"...every time I remember you."

Recently I've been thinking back on how much of an impact the people around me have on my spiritual life and my understanding of God. It's been over a year since I've been surrounded by my closest friends at college. Sure, I've seen most of them since, but not all at once and not for much longer than a few days at a time (if we're lucky). There's so much to be said for that community of believers being together in the same place, holding each other up, talking about both the deep and the seemingly trivial in a single conversation. It's been awhile since I've felt that community and I miss it. We were 'church' to each other.

In one of C.S. Lewis' essays entitled "Friendship," he laments the death of one of his closest friends, Charles Williams. He talks about how it effects him and another one of their mutual friends, Ronald Knox:

"In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald's reaction to a specifically Charles joke. For from having more of Ronald, having him "to myself" now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald."

Being in community with my dearest friends brought out the fullness of each other. And I believe that they helped me to learn more about my faith. Christianity is designed to be communal. A phrase used in a sermon I heard recently was "intensely personal." There's something so beautiful about that. So often I think we have this image of trekking out on our own in our faith and then (maybe or occasionally) coming back into community to get 'recharged' to 'get back out there.' I just don't think that should be true. Lewis continues in his essay:

"In this, Frienship exhibits a glorious "nearness by resemblance" to heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each of us has to God."

If what Lewis is saying is true, that by community we can understand the individual more fully, how much more that the Church should be able to understand the personality and character of Jesus while in community? This has just been on my mind since I don't feel like I have that community anymore, at least in the way it had existed for four years of my life. I realize what that looks like needs to change as most parts of life have, if only slightly, changed since then. Part of me just wishes we could all still exist in what once was. Despite those desires, I know God will provide it once again, perhaps in a way that I'll be blindsided by.