January is for… Joy?

When most northern-residing people think of January, the word “joy” isn’t the first thing that comes to mind.  January follows the exciting seasons of Advent and Christmas and it doesn’t seem to have much going for it.  Retailers attempt to rally our spirits by selling us a new year for a new us—organized, sanitized, exercised.  With all this dreary weather, post-holiday doldrums, and corporate manipulation it’s easy to start feeling down.  Thankfully we don’t have to let these downers define how we experience this month. 

God’s love is a continuous source of joy.  I think, though, that during these darker days its light shines especially bright.  Instead of complaining and allowing myself to be miserable (as I am accustomed to doing at this time of year), I have been making an effort to maintain an attitude of gratefulness.  When you’re busy being thankful and seeing the blessings around you it’s harder to be brought down by these other influences.  

What are you grateful for? How do you experience joy during January?

Here’s a list of a few things that I am thankful for and joyful about: 

1.       Family, friends, safety, good food, warm apartment, health

2.       God’s tenderness toward our concerns and longings

3.       Living simply

4.       Tea

5.       Learning new skills (I’m learning to sew!)

6.       Marriage- and all the hard lessons that come with it

7.       The example of Jesus- especially his radical unprejudiced love and boldness in the face of injustice

Here’s to a joyful January.

Editorial note: Once again while posted by Chris this was written by Anya.

"Be Holy as I am Holy."

            Living in community isn’t exactly the easiest thing. I’m in seminary, so the community is like Houghton but about 50x smaller. There are 60 people in my session (class). There are 53 in the session behind mine. I sometimes look back on all of Shirlz’ messages on community and think… You don’t know community until you go to seminary. You think the Houghton Bubble is bad? Pfft! Child’s play.

            Within this post, it’ll seem as if I’m painting a negative picture on seminary. I’m sorry, that’s not my intention (because seminary is actually a great place to be. It’s truly rewarding, enriching, and a positive life changing experience). What I wanted to do was give you some kind of personal insight as to what I’ll be writing about; being who you were created to be.

           The campus that I live on is incredibly small. It takes no longer than 5 minutes to walk from one side of campus to the other. Everyone knows everybody …and their business.  While knowing your community isn’t a bad thing, sometimes it’s frustrating when everyone seems to know the little details about your life; especially if not all of it is truth. Unfortunately and also quite unsurprisingly, seminary is a gold mine for the enemy to run rampant. You have people here who are following the Lord’s will for their life and they walk into this battlefield and get weary from being attacked so quickly. 

          From what I’ve noticed in my 1 ½ years here is that two of the biggest tools the enemy uses to pull us from Christ-likeness, or holiness, is 1) gossip and 2) insecurities. Both of these unnecessary evils lead to destruction of the self and broken relationships; and most of all – it leads to unrighteousness.

          Through allowing our insecurities to blossom, we allow a poison to overcome us and altar our minds and hearts to what is untrue. I, along with many, have been guilty of this. It starts out simple. There’s a flaw about yourself that you’re not too pleased with, but you’re able to live with. However, when used against us, the insecurity starts to dig deeper and hurt more. It then moves toward the extreme: altering pictures of yourself to change your appearance, comparing your appearance to someone that you can’t stand to use as motivation to be thinner, posting on social media about every accomplishment you’ve ever had – wholeheartedly craving for a double digit number within a tiny red circle to find that assurance you need. This is in no way reflecting a loving Savior nor being wholly complete in Him.

            Then there’s gossip; something that we all know is a sin, but tend to toss that knowledge to the side (again, of which, I fall victim to). The rumor mill can bring destruction to relationships, friendships, and personalities. The smaller the community, the bigger the mill. The gossip doesn’t even have to be of malicious intent. Sometimes, all it takes is for one person to voice their opinion on a situation or person and before you know it, easily swayed minds and selective hearing ears have taken in something false; and the wildfire will then commence. I’ve seen it happen. In fact, I’ve been on both ends of it. Gossip is Grade A Poison. Participating in gossip opens up a part of you, a part that is not how you were originally created to be, that is ugly and shrewd. By participating in gossip, we are verbally destroying God’s creation. And in the same regards, by allowing our insecurities to go to the extreme, we are emotionally and mentally destroying God’s creation.

           The sad part about all of this is it’s not just happening in one small community. It’s happening within the community that is the body of believers. How will others know we are Christians by our love if the love is not there? John Wesley has much to say about this topic in both of his sermons entitled Original Sin and Image of God. He writes that we were created to be in Christ’s likeness, but through our first parents, we all have fallen short of the glory of God. Because of our disobedience, we lost that image. However, we have that beautiful hope; we know that it doesn’t have to stay that way.

            By God’s grace, we can receive salvation. Upon receiving this beautiful gift from our loving Savior, He can heal this disease, this poison within us, so that we may walk in His light and know the holiness – the righteousness – that He has for us. In Wesley’s sermon Working Out Our Own Salvation, he puts it like this: “Deny yourselves every pleasure which does not prepare you for taking pleasure in God, and willingly embrace every means of drawing near to God, though it be a cross, though it be grievous to flesh and blood” (Outler & Heitzenrater, 1991, pg. 409).* Although it may feel so good to “vent” about people that upset us and put ourselves down because “there’s nothing good about us anyway”, deny it! These are not of Christ! They are lies and tactics from the enemy that will try to separate us from God. If we allow it to posses our hearts and minds, then we choose death instead of the life that Christ promises us through Him. 

          Yes, we all have insecurities. As our own worst critics, we’ll always find something about ourselves that we don’t like. Don’t look at yourself as incomplete. God created you in His likeness. Be proud of who you are in Him. Don’t allow your insecurities to bring you to a place of competition and depression. Don’t allow these lies that you’re being fed to sway your heart to think that what you need to be satisfied is that notification or a fake alteration to your figure or even that outcome of the comparison game. What brings pure joy and complete wholeness is not only living with Christ, but living with the assurance of faith; that we are God’s and He is ours. Be who God created you to be. Be genuine. 

            “But just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.’” – 1 Peter 1:15-16 (NIV). Build one another up. Encourage, support, forgive, and love. Seek that holiness, that Christ- likeness, which God has for you. Forget the slander of both self and of others. Strive for holiness. Strive for forgiveness. Strive for wholeness. Strive for oneness. Strive for love. 

              So follow the words of John 6:43 – “’Stop grumbling among yourselves’, Jesus answered.” Cling to His promise of holiness and righteousness. Get rid of the poison that keeps you from Christ. Seek Him in all you do, say, think, and feel. Make Him your number one priority. Live for and with Christ today. Love others as you share Christ with them. Reflect His holiness. Be holy as He is holy. 

* A book entitled "John Wesley's Sermons: An Anthology" edited by Albert C. Outler & Richard P. Heitzenrater.

Guest-ish Introduction: Erik

Hello there all of yous out there. I'm Erik, and if you're wondering why you haven't really seen anything from or about me before, it's because I'm not exactly the most "core" Tribal member. Yes, I am a member, I did spend tons of time with them, and they were some of my best friends in college (I even roomed with Chris my senior year), but it was never the place where I totally "belonged". That being said, the Tribe was a hugely important part of my life, and I can't imagine college or my life now without it.

I was a bit of a latecomer to the Tribe. I'm a year ahead most of the other members, so I had a full year to make friends at school before the Tribe even ever met each other. I had a great group of friends my freshman year, but that was heavily based on all of us living on the same floor, and by the time my sophomore year rolled around, that group had splintered into two "factions", with me ending up not really a part of either. At the beginning of my sophomore year, I started falling into a new (and much smaller) group of friends, but as I was the only male, it sometimes made things a little bit difficult. The girls often wanted to just sit with each other at meals and have "girl time". That fall, there was a "fall ball" hosted by the dorm those girls lived in, so I went along with them, but they wanted to ride over just with each other to spend more of that "girl time" together, and when they decided to cut out early, I was left awkwardly at an off campus event with nobody I really knew at all. But still, they were very close friends, and I became best friends with one of the girls in the group. Towards the end of my sophomore year though, she began to feel like our friendship was too much like a relationship (and she'd just gotten out of her very first relationship with an extremely messy breakup), so after Easter break, I came back to campus to find my best friend ignoring and avoiding me with absolutely zero explanation, and it made it nearly impossible to spend time with those friends.

I felt very lost and stranded. Practically none of the friendships I'd built up for two years were there for me anymore, and it was already an emotionally difficult time because of the way my best friend was treating me. So I turned to the Tribe.

Going back a little, I had become acquainted with Tribe through my sophomore year, although I didn't know them as such at the time. Chris was on my floor, and we'd started talking after I was playing some Estonian music (Kerli, if I remember correctly) and he came in to talk about it. After having a difficult time finding actors for my first video for my digital video class, Chris offered to act, and suggested Lane as my actress. The video went quite well, and during the filming, I recruited Lane and Maya for the video that ended up becoming my final for that class. I ended up making a total of six videos with Tribal members acting in some capacity (Chris and Lane each appearing in four, Joe and Gordon in two, and Maya, Jackie, and Chad in one apiece). All in all, I only made one video in college that didn't feature any of the Tribe (made both before and after I really became part of the group). [It's interesting to note that almost all of my college videos deal with themes of rejection, which I didn't even realize until later.]

So, I'd reached this point where I was very alone and didn't really have many people I could turn to. One day, I was going up for a meal, and decided I was tired of eating alone, and took a chance and sat with the Tribe, of whom I was only really acquainted with a few. They were incredibly friendly and welcoming, and readily accepted me as one of them.

I'm an extrovert though, and I made a lot of friends easily. The girl who'd been avoiding me eventually realized she was being silly and we made up (a process which repeated itself our senior year at a significantly more emotionally intense level [although we've since made up again, this time for good]). I made friends with more people on my floor, and their friends, and even other people around the school. I couldn't just abandon any of my different friends groups, so I spent time semi-equally between them all. I think, in total, I hung out with about 4-5 groups of friends (some of whom bled into each other a little bit). While this allowed me to have a lot of friends, it prevented me from becoming really a "core" member of any of them. I also never really felt like I totally belonged with any of them. Don't get me wrong, I got along great with everyone, and had many individual friendships that were very close, but I always felt like a little bit of an outsider with every group. I also had a very different role to play in these friend groups than I was used to back home. I ran with a pretty wild group of friends back home at the time, whose activities included licking a 10 tab strip of acid and going to work, and doing shrooms and coke at an anime convention (neither of which I was a part of or even present for). So, needless to say, back home I was the super cautious and conservative one, the kind who would say "I don't know if we should be doing this guys", but at Houghton (and especially in the Tribe), I was the super liberal, wild, party animal. I don't know the direct impact of that on my feeling of belonging, but that combined with my own insecurities, loneliness, shyness, and low self esteem made me feel like I didn't really belong.

But the Tribe always did their best to include me, even though I wasn't always around for some of the big events, asked to come to everything that happened, or even attending the same church as them (which I think was also a big part of me not really being a "core" member). I'm still a Tribal member though, and I have some amazing friends in the group (who I really need to catch up with, I miss you guys!). Most importantly though, the Tribe was there for me at a time when I was lost and needed rescuing, and they opened themselves up and brought me into their fold. I can't imagine life without them, and they're some of the tightest knit friends I've ever met. They're all incredible people, and I'm incredibly blessed to have all of them in my life. The Tribe is the real deal, and I look forward to following their adventures here along with all of you too.


Depending on Chris' discretion, I hope to be back again sometime to contribute some more. I have an extensive knowledge of and passion for music and movies (some of which I shared with the Tribe, including a somewhat poorly conceived viewing of Battle Royale on a classroom projector), so maybe I'll get to talk about those or something. Who knows?

Doing the Most Good Behind the Scenes

As Jackie said last week, "Ah!  I'm late writing this!"  Part of the reason I'm late writing my blog post is that I work for the Salvation Army, and this is the dreaded holiday season.  It's understandable why life is crazy in the Salvation Army.  Between kettles, toy distributions, advent, and Christmas meals and baskets everyone is working harder than ever (except youth worker people; they're craziest during camp/day camp season).  But I don't work standing kettles or distributing toys.  I work in the exciting Direct Mail department doing the super fun job of data entry!

That's right, I get the privilege of entering in all the donations that the bank can't automatically scan or that don't automatically upload from one system to another.  I also read all of the notes donor's send in with their donations.  I do a few other things as part of my job, like run reports, but data entry and reading donor's notes is the majority of my work.  The Salvation Army, like many other non-profits, gets most of its donations at Christmas time, so that my workload during the Christmas season at least doubles and often triples. 

There are also a lot more notes from donors during the Christmas season, and I read them all, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  There's a surprising amount of ugly.  Sometimes people who write in to the Salvation Army, and I feel that this is probably the case for most non-profits, are angry.  They might be angry about something they personally experienced, something they read about on the internet, or just angry without an explanation.  As a result, I get cussed out and yelled at through text almost every day at work throughout the Christmas season.  It can be really exhausting to deal with so much negativity when I'm already stressed out and over-worked.  It can also be really hard to focus on advent and hope and peace and joy when I see so much hate and anger every day.

But there's also a lot of good donor's notes.  Really really good donor's notes.  It's one of the perks of my job to get to read these ones.  I get positive notes every day during the Christmas season from World War II veterans who remember the Salvation Army donut girls bringing them free coffee and donuts in the trenches.  I get notes from people whom the Salvation Army has helped during a crisis point in their lives.  I get notes from people who remember bright happy Christmases, only made possible by donations from the Salvation Army.  And I get lots of notes just saying "Thank you for your good work."  These notes make my day.  They encourage me.  They help me get through the crazy Christmas season, and actually try to enjoy it. 

So, I guess I would like to give you two main take-away points:



1.  Don't write angry notes to non-profits.  You might think you're "sticking it to the man" by writing these, but you're probably just sticking it to the 23-year-old working part-time trying to pay off her student loans.  It's not nice, and it's not really making the impact you want it to.  If you do have legitimate concerns, express them calmly and politely.  People are a lot more likely to listen that way.  It's also helpful to try and find the right people before you start expressing your opinions.  If you express your opinions calmly and politely, you can make a difference.

2.  Do write thank you notes to everyone who's part of a non-profit.  Like I said before, kind notes from donor's make my day.  I don't think people know how much of an impact they can make with a few simple words.  Someone is reading those letters you send in to your local non-profits, and it's amazingly encouraging when you tell that someone you're grateful for what they're doing.  Also, try and thank the people who aren't as visible, the ones who aren't necessarily on the front lines.  Thank the finance department at your favorite non-profit.  Thank the church secretary or treasurer.  Thank the person who's in the kitchen washing dishes at the community meal.  Thank the people who are visibly doing the most good, but don't forget the ones behind the scenes.  Their work is just as essential in spreading joy and peace and hope during Christmas, and they're often the least thanked.  So go on!  Make someone's day!  It's probably a lot easier than you think.
 

Family 'n stuff

A suggested theme for this round of posts is "holidays" because we all mostly are posting during the holiday season. I recently completed an self-disciple-exercise called "No-Spend-November" to help myself become aware of my own consumerism (no, I don't NEED to buy coffee every other day). It was a good time and in light of Black Friday, I have a lot to say about this...but instead, I'm changing tracks. I want to talk about all these holidays and the idea of family. Awww...how cute....and rather corny (you've been warned).

So...recently, we had my FAVORITE holiday...Halloween...and then my second favorite holiday; Thanksgiving. Both were good fun. I got to teach about detrital energy sources while wearing a pirate costume for the former, and eat pumpkin soup for the later....and for both, I got to hang out with two really cool people named Andrew and Emma (they're both pretty much walking vats of knowledge ...and we're in an almond-themed cult together).

The next holiday to come is Christmas. I've never liked Christmas that much, really. It's this happy time of year for family traditions and overall joy, right? Well...post-Halloween, the holidays shift from being spooky-fun to an emphasis on this idea of "family" and that is the part I was never too comfortable with.

Growing up, I went through weird different permutations of "family". Throughout most of my life, my family consisted of my Mom, my Stepdad, my Step Brother, my Step Sister (both of which are half siblings of each other, each have a few other siblings - just to make it more complicated), for some time a Dad....and occasionally a Stepmom who didn't really speak English....and sometimes I went and stayed with a completely different family altogether. Christmas was a time of "who-got-which-step-sibling", and with so many parents thrown in the mix, it was always a jumble....with a lot of tension and the pressure to put on a happy face. I didn't like it.

This is Devon, my Step Brother and Mandi my Step Sister. We continued sharing Christmas together for some time and I'm just as thankful for them as I am everyone else mentioned...

When I graduated high school, my weird concoction of "family" literally dissolved in a divorce. I jumped from  this scenario into Houghton (technically I hobbled---my foot was broken at the time). As you can see by this blog, I made the very best of friends there...and over the four years, I've gained the very best of family through these people. They have shown me everything about being supportive and kind, generous and share-y...and of course a lot about faithy-stuff (did you know that K-Tunez is the Tribal Chaplin....Chappy).

This is my Mommy

Last Christmas, was the first Christmas of just me and my Mom....all by ourselves because this is what was left from our situation. It was peaceful and wonderful, but she made the observation that we were our only family - it was just us. Her and me....and the morbidly obese cats and a deaf chihuahua mutt. But then she said that we had both been able to craft our own families out of our friends and that was way better than anything we could possibly have had otherwise.

So, in the spirit of Thanksgiving....and in the reference to the family-ness of Christmas, I'd like to give thanks for my very-very special and perfect Family.
I'm thankful for my wonderful....and kind of weird....Mom, who I am so fortunate to have (I get to go home for this Christmas too!!! Yay, New York!).

I am thankful for my first roomie and closest-to-a-sisterly-thing Jackie...for my other Amazon Sistas; Anya, Jenny, K-Tunez and 9-Fingered Lane. For Tribe Brother Chris.....and all the other Tribespeople who will be guest-blogging  in the posts to come. I'm thankful for how each of them is passionate about the world we live in and how they inspire me to be a better person.

...and I'm thankful for their
forgiveness when I
steal the brownie mix.

I'm thankful for their patience for when I'm frustrated or obnoxious...I'm thankful for when I log into facebook and have a constant stream of reminders of how cool they are. I'm thankful that I can send them a whining message and get responses brimming with hilarity and support. I'm thankful that they like me for being me, when most people think I'm a bit strange. Below is a link to a video-hodge-podge of Guruji Sri Vast ("an enlightened spiritual master from South India" - I'm not sure what that is, but he has something good to say here) discussing family. Some of the video clips used it in are a bit corny and unnecessary, but I like the part where he says: 

                                "What is family? 
                                                       Love and acceptance. 
                                                      Where I can be, as I am. 
                                                    Where I am not judged. 
                                                       And that is the family."


Also, I'm thankful that my family keeps growing....remember Andrew and Emma from the beginning of this post? Our Thanksgiving feast was lovely and delicious (Emma somehow manages to be both 100% Snake Conjurer and 100% Chef). I'm thankful they both let me stumble into their lives and that they put up with my shenanigans.

This is Andrew and Emma.
They're both opposed to have pictures taken of themselves.
The big plant in the foreground is a sunflower...because Kansas is the Sunflower State!

And so...I'd like to conclude with the point that your family isn't just who biology or marriage brought into your life, but who you choose to build friendships with.

Your family is probably bigger than you realized.

That's all I really have to say. My family is fantastic and I love you all lots and lots. And now...time to cram for finals exams. Boo. Finals are not included in my family. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3tKh1olYRI

Adulthood: When Everything is Easier, Right?

Do you remember being a teenager? Your life constantly in flux while your mind is overloaded with more emotions than you can process, riddled with insecurities and a deep unshakable loneliness. Making friends is a confusing if not impossible process full of popularity contests and friendship killing landmines awaiting each misstep. You are torn between a host of conflicting expectations telling you who to be as you try to nail down just what your identity actually is.

And through it all someone tells you "This isn't forever. Someday you will grow up and get past this."

I am the real Chris here

I'm a grown-up now. A fell-fledged adult. I have a wife, a job, and even an apartment with renter's insurance. I have a college degree. I pay bills and I punch a time clock. So how come I still feel kind of like a teenager? I thought this was supposed to get better, right? Why do I still have all this insecurity and loneliness?

I think the hardest part for me about being away from Tribe is just the overall loneliness of it. I'm completely lacking in peers. The irony is that though I am alone I know I am not alone in my loneliness. I know I'm not the only one having trouble making friends or the only one wishing for more people to spend time with. One of my friends said pretty much everything I'm feeling a year ago, I'm just not as good at putting it into words.

What really frustrates me is that I really thought that things were going to get easier at some point. I thought I would begin to feel secure and self-assured. I thought I would reach a point where even if I didn't have friends I would be okay with that. I thought once I became an adult I would be stronger than this.

But I'm not.

I'm sad and I'm lonely and I'm very insecure. I don't feel like an adult at all. Or more specifically, I don't feel like what I thought adulthood would feel like.

Well, if I have to

But what can I do to make it better? To be honest I really don't know. I've given this a lot of thought and read some articles but I think I'm just at the point where I have to suck it up and just hold out for better times.

I'd like to think that I'm actually in a second "teen" stage. When I was a teenager I was too old to make friends easily or feel confident and good about myself, but I was too young to go out and find find peers easily or know how to present myself. I was in an awkward middle stage. Now I think I'm in that place again. I'm too old to just be a college kid and goof off and fit in with a bunch of 18 year olds, but I'm too young to have "adult" friends or know how to cultivate "adult" friendships.

For the time being I'm just stuck.

I'd love to drop some epic wisdom at the end of this post, but I really don't have any to give. This is where I'm at right now and I guess I just miss Tribe. In lieu of wisdom I ask you to accept this gif about the things I'd like to do with my adult friends now that I'm all grown up.

We made a spaceship once