Amy and I at her wedding 

Finding myself

I called Shaliah today to tell her that I'm not going to be coming to Auburn this weekend. She said, "Oh, I guess you need to find yourself."
"Yes, if Kara's around, I'll have her call you."
"Maybe she's wondering the streets with me."
"Yea, maybe they are walking the streets togehter."

So this weekend I guess I'm going to stay here in B'ham. My first official weekend. So far I have learned my way to many of the major highways, malls, and work. All I really need to know, right? And I found a grocery store. Yeah me. I have eaten Thai food, Greek food, and peanut butter sandwiches. I have NOT eaten chicken fingers, or BBQ. I really am so glad I have left Auburn sometimes.

I am still really living out of boxes, though. I sleep on an air matress that has a hole in it, and every night I re-fill the matress with air, only to find my butt on the ground when I wake. Most of my dishes and clothes are still housed in cardboard, and getting ready in the morning means shuffling through piles trying to remember what is clean, and what is dirty. I guess basically I'm living like a batchelor...

My office is much like a closet that no one wanted. As I sit here now, the inventory consists of a filing cabinent, a table, a desk, two computers, a shelf and about about 9 suitcases to haul around eye care equipment in. Sounds classy, eh?

I know that I'm rambling, and if you are still reading at this point, I say "Kudos to you" Because I probably wouldn't be anymore. I think I would have stopped when I started describing my office.

I am really happy right now, though. Some might say that I'm still in the "honeymoon" stage my the move and the job, and I will accept that, it's probably true. It's weird, you know, moving from having my life packed with constantly working on things, to this job where I'm not totally sure what to do, and going home to an empty apartment with free nights, again, not really sure what to do with my free time. I still haven't really found a good place to run, because it's so freakin hilly.

Well that's an update on my life. Not as exciting as other entries, but at least you know. If you have any advise on adapting, good recipies, or exciting things to do in BIRMINGHAM, then let me know!

Barn raising

I've been thinking about community the past couple of days. As most of you know, I'm leaving this fair 'village on the plains' in a couple of weeks. It's so strange to me how much you can loathe a place so much, and in the midst of it it somehow becomes home. Like a leech that I didn't know was there, it has burried it's way into my leg and somehow become a part of me. Gross, but true. I didn't want it at first, I would never have entered the pond had I known beforehand of the leeches to come, but there they were... waiting to cling to me.

Maybe a leech is a bad analogy.

This weekend on Friday night, I ate at the Commanders' house, along with the band of brothers (Adam, David, Eric, and Phil), Jill (Eric's girlfriend, and my roomate for the summer), and the two youth interns, Jason and Derrick. Julie Commander invited me saying, I'm feeding the boys so they can help move furniture. You can come too, but you don't have to move anything. So I did. And I didn't. But it was fun sitting there, playing with Joy, making costumes from the packing and talking about the big box and it's many uses, while the boys were sweating and hauling, and I thought that maybe this is kind of the modern equivilant of a barn raising. The community coming together to help each other out.

The next day, another family who has just finished building their house had about 20 people come over and help them lay down grass in hopes that they would some day have a lawn. They finished just before lunch, when the rains (AKA Dennis) came.

I don't know what is so amazing about community to me. I mean, really, it just makes sense... everyone working together, and accomplishing more than an individual... but in this individualistic world that we live in I often think about how hard it is to be a person who invites community.

It requires that we shuffle off the shell that we protect ourselves with and allow ourselves to be vulnerable. We come out of hiding, and admit, "I need you." Admitting our own weakness in the process, though validating the need for others in this gigantic way.

I think about a friend of mine who was moving and she called me and told me that she asked a woman from the church where she was moving to, to be her mentor. I remember her saying:

"It was so hard, Kara. Just the awkwardness of it all. Who does this kind of thing? What do you say? I actually said to her, 'I don't really know what this is supposed to look like, but I would really like you to mentor me when I move here."

I was so proud of her, because she was building intentional community.

I sometimes wonder what it would have been like if Jesus was like, you know, I don't need anyone. I'm just going to wonder around and heal people and sleep on the streets and fend for myself. He was GOD AFTER ALL! But even God was dependant on other people. He fed 5,000 with food from someone else. He was the ultimate in the dependant relationship... and yet we sometimes think that we are too good to need others.

Lord, teach me how to accept community. To accept it, and to seek it out, even when it is uncomfortable, even when it is hard. Thank you that you have not left us here alone. That you commune with us, and that you have left us each other, each living stones built up in you.

On roaches and bombs dropping

I'm in Spidle Hall, putting the finishing touches on my thesis. There is a roach crawling across the floor to my left. I am really tempted to be grossed out and scream, but there is no one else in this whole building, so I know that really it will do me no good. As he meaders across the floor, seeming to float on the carpet itself, I'm reminded about the random morsel of knowledge, "If a nuclear bomb dropped, roaches would be the only thing to survive." This is interesting, because today I feel like some bombs have dropped, and yet here I am.

The roach is still here, but somehow so am I.

Today I hurt a lot for others. I have been so enveloped in my own stress and pain for a couple of weeks now- like a horse with blinders, only seeing one direction. But today, in what felt like only an instant, I began to really hurt for someone else that I love dearly. It has consumed me all day. I hesitate to even blog about it, wondering what eyes see this blog, even though it just feels like I am writing into the infinate cyberspace of no one.

Today, was a day that I am ashamed to be associated with a pack. A tribe. A group of people. A denomination. A congregration. A religion. Today it seems that all the reasons that people give for not wanting to join mainstream Christianity came and slapped me in the face, and I am forced to look at them, and wonder what the Gospel message has become.

In the midst of our behavior modification rituals have we lost grace and love? We say that we do not want to be like the world, and yet we care so much about rules and obeying.

I thought that this was what Jesus came to change.

Tonight, with tears in my eyes, I grieve for a wounded warrior who walks alongside me. One who feels defeated, but doesn't see the Lord fighting alongside. But I also grieve for that which so many have become, who "they" think that "we" are in this insider/outsider game of who looks and acts the best.

I grieve that sick people can no longer recieve mercy at the hospital, this place where they need it the most.

And I pray that somehow I can be an agent of change, a messenger of light to those who are broken.