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!