Community is the epiphany of creation. It is the epiphany always longed for, very often struggled for and sometimes gloriously realised. Its potential exists at the very central point of creation: it is brought to actuality when humankind mutually strive for equality of relationships, and respectfully treat and develop the physical world in which it exists.

Community, like all profound realities, lies open to trivialisation. This should never be the case for the Christian. For in the web of relationships is to be found the hint, at least, of transcendency. The God I know and have heard about, in the words of Jesus, is the God of relationships. When creation is described as groaning for redemption, the groan will turn into a hymn of praise only when the harmony of relationships is realised—as it is from time to time, though with an exiled imperfection. The ethic of Jesus was fundamentally about this harmony, for in essence the ethic of Jesus was about a life of total equality amongst all human beings. It was about a shared power, shared in order to be creative, in which creativity would be found the authentic expression and exercise of freedom.

Personal and structural selfishness is always waiting to ambush those who would attempt such a vision. Even the best of lives, even those wrapped up in the noblest of vocations, contain degrading dependencies which make a mock of true community. They therefore mock and abort the plan of God’s creative will. Status, position, economic security, political manipulation, parading in the robes of power, longing to be honoured in the market place—these are some of the values which lead to corruption of that shared power which rests at the heart of God’s creation. ‘To exist with and suffer with’ is ultimately about sharing of power over the whole spectrum of life.

I would think that if incarnational theology has anything to say, it is surely about how, paradoxically, the more one becomes godly, the more one becomes truly human. The equation of transcendence and immanence works itself out into a solution which honours both elements. God may well be able to talk about himself, but I suggest that one can only talk about the reality of God because one talks about the reality of man and woman. I am not saying that God is an invention of man, but that the only way I can talk about God is by talking about his relationships with humanity and the web of relationships which holds humanity together. I only talk about the creative power of God to get to the point of understanding the profound right of every human being to be creative too. I cannot talk about God without being conscious of man, and if I attempt to forget God, I cut the human spirit from its moorings. There is no other arena in which we can search for and understand how to define God except the human arena in which we find ourselves.

If human beings attempt to escape from each other, then they escape from God. One cannot discover God in a total wilderness of our own making. We are born to exist with each other, and if this is so, we must agree to suffer with each other. If we attempt to achieve this, then life’s pilgrimage is about sharing power over creation, as it is materially and spiritually revealed to us day by day. If I refuse this path, then I choose to exist with myself, which is, at least, the beginnings of sinfulness. If the Gospel calls us to anything, I believe it calls us to a new translation of the reality and experience of power. This is the conversion point. God and the world are not mine, they are essentially ours.

Anything which gets in the way of that shared possession destroys both the meaning of God and the meaning of being human. I would think it quite pointless to attempt to unravel the meaning of the crucified God, and simultaneously rest content with philosophies and structures which run counter to the search and struggle for a world without privilege, status and position.

One cannot permit oneself to ‘put up’ with inequality. This is not a political philosophy nor an economic plan nor a social vision. It is at the very heart of Christian revelation and, therefore, at the heart of all that is truly human. Unity, truth, justice and love are not aspects of living, they are the stuff of living. One cannot give God a chance unless one really gives humanity a chance. I shall never know the meaning of grace if I am not respectfully gracious in the presence of every human being.

Some years ago Brian Wicker wrote:

The protests which I have discussed ... offer us some conception of the kind of visionary ideal to which a sensitive Christian can, and (I suggest) ought to, commit himself. But the immediate impracticability in the face of contemporary pressures seems nevertheless all too evident. The danger, in this predicament, as I have said, is to abandon the vision which the literature of protest embodies, and to fall back on contentment with merely ameliorative, practical measures.1

I believe this shared power over life, which I see as the central point in a philosophy and theology of community, is day by day reasoned away by the philosophy of impracticability. However, in my own life, my Passionist community have brought me back to—even presented for the first time—this vision of life: the people of my own area, many religious, priest and lay friends who long for a new Church of the poor, the many community workers and activists along with other professions in my area, Christian and non-Christian. I believe this to have been the case because, all at differing levels and in differing degrees, we have in some way surrendered power over life to each other. In so doing, we have touched the sacred at its deepest level in life. There has been a great sense of ‘existing with and suffering with’, but what has happened at this point in my life has turned my mind to a deeper sense of the need for greater kenosis2. Looking into my area, looking specifically at the work with young people initiated by one member of my community, the question does relentlessly emerge: To what degree does one go, how far does one go, in giving power over my life to the powerless youngster?

Rational arguments can so easily distract from the major issue. When the work of that companion religious needed more space, I must say that I found all kinds of reasons why I should not surrender my own room. I came in one day and thought to myself how ridiculous such rationalisation is. It was not as if there was nowhere for me to live. In fact I now live in a basement flat, with another member of the community, in a house occupied by seven old people who have spent most of their lives in mental institutions. That flat was a possibility during the whole debate about whether I should move. The community gathers each day in the flat, and it has become the base for all our dialogue and life. But what is a room in a house, in terms of personal value, when put beside the needs of a young inner city population with nowhere to go? If one child has the possibility of discovering his or her creativity more easily through the space vacated by me, what is it, deep down, which still forces me into vast rationalisations? In the last analysis it is nothing more or less than that desire to ‘exist with’ the self, to preserve the self, to persuade the self of needs, needs which are merely the outcome of past patterns of life and action.

I look at these issues day by day: the homelessness; the lack of social acceptability; the racial discrimination; the total inability to invest in a future; the painful steps which must be taken just to walk one mile; the increasing incursion into life of the non-compassionate society. These issues make me really wonder about so many matters which seem to preoccupy the Church towards the end of the twentieth century. That overall pre-occupation conditions me, as a middle-aged religious and priest, to fall into the trap of tentativeness. The grandeur and squalor of the inner city have liberated me, and my commitment is deeper now than it was on the day of my religious profession and priestly ordination, but should I be so bored and weary with so many ecclesiastical things? Perhaps boredom is even the wrong word—I am tempted by the word irrelevant, but I do not have the right to pass judgement on people. Suffice it to say that I cannot summon up the energy to face many of the questions which seem to be so crucial in ecclesiastical circles. I find it hard to summon up the energy not because I want to run from theological or philosophical reflection—far from it—but the questions seem so far removed from a wounded world.