preaching to myself today…
From the place where we are right/flowers will never grow/in the spring./The place where we are right/is hard and trampled/like a yard./But doubts and loves/dig up the world/like a mole, a plough./And a whisper will be heard in the place/where the ruined/house once stood.
Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai
Love, Your Friend …
Commentary on Community:
Conversations
Every time we gather becomes a model of the future we want to create.
Authentic conversations create a future distinct from the past.
Conversations create possibility.
Show up. Be present.
The more words you use, the less likely you are to be authentic.
Inversions
These two matter to me at the moment:
The future creates the present.
The listener creates the speaker.
Taking (emotional) risks creates safety
Changing the Future
The past is only a lesson about the future to be used in the present.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
Restorative Justice
This thought is taking from “Community” and “Sitting in the Fire.”
Restorative justice is communal justice (as opposed to individual retribution).
Restorative justice adds a measure of balance to the community.
Based on the community conversation practices of Peter Block
Captured by Eric Hansen – Hansen Resource Development
To be truly alive
is to be fully, freely, lovingly present
in this moment,
drinking in the grace of God
and pouring myself out in love
for God and for all beings.
What do I gain
by abandoning this
to be right,
to get my way,
to be comfortable,
to manage how people think of me?
When I win the argument,
protect my beliefs, defend myself,
when I judge another
and put them in their place,
when I separate myself from those
who suffer pain or injustice,
when I buy another trinket
for my heart’s little room
and close the door,
what have I lost?
I am not a body or a reputation
but a soul.
God of love,
open my door.
Let life spill in
and spill out.
Let me suffer and love,
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Change is the end result of all true learning.
– Leo Buscaglia
life: acoustic & amplified 