Community...

I'm in a constant place of questioning and trying to figure out community. I've lived most of my life with ideas of what community might look like, but no real practical experience to base it on. And then I came to a place in my life with true community. Those I was able to gather around in Waco were an inspiration. They were amazing individuals and formed an incredible group of people.

Each time I have moved I searched again. After some time I usually find pieces of community, but it never quite compares.

A friend of mine who does research claims there are four types of people: 1. Those who build community wherever they go. 2. Those who nurture community when they are a part of it. 3. Those who are a strain on community. They are very needy. 4. Those who kill community.

Since I heard these four, I've been trying to figure myself out. Now those who know me understand that I am my own worst critic. Mix that with my incredible arrogance and it is one ugly picture. But I don't know where I fit on this spectrum of people.

In Shane Claiborne's The Irresistible Revolution he quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer saying, "The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community [even if their intentions are ever so earnest], but the person who loves those around them will create community."

I'm not sure I create community. I might even destroy it, but I don't think I create it. I fear I am stuck on my own idea of community. In Africa, I finally found pieces of it...I, at the very least, found a few close friends. In Phoenix I thought I found it, but I'm afraid I have become one of the last two options on the spectrum. I fear I am either the high maintenance drain on community or am killing it and most benefit community at this point by stepping out of it.

According to my most recent taking of the Strengths test one of my strengths is entitled Restorative. As I read a bit of a description on it yesterday it talks of how I am "adept at finding the flaws" (the books words, not mine). It does point out how I will do this in myself also. Because of this tendency, I am encouraged to be around optimists so that my criticisms won't lean more and more toward pessimism. (I think I may be too late.) I fear this reality, makes me quite a strain on community. I pick out problems and seek to fix them. I think that can be hard for many. I never seem satisfied with what is at hand.

A great struggle on my community this semester has been that my heart is even dumber than my head. I over analyze...everything. In high school my friend Beetle told me to "stop thinking so much." I think everything to death (interesting choice of words considering I'm talking about killing community, and dealing with having killed another relationship). Because I tend to over think, I tend to have thought through options and conversations and situations before they even happen. When people offer advice, it is sometimes not a new idea although it may carry new power coming from another mouth. (Callie, is that a better way of saying it?) I've considered the option and get the logic.

I even want to pursue that option as it clearly makes the most sense. But there is another issue, my stupid heart doesn't like to follow. Sometimes I know I have made the right choice about what to do in a situation, but I can't get my heart to follow along. My head says "good job;" my heart says "you're and idiot."

I wish issues of the heart were more logical, then I could understand them better and work myself through them better. I think I do a decent job with issues of the head, but when it comes to the heart I suck at it. The mystery of love overwhelms me. It is not uncommon for me to get tangled up in issues of the heart and not be able to find my way back out of it. Perhaps the issue is that I don't always want to find my way out. Sometimes when it even makes more sense, I'm not sure I want to find my way out.

I long for love. I long to fit in. Erwin McManus does some great stuff with these ideas in the first section of Soul Cravings. He talks of how we are wired to crave love. We do crazy things just to be accepted by others.

I apologize, I've started rambling. I think that is because I have things I want to say, or write as the case may be, and I can't figure out how to make words out of the thoughts and emotions I am feeling.

This week I told a friend I couldn't talk to her for a while. I needed the space to protect my already crumbling heart. I'm not sure I realized the friend I was letting go of until I recognized that the other friends I thought I could fall back on weren't coming through. They were tired of dealing with it or me or something. I need the space; but I don't want the space. My head says it is right; my heart says it is hard. My pessimism says I just shot myself in the foot letting go of something so precious; my optimism says true love returns.