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    Why We Live in Community
    Why We Live in Community
    Why We Live in Community
    Ebook56 pages1 hour

    Why We Live in Community

    By Eberhard Arnold, Thomas Merton and Basil Pennington

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Everyone’s talking about “community” these days. Arnold and Merton say it can be lived, too.

    In this time-honored manifesto,     Arnold and Merton add their voices to the vital discussion of what real community is all about: love, joy, unity, and the great “adventure of faith” shared with others along the way. Neither writer describes (or prescribes) community here, but they do provide a vision to guide our search.

    For both the uninitiated seeker and the veteran, this book offers guidance – and a disarming call to a renewed commitment and a deepened faith.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPlough Publishing House
    Release dateJan 2, 2014
    ISBN9780874865684
    Why We Live in Community
    Author

    Eberhard Arnold

    Eberhard Arnold (1883–1935) studied theology, philosophy, and education and was widely sought as a speaker at student conferences and other gatherings. In 1920, leaving a promising career as a writer and the privileges of upper-middle- class life in Berlin, he moved with his wife and children to Sannerz, a small village in central Germany, where they founded a Christian community on the basis of the Sermon on the Mount.

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    • 4/5
      This short book of less than 75 pages contains a variety of insights concerning both what community is an is not as well as why it is needed. While,the author Arnold as well as Merton (who wrote two essays discussing Arnold's text) are from the Catholic tradition, the ideas expressed have value fo all Christians.

    Book preview

    Why We Live in Community - Eberhard Arnold

    coverimage

    Why We Live in Community

    Eberhard Arnold

    with two interpretive talks by Thomas Merton

    Foreword by Basil Pennington

    Plough Publishing House

    Published by Plough Publishing House

    Walden, New York

    Robertsbridge, England

    Elsmore, Australia

    www.plough.com

    Material by Eberhard Arnold and Basil Pennington

    Copyright ©2016, 1995 by Plough Publishing House

    All rights reserved.

    Building Community on God’s Love and Community, Politics, and Contemplation are reprinted from Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton in Alaska. Copyright 1989 by The Thomas Merton Legacy Trust. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. World Rights.

    Why We Live in Community is a translation of Warum wir in Gemeinschaft leben, an essay published in Eberhard Arnold’s journal Die Wegwarte 1:10/11 (October/November 1925) and again in 111:8/9 (May/June 1927), in Sannerz, Germany.

    PRINT ISBN: 978-0-87486-068-9

    PDF ISBN: 978-0-87486-567-7

    EPUB ISBN: 978-0-87486-568-4

    MOBI ISBN: 978-0-87486-569-1

    We do not want you to copy or imitate us. We want to be like a ship that has crossed the ocean, leaving a wake of foam, which soon fades away. We want you to follow the Spirit, which we have sought to follow, but which must be sought anew in every generation.

    —First generation Quakers

    at Balby, York, late 17th century

    Foreword

    There is something stark about Eberhard Arnold’s ­statement on community. It is chiseled clearly in the solid granite of faith. It does not spare us any of the anguish of a world so horribly failing in community – even communities of faith. Our open wounds confront us. Arnold stands unambiguously in the church’s option for the poor, the option of our divine Founder. For him, community is our way of saying an existential yes to God and his creation, to our own nature and ­predestination, a predestination, though, that will only come about – by God’s own design – if we work for it and work together.

    In a world where the gulf between the haves and the have-nots is growing ever wider we need to again be forcefully and persistently confronted with the ideals of the early Christian community. It is certainly a scandal when a person who professes to be a disciple of Jesus goes off to his bed well fed, and with food in his larder, while a fellow human hungers within his reach. It is certainly a scandal when a person professes to be a disciple of Jesus and uses his God-given talents only to augment his own wealth – while fathers cry out for an opportunity to earn a living for their children. Perhaps the ecclesial communities would more effectively enlighten such benighted consciences if they reformed and renewed the powerful sacramentality which Arnold reminds us of.

    It may be difficult for today’s Christians to hear Arnold’s constant reminder that the fullness of life, which is found only in community, comes at the cost of complete self-sacrifice. Yet that is the Paschal mystery of life through death. And it is a sacrifice shot through with joy. Arnold brings out the real paradox that is so essential for the vibrant community, but so difficult to attain: the requirement that each member lives out a personal decision to surrender to the whole and yet exercises his or her will for the good. The secret behind this is, of course, the Holy Spirit, a secret a faithless world cannot know – hence the many strivings for community that end in shambles, with deeply wounded people feeling totally betrayed. A community animated with the Spirit centers on Christ by necessity; it knows the struggle for liberation in Christ, and so it lives in the hope of the resurrection. It is a community of universal love, a leaven in the human family. The Spirit enters into a community when, through its members’ common yearning, the community opens itself and makes itself ready to be

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