As much as I believe we can know God within, I really think there is value in both the guides of communal fellowship and teachers/elders. I don’t think these things are authorities on God but instead companions to God. We were made to grow from and with one another—to serve and love one another. That said, I think they can and need to be found outside spiritual structures.

Don’t get me wrong—we need revolutionary fellowship. But I think many of us are holding on to a specific vision of that means instead of listening to the Spirit of God for ourselves.

If a religious fellowship forms that isn’t grounded in the life of the revolutionary commune, it deserves God’s judgment. How can we preach this inward God of liberation and yet not materially struggle towards liberation? Yet even intentional faith communities preach revolution and yet too often demand centering in their members’ lives. Such communities may create revolutionary fervor, but too often become insular and disconnected from liberatory and revolutionary currents.

If we are to have spiritual communities, we need to listen to the Spirit about what that means. Revolutionary house churches and monasteries are a beautiful thought, but how do we keep these projects integrated in the revolutionary movement? How do we avoid over-intentionality, and losing grip of this world? We need to re-discover what discipleship and fellowship means for ourselves. Inherited forms and expectations may be holding us back from faithfulness.

It’s not that being a revolutionary is everything. But abiding in love is. I hope that both my communism and my Christianity are the result of me abiding in this Spirit. How I see it: being hidden in Christ, and yielded to the Spirit of liberation, demands of us a new world. If we don’t answer to that call, we are refusing the masses, and we are refusing Christ.

All that to say, there are apostles among us. Angels. Christ, and God even. We just need eyes to see and ears to hear. If they want to pray, we’ll pray, and that’ll be beautiful. But not every Christ we meet will believe in God, and that’s okay. I think God is so much bigger than what we’re allowing ourselves to believe, and it seems more and more pressing to broaden our spiritual imagination. We need to believe the Spirit was poured out on all flesh—on all creation even.

May God teach us how to be faithful in ways that are natural and true to us. May God open our eyes to their presence and kin-dom in all things.