe it or not).

Then the father interjected: “So are you willing to trade the church for the treehouse?” This was a perceptive and helpful question from the listening father in our midst. I paused, and responded “no.” I am not willing to give up Jesus and the  power of the resurrection. I imagine Anastasio would feel similarly – he is not willing to give up the forest for the church – whether a building, organization or the people of God. To do so would be to unbaptize the church and reduce the spirit of the forest. The father agreed.

It is not often that I am able to engage such peculiar people. Andy was a gift to me. We shared testimony not doctrine – we conversed not debated. I was disarmed from persuasion, and the physical peculiarities of the beard and tattoos were refreshing to my Midwest ordinary lifestyle. It was good to be together story-telling. Yet the stories were not childish tales, but lives abundant – committed, valued, and oriented to a more good and just world. I think that as a Christian I have something to learn from the forest without needing to adopt the forest as my new world. And I do whole-heartedly believe that the spirit in the forest might very well be the Holy Spirit of Romans 8 speaking to the tree-dwellers. Indeed, if this could be so – then Anastasio might be hearing the very voice of the resurrected God in a very peculiar place, but I will wait to hear if indeed God dwells even in the treehouse – I believe God does – the One of the Resurrection.