Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Community Ramblings

I'm currently trying to improve my grammatical skills. As an English major, I'm embarrassed to admit that I cannot define for you what the hell a gerund is, and though I can construct a sentence alright (at least to my liking), it would take me a few minutes to figure out what the direct object is, or what a present participle is. Verbs, adjective, adverbs, nouns, subjects, etc . . . those parts of speech, I have down. But the details, the little nuances of the written language that I find incredibly annoying to learn -- I'm at a loss. So, I'm breaking out the freshman-year English composition book and starting from scratch here.

Or at least that was what I was doing before I started blogging (what a wonderful way to procrastinate and waste more time, this Blogger world).

Ok, so I'm new to the whole blogging thing, and while I started this for the purposes of recording my thoughts on faith, I admit to not really doing much of that. Maybe it's because I'm in one of those moods I get in when I come home for summer break: back in my home town, away from the amazing communal life of college, and I feel like I'm missing something. My parents, as much as I love them, drive me up a wall with their conversations about God and the emerging church and what not, and their attempts to find something, some kind of spiritual group or something.

Just the other day, my mom was going on about a family we're friends with who left the church when we did. They have three children -- their eldest is my age (19) and the two youngest are in middle school. They struggle with the youngest two much more than the eldest and (very possibly rigtfully so) believe it is because the kids have nothing to teach them morals outside of their home -- no youth group, no church, no sunday school, not many adult Christians who can mentor them, and a public school known for troublesome kids. Their parents and mine and others like mine complain (ok, maybe that word is too strong) discuss how it's not fair that the kids have nothing like that. Alright, fine and good, yeah, the church we were all apart of sure as hell screwed us all over damn good as students. It would take many pages to describe in detail exactly how the foundation all of us students (junior high, highschool, early college) were taught to stand on was torn out from under our feet in one fell swoop. A lot of us were left to flop on the deck for a while, and some of us are still there, five years after the fact. But I'll be honest -- as much as our parents complain about how we have nothing, the only communities they've tried to reform have felt "adult-only" and pretty much left us kids out.

Alright, I'm realizing I may sound bitter here. I admit to being a little. However, I think this whole thing has afforded me an interesting opportunity in the long run. Here I am, at 19, and I'm free from the chains that used to bind me to organized religion. My parents, in their 50s, are just being freed from half a lifetime of this bondage, and the struggle shows. Their roots in the IC (institutionalized church) go much deeper than my own. I have the opportunity to "search for more" at a much younger age than they do. I am going to see a lot more change in the IC and possibly religion and even spirituality than my parents ever will.

So why don't I give a damn? Ok, argue that I obviously give a damn, or I wouldn't be writing about it. But I since I've left home, I haven't really felt the need to find a community again, not like I used to hunger for one. And I don't really feel the desire to go sing pretty praise and worship songs. Though not religious, I still consider myself very spiritual and Christian, and God has never ceased to be a part of my life. Have I lost my desire to be fed?

Little tangent here, but I swear it has a point. I've been reading other blogs lately, and I ended up linking to this one, written by a mom of little ones. She talks about community, and how we all really need to need it, but it's actually our society today that's kind of destroyed it in a lot of ways. No longer to we meet together in groups to perform daily, normal activities and live together and help each other like our ancestors did. In this way, we're different than any other culture or time. Communities of old were just natural. They just happened from the lifestyles of the people. Almost makes sense that trying to force a community doesn't work so well. Things fall apart, people stop showing up, it's not natural at all. A forced leadership develops, causing more problems than not, with one or a few people's being "in charge" or "in authority over" the others, which only adds to the force with which things will eventually fall apart.

This is going to sound like another tangent, but it all comes together, I swear. Since I started college, I've been a believer that campus life cannot POSSIBLY be healthy. Stick a bunch of us together right out of high school, give some ID's to buy alcohol, and give us nearly NO supervision -- chaos errupts all over the place. How could it not? Drugs and drunkness and pregnancies and abortions, etc.

BUT, though it isn't something that has occured naturally, campus life is probably one of the most communal things I could be a part of right now. Strip it of the drugs and alcohol and rampant sex, it breaks down to peers who live together, work together, eat together, play together, support each other, fight with each other, make up, advise, laugh, cry, and grow up together. And yes, we make mistakes together. But though I've made my mistakes, and I carry more scares on my heart now, I've also grown up more, loved more, and healed more with these people.

Is this why I'm not craving the community that was once falsely errected for me at my church and youth group? (And is it also why I'm somewhat miserable during the summer when I'm away from that tight knit group?) Maybe for now, this is what I needed -- I broke away from my IC, left my home town, and became a part of a community, and during this time, I've healed from most of the pain from the fall of my IC. I've grown and I've learned.

But two years and I'm out.

So, what the hell am I supposed to do then?????

1 comment:

nic.otine said...

Now here is where I come in and, whether it's thought out or not, state a simple thing that i thought while reading this.

wouldn't you say that most of the college community is forced as well? You get put in a room with someone you likely don't know, put into classrooms with people you don't know, and forced to eat and work and play and shower with these very people. one could argue that is very similar to a neighborhood where you cannot pick your neighbors, or a high school where you cannot pick your classmates or a place of employment where you, obviously, cannot pick your co-workers. but these are all separate things, all things that are not all lumped together as one big community.

i don't know, just a thought. =]