Community- Latin, communitas, a community, fellowship; from cummunis, common.
Community LinksBruderhof
Communities Field Observations: An Interview with Wendell Berry Intentional
Communities Lost Valley
Intentional Community Center for Neighborhood Technology The Orion
Society Seeds of
Peace
Children & Education |
"We know the rules of community; we know the healing effect of community in terms of individual lives. If we could somehow find a way across the bridge of our knowledge, would not these same rules have a healing effect upon our world? We human beings have often been referred to as social animals. But we are not yet community creatures. We are impelled to relate with each other for our survival. But we do not yet relate with the inclusivity, realism, self-awareness, vulnerability, commitment, openness, freedom, equality, and love of genuine community. It is clearly no longer enough to be simply social animals, babbling together at cocktail parties and brawling with each other in business and over boundaries. It is our task--our essential, central, crucial task--to transform ourselves from mere social creatures into community creatures. It is the only way that human evolution will be able to proceed." Scott M. Peck-The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace
"A spider's web is stronger than it looks. Although it is made
of thin, delicate strands, the web is not easily broken. However, a web gets torn every
day by the insects that kick around in it, and a spider must rebuild it when it gets full
of holes...."
"To grapple with the forces that undermine our family, we need new ways of thinking. We must pay attention to interdependence, trust and mutual responsibility. We must get beyond the language of individualism. We must seek the common good together. We have a need for trust and sustenance." Richard Madsen, UCSD - La Jolla, 1996; Also, Robert Bellah, Richard Madsen, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985.
"Many of us believe that when some people are excluded from the social fabric of our communities, that fabric contains a hole. When the fabric contains a hole, the entire fabric is weakened. It lacks the richness, texture and strength of diversity."
"No man is an island, entire of itself; every
man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be
washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a
promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine
own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in
mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells
tolls; it tolls for thee."
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