In true community we will not choose our companions, for our choices are so often limited by self-serving motives. Instead, our companions will be given to us by grace. Often they will be persons who will upset our settled view of self and world. In fact, we might define true community as that place where the person you least want to live with lives…. Community will teach us that our grip on truth is fragile and incomplete, that we need many ears o hear the fullness of God’s word for our lives. And the disappointments of community life can be transformed by our discovery that the only dependable power for life lies beyond all human structures and relationships. In this religious grounding lies the only real hedge against the risk of disappointment in seeking community. That risk can be borne only if it is not community one seeks, but truth, light, God. Do not commit yourself to community, but commit yourself to God…In that commitment you will find yourself drawn into community. Parker Palmer, A Place Called Community, 1977. Parker J. Palmer
Some Similar Quotes
  1. The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers & cities; but to know someone who thinks & feels with us, & who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden. - Unknown
  2. We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community. - Dorothy Day
  3. Pull up a chair. Take a taste. Come join us. Life is so endlessly delicious. - Ruth Reichl
  4. The real community of man, in the midst of all the self-contradictory simulacra of community, is the community of those who seek the truth, of the potential knowers..of all men to the extent they desire to know. But in fact, this includes only a few,... - Allan Bloom
  5. A forest is not a wilderness, but a community of souls who speak to one another on the wind. - Anthony T. Hincks
More Quotes By Parker J. Palmer
  1. Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.
  2. Like a wild animal, the soul is tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, and self-sufficient: it knows how to survive in hard places. I learned about these qualities during my bouts with depression. In that deadly darkness, the faculties I had always depended on collapsed. My intellect...
  3. Formation may be the best name for what happens in a circle of trust, because the word refers, historically, to soul work done in community. But a quick disclaimer is in order, since formation sometimes means a process quite contrary to the one described in...
  4. Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you...
  5. In my own life, as winters turn into spring, I find it not only hard to cope with mud but also hard to credit the small harbingers of larger life to come, hard to hope until the outcome is secure. Spring teaches me to look...
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