(can I just say that I am getting SO good about blogging consistently I’m frightening myself? I mean. Seriously. I am faithful.)
Everyone who knows me well knows that I am inspired and propelled by ideas. Discovery of new ideas or new arrangements of the same is the reason I wake up every morning. (I’m not overstating for dramatic effect.)
Here are some ecclectic quotes that have fueled my recent thoughts on community –
“Both self-rejection and arrogance pull us out of the common reality of existence and make a gentle community of people extremely difficult, if not impossible, to attain.”
Henri Nouwen in “Life of the Beloved”
The second quote is from Heidegger’s “Poetry, Language, and Thought.” It is one of the most compelling explanations of community-oriented philosophy that I have heard articulated (especially by a German!) –
“When through a rent in the rain-clouded sky
a ray of the sun suddenly glides
over the gloom of the meadows. . . .
We never come to thoughts. They come to us.
That is the proper hour of discourse.
Discourse cheers us to companionable reflection. Such reflection neither parades polemical opinions
nor does it tolerate complaisant agreement. The sail of thinking keeps trimmed hard to the
wind of matter.
From such compaionship a few perhaps may rise to be journeymen in the craft of thinking.
So that one of them, unforeseen, may become a master.”
I am in prayer about cultivating and joining such a community next year.
