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Brigadoon: |
1) A mysterious, magical city appearing once every few hundred years. 2) a remote, unspoiled or idyllic place. 3) Shangri-la. |
What if I told you that paradise isn't as far away as you think?
On my page about Anarchism I talk about how
fiction can allow us to trace events through history by reading the perceptions
of those that write it. And on my page about Jungian
Shamanism I talk about the science of Mithraism and the process of
extracting reality from between the lines of figurative language.
Figuratively speaking, a Brigadoon--as described above--is a magical place that
exists for only a short time and then disappears. Realistically speaking,
however, if we take note of events such as The BurningMan Festival, The Rainbow Gathering, The Starwood Festival, The Wheatland Music
Festival and even large-scale re-enactments such as the The Pennsic Wars, The Civil War and Chuckwagon Cook-offs
could all be called Brigadoons: Settlements (some with their own zip
codes) which appear for a few days or a few weeks out of every year, creating a
temporary paradise where people are allowed to pursue a specific lifestyle
(even temporarily), and then disappear.
In fact, it could also be said that a Brigadoon could be found at any community
festival or tailgate party. Any place where large numbers of people accumulate
around a common idea--what I call Anarchy at work.
Brigadooning is the act of going from one Brigadoon to the other as
either a lifestyle or a hobby.
You don't have to look very hard to find such places, in fact, if you kept at
it you might actually be able to find enough of them to sustain you as
you move from one to another for any extended period of time--especially if you
work there as a merchant.
The open home and a wandering life is a major factor in leading a more creative
and challenging lifestyle. This ministry proposes to use brigadooning as a way
to piggy-back our group on to events like those listed above in order to
provide learning opportunities for our members and allow our artists,
performers and merchants to earn a steady income through Ministry functions.
By combining brigadooning with the creation of a sanctuary, we are able to able to provide a
home base for the ministry while at the same time wandering our lifestyle so
that we can gain new and challenging experiences and therefore pursue a more
artistic and creative way of life.
We are hoping to have an office to operate out of by March of 2005 and to have
enough camping equipment to begin brigadooning by August, so if you'd like to
be more involved please visit my Yahoo! Group at: