“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”  

Henry David Thoreau

“When an individual is no longer a true participant, when he no longer feels a sense of responsibility to his society, the content of democracy is emptied.  When culture is degraded and vulgarity enthroned, when the social system does not build security but induces peril, inexorably the individual is impelled to pull away from a soulless society.  This process produces alienation - perhaps the most pervasive and insidious development in contemporary society.”  

- Dr. M.L. King

Apply these words to your context - home, organization, church, community.  How is your citizenship reflective of you as a participant that is responsive to the finite with motivations that reflect the infinite/Infinite?

In seems appropriate that in the midst of so much constriction driven on by personal and collective fear that we open our eyes to break through our illusions and open up to deeper and ever present Truth.  If our attention is not dualistic as good or bad we could launch  into hundreds of possibilities and see the beauty that exists here and now.  David Whyte says it this way:  ”That day I saw beneath dark clouds the passing light over the water and I heard the voice of the world speak out, I knew then, as I had before, life is not passing memory of what has been nor the remaining pages in a great book waiting to be read.  It is the opening of eyes long closed.  It is the vision of far - off things seen for the silence they hold.  It is the heart after years of secret conversing speaking out loud in the clear air.  It is Moses in the desert fallen to his knees before the lit bush.  It is the man throwing away his shoes as if to enter heaven and finding himself astonished, opened at last, fallen in love with solid ground.”

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice  -  though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles.  ”Mend my life!”  each voice cried.  But you didn’t stop.  You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its fingers at the very foundations  -  though their melancholy was terrible.  It was late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones.  But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice, which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do  -  determined to save the only life you could save.”

“Make no little plans.  They have no magic to stir men’s blood.”   Daniel H. Burnham

What does it mean for us to be “in” with a group that we join?  What are the requirements for membership?  Is it that we bring something to the group that it values?  Are we important because of the past credit or the promise of future pleasure?  Is agreement to core ideas and behavior the portal for entry or is solidarity in lifestyle what really matters?  Is belonging an evolved need only after the satisfaction of more base ones?  Does life together exist only in the temporal idea or as universal and even timeless?   Am I more “in” as I am homogeneous or when I am diverse?  What is the importance of a larger narrative that I respond to while living in the temporal social networks created for safety, achievement, pleasure, or for the aesthetics of life together?  In our relationships with our neighbor, or employer, a team member, a spouse or child, what is the essential requirement?  Eric Fromm in the Art of Loving says that to love is to be practitioners of knowing the other, respecting them as they are and can become, responsibility to the relationships asks of us, and to care with depth, breadth and sacrifice.  To be “in” may have lots of different requirements, but worthy leadership of great impact chooses to offer the gift of love when taking on the privilege of joining with others.