The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. So today the topic for reflection is community and to restate what I've said before

that these 10 reflections that we're exploring this week this week and last week were

inspired by orientations that people like hospital chaplains, spiritual caregivers, who offer

interfaith care, meaning that they're not proselytizing, but they're trying to understand the people

they're with and how they're suffering, where their challenges are, and that these

ten areas are places where maybe fundamental needs that many people have.

And so Chaplains will listen for where is it that something is broken or ruptured or challenge for people?

And one of those places is community.

And the community that a person has felt part of,

there's a strain, there's something that's broken,

there's a rip in the community,

and it can be very difficult. And sometimes people who are chaplains will meet with people who are dying.

And sometimes the final thing that they want to do is to repair their relationship to others or to their community or to their family or to a friendship.

And I was surprised many years ago to go visit, be with someone on their deathbed.

And, you know, I knew that there was a, their death was going to be any hour, and I went to visit and the person was still alive enough and clear enough that the person asked me to be involved in

marital counseling and my kind of maybe naivete was surprised that in such a crucial moment the last, you know, hours of a person life,

that that's what they wanted to do. But I shouldn't have been so surprised that often the community,

connections, relationships are so important for people

that repairing them helps us feel complete or feels like there's no loose ends or you know

know apologies have been made or repair has been done.

So community begins with, you know, probably with gestating our mother's belly, where everything of who we are is really connected involved with a single

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