18 Comments
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Jenn's avatar

Today I feel compelled to comment on the footnotes.

1. I won't try to sound off on this one! 😂

2. Preaching about this has a similar result, and I, too, sigh and eye-roll. It's work!

3. This is really really beautiful. I love that you've come to find community for yourself that you can feel the responsibility to be your full self in love.

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Robert the contemplative's avatar

😂 and thank you for appreciating these footnotes!!

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HEW(Hue) of Poetry's avatar

It's telling that *they* feel no obligation to fix past mistakes done by their ancestors yet they're often the ones relying on parental connections/"community" connections(read: privilege) to fix theirs in real time :/

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Robert the contemplative's avatar

All of this. Phew

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Shannan Martin's avatar

An "ethic of love." I like this. 🩷

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Robert the contemplative's avatar

Aww thanks

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Timothy JK's avatar

Benedict Anderson’s book “Imagined Communities” discusses both the allure of communities and their ability to promote collective action, while at the same time, as constructive, also engendering exclusivity, nationalism, and anonymity (which allows the individual to disown responsibility). We don’t talk a lot about how communities do, by nature, require an excluding element. This can be good thing, of course, but it can also be deeply alienating for an individual subject.

Thanks for sharing your reflection!

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MeghanEBLin's avatar

Beautiful post, thank you.

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Robert the contemplative's avatar

Aww thank you

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Kim Sutphen's avatar

Thank you for sharing this. I was surprisingly convicted of my habit of combining withdrawal and individualism. I didn’t expect that this beautiful Sunday morning but know that it is something I need to confess and repent and ask the Lord to help me. Bless you.

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Robert the contemplative's avatar

Aw thanks 🙏🏾

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Sharifa's avatar

Now you have Mama Toni reading to us? Love. Even if it is a sad account of killing time in place of living.

I disappear, too. Community does call us to respond differently, doesn’t it. Sigh.

And thank you for mentioning my book. 🥹

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BEE Channel's avatar

Sigh. That Toni Morrison reading was profound. I get what you mean about the idea of community seeming helpful but at times the reality tells a different story. I can resonate with what you said about trying to protect yourself from rejection and with disappearing. I am just getting to a place now where I tell safe people that I am not okay. But sometimes I tell too many people, and those people just don't have the capacity to carry that information. I love Morgan Harper Nichols posts on Instagram, by the way. I agree with you about owing something. We can do better than the generation before us and leave a rich legacy for those that will follow. That does matter. Thanks for sharing.

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Benivia Lee's avatar

Thank you for sharing your view, Robert...as always...and I got her book!

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Robert the contemplative's avatar

Yayyyy

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Kevin Fernandez's avatar

Wonderfully written, thanks for posting this,

I hope to reconcile what I not know and while ignoring because my and commune with those fitting and desire to pay in kind. Somewhere along the way I let my earnest kindness taken apart and I let my ego avoid feeling the space to become what I can, because that fear sits right next to me, and unsure what approaches, so I may be paralyzed, because all the things I have to account and re examine Relationships I have. And ask what comes next? Do I agree to forgive? Do I retreat? Or make my own pilgrimage and accept the drastic anxiety and fear, is the underlying psyche saying can you live for yourself fully and Foster your capability and do that for others too.

This is where community is important to push through. One day at a time

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Jamal Robinson's avatar

That first footnote 😂

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Robert the contemplative's avatar

lol 😆 you see me?!

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