Building Meaningful Community
Two acquaintances of mine are going to set aside all other commitments this year to spend six months living with a small group of people from different countries, whom they don’t yet know. With this little international community, they will practice living simply, do some studying, and then go out to share their faith with other people. I was surprised to hear of their plans, and even more to hear that in recent years more young Catholics in Singapore have been showing interest in similar ventures. “It was really the idea of community that drew me to this,” one of them explained to me. Funnily enough, the other friend had the opposite perspective: “What made me doubtful about this was whether I could accept living in community,” she said. “I like living on my own and having my own space.” Despite their seemingly different viewpoints, I think they were both united in realising the centrality of community in the work they were going to undertake. They could see that community li...