Quotes About Community

This understanding of God provides the key to understanding what the Bible means when it declares that humans are made "in the image of God." The imago Dei means that humans, like God, are essentially beings who exist in relationship. We are created to exist in relationship with God and with each other. To the extent that we live in isolation from God and from each other, we are not fully human. The

These observations strongly support the understanding that "us" refers to God in his Triune nature, and therefore, that the imago Dei refers to our relationality. Like God, we are created to live life as an "us," not just as an "I." But

Whenever people are separated by racism, the church is to work to manifest the one new humanity Jesus died to create (Eph 2:14).

You know, I'd like to live here alone like you." "You can't." "Why not?" "If you come I'll be here and you won't be alone. Neither will I." "Well, I mean almost alone.

That's how we keep this crazy place together - with the heart. Two hundred fuckin' languages, and a billion people. India is the heart. It's the heart that keeps us together. There's no place with people like my people, Lin. There's no heart like the Indian heart.

But I always connected to the people and the purity of their faith, rather than the religious code they followed.

Surrounded by people and hungry for solitude, I was always and everywhere alone.

every time I entered the slum I felt the urge to let go and surrender to a simpler, poorer life, that was yet richer in respect, and love, and a vicinal connectedness to the surrounding sea of human hearts.

We walked on the road because the footpaths were occupied in many places by sleeping pavement dwellers.

in the centre of six hundred stares and whispers

In that poor and simple village, no-one doubted or forgot that its treasures were its people.

the ghetto existed on a foundation of those anonymous, unthankable deeds; insignificant and almost trivial in themselves, but collectively essential to the survival of the slum.

They became demi-heroes, and were moved to respond with special sales, reduced prices, and a carnival atmosphere. The ghetto was a living organism: to counter external threats, it responded with the antibodies of courage, solidarity, and that desperate, magnificent love we usually call the survival instinct.

This is how they manage to live together, a billion of them, in reasonable peace. They are not perfect, of course. They know how to fight and lie and cheat each other, and all the things that all of us do. But more than any other people in the world, the Indians know how to love one another.

As we walked, it occurred to me that the slum had been strangely devoid of pariah dogs. I noticed that there were none visible anywhere on the streets.

The little victories haggled from him by foreign tourists cost Anand his daily bread, and cost them the chance to know him as a friend. The

The people are waiting more than one hour already. If you are not with us, they would still be waiting, but waiting for nothing only. Waiting for nothing, that is what kills the heart of a man, isn't it? Now the people are waiting for something. Waiting for you, they are.

Children played everywhere. Men carried water in buckets. Men made repairs to one of the huts. And everywhere that I looked, people smiled and laughed.

And there were more smiles in the eyes on those crowded streets than in any other place I'd ever known.

Civilization is submission, in a good cause.

Millions of dreams were born there, around us, every day. Millions of dreams died there, and were born again. The humid air was thick with dreams, everywhere, in my Mumbai.

never found a club or clan or idea that was more important to me than the men and women who believed in it.

Every city has a village in its heart. You will never understand the city, unless you first understand the village.

Feeling small and alone and lonely, I walked by memory and touch through the dark, lightless lanes of the slum.