Written by Ollie Jarvis, TCL’s pastoral assistant and enthusiastic dialogue participant.
Ollie lives and works in Austin, overseeing his daughter’s online education and learning new recipes. He rides his bike a little every morning. Ollie is a friendly soul and would prefer in-person visits, but has adjusted to the times by staying inside and making small art. He was once 10. Ollie’s deeply grateful for his TCL family.
The before times. We all remember them well. We sat together at our tables and gave each other hugs as greetings. We didn’t feel the need to swing wide when walking past someone on the sidewalk, and dropped into the grocery on a whim when headed home from work. We touched our faces with abandon!
Added to the generalized anxiety of trying to avoid infecting ourselves and others, these new times have imposed other struggles. We aren’t accustomed to spending so much time in close quarters with our familiars or, in many cases, alone. For those with children, the close quarters are compounded by the fact that daycares and schools aren’t functioning as normal, leaving parents to navigate their children’s education at home. Jobs and work have dried up for a host of us, causing financial repercussions that ripple through our daily lives and relationships.
Then, as an added layer of uncertainty, the institutions many of us have trusted to protect us and provide an undergird of dependability have now been revealed as fragile, unstable, and fraught. The yearning to belong and feel safe some have felt for a long time is now being recognized (for the first time in many cases), by our fellow travelers. The noise and energy being applied in an effort to alleviate (or prevent the alleviation of) long-established oppressions exposes the degree to which we cannot predict the future.
Times are trying, no matter where you find yourself situated.
As the chaos outside built over the last six months, I found myself more and more grateful for this community: The Church Lab. I both work for TCL and participate in bi-monthly dialogue conversations. So I both give to and benefit from this tiny non-profit as it seeks to imagine and create solutions to the situations we all, but especially the church, find ourselves in. While I can't say that my personal experience over the last six months has been an unmitigated joy, I can say that all of my investment in TCL has, in fact, been that.
On a personal level, I can express deep gratitude to my fellow dialoguers. I would never have guessed going in how important these relationships would become to me, especially since on the surface, some of my community members would seem to be miles apart from me. In fact, when I recently shared a deeply personal decision with the group, one of my on-the-surface-miles-apart community members was the one whose reaction I most cared about. She was the first to react with support and love. That’s the power of dialogue, right there. Profound and valuable.
As for my work with TCL, I can offer these reflections. At a certain point it became clear that the pandemic’s effects would be profound and that our own community members were being affected physically and emotionally. Members of dialogue immediately stepped in to take care of each other in concrete ways. Furthermore, it became clear that the pandemic’s toll would be extended and could potentially affect everyone’s bottom line: the dialoguers, TCL’s supporters, our organization itself. The Church Lab’s financial supporters both stood their ground and stepped up. I was overdone with relief and joy each time it became clear that our supporters value the work we do, recognize how that value impacts the world, and trust us to care for God’s people. Since The Church Lab is structured to be nimble and to be financially solvent, we were in the position to use these resources to respond in real time to the emerging needs of our own community and the larger world. We created new means by which dialogue members can stay in touch, worked to develop ways to worship together virtually, created a newsletter block for social justice response, jumped into action as Hurricane Laura approached the Texas gulf coast. God is truly good, and working through The Church Lab.