Day 2 - Here we went again

Shhh!  Don't tell anyone that I'm *starting* composing this entry at midnight on Wednesday, which is a full hour after lights out.  I don't think there are any "light's out" police here, but I'm going to regret this at 6:30 AM.  For the moment I'm going to enjoy this leftover slice of cold deep dish pizza from Sunday, and let my fingers fly.

On day 2, this time all of our group went to the same work site.  We were helping out a Mennonite church in Evanston that does a lot of good work in neighborhood around it.  No, they aren't the "horse and buggy" Mennonites as church member, Dan Coyne, put it.  They have some of the same values as the Amish, most notably pacisim and community, but they choose modern lifestyles...sorta.  More about that later.  

The "sweat equity" work we did consisted of washing windows and clearing some overgrown vegetation on the church property (you should have seen what a jedi Jake was with a hand saw).  The other work some of us did is a bit of a stretch to call "work."  One of focuses of the church is to try to bring a neighborhood together that has some gun violence and drug abuse.  What they do is host community building events like pizza parties where everybody is invited to have some pizza and get to know each other (parenthetically this is very much like the block party Immanuel supports on South Marshall street every summer, so all of us have the opportunity to do this "mission trip" stuff in our own backyard).  The unconventional work Dan had us do was play frisbee in the park.  Ok, stay with me here.  Dan told us that the parks in the neighborhood are rarely used by families because of the gun violence that has happened in said parks.  What he's trying to do by getting some of us out there having fun in the park is to catch the attention of neighbors and coax them into coming out and being...well, neighborly.  

For me the most interesting thing of the day was Dan telling us more about Mennonites in general and his congregation in particular.  Back to what I said about not being part of conventional modern society.  They have created what they call an "intentional community."  Essentially, they take the same approach as the very early Christians did when it comes to living expenses.  Everybody gave everything they had to the community, and then the community took care of everyone's needs within the group as well as tending to needs outside the group.  It didn't matter if you were a wealthy business owner or unemployed.  

In these Mennonite communities, people are welcome to join or leave the community as they wish, and in fact if you want to leave, the community helps get you on your feet financially so that you can be self-sufficient.  I can see the benefits and the pitfalls of a system like this and to be perfectly honest I don't think I would ever be comfortable with giving up the ability to be able to make my own decisions about things when I may not agree with the consensus.  There is, however, something to be said for the selflessness, courage, and faith that such an arrangement would require.  Whatever the case, I know from meeting him that Dan is a wonderful human being.

During the late afternoon, we rode the "L" train downtown to check out Millennium Park.  There were lots of cool things there, including this gigantic 3 dimensional bean-shaped mirror, an open orchestral rehearsal, and a "face spitting" fountain.  I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

-PJ

Our group selfie in the bean mirror

Open orchestral rehearsal.  They were rehearsing Haydn 98th Symphony.

Yup, a spitting fountain