The first step of building community is opening a space where people can connect, whether that be in a book group at the library, in a work meeting or in an online chat or Facebook group.
What sorts of spaces make it easy for you to connect?
Puppy Pile
It might not be your idea of comfort to sleep with someone lying on your head, and some of us are downright phobic of being crammed together in tight quarters. But there is something enormously sweet as well as terrifying about such intimacy, about letting go of boundaries and defenses so that it is hard to tell where one being leaves off and the other begins.
With what group do you feel the greatest intimacy?
Building the World
To be [human] is, precisely, to be responsible. It is to know shame at the sight of poverty which is not of our making. It is to be proud of a victory won by our comrades. It is to feel, as we place our stone, that we are contributing to the building of the world.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
What stone will you place today to contribute to the building of the world?
Yom Kippur
In the Jewish tradition this evening begins the Day of Atonement, when the faithful ask God for forgiveness for all the sins of the past year. But in the days before Yom Kippur Jews are expected to ask forgiveness from all the people in their life, to heal hurts and end grudges. First your neighbor, then God.
Who do you hope will grant you forgiveness?
Not So Pink Flamingos
Their vivid pink color is such a central part of how we think of flamingos that they are often referred to as “pink flamingos,” as if their color were part of their very name. But other qualities, like their spindly legs, long necks and curved bills, are really more crucial to what makes a flamingo a flamingo.
In what ways do you go against the expectations people have of you based on the family or groups you belong to?