Second World Kiosk & Village Commons
Check out the video below for a tour of our latest project, the Second World Kiosk & Village Commons in the front yard of the Simone Weil House!
See the calendar for our kiosk open hours, and stop by for coffee and conversation… and sometimes fresh popcorn and frozen banana ice cream. No transactions!
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Reflections on the Second World
“The sepulchre, temple, and palace preceded the utilitarian house; ornament preceded clothing; work, particularly teamwork, derives from play.” – Eric Hoffer
On seeing the Second World kiosk in our yard one might be justified in asking whether the name, diffusive intensity, and underlit globe in its cupola points to something entirely serious. Maybe not. It is too serious to be serious about. Because when you play, you can get right into things, both the doing and the world-making.
We think the child fireman who one morning just put on a raincoat and took out the garden hose helps us approach the spirit of Dorothy Day, who, as a baby Christian, saw that the very reality of belief called for a commitment to the make-believe. She saw to it that the poor surrounding her were fed like those surrounding the Christ of the Gospels, and that the good news was proclaimed boldly in a newspaper that there were no resources to sustain.
Our habit, in contrast, is to insist on squaring away the circle of loss and return before making a beginning. We call this mental (spiritual) block realism, the shadows it casts ahead of us our growth and progress, and the ideal interplay of these hardened shadows we give grand names such as “the economy.” If reality is the play of such forces, it is no wonder that we seek avoidant and even cynical play to escape it, and that our seriousness about what is unserious and our destructive play come more and more to imitate each other in a seemingly inescapable game. The bullet, the meme. The drone, the video game.
How we play is so serious that it re-creates the world in its image; we can say for good or for ill, but in the end there is a pattern. We believe that there is a true game and a true path of serious play, and that the other games play themselves out within it. For this pattern we look to the one who called the Father “daddy” and said we must become like children, who fancied that Scriptural imperatives and prophecies apply quite literally, and who took the person in front of him to be the whole world. His play didn’t diffuse or shelter from reality, but distilled and concentrated it. Ultimately, when the cross brought it to a point, the tables were turned a final time – the still point of death itself was revealed to be the fulcrum of Life. It is the free play and unrestricted economy of this Life, humanity’s true calling, that we wish to make a home for in our world.
To this end, we humbly offer an other-worldly watercooler to talk around, to help us experience that what is strange and wonderful is inviting us in – to get comfortable with, discuss, and play ourselves into its very different normal. This, my friends, is the Second World kiosk in the center of the Village Commons.
Come have a very good coffee and maybe homemade sourdough or popcorn, without a transaction. Introduce yourself and let’s talk about building what Peter Maurin called “a new society within the shell of the old.” Like him, we have some literature we’d love to share with you and discuss, and (hopefully more than old Peter), we’d like to listen to what you are inspired by and make common cause. Yesterday the first two strangers to show up at the kiosk had stories of the small-town life of Ibiza, Italy, and Romania, and the next person was wondering how to make a life that feels like her University of Oregon student co-op.
Of course, nothing spurs real conversation like knowing that we’re in a context that supports going beyond talk. So take part in the resource-sharing of the village commons, our potluck meals, the living communion (zero interest) credit union initiative, the agronomic university, or Simone Weil House’s midday liturgical prayer.
We hope you join us, and we hope you dive deep enough into this “second world” to experience that there may not be another shoe to drop. Maybe the play is serious, maybe the Second World is real.
So come join us in the Second World! Our current schedule is Monday-Friday, 2ish to 7ish, with potluck dinner Wednesday at 6. Updates (possibly adding mornings) will be posted here and on the chalk board out front.