The mystery of community (Henri Nouwen)

   Friendship, marriage, family, religious life, and every other form of community is solitude greeting solitude, spirit speaking to spirit, and heart calling to heart. It is the grateful recognition of God’s call to share life together and the joyful offering of a hospitable space where the re-creating power of God’s Spirit can become manifest. Thus, all forms of life together can become ways to reveal to each other the real presence of God in our midst. 

    Community has little to do with mutual compatibility. Similarities in educational background, psychological makeup, or social status can bring us together, but they can never be the basis for community. Community is grounded in God, who calls us together, and not in the attractiveness of people to each other… The mystery of community is precisely that it embraces all people, whatever their individual differences may be, and allows them to live together as brothers and sisters of Christ and sons and daughters of his heavenly Father. 

--Henri Nouwen 

Image source: Wangari Mathenge, The Ascendants XI (Homage to Ecclesiastes Three, One Through Eight), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/12/t-magazine/friendship-art-creative-partnerships.html

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