Weekend Commune Living

Today's weather: High = 19 Low = 11
Cloudy and showers

At the invitation of a friend, the weekend was spent experiencing what life would be like in a commune. Of course, it wasn't put to me like, "Come and check out a commune" but that's how it turned out. My expectation was this would be like a typical Christian retreat, but this was not the case as I quickly found out.

The organization that runs this is called L'Abri

http://www.labri.org/

It is really hard to describe L'Abri in a short blog, but you'd do well to check out the website which I did not do beforehand.

The L'Abri community, or commune, is a group of short-term and long-term students who come and study for periods of time. It also consists of leaders and helpers, but frankly it's hard to know who's who. The organization is all rather loose and things are flexible, yet there are also strict rules to follow -- even for a weekend. The idea of following these rules is that everybody does their part to sacrifice their individual selves for the good of the community.

For example, water is very scarce and so showers are also scarce. Meals are mandatory and held at fixed times. During the meals, tasks are delegated for who's cleaning up, etc. Sleeping is in dorm-style beds. Everyone must work for 3 hours on Saturday afternoon. I sanded up stair railings. There is personal study time, and optional prayer time for those interested. There is also counseling time, which I took advantage of.

By the way, internet is strictly regulated.

Getting to the location is an art in itself. It is isolated at the top of a hill on Bowen Island. However, thanks to the help of my friend, I discovered a water taxi that runs from downtown Vancouver to Bowen Island directly and only takes 30 minutes. The price is reasonable at around $15 a trip each way.

I got the impression that personal privacy is not exactly in vogue here, but that is to be expected for living in a commune. A good example is when some girl known as 'Allison' was making a cell phone call and she got hounded by a bunch of guys playing loud music and guitars to disturb her phone call to the outside world.

That being said, however, the people there are all awesome and this community is a really good example of how people *can* live together and counter the influences of a hyper-individualistic society. People being people, we've all got our flaws and issues and so there is bound to be difficulties, just like siblings in a family don't always get along. But if they take the view that we sacrifice for the community, then it can work.

We also had lectures and discussions, much about the Christian faith. While I learned a lot, I also had a hard time processing everything because it was too intellectual. The topics were about intellectualism vs. emotionalism in church and also about how different cultures interpret the face of Jesus. It was rather theological and deep for me. My counseling session was in a similar line, given an intense discussion on differences in Christian denominations and how to relate to people who share different views.

I came out of this retreat with more questions and confusion about God than I came in with. That in itself didn't sit very well and raised a few alarm bells. To make a long story short, that crisis took me back 12 years all the way to the beginning when I first became 'born-again' and had me re-evaluating a lot about what I believed.

People in evangelical circles would call this sort of an experience a 'crisis of faith'. It was resolved about an hour after the retreat and taking a water taxi back downtown, attending a church downtown, and listening to a sermon that addressed the question of the nature of who God is. The sermon was very well presented and clear, and made a good case for understanding how God exists in three persons as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The focus on the basics of the Christian faith is important to me as I happen to be a small group leader in Shanghai, and I end up teaching this stuff to new believers. When things become too intellectual and sophisticated there is a huge problem because the faith is supposed to be a simple message for ordinary people to understand. Sadly, nowadays, you put a bunch of evangelicals together in a room and they can't even agree on the basics such as what is salvation, and who is Jesus.

The weekend retreat also took me back 12 years around the same time I became interested in social awareness and political issues. I started reading tons of books on issues of simple living (Your Money or Your Life) and anti-capitalism (Opposing the System) around that time. I was doing some research and on track to start living in a commune around the time of university graduation, but it never quite happened.

After a few years of living in the west and brushing up on the basics of the Christian faith, I then moved to China and have been there ever since. Now I find a need to go back to the basics again. It is clearly apparent from this weekend that without a firm grasp on the basics, it is easy to get sidetracked down a myriad of theological rabbit holes

For that reason, I've started a new blog that has been in the making for quite some time. The blog goes into basics of the Christian faith, in the context of what it means to live in this particular day and age. One of the characteristics of the times in which we live is for mass confusion on what this 'Christian faith' is all about, and for disagreements to happen left, right, and center between people who all profess to believe the same stuff. Of course, this has been going on for years, but it is intensifying now we have access to the internet and media, etc.

Not that I claim have the inside track on these issues, but I do want to emphasize a 'back-to-basics' approach and to rely more on what the Bible says for understanding of what the Christian faith is about, rather than what people think in their heads intellectually.

At the same time, I tend to shy away from discussing these particular issues in the 'Shanghai' blog. This particular blog is more for secular topics and for secular readers and I want to keep it that way. While I believe that the 'faith' and the 'secular' aspects of life are supposed to be integrated, it is convenient to write two separate blogs in order to focus on different audiences. So that's what I'm doing.

The address for my other blog, then is here:

http://last-days-living.blogspot.com/