MeyerBros

illusionment

i hear i might be disillusioned (i know i’ve been disilutioned) - but i’m not sure the alternative sounds that much more positive. illusionment? hmmm…

i spent the weekend at reba place visiting Jesse B Miller - now a novice member of the community there. he seems to be doing very well, and must be enjoying it if he’s thinking of joining. cheers to him. the interns there are running a sweet bike rehab shop (the recyclery). anyway, they figured i must be disillusioned because i’m a GC grad and I guess that’s the trend. they asked about my relationship to Jesus. it became an interesting conversation in which i claimed ‘militant agnosticism’ and then ‘apathyism’ and then some faith-variant. i like jesus and scripture and all, i just don’t really care about any son-of-god language because i don’t know anything about that. what does that mean? how does that affect me? i like Tink Tinker’s moratorium on Jesus, but I think it’s a good idea for all of us, not just Native Americans. I think we get ourselves caught in 2000 year old religious rhetoric and jargon that we don’t even understand. salvation? anyone? anyone?

i’ll stick with militant agnostic for now, i like how it sounds. i don’t know and neither do you, damn-it. i think that’s just honesty. from there we can discuss weather we are christian agnostics, muslim agnostics, native american agnostics, or secular agnostics. that and: i think we should start an “apathy for peace” campaign, except i care way too much about the idea. can you imagine apathy-ins? i think we could all do with a lot less caring about and a lot more caring for.

from there i decided that my main concern about most intentional communities is the ‘intentional’ part. sounds so serious. why don’t we start by just trying to make our unintentional communities work out a bit better? i think if we all layed off the intents all the time we might actually be able to get along. i don’t want to live in a community focused on peace and justice, i want to live in a community focused on people - peace and justice should be able to grow out of that.

i’m starting to remind myself of my old roommate’s ‘masturbate for peace’ campaign that we all shot down at the time. i think i kind of like it. until i start thinking about earnest masturbation. then i’m less interested.

all that to say: i’m not disillusioned - i’m differently illusioned. i have faith in humor and misbehaving. i have faith in failure, in-action, sleep, ice cream, wine, cheese and socializing. just ask Jesus why he was out drinking with the prostitutes. that man was a genius, which is good enough for me. sign me up for agnostic christianity with a touch of clowning and a touch of apathy.

(i’m also for action. and concern. just so you don’t start to think i’m being consistant. i haven’t lost hope peace or justice or any other beautiful ends - i’ve just found that most good things are best achived by not worrying about it so much. cheers.)

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 14th, 2006 at 10:42 pm by eric and is filed under rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

4 Responses to “illusionment”

carl Says:

May 18th, 2006 at 4:15 pm

good call. I don’t think I’d really quibble with any of that, but there is a part of me that likes to point out that “not worrying about it so much” is more easily achieved by those of us with lots of things and privileges than those without. I do think at some point we have a responsibility to ourselves, the world, Jesus, wine and cheese, whatever to take a look at our privileges and how our actions affect other people. Does that imply “worrying about it?” I dunno, worrying never seems to help too much. But I think it does imply a lot of really hard, sometimes painful emotional work. Which I think is probably best done in supportive community (intentional or not) in which there is lots of laughing, playing games, loving, making mistakes, clowning, failing, singing, socializing, and wine and cheese too.
eric Says:

May 18th, 2006 at 6:41 pm

cheers to that. and here’s to different people needing different things at different times (though i assume justice and cheese are somewhat universal).
eric Says:

May 19th, 2006 at 2:22 am

my girlfriend talks about ‘articulating something into being’. it’s all about action. i like the idea and hope one day she’ll post on it. i hope she also complains about my use of the term ‘girlfriend’ - but i really hope you all follow that link (yes, the second one is her).

i think my problem with ‘worrying about it’ has more to do with worrying about the wrong things. too often the major concerns of intentional communities i’ve stayed with have been along the lines of: how many squares of toilet paper are appropriate to use per trip to the bathroom? should women be aloud to wear pants/have leadership roles? are those shorts too short? could anything i say possibly offend anyone? etc. i’m not interested in that. at all. you can wear whatever shorts you want and we’ll say things that are offensive and then we might apologize or have an interesting conversation and then we’ll go fight injustice and poverty together and with a sense of humor.

otherwise we’re not peacemakers as much as we’re pius elitist snobs without any friends. that’s what i don’t find useful to the peace movement - too many people caring too much about how and when everyone eats, dresses and has sex.

so let’s have communities in which we are actually supportive, not communities in which we take out our own bagage on other people.

really it’s not an issue with ‘intentionality’ in the community but so much ‘intentionality’ in life that we forget to be real people with real failings and real needs. like me. i really need sleep. and i really need to not be on a very tall horse. figuritively. sort of. i’m getting off.

apathyism is totally out of my range. i care. but i like the sound of it, and it sure sparks good conversations. or rants. or something.
carl Says:

May 23rd, 2006 at 10:37 pm

Sign me up.