The Broadest Possible Exercise of Imagination

Community, Imagination 0

When definitions of “us” and “them” begin to contract, there seems to be no limit to how narrow these definitions can become. As they shrink and narrow, they are increasingly inflamed, more dangerous and inhumane. They present themselves as movements toward truer and purer community, but, as I have said, they are the destruction of community. They insist that the imagination must stay within the boundaries they establish for it, that sympathy and identification are only allowable within certain limits. I am convinced that the broadest possible exercise of imagination is the thing most conducive to human health, individual and global.

— Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child, I Read Books, p. 26

The Community of the Written Word

Books, Community, Reading, Writing 0

I belong to the community of the written word in several ways. First, books have taught me most of what I know, and they have trained my attention and my imagination. Second, they gave me a sense of the possible, which is the great service — and too often, when it is ungenerous, the great disservice — a community performs for its members. Third, they embodied richness and refinement of language, and the artful use of language in the service of the imagination. Fourth, they gave me and still give me courage. Sometimes, when I have spent days in my study dreaming a world while the world itself shines outside my windows, forgetting to call my mother because one of my nonbeings has come up with a thought that interests me, I think, this is a very odd way to spend a life. But I have my library all around me, my cloud of witnesses to the strangeness and brilliance of human experience, who have helped me to my deepest enjoyments of it.

— Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child, I Read Books, p. 22-23

Imaginative Love

Books, Community, Reading 0

I have spent literal years of my life lovingly absorbed in the thoughts and perceptions of — who knows it better than I? — people who do not exist. And, just as writers are engrossed in the making of them, readers are profoundly moved and also influenced by the nonexistent, that great clan whose numbers increase prodigiously with every publishing season. I think fiction may be, whatever else, an exercise in the capacity for imaginative love, or sympathy, or identification.

I love the writers of my thousand books. It pleases me to think how astonished old Homer, whoever he was, would be to find his epics on the shelf of such an unimaginable being as myself, in the middle of an unrumored continent. I love the large minority of the writers on my shelves who have struggled with words and thoughts and, by my lights, have lost the struggle. All together they are my community, the creators of the very idea of books, poetry, and extended narratives, and of the amazing human conversation that has taken place across millennia, through weal and woe, over the heads of interest and utility.

— Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books, p. 21

Our Own Music

Community, Core Value, Creativity, Joy, Life 0

If we cannot hear the music of our own sweet nature calling to us, if we cannot remember that the intention is to live who we really are, it’s hard to know how to move, where to begin, how to dance. That’s why it’s not always a good idea to start shouting enthusiastically about what we are going to do, how we are going to live our soul’s longing, no matter how strongly this longing is felt in the moment. Sometimes we need to just stand quietly together, hand in hand, until one of us hears the music and begins to dance.

— Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Dance, p. 15

Gifts from the Church

Community, Faith, Growth 0

I am not certain my change of heart would have occurred outside the context of the church. For as I sat on the town-square bench, my mind was filled with stories and examples of forgiveness I had learned at the church’s knee. While I belong to a number of organizations and institutions, only the church has given me the language of reconciliation and has concerned itself with my human growth and betterment. When I have been angry, it has taught me to forgive. When I have been lonely, the church has provided friendship. When I was happy, it celebrated with me. When I was sad, it shared my grief. When I was egotistical, thinking only of myself, the church corrected me and taught me to consider others. When I was stingy, it taught me generosity. And when I was fearful, it taught me courage. In short, the church let me practice what it meant to be human. Not just any kind of human, but the best human I could be.

It is also abundantly clear that what the church has provided for this Christian has also been provided to the Jew, the Muslim, the Buddhist, and others by their spiritual communities. All of them, in their own contexts, have been taught what it means to be human. To be sure, I and others have not consistently lived up to the ideals of our spiritual communities, but those ideals are no less important and imperative.

— Philip Gulley, The Evolution of Faith, p. 185-186

Joyous Participation

Community, God, Growth, Joy, Peace, Redemption, Universalism 0

This is why Christians who talk the most about going to heaven while everybody else goes to hell don’t throw very good parties.

When the gospel is understood primarily in terms of entrance rather than joyous participation, it can actually serve to cut people off from the explosive, liberating experience of the God who is an endless giving circle of joy and creativity.

Life has never been just about “getting in.” It’s about thriving in God’s good world. It’s stillness, peace, and that feeling of your soul being at rest, while at the same time it’s about asking things, learning things, creating things, and sharing it all with others who are finding the same kind of joy in the same good world.

Jesus calls disciples to keep entering into this shared life of peace and joy as it transforms our hearts, until it’s the most natural way to live that we can imagine. Until it’s second nature. Until we naturally embody and practice the kind of attitudes and actions that will go on in the age to come. A discussion about how to “just get into heaven” has no place in the life of a disciple of Jesus, because it’s missing the point of it all.

— Rob Bell, Love Wins, p. 179

Asking for Help

Community, Growth 0

People might think helping is hard, but really that’s the easy part; just look how good it makes people feel. Look how happy all those Red Bend ladies were about chipping in. It’s the asking that’s so painful. It takes real courage, real strength, to say you’re not strong enough to do it alone.

— D.J. Schwenk in Front and Center, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock, p. 196

An Allelujia Chorus

Community, Connection, Core Value, Creativity, Friends 0

Being with real people who warm us, who endorse and exalt our creativity, is essential to the flow of creative life. Otherwise we freeze. Nurture is a chorus of voices both from within and without that notices the state of a woman’s being, takes care to encourage it, and if necessary, gives comfort as well. I’m not certain how many friends one needs, but definitely one or two who think your gift, whatever it may be, is pan de cielo, the bread of heaven. Every woman is entitled to an Allelujia Chorus.

— Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD, Women Who Run With the Wolves, p. 348

Forgive and Pray

Community, Compassion, Forgiveness 0

And therein lies another law of forgiveness:

If you believe that someone you know
is behaving in a way that may be harmful to himself or others,
you have an obligation to pray for him.

This law is not about passing judgment or infringing upon someone else’s free will. You are simply praying that this person will gently find his connection to God and fulfill his own promise. The rest is out of your hands. How he does that is really none of your business. But this type of prayer, toward someone else’s highest good and happiness, is extremely effective. It has the power to save another human being from experiencing something truly terrible, and the whole world benefits each time someone awakens to his higher purpose.

This is part of your service commitment. It is part of everyone’s promise to bring about a more peaceful and harmonious earth through forgiveness and loving thought, even toward those who hurt us. Especially toward those who hurt us.

— Kathleen McGowan, The Source of Miracles, p. 159