Participatory Community
Community. It’s one of today’s popular catch phrases. Thanks to that popularity, though, its meaning is a bit fuzzy. It usually seems to refer to an ideal interaction with others. What that ideal is, though, is hard to pin down. Recently reading Bonhoeffer and Lewis brought additional clarity to this puzzle for me. This clarity came from their comparison of heavenly and hellish forms of community. Bonhoeffer set the stage with the suggestion that, “The
Percolations of Peace
“When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut, Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs? When, when, Peace, will you, Peace?–I’ll not play hypocrite To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but That Piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?”1 Peace can be such an erratic thing. One moment present, the next, somewhere else.