inspiral blog

Since the lectionary reading this week was the famous “do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink…” from the Sermon on the Mount, I decided it was time to introduce dumpster diving as a practical way we can enter the abundant economy of God (while helping reduce some of the waste of the world’s economy). More on dumpster diving can be found here, if you’re not familiar with it, and we used the article here to provoke discussion. Megan led most of it, which was great as dd isn’t something I’ve done a lot of (a bit, but not a lot), and her friend Karen chipped in too. But it looks like something we’ll be able to do a lot more often.

That was followed by some useful discussion about the economy of God – what is it like? How deep do we go into poverty before it’s “enough”? How much is too much to own? Is superannuation anathematic to the Kingdom? All these questions and more were batted around. Finally we were left with the fact that living into the Kingdom, particularly for we wealthy, privileged westerners, is a process that takes time. So we’d best be patient and gracious with ourselves, lest it become yet another form of legalism.

This week we explored the idea of the Trinity. It’s a tricky day, Trinity Sunday, the only feast day that celebrates a doctrine (and a fairly complex and mysterious one at that). So we decided we’d re-run the Arian controversy to explore some of the ideas that surround it.

Team Arius argued that Jesus could not have been divine, and that the Trinity was therefore made up of a hierarchy of subordinates (Father, then Son, then Holy Spirit). Team Athanasius tried to argue for an equal, communal trinity.

Having thus butchered history and theology in one fell swoop, what we discovered is how difficult the Trinity is to argue for in any objective sense. It’s clearly about an experience of God, or a description of an experience, and thankfully one into which we’re all invited.

We spent some time looking at two readings, and what stood out for us was the practice of unity in diversity – that Pentecost was essentially the undoing of Babel, where everyone was separated and scattered, and the 1 Corinthians passage is about a bunch of different people all being part of the one body…so, the Spirit inspires unity not in a monoculture, but in diversity. And so as a small way of beginning a Pentecost here in our own community (which is remarkably ethnically diverse), we spent some time chalking our streets with the phrase “one in spirit” in the different languages of those who live around here. We had the phrase in English, Italian, Greek, Farsi, Arabic and Hebrew. So here are some of the results:

My friend Harry from Peace Tree in Perth asked me today how I’d describe our life together, and in doing so gave me an excuse to sit with the question for a minute and spend some time writing about it. So here’s what I told Harry – it’s my take, so others can feel free to differ!

Our ‘life together’ (ah, bonhoeffer)…is kind of just beginning in many ways, but still very much building on my experiences of the last three years. At present our official scheduled times of meeting together are Tuesday and Sunday, where we eat together. Sundays we explore/wrestle with the lectionary readings, and Tuesdays are generally devoted to someone telling their life story. A life story will mostly go for about 2 and a half hours and is perhaps one of the most sacred things we do because people are so brutally and vulnerably honest. We started doing them again recently so that (with some new people having jumped on board more recently) we could all get to know each other very deeply relatively quickly. We’ve almost got through everyone now, and once we have we’ll start focussing on hospitality specifically with our Tuesday dinners (though that’s happening anyway). The main idea is that we start developing some intentional nonviolent practices that will enable us to do conflict well and explore each others shadow sides and keep each other accountable. There’s been some good signs already in this respect, but it’s darn hard work just to undo a lot of deeply ingrained habits. The queries and advices stuff has been useful with that.

When I say we, I reckon about half of our mob are now living in proximity, the other half not too far away, but we’ve (loosely) defined the proximity thing as the distance you’d carry a ladder (we have a good ladder, and wanting to share possessions means carrying it between houses a lot!) So everyone’s welcome to be involved in everything, whether you live in proximity or not, but practically it’s going to be more difficult for others to be involved in the deeper shared life of those in close proximity. We’re pretty much just dropping around to each other’s houses whenever we feel like it.

We’re also a surprisingly diverse group – from 6 day literal creationists, to a Muslim, to very new Christians, to intellectually disabled people, to burnt out former church leaders, with one convicted criminal thrown in (me) – yikes! it’s all a bit much to hold together sometimes. But we’re managing, with a strong core group, to hold some of that diversity without needing to create rigid boundaries. It’s come down to Thoreau’s “If you think a man does wrong, do right; but do not care to convince him. Men believe what they see.” (same goes for women, I would venture ) Which sits well with the whole Gandhian notion of “experiments with truth” for me, which is about seeing what emerges when your truths clash while being aware of the power dynamics within the group. The main thing is being self-aware of our own power, which I’m pretty (insanely) paranoid about.

So mostly it’s things like sharing possessions like tools, gardening together, getting involved with our neighbours, providing hospitality for people visiting Melbourne or otherwise struggling for accommodation, and deepening relationships with each other so that real community (as opposed to pseudo community ala scott peck) is built. I’m starting to get involved half a day a week at a boarding house for people with mental illness and intellectual disabilities, which is about 300 metres down the road (already know lots of residents). So it’s mostly just doing gardening with the residents, and others of the mob may do the same. They have a greenhouse – woo hoo! – and lots of worm farms. I’m not sure who’s doing better out of that deal, me or them.

This week (with the third house now set up) we’re going to discuss what other spiritual disciplines we might be able to set up in a sustainable way (particularly prayer/liturgy together).

We also have lovely informal connections with similar groups (from the Seeds mobs that have emerged out of Urban Seed, to The Cave, Loam, Jahworks etc.) that form a broad network, which I find stimulating and inspiring.

So when I really stop and reflect on it, we’ve come a long way in three years. We’re very obviously imperfect, but I’m encouraged by the direction we’re taking.

It’s taken nearly 3 months, but I finally got this sucker fixed…getting my service providers to work out how to fix it has been like getting blood out of a stone. It was showing the posts all in the wrong order, which frustrated me so much I had no time to blog. Nonetheless, we’re there now. Which means I’ve missed a considerable amount of posts, but things are going swimmingly. In fact, dare I say the time of no recording has been some of the most significant time for this mob. We’ve been following the lectionary (mostly) and managed to not only hold things together in the leadup to the big trial, but have found a third house nearby which Ant, Ellen and Jane C have moved into. Awesome times.