just thinking...

I'm going to hear a guy speak on Sunday night. His name is Shane Claiborne, and he and his friends started an intentional Christian community called the Simple Way.
I read some of the stuff that he wrote about living out faith in community, being a neighbor, living out justice... and I feel more connected to it than most of the stuff we talk about in our seminary classes. I don't care at all about Public Worship. Not at all. I don't care much about UM Polity. The classes that have stood out to me have been ones that talked about stuff I already knew I loved -- Urban Ministry, Church and Community ministry, even women in the NT... But I am enjoying Howard Thurman, and I should pay more attention to Bonhoeffer. They both speak a lot to what it means to embody what you believe.

I'm sure I'm thinking about all this stuff because I'm starting to get antsy. I'm getting close to time to move on. And I'm not really sure what's next. I haven't been able to make myself focus on the CPE application long enough to finish the page-worth of writing I have left. Does that mean I don't really want to do it? Or just that I'm being my usual procrastinator self? Who can say...

I love Candler. And I really like being the Wesley campus minister. Applying for that job has crossed my mind, but I really really believe they need someone with a passion for campus ministry who can commit 5 or 10 years to them. And I don't have those qualifications. I think I could love full time campus ministry, and I think I could be way better at it if I could focus, and maybe someday down the line I will come back to campus ministry.

But for now, for the whole time I've been here really, I feel compelled to get back out there, to do more real things. Not that campus ministry isn't real. But it isn't where I feel most alive. I loved working at the shelter. I hated living there, and I hated the way things were for people. But I loved being there with and for people, sitting on the stairs talking with the moms, playing with the kids in the parking lot. I loved advocating at the capitol and going with people to appointments to advocate for their rights. I loved making presentations about homelessness and what people could do to help things change.

This guy writes about the stuff that fills our conversations here -- community, embodiment, ministry of presence, living into the Kingdom... the difference, you see, is that he is really doing it. And we sit in my living room drinking beer. Or we hurl empassioned emails at each other in our online forum. Or we gather in our common space at school, on the pretty new couches I worked so hard to get (why did I choose that to be determined about? couches? really?). We speak in theory, and this guy lives in reality. I know we have to live in the tension... but it drives me crazy.

I came here to figure out how to do those things better, how to work harder for love and justice and peace to guide our lives and our society. And I have grown farther from what I was doing, farther from where I want to be, and I am less connected to the real work of justice. At Emory, I am farther from the real world, farther from the margins than I have ever been. And I don't know how to get back.