Discovery, Symbols, Meanings

My old community on the near West Side of Cleveland has evolved into a collage of meaningful expressions. I'm having a fine time going from one event after the other. On Thursday evening I participated in a Catholic Worker community bible study discussion, Friday morning a Zen Buddhist meditation at a storefront amidst drug houses, today a yoga of the mind/then body exercise, and later a Catholic Mass in an archaic Irish church. The original Thomas Merton Community, which I cofounded in 1969 with many of these folks, has emerged into a beautiful blend.

The Bible study dwelled on Luke 14, four scenarios about who is invited to table. Those invited limited themselves by not coming. Healing became truncated through personal choices and the power dynamics of hierarchial social structure. As a result, Jesus taught the disciples to go out into the highways and byways to bring in the lame, the disenfranchised, the rejected. Still, there was more room at the table. Making a long and lively discussion short, Megan shared how she recently chose to downsize by moving into the Catholc Worker house. Megan, a bight young woman who has spent a year in Chile, was on fire with the vigorous insights of the discussion she helped lead. The room contained folks who work with the homeless, who just returned from Palestine with the Christian peacemaker team, or who have been or are going to work with New Orleans post Katrina community. Of course, I shared that my journey to the UK in Gandhi loincloth dress was another way of sysmbolizing "going out to the highways and byways" to include the impoverished masses.

If we go deep enough, we can find common truth.