In the Fourth Order community where there is great diversity the fundamental roots are respect and compassion. We bring to each other such joy and such opportunities for growth!

We realize prejudices and preferences of personality, culture or style are like the hard seed casing that covers our hearts and minds. They must be cracked open for the flower to bloom.

However we live, as hermits or in community, we experience a depth of relationship and unity with all that is. We honor all beings as the manifestations of the Unseen Source. We do not badger our companions with fault finding or complain of them to others. We experience the beauty of the heyoka, the backwards teachings of Holy Wisdom, how others kindly mirror for us the dark side of our own moon. The gift of community is wholeness, the nakedness of God in our own naked selves.

To love one another is an action and a non-action. By non-action we mean the gift of simple and vulnerable presence to ourselves and to each other. This is the basis of our life together and from it all else proceeds. Without this we are empty vessels and our actions are only impersonations of love.

The Sufi, Al Ghazzali, reminds us to uplift each other by offering friendship that is dependable, praying for each other with the same intensity we pray for our own well-being, letting each other know we care, praising one another for his or her good qualities. We do not hold grudges and resentments, but seek inner and outer reconciliation. Grudges and resentments are harmful to ourselves and others. It is helpful to forgive.

We refrain from causing harm or discomfort to our companions. We do not burden, weigh down or put a yoke on them. We do not give them advice when we know they are not able to act on it. We take care not to place our companions in awkward and difficult situations.

We should be attentive to cultivating skills, which are useful to our own support and to the work of Holy Wisdom. We are responsible to work. Sometimes we will work and still have unmet basic needs. We assist each other in time of need with basic survival requirements, such as food, housing or money, as well as assisting with various opportunities for serving the call of the Spirit. Francis was humble and open to receive from this bounty of `the Lord's table'.

Always and everywhere we remember the great law of compassion: “If they are sick, visit them; if they are busy, help them; if they have forgotten, remind them.”

In the garden of Divine Madness love plants its wild diversity of seeds. The seed of light is cast in the dark soil, and will flourish when that soil has been tilled by respect, humility, tolerance, humor, compassion, and forgiveness. This holy madness of community is the water that softens even the hardest ground.