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!
Monday, May 10, 2010
Saturday, May 8, 2010
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
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
Sunday, May 2, 2010
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.
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.
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