"And folks were asking me what I was going to do when I graduated from college. People always want to define you by what you do. I started saying,'I'm not too concerned with what I am going do. I am more interested in who I m becoming. I want to be a lover of God and people.'
I was convinced that what we do is not nearly as important as who we are. The question is not whether you will be a doctor or a lawyer but what kind of doctor or lawyer you will be. What would a twenty-year-old Jesus have said if they asked him, 'What are you going to do when you grow up?' I don't now, maybe something like, 'I'm going to turn the world upside down. I'm going to hang out with prostitutes and tax collectors until people kill me.' Or what would Peter have said? 'Well, I was going to be a fisherman, but then I met this dude, and he messed all that up.'
I remember Mother Teresa saying, 'Do not worry about your career. Concern yourself with you vocation, and that is to be lovers of Jesus.' So I started calling myself a 'vocational lover.' Whenever I would fill out forms that had a blank for profession, I'd just write 'Lover.' My high school reunion handbook just listed me as a career lover."

-- Shane Claiborne, "The Irresistible Revolution"

The new book of the week is Shane Claiborne's "Irresistible Revolution," in which he talks about his experiences in search of true followers of Christ in a world full of "Christians." This particular passage struck me because it seems to put words to a lot of the work I came here this semester to do. I can't say that I have mastered it by any means, but something that continually came to my mind as motivation for me to follow through with the step to come here was the desire to learn how to love well.

A few weeks ago, I wrote that at this moment, I care less about where I am headed after gradation that I have for quite possibly, my entire life. It just doesn't seem to matter much anymore what I am going to do. Being away from the college-town culture where everyone is concerned with how many credits they have yet to complete, and spending a lot of time with people in all different walks of life, my perspective is changed a bit, it seems.

After spending time in elementary schools, and in bowling alleys, and in offices, in coffeehouses, in "bonus rooms" and living rooms surrounded by hurting followers of Christ, being with people who are simply trying to get started on their education and those who have completed it (formally, that is), really old people who talk about "college days" as being hundreds of years ago when they were still so young and foolish, those who have been through three or four career changes already, the world seems a lot bigger, and maybe a bit more simple. It feels like whatever I do after this stage in my life will simply be another part of my life. I think what I am trying to say is that I am finding a great deal of joy in the fact that my life is not held together so much by what I am doing. I have said this many times and continue to think about it-- that our culture promises so much of the security we seek in "the four year plan," the expectation that you follow a certain path to be truly successful and "normal."

But I like what Claiborne says here. That our lives are not held together by our professional label. I think there is a great deal more continuity when we seek "what we are to become rather than what we do." This is why people find their lives so disjointed-- I can't follow the deeper impulse of my heart because I don't have time between work and soccer practice and all I do to bury myself so I don't feel the pangs of those impulses. Safety in business that actually leads to our eventual death from numbness.

Not long after my arrival, a newly-met friend lent me the book "The River Why," by David James Duncan. After graduating high school, the main character finds himself free to do what he has always wanted to do-- fish every moment of daylight-- and in turn ends up awakened to the reality of the numbness that comes from such a life spend buried in such self-gratification. After prolonged immersion in solitude, he began to unearth his heart from under the clutter of "doing" that had kept him from loving for so long.

And I've often thought about the life I have led up to this point. A life spent keeping busy, looking busy, working hard to stay out of the way. I often think about my high school-freshman-self that hid behind an organized locker, a newspaper layout, math homework, a correct theology, so as to avoid the pain of human interaction. And suddenly, as I sit here, I wonder if I am as far from that person as I thought I was. I think about what it is going to be like going back to school in the fall and I wonder if Iwill fall back into that pattern of business, just like everyone else around me.

In contrast to the life I lead now surrounded by such a diversity of people and activity, the homogeneous culture of university life seems numb. But it sucks you so easily. The flow is disguised by weekend partiers, "a breadth of experiences and resources," and the appeal of education as broadening your horizon. And I often can't help by hold this tension between this system. I feel privileged beyond words to have the opportunities that I have been given as a college student and all that I have learned, but I fear the system of numb security it breeds in our culture. It is hard not to be spoon-fed the ideals of the "four year plan" as we go through, unthinking.

Really, what I am getting at is this tendency we have as students to put school first and treat relationships as just another extra-curricular that we are lucky enough to participate in if we have the time. And this is not the life that I want for myself. I want to finish my degree, my mouth waters at the idea of what kind of artist I am to become, all there is for me to learn and love, but I do not want to have to choose either-or. I want balance. I want my relationships to be enriched by what I learn about the world, not an after-thought. After everything passes away, I want to have invested on what matter, what holds it all together and I am convinced that that is not my education or career-- it is the people that I am able to join hands with.

So what do I do with that? I do not know. The cost of solitude, of a life lived at a reasonable pace seems very high these days. In all actuality, it is much more cost-efficient to rush through school, never looking back, but unfortunately, that way of life also costs us possibly a lifetime more in all that we miss in the people along the way. It's like you enter this monster and it feels so counter-intuitive to do anything but follow suit. To be more concerned with being than doing is quite foreign and backwards in this culture.

But I am working on holding tensions-- instead of gratifying the impulse to resolve it, I am going to let that tension sit as it lies. To work through the push and pull until something settles. in the meantime, I am going to worry about being today and decide what to do later.