The Human & the Holy
OUR RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

by Dan Miller, Ph.D.

Encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing (1 Thess. 5:11)

• Collaborative Learners
We are a community of collaborative learning. Each one of us comes with something unique and important to share, to speak, and to radiate. Each one of us has something essential and invaluable to recognize, to hear, and to receive.

• Humility
There is no one here among us who has the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth so help us God.

• Openness
To the best of our ability, we come with a spirit of openness: to each other, to ourselves, to God, to all of creation. We are hoping to be bridge-people not wall-people. We are unfinished works of art, works-in-progress who dare to be susceptible, vulnerable, and available to God’s transforming power.

• Wisdom
There is a lot of wisdom in this peopled-environment. Speak honestly the experience of your life and treat those around you as bearers of a word you need to hear, whether words with which you agree or disagree.

• Reverence
Each person among us is a mystery, a peculiar treasure, utterly unique, and the beloved of God. We do our best to speak and listen to one another with reverence and kindness, mindful of the inherent divine dignity within each of us.

• People on the Way
Vatican II reminds us that we are a pilgrim people. The Church is not merely the people, but the people on the way, on the move, not-yet-arrived, unfinished, in process, continually growing. This means, among other things, that our thinking, our prized assumptions, our tightly held convictions, our secret biases, our entrenched world views, our inherited myths, are all vulnerable, at risk, susceptible to dismantling, and open to change. What a delightful insecurity!

Daniel J. Miller, Ph.D. • 2005, revised 2011