Quotes About Community

There was in the meeting-house a wood quiet. It was the quiet of trees that have been brought in out of the wind, whose new-shown limbs reach out, not to the sky but to the people. This is the quiet, still, otherness of trees found by the carver, the shaper, the maker.

It was our own that were able to bring us home. It was those who were not strong that could give us strength. The mud that covered our bodies and clothes now clung to them as well, but it was the same mud that pulled at our feet, the mud of our own standing place

I think he was absolutely right not to go to UN last week... First things first - that is, values and people here in their local communities, and remembering all politics is local, and trusting people more.

The power of a free mind consists of trusting your own mind to ask the questions that need to be asked and your own capacity to figure out the strategies you need to get those questions answered. Over time, this requires building communities that make this kind of intellectual and political work possible.

I know that it isn't just violence against women, it's how do we support ourselves and our families, how do we deal with health care for ourselves and our families? It's a bigger picture.

Some of us may just, in one-on-one conversations with our family, with our friends, over the back fence with our neighbors, talk about the reality of our lives and realize that we're not alone, that we have a right to be physically safe and emotionally safe in our own homes.

Cradled in this community whose currency was relational ethics, my stock in myself soared. My value depended on the glorious intangibility, the eloquence invisibility, of my just being part of the collective—and in direct response I grew spacious and happy and gentle.

nothing soothes fear and shame like connection.

I have learned to trust myself and so have the women with whom I sit in circle. We no longer choose to expend our precious life energy scrutinizing every facet of our beings to figure out what is wrong with us. Instead, we celebrate ourselves as gifted and powerful children of life.

Two weeks of aunts," said Papa. "That's a lot of aunts." "They'll help," said Mama. "Oh, I know that," said Papa, laughing. "They may take over.

Life is made up of circles.

Dot is lonely. Are you surprised? It's hard to find friends when you're only Dot-sized.

To be faithful, he wrote, a person had to be concerned less about himself and more about caring for his neighbor.

This is also the season when the women drink the blue-black juice of the marking nut tree to do away with the babies in their wombs—the ones who would be born only to be buried next season.

Dave announced as he pulled into the Methodist Church parking lot where the exterior lights were starting to show

Each summer, with Kendra and Grif joining Amy and Luke in living at the ranch while their friends Dale Sinclair and Ellyn Neal spent more time here than at their homes in town, Far Hills Ranch was nearly what Marti had always dreamed

The Church would impoverish Herself to the degree that She refused to tap this richness.

The kids come to us by word of mouth – we've been in business for 25 years, so one person tells the other.

When you've got too much religion that you can't mingle with people, that you're afraid of certain people, you've got too much religion. C. L. Franklin, from a 1955 sermon

When you help folks solve their problems, don't be surprised if you solve your own.

Right here at our doorstep, we'll have the most beautiful bridge in the world.

Keep the gift moving forward.

Living in a community normally boosts one's chances of surviving and thriving. We can share food and huddle against the cold; we can organize to attack prey or to defend each other against invaders.

If our sociality motivates caring for others, it is also true that we are given to hate. We humans regularly derive pleasure from hating those we consider outsiders. We tend to find hating energizing.