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I'd love to hear a synopsis of that situation! I appreciate this bit as well. Makes me think something like this could quickly outgrow itself, and rather than t

I'd love to hear a synopsis of that situation! I appreciate this bit as well. Makes me think something like this could quickly outgrow itself, and rather than trying to keep so many voices under one growing roof, perhaps it may be best to split in half and split again to keep things manageable and cordial and not have things get worse than bad. But still do the things it was set out to do - provide an open third place for people who may not have such and take advantage of some discounts along the way.

jelliclesfarm 7y ago
It is difficult to create a synopsis for this because it’s a lot of things..little little things that mushroomed and eventually caused the group to implode. There are other things that happened and I can’t talk about it. But I will say this...the biggest cleft occurred after 9/11. It was a very bad time for the group to be cohesive. Looking back, it’s rather remarkable. I actually want to write about it some day because it was a pressurized emotional highly volatile environment where seemingly like minded people couldn’t stand each other’s POV anymore. The group was around for a decade plus after that..but weaker. The ‘virus’ came from how thoughts are like virii and can infect people. And every member of the congregation can be a vector for rational thought. We’d spend hours discussing (remember BBS and Dalnet/IRC?) how religion was a virus and only rational atheistic thought could vaccinate people against the virus of god. Darwin was our prophet. Evolution explained life. We celebrated his birthday. Man..those were some good times. Of course, even then no one got along..but we were all still arguing with ‘one of us’. But 911 changed everything. That’s when it dawned upon many of us..the most dangerous virus is not religion..but politics. What bound us was not as strong as what divides us. It was just sad after that. Slow agonizing ugly death of something that could have been beautiful. I was very young then..in the two plus decades since, I have changed too. I stopped calling myself atheist and became agnostic for a while. Then I called myself ignostic and until recently didn’t care. As I get older, I feel I am ready to explore and am willing to test if faith is more nuanced than ‘organised religion’. I don’t know. I guess we are always looking for answers. And when we are not, we invent questions to look for answers. To your point, I disagree..congregations need to be large. We were trying to replicate how a virus works by spreading rational thoughts memes and the more people we infected with our thought memes, the more successful we were going to be in promoting the virian ideal and virtue of pure rational thought.

jelliclesfarm 7y ago

It is difficult to create a synopsis for this because it’s a lot of things..little little things that mushroomed and eventually caused the group to implode. There are other things that happened and I can’t talk about it. But I will say this...the biggest cleft occurred after 9/11. It was a very bad time for the group to be cohesive. Looking back, it’s rather remarkable. I actually want to write about it some day because it was a pressurized emotional highly volatile environment where seemingly like minded people couldn’t stand each other’s POV anymore. The group was around for a decade plus after that..but weaker. The ‘virus’ came from how thoughts are like virii and can infect people. And every member of the congregation can be a vector for rational thought. We’d spend hours discussing (remember BBS and Dalnet/IRC?) how religion was a virus and only rational atheistic thought could vaccinate people against the virus of god. Darwin was our prophet. Evolution explained life. We celebrated his birthday. Man..those were some good times. Of course, even then no one got along..but we were all still arguing with ‘one of us’. But 911 changed everything. That’s when it dawned upon many of us..the most dangerous virus is not religion..but politics. What bound us was not as strong as what divides us. It was just sad after that. Slow agonizing ugly death of something that could have been beautiful. I was very young then..in the two plus decades since, I have changed too. I stopped calling myself atheist and became agnostic for a while. Then I called myself ignostic and until recently didn’t care. As I get older, I feel I am ready to explore and am willing to test if faith is more nuanced than ‘organised religion’. I don’t know. I guess we are always looking for answers. And when we are not, we invent questions to look for answers. To your point, I disagree..congregations need to be large. We were trying to replicate how a virus works by spreading rational thoughts memes and the more people we infected with our thought memes, the more successful we were going to be in promoting the virian ideal and virtue of pure rational thought.