檳榔嶼

- Communities sustain life - not nuclear families, or the "couple", and certainly not the rugged individualist.
  - There is no better place to learn the art of loving than in community.
- M. Scott Peck, <<The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace with the profound declaration>>:
  - Community as the coming together of a group of individuals "who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other, whose relationships go deeper than their masks of composure, and who have developed some significant commitment to 'rejoice together, mourn together', and to 'delight in each other, and make others conditions our own'".
- Much of the talk about "family values" in our society highlights the nuclear family.
  - Capitalism and patriarchy together, as structures of domination, have worked overtime to undermine and destory this larger unit of extended kin.
  - Replacing the family community with a more privatized small autocratic unit helped increase alienation and made abuses of power more possible.
- The failure of the patriarchal nuclear family has been utterly documented. Exposed as dysfunctional more often than not, as a place of emotional chaos, neglect, and abuse, only those in denial continue to insist that this is the best environment for raising children.
- In the United States studies show that economic factors are swiftly creating a cultural limate in which grown children are leaving the family home later, and are frequently returning or never leaving in the first place.
- It can only become a community if there is honest communication between the individuals in it.
- Susan Miller, <<Never Let Me Down>> :
  - I kept thinking, love must be here, somewhere. I looked and looked inside myself, but I couldn't find it. I knew what love was. It was the feeling I had for my dolls, for beautiful things, for certain friends. Later on, when I knew Debbie, my best friend, I felt even more sure that love was what made you feel good. Love was not what made you feel bad, hate yourself. It was what comforted you, freed you up inside, made you laugh. Sometimes Debbie and I would fight, but that was different because we were basically, essentially connected.
- Most of us are raised to believe we will either find love in our first family or, if not there, in the second family we are expected to from through committed romantic couplings, particularly those that lead to marriage and/of lifelong bondings.
  - Many of us learn as children that friendship should never be seen as just as important as family ties.
  - However, friendship is the place in which a great majority of us have our first glimpse of redemptive love and caring community.
  - Learning to love in friendships empowers us in ways that enable us to bring this love to other interactions with family or with romantic bonds.
  - In friendship we are able to hear honest, critical feedback. We trust that a true friend desires our good.
- Often we take friendships for granted even when they are the interactions where we experience mutual pleasure.We place them in a secondary position, especially in relation to romantic bonds.
  - This devaluation of our friendships creates an emptiness we may not see when we are devoting all our attention to finding someone to love romantically or giving all our attention to a chosen loved one.
  - Committed love relationships are far more likely to become codependent when we cut off all our ties with friends to give these bonds we consider primary our exclusive attention.
- When we see love as the will to nurture one's own or another's spiritual growth, revealed through acts of care, respect, knowing, and assuming responsibility, the foundation of all love in our life is the same. There is no special love exclusively reserved for romantic partners. Genuine love is the foundation of our engagement with ourselves, with family, with friends, with partners, with everyone we choose to love.
  - I had been raised conventionally to believe romantic relationship was "special" and should be revered about all.
  - Had I been evaluating my relationship from a standpoint that emphasized growth rather than duty and obligation, I would have understood that abuse irreparably undermines bonds.
  - All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget.
  - In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm's way.
- Like many other women and men who are in relationships where they are the objects of intimate terrorism, I would have been able to leave this relationship sooner or recover myself within it had I brought to this bond the level of respect, care, knowledge, and responsibility I brought to friendships. Women who would no more tolerate a friendship in which they were emotionally and physically abused stay in romantic relationships where these violations occur regularly.
- It has been the experience of both living in fear of abandonment in romantic relationships and being abandoned that has shown us that the principles of love are always the same in any meaningful bond.
- Within a loving community we sustain ties by being compassionate and forgiving.
  - Forgiveness is an act of generosity. It requires that we place releasing someone else from the prison of their guilt or anguish over our feelings or outrage or anger. It is a gesture of respect.
  - True forgiveness requires that we understand the negative actions of another.
- While forgiveness is essential to spiritual growth, it does not make everything immediately wonderful or fine.
  - Realistically, being part of a loving community does not mean we will not face conflicts, betrayals, negative outcomes from positive actions, or bad things happening to good people. Love allows us to confront these negative realities in a manner that is life-affirming and life-enhancing.
- Robin Casarjian, <<Forgiveness! A Bold Choice for a Peaceful Heart>>
  - Forgiveness is a way of life that gradually transforms us from being helpless victims of our circumstances to being powerful and loving 'co-creators' of our reality. ... It is the fading away of the perceptions that cloud our ability to love.
- We all long for loving community. It enhances life's joy. 
- Henri Nouwen :
  - no friend or lover, no husband or wife, no community or commune will be able to put to reset our deepest cravings for unity and wholeness.
  - The difficult road is the road of conversion, the conversion from loneliness into solitude. Instead of running away from our loneliness and trying to forget or deny it, we have to protect it and turn it into fruitful solitude...
  - Loneliness is painful; solitude is peaceful. Loneliness makes us cling to others in desperation; solitude allows us to respect others in their uniqueness and create community.
- Meditation: Learning how to "sit" in stillness and quietude can be the first step toward knowing comfort in aloneness.
- Service is another dimension of communal love.
- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross :
  - I can assure you that the greatest rewards in your whole life will come from opening your heart to those in need. The greatest blessings always come from helping.
- The willingness to sacrifice is a necessary dimension of loving practice and living in community.
- Enjoying the benefits of living and loving in community empowers us to meet strangers without fear and extend to them the gift of openness and recognition.
  - to seek ways in which to live with ourselves and others in love and peace
- Unlike other movements for social change that require joining organizations and attending meetings, we can begin the process of making community wherever we are. We can begin by sharing a smile, a warm greeting, a bit of conversation; by doing a kind deed or by acknowledging kindness offered us.