People Who Are Kind to Me: Thanks.

Two recent "15 minutes of fame" moments for me...

1. Christianity Today's Brandon O'Brien came to JPUSA and interviewed me, then put his reputation in further danger by actually posting a podcast of part of that interview on Audio Ur. Apparently even that isn't enough for him, as Leadership Journal's Winter 2009 issue will apparently offer even more of my brilliant babblings.

2. While I'm not a Christian Universalist, I do appreciate an apparently C. U. blog, Mercy Not Sacrifice, noting my blog entries re homosexuality and the Christian Right.

Okay, now that I've proven yet again that humility is not one of my strong suits, I'll shut up. But thanks, guys.

Project 12 Video: "A Call to Discipleship"

Here's a video I made (with hardware, software, and human limitations) re our Discipleship Training School, Project 12. The video mixes old JPUSA photos (some as early as 1974?) with an explanation of sorts regarding our community's founding focus on discipleship. Project 12 is our latest attempt to find ever-new ways to express and live discipleship out. Enjoy. And for those who might actually want to attend this year's Project 12, or just know more, check our Project12.us website.

Cornerstone Festival Line-Up Announced!

As many of you know, bluechristian (a.k.a. Jon Trott) is part of the community Jesus People USA, in turn the sponsor of Cornerstone Festival. This year's line-up of outstanding speakers can be found on the official CornerstoneXchange Seminar program page. Cornerstone Festival, by the way, has been Christianity's premier arts festival for nearly three decades, and we're just getting started.

A few of the speakers include:

Miroslav Volf on Identity, Otherness & Reconciliation
Shane Claiborne (& the "Jesus for President" Tour)
William Cavanaugh on "The Theopolitical Imagination"
Michael Spencer (aka Internet Monk)
Anthony Smith (aka Postmodern Negro)
Karen Sloan (Flirting With Monasticism)
Andy Whitman (Paste magazine) on Music
Crystal Downing (How Postmodernism Serves [My] Faith) and (A Good War is Hard to Find)
Gordon Melton on "Witch-Hunters & Cult-Busters"

And then there's Mimi Haddad, who happens to be the President of Christians for Biblical Equality as well as a dear friend to my wife Carol and I, offering "Mama Don't Preach."

There will be some dozen or two other speakers (a few listed below in the tags, many more on the afore-linked pages) and the usual mass of bands and musical troubadors of every style and substance artistically known to humanity (they may or may not have the kazoo artist back this year). Carol and I sure hope to see you at Cornerstone Festival this year!

For more on the music, the Flickerings 2008 film venue, and so much more, see the main Cornerstone Festival site.


tag: Cornerstone Festival, Cornerstone Festival 2008, Christians for Biblical Equality, feminism, Jesus for President, Jesus People USA, Cornerstone Seminars, Miroslav Volf, Shane Claiborne. William Cavanaugh, Michael Spencer, Anthony Smith, Karen Sloan, Andy Whitman, Crystal Downing, Gordon Melton, Mimi Haddad, Bill Ellis, Christine Sneeringer, Jonathan Case,

Seeking consensus: a painful meeting place for faith and politics

For those interested in the intentional community where I live, JPUSA (Jesus People USA), you may find Chris Rice's thoughts on "consensus" illuminating. In fact even if you are not interested in JPUSA, you may find them illuminating. I left a long comment of my own there, and as usual my thoughts relate only somewhat to the post Chris offered (I went a bit more existentialist than he did... just like real life). Did I mention Chris is one of my best friends, whom I see daily and work with?

tag: JPUSA, Jesus People politics, Jesus People USA, community life, Christian Right, politics and the bible, faith and politics

You Are the Light of the World (Uptown)

A beautiful song from our Maron Gaffron... "Uptown"

Carol Elaine: All I'm Thinkin' Bout Is You

I made this video some time back for my darling's birthday. I finally got around to posting it on YouTube, but I warn you it is rated SSS (super-sweet & syrupy). What can I say, I love her. Thank you, Mr. Springsteen, for the song and video title: "All I'm Thinkin' Bout Is You."




tag: video, youtube jon trott, youtube carol trott, carol trott, Jesus People USA, jon trott, JPUSA, Love, marriage

Violence: small town, urban neighborhood, or international event, it is always personal

.

A strange congruence of events -- three murders in my own Chicago neighborhood, one shooting death in my childhood hometown of Fort Benton, Montana (a bit ironic in light of my blog yesterday), and the anniversary of 9/11/01 -- begs contextualizing.

In Fort Benton, one young man is dead of a gunshot wound to the head. Was he murdered, or was it an accident? Two others, one the daughter of Fort Benton's mayor, were implicated in an apparent attempted cover-up of the shooting. I have no idea what happened, but mourn the senseless death, the effects this will have on other family members as well as the shooter and his girlfriend. And I mourn a little town I hold with affection, a place that violence isn't supposed to happen because it is (I wrongly want to tell myself) not a place such things are possible.

In my own Chicago neighborhood, within eyesight of our front door, two men were shot on two seperate nights. One if not both were homeless. These shootings happened just two and three days ago. Meanwhile, again just days ago, a man staying at our Cornerstone Community Outreach (CCO) homeless shelter (his wife and children also are at CCO), was shot down right outside CCO's front door.

With at least two of the men being homeless, we wonder if this is a potential serial killer. Police aren't saying. Meanwhile, some rather nasty upwardly mobile folks speculated on their website that these deaths could be stopped if the homeless and poor were pushed out of our Uptown neighborhood. Others of us met together to help warn homeless women and men about the potential danger, and to attempt new ways of networking our social agencies and faith organizations / churches so that the homeless had greater visibility as individuals whatever group or agency they were being aided by. Last night, I walked with friends from EZRA, a Jewish-based community outreach with offices directly across the street from our 920 Wilson building, walked the area from 11 pm to midnight as a non-violent "neighborhood watch" presence. We wanted people to know we were there. It was nothing all that helpful, most likely, but it was one way of positive protest and unity against the darkness of violence.

Finally, 9/11 every year is a sad day. I remember that date's tears and outrage, my wife and I isolated away from our community for our anniversary, having only one radio, one another and One God to sort out our sorrow, rage, and anxiety. Since then, I've only felt further outrage at our own country's massive idiocy in attempting a response to the attacks, a response which in both its scale and lack of intelligence has linked the Prince of Peace with one nation's horrific acts of violence, acts against a nation which we falsely accused of aiding and abetting our enemies and hiding those infamously non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

Christ's name continues to be dragged through the mud by these worshippers of unreasoning violence as diplomacy. Are we Jesus followers done yet believing those who say they speak for us? Will we at last tire of their lies, their cynical manipulation of our beliefs, hopes, and dreams? I don't dare hope so. I'm tired, and out of patience. Yesterday's anniversary reminds me not only of the dark deed done to us by others, but just as depressingly of the invincible ignorance of those who continue their project of blending Christianity (a bastardized version) with nationalism. I don't trust Christian leaders any more. Everything -- except the Love of God through His Son -- is up for reassessment. Old heroes don't wear well these days. If this is where our collective presuppositions lead, we need a whole new set of presuppositions.

Below is the short speech / prayer (not a very good prayer, because I think I was too upset and preaching more than praying) I gave at EZRA's offices on the afternoon of Sept. 10, the day of the third local murder here:

Today, we are gathered here to share in the suffering of the families of those slain, and in the anxiety and anger of our community in the face of these deaths. We mourn Phillipi Larrnarri, a thirty two year old homeless man who was shot while he slept on a bench only feet from where we stand. We mourn twenty-nine year old James Lane, shot outside Cornerstone Community Outreach's homeless center. We mourn one Mr. Belle, twenty five, shot on this block this morning.

Dear Lord, we are sad. We are angry. And though we don't like to admit it, we are afraid. Three of our neighbors have been murdered. Two in this very place. Who were they? Many of us know one or more of them. They were men. They were individuals. They were people of color, and poor. They had children. They had parents. They had friends. All that was taken from them in seconds. Gun. Bullet. Life. gone.

We want our neighbors' killers caught. And in the midst of that wanting, Lord, we confess we'd like someone to blame. We itch to accuse. We would like to blame our political leaders, or blame the police, or blame the poor and homeless. Some, even today, have so blamed. Yet two of these men were homeless, Lord. Forgive us. We lift up our mayor and our alderwoman, as well as our police force. Give them wisdom, God, to not only catch this murderer or murders, but also to find solutions more far-reaching, solutions that bring us together in common cause against these evils.

And Lord, help us to surrender our fear before it poisons us. We remember a day in September 2001, a day in which our entire nation mourned senseless killing, killing done in the name of God. What we learned since that day is that fear and anger can mislead a people, and that it makes of one terrible tragedy many such tragedies. Help us not to live in fear, but rather to acknowledge one another's suffering and so find in that suffering a common humanity.

Help us to empower and embolden the good, the true, and create solidarity in Uptown rooted in our common desire to love and live in safety. Help us to love even our enemies, yet remain vigilant in stopping evil acts and the systemic forces which create room for such acts. Help us to love, dear Jesus, help us to love life so much that we forget to be afraid in the midst of our love for one another.

We know that you are the God of Love. If you are not, then we are without hope. But your son loved us enough to die for us. As you mourned for your Son, so we mourn in Him for those whom he loved.

Amen.

tag: EZRA, Fort Benton, homeless, Jesus People USA, jewish, uptown chicago, violence

God's Love vs. the Warm Fuzzies (Sermon Aug 12, 2007)

The below sermon, delivered at Jesus People USA's Aug 12 service (at Joan Arai School), was provoked by many things too personal to blog on. Suffice it to say that I find myself continually falling short of God's agape (charity). And that these feelings have recently been racheted up a few more notches as I observed others I love dearly falling into patriarchal motifs of self-destruction and / or the destruction of others. It is not, on the face of it, a feminist sermon. But it is a mutuality sermon, and one which tries to go back to beginning things in order to contextualize my own (and maybe others'?) present place in the journey of discipleship. Questions, critiques welcome. One last note: I hope feminists will forgive me for quoting a fair amount of St. Augustine, that Church Father who was singularly anti-woman (and anti-sex) in some of the things he wrote in, for one, The City of God. But he also said other things, and I perhaps a bit intentionally focus on those things as a pro-mutuality Christian.

Warm Fuzzies. Anyone ever hear of them? How about seeing ‘em? Well, I have.

Many years ago, as a non-Christian, I attended a retreat with my church group. Now know that our denomination was very curious in its beliefs. For instance, when I questioned various leaders (including my pastor and my denominational bishop) about what exactly they believed about Jesus being a historical figure, and especially what they believed about the events of Good Friday and Easter, they answered back by asking me a question: “Jon, does it really matter?” You have to hear that with just the right sort of paternalistic tone of voice, by the way. As a non-Christian teen slacker cursed with my own set of God questions – questions which I back then and still now think were good ones, by the way – that reply did not do anything for me.

Anyway, about this retreat, or rather, the end of the retreat. The few hundred of us there were herded together, and each handed a soft little red, furry ball. “This,” the leader of the session told us, “is a warm fuzzy.” (And now you know what a Warm Fuzzy looks like. Thank me later!)

The feel-good rap offered us from the podium was that we were supposed to hand our warm fuzzy to someone else. Of course, as each person kept giving a warm fuzzy away, the next person would, it was expected, give them another. Isn’t that PRECIOUS? Really, it gagged me. I had visions of simply collecting all the warm fuzzies and stuffing them into my pockets, stuffing them down my shirt, giving none away – the way multinational corporations and Superpowers and billionaires do – but I didn’t quite have the guts to make that sort of nihilistic stink amongst all these happy happy joy joy people. But how could I join them to believe in this nice sort of wuv? As an unbeliever I didn’t know if love was anything more than sloppy emotions, and maybe love was even a sinister cover story for all the human animals out there using, using, using others. Tina Turner said it: “What’s love got to do with it?”

See, I didn’t want warm fuzzies. Now if the above experiment had been tried with, say, 100 dollar bills, I wonder how it would have gone?

A favorite verse of these warm fuzzy folks is this: “God is love.”

My cynical reaction back then? How about “Napalm is love”?

God is love. Hmm. What does that MEAN? Yet… Warm Fuzzies aside, because finding out what it means is going to cost you and cost you dear, God is love. And the older I grow, the more I have fitfully grown as a believer, the more my own story resonates first and only as a story it turns out is entitled “God is Love.”

So how did it start, this long journey toward knowing what that verse means? Previous to love I had to encounter myself. Not God, mind you, which is what I thought I needed to have happen; I tried all sorts of tricks, including insulting God and finally even ignoring Him, to flush Him from his hiding place. But looking back, I think I was the one who was hidden from myself, rather than God being hidden from me. As St. Augustine, whom I’ll quote a few times today, once wrote, “Don't you believe that there is in man a deep [spirit] so profound as to be hidden even to him in whom it is?” We all yearn for love; it is the universal hunger. Yet we also seem unable and / or unwilling to do or be that thing which allows us to find the very love we seek.

My ecstatic beginning in Love, a moment which for me included such immersion in love that I did speak in tongues, was filled beyond my imagining with absolute Otherness directed not as much at me as through me. I confessed my broken helplessness at last, and via that experience God became real to me in a way I could not – despite a skeptic’s occasional struggles – ever deny again. I’ll let St. Augustine put it more beautifully than I could: “You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.”

Only a week or two later, my Mother softly commented in her neutral observer sort of voice, “I’ll say one thing; you certainly are more loving since last week.”

So everything was great, Jonny was a groovy little lovely, loving Christian. The End?
No, God’s love, which never fails, was the beginning and remained true and constant. My response is the rest of the story.

A key word, then, regarding love is a hard, unwelcome word: obedience. It is only through obedience that I – or any of us – will remain in love. This is not negotiable. Christ makes this crystal clear: “Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.” [John 14: 23,24 NRSV]. Now note, Jesus does not ask us as humans to do what He did not. “He humbled himself and became obedient to death-- even death on a cross!” [Phil. 2:8] Yet is he intent on torturing us, beating us, making us into a narrow, frightened community? No.

Nothing could be less like Christ than the Patriarchal, dominating God often pushed in some fundamentalist circles. Listen to Jesus’ own words: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” [Matt. 11:29,30 NRSV]

Remember, what Jesus is up to: creating a people who reflect His loving Character. And here are more key words regarding love: love is reverently relational. Not only toward God, Who after all deserves our love; we are called to love one another. Jesus said of this call that it was a new commandment given to us, to love one another as he first loved us! So, obedience is training in love, not training in legalism, false spirituality, or some sort of religiously-rooted death wish.

We are not reverently relational by default – it is the one thing we are least good at. We want it, but we have little idea as to the discipline involved in having it. After all, the word disciple is defined as one who is learning (a) discipline from another. Jesus is Love, and his discipline is meant to make lovers of us. His way is narrow because it requires our constant “yes” to create in us a maturity that truly reflects love.

Reverently relational also could be worded as being other centered over self-centered. And as Paul writes in Romans 13, there are far-reaching implications to this: “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellow man has fulfilled the law. The commandments, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not covet,’ and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” [Romans 13:8-10 NRSV]

St. Augustine coined one of the most beautiful summations of the above theology I’ve heard.

I’ve slightly modernized his quote: “Once for all, then, a short precept is given you: “Love, and do what you will: when you hold your peace, through love hold your peace; when you cry out, through love cry out; when you correct, through love correct; when you spare, through love you should spare: let the root of love be within, of this root nothing can grow but what is good.” Love and do what you will is another way of citing a biblical idea that is hard to grasp and easy to twist wrongly. But here it is, clearly taught: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” [Gal. 5:22, 23 NRSV] And who is the Holy Spirit if not Love?

So, some more key words regarding love might be these: Love acts for God and for neighbor rather than laws and rules. Jesus worked on the Sabbath by healing a paralyzed man. This really ticked off the religious authorities, and they confronted him. The Law said you aren’t supposed to work on the Sabbath. Jesus’ response? "My Father is still working, and I also am working." [John 5:17b, NRSV]

Let’s get personal here. I was – and sometimes still am – quite legalistic in how I understand God’s Word, usually when I’m applying that Word to someone or something else! But when it comes to me, I can go the opposite extreme and give myself a basket of warm fuzzies. That is, I find it easy to overlook the Scriptures aimed right at me while focusing on those aimed at others, usually those who struggle with sins the most unlike my own sinful inclinations. For instance, money doesn’t tempt me much, so I find it very easy to bash rich folks – you know, “yuppies.” Book of James: “Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you.” Alright, God, go git ‘em! Nail their Mammon-worshipping hides!

Yet it was a rich man, Josephus, who bravely went to the Romans possibly risking his own life to ask for the body of Jesus, and then laid Christ’s body in a tomb he’d purchased. In the current class war in Uptown, isn’t the yuppie as much my neighbor as the poor person? Yes. So I have to balance my biblical advocacy of the poor with my remembrance to love those who are not financially poor. I sometimes forget that they may well be even more impoverished – that is, without spiritual life – than their materially poor neighbor. Which brings me to another, very hard, set of words regarding love:

“Love your enemies.” Oh, my. All of us give this one lip service. Then we all hunt for the exits.

As G. K. Chesterton observed, “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies, probably because they are generally the same people.” Funny, yet isn’t that what Jesus was saying with his parable of the Good Samaritan? In that story, a person viewed by Jewish culture as a lesser being, an “evil other,” acts more humanely toward a Jewish victim of robbers than do various social and religious representatives of Jewish culture! And get this right – neither the other New Testament writers nor John the Apostle was anti-Jewish, being Jewish himself and worshipping a Jewish Savior. He, along with Paul and the others, was anti-legalist, anti-moralist. John was intent on knocking down man-made self-righteousness which had been wrapped up in God’s Law by his culture. Why?

Remember John at the last supper? Where is he sitting? What is he doing? The Scriptures say he was reclining next to Jesus, and even laid his head upon Jesus’ chest. John himself says that he was “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” That may sound arrogant to some, but I think it is the exact opposite. My wife and I have an old etching somewhere of John reclining on Jesus that, whenever I view it, stirs deep emotion in me. John well understood that legalism is the enemy of love, an outward show of obedience which at its heart is disobedient to the Law’s heart.

That, too, reminds me of something I sometimes fear I have lost in love. Remember how I said that my story in Jesus began with his baptizing me in Love? My heart flew out to Him, and I really did become a Jesus freak that day who did not care who knew about this burning passion inside me. My family knew, my schoolmates knew, people I met for the first time soon knew. I was intensely romantic for God. I still feel that passion, yet often I do not pursue God as I ought.

Do we often care too much about how others perceive us to openly love God? I often do not hold that first love as precious as I ought to hold it. So, the key words here are “return to your first love.”

To return to your first love – or for those of you who do not yet know Jesus Christ, to enter into your first true love – is also to find your own true self. Augustine – quoting him quite a bit today – has a curiously moving comment about his own long journey toward faith. He writes (again I’ve modernized this): Too late I loved You, O You Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! Too late I loved You! And behold, You were within, and I outside, and there I searched for You; deformed I, plunging among those fair forms which You had made. You were with me, but I was not with You. Things held me far from You, which, unless they were in You, were not at all.

Consider St. Augustine’s words. God was close to him, so close. But Augustine sought God through sexual excess, through worldly philosophies, and through other sensual pleasures of mind and body. He calls himself a “deformed I” among fair forms God had made. Those forms were human forms; those forms were art, books, lovemaking, great conversations, food, and other good things God had made. Yet these pursuits only took him further and further away from God, and also further away from himself. He literally did not know himself. Pride barred the way to sight.

In my way, I also experienced this. I believed God was hiding from me. Yet instead, I was hiding from me. I was hiding from God. I was tormented by two sets of desires set in opposition to one another. One set had to do with all my God-questions, my hunger for Him, even my anger at him which was a sort of distorted but real yearning for Him. The other set had to do with wanting a story without the empty moralisms, the warm fuzzy nonsense America was and is flooded with every day. And in both of these was a self that was afraid, that was arrogant and proud to an extreme, that was rigid in its self-righteous judgment of both Christians and non-Christians, which without compassion found in humankind the disgusting, the stupidly or willfully ignorant, the ugly. Yet in all my double-mindedness there was also the very man I most despised – a user of other human beings for his own selfish sensualism. Yet at the heart of all of this I desperately wanted love – to be loved and love only that truly worth the loving. Double-minded and so unstable in all my ways.

What about a person such as me who is so blind he cannot see God anywhere, while others – including a Christian friend I regularly mocked to his face –seemed able to see God everywhere.
Do you, Christians or not, ever sense a hard ball or knot of something within your spirit, something made of equal parts fear and rage and rebellion? I sure do. This whole week has been about a sort of godless anxiety for me. I haven’t caved into it, but I have failed at it. A fair number of times, actually. So whether you need this or not, I sure do.

Here’s a huge secret I learn but keep forgetting. God cannot and will not redeem our old nature. Do you hear me? In my flesh dwells no good thing. That flesh isn’t meaning the body, by the way. It refers to that part of my nature which was – and which still is – as hard as a stone, as mean as a rabid dog, as fearful and hateful of others as a Klansman with a rope in his hand. We Christians keep thinking that getting to be more like Christ – learning to be more loving – is to keep getting nicer. Well, true confessions: I used to be real nice. I got over it. After all, even Hitler smiled and patted little girls on the head. Nice is what any salesman learns first. Nice is about being safe, being comfortable, being our own little quietly manipulative, destructive monsters when anyone dares challenge us into the unsafe, the uncomfortable, and most of all the truly loving. Love exposes nice for what it is. Nice people crucified Jesus. Nice crucified Love.

Which brings us to a finally, finally. And a very big finally it is, too, God’s love is forgiveness. It is so tempting for the Christian to want to be the hero of his or her own story. “Suuuuupersaint!” And one way to be the hero of our own story is to make a big deal out of our failure, either by wallowing in shame and guilt or by elaborate repentance which really shows how humble we are.

True love in Christ, mature love, learns how to gracefully rebound from sin. When a mature believer repents, it is so refreshing. An honest confession – because she doesn’t really care about her reputation – followed by asking forgiveness of those wronged and then once again turning toward Love to pursue Love in obedience. Christ does not condemn us, so how dare we condemn ourselves?

So. There are a few of the lessons of love God is teaching me. I don’t claim they are learned yet, not by a long shot. This is my lesson I am trying to learn. I hope you will pray for me as I continue in it, and I hope it encourages you to continue pursuing that first, passionate, and central love which either is – or is not – the reason for which we live and the desire which sets our minds, hearts, and bodies on fire. Because at the end of things, passionate love for God ought to be joyful, just as passionate love for our fellow human beings ought to be an honor.
Let us pray.

Earth Day in Intentional Community

There is no doubt that living together as we do at JPUSA saves big on energy resources. In honor of Earth Day I'll list a few, which will sound like bragging, but will then confess ways we can do better.

The biggest thing to keep in mind is that in community, the term "livin' large" is turned on its head. While our living space takes up seven floors (plus three more for Senior citizens, we as individuals are involved in surrendering space. By accepting, for instance, one room for a married couple and one room for two or three single individuals, one also accepts the blessing of huge energy savings.

This goes beyond just using less electricity and into more far-reaching energy savings, such as owning less overall. Those material items took energy to make; by not buying them we in our microcosmic way help lower manufacturers' energy consumption.

Cars, however, are a huge way energy is used in our society. JPUSA owns many cars, more than we used to in our beginning years. But even so, we are far, far below the American average of one car per person. Rather, we share cars as communal resources. We also tend not to travel alone, but ride-share as a matter of pragmatic practice. Again, the energy savings over the usual American practice of one person, one car, are obvious.

Further, in a city like Chicago, where population is dense and the city is built up as well as out, walking and biking are often-used means of travel. As someone a bit addicted to walking when and if I can, I push this option hard with friends and family here. (I admit if we lived in Los Angeles, we'd be challenged in the latter regards.)

Food preparation is done in our large community kitchens, though each floor also has its own smaller kitchen. This can't help but save energy-wise, as large amounts of food are made for many at one blow rather than many smaller meals being made over long periods of time for only one or two people.

I would think this is also true of our dish cleaning operations, which take place via large communal dishwashers and sinks rather than many small ones, again (in the end) perhaps saving in both heating water and in the gas it takes to do that heating.

This hurried list can likely be added significantly to... I've lived here too long (30 years in January '07) to not be blind to some of these energy-saving practices.

WHERE WE ARE WORKING ON IT, OR NEED TO...

Nonetheless, we have areas in which we can do much better.

For one thing, our (by American standards) relative poverty prevents us from doing some things that would be highly intriguing to invest in. How about a set of solar panels on top of our 920 and 939 W. Wilson buildings? How about more solar and wind power on our festival grounds, Cornerstone Farm, near Bushnell, Illinois? We'd love to do it, but at present cannot due to financial costs involved in doing such upgrades initially (even though in the long run they would pay themselves off).

Then there are those things we are just starting to really get rolling... at least, conceptually (sigh!). For instance, changing out many older incandescent bulbs for the newer (but again, more expensive) micro flourescent bulbs: we're not there yet, though a few JPUSAns have done so.

Turning off lights in rooms not being used is also a struggle for us. Some do it consistently, but I confess personally I've had to consciously talk to myself (aloud, sometimes!) to remember to do this, and that only within the past year.

Electronic equipment may use less power than heating and most lighting sources, but it still sucks plenty. I am a bad offender here, often leaving my computers on (though with the "green" power-saver options enabled) and worse, leaving my cable box / DVD system on. (I use older equipment as a rule, which means turning stuff off often means waiting for some time to get it all back "up" again... such is my excuse.) But I can do some things, which I usually (blush) don't. Ask me again in a month what I've done about this.

As a community, there is a psychology that has to be made war on by individual community members. It is far too easy to walk into a lighted room and, because it is not our own living area but a "public" area, leave the lights on even if we turned them on when we entered that room.

Like all things having to do with energy consumption, each individual has to feel in her or his bones the burden to make a difference. And that idea of responsibility belonging to us individually is also one of the great lessons of community on levels going deeper than energy consumption...

technorati tags:earth day, global warming, communal life, JPUSA, Jesus People USA, earth day in intentional community, Chicago exercise, going green JPUSA,

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