“What really starts fighting is possessions. People get into fights by preferring things to people. This is well developed in Christian theology, and therefore for us [who live together in community], the importance of detachment from things, the importance of poverty, is that we are supposed to be free from things that we might prefer people. You can extend that to any limits you like–wherever things have become more important than people, we are in trouble. This is crux of the whole matter [to why we live in community].”
Thomas Merton (1915-1968) a Trappist Monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, as recounted in Why We Live in Community by Eberhard Arnold (Robertsbridge, UK: Plough, 1995) 39-40.