Spiritual Life Meeting God in Community

Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Peter and I are fetched by a van driven by Brendon, (with other seniors) to attend the adult day health care program at the Open Arms AHDC Center. We consider ourselves fortunate that at this stage of our life, we can still expand our circle of friends and participate in activities that will keep us active, alert and enthusiastic. Talking with some of the participants and interacting with them, makes us feel rejuvenated.

I was looking for a topic to share with my readers, and I found these words of wisdom from my Spiritual Formation Bible, “Meeting God in Community”.

We were not created to live in isolation. No person “is an islands entire of itself”, wrote the poet John Donne. While no one questions the need for periods of solitude and refreshment in our lives, faith tends to thrive most readily when shared and experienced with others. Without the connections community affords us, we experience what someone once called “spiritual loneliness”. For we meet God not just as we sit alone in quiet corners but in and through the people with whom we live, work and interact as we go through our daily routine.

Relationships present us with both a remarkable privilege and an awesome responsibility. Proverbs 27:17 tells us that “as iron sharpens iron, so one (person) sharpens (and

Aurora S. Cudal-Rivera