It’s bitter cold and rainy here in Portland. Last night I was standing out in the downpour hanging onto a box that weighs a ton and being knocked to the ground over and over; this morning I was covered in blood, lying fully clothed in a bathtub for two hours, and I had a blast…shooting a short film :)
You ever take a second to look at yourself and think, “What on earth am I doing right now?” I’ve been in a few of those situations this term. The short film is one; the dancing I’m doing for my friend’s choreography class project is another. I seem to get caught up in a lot of those little projects and diversions…I think it’s because I love people.
People are fascinating. We have so many incredibly varied passions, hobbies, angles, insecurities, quirks, private pleasures, and internal lives. I watched a friend of mine get frustrated as we left a restaurant today because there was no way to recycle her plastic drinking cup. This same friend doesn’t like the idea of cutting down Christmas trees because it kills the tree–classic Portlander. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that at all…like I said: I just love people.
Attending a secular university has been an enlightening experience for me. It’s funny: when you grow up in church it can be easy to think that “good people” go to church, and people that don’t go to church or don’t behave a certain way are lesser, or bad. The truth is, there are lots of truly wonderful, life-enriching people in the world that don’t believe anything like what I believe. Maybe it sounds weird to say, but I feel like Jesus would agree with me…he loved a lot of unchurched people too.
Still, at the end of the day, the people I connect with the most powerfully are people that share my beliefs, because their priorities are ordered the way mine are, and they are excited most by the things that excite me most: living compassionately, meaningfully, and purposefully, and making the world a better place. I imagine that’s why God designed church to be (as Ken likes to say) his “plan A” for changing the world, because it’s engineered to inspire, sustain, and restore the people within it and the people without it.
You rock Ben