Awakening to the neighborhood

My Book Study group has chosen to read The Abundant Comunity: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods for Lent.  I'm eager to read and reflect on John McKnight and Peter Block's words of encouragement and practical application.  Just one page in and I had to pause.  You see, for a couple years now, some of my friends have joined the trend choosing a word of the year.  This year, I too joined the bandwagon.  And my word for 2015 is...

Just one page in and I had to pause:

"In many nations, local people have come together to pursue a common calling.  They are groups of local people who have the courage to discover their own way- to create a culture made by their own vision.  It is a handmade, homemade vision.  And wherever we look, it is a culture that starts the same way, with an awakening:

First, we see the abundance that we have- individually, as neighbors, and in this place of ours.

Second, we know that the power of what we have grows from creating new connections and relationships among and between what we have.

Third, we know that these connections are no accident.  They happen when we individually or collectively act to make the connections-they don't just happen by themselves." 

 [ page 1 of the introduction of Abundant Community]

Awakening.  May it be so...