Community

So lots of fun updates.

1.) My computer died as in the mother board is probably shot, which means I have to cope with using someone else’s computer for my school work – the bulk of which will hopefully be done by the end of break. But tomorrow I find out if all of my school work can be recovered or if I’m screwed. Anyway, Shane is being great and letting me share with him

2.) I broke down and got a cell phone today, not for overseas calling but more as a precaution. If you need more details let me know, but as for now we’ll leave it at that.

3.) I have an amazing blog update on a movie I just saw on Wed that I still can’t get out of my mind called The Jammed about prostitution in Melbourne. Wow. Unfortunatley its on my dead computer so look for that to be coming up sometime over break, which started about an hour and six minutes ago.

4.) Pictures are updated on both Facebook and Webshots so check them out.

So what I really want to write about now. Community. The buzz word that I have such an intense love-hate relationship with. We all try to define community by what we want it to be instead of acknowledging what it really is. And when other people can’t fit into our narrow definitions then we freak out. I think this sums up the story of my life since being at Houghton, but most definitely since being here.

In our engaging Australian culture class last week we had to break into small groups and talk about what community is and our distinct lack of it as HDU students. Yeah, world war three just about erupted in my group. But then TK started to talk about community amongst the Mennonites and how he doesn’t necessarily agree with sharing all things in common (ie a community pot).

Why is this such a horrible horrible thing? Seriously. The more I thought about it, this is where I am in life right now and have been for a while. Shane and I were talking about/ arguing for a while now if we have community amongst the two of us. I’m still not sure where I stand on that issue, but I can tell you that we most definitely have all things in common. There is no record of who spent what or who brewed the cup of tea last time or even how much stuff we have of the other persons. And yet, because that is so shunned in our individualistic and selfish culture, we are looked at and labeled in a manner that is difficult for me to handle sometimes. What if in being the church to one another we are better equipped to be the church for others? Why do gender lines make everything so complicated in people’s eyes and you can’t just be. Why can’t we just label as it is – genuine community? Because it scares people because it is so rare in the form that we are throwing out there by being nothing less then ourselves.

On Monday my group was discussing how we can’t really have community because we don’t have a common goal as HDU students. Ahhh… of course we have a common goal – as Christians we have the goal to love and respect for and care about one another. We are responsible for communicating LOVED and WORTHY. We are to be the CHURCH. Since when did our own selfish pride get in the way of being the church?