A Few Rabbit-Trails

Shortly after I started this blog, From SoC to Points North, I began to fear that I would quickly run out of things to say. I never had this fear with my original blog, TH in SoC, nor with my other blog, The Well Run Dry. But I guess if people are attuned to the things that happen to them every day, they can find something to talk about – especially in these present times.

I had another dream about my old church, a church which I must ashamedly describe as an aberrant and abusive group of people, as I described them in TH in SoC. But I also had a flash of insight after the dream, and I figured out why I still have dreams about that place and those people. It has to do with community. Like many high-demand, totalist groups, these people held out the promise of instant community to anyone who was willing to submit to their demands. Because they set themselves as the definers and mediators of “community” and because their demands were so intense, many of us who left had trouble establishing our own circles of community after we left.

I know it has been a struggle for me. While I lived in Southern California, during the days after I left that church, I had some healthy distractions and experiences of community in which people were free to be themselves. For instance, there was the experience of getting to know the neighbors on my street and talking to all of their kids. The kids used to come to my front yard so often to hang out that I once humorously thought to myself that I should have become a child psychologist instead of an engineer. Then there was a guitar class and a creative writing class I was involved in, and my discovery of Peak Oil two years ago, which took my mind off a great many other things. (Ah, but Peak Oil is a subject for another blog...)

Anyway, since I left Southern California over a year ago, the process of rebuilding the experience of community has been rather slow. It is not that there are not opportunities here; in fact, it seems that it would be easier here than it ever would in the vast suburbs of So. Cal. It's just that it's up to me to do the rebuilding, and not to lazily cede control of my social life to some authority figure usurping the place of a parent in my life. And the rebuilding involves adults coming together as free individuals who are free to be themselves as they interact with each other. Once that rebuilding is underway, I will be able to say that a major portion of the damage done to me by that old church is fixed, and that I've scored a victory over them.

There are other things I've been thinking about, such as the place of Christian art in the present world, and how to find and support artists whose work doesn't stink like corporatist cheese. I am also pondering the challenge of being a Christian witness in a dangerous world, as I think about the things I have learned over the last two years concerning energy, climate, and the evils of the present worldly power structures. That makes me think of a statement on Stormchild's blog Gale Warnings: “...most of us spend our lives as prey, economically and psychologically...” In a world dominated by rich and powerful predators, living as a Christian and not becoming prey will be a very big challenge. I've also been seeing the need to re-learn the “mechanics” of how the supernatural actually works. This is because of my exposure to wacky teaching in my old church over the years, as well as the craziness I have been seeing among many who are involved in the Charismatic/Pentecostal side of Christendom.

But this next weekend I am going on another long bike ride with a local club, providing that it doesn't rain on us all. I may even take pictures. To anyone reading this, I wish a happy Thanksgiving.