Palm Sunday

 We just back from Palm Sunday brunch at Fred and Jan's place in Mesa, in the RV Park. Getting down there was aa bear, even on a Sunday. Most of the 101 is blocked for miles from our exit southward and the detour took us twenty minutes. Then getting off in Mesa at Val Vista Road, we found that thoroughfare completely blocked as well, entailing another detour.

The quiche Jan made was well heated by the time we arrived. Jamie was there. I had not seen her in at least a year I think. She had flown down from Louisville to her her mom and Fred, and of course her older sister Jessica.

Jessica is quite a free spirit. She works as a midwife in a birthing century in southeastern Indiana. She was telling stories of birthing adventures around the taable after brunch, including a woman who wass trained opera singer and whose breathing exercises consisted of her singing her labor. 

Jamie has two daughters by two different fathes. Her youngest daughter Mary often visits Mesa, or at leasat she did during her high school years and her college years, which just ended.  But on this trip it was just Jamie.

I'm always wary talking to Jamie at first because her politics are very strongly leftist.  I don't want to make a joke that I might make easily in front of the rest of them, but which might cause a defensive reaction. My dry black sense of humor is not for everyone,  I can push almost anyone to the limit of their tolerance of humor.

In contrast to my fears, we actually got along well. At one point we were siting around the dining room table able the meal and the subject came up of monasteries and convents.  Jamie mentioned the one in Bardstown, Kentucky near where she lives. She mentioned it was shrinking.

I said that this was probably not because of lack of people wanting to live their and join the community. Instead it was often the Catholic Church hierarchy, which hated these communities and was trying to abolish them.

I went into to launch into a whole monologue about how we live broken apart from other, in isolation, misery, and mental illness.  I said that there is a growing yearning for something more.  I mentioned how the RV park in which Fred and Jan lived was a partial solution, but really for Baby Boomers and select Gen X who would appreciate the communal aspects of it. It did not include the one issue that is the most important aspect of happiness for human beings, which is the communal sharing of meals. An ideal solution would include this, not as a forced thing for every meal, but an attractive option that is well used.

I said that within ten years there will be a huge push for people to. be able to live this way, especially among young people. Many types of solutions will be explored. Monasteries are one such solution.

The way Jamie was looking at me I could tell she agreed with just about everything I was saying. This is the way I like to talk to people.  I make people forget about the things we disagree about it.

She didn't even mind when I pressed on the accelerator by mentioning my belief that in many, but not all cases, these attempts at spontaneous real community will be in the form of traditionalism, and even an outright imitation of the past. In part this will be an attempt to negotiate a communal relationship with various modern technologies. "The Amish have one solution, obviously."

In response she mentioned a tiny house community put together by a group of older divorced women who had wanted to live in a communal way. 

See, we can get along.