"The mission of a community is to give life to others- that is to say, to transmit new hope and new meaning to them. Mission is revealing to others their fundamental beauty, value and importance in the universe; their capacity to love, to grow and to do beautiful things and to meet God." -Jean Vanier
I stumbled across this quote the other day while reading an article on community called, "I Live With Another Man's Wife" in Relevant magazine. It was a timely find for me because it put to words some of the joys and struggles that I've discovered within just a few months of communal living. Pretty much, forgiveness is the heartbeat of life in community- without forgiveness, we have no way of making sense of the weakness that's exposed by living so intimately with one another. Reading this quote gave me a renewed vision of the potential for community to transform and heal us, to make us better, more honest people who are inspired and changed by the love and support of those we live with.
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