The Communal Imagination Quotes

“Richard Rohr states in one of my favorite books The Naked Now:   Wisdom is not the gathering of more facts and information, as if that would eventually coalesce into truth. Wisdom is precisely a different way of seeing and knowing those ten thousand things. I suggest that wisdom is precisely the freedom to be present. Wise people always know how to be present, but it is much more then that. Presence is wisdom! People who are fully present know how to see fully, rightfully, and truthfully. Presence is the one thing necessary, and in many ways, the hardest thing of all. Just try to keep your heart open, your mind without division or resistance, and your body not somewhere else. Presence is the practical, daily task of all mature religion and all spiritual disciplines.47”
― Mark Votava, The Communal Imagination: Finding a Way to Share Life Together

“Wendell Berry’s definition: “If the word community is to mean or amount to anything, it must refer to a place (in its natural integrity) and its people. It must refer to a placed people.”7 Berry goes on to say, “It exists by proximity, by neighborhood; it knows face to face, and it trusts as it knows…”
― Mark Votava, The Communal Imagination: Finding a Way to Share Life Together

“Richard Rohr: “We don’t think our way into a new life; we live our way into a new kind of thinking.”
― Mark Votava, The Communal Imagination: Finding a Way to Share Life Together

“The Long Loneliness: “The only answer in this life, to the loneliness we are all bound to feel, is community. The living together, working together, sharing together, loving God and loving our brother, and living close to him in community so we can show our love for Him.”
― Mark Votava, The Communal Imagination: Finding a Way to Share Life Together

“Shane Claiborne says in his book The Irresistible Revolution, “Community is what we were created for ... But that doesn’t mean community is easy. For everything in this world tries to pull us away from community, pushes us to choose independence over interdependence, to choose great things over small things, to choose going fast alone over going far together.”
― Mark Votava, The Communal Imagination: Finding a Way to Share Life Together