Living in Community

I have not oft-mentioned on this blog the notion of living in intentional community, but that is what this living together is about for us. On this blog, I've recorded some of the sights and sounds of living together, but not talked much about the ideal of living together.

With that in mind, I'd like to offer some thoughts from Wendell Berry on living in community and related themes...

"Community, I am beginning to understand, is made through a skill I have never learned or valued: the ability to pass time with people you do not and will not know well, talking about nothing in particular, with no end in mind, just to build trust, just to be sure of each other, just to be neighborly. A community is not something that you have, like a camcorder or a breakfast nook. No, it is something you do. And you have to do it all the time..."

“A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other's lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves...”

“Always in the big woods when you leave familiar ground and step off alone into a new place there will be, along with the feelings of curiosity and excitement, a little nagging of dread. It is the ancient fear of the Unknown, and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into.”

“We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. 

We have been wrong. 

We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.”

“You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it.”

“'You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out - perhaps a little at a time.'
'And how long is that going to take?'
'I don't know. As long as you live, perhaps.'
'That could be a long time.'
'I will tell you a further mystery,' he said... 'It may take longer.'”

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work
and when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings...”

“Love is what carries you, for it is always there, 

even in the dark, or most in the dark,
but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery. ”

~Wendell Berry