We are excited to announce our new website for URBANLIFE #wementor!
Within our site you will be able to view our purpose, goals, and even ways you can help. We look forward to this new journey.
There is something to be said for a “theology of place” — choosing to orient our lives around community for the sake of the gospel. So much of our culture is built around moving away from people rather than closer to them. In many of the wealthiest countries in the world, we have lost the sense of a village. And we have some of the highest rates of home ownership and some of the highest rates of depression. We are some of the wealthiest and loneliest societies the world has ever seen. We live in a mobile culture in which people are used to moving every few years, and in which many folks will uproot without question to move for a higher-paying job.
Commitment to a people and a place is one of the countercultural values at the heart of the gospel. It means recapturing the notion of the parish, a word which shares a root with parochial, meaning “localized and particular.” Many folks these days are learning from village cultures, where people often have fewer resources but more life and joy. Even our geography has to be rethought, because our neighborhoods and homes are often built around values different from the gospel and community. What we often lament as a “breakdown of the family” is really a breakdown of local community, which has stripped away the support structures that help all of us survive. Joachim and Anna, whom tradition names as Jesus’ maternal grandparents and who nurtured the mother of the Lord, remind us how important the basic institutions of family and community are.
-Shane Claiborne, Common Prayer