ATLANTIC LIFE COMMUNITY
toward a vision statement--April 1996
We live in a time when life is threatened at all stages and levels of existence. We live in a nation which is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. We are, therefore, compelled by our faith in God and our love for creation to embrace those changes which will free us to deepen our nonviolence in order to resist the principalities and powers of this world where they destroy life, and to embody our hope in spiritually-based intentional communities.
We recognize the strength that has come to us through our participation in the ALC and the gift that this community has been to us, and to peacemakers throughout the nation and even the world. We are compelled by the dis-ease of our nation to deepen relationships that make for vision and sanity and health even as the millenium and its attendant madness rushes in on us and the nation spirals more deeply into fascism, with radical consequences for the poor, the disenfranchised, and the earth itself.
We affirm that the heart of the communities we strive to create is a faith-based commitment on the part of each member (1) :
- to live God's commandment to love unconditionally;
- to incarnate the Word of Jesus, which charges us to renounce all killing and to embrace the way of nonviolence;
- to resist violence, injustice, war, and preparation for war through nonviolent symbolic action so that the vision of Isaiah and Micah- "They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war anymore"—might be fleshed out as freshly and frequently and faithfully as possible;
- to create an environment in community where nonviolent resistance ("divine obedience") can be embraced by all its members;
- to live in community so that obstacles to a nonviolent life such as racism, violence against women, classism, and consumerism, can be confronted and diminished;
- to embrace a "consistent life ethic" where all life, including the unborn, is held sacred;
- to live in community in such a way that we can begin to learn what life would look like if people stopped controlling the world's resources for their own greed.
Regular prayer, liturgy, analysis and celebration will lead us:
- to open our hearts, our lives, and our resources to the poor among us and around us;
- to educate ourselves and one another as changes in national and international politics and policies leave their mark on the quality of life in our time;
- to organize faith and resistance retreats (2), to participate in and support justice struggles on the local, national, and international levels, to respond with nonviolent resistance to the violence of governments, and to resist war taxes;
- to exercise a spirit of stewardship toward our earth's resources, to use energy wisely, to hold all property in common, to subject it to the scrutiny of need rather than greed, and to use what goods we have as they were meant to be used~to do good;
- to develop cottage industry both to support the community and to provide a model to our neighbors of alternative economics;
- to strengthen the parents among us in raising children nonviolently and responsibly;to deepen our sense of accountability, of shared leadership, and of a modified consensus process that would respect both communitarian and individual conscience.
1 While we know that each of us must deal personally with those things in us that block us from becoming just, we also know that we can be helped by one another in that growth process and, above all, can be inspired by the struggles of sisters and brothers to become more human.
2 The Baltimore-Washington communities consider that the regular faith and resistance retreats (at least 3 times a year) have been central to our clarification of thought, have deepened our ability to work together and count on one another, and have stretched and expanded us and all who participate. We would like to see that model expanded and deepened throughout the Atlantic Life Community.