Seeing Eleanor Rigby in the Mirror

on the pavement

A friend recently used the word "Shibboleth" in a blog entry and somehow this locution resonated with me and brought order to some of the cacophony of thoughts and ideas that have been moiling about my mind and soul lately.
What is my search for community about? Is it about finding a way to serve others? Or a way to meet one's own needs. Am I looking to affirm or to be affirmed?
Shibboleth is a term from the Hebrew which represents a linguistic password. It's a way of acknowledging those who are a part of the in group and those who are not. A form of inclusion that is meant to exclude. Those who speak correctly are allowed to live. Those who mispronounce, misunderstand, miss the boat; they are put to the sword. How true in today's disconnected, individualistic, consumer driven, in-group seeking world. People desperately searching for a way in which to belong to something, anything, just so they won't be left alone. Alone to face themselves. Alone to face God, naked, without the comfort of slogans or mantras or inner-ring conceits. C.S. Lewis wrote that the desire to be a part of an "Inner Ring" is one of the most powerful driving forces of human behaviour and thought. In his words "The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it." (The Weight of Glory) To Lewis both "pining and moping outside Rings that you can never enter" and "passing triumphantly further and further in" are dangerous states of being. In each of those possibilities the rings tighten and strangle the soul that seeks to cleave and find true relationship. Rings like this dictate that you sacrifice your true self on the alter of conformity and that you demand others do the same. A false offering that cannot heal. the smoke does not rise.
Relationship is a good and natural desire. We, created in the very image of a God who is relationship personified, must have connection in order to live. But, fallen and broken we turn what is a thing of beauty and freedom into yet another weapon. One that we believe we are using in self defense, not realizing that those who live by this sword, die by it. How do we take the blade and beat in into a plowshare? In the words of Edward Markham
He drew a circle that shut me out,
heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win;
We drew a circle that took him in.
Love, being a receptical of the enduring never ending eternally inclusionary love of God can turn us from seeking an inner ring to seekers of circles in which the centre is eternal and the circumference nowhere. (apologies to Timaeus of Locris)