it is time to reflect

Tomorrow, I move into my new home. A home that has widely been anticipated for over the last two months. A home that initially was not my first choice, but which has become my salvation. A respite from the rigors of displacement, and more than anything else, a real lesson learned. Now is the time to reflect on what the last two months of displacement, and the prior two months of uncertainty have borne.

I have written before on the subject of intentional community, back when a group of students and I were hoping to practice living and loving together. Well, our group put our guaranteed housing on the line and went for it, house hunting and hoping, sacrificing the security of our dorms for the promise of family living. Each of us held a share of the dream of living together as brothers and sisters would live, learning from one another in daily interaction and give and take, and we gave our vision everything we had. In the end, however, it wasn't our time, and we jointly decided not to continue to pursue our project after the spring semester began.

For me, as I'm sure for the others, this was a major loss. I originally experienced it as something of a death. Isn't the loss of an ideal, an acceptance of something less than what we know we are meant for, akin to a part of ourselves dying which cannot be revived? We had all been thinking and dreaming about this for quite some time, some even longer than others, and I had spent time since last summer in contemplation of the ways this would work and what it could become. I had grown so attached to the idea I could not contemplate it's failure until failure was moments away. I had no reasonable contingency plan, and I wanted no contingency situation. So when we had to move on, away from what we had seen ourselves doing in this home, I almost could not. At this point, much of my belongings were stored illicitly in closets and furrowed in storage units, I had already spent an entire week commuting from a friend's home twenty miles from school and work (which translates to a 50 minute commute during the work week), and I was beginning to run shy of the meager rations of shampoo and toothpaste I had determined would see me through my period of displacement. I felt the loss of our communal dream, and I felt untethered, unconnected to anyplace I could consider home.

But in that place of loss, I found a place of belonging. My old friend Na used to say that God uses the broken things best; it's my most beloved lesson from college, the infancy of my Christian life. And it is still true. When you think you're whole and you don't need God, you're not. But when you know you're broken and turn to God for what you lack, that is where you can find your strength again. That is when you become yourself.

I was taken in, by friends. Friends who had to sacrifice to take me in, friends who were inconvenienced by my presence but who did it anyway. Friends who put up with my complaining, my new late hours, with the things that went missing from their refrigerators. And my belongings, which I've all but forgotten I have-- they have been stored in corners of friend's dorm rooms, in places where their things ought to be stored instead. My coworkers have looked past the boxes behind my desk at the office, and friends have overlooked the piles and stacks of possessions in my car (with the exception of a few well-intentioned jokes about the 7-Eleven on wheels). Friends have fed me, picked things up from the grocery store for me, lent me clothes, shoes, laundry detergent, closet space. I cannot remember a time when I've lived with less, or a time when I've felt like I still had so much.

The lesson here is that faithfulness does pay off. Perhaps not in the ways that you think it will; perhaps you still won't get your way. You might have to give up dreams you had, but new ones will grow, and you'll be glad you didn't let go of what you felt you were called to. I wouldn't ever have been in my displaced predicament if I hadn't believed enough in the idea of the intentional community to sacrifice something for it. But I would never have felt the love I have experienced, or understand how grateful I should be, always, if it weren't for that, either. And just because we end up somewhere unexpected doesn't mean that it isn't as worthwhile as where we hoped we'd rest.

This all has lent to my focus during the season of Lent. Because, while overall I was faithful to the calling of intentional community I felt, I have a tendency to be less faithful than I ought. I second guess myself and my unconventional desires and ideas, and more often than not, I am successful in talking myself out of doing things that might be meaningful to me if others might notice. I behave in a way that will never draw attention to myself. And so I am ignored.

This has been most evident in my recent decision to continue to pursue something I refused to recognize that I should not have pursued. In retrospect, I knew that I should let it be, I KNEW I should. But I was so curious and so strong-willed that I refused to acknowledge what I knew was the answer to prayers of uncertainty. I ignored myself when my thoughts began to drift towards the truth that I knew God was revealing to me. Which sounds completely flighty and ridiculous and yet I have no other words to explain how you know something is the right thing for you when there is no clear right or wrong.

So I felt admonished at the start of Lent in reading of Jesus' baptism-- that which I have come to understand each Christian participates in as a symbolic act of forsaking old ways and committing to a life in which we do our best to follow the path that God leads us toward. An act the Israelites could have participated in, (of course, not before Christ) if they could have renounced their selfish ways. But the Israelites who wandered in the desert, who felt they had nothing, but whose every need was seen to by the provision of God-- still they complained they had nothing. I was an Israelite, too. I felt I had nothing, yet are not all my needs met? How can I possibly continue to complain, especially since I have already taken on that symbolic act of baptism? I have already forsaken the old ways of faithlessness, haven't I?

So I needed a new symbolic act, a rebaptism if you will, to signify my commitment not only to faithfulness in Lent, but to renew my committment to follow where God leads and as an affirmation that I will try better to listen to that voice inside myself in future. I needed a way to listen more to the things I talk myself out of doing, and the things I commit to out of obligation. With this new idea of follow-through in mind, and an understanding that Christians are called also to lead a defiant life, to live in ways which by their very nature draw attention to them from the world they live in-- I committed to following through on the next thing I might have talked myself out of. It just so happens that the next thing I might have talked myself out of was piercing my nose. So instead of convincing myself it was unprofessional, painful, a waste of money, stupid to do alone, or so outrageous as to be disregarded with no other foundation-- well I didn't. I said yes. And then I went and did it.

So that I have a frequent reminder to say yes when I might automatically say no, so that I might also remember that my actions and deeds are ones that will frequently call attention for their radical nature if they are truly in the spirit of Christ, and so that I close this period of my life in which I have lived-- and survived-- on the kindness of friends who remind me to always be faithful even if it turns out in ways I might not have guessed, I have pierced my nose.

Though you might never guess just by looking at me. And which goes to show that faith will lead you places you might never have imagined. Thanks for bringing it all back 'round, God.