IT’S 2010: DARE TO BE A DIFFERENT COMMUNITY.

The ability to see is both strength and a weakness. The more we struggle to see ourselves more clearly and closely, especially at the end of an assignment, or life phase, the more we question the primary reasons for our existence. Hence we wish to withdraw ourselves into a ‘desert’- the desert where surely we will have an experience with the Divine. Here we hope to get a sense of surety of our direction, because we fear entering into the new and feel comfortable with the present. On the other hand we as brothers and sisters to one another are constantly encouraged to withdraw into our community where the divine will present us with the new in the ordinary, and will speak to us through the other people we stay with when we live as a sacrament to one another. A life fully lived in a community helps us to jump together the life hurdles of the whole year, hence we see every New Year, though different, as a gift. But above all our community living demands we take ourselves, thank the Holy One for our giftedness, break ourselves, and give ourselves to others. This is the journey we all walk, especially at this threshold of entering in to a new gift of the 2010th year of our Lord.
When we begin to understand our own spirituality of community, we become aware of our interconnectedness and realize that without intertwining ourselves to one another, we will be able to clear the 2010th year’s hurdles raised high above our individual jumping ability. When we understand this spirituality of community, we become aware that our communion with one another is first of all based on our deepening bond to Christ and that our purpose is to hold each other’s hand and draw each other to the centre of life where each person’s values will count and the meaning of our co- existence will matter more than individual convenience.
The fact is that simply living together will not constitute a unique community from the past year, people live together in prisons, dormitories and hospitals but they don’t make a community unless they live from the same reservoir of same values and centre of love. For us to survive this New Year the cost we have to pay is to share the same vision, want good for one another and struggle to be something greater than ourselves.
As a community we need to promise ourselves to live by one resolution, which is, thanking God for our giftedness, breaking ourselves for others so that together we may have life to the fullest.
(Nicholas Linus Odhiambo)