Quotes About Community

We need to talk with each other, honestly, simply, caringly. We need to learn how to talk about racism without rhetoric (which fans the flames); without attack or intimidation (which separates people from one another).

Across the globe, one billion people live in slums: that is, one in seven human beings.

In Gaza, in August 2014, I spent ten days in a community being systematically destroyed by drone strikes, shelling and sniper fire. Fifteen hundred civilians were killed, one third of them children. In February 2015, I saw the US Congress give twenty-five standing ovations to the man who ordered the attacks.

All the lonely people. Where do they all belong

The spirit of those men of steel, / their gray-eyed wives and daughters

And whenever he's busy trying to be all he can be, he forgets about trying to be all we can be.

A notable exception is the position taken by Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary in their Psychological Bulletin article, The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental

Man is this plural and collective unity in which the unity of destination and the differences of destinies are to be understood through each other.

Even in a seemingly futile moment or losing cause, one person may unknowingly inspire another, and that person yet a third, who could go on to change the world, or at least a small corner of it. Mandela called this process "the multiplication of courage.

Just think of AIDS as . . . the guest that won't leave. The one we all hate. But you have to remember. Hey--it's still our party.

A sad truth of human nature is that it is hard to care for people when they are abstractions, hard to care when it is not you or somebody close to you. Unless the world community can stop finding ways to dither in the face of this monstrous threat to humanity those words Never Again will persist in being one of the most abused phrases in the English language and one of the greatest lies of our time.

Wherever the killing season should next begin and people should become strangers to their neighbors and themselves, my hope is that there will still be those ordinary men who say a quiet no and open the rooms upstairs.

Loving without agenda: Often our neighborhoods are filled with special interest groups. The church is not a special interest group; rather we have a reconciling mission that seeks unity, that all might flourish. Consider how your faith community can champion what others are already doing.

Sometimes the best catalyst for local responsibility is actually taking pilgrimages to other local places.

Partnering across neighborhoods in the city or county exposes areas of insularity and opens the door for reconciliation, collaboration and innovation.

What if we stopped attending community groups and became groups of communities?

We all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. . . . The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part. . . . You are Christ's body—that's who you are! You must never forget this. (1 Corinthians 12 The Message)

But what I liked in Aberdeen was what I liked generally in Britain: the bread, the fish, the cheese, the flower gardens, the apples. the clouds, the newspapers, the beer, the wollen cloth, the radio programmes, the parks, the Indian restaurants and amateur dramatics, the postal service, the fresh vegetables, the trains, and the modesty and truthfulness of people.

That seemed to be a feature of life in the country [Malawi]: to welcome strangers, to let them live out their fantasy of philanthropy - a school, an orphanage, a clinic, a welfare center, a malaria eradication program, or a church; and then determine if in any of this effort and expense there was a side benefit - a kickback, a bribe, an easy job, a free vehicle. If the scheme didn't work - and few of them did work - whose fault was that? Whose idea was it in the first place?

We brought the Caravan to the United States two years ago, to inform the people, and many listened and shared our concern. They were very sympathetic.

He caught my eye, saw me staring, and waved in a neighborly way, from his own country.

tends to create the like-mindedness of sympathy helpful in making a community coherent. That families are intact, children are valued, and the elderly are respected

keeps Mexico ticking over

I said I was a stranger here. "Ain't no strangers here, baby," she said, and gave me a merry smile.