Page 17 - C.A.L.L. #23 - Spring 2004
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Jesse Barton from the New Meadow Run Bruderhof responsibility for how one behaves, but the
in the USA, contributed this piece to our discussion behaviour is rarely seen more than superficially
on decision-making in community. and the need to try to stay free of blame for
one's actions often distort one's personal
Decisions - some are small, everyday and others responsibility and leaves the consequences to
are life changing, both individually and on a land squarely, or not so squarely on others. The
much wider scale. Living in community, living exact opposite is an integral part of a common
together as a group, determine that decisions life where one must bear not only responsibility
can have a very different impact than those for one's own individual actions, but there is a
made by individuals, individual families and the shared responsibility for how it affects those
larger social around us. This is really only possible where a
organizations in deeper commitment has been made, both
which most of because we must always seek to let the needs of
humankind lives the community be of primary importance and
and works. our own personal needs must take second place.
A community, a In thinking about the experience of most of the
community of like world's people and how they live, isn't this also
thinkers, those who have chosen to live together how a family must operate to truly fulfill its task?
because of a common belief or other basis makes Don't the father and the mother continually
a very different demand upon us as individuals. submit their desires to the larger needs of the
As members who have made a deeper, more whole family? Isn't also nature and the order of
thought through commitment to an order or the universe the same way? A mother always
community of life, we have in a gives up everything in her care
certain way submitted some of of her children, all of her
the more typical, normal daily decisions are based on the
decision making to the needs of needs of the others of the whole and the
the larger group. On the other hand, by letting consequences of those decisions are borne by the
go in this way, we have obligated ourselves to a whole. So it must be for us as members of a
much more serious level of decision making, one community, a committed community, that we
that not only affects us individually, but in a very always have the vision before us of to what we
important way affects the lives of those around choose to give our lives, a daily choice, but
us who have similarly committed themselves. In something that is predicated by a much more
other words, we have yoked our lives and our basic decision, the
decisions in a way not possible or imaginable for realization that
those who live in the more loosely organized life has much
"normal" society. more to offer, and
we have much
One of the more interesting parts of decision more to give, than
making in a larger group is the way in which the what we see
consequences for one's personal behaviour affect through the
those around you and in actual fact, your own narrow scope of our own personal experience.
person. In "normal" society one certainly bears
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