Yesterday we had our annual community meeting. We reviewed the good, as well as some disappointments, experienced last year and made plans for the year ahead. One of our number, Sue May, has been reading Richard Rohr’s book ‘Simplicity’ and she shared some of her thoughts on what she learned of community from her reading.
1. Others can get through to me – I can get out of myself.
2. Not a special kind of structure – but a network of relationships.
3. Relationships between the established church and the ‘base community’.
4. Both are needed, established church has history and communities have vibrancy and honesty.
5. Advocating living on the edge, holding both together but holding things lightly.
6. Act of faith is to give away what we don’t yet have. For example, healing when we aren’t healed, love when we struggle with bitterness or unforgiveness, compassion when we struggle with pride.
The cross is an excellent reminder of our posture and orientation. To look up and fix our eyes on Jesus, with our feet rooted in the soil of ordinary life. Reaching out in one direction to institutional church and in the other to community on the edges.