Community

“Lovers must not, like usurers, live for themselves alone. They must finally turn from their gaze at one another back toward the community. If they had only themselves to consider, lovers would not need to marry, but they must think of others and of other things. They say their vows to the community as much as to one another, and the community gathers around them to hear and to wish them well, on their behalf and its own. It gathers around them because it understands how necessary, how joyful, and how fearful this joining is. These lovers, pledging themselves to one another "until death," are giving themselves away, and they are joined by this as no law or contract could join them. Lovers, then, "die" into their union with one another as a soul "dies" into its union with God. And so here, at the very heart of community life, we find not something to sell as in the public market but this momentous giving. If the community cannot protect this giving, it can protect nothing...”

                                            Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community: Eight Essays

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trudging through the mud alone

as my boots squelched in the sodden earth

and happy dog played

it hit me

we have it all wrong

at least many of us do

we live in a culture that is saturated with self

everything is about “me”

my safety, my power, my affluence, my success

our relationship to the sacred is about my, personal, individual, relationship with the Sacred

and the focus is on what my faith can offer me.  Fire insurance, hope, affluence, power

our work is often about personal success, title, corner offices

we measure our success as a person on our success as an individual

but this focus on the individual counters almost everything we learn from

most great faiths

I know Christianity the best, and if you think about it,

The faith of the Bible is not about the individual

It s about a people

The people of God

Biblically God rarely deals with individuals

He deals with cities, with tribes, with nations

They make it, or fail to make it, not one by one, but together

The people of God leave Egypt as a people

They wander through the desert for 40 years, as a people

They enter the promised land as a people

They success and fail as a people

They go into exile as a people, and return the same way

And when Jesus comes along….

He doesn’t say “salvation is like”

He says, “the kingdom of God is like”

We are at out best

And we are in the flow of sacred purpose

When we are thinking in terms of community

When the goal is not personal salvation

But the salvation of all creation

And all those within that creation

Things are different

We are different

So here is to community

Here is to a communal faith that seeks to bring “salvation”, God’s love and grace to all

Here is to community based primary care

And community based mental health

Here is to the task, not of creating power and affluence for myself,

But the task of working to ensure

That no one is left behind

That all have healthcare

All have addiction treatment

All have food, and clothes, and housing

For unless we die into each other

We will never really

live