Good reader,
How do we live well, together? The first half of this question is one of the perennial questions of philosophy: What makes a good life? But it’s also the easier half to answer. People may disagree on the answer, but the answers come easily. Success and legacy, family and comfort, peace and prosperity, love and happiness.
Then comes the troublesome modifier — together.
Our answer to the first half will steer our approach to the second. It’s easy to imagine a life well lived for ourselves, but what one lived well with others for the good of one and all, can seem like a dream. This is especially true in 2020, when a few minutes of scrolling online is as likely to make me shake my head as it is to spill tears on my keyboard.
It doesn’t have to be this way. And I sincerely believe it isn’t meant to be this way. Working towards promise and peace starts close to home, in the spaces where we walk, work, and welcome people every day. This is why I started Common Pursuits with friends who are grieved by all the good left undone in our communities and relationships. We launched our website earlier this week, not knowing it would coincide with riots protests across the US and solidarity protests where we live in Toronto and Montreal.
When I left my home to follow the Montreal march down the street, I was met with a brilliant rainbow against a dark sky. If that’s not the wonderful weirdness of being alive, I don’t know what is. We live in a world that groans, for a time, beneath a cosmos that sings of the way things will be.
I hope Common Pursuits can be an invitation to join in.
-Matt
in the day of trouble – Alan Jacobs
A prayer for troubled times.
The dangers of "digital togetherness" – Joshua Heavin, Granola
This is an approach Common Pursuits will try to model on Twitter and elsewhere.
Nonetheless, my plea is much simpler: we should strive to have a deictic online presence, one that cannot be fully understood without additional contextual information. Little to no good comes from opining directly on social media, and the platform is best used to re-direct followers elsewhere towards things that are good, beautiful, and true, or that celebrate quiet faithfulness and joy.
1 important fact about the Minneapolis police department – The Week
It’s possible to care for communities you’re not a part of, but it is not easy. Police officers should be supporting characters in the drama of the neighbourhood, not just a heroic or vicious cavalry to be called in.
Residency is a good way to achieve that sense of neighborliness and mutual community commitment. Even if officers live in city neighborhoods unlike those in which they work, they're still more likely to encounter these areas off-duty — in normal, peaceful contexts like trying a new restaurant or visiting a park — than they are living 30 or 60 miles out of town. But residency isn't the only way to foster familiarity.
When police officers are told they’re in a war, they act like it – Vox
A simple truth for a time of turmoil.
“…you don’t sit for eight minutes with your knee on the neck of your neighbor.”
The day is coming, and it’s possible to be part of ushering it in. Somehow, to my mind, the Twitter thread above and the song below are in an important conversation with each other.
Thank you for reading Good Words.
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