Yesterday I did not leave the house. Well - I take that back. I took a picnic blanket out of my car and sat on our front lawn under a tree for two hours - reading, dozing and talking to one of my best friends from college on the phone. Also, I sat on our back steps with my housemates and our guests for our Labor Day-attempt-to-cook-out (grilling just took a while, but all was still delicious), and then talked to our 5-year old neighbor for a few minutes.
Last Tuesday, we had our first community night. LVC strongly encourages/requires (we commit to it when we sign our letter of commitment which isn't the same thing as our contract but is not wholly unrelated) all of the houses to have a community night once a week, in accordance with the whole "intentional community" thing. Tonight we're having another one, and we'll just go out to dinner and hang out, probably, with maybe some focused discussion. Last week, though, we had dinner and then a focused conversation about focusing on simply being. One of my housemates read a passage from a book, about two people savoring a walk in the countryside, sitting on a wall and talking, and then asked - What makes you busy? What do you not have time to do? and one other question which escapes me at the moment.
Simply being is a tough concept for me, and it's great that I'm being challenged to try it out at work as well as at home. My job right now is to get to know people, and specifically, to LISTEN. And not even necessarily do anything about it - at least, not in the way that I am used to doing things. My goal in the past has been to accomplish - to get this club started, this letter written, this paper written, this action to take.
Apparently, simply being yourself in the universe is a way to accomplish.
My thoughts are with my friends who begin classes at Oberlin today. Being themselves will involve doing tough homework this year (long papers), responsibility in student organizations, and confronting the terrible, awful, horrible, no-good, very bad question, "So, what next?"
I hope they will remember that simply being themselves is a wonderful thing. And that they can email me if they want help remembering that :-) and thinking about what that means. I think I (at least, kind of) get it now.
Pictures! Because I promised!
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| Our first Friday night on the town - these are my fabulous housemates! Outdoor concert in the parking lot of a popular bar called Slowdown - sponsored by Toyota. Oh, indie music, how thou hast changed...I guess...(not like I'm an expert or anything...) |
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| Downtown farmers' market |
Love,
Anna
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