It’s a phrase I hear more and more these days, this notion of “holding space.” I hear it invoked by artists, therapists, retreat directors, progressive altruists. It hints at a kind of Ignatian discipline centered on the conditions required for human growth amid...
Community
Taking It Outside
John Clair
Suddenly it seems everyone would rather simply “take it outside.” We saw these images in almost every city and town in America. Images of violence in exchange or action, splattered across the national news in waves not seen in decades. A key job of the police, and one that other citizens are less well-equipped to do, is to do what people don’t have the time or temperament or training to do when they are in a mood to take it outside. That is to find out what actually happened: to investigate.
Building Our Commons
Father Jack Wall, Joe Boland
How might we imagine and actually each play a role in building a more woven, widely shared commons? A commons committed to solidarity and humbly receptive to repair. One that keeps human dignity front and center and sees all of life as gift. How could each of us and each of the societal sectors that touch our lives and that we touch in turn—education, medicine, business, social service, law, media, politics, the institutional church, and more—how could we and all these shift, perhaps softly in some ways, perhaps dramatically in others, to sow a better normal?
We, the People . . .
Mack McCarter
This was written four years ago, in January 2017, as part of Mack McCarter’s “weekly word” to the global community of those committed to renewing our relationships from the foundations on out. We thought it appropriate to re-post today, on this Inaugural week in the States.
Robert Peel’s Policing Principles
Sir Robert Peel
These principles, attributed to the founder of London’s first modern police, were sent out in the “General Instructions” issued to every new member of the Metropolitan Police Force from its formation in 1829 onward.
What Is Policing For, and How Do We Reform It?
Anthony Barr
To rebuild the public realm, we must reform the police; to do that, we should turn to the policing principles first set out in 1829 by Robert Peel: the “police” are just members of the public “who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.”
Justice in a Time Out of Joint
Brad Littlejohn
Trapped within his own private reality, the vigilante can no longer be sure whether he is acting to vindicate the corrupted order of public justice or merely to achieve some private catharsis.
What Is Political Authority?
Susannah Black
You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilisation from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn. John Buchan, The Power-House What is government for? What is...
Citizens Aren’t Just Born. They’re Formed
Kevin den Dulk
My university (yes: by press time Calvin College will be a university) recently crafted an “educational framework.” Its purpose, as I understand it, is to “operationalize” our primary mission. Three of its four categories of goals—“faith,” “learning,” and...
Sowing for Trust
Anne Snyder
We are living through times that often feel like one long commentary on Joni Mitchell’s line “you don’t know what you got till it’s gone.” From quotidian encounters on the street to public sacraments, hospitality in the flesh to basic truth-telling from our leaders,...