Judgmental Much? Yep.

So a couple weeks ago I had occasion to be in a gated community. It was weird. I hadn't realized ahead of time that our destination was inside a gatehouse, with an actual person who wanted to know our names and destination. (She did not, however, seem to have a list to cross-check us with, so the whole thing seemed pretty bogus with regard to actual security.) I suppose I still would have gone, even if I had known.

It's not like we were driving around the neighborhood all night, so mostly, I wasn't thinking about it. But as we were leaving, I had a weird thought: "It is actually, I suppose, kind of pretty in here."

And then it occurred to me that most people probably noticed that right away. But I was so freaked out by the highly manicured, manipulated and privilege-indulgent aspect of the whole thing that the "beauty" of the place sort of repulsed me mostly. For that quick second, I set it aside and could see that the little lake and the wooded hills and bushes were attractive. And that, if you lived in this rather large city, it might be nice to have an oasis that was at least natural-seeming. But there is no way I could get around the gated community ickiness of it to actually want to spend time there myself.

I have many other thoughts about this experience, not the least of which are related to the fact that it was a clergy Christmas party I was attending, which means I am standing in judgment of some of my colleagues who live there.

It seems hard to me to reconcile being a Christian with living in a gated community. Is that harsh? Maybe. Does that mean it's not true? No. The thing is__where someone lives is such a huge aspect of their life, that it seems almost impossible to me to have that conversation in a productive way with someone I have such huge philosophical differences.

And it's not like there are ways in which I do not live a simple, economically-indulgent life, so clearly, I am wading in the waters of hypocrisy. Our lines are all in different places. But sometimes they need to be drawn clearly. Don't they?