Community Care

One of the founding principles of Red Clay Sangha is the importance of sangha. We regard sangha as our teacher and focus heavily on cultivating relationships and friendship within the sangha, for example by having a meal together after most of our regular activities. We have come to realize recently, however, that there are important areas of sangha as community to which we have not been paying attention. A working group has been formed to explore this area and to bring forward ideas and actions that would be helpful to building and strengthening our sense of community. Broadly the areas we are looking at fall under the category of pastoral care:

• An announcement list for dedication of merit;
• A regular forum for celebrating life milestones;
• A regular email communication (newsletter) to the sangha which is focused on the personal, family, community issues and not on dharma or teachings or even Red Clay activities.

Making this "real" requires the participation of voices from the sangha to express what is important, to help develop action plans, and to lead the activities that come from this.