community

The journey toward inner truth is too taxing to be made solo: lacking support, the solitary traveler soon becomes weary or fearful and likely to quit the road.

The path is too deeply hidden to be traveled without company: finding our way involves clues that are subtle and sometimes misleading, requiring the kind of discernment that can happen only in dialogue.

The destination is too daunting to be achieved alone: we need community to find the courage to venture into the alien lands to which the inner teacher may call us.

We men and women are all in the same boat, upon a stormy sea. We owe to each other a terrible and tragic loyalty.

What you need to know about me
is not that I survived the war
or that I write poetry
or that I am African,
but that I live in this world
just like you.

That I wake up every morning
to get the children ready for school,
that I comb my hair
and worry about its gray,
that I love my strong coffee
in the morning...

That I listen to music
and laugh out loud
when the mood is right,
that I cry when I read the news...

What you need to know about me

The wisdom of a true community often seems miraculous. This wisdom can perhaps be explained in purely secular terms...There are times, however, when this wisdom seems to my religious eye to be more a matter of divine spirit and possible divine intervention. This is one of the reasons why the feeling of joy is such a frequent concomitant of the spirit of community. The members feel that they have been temporarily—at least partially—transported out of the mundane world of ordinary preoccupations. For the moment it is as if heaven and earth had somehow met.

The wild goose is a Celtic symbol of the Holy Spirit. Geese in a flock have greater range and fly faster than single geese as they benefit from the lift of their wings. When the lead goose gets tired, it rotates back into formation and another flies at the point position. We fly in sacred community, interdependent with one another.

Community is first and foremost a gift of the Holy Spirit, not built upon mutual compatibility, shared affection, or common interests but upon having received the same divine breath, having been given a heart set aflame by the same divine fire, and having been embraced by the same divine love.

But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long close friendship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.

Our communities may not conform to any blueprint, but we know we have them...I once knew two elderly shut-ins, longtime friends, both of whom lived alone. Every day they watched a religious program on television and as it ended each would offer a prayer for the other. They knew who formed their unique community...

Community is the container in which the sacred is remembered, practiced, and made real.