This Sunday, November 4 is the final week of our five-week worship series called Healing the Heart of Democracy, based on the writings of Parker Palmer. We will make our Deep commitments of faith and finance for the coming year.
This Week’s Habit of the Heart: A Capacity to Create Community
“A capacity to create community: Learning to speak and act as an individual does not contradict community but requires it: you can’t have one without the other. History consistently teaches that voice and agency are nearly impossible to achieve—let alone to exercise—when there is little or no community in our lives: it takes the support and encouragement of a village to raise up a Rosa Parks. In a mass society like ours, fewer and fewer opportunities for community are ready-made in our lives. But there are many ways to plant and cultivate the seeds of community, small and large, in the places where we live and work: the companionship of two or three people can sometimes make a great difference. We must help each other become gardeners of community if we want democracy to flourish.”
“We must judge ourselves by a higher standard than effectiveness, the standard called faithfulness. Are we faithful to the community on which we depend, to doing what we can in response to its pressing needs? Are we faithful to the better angels of our nature and to what they call forth from us? Are we faithful to the eternal conversation of the human race, to speaking and listening in a way that takes us closer to the truth? Are we faithful to the call of courage that summons us to witness to the common good, even against great odds? When faithfulness is our standard, we are more likely to sustain our engagement with tasks that will never end: doing justice, loving mercy, and calling the beloved community into being.”
Try sharing with one other person this week some of your hopes and goals for the coming year. Answer these questions and consider allowing yourself to be held accountable for how will you root your life in Grace? How will you grow in faith? How will you reach in love? How will you give generously?
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