“Some people tried to hurt us to protect themselves, their family and communities...This was one of the consequences of civil war. People stopped trusting each other, and every stranger became an enemy. Even people who knew you became extremely careful about how they related or spoke to you.”

“I don’t find our relative insignificance disheartening at all: The main thing it tells me is that in a culture that worships celebrity and the purportedly extraordinary, ALL people are ordinary people. ALL people have the same responsibilities to themselves and to each other. Maybe the universe cares nothing for us, but WE care about each other. And most encouragingly, we care not just for our friends or family but for the whole enterprise of life—we care about strangers and about humpback whales and, most beautifully of all, we care about the dead. We try with our lives to honor theirs. That’s how we make our lives meaningful, and how we make their lives meaningful, too.”

“As an introverted person, I struggle even writing about community because I know how difficult it often is for me to walk across the room to converse with people. People often drain the energy out of me, and too often I prefer to protect myself rather than engage in relationships with people. For some of us who are more extroverted, community is a way of life, yet I wonder how intentional even the most extroverted person is about making community a holiness-shaping thing. Community with God’s people ultimately shapes us to reflect more of who God is.”

“Everyone realizes that one can believe little of what people say about each other, but it is not so widely realized that even less can one trust what people say about themselves.”

“A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other's lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves.”

“What is the matter with these people, these people who won't stop fighting, won't stop hurting each other...?”