Life Together

To bear the burden of the other person means

involvement with the created reality of the other, to accept and affirm it,

and, in bearing with it,

to break through to the point where we take joy in it.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 'Life Together'

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Community, then, is an indispensable term in any discussion

of the connection between people and land.

A healthy community is a form that includes all the local things

that are connected by the larger, ultimately mysterious form of the Creation.

In speaking of community, then, we are speaking of a complex connection

not only among human beings or between humans and their homeland

but also between human economy and nature,

between forest or prairie and field or orchard,

and between troublesome creatures and pleasant ones.

All neighbors are included.
Wendell Berry, ‘The Art of the Commonplace’