Americans Who Tell The Truth

“The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war but have not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and wasteful.”

Wendell Berry

www.americanswhotellthetruth.org

Nouwen

Here is today's henrinouwen.org email:

What We Feel Is Not Who We Are

Our emotional lives move up and down constantly. Sometimes we experience great mood: swings from excitement to depression, from joy to sorrow, from inner harmony to inner chaos. A little event, a word from someone, a disappointment in work, many things can trigger such mood swings. Mostly we have little control over these changes. It seems that they happen to us rather than being created by us.

Thus it is important to know that our emotional life is not the same as our spiritual life. Our spiritual life is the life of the Spirit of God within us. As we feel our emotions shift we must connect our spirits with the Spirit of God and remind ourselves that what we feel is not who we are. We are and remain, whatever our moods, God's beloved children.
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That struck a chord with me this morning. Often the way I feel is how I interpret who I am. Loneliness, confusion, and purposelessness have been how I've been feeling and that in turn has translated to my view of myself and the world around me. But Henri reminds me that, in fact, those are lies. I am one of God's beloved children! Loneliness is a chance for solitude, confusion is a chance for guidance, and purposelessness is a chance for meaning. All a chance to be reconciled to God.

Blogs

So Mark has a blog now. That's cool...seeing as I've had one since October and haven't posted once. I have plenty of saved drafts full of unfinished thoughts but nothing publishable. Is that a word?

So now I'm motivated to start writing again. Just one more reason why we have to live life in community. Well, maybe not WE but I have to live life in community.

So what are the essentials of community--what makes a community? I would start with people. Duh. But believe it or not, there are people all over the world who live in close quarters who I would not describe as a community except for a very superficial definition of the word. I can look outside my window and see about 8 houses of people I've never met before who would say that we all live a community. People are of the utmost importance to a community but there must be something more than that. I would add a common purpose or goal. I guess it doesn't matter what that purpose or goal is but it must be something. It would be an easy task to criticize every community's purposes and goals and find flaws and fault with them but that isn't the point i guess.

So far we have: people with a common purpose. That seems pretty good. Let's add identity. Those people must all agree that the purpose belongs to no one alone but the entire group. And every person in the community knows that each other person in the community has that same purpose or goal in mind. I think thats important because I can easily find a hundred people who care about what I care about but they don't want to be identified with me. Its more than just claiming a group, the group must claim you.

Wendell Berry says that community is 'Membership.' I remember i didn't really like that the first time I read it but I think I am beginning to see what he's saying. The members 'join' the community with the understood principle that the community is more important than themselves--they are giving themselves to the community. The membership exists, though, for the good of the members and so all members work towards the common goal of sustaining the community.

I think I'm done typing now but well see where this goes from here....

peace