In our community, we have a duty to strengthen the weakest among us to build a better society.
The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers & cities; but to know someone who thinks & feels with us, & who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.
Even with the very best of intentions, even with the ambition of making the world a better place, when we cast judgment upon people whose lifestyles, beliefs, or predilections we dislike, we add to the emotional filth of hostility and make the world feel a little less safe for the folks we’re genuinely trying to help.
Live for your country, die to yourself; live for yourself, die to your country.
A godly woman is beyond average because she keeps her word. She honors her vows. She exhibits great faith. She overcomes great obstacles. And she affects her family, her community, even the world.
Everyone was important during the war. Everyone. We worked together and we won.
The keys to health and weight-loss: stress reduction, sleep, deep breathing, clean water, complete nutrition, sunshine, walking, stretching, meditation, love, community, laughter, dreams, perseverance, purpose, humility, action.
I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.
We have to abandon the conceit that isolated personal actions are going to solve this crisis. Our policies have to shift.
The words we choose can build communities, reunite loved ones, and inspire others. They can be a catalyst for change. However, our words also have the power to destroy and divide: they can start a war, reduce a lifelong relationship to a collection of memories, or end a life.
The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts.
Work is easy when it’s full of meaning and shared with others.
Sloth may disguise itself as "conscientious work" and meet with various forms of public approval or success. But work that is not motivated by love for the life of the community, beyond the temporal and spatial confines of one's own small life, cannot free either worker or community from profound anxiety.
There is, in fact, a paradox about working to serve the community, and it is this: that to aim directly at serving the community is to falsify the work; the only way to serve the community is to forget the community and serve the work.
Pull up a chair. Take a taste. Come join us. Life is so endlessly delicious.
Healing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of loneliness. Conviviality is healing. To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation.
(pg.99, "The Body and the Earth")
Love is our most unifying and empowering common spiritual denominator. The more we ignore its potential to bring greater balance and deeper meaning to human existence, the more likely we are to continue to define history as one long inglorious record of man’s inhumanity to man.
Create your own community of liberation. From this moment on, direct your most concerted efforts, your best work, and your greatest feats of imagination toward creating the impossible community, and do so first of all precisely where you are, with those around you.
Everybody is a story. When I was a child, people sat around kitchen tables and told their stories. We don't do that so much anymore. Sitting around the table telling stories is not just a way of passing time. It is the way the wisdom gets passed along. The stuff that helps us to live a life worth remembering.
The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.
To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.
We live in a community of people not so that we can suppress and dominate eachother or make each other miserable but so that we can better and more reliably satisfy all life's healthy needs.
...it does not matter if we are forgotten; what matters is the effect we have on those around us and those who come after us. What matters is how our own lives affect the larger, perpetual community of the living.
Educate a boy, and you educate an individual. Educate a girl, and you educate a community.
If you teach a boy, you educate an individual; but if you teach a girl, you educate a community.
Teaching kids how to feed themselves and how to live in a community responsibly is the center of an education.
I grew up in libraries, and I hope I've learned never to take them for granted. A thriving library is the heart of its community, providing access to information and educational opportunities, bringing people together, leveling the playing field, and archiving our history.
Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose. Not when they are escaping to some wild west. The most unfree souls go west, and shout of freedom.
Lovelessness is a huge sin in the church. The four primary personalities in the New Testament- Jesus, Paul, Peter, and John- all four of them say that love is the most important thing. But the only time love really counts is when something unlovely happens.
Soccer isn't the same as Bach or Buddhism. But it is often more deeply felt than religion, and just as much a part of the community's fabric, a repository of traditions.
When the highest value in a community is loyalty to the greater cause, meaning the continuity of the status quo, all means to this end are imbued with religious significance, and are thereby justified.
We can all make a difference in the lives of others in need, because it is the most simple of gestures that make the most significant of differences.
Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.
Regardless of the difficulties we may face individually, in our families, in our communities and in our nation, the old adage is still true - you can make excuses or you can make progress, but you cannot make both!
We need to bridge our sense of loneliness and disconnection with a sense of community and continuity even if we must manufacture it from our time on the Web and our use of calling cards to connect long distance. We must “log on” somewhere, and if it is only in cyberspace, that is still far better than nowhere at all. (264)
Polyamorous people are wary of having others' values inflicted upon themselves, and so tend to stay very far away from making such pronouncements, to the point that they will actively ignore predatory behavior that is affecting their own "community.
Become faithful to yourself, if you do, it will come natural towards everyone else.
We're experiencing the genesis of a community where it does not matter where your roots lie, but what you believe in. We will continue to create an inclusive and sustainable spirit, spreading the word from coast to mountaintop.
A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.
Integrity is a powerful force, keeping you alive to others long after you’ve left their presence.
But many of us seek community solely to escape the fear of being alone. Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.
Community is about sharing my life; about allowing the chaos of another’s circumstances to infringe on mine; about permitting myself to be known without constraint; about resigning myself to needing others.
Century after century, the belief that an individual’s physical health was independent of his or her emotional health has so dominated medical thought that there has even been open contempt for anyone who would dare to claim that a person’s physical well-being is the sum of its internal and external influences.
In these dangerous times, where it seems that the world is ripping apart at the seams, we all can learn how to survive from those who stare death squarely in the face every day and [we] should reach out to each other and bond as a community, rather than hide from the terrors of life at the end of the millennium.
Unanimous hatred is the greatest medicine for a human community.
This is what Jesus had in mind: folks coming together, forming close-knit communities and meeting each other's needs- no kings, no major welfare systems, no presidents necessary. His is a theology and practice for the people of God, not a set of suggestions for empire.
When the world careens out of control, we can rest in the fact that God spun this world with a simple word. Matter from emptiness. Beauty from void. Community from chaos.
It is hard for us to recognize it now, but Peter and Paul were introducing the first Christian family to an entirely new community, a community that transcends the rigid hierarchy of human institutions, a community in which submission is mutual and all are free.
I fully recognize there is an urgent need for constructing the _strategic we-nes-in-sameness_ and promoting the _solidarity of sameness_. The sheer realization of the inextricable interconnectedness of I-ness/me-ness and we-ness/us-ness is the round for an authentic solidarity with one another in spite of and regardless of the difference.
Cosmopolitan discourse is in a way a response to the issue of solidarity. Although the precondition for solidarity can be a _community_, solidarity requires more intentional commitment and performance than does community.
It is not the fact that we are united in common goals or purposes that makes us a community. Rather, it is the fact that we share a common life in Christ.
God's people are not to accumulate stuff for tomorrow but to share indiscriminately with the scandalous and holy confidence that God will provide for tomorrow. Then we need not stockpile stuff in barns or a 401(k), especially when there is someone in need.
To turn the tide of materialism in the Christian community, we desperately need bold models of kingdom-centered living. Despite our need to do it in a way that doesn't glorify people, we must hear each other's stories about giving or else our people will not learn to give.
To conquer your biology, stop seeing people sexually and start seeing them as family. In our day, we have really a perverted notion where it's like strangers and potential sexual objects.
We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.
People are living books. The real library of life is community.
As humans, reality for us is largely based on other people's perceptions. If there's 20 bodies in your crawl space but you haven't been caught yet, you tell yourself you're still a birthday clown, and that's how you keep doing it.
Because you live to love and love to live/ And because of what your heardrum will give/ Now we might love to live and live to love.
A civilization must be judged by its standards not by its expenditure.
There were millions of such families anxious only for peace and quiet in their own little nests. These were the mounting blocks by which the criminals climbed to power and kept it.
We don’t necessarily need to know each other’s name, age, profession, drug of choice, childhood trauma or recent tragedy to understand what pain feels like and offer comfort. We are strangers drawn together by a shared desire for lasting peace.
Unity without uniformity, community without conformity.
Unless today is well lived, tomorrow is not important.
Community is composed of that which we don't attempt to measure, for which we keep no record and ask no recompense. Most are things we cannot measure no matter how hard we try.
If a family is an expression of continuity through biology, a city is an expression of continuity through will amd imagination through mental choices making artifice, not through physical reproduction.
A town teeming with life. Full to overflowing. And every day, the good people counted their blessings. Every single one…
Infusing the cultural war with love, respect and empathy is the responsibility of every one who cares about the health and wellbeing of women, our families and communities, and our democracy.
Technology has transformed the world into a global village. And communities, families, friends, etc., into local islands.
To be part of a family, or any community, is to have duties and responsibility, to be bound by the rules of that group.
Often we see detox as a solitary pursuit, something we have to muscle up for and go it alone. But the truth is that it will be easier and healthier if you find a way to integrate your friends and family into the experience.
The society that embraced him continued to prosper by stressing the family unit and their close-knit community. Hers prospered by forcigng independence and self-sufficiency.
What if there were health food stores on every corner in the hood, instead of liquor stores!?
Soon enough it will be me struggling (valiantly?) to walk - lugging my stuff around. How are we all so brave as to take step after step? Day after day? How are we so optimistic, so careful not to trip and yet do trip, and then get up and say O.K. Why do I feel so sorry for everyone and so proud?
We represent the true human condition, the one permanent victory over cruelty and chaos. . . . Our true home is the imagination, and our kingdom is the wide-open world.
Suffering reminds us of our brokenness, our humanity. It disarms us of our self-absorption and magnifies our need for one another.
You can become the greatest personality in your community by developing the sagacity of humility, teachability, prosperity-mentality and accountability.
Wherever you turn, you can find someone who needs you. Even if it is a little thing, do something for which there is no pay but the privilege of doing it. Remember, you don't live in a world all of your own.
Storytelling comes naturally to humans, but since we live in an unnatural world, we sometimes need a little help doing what we'd naturally do.
No time is better spent than that spent in the service of your fellow man.
We’re better together than we are apart. The American Dream has us looking out for ourselves even at the expense of our neighbors. That shit ain’t true, man.
The freedom of affluence opposes and contradicts the freedom of community life.
What does freedom mean if we accept the fundamental premise that humans are social beings, raised in certain social and historical contexts and belonging to particular communities that shape their desires and understandings of the world?
I think all people want freedom, but they've got this idea inserted into their head about money.
To be a librarian is not to be neutral, or passive, or waiting for a question. It is to be a radical positive change agent within your community.
There's nothing wrong with helping someone without a cost. Especially if there's no end return.
The more we love, the more it hurts, and the more we have to let go.
My cat brought me a toy. I thanked her and threw it. She sat there gave me a look that made me realize people and dogs are the crazy ones.
Teamwork is the secret that make common people achieve uncommon result.
Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction.
We are halves, but we make an infinite whole.
The truth is a community is as big or as small as your heart lets it be.
Good literacy skills can help children:
-Be healthy and safe.
-Do their homework to their best ability.
-Get and keep a job one day.
-Eventually participate in local committees or government
Knowledge is power and at the end of the day, our health, the health of our children, the health of our community, and the health of Mother Earth is our responsibility. Therefore, it is imperative that we understand the human and environmental affects of the products that we buy.
I have become convinced that the more wealth a country accumulates, the more isolated and lonely its people become. The loneliest are usually the children and the elderly. Children learn what they live, and isolation in the ‘village’ is one of the most destructive messages we daily write on the tablets of their hearts.
... the forces of power, particularly corporate power, are impatient with what is adequate for a coherent community. Because power gains so little from community in the short run, it does not hesitate to destroy community for the long run.
The act of claiming an identity can be transformational. It can provide healing and empowerment. It can weld solidarity within a community. And, perhaps most importantly, it can diminish power from an oppressor, a dominant group.
Maybe you care deeply about the environment or other global issues, or you feel strongly about your local region or community, but you just don't see how local money can help. I hope that this pamphlet will show you connections between what you care about and 'the money problem'.
The purpose of this pamphlet is to explain how local currencies work. Alone they cannot solve all the multiple financial, social and environmental crises we face, but they are an increasingly important part of the answer.
If you don't have a whole lot of unsatisfied people, the economy stops dead, doesn't it?
Do not settle for labels that presume you will never heal. Believe in yourself. Find a tribe who understands and believes in you too. Don't ever give up.
… I don't know what to say.'
‘That’s okay. Sometimes talking is like singing in a storm.’
‘Like when you’re scared?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Or when you’re sad?’
‘That too. A voice can be reassuring.
We of alien looks or words must stick together.