tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15715889.post4198589356879879273..comments2023-07-23T00:49:12.363-07:00Comments on Tables, Chairs & Oaken Chests: ImaginationChris M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11651283601238351902noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15715889.post-50187784285386676252007-07-17T10:35:00.000-07:002007-07-17T10:35:00.000-07:00You would have enjoyed Walter Wink's plenary prese...You would have enjoyed Walter Wink's plenary presentatin at FGC in Normal in 2002. He had teens help him in acting out the nonviolent resistance implicit in Jesus's illustrations about going the second mile, turning the left cheek (or was it the right?), and giving your shirt along with your cloak.<BR/><BR/>I, too, wonder where the points of my complicity with the empire are that I can resist. I think I'm beginning to understand better what it means to live in a "totalitarian" society, where there is NO space that is not connected to the dominant system and where living outside of or out from under the system is, literally, unthinkable.<BR/><BR/>Your musings about resisting at the airport also reminded me of the two months when I paid my monthly electric bill in pennies in a protest to the utility's planned nuclear power plant on the shores of Lake Michigan (circa 1978). I stopped when I overheard one of the office clerks complaining in a bar a few weeks later how this no-nuke guy had dumped $30 worth of pennies on the counter and how it took her all morning to count & account for them and how it made her late for picking up her kids at day care etc.Paul Lhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03483071863453025925noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15715889.post-50193667369862798062007-07-16T19:48:00.000-07:002007-07-16T19:48:00.000-07:00@CS: Thanks for commenting! Yes, I have the same s...@CS: Thanks for commenting! Yes, I have the same sense of living "just enough apart." We don't have a TV, don't see many movies, and don't read the entertainment or sports sections of newspapers much. (Of course, the front page of newspapers lately have become indistinguishable from the entertainment section in too many instances.) I think it contributes to the degree of centering I'm able to achieve.<BR/><BR/>I just re-read Deborah Fisch's pamphlet "Being Faithful with Friends: Individually and Corporately." It's the text of her Weed Lecture at Beacon Hill Friends House in 2006. She talks about a rural meeting in Iowa where one year they decided to have a "simple meal" and donate funds they collected to a local food pantry and UNICEF. They did it for years, it grew and grew. It eventually grew beyond the capacity of a shrinking meeting, so now the churches in town have taken on the event because it became such<BR/><BR/>So, out of small, faithful responses can grow bigger things.<BR/><BR/>-- Chris M.Chris M.https://www.blogger.com/profile/05125825966802002625noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15715889.post-91764705155199493602007-07-16T07:37:00.000-07:002007-07-16T07:37:00.000-07:00Thank you for sharing these thoughts. I too keep ...Thank you for sharing these thoughts. I too keep trying to think of imaginative and transformative responses to the little (and not-so-little) indignities and frustrations we so often must suffer at the hands of the domination system. And I too have been greatly inspired by Walter Wink's work.<BR/><BR/>While I have a lot of sympathy (and attraction to) the idea of just trying to live apart from the domination system (and in fact I think I largely do this in my own life), compassion for others who also suffer its effects keeps drawing me back to the question of how to transform it.<BR/><BR/>More and more I am aware of how much we all suffer these effects, and yet often do not realize it, blaming ourselves or inappropriately blaming others for effects that are not of our own creation but are produced by these systems in which we are embedded.<BR/><BR/>And so what I tend to do is strive to strike a balance. I live just enough apart from it all to maintain some perspective and keep reasonably spiritually centered, and in living apart, to be trying to live another world into being. But I could not live fully apart, even if I tried. Nor would I want to, because staying somewhat engaged is a way to maintain the potential for having a transformative influence. And for that, I keep imaginatively playing through possible creative responses, as you describe. Unfortunately, I usually don't think of a good response until it is too late to act on it, but every great now and then, I think fast enough to do so.Contemplative Scholarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08146198812589653300noreply@blogger.com