Our community is trying to determine what rhythms and practices are need to help keep our vows. Over the past few days, I have been trying create some material to facilitate a discussion on this topic. My hope was to try and get some input from some of the other religious orders that we have connections with. Thus far, I don’t think I will be able to get more input by the time we have our meeting, but I did stumble upon someone else who provided me with timely and very wise input.

During some of my search for more information about how other communities keep their vows, I found a blog called A Nun’s Life that is authored by Julie Vieira. Today she has a post about religious life not being a popularity contest. I really appreciated her thoughts and the subtle nuance that she sees from the concern about the size.

Here is a quote from her post about interest in numbers:

Jesus himself said, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). He did not say, “Where institutions, buildings, and popularity abound, there I am.” Certainly, Jesus is there wherever and however many we are. No question about that. But size was not the criterion for following the gospel, being a viable community, or pursuing a mission that God planted in people’s heart.

The more subtle point that she makes is about the focus of the thinking about numbers and size. Instead of paraphrasing, I’ll quote her directly:

When the focus of religious life becomes the religious community itself or the individual herself/himself, then something has gone terribly wrong. Religious life is not about any one of us or our community. To get caught up in such navel-gazing is to neglect the whole reason religious life exists: to serve the world and Church. It’s about MISSION. Without mission, it doesn’t matter how many people come through the convent doors or how consecrated you look or what lofty ideals you subscribe to.

It is about MISSION. This is the input that I was missing. I think in trying to create a community it is easy for us to lose sight of our mission. Thank you Julie for reminding me.

So what is out mission and how do we focus on it? Maybe that should be held to tightly as we try and create practices and rhythms for keeping our vows.

For the sake of communicating more about our community and to follow this thought maybe I should mention a few words about or mission. We see our mission as modeling and teaching an integrated way of life that is leveraged for the good of the world and is inspired by the life and teaching of Jesus. A life of love for our creator and creation.

So what should be the measure of our community? I could take Julie’s lead (it’s a good one), but I would like to hear from others what they think. Any input?

Our community decided to take vows last weekend to try and make our commitment to following the way of Jesus more specific and accountable. We want to seek a way of life that we believe moves us closer to becoming like the master. To do this, we feel that it is necessary to create some accountability and solidarity with our community. We hope to accomplish this by taking vows around the seven rhythms we have come up with.

Simplicity Service Prayer Creativity Obedience Community Love

Many people are longing for a more committed and accountable way of life that is consistent with their values and the teaching they receive. The typical model followed by most churches tends to focus primarily on teaching with little or no connection between the doctrine or ideas and how they are integrated into our daily lives.

We long for wholeness and integration. We long for our lives to be lived out in a way that reflects our values.

The work that we have been doing over the past 6-12 months is coming together in a more tangible form. We have been gathering to explore what it would look like for a community of people seeking to live in the way of Jesus to make some vows to further their commitment in this direction. I’ve written a little about this journey here, here, and here.

The meeting this weekend marks a milestone for us. We feel like we’ve come to a place where we can put a little more structure around operationalizing the vows we are taking. We’re calling the group Seven. Here is a little history on the name.

A NAME: SEVEN

For a while we were calling what we were doing “common life” and some of us have spent hours brainstorming different names and approaches to a name for the community of people who are exploring vows together. We looked over the six vows and realized that the intent of all of them is to LOVE—God and people. If we added love, that would make seven vows. There were seven days of creation and there are seven days in a week and we seek to live the way of Jesus seven days a week through the seven vows we make. (As an added curiosity, many of us live in or near a principle city that is 7 by 7 square miles.)

We decided that it might be better to use a name that requires some explanation, because a lot of our attempts at a name that fully explained things was cumbersome or had the wrong connotations. So we are proposing SEVEN as a name to describe the activities and gatherings of our community.

And here are the vows:

Service:

1. We account for and leverage our time to serve others through evaluating our commitments and developing a written schedule we share with one another that reflects our most important priorities.
2. We give priority in our schedules to seeking the presence of God with orphans and widows and people who are hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, lonely or in prison.
3. We seek to do work that provides income and fulfills our true vocation with dignity and in ways that promote equality, sustainability and justice.

Simplicity

1. We keep careful account of our personal finances and live budget that reflects sustainability and intentional conscientious priorities, and we share our income and expense budgets with one another in a yearly members meeting.
2. We give away 10% of our income; (5% to the common work of Seven Society and 5% to the charities of our choice).

3. We seek to live lives that are focused, content, sustainable, and generous. As a general principle we are mindful not accumulate possessions and, once a year, (on the day after thanksgiving) we collectively take an inventory of our belongings and evaluate what to keep, share, sell or give away.

   Creativity

4. We cultivate divine imagination by reading the scriptures daily with our family or household.

5. We seek to find God in all of creation and our humanity through intentional and reflective interactions with nature and cultural artifacts.
6. We create cultural artifacts (recipes, poems, paintings, songs, stories, etc) and share them with each other once a month leaving a trail for others to discover and learn from. (The fourth Sunday evening of each month)

Prayer

1. We begin and end the day with 15 minutes of prayer.
2. We take an annual three-day silent retreat.
3. We participate in cooperative morning-prayer the second and fourth Fridays of every month.

Community

1. We are active in a Jesus dojo cohort excercises.
2. We participate regularly in Sunday night SEVEN gatherings.
3. We practice hospitality on a weekly basis (Thursdays suggested) with neighbors, coworkers, travelers and strangers on a weekly basis.

Obedience

1. We keep our vows.
2. We meet with a trusted mentor at least once a month to talk about personal growth. (either someone within SEVEN or another local person.)
3. We seek community discernment on major life decisions (change of vocation, marriage, relocation, personal crisis, etc) through a listening meeting (scheduled for the 4th Sunday of the month).

Love

1. We seek to meet one another’s needs.
2. We seek to be reconciled one with another and with all people.
3. We seek unity, cooperation and goodwill with all groups and people locally and globally seeking God in the way of Jesus.

Update 9/11/2006: I updated Simplicity and Community slightly to reflect the updates from the Saturday night meeting.