“All of us are here because we have been attracted through an encounter that has won us over…if you are here, it’s because you encountered a companionship, and you perceived in it the breath of a promise of life, a presence that corresponded to your heart’s expectant awaiting.”

When I read this I had this moment of, “that’s me. He’s talking about me.” I am here because I met Someone in whom I am more myself. I met a belonging.

I can vividly remember a distinct moment in college where my loneliness seemed suffocating. I remember being in my room and literally crying out, “Jesus, give me friends like you had in your apostles. People to walk with towards you.” I remember thinking this was funny after I said it because I don’t know that I have ever thought of the Apostles in this way. As students who were following someone, as a group of men who were brought together on mission without choosing each other, sure, but “friends” was a different thought.

At the time I was living in a house with three other women. We went to church together, attended the campus ministry events together, but I didn’t perceive them as friends.

Ironically, it was one of those women, the one I would have least expected, who called me five years later to invite me to the Advent Retreat in Tallahassee. They were trying to start a new School of Community there.

I had no clue that I was about to meet what my heart had been crying out for when I said “sure, I’ll go.” “I’ll go on the retreat, to the New York Encounter, I’ll go on the summer vacation with a bunch of strangers.”

I grew up Protestant. This means that “Jesus loves you” was the chosen mantra of most people around me. I remember, even as a little girl, feeling like something was wrong with me because I wasn’t sure of the truth to this statement, regardless of how many times I said it, how many Bible school songs I knew about it, or how many smiley face stickers with the saying that I had on my little pink bike.

But it was at this moment, sitting on the steps at the summer vacation, talking to total strangers, that the answer to the question of whether Jesus really does love me was discovered as a fact. None of these people said this to me. No one tried to say “Jesus loves you.” These people didn’t even know me, but they looked at me in a way I had never been looked at, like they saw someone they knew and loved. What really knocked me off my feet was that I saw in them someone I knew and loved, too.

I finally met something I had been begging for, friends like His apostles, and at the same time, I was all packed to move away to a convent in Connecticut unsure if I would ever see them again. Somehow this wasn’t a problem. My heart felt like it was breaking, AND at the same time it wasn’t a problem. In fact, I was even more free to go because of this encounter, because of meeting Him in these particular faces, I had an idea that my life was not for myself. That when I was waking up at 5:00 a.m., saying morning prayer with my community, going to work, and meeting new people, all of this was really lived with this understanding that what I was doing was for Him, for my friends, for the people I would meet that day and the people they would meet. That it was for the world. “The attraction of Christ has an effect: it perturbs and changes life, generating a new being… belonging introduces a radical change, first and foremost in one’s gaze.” I was far from my friends, but I had this excitement to see if I would meet Christ again in the face of someone new. Every day held a possibility of this encounter, and every face was a chance to see Him.

In the Beginning Day text it says, “The grace of the encounter and of our companionship are Christ’s way of saying, “Come with me, follow me.” The text talks about how the rich young man goes away sad because it would have been difficult to walk away. “He had recognized Christ, but his attachment to his own plans was too strong.” When I encountered Christ in a tangible way through these people on the summer vacation, I knew it was an invitation to follow. So, I moved to Connecticut without fear, later, I moved home, following. This year, I moved to Tampa, following. None of these moves have been easy. Each comes with the recognition of leaving something behind. My family didn’t understand how I could say “I know you all are living here, but I am moving to Tampa.” I moved to Tampa because it’s where He meets me. It’s in the particular community, and life that is shared that He draws me to. A person to whom I belong, with a particular place where I belong, a belonging that continues to send me out rather than have me draw in on myself. “We belong to Christ, and therefore, we also belong to the companionship through which He reaches us.”

Ever since I was 15, Fiddler on the Roof has been my favorite movie. Without spoiling too much (of a movie that has been out for 54 years), there’s a scene where one of the daughters is moving away to marry her fiancé. Her dad doesn’t understand how she can leave home and she sings this song that has always resonated with me.

Once I was happily content to be
As I was, where I was
Close to the people who are close to me
Here in the home I love
Who could see that a man would come
Who would change the shape of my dreams?

Who could imagine I'd be wandering so
Far from the home I love?
Yet there with my love, I'm home.

The interesting thing about this song to me is that it is made with minor and major chords, which work to create both a melancholy and a happy song at the same time. This emphasizes that even though it’s not the easiest path, there is joy in the fact that a path has been given to follow, with certainty of it being for her.

Guissani says, “Who can say, “come with me!’ Leave your father, your mother, your girlfriend, your money, with authority? Someone who is my Lord, to whom I belong.”

I have discovered this to be true. I am free to follow, or to stay, but I am more myself when I follow. I follow with belonging, a belonging that changes everything. It changes how I open the classroom door when my students knock, knowing that (on my best days) when I open the door, what and who I meet there are for me. It’s for me, it’s for the student, and somehow it’s for the world.

This belonging that is made known through His Presence is seen at different moments: moments of joy when I am singing Country Roads with you all, and moments of desperation. Like when I was at my mom’s funeral, feeling alone, and I see the face of a friend and I’m reminded that the One who gives me my friends is the One that gave me my mother, and also creates me. This is the belonging that comes in His Presence in the place where He meets me.

Whitney, Tampa