Exerpt from Community and Growth by Jean Vanier

Gloria is reading this book right now and posted this on facebook. I thought it was lovely, thus I am posting it here.

"Some communities start by serving the poor. When they begin, their members are full of generosity - though sometimes a bit aggressive in respect of the rich - and have a rather utopian ideal. Gradually, they discover the need for prayer and an inner life; they realise that their generosity is being burned up and that they are in danger of becoming a collection of hyperactives who put all their energy into external things.

Other communities start with prayer - like many of the communities of the charismatic renewal. But graduallly they discover the need to serve the poor and to develop real commitment to them. Opening to God in adoration and opening to the poor in welcome and service are the two poles of a community's growth, and signs of its health. And the community itself must grow toward a stronger sense of identity, like a body in which every member can exercise its gift and be recognised for it.

If those communities that started by serving the poor do not discover the deepening of prayer and the bonds of love flowing into celebration, they risk becoming a militant group struggling for justice. If those communities that started with prayer and adoration do not discover the waters of compassion flowing from them upon those in pain, they risk becoming legalistic and sterile.

The three elements of community - prayer, or communion with the Father through and in Jesus, presence and service to the poor, and the consciousness of being bonded in a single body - are always necessary for a community to be healthy and to grow.

Jesus called each apostle into a personal relationship of love with him, then he bonded them together in community and then he sent them out to annouce the good news to the poor.

Communities which start by serving the poor must gradually discover the gifts brought by those they serve. The communities start in generosity; they must grow in the ability to listen. In the end, the most important thing is not to do things for people who are poor and in distress, but to enter into relationship with them, and to be with them and help them find confidence in themselves and discover their own gifts...

The promise of Jesus is to help us discover that the poor are a source of life and not just objects of our charity. If we are close to them we will be renewed in love and in faith."

p. 141-142

Community Quotes

The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne is chalked full of quotes related to community and Christian living. Here is an assortment of particularly nice ones:

Saying, 'Father forgive them for they know not what they do.' is an action that is not based on logic; it is based on a love that does not make sense, a scandalous grace.

We are trying to raise up an army of lovers - a community of people who've fallen desperately in love with God and with suffering people and who allow those relationships to disturb and transform them.

We must never fall in love with our vision or our five year plan. We must never fall in love with "the revolution" or "the movement"

The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community but the person who loves those around them will create community.

We will hurt no one. We will love evil doers, even if it costs us our lives. And then we will see evildoers become extremists for grace. This is the story of our faith.

Community can be built around a common self righteousness or around a common brokenness. Both are magnetic. Christianity can be built around isolating ourselves from evil doers and sinners, creating a community of religious piety and moral purity. Christianity can also be built around joining with the broken sinner and evil doers of our world, crying out to God, groaning for grace.

The ghettos may have their share of violence and crime, but the suburbs are the home of more subtle demonic forces - numbness, complacency, comfort - and it is these that can eat away at our souls.

Christians should be troublemakers, creators of uncertainty, agents of a dimension incompatible with society.

Drum roll pleeease!

Ladies and Gentlemen...

After many months of toil, fall through, and stress, we have finally just signed a lease for our community house!!!!!

We would like to praise God for delivering this house to us, as finding the specific house we needed was an extremely complicated process! With so many people we had a lot of very specific requirements for what was needed in the house and so finding this house and signing the lease is an incredible blessing and we're incredibly thankful! It's a big relief.
It was a very long haul. We've been searching for a house since the beginning of February, and it took 2 full months of consistant effort. We had multiple housing appointments almost every week and came close to signing quite a few other places.
We've been praying consistantly and have had our greater community praying for us too all along.
Thank you for your prayers, we really appreciate them. Please continue to pray for us as we've gotten this huge concrete block of a logistic out of the way and now can move onto the more fun and exciting phase: the dreaming!
We'll be meeting after exams to hang out, build relationships, and do some hardcore dreaming and planning for the community.

God Bless!

-Katie

"Is he safe?"
"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver, "who said anything about safe? 'course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the king, I tell you."
- C.S. Lewis

Some Bulgarian Poetry in Honour of the Feast of Sts. Cyril and Methodius

This author, Blaga Dimitrova, was recommended to me by a friend. She is Bulgarian and the feast celebrating the patron saints of Bulgaria is RIGHT around the corner! Therefore, given the current name of this community, I felt the need to spread around three peices of Bulgarian beauty.

- Gloria

IMPERCEPTIBLY

I will go.
And the space I used to take
will be filled with air—
a liberation—
invisible and spacious.
A silent presence,
from which someone else,
unconsciously,
will take a big breath



5.

The silhouette of a love,
refracted in my memory—
rootless seaweed
carried from far away
on a warm current.

How much bargaining with circumstance,
how many devious moves,
how much struggle with ourselves
and risk and recklessness
for just one meeting.

So close—the sea, jumping out of itself,
and again subsiding to its own element.
Around us—tourists,
shrieking cutouts
on the boiling background.

Only the two of us are quiet—
a small island amid the chaos,
so stormless, almost a mirage,
set against reality,
against your ticket home,
against tomorrow.


Cassandra With A Tail

A cat stretches from one end
of my childhood to the other.
Those winters, by the hearth,
it spun a yarn of smoke into a ball.
At night, it flickered half-moon eyes
into the dark corners of the house.
By day, its tail twirled a signature
on the sky and pawed the air with grace,
gathering in its coat
the electricity of the storm
and smoothing it into gloss fur.
Wise With cottony steps.

Self possessed.
Just once she jumped out of her skin,
One peaceful evening
her tail shot up like a bottle brush
and she lept onto the chandelier
wailing like an ambulance
as if all the voltage in her fur
exploded out in flashing rage.
None of us understood the cat’s prophesy.
We hissed at her to calm down…And
the earthquake nearly flattened the house.
The oracular cat disappeared
with my childhood, forever.

But her miracle stayed with me.
Tonight, to my surprise,
she crept inside me.
Bristling with shock, I shook
and bounding back from wall to wall
yammering up a piercing cry
to call you wherever you are:
Listen. You have so little time.
Grab what you can,
whatever is dear, whatever you love.

Deep in the belly of the earth
an atomic blast is swelling up,
nurtured by electronic brains,
and produced by pulsating robots.
The green careening planet
spins blindly in the dark
so close to annihilation.
Listen. No one listens. Meow.

The Benediction

This is a video my cousin showed me a few months ago. Its not directly related to our house...but I like it :)

Prayer

A few of us are currently reading Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster. I'm in the midst of the prayer chapter, which is a really nice coincidence because last night we had some realizations about the great need to pray for this project.
Within the past couple days a few things have been going wrong. Katie pointed out that we have not been praying for this as much as we should be. This has been weighing on my mind for the past 24 hours and a few parts of the prayer chapter in the book stuck out to me.

'All who have walked with God have viewed prayer as the main business of their lives.'

'In our efforts to pray it is easy for us to be defeated right at the outset because we have been taught that everything in the universe is already set, and so things cannot be changed. And if things cannot be changed, why pray? We may gloomily feel this way, but the Bible does not teach that. The Bible pray-ers prayed as if their prayers could and would make an objective difference. The apostle Paul gladly announces that we are "co-labourers with God"; that is, we are working with God to determine the outcome of events (1 Cor. 3:9)...This comes as a genuine liberation to many of us, but it also sets tremendous responsibility before us. We are working with God to determine the future! Certain things will happen in history if we pray rightly. We are to change the world by prayer.'

I just wanted to share this because it emphasizes how powerful prayer can be and I've always know that somewhere in the back of my mind, but this really brought it to the fore front. So we just wanted to ask that everyone would keep us in their prayers as we search for a place to live and begin this crazy and huge task of creating a community house.

Thanks :)

-Rebecca