The Meeting Ground Reader

If you have come to help me you are wasting your time.

But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine,

then let us work together.

- Aboriginal Activist Sister

Introduction

This reader contains articles which help describe Meeting Ground's philosophy and outlook as it has developed since our work together began in 1982.

Most of the articles are from Meeting Ground's publication Loaves and Fishes, which was first published in the spring of 1982. Most of the articles are written by persons who have been deeply involved in the work, and who are writing about shared experiences of the community over the years. Other articles are also included, which are not directly rooted in Meeting Ground's particular work. They nevertheless express principles and ideas that are at the heart of Meeting Ground, and common to all engaged in similar endeavors.

In general the articles reflect our mutual ideals and passions in the struggle around four important themes: justice, love, focus on individual persons, and longing for our renewal as a society after the ideal of the "beloved community."

Although the focus of our community life and work has been with and among persons who are homeless, yet the cause is "one" with all who struggle at the margins of our society -- and, as the articles reflect, many other issues of social justice have become part of Meeting Ground's life, work and struggle.

It is our hope that through this reading you may walk with us a little, and perhaps, in some way, join us to help create the road we are walking together.

April 1996