If you've spent any real time in the aerial world, you already know something the rest of the world doesn't always see from the outside: this sport is intimate. You are trusting the person spotting you with your life. You are trusting your teammate to hit her mark in a duo catch. You are trusting the person next to you in ensemble not to let go a half-second too early so your timing is also correct. There is no faking your way through that kind of trust. It has to be real, and it has to be built — every single day, on the ground, before it ever shows up in the air.
That's why, this week, I want to talk about something bigger than technique, bigger than choreography, bigger even than competition scores. I want to talk about love — the specific, deliberate, sometimes-costly kind of love that holds a community together. Because at Eternal Aerial Arts, this isn't a nice-to-have value we tack onto our mission statement. It's the whole reason the studio exists the way it does. And I believe with everything in me that how we love one another here is the single greatest testimony we have to offer the world about who Christ is.
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"The Commandment Underneath Everything We Do
When Jesus was asked which commandment mattered most, He didn't hand back a list. He gave two, and told us they were inseparable
The most important commandment is this: 'Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.' The second is equally important: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' No other commandment is greater than these." (Mark 12:29-31)
Notice He said equally important. You cannot claim to love God with your whole heart while treating the people around you — your teammate, your coach, the student on the next mat — as someone to compete against, gossip about, or tear down to feel better about yourself. Love of God and love of people are not two separate assignments. They're one calling, lived out in two directions at once. Everything else we do in this studio — the coaching, the choreography, the color-level progressions, the competition team — is downstream of that one calling.
The Mark That Proves It's Real
Jesus went further than just commanding love. He told His followers that love would be the evidence — the thing that would set them apart and point people to Him:
"So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples." (John 13:34-35)
Read that last line again: your love for one another will prove to the world. Not your skill level. Not your trophies. Not how polished your showcase piece looks. Love — the way you treat the people in your own community — is the proof. That's a sobering standard, and it's also an incredible privilege. It means every practice, every studio chat, every hard conversation between teammates is an opportunity to show the world something true about who God is.
Jesus prayed for this specifically, too. In what's often called His High Priestly Prayer, right before His arrest, He prayed not just for His disciples but for us:
"I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message. I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one — as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me." (John 17:20-21)
Unity was never a side detail to Jesus. It was something He prayed for, by name, knowing that division among believers would blur the very message He came to deliver. When our team is unified — even through disagreement, even through hard seasons — we are living out an answer to that prayer.
Held Together by the Head
None of this means unity is automatic or that we simply agree to get along. Scripture is honest about the fact that community has to stay connected to its source to function properly. Paul describes it this way:
"...not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God." (Colossians 2:19)
A body that loses its connection to the Head stops growing the way it should — no matter how talented or hardworking its individual parts are. This is exactly why we anchor our culture in Christ rather than in personality, popularity, or performance. When we stay connected to Him first, He's the one knitting us together — joint by joint, relationship by relationship — into something stronger than any one of us could build alone.
Accountability Without Cruelty
I want to be really clear about something, because "love your community" can get misread as "never say anything hard to anyone." That's not it. Real love doesn't avoid truth — it delivers truth in a way that builds up instead of tearing down.
"Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ... He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love." (Ephesians 4:15-16)
That's the model here. When a coach corrects your technique, that's love. When a teammate pulls you aside because something felt off between you, that's love. When we address a conflict directly instead of letting it fester into gossip, that's love. The goal is never to win an argument or prove someone wrong — the goal is always the growth and strengthening of the person and of the whole team.
What We've Watched Happen Elsewhere
I want to share something without naming names, because it's not my place to expose another studio — but it's too important a lesson not to talk about.
Recently, our team had interactions with a team from another studio at a competition, and over time it became clear just how much damage had been done due to the lack of expressing truth in love — from the top down. The owner had, by all accounts, spent a long stretch of time pitting her own students against one another. Favoritism. Accusations thrown around instead of conversations had directly. Blame handed out instead of ownership taken. Belittling comments that chipped away at kids' confidence rather than building it up. Eventually, it got bad enough that she was banned from coaching her own team.
Think about that for a second. Not a rival studio undid that team. Not a bad competition season. The very person who was supposed to be their protector, their advocate, their biggest cheerleader, became the source of the fracture. And her students — young athletes who just wanted to fly — were the ones who paid the price for it.
That story isn't rare, unfortunately. It's what happens in any community — a studio, a team, a church, a family — when love stops being the operating principle and comparison, ego, and self-protection move in to fill the space instead. Gossip becomes normal. Sides get chosen. Kids learn to watch their backs instead of trusting the people beside them. And the whole thing eventually collapses under its own weight, because it was never built on something that could hold it together in the first place.
I share that not to shame anyone, but because I never want us to be naive about how easily this can happen — even here, even to well-meaning people, if we stop being intentional. Culture doesn't hold itself together. It has to be chosen and re-chosen, especially by whoever is leading.
Why We Do It This Way
This is why, at Eternal Aerial Arts, we work hard to build a culture where hard conversations happen directly instead of around someone. Where a coach's correction is always aimed at making a student stronger, never smaller. Where teammates are taught to celebrate each other's wins instead of quietly resenting them. Where accountability is normal, expected, and never weaponized.
It's not that we're perfect at this — we're human, and we will get it wrong sometimes. But it's the standard we keep coming back to, because we believe Jesus meant what He said: the world will know who He is by how we love each other. Not by how high we fly, not by how many medals come home from competitions, but by how we treat the person on the mat next to us when no one's watching.
So as we head into this week — practices, rehearsals, the everyday grind of building something together — my encouragement to every family in this community is simple: choose love. Choose the hard, honest conversation over the whispered comment. Choose to build someone up even when it would be easier to tear them down. Choose unity, not because conflict never happens, but because we belong to each other, and how we handle that belonging is the clearest testimony we'll ever give.
With love, faith, and excitement, Peggy Ployhar Owner, Eternal Aerial Arts
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