I interviewed Bren Dubay who is the Director of Koinonia Farm in Americus, Georgia. Koinonia is an “Intentional Christian Community,” with people living and working together on a 573-acre pecan farm. (Koinonia was started by the late author Clarence Jordan, who had Blacks and Whites living and working together on the farm as early as the mid-1940s in a highly segregated South. It became the “backwater version of Montgomery, Alabama” in the height of the Civil Rights Movement. And Jordan went on to write the “Cotton Patch” series, a collection of modern day gritty, southern interpretations of the Bible.) Bren Dubay, a writer herself, was the “Playwrite in Residence” at Rice University. Several years ago, she came to Koinonia for a visit and got hooked on the spiritual ethos of the place. “There’s a sacredness here,” she said… And there is a rythm. Each day Koinonia members meet for morning devotional in an old chapel on the grounds, then disperse for various jobs around the farm. A bell sounds for 10:30 a.m., 3:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. prayer. The community eats noon meal together, followed by another devotional as one of the members (it rotates) shares some of their own personal takes on spirituality (a reading, some personal thoughts, a prayer). The work and prayer, for the most part, are at a slow, steady pace — with members taking the time to regularly stop, chat. By contrast, Bren notes that society at large these days seems tremendously accelerated as we “fill up on consumerism, work, activities…” Bren said to live in community is to live part of the gospel message. “God is in community,” she said. Bren, who also is a trained spiritual advisor, spends her days in prayer, talking to community members about spiritual matters, helping formulate ongoing vision for the community, handling business matters, with, again, one eye always on the spiritual mission of Koinonia… Conversely, she said often her CEO counterparts out in the world, if they have a spiritual life, will often practice it in a sort of “extra-curricular” fashion. That is, they’ll (for instance) go to church on Sunday, but not take much, if any, spirituality into the work place on Monday. Bren said that Koinonia’s over-arching vision is to “live Christianity as oulined by Jesus.” And she added to live it that way is inherently to be: “radical.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I interviewed Bren Dubay who is the Director of Koinonia Farm in Americus, Georgia. Koinonia is an “Intentional Christian Community,” with people living and working together on a 573-acre pecan farm. (Koinonia was started by the late author Clarence Jordan, …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}