There’s been a film shoot happening across the street from my apartment.  The production company turned the vacant storefront on the corner into a set.  With the taxis, twinkly lights they’ve strung in the trees and extras walking on the sidewalk wearing party hats, I’m guessing the setting is New Year’s Eve in New York.  It has been a major production with multiple days of shooting both day and evening, a nearby parking lot taken over for trucks and equipment and lots of crew of various kinds.

When the film comes out, none of the “behind the camera” work will appear.  And most of what I see:  the taxis turning the corner, the extras on the sidewalk, will be “background” for whatever the scene is, taking place inside.

It makes me think how much of creative work, or work of any kind, tends to lift up just a few individuals, but depends on a whole network of uncredited collaborators.  We really are an interdependent web in all we do, or an “inescapable network of mutuality” as Dr. King described it.

I think of our Fellowship like this, how we rely on so many contributing so much, in gifts large and small, some foreground, some background, some entirely behind the scenes.  But every gift, each of us, required to make our community.  It reminds me to bless all that work.  And to thank you for your work.