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Trying to flex my brain.

It's a windy, rainy, chilly, funky day, and Sarah and I are parked at The Temescal Cafe, the best coffeshop in our zone. When we got here, a trio of guitar and banjo playing women were singing and playing bluegrass songs, and the joint was crammed with people. The music was a great counterpoint to the weather, and the energy in the room was really reinvigorating. We worked at a luncheon yesterday at CDSP (Church Divinity School of the Pacific,the Episcopalian/Anglican school in the GTU), walking there and back from our house in Oakland, and watched the first two Indiana Jones movies in the evening. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was maybe the most exhausting thing we did all day--not the chill-out space-out we'd been hoping for. Just a boring, shrill, senseless, racist shell of a movie. I'd heard that the Indian gov't refused to let Spielberg and Lucas shoot on Indian soil, and after watching the terrible banquet dinner scene (Snake Surprise? Chilled Monkeybrains? Come on!) I could understand their reasoning. Just preposterous and unnecessary, and fundamentally insulting.

I've got to write a sermon for class tomorrow, and I'm kind of spinning my wheels. I want to write about anomie, and how community seems to be dying, or at least taking on a new form and a diminished status in our country. I'm thinking of talking about my experiences building decks in the exurbs, and how the neighborhoods felt like dead zones in so many ways, and then move on to cars and how driving (and internet chat rooms) lets people behave in ways they never would face to face. Okay, fine, but where to go from there? How do you bring back community after it's been exiled?

Comments

Anonymous said…
A sermon! pretty cool. Here is what I think about your question: You bring back community one relationship at a time, one connection at a time. By thinking of the folks with the deck in the exurbs as real people, by connection with them - as you, Andy, always do with the people around you. Love, Mom
5:17 PM
Anonymous said…
How aboutdoing something that doesn't make sense and let the community happen.

At last week's church retreat we were talking about the exhaustion from all the headwork, and Joyce carey and I started riffing about how next year we need time to color or make potholders.
5:27 PM
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