More than Oatmeal

My only expectations came from reading A Day No Pigs Would Die, in a special class for kids who couldn’t read good when I was ten, and honestly that book terrified me. Other than that I knew Quakers were pacifists that sat in silence together. I was prepared for whatever cultish behavior this would entail.
I never thought an architecture could be so intimate. The room opened up in a lemon shape. There were chairs placed in concentric lemon shaped layers around the room. I was so thankful for its' uncircularity because this meant that I wouldn't have to make eye contact with a stranger for the next hour and a half. This is something I greatly fear and often sit two people on one side of the restaurant booth with no one opposite because I so greatly dislike intensive meaningless eye contact. One large window framed the panoramic foothills that surround Boulder it in a kind of banner shape with the immediate effect of provoking thoughts on the amplitude of the serenity of nature. A small dove sticker on the window was the only sign of a dogma or otherwise.
I immediately felt comfortable sitting there with these people I did not know. However it is amazing how dynamic a silence can be. While initially I felt so comfortable, after a while no one else came in or out, and I began to become aware of the woman next to me inhaling her oxygen and wheezing it out, the difference in creaks of the pews versus chairs, and developed an escalating fear of farting. I realized I was mostly breathing already exhaled air. At the same time I noticed the old woman sitting next to me had some veritably verde varicose veins, and they seemed to be pulsating. With the staleness of the air and great swath of glass began to feel like an aquarium. I was still glad to be there though. Looking over at my mom I once again felt calmed and I could see how people would come back here.
It was once the people standing up to talk started that I got discouraged. Quickly I realized that these were people who were more than concerned about instilling creativity into their children. These women were the paternalistic feminists who would like nothing more than to tell women about their oppression and rescue them from it adding yet another layer of hypocrisy to concepts of freedom. People who think that any woman who veils must be a victim of patriarchy.
These were the people who are always saying that my generation doesn't take responsibility for our times. Why aren't we in the streets these days? Why aren't we protesting? People who think Jack Johnson is more socially responsible than this crazy noise kids are listening to today. You know a lot of the stuff they listen to is just sampled on the computer? That doesn’t even take any musical talent?
And in the next sentence you hear them cursing how they don’t know what the hell their computer is doing. It turns out they have no idea what is going on in their computer. These are the people who give you dirty looks for not buying fair trade coffee, although the only reason that you don’t is that you don’t have the means to pay ten dollars for some beans you could get for six, and you just want to say OH THE IRONY!
One man got up and talked about a march for renewable fuels he went on that apparently no one in Boulder had seen, the paper hadn’t noticed, and he very eloquently said that he thought was a flop. He supposed that perhaps protests cannot happen on lovely days with everyone so comfortable, and perhaps a protest needed to be noisy, and seen, and uncomfortable. He was so right that my intestines unwound and smiled at him.
Unfortunately the congregation seemed to disagree, and many people afterwards stood up to talk about the importance of putting your energy out there.
Granted I am the engineer type, and so efficiency is important to me, as is doing things well, but the thing with energy is that there is an efficiency that goes along with energy. Whether we are talking about anything moving a car or the metaphysics of a political movement. Some people work hard to achieve something and others do it easily. Granted you have to put the energy out there, but as much as new age crap, self help books, and propaganda like The Secret would have you believe that is not all there is to it. That you tried is no excuse for failure, but perhaps a good cause for a second attempt. Which should definitely involve more than putting your energy out there, like say thought? Eh?