[The following entry was written by Cathy Self, Sr. V.P. of the Baptist Healing Trust]
The Journal entries of late seem to have the thread of community woven
throughout – a community against injustice, a community of caring for an
individual, a community of faith. In writing about community, Henri Nouwen has
suggested community is, first of all, a quality of the heart. This quality
emerges from a spiritual knowing, says Nouwen, that we are alive not for ourselves but for one another. Community is
the fruit of our capacity to make the interests of others more important than
our own. Community is certainly central to our practice of radical loving care.
Yet community calls us to connect with others who may, in some ways, feel
different and strange…
People tend to self-organize – that is, we seek each other out because we
want to accomplish something. In joining together we experience the opportunity
for newness and creativity. Yet it seems that differences, or maybe our fears
of those differences, often keep us from coming together to form community.
Margaret Wheatly, a scholar in the field of organizational leadership, notes
how astonishing it is to see “how many of the behaviors we fear in one another
dissipate in the presence of good relationships.” Changes in attitude and
behavior rarely come as a result of an imposed program or even a newly crafted
company values statement. Structures, processes, and systems emerge from our
relationships. Says Wheatly, “[these things] emerge from decisions about how to
belong together.”
So how do we develop and nurture community? How do we decide to “belong together?”
Erie Chapman has often pointed to the truth “where attention goes, energy
flows.” In the fullness of our day-to-day demands, perhaps it is the simple act
of paying attention to what we need most, in taking time to reflect together on
who we are, and who we could choose to become. The invitation is to explore the
purposes that have called us together and to focus on the heart of why we are,
in fact, community. We are alive, said Nouwen, not for
ourselves but for one another.
-Cathy Self
Journal of Sacred Work 
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