Perspective (or when sad songs don't seem so sad)

I have so many mixed emotions it’s hard to ascertain where one begins and another ends. On one hand I’m tired. Just plain physically exhausted with having to try and get people to participate in the damned research for the thesis. So far I’ve gotten eighty-six to do the questionnaire, which is not bad considering that I am a one-man show. I wish there was an easier way. The other group of four have completed their 100 person quota. I know it’s not a competition, but it still irks me all the same: I have another seventy-four to go before I can call it a day.

Then there’s MUCC and with all the issues which they have. I see it more as a stage whereby the group really needs to focus on the creation of a ‘core community’ which is grounded solidly in faith and mutual understanding, which can then sustain all the other functions, activities and development of the larger community and support networks along the way. But somehow I feel drawn out, almost as if there really isn’t too much of an interest, or a general apathy, or a stronger faith community isn’t really something which people want. I know I have my own ways of doing things. I know that I am very potentially blind to aspects and elements which my experience or worldview has not prepared me for. In a very real way, I learn something new every time I try to do something for the group, which I am grateful for. I suppose I have to trust that things will take a turn for the better. Only perseverance and God will tell.

Sometimes I wonder what is the mission of the group as a whole. ‘Being there’ for others doesn’t seem as concrete a goal as it can be. It’s a question I raise but I have never been satisfied with the answer. Maybe it’s a different idea of how I would like things to be versus the larger community.

I met Ligna and Cass today. That was strange. I doubt I normally say anything more than ten words to either one of them in the average conversation back home. Yet there is that something of being far away from home that makes even that slightest bit of contact seem like a drop of water after a long hard march through inhospitable terrain. I enjoyed meeting them. Hope you blokes have a good holiday.

I was reminded today of the sheer faith that other people experience, and that joy that makes them want to do something about that faith. Admittedly, that is not my faith experience. I find the meaning in the doing, the planning, the semantics; I’m a thinker more than a feeler in this case, and if I may be so presumptuous to extend the analogy further, a theologian, not a charismatic. Which isn’t to say that that faith is no stronger, but that sometimes I fail to see things in those purely experiential spirituality terms. And when I see that flowing through other people, I wonder sometimes whether I am really experiencing and sharing that same faith that others show me every day.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m just really empty inside. I fear that sometimes I run out of things to offer because I offer everything at the word ‘go’. You wonder; do people hold back because of that? Do we fear being ‘known’ so much that we hold ourselves back from being known? Or do we just hide ourselves behind the masks, or contextual selves, which we inhabit and hope that no one sees you completely; while protesting that we just want to be ‘understood’? Curious dialectic there.

Again my heartstrings were tugged today. Combination of two things really; first being when I pointed out something that Diane would like at Freo Markets today, and Charmaine asked me why don’t I get it for her, and I ran off this spiel about why it’s impractical. And I suddenly thought, hang on a second, why am I rationalising? Two years ago I would have bought it and sent it back to her even though it is impractical. Just to surprise her.

Then at work, Jonno said something to me about music and whether you might like a song ‘more’ because someone you cared about introduced it to you. Interesting thought, but I would have to agree. That set me wondering about what Diane was doing. What she’s saying. What’s going on in her life. There’s so much that I don’t know what’s going on. And I hate that I am unable to share those moments of her life with her. Even the frivolous moments like what music she’s listening to (which will obviously be far from my own tastes, I’m very narrow-minded that way).

To hear an angel voice. Even for a few seconds. Just to hear those words, ‘I love you’ would mean the world to me right now.