Extending Grace in Friendship
We just completed the third Across the Bridge cultural immersion experience. Across the Bridge is an exchange of leaders from each side of the drawbridge who spend time in each other's communities in order to understand and address the cultural and racial divide between the Grand Haven area and the Muskegon area. Participants come to new realizations and build new relationships in a way that genuinely changes lives.
This year I was particularly struck by the idea of friendship and the way this experience invites us into a deeper engagement with each other. I think it may be because we start with a premise: "I don't know everything and I am bound to do or say something stupid. Please forgive me when I do." And the unspoken reply is: "Of course. And by the way, I'm going to mess up, too."
In his TED Talk, community leader Sean Goode begins by asking, "Will you forgive me?" He goes on to propose that the promise of forgiveness before wrongdoing — what he calls "unapologetic grace" — can empower people to share their truths and create space to bridge our differences.
This space sounds an awful lot like friendship to me. In the video below, Simon Sinek and Trevor Noah share their insights about friendship. They speak to trust being the underpinning of friendship and that trust is built by asking for help, not giving it. This echoes Goode's observation: the expression of vulnerability in asking for forgiveness before it's even needed.
I agree with these wise men. Friendship arises in trust and is solidified in grace. When we can ask for and extend forgiveness to each other before we need to be forgiven, we have found a friend.
The idea of friendship has taken on a added poignancy for me since my son's death in August. He was a young man who felt very isolated and alone. Last month, I wrote about the need to form peer groups based on common interests or ages in order to reach more people like my son. The hope of such groups is that they would nurture genuine friendships between the participants. As Sinek and Noah discuss, friendship is not a skill we talk about much.
It seems every third post on Grand Haven Informed is a grown up version of the question, "Will you come out and play with me?" People are regularly seeking personal connection, longing for friendship. Cell phones and a digital culture do little to help us learn the art of creating and nurturing friendships.
I think there is an opportunity to offer such lessons and to embody them in the Peer Groups I am suggesting: Friendship Circles, if you will.
During Across the Bridge, I found deep friendships that I will cherish from this day forward. I shared my struggle with my son's death. I apologized in advance should I seem distracted or out of sorts. And my concern was met with absolute understanding and grace.
We need each other. I've already heard from a few of you, but if there are others who want to be part of this imagining and planning, please let me know. Peer supports, lessons in friendship, the extension of grace. Please consider joining me and the Momentum Center in a community response to the need for community.
Namaste,
Barbara Lee VanHorssen
Experi-Mentor
barbara@momentumcentergh.org
