A new friend, Julie Foley, sent me an interview of Aaron Weiss of mewithoutYou that appeared in Busted Halo.

In it, Aaron provides a wonderful description of community:

BH: From what I’ve read about you, you’ve said that one of the turning points in your life is when you went to live in community with other people in Philadelphia.

AW: Yeah.

BH: How exactly does that work?

AW: Well, people who think that when Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself and love God–these are central teachings and central focuses of our life as Christians–not a belief in a doctrine of Christianity or an acceptance of a religious form but a life lived of love. And that’s going to play out as community. If you have a problem, and I love you, that’s my problem. If you have a joy, and I love you, that’s going to bring me joy. And we share it. We share everything. We share our struggles and our triumphs and our money and possessions. We share our faith and our hopes and our fears and struggle together and try to help other people around us who maybe don’t agree with us or have anything to offer us in return. Just living a life of service–that’s what I got out of the communal life that I tasted there. It’s just a simple life of love that I believe everyone is called to. It’s going to look different ways, but for me that was the realization that Jesus didn‘t call me to a belief more abundant or a doctrine more precise. He called me to a life more abundant. He called me to a life where there’s fruit that you can taste and see and touch and smell and feel–tangible reality. “The kingdom come on Earth as it is in Heaven.” That was something where I’d read the words before, but it had never penetrated my heart before that the Gospel has social implications and an immediate relevance. That was tremendously liberating from this obsession with the purely spiritualized version of Christianity. When it talks about setting free the captives, that’s spiritual. When it talks about “blessed are the hungry and the poor,” that’s spiritual. Spiritually hungry and spiritually poor–that’s in there. But so is the tangible stuff. People need food and they need shelter and they need freedom, both economically and politically.

BH: Was it difficult, having grown up in this culture, to start
living that way?

AW: Ah…I wouldn‘t say so, because it’s so bankrupt, the notion of just living for your own desires and pursuing your every whim and trying to ensure financial security. To store up money so that one day you can retire and have 15 years of relaxing until you die – has that worked for anybody? Has that given anybody eternal peace? Has that given anybody that sense of “I know why I’m here. I know the purpose of my life”? I look around and I see the failed American dream. People that are trying to claw their way to the top of the corporate ladder or some social group, and you realize that there’s no real contentment at the top. Whatever little ways that I’ve tried with the band–like, “Oh, we need to get on this label” –you end up wanting something else. Then you get on this radio station, and you want something else. You get in this magazine, and then you want something else. You get on this television station, and then what else? What else? What else? It’s never enough. Jesus calls us to less and less. He calls us to a simpler and humbler and more broken and emptied out lifestyle of service. To me, the moment that I realized that, it all made sense. It was perfectly clear. Everyone is called to that, and there’s room down there for everybody. But there’s only room at the top for one person. That would be a sad world, if our only purpose was to be the most successful or the world champion or the richest man alive.