Ohello, dear world.
Everyone always says this is a tumultuous time of life. I wonder if they couldn't find a better way to describe it. Like, they could have said, your whole life will be completely revolutionized during this time, or, be prepared to withstand pressures, passions, problems, and pains that you've never come across before, that you may never experience again, yet which will redefine how you look at yourself, your world, and the people around you. I'm a terrible poet. However, were there a decent one to find, he would be the man for the job. Poet's have a way of taking complex ideas and making them simplistically beauitful, meaningful, and enagaging. I have a good friend, who is now a house-mate of mine, who is a math major. She is an incredible woman. She is fascinated by the interplay of poetry and math, and wishes to find some kind of harmony between the two. How cool is that?? She would be the kind of person who could take my ineptitude with language and find a way to express this complexity of emotions, commonly known as maturity and wisdom.
I think getting back into blogging may be good for me. Like the title implies, there is far too much that I cannot process without the aid of a page or a keyboard at my disposal. Fascinating fact - speaking to my boyfriend only last night, we both examined the idea that we need to be spurred into discussion of hard topics, and asked uncomfortable questions, in order to understand things we may not have known about ourselves. I shall digress here, then.
I found this in my freshmen year of college, staying up till all hours of the night, laughing, yes, but often simply and respectfully questioning one another's beliefs. Nothing has ever lead to faster growth for me, or for more personal introspection and shock, when I realized how often I would simply state someone else's beliefs, instead of my own. I suppose, this is an exhortation for hard questions. Don't let the fear of an answer drive your decision to enter into a discussion. Language fails me again. There are caveats to this statement. One man will look at it and say, that tells me to be violent! Passionate! In people's faces, more or less, convincing, questioning, eating away. Another man will look at this and see what I hope I see - the need for humility and love to join the questioning. I suppose that was covered in the beginning - don't ask a question expecting an answer. Unless, of course, you're proposing, in which case, we all think it would be better if you knew the general idea of the answer. If you ask a question rearing to debate, you're not approaching the situation with humility. You're arrogantly placing your burden, of judgement towards a desired decision, upon someone else. I don't know about you, but that's not what I'm called to do.
So many people are hurt. Many are angry because of it, many are bitter, or resigned, or apathetic. I have come across all kinds. You don't realize how far you push away people if you come to a conversation with an agenda. If you're an even mildly intuitive person, you will notice if someone you are talking to begins to edge away. I'm sometimes repulsed when people approach me, and I know that there is a point they want to get across right away, underneath their concern for my welfare, my state of life. It's unsettling to be so highly scrutinized by someone I don't know very well. It doesn't provide the setting for a deeper relationship to form. I thought we were in this (as Christians) for the relationship! I'm so upset over corner-box messages, preached and delivered in a fashion that, at the very least, makes me feel inferior and idiotic, for not grasping at some claim they purport to be absolute truth.
I hate speaking to people who have been forever turned away from what I might say to them because of militaristic Christianity. I have been told that I am soft, ill-founded, wishy-washy, and uncommitted, to be unwilling to adopt that "evangelical" message myself. I refuse to believe it. People deserve to meet someone who is compassionate, and who doesn't come across as an arrogant, know-it-all, Jesus-fan-club member, out to getcha, dirty sinner.
WWJD? There have been a lot of stones thrown. Seeing as, from what I've heard, none of us are blameless, I would appreciate a little more of what Jesus was the perfect embodiment - humility. I want to see the kind of love that works through relationships and service unto others.
