in the spirit of the hippies...

In the book Blue Like Jazz the author Donald Miller writes about an experience he had one summer. He lived with a friend and a couple hippies in the woods for a month or so. He says that the hippies weren't Christians but that for that month he lived the most authenticly he ever had in his life. Although they were pot-smoking, non-showering, dreadlock wearing hippies, they were real, authentic, and intentional in their friendships. Miller then talks about how we as Christians don't practice this in our lives. I think he's right. We live under this misconception that because we are Christians we have to appear that we have it all together because God and Jesus take care of all our problems if we give them up to him. Really we are called to be a community. The book of Acts depicts a very different picture of church as we know it. They shared everything: food, money, belongings, time, resources. Sadly we have gotten away from that.

So in the spirit of the hippies, I am going to pretend that you just asked me how I am doing. And I am going to respond, in the spirit of the hippies, very candidly. Today was not a good day for me. At all. I felt very lonely and for the first time in quite a few months I didn't feel like God was real to me.

I think it all started on Friday night in Anchorage. About 15 of us went up to do children's ministry at a church all weekend. We did our session Friday night and then went to the house where we would be staying all weekend. When we got there we were given instructions that the girls could have the upstairs and the boys would have the downstairs. So I hauled my heavy bag up the stairs and visited each bedroom to see which one might have space available for me. I soon discovered that everyone must have made rooming arrangements with each other on the way there. I was without a place to sleep. I slept alone in the loft outside the bedrooms all weekend and was not asked by anyone if I wanted to join them. There wasn't room anyway, even if they had asked me. Now, I know this might seem childish to you, like I am making a mountain out of a mole hill, but it was real to me and I took it personally. I know that it was dumb for me to take it so personally but I did. It was an attack on me spiritually and emotionally. It perpetuated my feelings of being "the outsider." My heart closed itself to others a little bit that night. And this morning in Camping Ministry class (a required class by the way and so much fun) it was exacerbated again through small little things that I won't get into here. I never cried though through any of this. Recently I have been struggling with the fact that I have been unable to have a good cry. I might shed a tear or two and then, without me even trying, it will just turn off like a faucet even though I want to just let it all out. I am not really sure why that is and I have been working to figure that out.

All day today I felt like an island in a sea of people. I would look out from my island and see "the mainland" where people didn't have distance between them but were close in body and in soul. I remember thinking today I wish I could somehow reach the mainland but how can islands close that gap? They can't unless someone builds a bridge to cross the great divide.

Once a month a team of 2-3 people come to campus and are available in hour and a half incrememts to pray with students and staff in individual sessions. They just arrived in town today and I had signed up last week for an evening session tonight. At dinner I was sitting across from Krystal, another student here and one of the girls who didn't ask me to room with them over the weekend. Without thinking I said to her, "I really don't want to go to prayer ministry tonight." She asked me why and I told her, "Because I know I need it." She asked me what I needed prayer for specifically and I just told her that I had been feeling lonely. I didn't give details, just left it at that. I told her I had tried calling a few friends from back home and wound up having to leave messages for all of them. And my dad was eating and couldn't talk. She just looked at me and said, "I believe that's God's way of telling you that you need to go to HIM and not other people right now." The truth she spoke went down deep into my core. It was something I needed to hear but at the same time didn't want to hear.

We talked for quite a while and it was nice. And then she had to be somewhere and I went to my room to wait for my dad to call me back like he said he would. My prayer session started at 8 and he said he would call me well before that. I put on my Metallica cd, climbed up on my bed, and soon fell asleep. At 8pm I awoke just as the last song was ending. It was time to go to prayer. My dad hadn't called and my heart sank. Just as I was walking out the phone rang. It was him. He apologized for having not called sooner and I forgave him and told him that I had to go. I know he didn't mean to do that, it wasn't his intention to hurt me. It just mirrored my life the last few days.

I went to the chapel to pray. They always start by asking what's going on in my life. So I told them. And we talked about it and figured out some deeper, underlying issues of which the feelings of rejection and loneliness are just symptoms. And then I prayed.

I prayed that: 1) God would remove all doubt and disbelief from within me; 2) God would remove all other voices and confusing spirits; 3) I would be open to him and his voice and that he would tune my ears only to him, I am so hungry for his voice in my life; 4) I would have faith like a child, I desperately want this; 5) I would grow as a tree grows toward the light, I received this image in the midst of my prayer (evidence that I was in fact hearing him, just in a different way than some people); 6) a comment one of my aunts made to me a couple years ago would no longer hold any power over me; 7) I would have the courage to go to him and ask for help when I need it or when I am feeling lonely; 8) he would send down a cleansing flood that would drown out all things not from him; and 9) he would fill me up with him.

And then I said these words: Make yourself so real to me that there is no room for doubt and disbelief. And I heard this from somewhere within the cavern of my heart: I want to and will do that for you if you let me. And then I cried. Real tears. Salty tears.

I tell you all this so that you might, in the spirit of the hippies, help me with this and ask me how I am doing on occasion. And that you might even, again in the spirit of the hippies, share some things that I could help you with. It is one of my greatest desires to become intentional with the people in my life and you all are included. Here's to the hippies and to becoming one of them. Will you become a hippie with me?