Love and belonging are irreducible needs of all men, women, and children. We’re hardwired for connection – it’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. The absence of love, belonging, and connection always leads to suffering. – Brené Brown
“My story is not big enough or true enough to create large or meaningful patterns by itself.” – Richard Rohr
“The Christian Mission is always Christological and pneumatological, but the New Testament knows of no christology or pneumatology which is not ecclesial.” – David Bosch
Christian community is not an ideal we have to realize, but rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. – Dietrich Bonhoeffer
There’s something beyond technique when two or more people are deeply listening to each other. It is an awareness that not only are we present to each other, we are present to something that is spiritual, holy, sacred.
The way we are, we are members of each other. All of us. Everything. The difference ain’t in who is a member and who is not, but in who knows it and who don’t.
– Wendell Berry
Whoever cannot be alone should beware of community. Without the discipline of solitude, community degenarates into enmeshment and codependency. You will plunge into the void of words and feelings.
Whoever cannot stand being in community should beware of being alone. Without the discipline of community, solitude degenerates into isolation and self-absorption. You will perish in the bottomless pit of vanity, self-infatuation and despair. – Dietrich Bonhoeffer
‘Community is intricate and complex. Living in community as a people of God is inherently messy. A congregation consists of many people of various moods, ideas, needs, experiences, gifts and injuries, desires and dissapointments, blessings and losses, intelligence and stupidity, living in proximity and in respect for one another, and believingly in worship of God. It is not easy and it is not simple. Not every situation can be anticipated. Novel combinations of circumstances take us by surprise. No community worth its salt has ever existed very long without attending painstakingly to particular conditions.
I did not come to this conclusion easily, but there can be no maturity in the spiritual life, no obedience in following Jesus, no wholeness in the Christian life apart from an immersion and embrace of community. I am not myself by myself. Community, not the highly vaunted individualism of our culture, is the setting in which Christ is at play.
– Eugene Peterson
Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don’t believe I’m wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
—Maya Angelou
Human Relations — Eleanor Rigby
You are my worldly counterpart.
You begin where I end,
I pick up where you leave off.
The yin to my yang,
the push to my pull.
We understand without words.
You hear what I do not say,
I feel the pain you don’t wish for.
We share the burden of one lifetime,
and share the joy of two.
Our friendship radiates.
What we know of each other,
others never could understand.
You are the heart behind my soul.
Waar ek jy word – Antjie Krog
oor-ruisend deur ons
houvassende kapasiteit
op hierdie kniebare aardmantel
kan ek nie nie-jy wees nie
jy nie niemand wees nie
ons nie nêrens wees nie
die ongehoorde behorende woord
nie nie-gesê word deur ons nie
my hart haper — gewigloser as tevore
dog brugbaar
daar waar ek anders as jy is
begin ek dis waar
maar daar waar ek jy is
jy geword het sing ek buite myself
ligte polsslae kwiksilwersingend
iets anderkant alle mensheid gekaats
A brave and startling truth — Maya Angelou
We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth
And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms
When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil
When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze
When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse
When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets
Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world
When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines
When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear
When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.
When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.
—Robert Frost
Often I Imagine the Earth — Dan Gerber
Often I imagine the earth
through the eyes of the atoms we’re made of—
atoms, peculiar
atoms everywhere—
no me, no you, no opinions,
no beginning, no middle, no end,
soaring together like those
ancient Chinese birds
hatched miraculously with only one wing,
helping each other fly home.
Community dance — Elena Sandu
Celebration of life
Orientated creation
Mental imagery
Meaningful motion
United hearts
Neutral observations
Inclusive. Mindfulness.
Translation. Transition.
Youthful mind. Passion.
Dynamic activity
Art with
No borders
Communication of
Energy.