(adapted from Cheryl Lawrie, Hold This Space)
We bring to this meeting all of who we are.
This is both our greatest weakness and our greatest strength.
We will have come with priorities
that we might barely be aware of
urgent expectations that we haven’t yet identified
with raw nerves that surface, unbidden
at unexpected moments
with fragilities unacknowledged and unwanted
that we have learnt only sometimes successfully to mask
This is both our greatest weakness and our greatest strength.
Tied inextricably to those,
we will have come with questions
that don’t yet have words to shape them
we will bring experience that we haven’t yet valued
and knowledge that we take for granted.
This is both our greatest weakness and our greatest strength.
but what will make this a highly functioning gathering
what will produce our best work
is if we acknowledge and embrace our own complexity
our incongruities and contradictions
our uncertainties and expectations
if we let them be on the table too.
Let me finish with an invitation that brings that to this space.
In this space,
all of who we are is welcome,
and all of who we are is needed.
so in the silence,
name to yourself what you bring:
your strengths
your failures
your capacity
your weakness
let those things sit alongside all that your neighbour brings.
and let it become part of the gift we can be. Amen.
