Posted by giveawayboy on February 04, 2003 at 22:31:59:
In Reply to: Re: marc & bill posted by j on February 04, 2003 at 08:33:03:
building a community
bill:A building seems like a great idea, but I want to see us functioning as a good community first.
j:*** This is clearly the route we must take in order to build a foundational framework... specifically concerning community-building. I think opening our conversations over this electronic medium is a wonderful idea...
bill: Jason, I'm glad you resp. here since it shows me that our whole effort wasn't simply in vain.
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experience/moment/window
marc: maybe home is just a window in time
j:*** ...then by that definition, a physical home is an environment (or 'space') where these 'home windows' are more prone to occur?
bill: maybe like steve said we recognize it and chronicle it.
marc: like an experience
marc: yea
bill: but stay moving
marc: yea
j:*** Forgive me for bringing up another "Waking Life" concept, but it sounds like the experience/moment/window, etc. is that sacred moment where we choose "yes" or "no."
bill: No forgiveness necessary. Don't you know that I'm all about that holy moment. That is really it. I mean God who transcends and contains time meets us in that holy moment. To be honest the whole goal of prayer is getting into that moment. It is the place where we come to just say YES. Jason, you have to know that I'm totally with you here. Sometimes I feel like our brains are jacked into each others' brains, and perhaps linked up to John's and Alex's too. Who knows?
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uncovering the jewel
bill: sometimes i wonder if you are caught between two different realities and if you could just find out that they could all be a part of each other.
bill: the monk, the dancer, marcia, the librarian, the performance artist....
bill: all these things which are parts of you--you are like a multifaceted jewel
j:*** Yesterday I was thinking about this same concept, especially regarding part of the discussion Sunday where we were examining our lives in relation to others. I was thinking how my "realities" exist in the "Real" and the "Now." The Real is what exists in an eternal sense (the foundation in which we build). The Now is the space in which we build on the foundation: using gold and jewels or hay and stubble.
bill: this reminds me of where the 'nomos' of God dovetails w our everyday life, transforming our vision. this is where our heads get lifted and we learn how to say YES. this is not easy all the time. sometimes it destroys our 'nomos' entirely. it shatters it. sometimes it modifies it and transforms it. at any rate we have to get that 'deer-in-the-headlights' look. it's necessary for our sanity to be interrupted once in awhile.
marc: yea
bill: i wish one day someone would uncover you
bill: really i do
bill: i think god must be polishing you. you might look like coal now, but you are a diamond
j:*** What does the uncovering mean? Do you mean, you wish another dreamer would come along and identify the jewel? Or are you talking about the facets?
bill: here i was actually specifically referring to marcos as a jewel. i think that many people do not know marcos, and i think that marcos only has glimpses. i wish it could be fully revealed, but i'm afraid right now marc and everyone else is not fully ready. still, i see him in facets that long to be realized and have yet to find a framework for that realization. of course this metaphor of a multifacted jewel can apply to us all, in our quest for our true natures and for completeness in Christ.
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the pink palace idea
bill: what you need is a place to plug all this in and let it all out
marc: but Im just looking at society
bill: you need a creative space and a prayer space
marc: yea,
marc: that sounds like the
marc: pink palace idea (the pink palace refers to the apartment that Marcos and I once shared in Palma Ceia)
j:*** What is this idea?
bill: the pink palace was much more than an idea. the pink palace was actually one of several potential encapsulations of a much larger idea. think of a place where people can come to read, to discuss spiritual writing, to talk about the arts, religion, philosophy, music, etc. think of a social space, an art space, a prayer space, a meditative space. this is the larger dream behind the pink palace. (is someone printing all these posts?--they should all be in some book some day) well, the dream continues in many forms. it all started years ago w marcos, terry parmegiani and perhaps a few others along w myself discussing this kind of multipurpose space/community. the space bascially became the vehicle for the community to actualize itself. the community could exist wout the space but the space was an important dynamic for the community to acheive it's goals of spiritual growth and community life. i guess the real vision of the pink palace is something bigger than the actual pink palace (we dubbed our apartment the pink palace after kumar visited once and told me it indeed was pink--being color blind, i always assumed it was beige). still, the form it took was a small apartment w an empty living room, enough for many people to sit on cushions and pillows. we had an area in the dining room which was sectioned off w a small altar where we would place prayer requests into a fishbowl. here we kept some images which could remind us of Jesus and some of the saints. We lit candles here. the back patio was a little meditation spot w a garden, a statue of jesus, a candle and a red light bulb which symbolized god's mercy. we had a community bookshelf w all kinds of books both religious and non-religous. we had prayers there. we watched videos there. we danced there. we had powwows there. etc. that was the tiniest sliver of the pink palace. it was a place to actualize the larger dream of a lay-religious community. it was almost like we wanted to live the life of monks and nuns, but in the lay state. this is slightly like the third order of saint francis, where people are 'in the order' but not brothers or sisters in the formal sense. hope this answers your question.
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striving for understanding
j:....There is homosexuality, and there is gay culture. You mentioned above that perhaps gay people are supposed to be OTHER but not sexualize it. I don't know if this is true or not, but it provides an interesting perspective...
bill: well, this gets into an area i think marc is more qualified to discuss. he seems to have this theory which i can't substantiate but tend to agree with. it has to do with 'gay' being a broader term that may have been in use prior to its association w homosexuals. i am not sure if this can be proven but marc usually has good reasons for his theories. still, i'm not exactly sure what he was getting at, but i think part of him wanting us to post our im was so he can perhaps discuss this 'gay' theory of his. he and i both would like to see the word itself, liberated from such a narrow context. it's one of those words tarnished by modern conotations.
j: Again referring to Sunday, Steve pointed out that culture is a creation of man, and at some point, the culture becomes strong enough to stand on its own. Ultimately, the culture "lords over" those who identify with it. Its sole purpose is to survive, regardless of truth or reality. If you want to step into politics for a moment, in reality, Republicans and Democrats are no different than homosexuals, Yuppies, parents, students, dog breeders, and yes, Christians.
It is very easy to see the survival instinct of a culture kick in: Republicans vs. Democrats, Homosexuals vs. Heterosexuals, Dog breeders vs. Cat breeders, etc. In some instances, these "battles" can be bloody. In others they aren't really battles at all, but a sharing of ideas and understanding. This is what we strive for...
bill: yeah. given that we are all in a position to learn, we should not fear such experiences of learning and sharing. also, we need to get way past this inherited idea that we are tolerating sin if we accept imperfect people in our church. it's not our job to micromanage everyone's life. we aren't big brother. am i saying we don't have a responsibility to follow Christ? Am I saying there is no moral truth? Certainly not! I'm just saying we should be welcoming to folks. Also, it's ultimately alot more than a 'gay' issue. It's a hospitality issue.
bill: yeah, but Marcos, really, are you referring to 'gay' things here or something more general
marc: right now to the last stuff, the "gay" stuff
bill: o.k. well, we can bring it up in diff. ways. i just wouldn't want to make it look like a bill-rogers-forced topic
j:*** I think of it more as a bill-and-marcos-(inspired)-topic
bill: yeah Jason, that's the ticket!