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?????

My "new" church

It's finals week at my school, and I really should be doing lots of work, writing papers, and studying right now, but I'm so burned out, and I just want to write something for myself right now.

I'm moving back home on Friday for four months. I remember this time last year. I was exhausted and burned out like I am now, and just wanted to relax. The problem was I had in a sense "run away" from my home town a year early, skipped my senior year of high school, because I had to get away from everything that had happened with my church. Two years ago, my family was still undergoing a lawsuit via my oh-so-lovely narcicistic pastor, the people from my church treated my parents like shit but were sickly sweet to me (as though I was too young to know what was going on or to draw conclusions about things on my own), and I felt like I was suffocating. I went a very small Christian school that was overflowing with either people from my exchurch or people who knew people from my exchurch. At that point, I was so bitter against institutionalized religion and churches, and the Christian school did nothing to help with their intense legalism. I applied to college a year early, minus the high school diploma or GED entirely, and got accepted to a decent private college with almost half the tuition covered in academic scholarshihp and my teachers and principles told me I was doing the "wrong thing, going against God's will for my life and making a mistake." I was done with them at that point. I left that institution as well, hurt and disappointed in the Christians I had trusted for so long.

I know now that I could not be here if it's not what God wanted for me. I have excelled where I'm at now, and I'm doing what I really want to do.

Going back home last summer was hard. The only job I could get meant spending a lot of time waiting on and serving the churchies from my XC (exchurch), and I had to work with one of the students (the son of an elder) as well. I was miserable and depressed and angry. My parents continued their habit of dumping everything on me: their frustrations about the lawsuit, their depression at the loss of so many friends, my dad's pain over the loss of his closest friends. They told me what people were still saying, what people thought we should do. Told me that Jack, an elder who I trusted so much, and who even stood by us through a lot, thought we were doing something almost evil by having left the church and holding a very small Bible study in our home. I was told I needed to get back into a church, "find God again", whatever the hell that means.

I started pulling away from everything and everyone. By the end of the summer, I had a few fights with my parents, explained a lot to them about who I am now and where I'm coming from, and things got better. Regardless, going back again is still stressful and I'm scared.

Completely honesty here: I'm a Bad Christian. I've done a lot of things I know I probably shouldn't have done since I left my church and school and hometown. I don't go to church and don't want to. I don't participate in any kind of Bible study or Christian group. I smoke. I drink. I lost my virginity to a guy who didn't love me then and still doesn't, I swear quite a bit. I refuse to say that this stuff doesn't need to change. I refuse to say that I didn't make mistakes and that I don't regret a lot of it.

But I flat out, completely, 100% refuse to say that I do not have a relationship with the God I've discovered since I left. This God guy, what I've discovered about him is that he's always there. He's been there when I've blackout from all the vodka, he was there when I crawled into bed with the wrong man, he was there when I sat on the stoop of my dorm in the middle of the night and asked "where are you?", he's here with me now. And somehow, I don't know how, but I think he likes me.

I used to hide behind this "good Christian girl" image, and oh, was I ever the good Christian girl. Bible cover and promise wring in tote all the time, I didn't do anything wrong on the surface. I wasn't me. I wasn't being true to myself. I was doing everything I was told I was supposed to do. I was "having visions" and saying the right prayers and being thankful and all, but it wasn't me at all. I had this fake like relationship with him that wasn't honest. Deep down, I was angry, especially between the ages of 15-um, now. I had this ugly, ugly anger inside me, stemming from all these "you should do this, pray like that, God won't like you if you do this, he'll be angry if you do that", all this goddamn hypocracy. I couldn't handle it.

Now, still uninvolved in any kind of organized group that meets to talk about God at all, I think my relationship with him is possibly more real than ever, even if it is just kind of starting out again.

I think in a way, maybe I was lukier than my parents through all of this. I had to grow up faster than I should have, had to leave a year early (I'll never forget my dad on the phone with an elder who finally realized we did nothing wrong; the guy asked my dad what he could do to make it better, and my dad said "give me that year with my daughter back;" break my heart), had to deal with adult situations at a young age that shouldn't have been put on my plate. I should be angry, I should be better, hell, I should be fucked up.

But I'm 19 years old and I'm free. The bondage that was my church, those chains are off my hands, and everytime someone tries to slap them back on, they won't stick. Yeah, I'm still bitter, and it's hard to move on, but I'm still free from the lies. I know that I don't have to be who I used to be to be loved or even liked by this Godguy I know now. I don't have to pretend.

And I think I've finally figured out what all the "rules" I was taught in church were all about. The "no sex, drugs, alcohol, etcetcetc," I don't think it's really about this superstitious ''God won't love you anymore" or "you'll just make him angry" thing anymore. I don't think it's about "do better, try harder." It's more about me. Ok, that sounds selfish, I know. But I think Godguy was just trying to keep me safe.

Cuz the sex is great, but right now, I'm alone, and since I've had that, I feel like I lack that more than ever. If fulfills and feels great at the time, and it feels great as long as your with the person. But no long term committment means lots of pain. It means being alone for the bad shit that comes with sex, like the pregnancy test you have to have your friend help you pick up cuz you're boyfriend is out of the picture. It means seeing someone and hurting, because they knew you more intimately than anyone ever has, and now he's knowing someone else that intimately, and you're alone.

And the alcohol -- while, again, fun at the time -- just makes you sick and depressed the next morning. It means pictures you don't remember being taken and people you don't remember meeting or kissing or dancing with.

And the drugs just become another thing to be dependent on. Another replacement for all the bad shit you went through before.

The smoking just replaced the cutting and makes me cough.

And I know I was told all this, and maybe I just wasn't listening at the time. But it was so wrapped up in the shoulds and shouldn'ts of my hypocritical Christian culture that I hated the rules. Cuz the same people who were telling me I shouldn't do it because God said I shouldn't were the same people who were cheating on their spouses and relying on that bottle of whisky to get through the day. And the guy who told my parents how to raise their children, it was his daughter who barricaded herself in a building after running away and tried to hurt herself and would only let me in.

So, yes, I learned all this the hard way, and I will never claim to be a perfect Christian or person, and hell, I'm still trying to figure stuff out right now, like how to give up new addictions, and what to do now that the boyfriend is calling again. I've made mistakes and I'm dealing with the consequences.

But I am free. Really I am. The friends I have found are some of the coolest people I know. And none of them is perfect. We're all pretty fucked up. But most of them know this Godguy in some way, even if they don't call him by the same name I do (what does a name matter?) and their honest with themselves and with him about who they are, about their hurts and pains.

And it is here that I've found my church. No small group needed, no structure at all. Nothing organized. Just the people God has led into my life for the moment, and honesty, and him. I realize in two more years, when college is over, I may lose all of that and be back at square one with church.

But for now, this is all I need.