What a Wonderful Aurora

I was just in Elkhart for three and a half weeks, and it was incredible. I biked around 350 miles, I did a bunch of yard work, and I made a lot of new friends. Most of the biking was to and from Goshen to visit some new and old friends. I stayed at Morgan's house at Goshen College. Stayed is a pretty weak word, I think lived is much more appropriate.

What a life it was! For one, it was really reviving to be in a Mennonite college context again. It was nice to be accepted and loved the way I came. After all the biking, I'm sure I didn't smell good whenever I was there and I generally didn't have clean clothes for the time I spent sitting around all of the next day talking, reading, eating and sleeping. The most amazing part about Aurora House was that my lovely house mates expressed their affection for each other very easily and openly. I think the physical closeness and acceptance that they showed each other is one of the most powerful tools around for building community. I think physical contact is directly related to trust and, obviously, love. It was great to see their honesty in sharing joys and sorrows and how they relied on their house community when they had things to deal with. Apparently they had house meals almost every day during the school year. The one that I got to be a part of was a perfect time for them to build relationships and identity as a group. That kind of life, the kind where you're living every day, is an blessing that is worth so much.

When there was a Critical Mass bike ride in Elkhart, seven of the Aurora community showed up. We went to my house and had a bonfire with Jubilee House (the Mennonite Voluntary Service House in Elkhart) members. I experienced another great community builder there as we sat around the fire and sang all of the good singing songs we could remember. Like my opening post on this blog, I want to fill beautiful and ugly places with powerful and weak voices joining in song. Acceptance, belonging, physical contact, group meals, singing.... all of that is a dream, one that feels like heaven to me.

Silly Cars

I ran some errands today on my bike. The agility and precision that I have on my bike makes car-watching hilarious by comparison. Cars have to run through all kinds of complex maneuvers to get out of tight spots, sometimes people even do all the maneuvers for spots that aren't that tight. Thats because the driver generally doesn't have a good understanding of how long or wide their vehicle is, so they end up cranking on their steering wheel for a couple minutes doing 20 point turns, 15 cm (6 in) forward or backward at a time. Whenever I see cars driving slowly they always remind me of stupid animals. I had to laugh when I saw a Neon or something like it that looked completely bovine as I was going through a neighborhood. It only makes the analogy better when you see the faces of drivers sitting at stop lights or rolling slowly through neighborhoods because they always look really bored and a fair bit bovine themselves. Occasionally I get the people who see me on my bike and then sit frightened at the stop signs from when they spot me until I pass since I'm not driving a car and therefore must be insane. That behavior reminds me of cows too.

That being said, I have nothing against drivers. I do my fair share of the bovine driving and parking thing as well. I think its tragic that we've all become accustomed to traveling 30 km (19 miles) to find friendly people to eat dinner with. Not that long ago, travel was a time that you spent your days outside and had plenty of time to look at and appreciate nature. At nights, you would stop and spend the evening sitting or meeting people. Now our cars cut us off from all of that. We travel in climate controlled boxes playing canned noise to counteract the noise from our vehicles. We stare at the stripes in the road as they fly by. If we're not on highways, we might even catch glimpses of the communities that we thunder past. Cars are another example of the paradox of technology, they are meant to connect us with each other and increase our quality of life, but they actually disconnect us from and often destroy our communities and the nature around them.