We Like Sheep - Wandering Astray

I wrote this a few nights ago for a discussion the Hawthorne project was having about reports that there were people sleeping on the church porch and leaving trash around the building. As I thought about what to share, I was struck how useful the practices of the weekly circle I do were in making honest, aware, choices. A while ago a friend of mine from another circle commented that: "I come to Circle because it is the most profound time during my week – a time when I can try to put into words in front of witnesses what otherwise only haunts my dreams and rattles around in my unconscious." Reading the discussion, I was haunted by memories and choices I had made. I was struggling to focus at work, so I took an early lunch break and wrote this email. After I sent the email, I had a lot easier time focusing on the rest of my shift. Where do you find space to discuss the things that "haunt your dreams and rattle around in your unconscious?"

Frank,

Thanks for getting at the root contradiction here. Last week as Hawthorne was wrapping up it started to rain. It was 4pm and all of the adults had places to go. At that point the adults had to directly ask the kids to leave a warm dry place and go out to a cold wet place.

I know I faced a pretty stark choice. How much of my time do I spend here with them? What of mine do I offer? Where do we draw the boundaries? etc.

I knew enough to be troubled saying: "good luck, hope you keep warm and dry, see ya next week." I chose a way to handle something that was defined, finite, easy, and avoided addressing the hardest problem - I gave mimi, her kids, and the group of pregnant friends that stay with her a ride to star of hope, where they stay. It was a way easier thing then inviting the kids who did not have a place to sleep to wait out the rain at my apartment, a lot less risk.

That was a choice i made, I can try to justify my choice, but the reality I don't like to talk about is that kids I know staid outside in the rain and cold because I chose one way as opposed to another. I don't want to get into moral arguments or guilt here, I happen to think I made the best choice for me there. I just think that as we have to have these conversations we need to start by acknowledging the facts of our choices and their consequences.

Wanting to delude ourselves about these choices and their consequences is not a new thing, the second chapter of James addresses people making that same move, when the author writes: "15Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?"

Those kids sleep outside because the church has made the choice not to let them sleep inside. Any discussion with the trusties should start from that context. Those kids sleep outside because our neighbors chose not to invite them to sleep inside. Any discussion with the neighbors should start from that context as well.

How do we do that? I would recommend this as a minimum, let's get a real plan together for doing some kind of night shelter together, with a real budget and a dedicated account to hold funds for such a project. Any neighbor who complains can be welcome to contribute towards the budget for this and to host fundraisers with their neighbors and the local home owners association to help fund such a project. I am sure the costs of said plan are smaller then the imagined hit to their property values. If they are not willing to help fund things, I suggest we come up with a plan b, that involves some kind of intentional space outside and visible where the kids can find shelter with our blessing. If the cops are called by the neighbors it would be for trespassing on the church grounds, if they are intended to be there, its not trespassing. I am willing to bet that given the alternatives funding for whatever realistic changes needed to happen and maintenance costs would be a lot easier.

These choices are not simple or easy, I have made the choice to withdraw from hawthorne for a time, as a way of not having to foreground the consequences of my own choices. I had a kid from hawthorne stay with me for six months, and I made the choice to kick him out. None of those were easy, but I think if I am honest, I can't deny any more that there are kids out there that can't go home, kids in our group who have been harassed for the sexual orientation and refusal to live in heteronormative patterns, kids who do not have a place to stay tonight, kids for whom sleeping on the floor, inside, out of the rain, would be a upgrade.

What we chose to do is ours alone to decide, the basic contradiction is not.

For me, I chose to finish my lunch and go back to my job.

Nate

So for a while I have struggled with a short, clear, explanation of what a CRC is and why I think its so important. As we get in the cycle of recruiting new members, I wanted to take a stab at this from a different angle. Instead of trying to paint a representative picture of the flow, theology, structure, etc - simply ask why do I come? I am stealing this method from Constance, who's discussion of why she came a month ago was really helpful to me.

I come to the CRC because its a quiet place. Most of my world is busy, loud, and media saturated. The CRC has a slower pace with long periods of silence that help me reconnect to the deeper parts of me.

I come to the CRC because the discipline of a weekly, regular, ritual gives my life a sense of rhythm and regularity that is helpful for this low structure guy. The discipline of reading something each week, of sharing from my life, and of a common meal with the same friends week in and week out is a foundation I can build the rest of the week around.

I come to the CRC because its a safe space for honestly. Most contexts I am in have strong social pressures to lie, manipulate, and defend - the CRC has strong social pressures towards honesty and vulnerability. Its small size and the regularity of people that come every week for a whole quarter fosters an intimacy that makes honesty less risky.

I come to the CRC because its a place where I can tell about my doubts. The core theological agreement is that we never ask anyone to believe anything that contradicts their own experience. Because we value experience over systems or dogmas, the CRC has space for mystery and confusion. In the CRC I can dwell in the middle of a tension without having to resolve it one way or another.

I come to the CRC because it is deeply democratic. Each of the leadership roles rotates, plans for the next quarter are made after a consensus building process. So much of my life is dominated by heirarchy and my own desires for power and control. The CRC is a space where we flip authority from person to person and I am free to follow and encouraged to lead.

I come to the CRC because it is experimental and temporary. The CRC invites me to be creative, to try and do something new. Like a ballroom dancer, the form of the CRC gives just enough structure to make it easy to innovate and try new things. The CRC asks me to be an artist, and the CRC allows me witness other brilliant artists. More weeks then not I leave inspired by something someone brought or shared.

I come to the CRC because its a chance to talk deeply with good friends. I am not very good at spending time with friends, I quickly get occupied and forget about them. The sharing and meal during the CRC is a great chance to catch up and drink deeply from the nurture of relationship.

I come to the CRC because it challenges and undercuts some of the delusions in my life. The CRC asks that each member find ways to participate in social change and studies together how to do that effectively. The CRC asks that each member find a daily, solitary, contemplative practice and studies together on techniques to make that happen. The CRC asks each member to reflect on their life each week as we try to practice the return to reality in those scary parts of our life.

Well that was not very short, but I think it was clear and grounded writing. Folks that have been to CRC's does this ring true for you? If not why do/did you come? If you don't come to a CRC, is this something you would want to come to? Is it clear enough to give you an idea of what you might be getting into? Does it hide things that should be made explicit?

So today is a pretty cool day for me, a few months ago I read a little book called: The Hacker Diet. It was really useful for me. What I appreciated the most were the realistic sensibility of the author - very little BS or moralism, the mathematics based ideas, and the simple online tools for tracking progress.

Three months ago today, I broke down and purchased a scale. For the first time in 3+ years I decided to weigh myself. It was not a happy number. I also started logging my weight each day with the nice little web-version of the hacker's diet's online tools. My goal was to establish a baseline of what I was doing without any diet changes and then drawing from that start making some changes for the better.

One of the commitments for the Symposium I am part of is that we develop and adopt daily spiritual practices. It was one of the ones I have failed at the most. I am just really bad at daily chores. I decided to understand my weigh in each morning as a spiritual practice. What I mean by that is that weighing in each morning is about confronting reality, and specifically one part of reality I don't really like to think about. Using some of the interplay training, I have paired this daily weigh in with a long hot shower afterwards. Back when I did the interplay seminar, we were asked to reflect on the physicality of grace, what feels relaxing, welcoming, peaceful, released, etc. For me one of those experiences is a long hot shower. So my long, hot, shower at the end of each day, is a nice way to celebrate successfully doing my daily solitary practice, and an easy way to feel present and happy in my body.

[Before anyone freaks out about daily weigh ins, the goal of the plan is to focus on a 20 day, rolling, weighted average. Meaning my focus is on keeping the trend moving in the right direction, not on what any specific day's weigh in comes out as.]

One of the tools the site uses to help you understand the information you are collecting is a 3 month chart. Today, for the first day my three month chart was full of data. Yay ... Now the diet / lifestyle changes did not kick in until May 1st (I chose a specific day so it would be easy to see if they were having an actual effect), so that three month milestone is still a little ways away. But hey, going to celebrate this one too.

My highest weight (per the average) was 287.4 - the average for today is 263.6. So with about two and half months of dieting, I am down 23.8 pounds. Including the time I spent building a base line, over the last three months I am averaging a 2.04 pound weight loss per week. Certainly not Biggest Loser style epic weight loss, but a nice steady pattern I am confident I can keep up for a while to come.

Here is that pretty graph:

I am sure that there will be ups and downs with this. My adherence to my own pretty loose diet plan is far from perfect, but perfection is not the goal, an average of 1.5-2 pounds every single week for a year is the goal, and I am still on track for that.

So to all the people that have had to deal with me bitching and moaning about the diet, thanks for not slapping me. It used to drive me nuts when people complained about dieting, but now I realized that sometimes the food I chose not to eat, is exactly what I crave.

Overall May was a good month for me. My solitary practice has continued, in May I was able to loose 7.9 pounds in the month (using a trend analysis from start to finish), which is right where I was hoping to end up.

Our CRC was more off then on, but we had a good evaluation and are going to try some really interesting experiments for this quarter. One of which is moving the common meal near to the start of our liturgy and use that space as a space to include children, before separating to our study and reflection.

One of the more interesting things I read last month came out of england:

http://hauntedgeographies.typepad.com/basho/2009/05/99.html

It was the reflections on joining a local "transition" community and struggling to understand its place inside the broader network of the "Transition Lmtd" group. Transitions is network / stream that comes out of the bio-regionalism movement in England and is about find ways for communities to respond to the twin issues of peak oil and global warming in local, networked, grass-roots ways.

The author was one of the anchors of Vaux, an experimental church form in England in the 90s and early 2000s that did some amazing stuff. What struck me about it was the hesitancy of people on the outside to risk being parts of networks that had a sense of heirarchy where they were not present in the formative stages.

For example here:

"The first piece of information that begun to dampen some of my enthusiasm was the existence of a ‘Transition Network Ltd’ and the associated ring fencing of the terms ‘Transition Network’ and ‘Transition Initiatives’. The movement seemed to be posturing as a ‘brand’. Which to me, is falling at the first hurdle, quite literally buying into the very system that has perpetrated so much havoc. It feels particularly depressing as transition practice could potentially challenge capitalist subjectivity.

All this tends to breed immediate suspicion, undermining all the talk of ‘decentralisation’, ‘temporality’, ‘sharing’ and ‘openness’— its just business as usual. I find the copyright issue particularly confusing as it’s being invoked ‘to ensure their work isn’t hijacked’. This seems crazy, the whole project has emerged virally, its meant to be replicated, adjusted, twisted and hacked. It’s designed to be adapted to local conditions. The Transition network should be more confident of its biological models. As with open-source programming, the code should be freely available— to be tinkered, adjusted and improved by anyone. Yes, misuse of ‘the commons’ is possible, yet this is the nature of the beast. The benefits and advantages of a locked-open system far out way the possibilities of any ‘deviant’ application. (Ab)use and error are necessary evils, a creative system requires them. To make pearls and snow, one needs ‘dirt’."

It reminded me how deeply ingrained the expectations of freedom and forking are embeded into the generation that grew up on the internet. When open systems (online) are the norm its a struggle to accept other modes of being.

So this month I am going to look for ways to embed that freedom into the way we introduce the CRC to the new member joining us for the first time.

Nate

This is a list of things I like:

Ecotheater
Realistic Living
Good Theology
Food
Drupal
Scotch