The Beloved Community

This year, we moved into our second home, just next door to the one we've inhabited for years. In a way, it is an extension of what we've already built, an expanding step into something that's been growing around us for a long time. At the heart of our little community is an unspoken trust in the possibility that love - simple, steadfast love - can guide us.

As time has passed, I've found myself increasingly moved by what Martin Luther King, Jr., and others have called the 'Beloved Community'. King understood that the true aftermath of nonviolence is not ultimately political or economic; it is the slow, tender work of a shared life - a life bound together by mutual concern and care. The Beloved Community, as he envisioned it, is a place where people live out their interconnectedness, and in doing so, become something larger than themselves.

It doesn't matter who we are, in the end - we all long for goodness, for love. But I have come to believe that cynicism and fatalism are not expressions of truth; rather they are defense mechanisms, ways we shield ourselves from the unsettling possibility of hope, and from the vulnerability of change. If we could only wait a little longer, sit quietly a little longer, we might begin to notice those small, tender openings - those fleeting moments when love slips into our lives through the people closest to us.

Somehow, over time, my own gradual awakening to the irrefutable goodness that exists in the world found an unexpected parallel in the lives of those whom the state of Florida has labeled "the worst of the worst." I cannot explain exactly how or why this happened - only that it did. And it changed me. I've come to understand that the love we need is not some transient thing, but something durable - something that can hold the complexities of our lives, the joy and the sorrow, the hope and the struggle. It is a love that, when lived in community, has the power to transcend shame and guilt, and to call us toward a justice that is not punitive, but redemptive - a justice that heals rather than condemns.

This year, we hope to bring more of that durable love into the world. We hope to make our little corner of it more hospitable. Here at Joseph House, we are grateful to all of you who have helped us grow, who have shared in our effort to expand this beloved community, especially as we welcome our returning brothers.

We are, all of us, learning that love is the only true force capable of making us whole.