I Want to be a Community Elder

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I Want to be a Community Elder

At the beginning of each new year, our Healing Center International community habitually looks to see where God has been at work over the past year and asks him what he desires for us and where he is inviting us to join him in the coming year. Not only as a community habit, but also as a personal habit, I began seeking God and interacting with him on his dreams and desires for me for this coming year. Unexpectedly to me—not to him—I found I had a desire to become a community elder, a community guide.

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Human Developmental Maturity - Elder Stage

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Human Developmental Maturity - Elder Stage

ELDER (when the needs and tasks of the Parent have been fulfilled or the youngest child reaches adult maturity):
An elder is a father or mother to his/her community. They are able to treat children who are not their own with the same unselfish care they learned to give to their own children.

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Human Maturity Stages - Parent Maturity

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Human Maturity Stages - Parent Maturity

PARENT (from birth of first child to when the youngest child becomes an adult)
The Goal of the Parent stage is to learn to give sacrificially with joy, without expecting to receive in return.
Anyone who has ever been a parent knows that this new stage requires all we learned in the earlier stages—infant, child, adult—and more. Welcome to the parent stage! Only a person who has mastered the first three stages will have the capacity to give sacrificially to an infant.

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Human Developmental Maturity - Adult Stage

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Human Developmental Maturity - Adult Stage

ADULT STAGE: Young Man or Woman (age thirteen/puberty) to the birth of his/her first child)
The goal of this stage is to learn to satisfy the needs of two people—his or herself and one other person.
Ideally, the ADULT STAGE begins at age thirteen. A fully mature 13-year-old can take excellent care of herself. As s/he enters the adult state s/he will learn how to satisfy the needs of more than one person at a time.

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Human Maturity Stages - Infant Maturity

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Human Maturity Stages - Infant Maturity

The goal for infancy is for babies to organize a strong, joyful, synchronized identity. An infant must learn to receive.
Ideally the infant learned that they have value for “just being me.” The infant must experience strong, loving, caring bonds with his parents. These bonds must meet his needs without his having to ask. He must receive life and also learn to express the life that is in him, to everyone's delight. During infancy, the baby learns to live joyfully in his mother's world.

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