Sunday, May 21, 2023

Nouwen Meditation: Community is Heart Calling to Heart

Now & Then Podcast

When our relationship with our dad is difficult it can complicate our ability to connect to the Father's love. In this Henri Nouwen, Now & Then podcast, Arthur Boers, author of the powerful new memoir Shattered, navigates the complex terrain of fear and love, shame and forgiveness in the face of generational cycles of rage and violence.

DAILY MEDITATION | MAY 21, 2023
Community is Heart Calling to Heart
Friendship, marriage, family, religious life, and every other form of community is solitude greeting solitude, spirit speaking to spirit, and heart calling to heart. It is the grateful recognition of God’s call to share life together and the joyful offering of a hospitable space where the re-creating power of God’s Spirit can become manifest. Thus all forms of life together can become ways to reveal to each other the real presence of God in our midst.

Community has little to do with mutual compatibility. Similarities in educational background, psychological makeup, or social status can bring us together, but they can never be the basis for community. Community is grounded in God, who calls us together, and not in the attractiveness of people to each other. . . . The mystery of community is precisely that it embraces all people, whatever their individual differences may be, and allows them to live together as brothers and sisters of Christ and sons and daughters of his heavenly Father.
"Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another..."

HEBREWS 10:24,25 (NIV)
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