A Commons Beginning

Greetings Friends,

Somewhat to my surprise, I have felt moved to create a blog.  As a rule I confine my musings to my sermon journal and my preaching in the pulpit of Gloria Dei church in Mulberry, IN.  But as I begin the blog we are in a time of national trouble, the symptoms of which are a partial government shutdown and a threatened default of payments on the national debt.  Our situation has been exacerbated by hardened ideological positions, particularly of Tea Party Republicans.  And while I understand imperfectly their motivations, I am struck by their orientation toward selfish individualism without apparent regard for the common good.  Such a position does not allow for negotiation or compromise.  They seem willing to inflict damage in the commons  without regard for those who share the commons.  When this happens all suffer, but particularly the powerless, those who the Old Testament refer to as "the widow, the orphan and the stranger," who Jesus calls "the least among us."

 I hope I will resist the temptation to simply vent (although I will not promise that I will always resist [see above]).  I do hope to be positive in my musings.  I wish to think about how we might nurture the common life; how we can live our individual lives in safety and dignity in the midst of community. 

Allow me to step back at this point and offer a working definition of "the commons":  simply, those areas of life shared by people, i.e. the community.  These areas are not limited by scale, they include: family, neighborhood, town, state, country, the world, in short, "wherever two or more are gathered."  The commons are also places where personal well-being is dependent on communal well-being, where a web of interdependence unites all in a common bond for the sake of happiness and, ultimately, survival.  This "web" implies that the commons includes more than people e.g. ecological health is a component of communal well-being. 

I welcome your comments and look forward to conversation.