I had coffee with my good friend Ben today and another old friend joined us later on. When I say old friend I do not mean we go a long way back, I mean old…Ben and my other friend are both more than 80 years old.

I appreciate my conversations with “old” friends. There is something refreshing about their “seen it all” attitude that often softens the blow of much that they hear that would otherwise shock and dismay those of us with far less life experience.

Often we do not speak about anything profound but rather mostly mundane day to day things and memories. Today the subject turned to tinkering which left me listening as my two table companions took turns talking about the things they had made in their life. One spoke of making his own welding tools which both baffled and awed me. The other spoke of writing a letter to Ford once about how to improve the design of their vehicles. So much knowledge, so much experience.

At the same time the conversations inevitably turn to illness, pain and death. What new malaise has made an appearance and who has most recently died.

The older my friends become the more time-bound they appear and act.

I notice this more and more. As a child, adults were all one species and radically different from me. Now as a somewhat middle-aged guy I must resist the temptation to view children, youth and seniors as strange and other-worldly. I say resist because the temptation is strong to classify them as ‘other’ which then allows me to speak of them or treat them as if they were inhuman.

Time seems to be a poison to me. Something about the accumulation of time corrodes us and binds us in a way that frightens me.

I think this is because time is really a foreign thing to us…I believe we were created by God with the intent of existing outside of time. Existing in a place and way where the accumulation of experience does not threaten to overwhelm us in body and soul.

I do not like the idea that we are all vehicles moving along the linear highway of time, each at different points, some behind and some ahead, some accelerating and some decelerating. At the risk of sounding a little too touchy/feely I believe we were meant to exist outside of time.

Entropy, atrophy and the ultimate running down of things all seem like an aspect of brokenness and corruption that will one day be overthrown. In the meantime I believe we need to see them for what they are and remember that the people around us, young and old, need to be viewed with time-based biases stripped away. Not as aliens strange and unusual to us but as brethren that deserve compassion and and ear; to be heard and thus receive validation, affirmation and ultimately existence.

If time poisons, isolation rusts. I believe the antidote, the oil of life if you will, is community. First community in the world but ultimately community in Christ in preparation for the forever community we were built for. Community across ages. Not a community of many ages stratified across demographic but a true blending of age and type and character and experience.

Community is not an easy thing to find or to do. The worst thing is the longer is takes to connect or become community the harder it gets (like exercise).

How do we find it? Ideally it is selfless, loving, compassionate, forgiving, relationship but how often do we run into these things? Harder still humans tend to be all or nothing types…if we cannot find perfect, sharing community either in relationship with others, church or group, we tend to want nothing at all.

Frankly I think the best most of us can do here is to recognize that community is built like a brick house…one brick at a time, one person at a time. It is not walking into a church, bar, work, house etc. and being overwhelmed by perfect, holy, loving, community (aka our expectations). It is a wave and a smile to the stranger on the street, the frightening hello to the unknown and the expectation that other people’s fear and similar brokenness will likely mean we will have to do these things a thousand times before it sticks…but I can tell you this – it is worth it.

The pain of stepping outside of ourselves and into others is absolutely worth the effort. Which is why, once we recognize that those different from us, those older and those younger, are the same, with the same fears and preconceptions, it becomes easier to do and before you know it you have a whole network of people in your community – coworkers, your bank teller, the garbageman, your church crowd, your drinking buddies, the woman who lets her dog crap on your lawn, the waitress at your favorite restaurant etc.

Together all these strange half-relationships make up the ingredients of community. It is not neat, it is not clean, and these bozos will just as soon disappear for months on end but they come back or their space is filled with the kids on the soccer team, the coach of the hockey team or the oldsters at the local Tim Hortons you sometimes stop and talk to.