Values
Below is our best attempt to distill a few of the primary values that we seek to embody as a community.
Wonder
At the heart of Christian faith is the claim that in dealing with God we are dealing with a reality that literally over-whelms. God is radically in excess of who we are. In dealing with God we are up against mystery. This is why Christianity has always cultivated practices of singing and praying, rituals of worship and praise. Incarnation is a community that engages in practices aimed at keeping us open to the Mystery of Love that is closer to us than our own breath. Over against the pull towards the trivial and petty that marks our consumer-oriented culture, we want to promote a way of life that privileges wonder.
Storytelling
Our lives are shaped by stories. We inhabit all kinds of stories - sometimes by hearing them told, sometimes by telling them ourselves. And this is true whether we consider ourselves "religious" or not. When we meet someone new, when we apply for a job, we are always telling stories about ourselves - those are personal stories. But we also tell stories about politics, the economy, work, the places we live - those are cultural stories. Christians also traffic in stories. Stories are, in fact, the primary currency of Christian communities. So we tell stories about what God has done and continues to do in the world and in our lives. Most of what we do is aimed at helping New Yorkers live the story of their lives within the broader story of God's grace toward us.
Wisdom
Living well in the city is no easy task. Anger, dissatisfaction, greed and loneliness come to us more readily than compassion, gratitude, joy, and contentment. Incarnation seeks to draw on ancient sources of wisdom to suggest patterns of living joyfully in our complicated, late-capitalist, urban culture. The problem we are trying to solve is this: how do we live in ways that make us more deeply human? Living well involves both a regard for the wisdom of the past and an ability to travel in new life-giving directions.
Hospitality
Hospitality refers to practices of making space and time for others. We tend to think of hospitality in terms of opening our homes or apartments to others. But it's also about opening our hearts and lives to others. God is present to the world as the mystery of love that makes space and time for all of us creatures. At Incarnation we want to reflect God's hospitality in two primary forms: friendship and justice. Opening our lives and hearts to one another requires practices of friendship. Working to make New York City a place that is hospitable to all - and not just those lucky enough to be young, beautiful, wealthy, well-connected, or some combination thereof - requires practices of justice.
Generosity
Ancient Christians referred to God's ordering of the world toward common flourishing as God's oikonomia or economy. And the fundamental characteristic of God's economy is generosity. The biblical story is that God shares all God is, and all God has, with us. God's own life is pictured by the Christian tradition as a never-ending three-fold sharing between Father, Son, and Spirit. And further, Christians confess that in Jesus of Nazareth, we too have been pulled into the orbit of God's self-giving. Incarnation seeks to reflect this divine economy of giving within our smaller human economies. We don't pretend to give like God gives, but our patterns of sharing with one another ought to echo God's sharing in some small but powerful ways. Our goal is to help persons move from "What can I get from the city?" to "What can I give?"