(no subject)
My brain is spinning its tires, caught between organic chem (my usual nemesis) and the things I'd rather be pondering. I picked up Chelsey's copy of The Irresistable Revolution (which I'd accidentaly appropriated a week ago) this morning and I haven't been able to focus on the Diels-Alder Reaction... or much of anything... since.
Thing is, I'm getting more sold on the idea of communes each day, and this is not just a matter of the Tim-exposure lately. I've always been drawn to the monastic lifestyle, and while I always dismissed "I want to join an abbey" and "I want to be an astronaut" as being on the same level of idealism, I would swich faculties in 2 seconds if I had a fighting chance of going into space. (Which I do not. Darn myopia.) And let's just say that I think that the commune idea has more than a fighting chance of actually working.
I'm not talking about communes in the creepy cult way, although that's fun to joke about, but about the idea of a group of people sharing life and resources, and working toward some common goal in their immediate community. It's a new monasticism, one focused not simply on a segregated life of spiritual contemplation and devotion to a future world, but on changing the present world-- without discarding the contemplation or intellectual tradition. That's the definition I threw together for Andrew last night, and the one I'm going with for now until I get a better picture of what this might look like. But the concept seems marvellously ordinary and marvellously revolutionary at once- find a place in downtown Edmonton. Move in. Open the doors. Figure it out as you go.
I could dress it up with Christianese, but I don't think I need to quote verses to point out that Jesus was all about loving people and living with the impoverished. Although, I do remember something about selling everything and giving to the poor, and about how that infamous dividing-the-sheep-from-the-goats passage came down to seperating those religious people who gave a damn about the world from those who didn't.
.
The greeting Namasté, I'm told, can be loosely translated to mean "I salute the Light of life in you." The underlying philosophy is different to be sure, but I can't help but think of how Jesus said that whenever we serve another human being, we'd be serving Him. Can we have that sort of vision, to honestly see the image of the divine in humanity, be it tattered or wealthy? Can we extend grace to the homeless... and the Walmart executive, who like the rest of us in suburbia probably needs it more... alike?
It's Ash Wednesday. I don't really observe the liturgical calendar, but it's a day of repentence and consecration, and it seems a good place to start, these crazy ideas and scattered thoughts and mixed motives in hand. God have mercy on us all.
.
Thing is, I'm getting more sold on the idea of communes each day, and this is not just a matter of the Tim-exposure lately. I've always been drawn to the monastic lifestyle, and while I always dismissed "I want to join an abbey" and "I want to be an astronaut" as being on the same level of idealism, I would swich faculties in 2 seconds if I had a fighting chance of going into space. (Which I do not. Darn myopia.) And let's just say that I think that the commune idea has more than a fighting chance of actually working.
I'm not talking about communes in the creepy cult way, although that's fun to joke about, but about the idea of a group of people sharing life and resources, and working toward some common goal in their immediate community. It's a new monasticism, one focused not simply on a segregated life of spiritual contemplation and devotion to a future world, but on changing the present world-- without discarding the contemplation or intellectual tradition. That's the definition I threw together for Andrew last night, and the one I'm going with for now until I get a better picture of what this might look like. But the concept seems marvellously ordinary and marvellously revolutionary at once- find a place in downtown Edmonton. Move in. Open the doors. Figure it out as you go.
I could dress it up with Christianese, but I don't think I need to quote verses to point out that Jesus was all about loving people and living with the impoverished. Although, I do remember something about selling everything and giving to the poor, and about how that infamous dividing-the-sheep-from-the-goats passage came down to seperating those religious people who gave a damn about the world from those who didn't.
.
The greeting Namasté, I'm told, can be loosely translated to mean "I salute the Light of life in you." The underlying philosophy is different to be sure, but I can't help but think of how Jesus said that whenever we serve another human being, we'd be serving Him. Can we have that sort of vision, to honestly see the image of the divine in humanity, be it tattered or wealthy? Can we extend grace to the homeless... and the Walmart executive, who like the rest of us in suburbia probably needs it more... alike?
It's Ash Wednesday. I don't really observe the liturgical calendar, but it's a day of repentence and consecration, and it seems a good place to start, these crazy ideas and scattered thoughts and mixed motives in hand. God have mercy on us all.
.