Todd P Paul

New Beginnings

As we have started working through what community life looks like in Chicago over the last few weeks, I am both encouraged by what I see and sadden. Encouraged because I see endless opportunity, which for me is refreshing and full of hope. There is already a lot of great work going on in the city and in our area. We have meet a few people interested in new ways of doing life, but fewer than I thought. I am sadden by this and honestly, very shocked. Having walked with great and challenging friends for the last six years, I thought these ideas for community and a new Christian life together were more wide spread than it turns out they are. This is not to discount the great work people are doing, just to say it is different than I expected. What I have found is myself and the story of Communality as a spectacle for all of these new names for Christianity and the church. The story that Jen and I have lived for the past few years, seems to be more compelling than the work of doing it together. Which I guess I should not be surprising.
In my typical analyse and fix mode, I have been trying to decipher why this is the case. I did not realize the ideas of our local and global community where so different than that of the mainstream and popularized Christian life. Maybe I assumed too much and that it was a more "natural" approach, than it is in reality. The story seems to be interesting to others, but the praxis seems foreign. Why is it so foreign? My only guess is because it is so simple to state and so hard to put into practice. Especially when your passed context has been a sermon where someone told you the three "nuggets" and to go home and pray about it in solitude.
Live a rich life deeply connected with others and partnering together to do kingdom work where you find it. Seems clear enough.  I guess our culture is missing a context or experience with what it means to be deeply connect, let alone, living a deeply connected missional life together. I can understand why that is tough to take, as it always is for me too, but I did not think it would be disabling.

Communal Living

I would encourage you to read the FT article on communes in the weekend paper. It looks at a brief history of intentional communities and talks about the modern movement.

They were the perfect homes for the hippy movement. Loosely structured and easy-going, communes in the late 1960s and early 1970s offered young people shelter, warmth, food and company without any of those annoying constraints of the nuclear family and suburban life. In a commune you could get up late, spend the day doing whatever you wanted and even sleep with your best friend’s partner, all in the name of rejecting conventionality. And it hardly cost you a penny.

Well, at least that was what the view was from “straight” suburbia and it provided plenty a pursed lip and sharp intake of breath around the dinner tables of provincial Britain and middle America.

Full article, free, here = FT - Commune Article

Recycling the Financial Times

On of my chores around here, is to load up the Burley Trailer and take the recycling to Uptown Recycling Center. I was over there sorting out my colored glass from my newspapers the other day and another couple drove up to drop off their recycling as well. The lady and I were both at the newspaper/ magazine recycling bin when she said, "I didn't know people who read the Financial Times recycled." I laughed to myself and responded, "Yea, we're a strange breed." She proceeded to comment on my other newspaper recycling, the Wall Street Journal, with, "I hope you don't read the editorials." I was a little thrown off by the whole conversation I was having with this total stranger. Your recycling is a personal thing and here this lady was giving me a running commentary on my reading habits. I respond, "Yea, I generally do everyday, mostly online. I think it's important to be well-rounded." She didn't respond for a while, so I finished up at that station and moved over to the cardboard bin. I was about halfway through putting my cardboard products in the bin when she came over with hers. Her husband/ boyfriend/ life partner joined her to help her finish up. I was throwing stuff in the bin right and left, when I came to a condom box. So, I threw it in the bin and said, "Yea, readers of the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal also have a lot of sex." Her husband/ boyfriend/ life partner laughed and she turned about 4 shades of red in about 2 seconds. Nobody responded and they quickly finished up and left in their car. It was all a rather surreal experience compared to my usual conversations at the recycling center with the men working there about bicycles and the Cubs. Stereotypes are fun things sometimes.