what i really think

I think I can better express in writing what I tried to explain last night...

I really mean it when I say I'm interested in the kinds of things you guys imagine for ssj, and so I'll probably keep asking. I've all sorts of wild ideas. I'll elaborate on the house idea I mentioned last night to give y'all an example of what I'm thinking...

This would be a place where music and art, creativity and individual expression are encouraged. A place of no judgment. A lifestyle of shared meals and possessions and laughter and burdens and life... of striving and seeking and learning to live rightly even if we're not sure what that means... friendships and loveships and all sorts of crazy different people with all their crazy beautiful differences. And this type of thing, if it was for real, would be radically inclusive and wildly contagious (obviously I'm a bit idealistic!). And if it seems too self-centered or unjust to want to live so truly and happily when so many others can't, think about what it means to actually be the change you wish to see in the world... We have more power than we think to change the world by changing our lifestyle. And hey, everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing him- or herself, wrote good ol' Tolstoy. I don't think this negates concern for the world, but I do think it's hard to make someone else's problem better without a vision of what that better is, and it probably means we've got to get our shit together at least a little bit before we try to clean up someone else's. I could be wrong. Momma T, however, clearly the epitome of justice and Christ-likeness, made wild statements like Jesus said love one another. He didn't say love the whole world... and In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love. I've a suspicion that Jesus was into the little stuff too, and in doing small things, mad things, with great amounts of love, world-changing amounts of the love-your-neighbor kind of love.

Remember that idea about recklessness? I really do believe that we need to live recklessly if we are to change the world (and by world I mean campus, I mean community, I mean family, I mean ourselves; let's be honest, I don't plan to take on the world). Like Kurtis and some of you guys were saying last night, maybe we should get the hint that the traditional ways of educating others just don't always cut it... And gosh, I'm hardly even worrying any more how to "educate" others, partly because (ironically so) students often seem resistant to education, and partly because I'd rather just live this stuff than talk about it, and in the few years I've been around here I've noticed that that's the only thing that seems to work.

Here's a fun bit from the Irresistable Revolution, I think it's relevant.

My friends and I had a hunch that there is more to life than what we had been told to pursue. We knew that the world cannot afford the American dream and that the good news is that there is another dream. We looked to the early church and to the Scriptures and to the poor to find it.

When Dorothy Day recalls the beginnings of the Catholic Worker movement, she says very unassumingly, “We were just there talking and it happened. We were just sitting there talking and people moved in. We were just sitting there talking and the lines began to form. . . .” The last line of her autobiography is, “It all happened while we sat there talking, and it is still going on.” I know what she meant.

So about thirty of us from Eastern College continued dreaming together about another way of doing life. We stayed up night after night laughing and arguing, and eventually we came to a point where we knew we would never agree on exactly what causes homosexuality or whether Adam had a belly button (some things are best left unresolved), so we decided to go ahead and give our vision a shot. Besides, most of us were getting tired of talking and were ready to live.