November 22, 2006
Posted by thomas in : xanga , 5 comments The Alumni ReportI am unemployed. I have been laid-off, downsized, made victim to the malaise of the middle aged little man of our modern imagination who gets lost in the shuffle. The landscaping season, due to a drop in temperature - a downpour of rain - a drought of funding, has closed for this young laborer. Just as employment is a common experience for most alumni, so is unemployment.
The question that no one can resist is, of course, what are you doing now? What are your plans? What’s next? How do you plan to feed yourself? Are you going to die fat, ugly, and alone in front of your tv in your sweatsuit watching Oprah, covered with cookie crumbs and the remains of a two liter of Pepsi you decided to try and drink “in one go” just for fun? Yes, plans. One does need to pay the bills, bills, bills - the telephone bills, the automo’bills…all that fun stuff.
Now, you have to realize that I have been jumping from job to school to job to school to job to school and job to job (and so on) since I was a fresh-faced young 15 year old working wonders as a cook in the Allen & Wright chain of fine restaurants after school. Every type-A gene in my body (and there are a few in there) revolts against the idea of not doing something, of being unemployed, uninvolved, unconnected. However, when I was first laid-off, a little earlier than planned I might mention, I decided to just take some time to do nothing, to actually take some time and try and figure out some sort of picture of what my life is at the moment and what I want it to be, you know: pray, think, commune. I also wanted some time to work on a book I’ve started writing. Basically I’ve become a sort of professional mystic who spends a lot of time sitting in quiet places reading books and every now and then managing to get a few words down on a page that I don’t think sound completely boring, stupid, or cliche. I am also now, at this juncture, looking for a job again (something cool and sexy that will make me fabulously rich).
Yet, the awkwardness continues when confronted with the question: what are you doing now? I usually don’t even bother with the whole “figuring out my life” bit. If people hear that I am praying for longer than fifteen minutes a day and fasting every once in a while they generally start looking for a crazy glint in my eye and the start of a long gray hermit beard on my chin.
So I tell them: I’m writing a book.
Oh, really? What’s it about?
It’s a decent question really, an understandable one. Yet, whenever I am asked it I imagine wrapping my fingers around my questioner’s throat and choking them to death, red faced: well I guess you’ll…never…know!
I’m cringing: Oh, it’s about me, it’s a memoirish type of thing, about identity and self knowledge and childhood and place and memory, you know…
Ah, I see. Cool. That’s neat.
Silence.
And of course in the silence lies all the judgment I rain down upon myself, all the thoughts I expect they are dying to give voice to. Yes, yes I know, I’m a narcissistic ass, writing about myself, my life, I’m only just turned twenty-two years old, I’m not even that interesting, what could I possibly have to say? I mean, this isn’t really answering the questions of how you plan on feeding yourself, now is it? You can’t make any money doing this sort of thing. This writing; it’s a trainwreck, a nightmare, a disaster - I know what you write, how you write, I know that there is no way…I mean writing a book? Just saying it sounds silly, doesn’t it? You’re going to hit page thirty five and scrap the whole thing, you’ll hit page thirty five and you’ll have nothing to say, you’ll hit page thirty five and realize you’ve been saying nothing all along and the whole load of it, the whole of your efforts will sit in a drawer or a box somewhere moulding away until one Saturday morning, with the sun slanting through the tiny square windows, you’ll come across it again in the corner of the basement and smile at the awkward phrasing and melodramatic description which covers the pages.
Of course, I’d love to tell them, love to tell myself: but don’t you see this is my dream? Don’t you see? Ever since I was young, ever since I spent my Christmas holidays writing my first novel when I was eight (about a horse named Northwind that runs away or something like that: a real winner), I’ve wanted to do this? I know, I know, I know, trust me, I know. Every accusation, I know. But this is it, isn’t it? This is life? This is where the drama of dreams and longing is played out. This, now, this is where we are all grown-up, and what did you want to be? I want to grab someone, anyone, and shake them by the shoulders, and scream it into their face. This is the struggle, isn’t it; coming to the understanding that the world is not large enough to meet our hunger, not bold enough for the depth of our dreams. It fits much more neatly in “to do” lists and account balances than we realized. But I am hopeful, so I try.
So, for the moment, I am unemployed. What am I doing? Haha, well you know, looking for a job, watching lots of Oprah, yeah, yeah, I know…
November 12, 2006
Posted by thomas in : xanga , 2 comments
O Saskatchewan! How we smiled and cheered last week with pom-poms raised whimsically aloft…but my heart is torn yet again. The scoreboard tells the story . Tell me, how long must I wait for you, my dear Roughriders, to raise not just pom-poms but a silver cup of victory? The winter approaches, and you have left us, once again, empty handed. The winter approaches, and it is cold in Regina.
November 8, 2006
Posted by thomas in : xanga , 6 comments The Alumni ReportThis current edition of the Alumni Report is submitted with much fear and trepidation since I’m trying to deal with the questions of evangelism and the so called ”Christian factor” of the alumni-ed life. I will invariably either end up sounding like a sanctimonious jerk, an irreverent hippy or just all around ignorant and naive. However, I ask for grace, understanding, and your words of criticism and response.
For a student who has attended a school like Trinity Western University there is the “Christian” factor to engage with once one leaves the comfy confines of the much discussed “bubble” of the Community (capital “C”). Most of us find ourselves living and working in “the marketplaces of life” and usually discover that the fact we may actually be Christians and have attended a Christian institution is a source of curiosity for our fellow marketplace dwellers.
First, I think the much maligned “bubble” of the Community is a bit of a myth.* If students lived their life with any sense of responsibility and honesty during the years engaged in the Community it becomes apparent that the bubble is really something we build for ourselves. The first few months in dorms probably should have pricked pinholes in any illusions of an overarching pristine Trinity bubble. However, it is easy to become individual bubble-boys and girls and if one decides to become a bubble builder one will probably be just as much in the same bubble once one enters into the marketplaces of life as one was while in school.
While blowing bubbles is a temptation for all (and for me perhaps more than anyone, trust me I could tell you stories…), we can at least hope that some of us keep watch for our own callousness and tendency towards wanton exclusivity, and you know, be Christians. The Trinity bubble itself may be a bit of a myth, but it is true that while not everyone at Trinity lives in the same spiritual space there is at least a sense that amidst a multiplicity of answers people are asking similar questions, going down similar paths, they are seeking: or their parents made them come. Yet, while initially the marketplace may seem like a strange and unusual place far removed from the Community one discovers that there are many of the same questions and paths being engaged.
Once marketplace dwellers discover that you are in fact a Christian there is usually a testing period where they try and figure out just what sort of Christian you are: are you absolutely idiotic or are you something resembling a normal fully functioning human being? That, at least, is what happens in the marketplace of landscaping. Let’s just say that being an English major was definitely a big checkmark in the “idiotic” column. Once one passes the initial testing phase, usually by being, you know, yourself (although if you are intrinsically completely foolish then it might be best to see each day as a dramatic performance, perhaps script out some coffee time conversations, that sort of thing), then trust and respect will probably develop and an actual relationship begins to grow.
Once respect and trust develops and it’s agreed that you’re at least mostly normal then curiosity usually wins out and questions start to come to the “resident Christian”. One of the first questions asked of me by my fellow landscaper was, “like, why do some of those Christian guys dance around and talk gibberish, [insert imitation of gibberish here] I mean that is hilarious [stuff] man, all these business dudes dancing around, what is with that [neato stuff]?” There are, of course, various idiot responses I could have used at this point (I’m not going to talk about them since we have probably all encountered them ourselves already…many, many times). Instead, I tried to explain as best I could what I knew about the dancing around and gibberish, confessing that I didn’t really know a whole lot since in my church you generally only raised your hands if you had a question, or I guess, two questions…at the same time.
Not all the questions have been about the idiosyncracies of various worship styles. There are questions about meaning, death, hope, origins, ethics - they are the questions that everyone has, questions that Christians claim are answered best in encountering Christ. We claim to be different, a new humanity in Christ, and for that reason we get asked the questions and we called to welcome them. Engaging with the Christian factor is really engaging with evangelism, bringing the message of Christ’s coming. One of my favorite profs at Trinity emphasized repeatedly the need to engage with culture and the world since it has been reconciled to Christ in his incarnation. I think he usually had in mind that this means engaging with the best of philosophy and academics in a responsible Christian manner, but it also means engaging with the landscapers and downstairs neighbors who you hear singing drunken karaoke through your vents.
The most recent issue of the Mars Hill talked about the game of “Duopoly” that is played between TWU and the surrounding community and examined students’ responses to the community and vice versa. My own interactions with others has usually revealed that not much is known about each other. Trinity might be known as the place “with all those rules” or with “all those rich kids” or not really known at all. Langley is that place out there with people that seems suspiciously like ourselves but who clearly aren’t as bright and brilliant and loving and caring as we ourselves may be (or hope to be). We’re two faceless crowds to each other hidden by the arbitrary labels that make things simple in their homogeniety. I have come to think that these sorts of perceptions only really matter as long as all people know are the big bubblized communities of TWU, the church, the NAE or Langley, the world, the culture. People more truly learn about a community by building relationships with the individuals that actually make up those communities. It is only when TWU ceases becoming TWU and starts becoming Thomas and those other people (friends) Thomas knows and shares life with that we actually start being known. It’s what being responsible is all about, what being the church is about, and really, in other words, it’s what being a Christian is about.
*The bubble I refer to here is not so much the actual physical separation of Trinity from the community and lack of interaction between TWU and the surrounding area but the more subtle attitude and idealization of community that somehow we as an institution that embraces Christianity live on a higher moral plane than the heathen that abound. The two ideas are, however, probably linked.