Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Spirtuality within cohousing

[Stephen Farley (sfarley]

To add to the thread about the sufi rituals at the end of the Colo 
conference...

My wife and I (and our 1-year-old daughter) were also at the conference, 
and we both shared Stuart's ambivalence about the ceremony. We 
particulary felt that this type of spiritual ritual was out of place at 
a conference which in large part emphasized the need for cohousing to 
"go mainstream" in order to truly affect the larger society.

We asked ourselves, 'If we were born-again Christians, for example, how 
would we feel about the ritual?" In fact, as spiritual people who 
happen to be deeply ambivalent about any organized religion, we felt 
just as alienated as the born-agains may have felt.

Any form of organized spirituality, especially when presented as the 
conclusion and summation of a conference, will have a tendency to 
polarize, not unify, regardless of whether it is called a "dance of 
universal peace" or "holy communion". We did not feel included, but 
rather felt that we were forced into something against our will, and 
that if we didn't take part, we weren't really one of the chosen people 
of the movement, since we didn't share their beliefs.

Expressing public spirituality is fine, but to present it as a type of 
"state religion" of cohousing seems to me to be counter to our stated 
desires to broaden the movement. I don't just want left-leaning pagans 
as my neighbors, I also want republican Baptists. 

To me, that's what cohousing is about--coming together with others of 
very different views and finding common ground; not imposing a common 
ground on your neighbors.

Steve Farley
(sfarley [at] igc.apc.org)