Communal Sex

To borrow from Lauren Winner's Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity (who is building upon Wendell Berry), "Sex is communal rather than private, personal rather than public."

It's time for another shout out to my community, both among those who meet together with me in the same building on Sundays, and those in the Body spread out near and far. Being 27 and single -- and chaste -- is not easy. I certainly couldn't do it alone, so fortunately, I don't have to. I'm surrounded by married and unmarried, young and old, very young and not old, but not... well, you get the idea. And these people invite me into their lives (and I invite them into mine). And so, I have community; community with other single believers who take the exhortation to live lives worthy of Christ's sacrifice and calling seriously, which includes, for various reasons, chastity; community with married Christians who live with a likewise intentional desire to align themselves wholly to Christ, which also includes chastity -- instead of abstaining from premarital sex and all that includes, abstaining from extramarital sex and all that includes. Even being in community with my 1st graders impacts my calling for this time of celibacy: conversations like, "How do you liiveee!?", but also simply serving, so I'm not constantly thinking on myself. Furthermore, living at home, with Mom and Dad, is helpful -- not living alone, and not simply sharing space (house), but sharing life (home); the same was true of L'Abri.

So, it's easier.

My church doesn't do everything perfectly. The sermon illustrations are still about marriage and family 99 percent of the time, which despite my belief in the skills of transference, can still be largely alienating. People -- married people -- still ask me things like, "Well, do you want to get married?" and are baffled when my answer is "yes and no" and not one or the other: like, "Come on, Renea, it's simple, either you're called to be single or you're called to be married; either you want to marry and will make choices accordingly, or you don't, and won't." I want to be like, "Really? How long have you been 'called' to retire, rather than 'called' to work?" But I can't help but smile to myself about how funny and fatalistic we get about romance; we forget our vow to one another in marriage is "until death do us part," not "happily ever after;" that even marriage is seasonal, just like the rest of life, "not because of divorce, but because of death" (139), and ultimately, because of our New Life upon Christ's return.

But they do a lot of things well. They don't ask me upon first seeing me, "Are you seeing anyone?" They ask after weeks, months even, usually as the conversation lends itself, rather than out of the blue. I appreciate that. I appreciate it on two levels: one, it's a tiresome question when it's always the first one you hear, no matter how much I try to tell myself, 'They just think you're cute and likable, and want to know, naturally, who you're dating.' :) and two, I like being asked about my life, even the really personal stuff, by people who've earned the right to do so. I mean, OK, when it comes to confessing, I don't always like it, but who doesn't thrive on feeling the vested interest of others who love them? (By the way, this derives in part, no doubt, from a sermon exhorting non-single folk to think of other questions to ask. Bravo, Pastor.)

They do ask me about the hard stuff: What am I watching? How have I been imaginatively virtuous today? How have I been vicious? How do I treat the men with whom I interact while dancing, or at the library, or at Starbucks? This could probably be done more, but we're slowly overcoming the trappings of our over-individualized, over-privatized society. If I were seeing someone, I am confident they'd ask about what we do behind closed doors. To borrow again from Winner, when I was baptized into the Body, what I do with my body becomes your business to a degree, not in explicit detail, but insofar as we all have been unified with Christ's bodily burial and resurrection. Since, "what we do with our bodies, what we do sexually, shapes our persons" (50), sexuality is a communal affair; it matters; and we have, not only the right, but the obligation to ask each other what we did last night, not in a policing way, but as an extension of Grace.

They invite me to dinner, but more than that, they invite me to life: dinner with the kids going crazy, dinner and games and talking, dinner and working together -- preparing for and cleaning after. This kind of doing life together keeps us from being boxed into separate packages of block cheese over there and Kraft Singles over here. Which brings me to a similar point, the "life classes" at church, or whatever they're called these days, aren't split up demographically either. Or at least, that's the intention. It may take several years for people to change their ways, but God promises to honor the vision -- and the works -- of the church when they align with his. We gain perspective from each other. I have insights that my family-focused friends need but can't get without help of an "other," and I too gain glimpses of Truth from their married lives which can be gained no where else!

So I just wanted to say thanks, because there aren't many un-married Christians over the age of 23 (in the South) who feel content, or as valuable members of the Family. It's a two-way street. I make myself available; I involve myself in the women's biblestudy at church, even though there's no one else there my age. I try to be vulnerable and open and "authentic," instead of complaining that no one is being "real." I ask if we can get together, which often leads to doing life together, rather than sitting at home, growing bitter about never being asked. And I admit, these things may be easier for my personality, the last in particular, but there's responsibility on the part of single Christians and non-single Christians alike to foster holistic community, so let's keep on working on it together.

Home

I just spent the weekend visiting the church I went to during college, and, similarly to when I came back to my home church in Plano, I was greeted with big smiles and bigger hugs. Many didn't know I was coming to visit, or even that I was back, so it was a huge surprise to them and super fun for me. Most encouraging was that the number one thing I heard as people were welcoming me home was, "I thought about you so much while you were gone, wanting to talk to you and wishing you were here; so I've been praying for you a lot." This was from friends my age and more so from friends my parents' age-ish. It was the same thing my first Sunday back in Plano.

Eventhough I knew that to be the case while in Switzerland and frequently anchorered myself to the sure but dim knowledge of those prayers during good times and bad, I'm still awed by it now. I'm humbled by the big-ness of life that includes me but isn't centered on me, reminding me of life's connectedness. I'm connected to a bigger community amid larger happenings. Somehow, when the ceiling began to crack and it seemed as though the roof was caving in over my head, beneath the surface lay a foundation deep and strong. Life is happening beyond what I can see and feel and I am connected to it. I know this is no great revelation, but it is humbling and encouraging, refreshing, energizing, motivating. And I just wanted to give a shout out to these two churches.

I'm fortunate, I know, because at the end of the day, regardless of the doctrines I disagree with and the things that really get me fired up and even down right angry, no matter what arrogant and shallow-minded, young, 'We Know Everything' attitude reveals itself in something I say or do, despite all of those things, we know eachother. We love eachother, these churches and I; it's family and it's home. There are endearing quirks and irritating entrenchments. We fight it out and laugh it off; we overlook certain things and agree to disagree. And it's worth it. It's worth putting up with and it's nice to know I'm worth putting up with too.

It's nice to know that this relationship is two-sided. If you're church-hunting and if you want my advice, once you think you might have landed somewhere, invest. Invest in the generation before you as well as the one after you. Invest in men and women who posses a faith that is long-suffering, producing in them a character that is charitable. Putting effort into a good relationship yields character-building benefits. I am fortunate. Because it is two-sided and sometimes one (or both) of the sides is crap: straying from true religion (Jm 1:27, 1 Tim 5:4), we forget Christ and expect white roses to be red, or we simply skip the whole thing and pretend by putting in perfect rows of plastic tulips. At any rate, I just wanted to write about church from a positive perspective, from the garden that springs up out of the manure as God tills and waters and prunes, creating good for those who respond to his call with loving duty: tilling, watering, pruning (Rom 8:28).

Getting Real

As some of you know, I've applied to stay on for next term. Just as before, writing my letter of application was a good processing exercise for me, and I want to share it with you. (I will find out next week if I am able to stay.)

___________________________________________________

In May and June of last summer my reasons for coming to L’Abri revolved around the values for which L’Abri stands, values such as integrated, holistic living: mind, body, and spirit journeying Homeward, that is, being more and more at home within one’s self, one’s community, even the whole of creation. I came here because I love learning: the growth, the discussion, the lightbulb moments of connection; and the environment in which our studies take place is idyllic, a shelter amid the Swiss Alps, a safe place to be and to become. It only took a few days for my purpose to shift slightly from merely intellectual to modestly personal: an intellectual and practical pursuit of the inner workings of my day-to-day Christian life. As it turns out, I needed to be here more than I realized. And the longer I am here, the more I am confronted by community, forced to deal with issues I had forgotten, issues I keep hidden beneath the surface of my soul. As Jasie encourages me to do more than merely talk about ontology and actually be myself – my whole self – I realize I am too much in the habit of ignoring things in my life that aren’t pretty to look at or nice to talk about; or at best, I gloss over them to candy-coat my memories, creating a sugar-coated story. And this is far from charity – it is neither charitable to me nor to those who love me.

So as I contemplate charity and what it means to live christianly praying, “Thy kingdom come,” I consider L’Abri: what it is and what it means to me. L’Abri is a safe place, though it is not safe for my pride nor the false images I’ve made of myself and presented to the world; it is not a safe place within which my insecurities can hide. For there are people here who have been living in community long enough to recognize a counterfeit self, and though my airbrushed self-portraits are of interest to the world, L’Abri, by which I mean the people who are L’Abri to me, is not interested. For the world sees people through utilitarian lenses, but the workers here, as well as some of the friends I’ve found, see through Love. Not perfectly, but even so, it is through our imperfections we learn forgiveness, grace, healing; we learn love. And this is what Christianity is about; this is what L’Abri is about: love as the demonstration of God’s actively redemptive existence in the world, namely the cross and resurrection of his Christ. This is what I want to be about. Or want to be better about. And L’Abri seems the best place to cultivate such charity (that is, learning to give of my whole self) for yet a little while longer. L’Abri is a safe place. Or rather, it is a trustworthy place. For within the hospitable charity which distinguishes L’Abri I am learning, however slowly, to entrust my needs and my insecurities to friends here, trusting that my real self will be nurtured – not kept safe from pain, but cared for – even as my graven images (images of self-god which replace with vulgarity the image-of-God-bearing self) are being pulled down. Christ claims to give abundant life and I desire to have the courage to live in that fullness with all its suffering and glory, because not to abide in the courage of Christ, to refuse to say ‘yes’ moment by moment (mundane as they often may be) to the call of a disciple, is to spit on the cross and scoff at the resurrection. I don’t want to be that kind of “Christian.” But I don’t have that kind of courage. Not without the courage of others, and even so I am feeble and fearful and want of freedom.

My interest in the possibility of a full-time position at Swiss L’Abri is also a factor in my desire to stay. In fact, it has been in my thoughts from the beginning; again, because I value so highly what takes place here. The work of pursuing Truth and providing Home is important to me and I enjoy being a part of it. I think about the possibility of remaining in the work for some extended period of time, and I don’t know if I can maintain the kind of life-in-flux that occurs here. I don’t know a lot of things. But that is yet another reality which L’Abri is helping me understand: that I don’t have to know how the next phase of my life, or even the next day is going to turn out. I hope that my presence within this community contributes to the work and the lives of people in positive, even unique ways. I hope to continue my work here, even if just for one more term, and to bring to maturity that which the Father has begun in me through you. How one attempts to say thank you for even such a beginning, well, I’m not sure it’s fully possible.

Now & Later

This past week I spent much of my free time writing a letter to the L’Abri workers (full-time staff) about the possibility of my staying on next term as a helper. If I am accepted, I will stay for free, have one afternoon a week to study and work crews and work projects the rest of the week.

I want to share my letter with you, for it was a great exercise for me personally insomuch as it gave me insight into what is happening here now that I desire to continue for another term.

Enjoy.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Friends,

Life at L’Abri has become a thing most precious to me. I enjoy being a part of this community and would like to deepen my involvement, returning next term as a helper. It is satisfying to contribute to the daily livelihood of a community, to know that people are eating because of the bread I made or that the grounds are lovely because of the leaves I raked. But it is much more than this. We share the work and engage in each other’s lives as we labor alongside one another: people are enjoying the meal we made; L’Abri is beautiful because of the work we’ve done collectively. There is a love-induced pride in the work and the fellowship.

I believe in the work of L’Abri and desire to support and contribute to this place that provides a safe haven for people to discuss issues that in other Christian contexts are considered unmentionable, a shelter from the totalizing violence of various Christian subcultures and culture at large, and an alternative to western individualism within the joys and challenges of constant community. My benefit from this is twofold in that I am free to exist in the vulnerable-secure dichotomy of honesty, which in turn frees me to provide a sense of home for others. Already this term my fellow students honor me with regard as a leader and a shepherd, someone they trust, and I hope they also feel encouraged by my love for the work and the diligence and strong work ethic that derives from that love.

I would also like to continue my studies. I have so many varied interests and L’Abri is a great venue for entertaining a myriad of interests through formal lunches and study and tutorials. I really value my tutorial time and desire to continue working with Jasie through my issues and the spiritual disciplines and the current issues of the Christian subculture. I love the church. It hurts me to see it hurting so and I feel overwhelmed when I try to think about what to do. I view my time here as an opportunity to remove myself from the situation so as to see more clearly what’s happening now, where things are going, and what to do. My time here also serves as a stint of consideration for the next step in my personal life. The slower pace of life at L’Abri blesses me in many ways, significantly in the time it affords me to grow in my communal role of neighbor and friend and my individual role of person.

I understand being a helper is difficult. I don’t pretend that it will always be easy regardless of my experience. On the contrary, it is because of my experience that I know it is difficult at times. So I do not wish to communicate naive expectations, but I do earnestly enjoy being at L’Abri and desire to stay and more deeply develop what has begun – both in my personal life as well as in the relationships I have come to cherish.

Thank you for your encouragement throughout this process and throughout my journey as a whole.

Renea

Confronted by Community

Welcome to L’Abri. The floors squeak and the walls are thin. Opening a window is loud. Opening a door is loud. Closing doors and windows is loud. Everything is loud. No action is quiet or discrete or private. If you choose to live here, you have chosen to live in community; there’s no getting around it. “No man is an island.” You may be able to choose at times how much you wish to be immersed (for example, most of the people in the house have gone out for the evening and I am taking advantage of the silence to write out these thoughts), but even so, every action I choose to make affects another and likewise I too am constantly affected by the actions and choices of others.

I was studying yesterday afternoon (we all study in/near the library during the day) and got up to close the window. It creaked and banged. It was loud. The guy sitting next to me was giving me a hard time: ‘Shhh! I’m trying to study.’ I smiled and said, ‘There’s no such thing as being discrete at L’Abri. You’re forced to be in community.’ ‘You’re forced to be honest,’ he replied. As I sat down I thought for a moment and whispered, ‘Same thing.’

I just finished reading a book by Luke Johnson called, Faith’s Freedom, which honestly wasn’t that great; however, he does make some great points about the role of community in the exercising of our faith. He speaks of God as “Other,” the Transcendent One who is other than every created thing. Other people are also “other” and God uses the otherness of both people and himself to invade our lives, causing us to step out of ourselves and our projects/plans/goals and make room for others’ projects/plans/goals. Johnson writes, “… Other breaks the plane of everyday life, shatters the veneer of predictability, and challenges the presumption of human control” (53).

I’ve been confronted by community before and I was forced to learn things about myself and about life, but this time I think I’m ready to be a bit more intentional about how I live my life within the context of community – a bit less scared to be honest, imperfect, ontological, a bit less scared to be. I’m practicing apologizing. I’m working on being OK with learning by trial and error. (How else do you learn? I know…) That is to say, realizing how silly it is to think I ought to be able to do things I’ve never done before perfectly – working so much in the kitchen is helping me here. Cooking is also helping me to expand my creativity, learning to take creative risks and make mistakes.

Believe it or not, I have made (so far) chocolate-chunk cookies, homemade bread (oven-baked, no bread-maker), and cream spinach soup, all from scratch, and people not only ate them, they liked them! Actually, I was only supposed to be stirring the soup when the person who was really creating it said to me, ‘Have a taste and see what needs to be added.’ As I looked over at her with uncertain eyes that said, ‘You obviously don’t know how little exposure to the creative side of cooking I have,’ I replied, ‘I’m pretty good at stirring, but I’d better leave the taste-testing to you.’ She looked right back at me, smiling and completely un-phased by my self-doubt and said, ‘Nope. You’re in charge of the soup right now.’ I just continued looking at her. Not missing a beat, she almost sings, ‘You can do it; just play with it.’ I thought to myself, ‘She’s calling me out of my perfectionistic, non-risk-taking self and into risk and creativity, ontology and play.’ Well, there’s just no arguing with such a call and I wasn’t about to refuse it, so I took the spoon from her hand, took a deep breath, and tasted the soup to, ‘see what needs to be added,’ as if I could even tell the difference between the spices on the counter. Nonetheless, I carefully lifted each spice to my nose and after having another taste decided to add more nutmeg. I stirred in the reddish powder and took another taste – delicious! How ‘bout that.

This experience with the soup reminded me of a discussion we had earlier in the week during lecture. We all had read the first chapter of A Disciplined Heart by Caroline J. Simon. The book pursues the ideas and connections between love, destiny and imagination. The first chapter sets everything up by providing definitions for the language Simon uses for the rest of her book; about love and imagination she writes:

In order to explore the distinction between love and love’s counterfeits, I will call the insight that is central to love imagination, and the illusions projected by love’s counterfeits fiction-making. This is a technical usage, which differs somewhat from the way these terms are ordinarily used. In ordinary usage both terms have to do with “making things up.” What my special use of them is intended to highlight is roughly the contrast between seeing what may not yet wholly exist, but should (imagination), and seeming to see either what should not and will not exist or what does or will exist, but should not (fiction-making). (14, bolding emphasis mine)

And about imagination and destiny: “Imagination is the capacity to see what may not yet appear but should. Imagination, then, when directed toward persons, amounts to insight into someone’s destiny” (16). So what’s my point? Well, I’m not trying to say that I think it’s my destiny to become a fabulous chef and master of the culinary arts (no comments from the peanut gallery, if you please), but I am happy about becoming a bit more familiar with the kitchen because I do hope cooking for my family is a part of my “destiny.” And the workers and helpers and students at L’Abri are, in Simon’s language, using their imaginations to encourage me in friendly love towards becoming who I should be (both in and out of the kitchen). Hooray for fellowship and ontology!