The Challenge Jar

Every week my house explores a new way to live out one of JVC NW’s four values through community challenges. Over dinner one night we all brainstormed practices that would stretch us to grow in simple living, community, spirituality and/or social & ecological justice. We collected all of our ideas in a jar and every month will draw four challenges. For each week’s challenge we spend time discussing why we are doing the challenge, what we hope to gain from it, and our expectations for what it entails (allowing for some personal choice on how to exactly live the challenge out given personal needs/comfort level). We also try to find time to reflect on how the challenge was for us, what we learned from it, and whether there are ways we can incorporate it our lives in an ongoing way. We have already had several challenges so far!

Our first challenge was to each share an article on social justice and read all of the articles that everyone contributed. I loved this challenge. It appealed to the part of me that misses college and intellectual stimulus. I enjoyed reading the articles themselves, and also found it interesting to see what types of articles each of us chose. We had a great discussion after we had all finished our reading.

Here are the articles, if you are interested!

"Helping, Fixing or Serving?"

"Rethinking Service" 

"Coal Pollution and the Fight for Environmental Justice"    

"The Life You Can Save" 

"Starfish Hurling and Community Service"

"The Tale of Two Schools" 

Our second challenge was not using utensils for a week. The idea behind the challenge was that there are many cultures that do not use utensils to eat, and that forgoing utensils was a way of simplifying. I did not like this challenge. Eating with my hands was fine, and it didn't bother me that much, but I didn't really buy in to the purpose of the challenge. If we were really trying to gain a cross-cultural perspective, I think we would have needed to eat meals from cultures that do not use utensils rather than just figuring out how to eat the same meals we would have had any way. I also did not really see it as a way of simplifying, but rather as giving something up just to give something up. I think the idea of the challenges should be to learn something new about yourself and one of the values not simply to do something challenging. That said, I think there was value in doing the no utensil challenge if for no other reason than that the rest of my community was doing it. I may have thought the challenge was pointless, but not everyone saw it that way, and I decided to participate in community life rather than just do what I wanted (or in this case didn't want to do).

Our third challenge was a 24 hour energy fast. From a Friday at 9pm till Saturday at 9pm, we did not use anything that could be turned on and off. This included warm water, cell phones, lights, stove top, etc. This was definitely challenging but also a lot of fun. We spent a lot of time together during the energy fast. Probably the highlight was playing giant jenga by candlelight in our living room Friday night. It was also very personally beneficial for me to turn my phone off for 24 hours. In a couple weeks, we will be having a weekend energy fast, and there also is a week-long energy fast currently in the challenge jar.

Our current challenge that we are wrapping up today is another article challenge but on spirituality this time. I am looking forward to discussing them all! Most of the articles were in paper but here are a video and a podcast that were shared if you want to check them out.

"What is the Purpose of Life?"

"The Wisdom of Tenderness" 

Next week’s challenge is a technology fast – no phone, internet, movies, etc. I’ll let you know how it goes!

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