Individualism Is The New Conformity - Laura from the Bruderhof

Laura and Chris are back from a few weeks at the Timothy Hill Ranch in Long Island. Laura's got some thoughts about a conversation she had with some of the residents

[jenniferreidthompson]

I am watching your videos and they are really helping me stay focused during this time of unrest. The importance of giving your life up to Christ and focusing on the giving instead of worrying about the getting is one message I am understanding. I am working as a social worker/ special Ed zoom instructor 60/70 + hrs. Some of my friends here have passed away, gotten sick, my children have lost their jobs, community members isolated and depressed.. all of these things so big but I can’t control this I know. I am watching your Bruderhof community videos as a guide. How God speaks thru you is amazing! I feel calm and well equipped to service my community and finding ways to self care with the natural resources and beauty around me. So Thank You so much for these treasures and teachings! I am so appreciative!!! and Happy New Year 2021!!❤️🙏🏽❤️💐❤️🙏🏽

[dawnpetras]

thanks again laura for more wonderful food for thought!!!!

[unathleticutd]

very interesting and thought provoking video I felt Gods presence listening to you Laura thanks for the share

[wangmary]

Watching your video is just like breathing fesh air from clean and shiny forest! You never know how lucky you are: you have the ancestors having faith in Jesus, which makes you avoid so many worldly trapping pits sticky and smelly. God bless you!

[smde]

God has given each of us a life and freedom to learn three (3) very important things. (1) Who we are. (2) Who HE is and (3) To see others as important as ourselves. We must learn the first thing before we can really move on to # 2 & 3. If we are honest we learn of our need and inability and utter dependence on HIM and after being helped, healed and converted by HIM we can then reach out to others. It is a journey and along the path of that journey of discovery HE invites others to help us and share about HIM. HE does the work, we just have faith and sometimes HE may allow us to witness the work that HE is doing in the lives of others. This is the great adventure.

[larryfroot]

I can't help but ask my teddy bear why my parents settled for the most extreme, fundamentalist form of Christianity (if one can even call it that) rather than anything far more reasoned, thoughtful and kind.

I grew up around, and with, exorcisms, book burnings, body and room searches for "unchristian material" and a degree of constant pressure to conform to this dysfunction that warped and undermined all familial ties.

My poor brother, being schizophrenic had it worse. Denied medication and made to endure exorcisms, he was eventually committed to a psychiactric ward after hacking some of his toes off with a knife. In the kitchen. I was 12.

Please do excuse the vivid and awful picture this paints. But it just shows the end result of such fanaticism.

Having grown up, year in, year out with these intolerable pressures, my developing brain became shaped and formed by CPTSD. Complex post traumatic stress disorder. Although, of course, all trauma is complex. A better way of thinking about it is compounded trauma inflicted over a period of time with no hope of escape.

Anyways...

I fled any form of Christianity because all of it was so triggering. By triggering I do not refer to being upset. But of finding myself curled up and biting my arm in a state of both extreme stress and dissociation.

Only in the last few years have I begun to slowly accept that Christians, and Christianity do not want to harm me even more.

Although from the outside it may look as if I have rejected Christian belief, that is a cursory conclusion arising from a cursory glance.

I have come to be highly suspect of belief. I have seen people driven to deeds that can only be described as insane due to beliefs. My parents made me eat my meals in front of pictures of starving children because they believed this would make me grateful.

In later life, then, I sought something greater, deeper and more profound than belief. I found it, in large part, in values.

After all, what are beliefs in comparison to values? What do we treasure more? That which we believe, or that which we value? What tells the world more about us? What we believe, or what we value?

So I have tried to keep true to values that happen to have resonance with Christianity. Especially the value of forgiveness. Understandably, given the life long trauma that CPTSD is.

I have, on rare occasion, sat in churches for x, y or z and found myself dissociating into a state of utter unreality to escape the associations all around me.

But I would be prepared to sit with the Bruderhof.

Please do forgive my verbosity on the matter. I rarely speak of the roots of my illness. But then, I have never before come across Christianity that enshrines and expresses it's values in daily life through intentioned community.

May you all go from strength to strength.

[delphinium]

The Bruderhof with the Sacraments and beliefs of the Catholic Church would suit me fine! Just love Laura with her strong faith, intelligent, gentle spirit.

[unathleticutd]

wish there was a way that your possitivity could be bottled up and posted to the Southampton (UK) Laura, it would be worth more than money can buy !!!

[markmead]

Hello Laura,
First let me say I enjoy your videos immensely. I also enjoy the proper way you speak and enunciate without inserting “like” or “ahh” into every sentence. My question is this. I am a very private person, like quiet and my time alone to think, read and create. How does my type of personality work in a community environment?

[kvk]

Individualism is highly over rated and I believe it decreases our ability to experience compassion for others.

[bayreuth]

The modern concept of freedom consists in the reduction of it to the act of choice. One is free to the extent that one can choose. The ancient concept of freedom consists in the liberation of our essential nature to its proper end, which, ultimately, is God. The service of God is perfect freedom, as Augustine once said. The modern notion of freedom leads to triviality and is ideal for a capitalist economy; furthermore it can potentially lead to some very dark places, such as the Nazis triumph of the will. The ancient concept of freedom can lead to a life in harmony with our own deepest natures and therefore with God.