the value, the rightness, the truth of the work - community building

[Elaine Hansen]

I liked this so much - and how it fits with community building just wanted to share. I see it as an affirmation of the work and an encouragement to you to keep on, keeping on the work of community

Thomas Merton wrote, in a letter to a friend he advised:

Do not depend on the hope of results… you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and achieve no result at all, if not perhaps the opposite to what you expect.

As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself… You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people… in the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.

[Elaine Hansen]

thank you - I liked hearing that :)

[Randy Weeks]

That's lovely, Elaine. Thanks so much for posting it.

It reminded me of those Margaret Wheatley messages. First, the one about how "Everything is a failure in the middle" and then the one about how in the end we hope to be able to say,
"We were together. I forget the rest".

Community appears in beautiful and different bloom every time we gather and I'm grateful to have the chance to be in it with you, Eric and everyone who's ever shown up at an ASG conversation.

Randy