Skip to main content

The Simple Way

A item in the latest issue of Peace & Life Connections from consistent life, along with some great material on the evils of abortion, lead me to a radical Christian community called "The Simple Way", modeled in many ways after the Catholic Workers.   They have a small intentional community, a sort of urban monasticism, in the middle of a low income area in Philadelphia.  They run a neighborhood park and provide some social help for neighbors. They have worship get togethers at there house on Fridays, but otherwise go to the nearby church.  They run a magazine called Conspire. They have a list of the 12 marks of the new monasticism including, "Relocation to the abandoned places of Empire".


That is quite a statement.  Having lived and worked in some of the abandoned places of Empire, I know it's not always easy.  From the little I have been able to read, they seem to be an ecumenical off shoot of the Catholic Worker movement and worthy of support. 


http://www.thesimpleway.org/
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Seeking the Romance of Life

A recent trip back to California, where I spent the middle half of my life (the part between the Seattle bookends)  and other smaller events have made me reflective of past events and places.  My brothers and I stopped in Santa Cruz, briefly, where I had lived for years, and stopped by a nightclub I had spent time in, the Catalyst, and asked the bartender the current status of local things. I found out Club Zayante in the Santa Cruz Mountain had closed.  When I got home I researched the Club, which was once of the hottest nightclubs in Central California to learn what happened.  I found out the club had closed for financial reasons then burned down. But what I learned about the owner, Tom Louagie intrigued me. He had come out from the east coast on a romantic quest, to find the Cannery Row he had read in Steinbeck. He had the idea of moving there and living a literary dream from the past.  He didn't know that that Cannery Row had died...
3 comments
Read more

Swing States Swinging Against Meat Axe Budget Cuts and Anti-Labor Laws

Polls are showing wide swings of voters away from recently elected Republicans who are charing ahead with budget cuts and dismemberment of collective bargaining for public employee unions.   These polls are holding also for many of the recently elected Republican Congress people and in many states where the politics has been less volatile than the Upper Mid-West States. In Wisconsin, polls suggest that if there was a do over of the gubernatorial race in which Scott Walker decisively beat Tom Barret, Barrett would easily win by 52%.  Walker's support in union households has dropped from 40% to 33% and Tom Barrett's union household support has jumped from 54% to 64%.  Barrett's support among Republicans has risen to 10%.  In Michigan the new Governor created what people are calling financial martical law, where he can declare a financial emergency in a local government, take it over, and void union contracts. ...
7 comments
Read more