I wish our society was ready to intentionally be a community. I wish we could help each other, and all work towards shared goals. I posted in my blog about it. I hope you like it. It’s great to be sharing the Earth with you guys.
[link removed]
Respectfully,
Yours
Reported as spam.
I lived in an intentional community, but it was not a commune. In my 20s, I spent two years volunteering with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and lived in an intentional community with 4-6 other volunteers. It was a really cool experience. It’s not a fixed community, though – your tour of duty, so to speak, is usually only for a year, so each year the community has new members. You live there from August to July. I loved my first year so much I stayed for a second year, and so come that second August, everyone in my community was new to it except me.
JVC has four core values that you focus on during your year: community (duh), spirituality, simplicity, and social justice. Part of living in an intentional community in JVC is spending at least one day or night a week doing some activity together as a group that fosters community, and also spending one day/night a week doing something to foster your spirituality. [You don’t have to be Catholic (or Christian) to join JVC, but you do have to have some form of spirituality in your life and be open to sharing it with others and vice versa.] You get a community stipend each month to pay for groceries/rent/group expenses.
The values of simplicity and social justice can be something that you work on as a group, or you can work on them separately, but my impression was that communal harmony was the priority. For example, if you alone define simplicity to include only bathing once a month, and the rest of your group disagrees and finds your BO hard to live with, you will be pressured to change your mind. (I knew of a community in our region that had to deal with this very issue.)
Edit: Welp, didn’t notice this was a zombie, but maybe someone will find the above useful.
Respectfully, Yours, since you started a thread in Great Debates to discuss this issue, I believe you have a wish to engage in discussion on this topic. However, we frown on people dropping in just to promote their blog. So I am removing your link here, since you’ve got it in the Great Debates thread.
Since you’re new, I suggest you look through the registration agreement and FAQs, found in the About This Message Board forum. Welcome and I hope you find the discussion you’re looking for here.
Ellen Cherry
IMHO Moderator