Quotes About Community

THE GREATEST JOY IN LIFE IS HELPING OTHERS. SPLURGE ON IT!

Peers can be the best teachers, because they're the ones that remember what it's like to not understand.

LA needs the cleansing of a great disaster or founding of a barricaded commune.

Appearances count," Father says. "When they see us riding our bikes to church, when they hear us sing and we dress up on Sunday that makes them believe certain things about us." "Like what?" I say. "That we're like them," he says. "That we believe the same things. That makes them happy, to see us doing what they're doing." The

People were never supposed to live in cities. They gathered together since they were scared and then living like that only made them more and more afraid.

None of the buildings in the town of Sisters are really more than one story tall.

You are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither high church nor low church, Catholic nor Protestant, citizen nor alien, capitalist nor communist, gay nor straight, beautiful nor ugly, East nor West, theist nor atheist, Israel nor Palestine, American nor Iraqi, married nor divorced, uptown nor downtown, terrorist nor freedom fighter, for all are made one in Christ Jesus.

What we find within the Christian tradition is a beautiful way of remembering, embracing, being nourished by, and living in the light of this miracle despite all the legitimate concerns and doubts we may have concerning it. For Christianity, at its best, offers us a community of people who have likewise been knowingly marked by the miracle and who wish to celebrate it through shared rituals such as prayer, meditation, fasting, liturgy, serving the poor, fighting injustice, and so on.

But the problem is that the fundamental structure of scapegoating is not broken in the acceptance of the latest "other." If the underlying scapegoat mechanism is not decommissioned, then new "others" will always arise to protect the group from its own internal conflicts. For

In order to destroy the scapegoat mechanism, a different strategy must be adopted. Instead of trying to create a community where there is no outsider, the real answer lies in understanding that there is a sense in which we are all outsiders. In concrete terms, this means that a community faces its own lack, rather than ignoring it and thus creating a scapegoat who must carry it.

If there is any true value in running as a sport, it is that it is a great leveler. Runners don't gear up, armoring ourselves like football players; we strip down to the minimum and empty our hands and become what we are at our most natural, and thus we are reduced to what we all have in common: legs, lungs, heart, and mind. We are all out there on the same course, heading the same way, whatever our speed, a brother/sisterhood of chafed thighs and aching feet.

Loving well is the goal of the Christian life.

Our relationship with God and relationship with others are two sides of the same coin.

Can we really love our neighbors well without loving ourselves?

Our churches are filled with "leaking" Christians who have not treated their emotions as a discipleship issue.

Peter Scazzero

Sadly, when we look deep beneath the surface of our lives, most of us are not doing anything fundamentally differently from what our families did. God's intention, however, is that our local churches and parishes are to be places where, slowly but surely, we are re-parented on doing life Christ's way. God intends that his new community of people be the place where we are set free.

On Sabbaths God also invites us to slow down to pay attention and delight in people.

parece que hace falta una crisis de extremo quebranto para hacer que cambien otros de nosotros que hemos estado en la iglesia durante mucho tiempo.

loving well is the essence of true spirituality.

leavers are believers who no longer attend church. These men and women made a genuine commitment to Christ but came to realize, slowly and painfully, that the spirituality available in church had not really delivered any deep, Christ-transforming life change—either in themselves or others.

Let the person who cannot be alone beware of community. Let the person who is not in community beware of being alone."17

Scripture Reading: Mark 3:31–35 Then Jesus' mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, "Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you." "Who are my mother and my brothers?" he asked. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother.

El que no sepa vivir en comunidad, que tenga cuidado con la soledad».