Quick and easy

I'll be back with longer stuff and more pictures in a week or so, when internet is free somewhere on the island through a little fenagling and people are more likely to read this and look at pictures.

Bryce and Aaron are talking about snow...
that's so freaky here. So foreign its become hard for me to imagine SNOW!
white stuff falling from the sky and you tell me it is ICE? NO EFFING WAY!

I don't believe it.

Its become very windy, I like that a lot. It's "winter."

I went out to the Jaluit Atoll for the break, and it was AMAZING!
For those of you that like the pictures... sorry but I forgot my camera and I think it was divine providence. It is sort of nice that the trip is just mine. There are some things that only require mental pictures.

I think its funny that I talk about Bryce like I've ever met him and that he might read this about me talking about him. The internet is WIERD.
Think about it. Think about it a little more... Yea see? WIERD!

I got my first 2 mailed Christmas card that were just for me, not for my family, for me (Thank you Sarah Green and Melissa!). They hold a special place in my heart.

I also got more floss... Thanks Mom. I get the hint.

I'm gonna push my self really hard to send things soon.

Don't watch "Eragon" but read it. Also read, "Everything is Illuminated" "Lamb" "Autobiography of a Yogi" and do see Casino Royale and Borat.

Much Love,
Mike

The Quarter Life: Community and Friendship

As always I have decided to invite myself along on a journey that I was not invited on, but I felt I needed to connect this endless rambling to something bigger, especially after having read both Aaron and Bryce's posts, I felt a strong push to hop on the boat (yes, all my comparisons for the rest of my life will most likely be maritime...). I have to struggle to get the money I need to join this little expedition of thought, but I find it worth my moneymore than many other things.

So, if you would like to read the genuine series that this post has been bootlegged into, and why I have chosen to do so, Aaron's post is found at its usual address of http://throughtincansandstring.blogspot.com/ and Bryce's can be found there.

So, friendship. As many of my friends know I have had, in the past, an awkward and rather negatie view of friendship. Yet, now a days, I have found in friendship the heart of life. If God is and always will be the soul, I think friendship is the heart, and community is the mind.

Friendship MUST include both entertainment, enjoyment, tomfoolery, ridiculousness, and many many many laughs and smiles. That is purely a requirement. Friendship must also contain love. Duh and all. But real love, and therefore real friendship, I think, do not always show themselves in the way we would automatically want it to. I think real friendship is hard sometimes because while our friends support us, they also challenge us. I think friendship, consciously and unconsiously, makes everyone involved better and change is never easy.
I have not thought about weddings, because I've never been to one.
My friend Tayrod sent me an email this summer asking me to be IN his wedding, not just go TO it, and I suddenly understood the big deal. I felt a pure and honest desire to be there, and a truly crushed feeling at my inability to do so because of my commitment.
I though, would have to qualify my friends, if I had to, (maybe because calling si my main form of off island communication and one of the thigns i have to go out of my way to do in the current world I inhabit) as follows:

1. Those I would call if I needed to be reminded of God and love.
2. Those I would call if I needed to feel at home.
3. Those I would call if I needed advice.
4. Those I would call if I needed a laugh.
5. Those I would think of calling.
6. Those I would never call.

Sixth place sounds bad... but it is not. Really. It is just personal negligence and forced ranking.
The other thing I think about these days is, if someone asked me, personally , to be with them, in one week, for whatever reason they felt was truly important... who would i give up my 2 year commitment for, with just one question, even with no explination.

I have to say those people exist. I intensly grateful for that Gift.

I belive friendship does not need proximity as much as it needs desire. Distance makes it harder to maintain, but distance, is, for the most part. Temporary. Not always, but many times.

Now,intentional community, christian communtiy, human community... Ha! Wow... well... there's two ways I think about it right now... immediate and worldwide. I think communtiy is effing ridiculously almost close to impossible. That is why it is so rewarding, in a lot of ways, to strive for it. I think genuinely being part of an intentional community and a worldwide community keeps us and our faith alive, gives us a form of joined solitude that, hopefully, pushes us hard towards God, and in the end, requires that we let go of so much of ourselves, and our desires and our wants, and our needs, and all the other OUR stuff.

It requires that we put God first, above all things, and in doing so, in letting go of ourselves and placing God first (which is one of lifes biggest and hardest challenges) we suddenly come to really see, every moment SEE, teh perpetual connectedness of mankind through God and love... wow that sounds hippie ish and new agey, but ti is not. I think it is a strong part of what Jesus was talking about. The connectedness of all people through the divine, forming ONE community, despite language barriers, cultural differences, and all the other complicated stuff... One human communtiy that is there constantly, eternally striving for the same thing... the thing we lost in the fall... whatever that fall was, the thing the legend of Adam and eve holds that IS true... even if they are not fact... thta somewhere along the line our relationships with each other and with God was broken...wewere broken, but we are all striving to put it back together. So community is that that forces us to help each other. We are already part of it, we have to make it intentional because we are blind to it so much of our lives.

For the last 2 weeks I have wanted nothing but to leave th community I am in. Yet, now I realize I can never leave it... it goes with me wherever I go. That is a comforting thought, even though I may be frustrated right now out of my own selfish and self guided ways.

To end:
One thing I have learned from community in the last few months:
PB&J sandwiches ARE good!
One thing I have learned from freindship:
God is alive.

The desert

I just watched a video about Catholicism, which I am slwlly beginning to love in the theoretical realm... in that space where I accept Christianity as my way of looking at the world.
While teh idea that there is one true religion encourages and motivates people, if I were to have to pick between there being one true religion and nothing at all to believe in.. I would pick nothing.
I cannot accept such a God.
That being said I can accept that Christianity is the language I am most comfortable growing closer to God in.

So. I was watching this video... about "The little brothers of Jesus"... funny name, great group. You should all look into them if you are bored... very interesting. Anyway. They live in teh desert alone for a year and they said 2 things I would liek to send to those I care about in a desert. I also started to think of this place as a desert made of water instead of a desert with no water.... they are equally as oppressive or a welcoming.

They said, and I paraphrase:

The scariest thing about the desert is that you risk encountering God.
and
when asked.. isn't it antisocial to go to the desert for a year and be alone, and remove yourself from society?
they said, and i paraphrase:
1. you come back
2. the desert is something you always carry around with you. You just need to learn to see it.
When you do, you can run into God anywhere.

Richard

If I needed to have an example of someone who had qualities I want:
Richard

He does everything... EVERYTHING, with that smile on his face.
Why?

He said service makes him happy.
Well, and he's used to it.

I want to have both of those things.

Unclear

This is not a very clear picture. But it doesn't matter because it is kindergardeners doing a chicken dance and that is universally fantastic.
We had an elementary school "TALENT SHOW" fundraiser where every class had to participate with more than one number and they did and it was fantastic.We also had a high school "VARIETY SHOW" with little variety but liek 25 numbers. Each show lasted over 3 hours, and other than my being exhausted from chasing kids around. I thought they were GREAT!

I have gotten tired of people of the american denomnation that criticize a lot of what goes on here because: A: it is not to THEIR taste and what a show, or class, or behavior SHOULD be, and B: because they simply don't like it. I'm tired of it because being around it makes me do it to and it makes me angry at myself for not having the will and character to not do it and remain silent, and for encouraging it through my actions. I also hate it because I LIKE most of the stuff they complain about. PLUS i think half of the stuff they complain about is so blown out of proportion. Again, making me blow so many things way out of the water. Oh there's no electricity for a day, oh there is a little teeny tiny iddy bitty piece fo glass in my food, oh we only get rice everyday even though we don't, oh we don't have enough variety, oh the dances are boring, oh they don't smile, oh they don't appreciate my presentation of food they just eat it...SHUTUP!! That is a shutup both for tham and for my own self. Stop bitching about things. Things that really don't matter at all!!!

Arg.. it makes me so angry and frustrated. And here I am complaining about how much people complain instead of just breathing and dealing with it, and maybe praying that the next community is less, just slightly less tied to what i don't like about "americanism" and has some more of the things i do like.

All I want sometimes is for life to be more of a group of kindergardeners doing a chicken dance. If you pay attention they all suck at it, but they're all enjoying each moment adn who really cares about the rest of it?