Gratitude Shout-Out

After the holidays, when Ben and I returned to Omaha I was going through some of my old books and such and came across my collection of journals. As it turns out, since my junior year in high school I have written in over 15 journals. 15! Flipping through a few of them I've realized so much has happened in my life and most of those events, memories, struggles and joys are captured within the pages of those journals. Being the curious person I am, I began to think back and wonder how I even started to become a reflective individual. All it took was finding the first journal I began... an older, almost antique looking journal from high school that was given to me by the lovely Sarah Ramthun. I remember being in your house, either for a FAT sleepover or some other gathering, and you generously offered this journal to me, telling me you had recently received it from an aunt or family member who had passed away. I felt honored to receive such a gift and had knew it was marking a new chapter in my life.

It wasn't just that gift that really established a reflective lifestyle for me. It was the steno pads that were a tradition at each mission trip. The questions of, "where did you see God today?" or the consistent, "how is your relationship with God going?" that I knew were always going to be asked every time I was with you, Sarah. You pushed me to be prepared with answers, to really examine my life and strive to improve. Journaling has become one of my favorite pastimes and one that has literally saved me in situations where I've felt hopeless, lost or drowning in despair. These books are a gift I will always treasure, not just for their contents, but for what they represent - your love, gentle guidance, and consistent care for me. Thank you, Sarah, for truly looking out for my best intentions, and the best in everyone you meet.

I was reading this article and figured I'd post it here since it kinda relates to community and our recent conversations.

http://catholic.org/hf/faith/story.php?id=44571

Too much alone time? You be the judge.

This is a response to Eric's post, but I figured I'd just make a new one since I don't like the formatting that blogger uses for comments.

Eric, thanks for sharing those select memories from the trip. It's so funny how the littlest things can be used to teach us all interesting life lessons, such as literally doing nothing and listening to your iPod. Hmmm.

I, too, enjoy having at least a little bit of simple "Kelsey time" each day, and on the days and weeks when I don't take very good care of myself by setting that time aside, everybody else pays the price while I try to suffer silently (which doesn't usually work because I just get cranky). It is good and well to spend time with whatever "community" you're currently a part of, but it's also just as, if not more important to make sure you take the time to yourself and don't always cover a genuine desire for alone time or silence with a facade of a good mood and a smile. If we constantly try to "fake it" and put on a smile when we're feeling really crappy, we very well may end up suffocating or just getting burned out and in the end everybody loses.

John, personally, and I obviously don't know the ins and outs of your feelings when you were not talking to anybody at dinner, it sounds like you're being a little hard on yourself (and that's coming from someone who beats herself up alllllll the time, so who am I to talk, anyway?). Shoot, not everyday is going to be a cakewalk of smiles and butterflies, and I think that's just alright. Sorry if that comes across crass, it's really not supposed to.

We recently did team evaluations where each of the four of us answered a couple of questions about the other three missionaries on the team. The category that challenged me the most was "Living Order," which essentially pertains to making time for yourself and your own personal life amongst the bazillions of things you have going on all the time. Tim (my team director) is really good at putting things into context and expressing them very well with words, and I told him that it's hard for me to take time to myself, especially in the middle of the day, because it seems selfish to do that when there are students I can meet with, barehanding (talking to random people around campus) to be done or expense reports to fill out.

He called me right out on that and said that rather than being selfish to the people I know right now I am actually being selfish to the people that the Lord desires to put into my life a few years down the road. He mentioned a shocking statistic: 98% of Youth Ministers (of course John and Sarah came instantly to mind) last 2 years on average in their ministry and after that they get burned out and never work for the Church again.

This was completely shocking! It makes total sense: we desire to help the lost sheep find their way, and when it comes to matters as important as our Faith, we desire that they know it fully and know true friendships in Christ.  We might end up pouring everything we have into just a few people for a short amount of time, but when the Lord presents new disciples to us down the road, we have already burned out and cannot give them the adequate, if any, time that they deserve in order to grow. Therefore, by taking time to ourselves we are actually doing a service to the people we don't even know yet and still allowing the Lord to work His magic through us with them.

Now I'll end this rather long post with a thought. Yes, I believe it certainly is possible to become selfish with our alone time and begin to guard it, build up walls around it and never let anybody touch it while it continues to grow and grow. But is guarding a set amount of time each day, whether 15 minutes or 2 hours, to remain sacred for you and you alone (with Jesus, of course) bad? There are both positives and negatives to a "yes" and a "no" answer, but this is definitely a common struggle--especially among us!--and by learning discipline in this an entire community can be strengthened.

Praying for all of you,
Kelsey

p.s. Perhaps we could read a book together? It's been something on my heart. I was thinking, although I'm sure many of us have read this, Mother Teresa's Come Be My Light. She understands suffering and service more than any of us and has truly lived it! Let me know your thoughts! :)

The Individual

I was going to make this just a comment to John’s post about community taking effort, but it got a little long, so here it is as a full post. I agree that community can take some serious effort, and that effort definitely should be put forth in most cases in community life. I did have a thought that there are also times when it will take effort to be an individual and/or to ALLOW others to have their space as well. Thinking of the trip, a couple moments come to mind.

One was working on a little eyebrow deally at the end of the day on Friday to make the soffit, siding and fascia to all tie together on the corner of the house. A few of us had a little brainstorming session and came up with some ideas, but with all the jobs being done, I ended doing the actual construction of the thing. The work was frustrating at times, but to tell the truth I really enjoyed solving it and I am glad that I had the opportunity to go at it alone. It was incredibly freeing to be able to go at my pace and not have to discuss everything out loud (although I can get in some pretty good arguments all by myself). Anyway, it was great to both share the work of the house, but at times be able to work or struggle on something alone for a while. I’ll leave it up to you to apply that to other aspects of life, because I don’t want to. I know you can do it.

Secondly, I think to the car ride back home. Being an introvert who had just spent a week with 4 other people almost nonstop, I was pretty ready for some serious inside my own head time. I popped in my earbuds and shut everything out. I really enjoyed being able to just sit and think, and I feel like it was fruitful. However, I realize that to the rest of the group, I seemed like I was angry or something was wrong, which I am very sorry for. To top it off, I did get frustrated when someone would ask me a question. How dare they try to interact with me while I’m thinking? So, I do think that there are times to just be alone, and perhaps even to let yourself or others be alone to their thoughts, even when you are physically close. I know that I haven’t been successful in handling this well, but there must be a place for it.

I leave you with this quote of great importance and wisdom:

To me, it's always a good idea to always carry two sacks of something when you walk around. That way, if anybody says, 'Hey, can you give me a hand?,' you can say, 'Sorry, got these sacks.’

-Jack Handey

“You don't think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking.” - Henri Nouwen

Community takes effort

Well as you will see again, this Mini Mission Trip has had a profound impact on my life and discernment of community. Like I mentioned yesterday this Mission trip in some respects allowed us an opportunity to enter into a community together. It provided an opportunity – for us to enter into a shared life. We worked, lived, ate, played, prayed, & shared expenses. And that is a beautiful thing, which I enjoyed immensely. However I also realized that just because the opportunity for community was there in structure, it didn’t mean that I was always partaking in communal life. And on the other hand if the structure of community was not in place there would have been no communal life there for me to take part of.

Hopefully as I continue, this realization will become clearer.

Most of the week, for me was awesome and fun and I was having a good ol time with everyone. One major exception to this was Wednesday. The weather was unpleasant all day and the work proved to hard cold and dirty. I was crabby and then I was short with my friends around me. Then I was frustrated with the fact that I become crabby so easily if I am uncomfortable. I just sort of checked out from the community around me. I didn’t make eye contact with anyone and said hardly anything while we got ready for dinner and ate dinner. I just didn’t want to be there, and boy I made it obvious in my demeanor.

Later reflecting and talking with my wife, I saw how I acted was really disrespectful and uncharitable to those around me. I am sorry for how I acted, but in further reflection I came to realized something about community and about my nature.

I realized 1) That as beautiful and as contagious as community is it also takes effort and at sometimes it will take huge amounts of effort to enter into the opportunity of community that is before me. 2) I have a strong desire to be an individual and the community in structure and practice needs to allow space for individuals.

The images that came to mind are 1)Each person joining the community is a play doh person and when you join we take your lump of play doh and add it to the community play doh person so that the community becomes this one giant play doh person. 2) Each person joining the community is a person made out of the stuff that is a person and we then put up four walls and a roof around us and we call the community HOME. Whereas the house is the structure & order & traditions of the community. And the people inside are the people inside the community. This HOME we build has windows and doors for us to go in and out of and a front porch for us to invite the neighbors to hang out and the doors are unlocked and the windows uncurtained. So the HOME is tangible and something real and a part of the persons’ identity and design and yet the HOME is separate from each individual and each individual is separate from the other individuals.

In summary:

1) The Community needs to respect the individual and provide true freedom to remain persons

2) Each individual needs to put in effort and at times great effort to get outside themselves in order to enter into the communal life and benefit the entire community

And at the end of the day we all come back HOME

Community is Contagious

Communal Life. - They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers. Awe came everyone, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their property and prossessions and divide them among all according to each one's need. Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple area and to breaking bread in their homes. They ate their meals with exultation and sincerity of heart, praising God and enjoying favor with all the people. And every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

- Acts 2:42-47 -

Last week, I had an amazing time on Mission Trip with some even more amazing friends. To make it even better we were serving people and an organization that I know & love. An organization we have become friends with. On our way home we stopped in St. Louis to visit a couple of Catholic Worker houses and other similar type community houses. Was interesting and continues to challenge me and raise questions in me of the type of communal life God is calling me to. Anyway after we got back in the car, some of us got to talking about the week of service and about past mission trip experiences to Mississippi. Brother David made mention of how each year after the week of working on mission trip he told himself he would work harder at making this great feeling last longer and this life of serving more a part of his life back home. Each year he noticed he was able to do a better job. After last summer he very actively looked for areas where he could serve within his talents. He started getting somewhat involved with habitat here in Sauk. But his reflection was even though he desires to serve more and he is actually doing it more throughout the year this trip to MS always seems significantly better and more fruitful and useful. Even this most recent one the 5 of us were just rapping up. Those of us in the car that were discussing this starting trying to figure out why the mission trip was better and why it is hard to bring it back home in a sustainable way for an extended period of time.

Discussions lead to the idea that a big difference was who we were serving with. On the mission trip the 5 of us were in a community – we lived, eat, worked, played, & prayed together. We put all the costs of the trip together and split the bill. And in a fairly larger scale that is what we do on the summer mission trip. And I was like wow – this sounds and seems a lot like what the early church looked like. So it would only make sense that as verse 47 says, “praising God and enjoying favor with all the people. And every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”

It only makes sense that this communal life when tied to service work is so much more enjoyable and attractive. David was trying to serve by himself when he got back home – which I believe is amazing and very commendable – but as we discussed in the car David can’t be the Body of Christ. He is only one part of the Body. And when we live & serve in community we have a much higher chance to become a fuller version of the Body of Christ. And let me tell you Christ is Beautiful. We all have different gifts from God and He distributes them to all of us differently, so that it forces us (or draws us) to form a communal life in order for us to become the Body of Christ.

I love Communal Life and it is true the world needs Communal life, and if we are all aiming at God it may just happen that others will also catch this contagious way to live.