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If
civilization is to survive, we
must cultivate the science
of human relationships--
the ability of all peoples,
of
all kinds, to live together,
in the same world at peace.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
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community 2 - community
3
- community 4
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We
are all longing to go home to some place we have never been--a
place half-remembered and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses of from time to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to
whom
we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our
throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us,
eyes will light up
as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever
we come into
our own power. Community means strength that joins
our strength
to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold
us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of
friends. Someplace where we can be free.
Starhawk
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Brotherhood
is not just a Bible word. Out of comradeship can come
and
will come the happy life for all.
Heywood
Broun
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What do we live for if it is not to
make life
less difficult for each other?
George Eliot
I
never did anything alone. Whatever I accomplished was
accomplished collectively.
Golda Meir
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Anticipate
charity by preventing poverty; assist the reduced fellow human being,
either by a considerable gift, or a sum of
money, or by teaching him or her a trade,
or by putting him or her in
the way of business, so that he or she may earn an honest
livelihood, and not be forced to the dreadful alternative
of holding out his hand
for charity. This is the highest
step and the summit of charity's golden ladder.
Maimonides
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The American city
should be a collection of communities where every member
has a right
to belong. It should be a place where every person feels safe
on his or her streets and in the house of his or her friends.
It should be a place
where
each individual's dignity and self-respect is strengthened by the
respect
and affection of his or her neighbors. It should be a place where
each of us
can find the satisfaction and warmth which comes from being
a member of the
community of human beings. This is what people sought at the dawn
of civilization.
It is what we seek today.
Lyndon
B. Johnson
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Let us be
kinder to one another.
Aldous
Huxley's last words
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A mystic bond of brotherhood
makes
all people one.
Thomas Carlyle |
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It is not written,
blessed are they that feedeth the poor,
but they that
considereth the poor.
A little thought and a little
kindness are often worth
more than a great deal of money.
John
Ruskin |
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We
have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the
only solution is love and that love comes with community.
Dorothy Day
The Long Loneliness |
Quotes on unity and
oneness
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To desire and strive to be
of some
service to the world,
to aim at doing something
which
shall really increase the
happiness
and welfare and
virtue of humankind--this
is a choice which is possible
for
all of us; and surely
it is a good haven to sail for.
Henry Van Dyke
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The
realization that our small planet is only one of many
worlds
gives humankind the perspective it needs to realize
sooner that
our own world belongs to all of its creatures,
that the moon landing
marks the end of our childhood as a
race and the beginning
of a newer and better civilization.
Arthur C.
Clarke
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It is probably a pity that every
citizen of each state cannot visit all the others,
to see
the differences, to learn what we have in common, and to
come back
with a richer, fuller understanding of America--in
all its beauty,
in all its dignity, in all its strength,
in support of moral principle.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
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It is a serious thing
to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses,
to
remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person
you can talk to
may one day be a creature which, if you
saw it now, you would be strongly tempted
to worship, or
else a horror and corruption such as you now meet, if at
all,
only in nightmare. All day long we are, in some
degree, helping each other
to one or the other of these
destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming
possibilities, it is in the awe and circumspection proper
to them that we should
conduct all our dealings with one
another, all friendships, all loves, all play,
all
politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never
talked to a mere mortal.
C.S.
Lewis |
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We
cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect
us with
our fellow men and women;
and among those fibers,
as
sympathetic threads, our
actions run as causes,
and they
come back to us as effects.
Herman
Melville
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Very seldom will people give up on
themselves. They continue to have hope
because they know that they have the potential for change. They try
again--
not just to exist, but to bring about those
changes in themselves that will make
their lives worth living. Yet people are very quick to give up on friends,
and
especially on spouses, to declare them hopeless, and to
either walk away
or do nothing more than resign
themselves to a bad situation.
Hugh Prather
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Blessed are the servants who
love their brothers and sisters as much
when they are sick and useless as when
they are well and can be
of service
to them. And blessed are they who love their brothers
and sisters as well
when they are afar off as when they are by their side,
and who
would say nothing behind their back that they might not,
in love,
say before their face.
St. Francis of Assisi |
community 2 - community
3
- community 4
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No
person is an island entire of itself.
Every person is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of
thy friends or of thine own were.
Any person's death
diminishes me, because I am involved in humankind.
Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls.
It
tolls for thee.
John Donne
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We
are all citizens of one world, we are all of one blood.
To hate people because they were born in another country,
because they speak a different language, or because
they
take a different view on this subject or that, is a
great folly.
Desist, I implore you, for we are all
equally human. . . .
Let us have but one end in view: the
welfare of humanity.
Johann
Amos Comenius |
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There is a danger, in
issue-oriented groups not based on community,
that the enemy is seen as being the one outside of the group.
The
world gets divided between "the good" and "the
bad." We are among
the good; the others are the bad. In issue-oriented groups, the
enemy
is always outside. We must struggle against all those who are
outside
of our group, all those who are of the other party.
True community is different because of the realization that the evil
is inside--
not just inside the community, but inside me. I cannot think of
taking the
speck of dust out of my neighbor's eye unless I'm working on the log
in my
own. Evil is here in me. Warfare is inside my own
community, and I am
called to be an agent of peace there. But warfare is also in me
and I am
called to seek wholeness inside of myself. Healing begins here,
in myself.
Wholeness and unity begin inside of myself. If I am growing
toward
wholeness, then I'll be an agent of wholeness. If our community
is an
agent of wholeness, then it will be a source of life for the world
around it.
Jean Vanier
From Brokenness to Community |
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When a mentally retarded child
is born, the religious question we often
ask is, "Why
does God let this happen?" The better question
to pose is
to ask, "What kind of community should we
be so that mental
retardation isn't a barrier to the
enjoyment of one's full humanity?"
Rabbi Harold Kushner
(While we do realize that "mentally
retarded" is not a currently acceptable
term, this quotation comes from several decades ago and is a
very
compassionate thought, so it seems better to let it stand as said
then.)
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A lot of movement in today's life is away
from others. That's part
of the American myth of
individualism. We are lone wolves, us
against the world-- individually,
or sometimes as a small, nuclear
family. But I think we've paid a high price for
that
in this country.
There's tremendous solitude
and isolation. Perhaps this revival
of interest in
the soul is reflecting a slight turn away from the
isolation of individualism
back to the cohesion of the
community.
Soulful life nudges us toward
reconnecting
ourselves to the
neighborhood, toward
community action, political activity,
reattaching with
our family, our past, our ancestors,
and revitalizing our
spiritual lives.
Phil Cousineau |
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We are
responsible for one another. Collectively so.
The world is a joint effort.
We might say it
is like a giant puzzle, and each one of us is a very
important
and unique part of it. Collectively, we
can unite and bring about a powerful change
in the world.
By working to raise our awareness to the highest
possible level of
spiritual understanding, we can begin
to heal ourselves, then each other and the world.
Betty Eadie |
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Quotes on unity and
oneness
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One exemplary act may affect one
life, or even millions of lives.
All those who set standards for
themselves,
who strengthen
the bonds of community,
who do their work
creditably and
accept individual responsibility,
are building the
common future.
John W. Gardner
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Human beings are a part
of the whole, called by us "the universe," a
part limited
in
time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts
and
feelings,
as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical
delusion of our consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison
for us,
restricting us to our own personal desires and to affection
for a few
persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free
ourselves from this
prison by widening our circle of compassion to
embrace all living
creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Albert
Einstein
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And so
it's good that we remember
Just as soon as we've discovered
That the things we do in life
Will always end up touching others.
Paul
O'Neill
(from Trans-Siberian Orchestra's
Christmas Eve and Other Stories) |
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Once
you educate the boys, they tend to leave the villages and go search
for work in the cities, but the girls stay home, become leaders in the
community, and pass on what they’ve learned. If you really
want to change
a culture, to empower women, improve basic hygiene and health care,
and
fight high rates of infant mortality, the answer is to educate girls.
Greg Mortenson
Three Cups of Tea
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There is nobody in this country who got rich on their
own. Nobody. You
built a factory out there--good for you. But I want to be clear. You
moved
your goods to market on roads the rest of us paid for. You hired
workers
the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because
of
police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't
have to
worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your
factory... Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something
terrific
or a great idea--God bless! Keep a hunk of it. But part of the
underlying
social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward
for the next kid who comes along.
Elizabeth Warren |
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People use drugs, legal and
illegal, because their lives are intolerably
painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their
leisure.
They are estranged from their families and their neighbors. It
should
tell us something that in healthy societies drug use is celebrative,
convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is lonely, shameful,
and addictive. We need drugs, apparently,
because we have lost each other.
Wendell Berry
The Art of the Commonplace |
community 2 - community
3
- community 4
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The
story of any one person's real experience finds its
startling parallel in that of every one of us.
James
Russell Lowell |
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What should
young people do with their lives today? Many things,
obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable
communities
in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.
Kurt Vonnegut
Palm Sunday |
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A
community is like a ship; everyone ought
to be prepared to take the helm.
Henrik Ibsen |
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There
was a farmer who grew excellent quality wheat and every season
he won the award for the best grown in his county. One
year a reporter from the local newspaper interviewed the
farmer and learned that each spring the man shared his seed
with his neighbors so that they, too, could plant it in their
fields.
“How can you afford to share your best wheat seed with your
neighbors when they are entering their crops in the
competition with yours?" the reporter asked.
“Why, that's very simple,” the farmer explained.
"The wind picks up pollen from the developing wheat and
carries it from field to field. If my neighbors grow
inferior wheat, cross-pollination will steadily degrade the
quality of all the wheat, including mine. If I am to
grow good wheat, I must help my neighbors grow good
wheat."
The reporter realized how the farmer's explanation also
applied to peoples' lives in the most fundamental way.
Those who want to live meaningfully and well must help enrich
the lives of others, for the value of a life is measured by
the lives it touches. And those who choose to be happy
must help others find happiness, for the welfare of each is
bound up with the welfare of all.
unattributed |
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quotations
- contents
-
welcome
page
-
obstacles
the
people behind the words
-
our
current e-zine
-
articles
and excerpts
Daily
Meditations, Year One - Year
Two - Year Three
- Year Four
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From the spiritual side: |
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Whenever education and refinement carry us away
from the common people,
they are growing towards selfishness, which is the monster evil of the
world.
That is true cultivation which gives us sympathy with every form of
human life,
and enables us to work most successfully for its advancement.
Refinement that carries us away from our fellow people is not God’s
refinement.
Henry Ward Beecher |
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Increase,
O God, the spirit of neighborliness among us,
that in peril we may
uphold one another,
in calamity serve one another, in suffering tend
one another
and in homeliness and loneliness in exile befriend one
another.
Grant us brave and enduring hearts that we may
strengthen one another,
till the disciplines and testing of these days
be ended.
Prayer
used in air-raid shelters, England, WWII |
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I sought my soul,
But my soul I could not see.
I sought my God,
But my God eluded me.
I sought my brother,
And I found all three.
Anon |
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