The Apathy Shelf

I should be sleeping but I can't. Lots going on lately with life. School starting up, side jobs finishing up, Abby's chemo coming up, and all of these hard circumstances going on in people I really care about's life. I have a "to do" list 3 pages long... in 8 font... ya, I'm serious, 8 font, Times New Roman. So ya, I have a few things on my plate, but that's just my life, that's how I often choose to live it. Sometimes it all gets squeezed together and my list gets really long but mostly it's just the constant grind. I don't think that's the reason that I'm up though, it's all the other stuff.

You see, I have a place for all of that. A list for my side job, a list for school stuff (broken down by all my different parts of my job of course), and a list for some of my tangible home things like mow the lawn. I'd do that one now if I could but then I'd be contributing to my neighbors lack of sleep too!

So what's keeping me up you ask again?... The other stuff, the stuff with no box, no compartment, no tidy place to shelve it until tomorrow. Things like relationship troubles, broken marriages, depression in friends lives, addictions, disappointment that I see in peoples eyes when I walk around, and the constant guarded politicalness of so many people that I know. That's what keeps me up. What do people do with these things?

Quite often I just put them on the Apathy Shelf if I can be so honest. I do that so I can sleep. I'm not saying it's pretty, it's just what I can so often do. But tonight is different. My heart aches. My eye lids aren't tired. The Apathy Shelf has been cleared of all that was on it and now I don't know what to do with it. I don't want to put it back, it doesn't belong there anyway. I know, I'm rambling. But what do you do with this stuff? This is just life. I know, I know... Jesus wept. I can do that too, I can relate but after Jesus wept he went and brought his dead friend back to life... Sorry, I try to be like Jesus but there's a point when I just can't pull it off.

Thoughts? I know by the time I read them I'll have gone to sleep but still I'd love to hear them.

For me it has, once again, to do with... can you guess? Yup, community. In real community, you feel pain, you get hurt, you have uncomfortable conversations, and you fight your desire to put peoples lives on a shelf that they don't belong on, you fight to not go numb. And disappointing as that may be, at least you are alive in it!

I've had some downs, I've had some grief, but I've also had some joys and a ton of celebrations!...

I refuse to live in the middle. I've done that and it's a lonely place. I want they highs of life and I want the lows. I want to be ok with being awake at night thinking about my friends and families problems. With that I want to get up early to celebrate their victories too.

So awake I stay, pondering life, praying for people that are hurting, and practicing community in my heart as I lie here on the couch alone. Maybe that is it. Maybe me, in this little place of care and prayer, in this place of handing things over to God to hold on to, instead of shelving them myself, will give me the rest that I so seek.

Good night.

Community vs. Accountability... or something like that.

I've been thinking a lot about community again lately. That is my passion really, a passion that often eludes me, yet is still my passion.

I just finished a week at YLI discussing community with a bunch of high school teen leaders in a break out session. We talked about authentic community, our relationship with God and how that affects our relationship with others. We talked about not wanting to check off more boxes in our relating with each other but how to really find community amisdts our culture that so often tells us to be an individual. Just think about it. "Your way right away", or a custom coffee drink tailored to your specific likes, or all of us with our individual music on our iPod... We are trying to get everything that we want when we want it, maybe we should just call it our "iLife".

So, like I said a lot of things have been on my brain lately about community and how Christians do community. The word that came to my mind and a lot of the kids in my class minds was "fake". Yup you heard me right, fake. I haven't figured out if that is the best word but it partially fits.

I'm in this accountability group right now and we are talking about what this group is all about. We do it via email and often times it doesn't carry much weight to my life. Actually all of the time, if I'm brutally honest with myself. Why doesn't it carry the weight? I say because it is over email. Email... what a great medium for community building. Right there next to my billions of tasks to do and the other 1300 unread emails. Or as my friend put it, "right next to my millionth Viagra email." Wow, great place to build community huh?.. Sorry I'll hold my sarcastic thoughts for a moment. Basically it is hard to drop to a deep level while I'm trying to teach or finish my tasks for the day, especially when it's just an email... no real person you know? I could just delete it with 1 click of the mouse. Not in the mood for community... click. Too many things to do... click. Don't feel like being challenged... click. It's hard to have community for me on my spotty WiFi connection. Definitely a bit removed from the real nitty gritty of our lives.

So how do we fix it? Well I'm glad you asked because I think I have some good ideas.

How about we start to live as a community again? I mean how can we have accountability with people that we first don't have community with? When I "do life" with people in an authentic way, I have the foundation for...(do I have to call it accountability?) for... spiritual depth with the people in my community. That's what I desire. But still how do we get it? Add another meeting to our schedule? Personally I don't know if early morning coffee shop times really do it for me. Don't get me wrong, it can be really nice to talk about what is going on in you life and have someone listen to you for an hour... but I just don't know if it really makes authentic community... seems more like a counseling session sometimes than a real friendship. I'm just tired of manipulated relational meetings. Not because I don't like meeting for coffee and talking, but because I want more. I want to share life with people instead.

So here is what I suggest. Why don't we start to share with people, with our community. I have lots of ideas on how to do this with out another meeting time... But that will have to be left for my next post. This one is too long already.