Acceptance of Fallibility

A convivial friend, Dan Grego, says that the future of our country depends upon whether we can learn how to help each other, outside of the market. One of the most significant reasons that we don’t help each other in...

> An Open Letter to Journalists By Peggy Holman, cofounder, Journalism That Matters It’s time for a new compact between Journalists and the Public. We need you.  Your work is vital to the well-being of us all.  I can’t imagine a functional democracy without...

“The Clearness Committee is not a cure-all,” says Parker Palmer in the excerpt from A Hidden Wholeness we posted recently in The Therapeutic Neighborhood. “But for the right person, with the right issue, it is a powerful way to...

The path to restoring function to the family in a citizen society, not a consumer society, is quite simple. It begins with five questions.   1. What functions can we put back into the hands of young people?  Whether they are our kids...

When family members do not work or live well together we sometimes call the family dysfunctional. We prescribe professional help for the family or advocate for social policies that would support it—child care, parental leave, extended unemployment insurance, debt...

"Getting the question right may be the most important thing we can do," states Peter Block in the opening to Part One of his book, The Answer to How is Yes: Acting on What Matters. "We define our dialogue and, in...

In 1938 the world was in a depression, war was breaking out in Europe and Al Capone, the gangster, ruled at home. Tough times. In the same year there emerged two comic book superheroes, Superman and Batman. They were...

I’m attending an amazing conference in San Antonio titled “Our Abundant Communities: Neighborly Nourishment in the Wilderness.” Here are my notes from Peter Block’s session titled “Art Calling Out Empire.” (The following notes are close to being quotes but there is...

My recent book, Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood, argues that forming a mission-shaped life in our time involves the recovery of neighborhood. Congregations must be re-imagined around the location of their members in neighborhoods. This requires us to...

One of the most inventive people engaging neighbors in community building is Ray Thompson. In his April 2011 newsletter he writes a soulful reflection on the perils of helping. His website www.thompsoncrg.com offers a community-centered, people-focused look at neighborhood possibilities for creating a satisfying...