this semester

Tomorrow I will be going to school to watch a movie in my last exam session. I recently found sidewalk chalk too, so I'm trying to think of a challenging quote to draw on the sidewalk on campus before I leave for the summer.

Debbie just returned from Uganda the other day, and we spent 6 hours just talking. We walked around the city, drank tea, and just sat and talked for 6 hours. Through talking, I realized why I have felt so out of place this semester.

Earlier, I called myself an idealist, and even though this is true, I must also call myself a realist. It is not a dualist, dichotomized, or polarized issue. I simply believe that the reality is that God has called us to advance His Kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven. This is both ideal and possible. It has been promised to us (though bad theology has led to a popular skewed eschatological view that the earth is supposed to become a horrible place and then violent Jesus will boom in the clouds and wipe out the human race). I believe God has called us to the impossible. He'd be irrelevant if there was not that calling.

We live in an age where the Sermon on the Mount is considered to be this thing Jesus spoke only to prove that we can't can't achieve it. Not so. We can achieve it, but the more we refuse to try, the more we separate our belief from our practice/ethics. The more we lock ourselves out of the house of the Lord of Hosts.

Morgan Lee and I skyped today and talked about pragmatism vs. idealism. We talked in terms of economics. She is a very intelligent girl, and I can't wait to hear more about her experiences this semester in China, because she is tossing around ideas of whether we're called to be "practical" or called to do things impossible.

All of this is a rabbit-trail rambling to say that I have felt really separated from people at Messiah College, because I think idealism and realism can be wedded as one. Communism nor free enterprise can exist alone. Rather, individual gifts and talents (free enterprise) should be utilized for the good of the whole (commun(al)ism). Maybe I'm just on an eastern nondualism kick but I don't think we need to choose "one or the other" as much as we do.

Some people call me a flaming liberal and others call me a conservative. On a polarized campus, this leaves you with less friends than you've remembered. Radicalism has no room for a giant family, only others that have seen the Kingdom. And as I've often said, we are few (and must appeal to our brothers and sisters).

Seriously. I actually think that conservatism and liberalism can be united. Liberation is an idea that has been conserved through minority (and often afflicted) believers since the Early Church.

My circle of friends has shifted, partly due to physical space/geography and partly due to convictions. Life gets tougher when you keep seeking Jesus. When you keep seeking your individual gifts and, to use Morgan's word, when your "motive" is selfless (despite your realization that you can exploit your own gifts to benefit just yourself).

So this is what it is, huh God? You start revealing yourself to me, and I become isolated? I know, I asked for it. About 6 months ago. I said I was ready. Ha....

This semester I've completely missed communication with people I would've previously hung out with nonstop. It's just hard to reconnect. The people that "get it" seem to be the ones that are most blown off as either sinners or pricks or something. Consequently, I've often been left stranded in this apartment writing papers until the wee hours of the morning, completely lonely. Wanting some kind of community besides half-naked girls on my computer screen. Wanting something real and actually fulfilling. In this place, it is just hard to find. Community is "intentional" when it does exist, and institutional when it pretends to exist.

It's kind of a shame that my circle of friends is leaning more toward Messiah staff than Messiah students. I have some great mentors, but where are my peers? Is this bikini girl doing better than they are? I'm feeling more community in the company of books about historical anarchists and impoverished peacebuilders than I am in these halls, these streets. And they all have said it's a lonely road, one of torture, but of no regrets (because Truth is more compelling than entertainment).

I speak with strong language on purpose. I really don't mean to criticize everyone. I have fellow subversives. Students my age dissatisfied with appealing through the state and fed up with the apathy surrounding them. We all have yet to be the Kingdom; we have only seen it and watered its seeds.

This post is meant to be a mourning. A cry of despair that I am too tired from being passed off as a freak. I'm going to get attacked for being self-righteous here (nothing new). Or having some egotistical revelation or something. It's cool, have at me. As long as you too speak your mind. As long as you too aren't trying to achieve groupthink. And when you do speak out and people say you're ridiculous, remember the Hebrew prophets. You have become one with them.

Hopefully there will be some goodies in the campus dumpsters tomorrow as people move out of dorms!

upon turning 18, american males must register for selective service

front side of index card-

I will no longer be a part of the selective service system. Not only do I believe all violence to be inherently wrong, but I especially believe that any self-proclaimed "Christian nation" cannot be at war. Violence is a perversion of Christ's teachings to love enemies. If you are a professing follower of Jesus, I urge you to resign your position which has perpetuated injustice across the globe, particularly in the Middle East, as well as in our own nation. Let peace reign.


back side-

From:
PHIL WILMOT
(Hanover/Harrisburg, PA)
signature
contact: pw1170@messiah.edu









Feel free to copy/paste to a letter and mail to the US Selective Service at:

Selective Service System
Data Management Center
P.O. Box 94638
Palatine, IL 60094-4638

upward mobility through the generations

I am convinced that if the world loved God more, there would be more farmers.

People all over the world started out as agriculturalists at the primal level. Even in the Americas, natives had crops and harvested and directly interacted with their food sources. Before they ate the food, they tilled the ground, planted, and harvested. There was so much labor behind a single grain of corn, a single berry.

Today I go to the grocery store and I pick out what I like. I unwrap it from the wrapper and eat it. There is no preparation. I am commended for my ability to purchase this food, because I "worked long hours to be able to obtain the food."

In reality, I work from my computer. Most of my work is responding to emails from my apartment. It can be a headache, but really, it's pretty low-stress and labor-limited.

When Europeans arrived in Jamestown, they spent too much time playing bowling in the streets and suffered from lack of food. They could've just farmed. Instead they wasted time going out on adventures and all that.

This attitude of "less work, more pay" has been passed down through the generations. Unions originally formed to do righteous, awesome things. Now they sometimes exploit their power. Minimum wage keeps increasing.

Yet, few of us do sustainable jobs. The amount of farmers in our country has gone from 99% to about 2%. These farmers are even subsidized by the government, which really harms foreign competitors and systematically keeps people around the globe, the real hard workers, in poverty.

Well this summer, I really want to dig. Actually, I don't really want to, because I'm told that it is a demeaning job. It's been indirectly pounded into me. My culture says that a reputable person is not a farmer. It's for hillbillies. Yet it is probably one of the most revolutionary and helpful acts a human being can do. We complain about immigrants coming in to do migrant agriculture in America, yet we sit behind desks and get paid for browsing the web. Getting paid for that sounds more irrational than giving physical labor to people that will actually do it.

I want not just to taste my food, but to know it. I want to truly believe that work is freedom, as radicals of the past have claimed. But I cannot believe this until I become it. Just because I'm living in a society that has become so upwardly mobile through the generations does not mean that I should conform to the pattern of that society. Perhaps less pay and more work is the path to freedom.

why i am an idealist

"Be realistic, Phil"

The moment we are realistic is the moment that we announce God is nothing.

The moment we fail to admit we are called to the impossible is the moment we refuse to live for the Kingdom of God.

I am an idealist because I am unwilling to settle for less.

Because "on earth as it is in heaven" implies risk, suffering, and persecution for the Kingdom to come.

By not being idealist, we, in fact, renounce our faith entirely.

Do you believe?

Do you believe God can do great things (or small things with great love) through you? He did so with a poor refugee outcast who was trampled by the pious and seemingly good citizens of the world. Then he said we would do even greater things than Him.

The age of apathy. My generation is the most apathetic. Yet bright hope shines from the extremely small minority who actually believe. We are few. Most Christians do not qualify.

i thought i made a post recently....

....but apparently it never went through. It was about how Protestants replace Jesus with the Bible, and while doing so, accuse their Catholic counterparts of worshiping Mary and the Saints, when in fact those who do worship Mary/saints are not staying true to the Catholic faith. I'm upset with my Protestant upbringing because it taught me that the Bible was holy (only God can be holy). And I didn't hear much about Jesus: more from St. Paul than anything (yet we continue to accuse those Catholics of being the ones worshiping the saints). My long, drawn-out complaint about the ambiguity and inconsistency of the Protestant schism has been, thankfully for you, reduced to this mere paragraph.

So I'll leave it at that and continue on just to apologize for not posting in a long time. Suzan's passport still has not been processed (and hence, neither has she completed the visa process). So I'm going to go to Uganda for the summer instead of her coming here. It's going to be great - sleeping and waking with the sun, visiting neighbors and strangers and old friends. All of those fantastic things. It will help my body and emotions cover from a semester of straining unrest. Oh, not to mention, I'm going to see Suzan. That's not just the icing on the cake. It is the cake. I will stay with her family and finally get to see her village of Oyam.

i looked back in time

Yesterday was so beautiful outside, and I wanted to take my camera on a walk with my friend Bianca to celebrate the temperature.

I wanted to explore the seemingly abandoned train station areas. First we had to pass through a fence that had been taken down at one spot to allow us to trespass into the fake suburban community downtown.

After we walked through the storybook neighborhood, we were back into the real world and crossed a few roads to get to an area of one color: grey. The endless stones on the ground were grey. The old trains and industrial machines were grey. Even the banner of capitalism (American flag) seemed grey to me. The black bird bathing in the toxic rain puddle, however, seemed to Bianca to appear as bright as day itself.

We walked onward, snapping shots of the ancient concrete jungle. Eventually we got to a place under the highway overpass. Without noticing, I almost stepped on a sleeping man who had garbage scattered all around him. Also scattered were bright jelly beans which sprinkled color all over the stone ground.

I needed to pee, and I saw a path, so I told Bianca to wait while I did my business. I went ahead up the path and peed in the bushes. When I finished, I looked up and saw (while not wearing my glasses) old tattered clothes and other colors amidst the trees ahead. I scurried back to Bianca and told her to follow me. I wanted to see what was ahead. As we walked closer it became apparent that these colors were tents that had been erected beneath the brush of the highway. A dog began to bark, which I perceived to be a threat (though later Bianca would tell me the dog was actually excitedly wagging its tail). Someone who I thought was a long-haired man (Bianca told me later it was a female) stepped outside the bushes and stared at us from afar. I stared back, in shock, not knowing how to act.

I was staring back into another world of long ago. I had been here, or dreamt this before. It seemed like minutes before I finally waved. The figure waved back. I paused and awkwardly shouted, "Hello," but the absent response left me pacing back and forth, deciding whether it would be more offensive to welcome myself to the tents or to turn around and leave: a lose-lose situation.

Bianca also looked uncomfortable and we turned around to leave, though something in my conscience didn't like that. Later Bianca said, "That's where Jesus would've gone, you know. The margins of society."

Bianca also remember the childhood dream of living adventurously in a tent, or perhaps a treehouse. I recalled my own similar, early fantasies. I do not know why we turned around, nor do I know why my inner being wants me to return and dwell with those people.

There was recently a shooting in another part of town: Allison Hill - the "pocket of poverty" as local clergy describe it. Katie and I walked to St. Francis of Assisi Cathedral at noon today for their Good Friday prayer walk, where we were to pass by the murder site (though I don't remember that part). We walked around south Allison Hill, stopping at various points to pray, do liturgy, kneel before the cross we carried, etc. As we walked onward, we sang, alternating between English and Spanish, as locals gathered on porches to perplex at our passing.

I had never done a non-Protestant Holy Week, but Katie helped me realize why I enjoyed the Catholic way. Catholics emphasize Christ's suffering so heavily. It's true, there is a much longer story of suffering than there is victory, in terms of scripture. Yes, suffering is temporary and joy eternal, but the word passion comes from the Passion of Christ - his suffering, his murdering, his slaughter. These Franciscans do something great by not cheapening Christ's affliction - they make His resurrection actually worth something.

Walking around the city, hearing about pain the whole time (until the final station) was difficult, but the truth is, it was still a nice day outside. My only question is: how long must the tent city suffer before it reaches its rightful atonement? Will the Church see its call, or will we merely wait for the apocalypse?

palm sunday

"April 2, 1944, was Palm Sunday. It was a hazy, still day in San Salvador, which had been abandoned by many families seeking fresh breezes on the coast or at summer places outside the capital....Military planes were flying low, barely above their houses."

The struggle of the rural poor Salvadorans, and others of the non-elite class, to overthrow General Martinez, the oppressive president of the country, was advancing violently. Radio stations and telegraph offices had been seized. Rebels were already drinking to a victory they had not yet won.

But the powerful and oppressive government used their shear strength to prevail. The violent uprising was only a tiny obstacle for the regime. Martinez was capable of defeating anyone militarily.

So Salvadoran university students had to come up with a better plan of action, a force more powerful than violent rebellion. They stopped going to class and ceased reporting to work. They convinced shop owners to close down and gathered funds to support those on strike. There were no guns, and this movement is the one which removed Martinez from power.

Just as Jesus rode in on a humble donkey, prepared to suffer, the oppressed of El Salvador also refused to take up arms, repeating the legacy of the King who ruled by his affliction. By using weapons not of this world, they conquered evil. Fully equipped with palm branches and the most humble of war horses.