Common Good Collective

Reader

This Reader is an expression of Common Good Collective, a vision for an alternative way, rooted in the act of eliminating economic isolation, the significance of place, and the structure of belonging. Whether you come at this from a place of economics, social good, or faith, we hope these reflections help orient your day in fresh, provocative, courageous ways. And most importantly, we hope these lead you into the sharing of gifts in particular communities—into co-creating a common good.

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Mystery, Reader, Structure Of Belonging Permalink

Clued to the Big Moment

The Common Good Collective team had the esteemed pleasure of spending time with Walter Brueggemann this week. We will be sharing this conversation with you soon, but in the meantime here is another contemplative sermon on how to stay connected to the true spirit of Christmas.

It is not easy now to let Christmas be a singular moment of faith and life. On the one hand, commercialism even before Thanksgiving detracts from the moment of birthed newness. On the other hand, the demands of COVID-19 make every day seem like the next one and the last one, and we don’t easily recognize “why this day is different from all other days.”

On both counts, the church’s attentive focus on the decisive moment of Christmas is a summons that requires some energy.

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An Economy Built on Sharing

This time of year, the messages from advertisers to consume come to a fever pitch. Liesel Clark and Rebecca Rockefeller offer a radical approach to get off of capitalism’s hamster wheel and gain what we truly want — a sense of belonging.

 

Online shopping has exploded during the pandemic, but there’s an alternative to all those brown box deliveries. It’s Buy Nothing, a worldwide sharing project that helps people get what they need without shopping, and declutter without leaving home. Even better, Buy Nothing groups make community visible and connected, even while physically distanced.
In their new book, The Buy Nothing, Get Everything Plan, co-founders Liesl Clark and Rebecca Rockefeller explain the philosophy behind a local sharing project that became the worldwide Buy Nothing network of hyperlocal gift economies. They describe the inspiration of community sharing Clark witnessed in Nepal, and include stories from Buy Nothing participants whose lives have been changed by shopping less and giving, receiving, and sharing more.

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Ella Baker Revolutionized The Revolution

Sunday, December 13th was the anniversary of Ella Baker’s birth and repose. Haitian writer Pascal Robert honors her legacy as a radical leader, even with in the revolutionary Civil Rights movement. A staunch critic of elitism, she observed the gifts of every day people and empowered them to demand justice, regardless of what the actions of charismatic figureheads.

In perhaps one of the most important biographies of a civil rights leader published, Professor Barbara Ransby has conveyed the epic life and struggle of a woman whose sheer skill, leadership, and ability to mobilize the marginalized and dispossessed to full participation in their fight for human dignity is almost unprecedented in American history. In her book, Ella Baker & The Black Freedom Movement, Professor Ransby documents the life of Ella Baker, a black woman born to a middle-class family in North Carolina in 1903 who, after witnessing the staunch spiritually based dedication of her mother to serving the poor in the South, transforms into a sheer force of will that worked with all the major civil rights organizations of her time, and helped mobilize to create two of the most crucial to the Civil Rights Movement: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

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Readers Reflect on “Not Numbed Inside” by Walter Brueggemann

Last week, CGC featured a piece from Walter Brueggemann, where he wrote about refusing to become numb. We reached out to a few friends and asked for brief reflections to continue the discussion. What struck you about Walter’s work? Here are four responses, each working around the bodily nature of neighborly solidarity.

Our human inheritance, writes Walter Brueggemann, is our ability to awaken from the inside out to live in bodily solidarity with one another. It’s through our bodies, our guts, our wombs, our innards, that compassion moves in, compelling us to feel our neighbor’s suffering, and respond. Here, Brueggemann shares profoundly good news: our empathy is both purposeful and divine.When we deepen our capacity to feel the pain and joy of one another, we are not only moving closer to God, we are also enlivening the God within us. – Shannon

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