Structure without life is dead. But life without structure is un-seen. Pure life expresses itself within and through structure. Each moment is absolute, alive and significant.*
(John Cage)

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.**
(African proverb)

Trust isn’t what it used to be. Seth Godin’s observation of our internet age is true both in statistics and personal stories:

The result is a moment in time when more people are connected and fewer are trusted.^

Friends aren’t what they used to be and now we need to identify meaningful friendships by inserting the word vital.

Fellowships are now more likely to be institutions providing awards of one kind or another, when they used to be how people came together to make some important happen:

To be part of an organised fellowship is a responsibility and also the chance to leap forward. Join the others, people like you, eager to see and to be seen, and most of all, to be of service. (Worth noting that ‘fellow’ it is not gender-specific and in fact is used in the Old Testament in reference to women).^^

The thing about fellowships of this traditional kind is that we don’t have to wait for them to come along, we get to start them ourselves with others.

So special are the dynamics of these groups that anthropologist Victor Turner came up with the term communitas to set them apart from our normal understanding of community: a group of people bound together by a common purpose.

(*John Cage, quoted in Bill Sharpe’s Three Horizons.)
(**African proverb, quoted in Shane O’Mara’s In Praise of Walking.)
(^From Seth Godin’s This is Marketing.)
(^^From Seth Godin’s blog: What is a fellowship?)