Calling all misfit toys
The three co-pastors of Harbor just met in person for the first time! This past weekend, we spent some time together in Boston, where we shared hopes and dreams for our community (and for Harbor Retreat 2023!).
For real, let us know if you want a Harbor hoodie. Thanks Brandi!
In one of our conversations, we described who we are—not the three of us, but Harbor as a whole. What do we do? Why do we gather? Who is in our community?
If you’re looking for the answers to those questions, the rest of this website should help (and will likely be refreshed very soon to reflect the new insights from our discussions in Boston). But I just want to focus on one word that came up as we described the lovable bunch of Harboristas: misfits.
To be clear, this was NOT meant as an insult (though it was Dottie, known bully, who first said it). We were describing the community—including ourselves. We are misfits. Many of us at Harbor didn’t fit in our old churches. Many of us didn’t fit in the crowd of cool kids at school. Or in heteronormative institutions, or self-righteous friend groups, or ableist workplaces, or in the thousands of other expectations and norms that families, neighborhoods, and societies place on us.
If we were toys, we would perhaps be living on an island hoping for Santa Claus (or King Moonracer?) to find us a suitable home. But after time, on that large island, we would find each other and build a town upon the shore, with piers for boats to come and go…
Okay I will force myself to table (for now!) the Harbor Online Community / Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) mashup. What I’m trying to say is that, at the end of that classic TV movie, those toys find homes and are deeply loved. And we—you and I—are deeply, deeply loved. No matter how long we’ve felt like we’re on a snow-covered island.
This is one of the reasons I continue to be so drawn to Jesus. What his ministry says to me, across centuries and oceans and language barriers, is that we are loved. Even those of us—especially those of us—who have been told explicitly or implicitly that we don’t belong.
So often in the Gospels, Jesus doesn’t just acknowledge or humanize outcasts, but he eats meals with them. Touches them. Laughs with them. Yes, he is imparting dignity, but more than that, he is offering a place to belong.
We will not always get things right here at Harbor. But as we explore together what it means to follow Jesus, we know this: it means creating a place where every misfit finds a home. If you want to belong, you belong.
