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?????

Sex, Drugs, Alcohol vs. Church, Bibles, and Sunday School

I was out driving around town the other day, just cuz I needed to get out and away, and I just got to thinking about life. I have this boyfriend/whatever you want to call him who I've been a little on and off with lately. He tells me not to think so much. I thought about that. And I think I don't want to be with someone who doesn't want me to think.

Anyway, I was thinking about how the other day, I was frustrated and venting to my roomate, Mary, about how a friend of mine is trying to drag me back to church. She even went as far as to ask me when I was slightly intoxicated one weekend and keeps coming back with "You promised you'd go next week." Some of my friends treat me like I'm this vile person since I've left the institution of the church. Honestly, though I'm coming to terms that I have not made the best decisions the past few yeasr, I feel freer now that I'm out of the church than I ever have.

So I was venting to Mary, and I was trying to justify my frustration with Jenna, and I said something like, "Honestly, it's not like I'm this terrible sinner who needs to find god and cleanse myself, it's not like I'm . . . " And I was quiet for a second. So Mary graciously chimed in, "You're not what? Drinking, smoking, and having sex?" We both kinda laughed at the irony.

But it really got me thinking . . . I was so bitter, so incredibly angry when I left my church, I started thinking everything they ever told me was bullshit. And while they denounced this on the pulpit, as a student, I was beaten over the head with the idea of "do better, try harder." It was like this constant game of trying to excel to the next level, of being this perfect little Christian girl. Those friends of mine who were in my senior high youth group with me at the time shit went down, we've all "rebelled" in some way or another against this idea. I myself rejected this idea that I had to be a better person and do better things in order to be a Christian or have faith. I killed the god I knew, and started believing in a God who I think loves me anyway, who I think, looking back, was there with me everytime I made poor decisions, as much as he's been there when I've made good decisions. I think my friends and I may have hit on something, but I think we're still missing something pretty big too.

Because all the shit we do right now, the sex, the drugs, the smoking, the drinking, the boys -- it's all trying to fill a gap that was left behind in the "do better, try harder." I don't look at myself and think I'm this God-aweful person for what I've done -- though I realize I've made a lot of mistakes and very poor, possibly dangerous decisions. I don't think I'm going to hell for getting drunk, for wanting to feel a man's body pressed against my own, for destroying my body in all the ways I have . . . I think it was "wrong" (god, i hate that word) because I think all I've been doing is trying to fill a gap, and emptiness I struggle with. I used to fill that emptiness with "good deeds" or church or the bible, or this really selfcentered prayer I was taught. I'm not sure what was more wrong -- filling this hole with sex and drugs and alcohol, or filling it with these pharacitical ideas that I was a better christian than other people because I didn't do these things.

I'd write more, and continue these thoughts, but I'm halfway to being late to class. I'll come back to this. But in conclusion, I think I'm really starting on this journey now back to healing, or back to me.