Silverlace Evening

I am writing this post on the topic of identity.  It may seem like a basic question that need not be asked, but as I live and move in this world I find myself desiring to be a certain type of person.  So who am I?  I am a man, created in the image of God.  I am a son of divorced parents, a brother of three brothers, an ex-boyfriend four times over.  I worship God on Sundays with Christ Community Church, a Mennonite congregation.  I was baptized Easter 2006.  I am a Philosophy and Psychology double-major at Drake University in Des Moines, IA.  I am a shift-supervisor/coffee master at Starbucks in downtown Des Moines.  After awhile this listing becomes jumbled, confused and I begin to despair…just what the hell am I really?!  I am an American, an Iowan, a college dropout at one time.  I was in a band for about three to four years called Cardboard Canary.  We played all over Iowa, a show in Phoenix, and had connections building up in Los Angeles where I lived for a year. 

I think I need to try this identity question again.  I am a Christian.  I grew up in a non-denominational ‘mega-church’ in Des Moines.  When I was a senior in high school I started going to an evangelical-free ‘mega-church’ along with the non-denominational one.  I kind of stopped going to church when I graduated and moved to Iowa State University to get a liberal arts degree.  Actually I went to Iowa State so I wouldn’t have to work because I hated working more than school.  Then I got fed up with school and dropped out.  My band ‘moved’ to Los Angeles, except they ended up not moving and I just stayed out there with my brother for a year when the band alerted me that they were not coming.  I smoked a lot of weed, drank a bit, tripped on mushrooms a few times, did some coke a few times, and didn’t eat a whole lot because I was pretty poor and too stubborn to work more.  I was also 19.  So I moved back to Iowa so that I wouldn’t die.  I was pretty depressed out there, mostly because my band quit and at that time I thought that music with that band was my ‘calling’.  I was pretty pissed off at God because I thought He was jerking me around. 

So, back in Iowa I had no direction at all.  I was simply existing.  I worked so I could eat and pay off some student loans, but I was desperately looking for a reason to live.  My older brother had been hanging out with some middle-age church guys at various coffee-shops and bars and invited me to come hang out and partake in some conversation with them.  I had a few questions for them like “If I am a ’saved’ Christian, why shouldn’t I just kill myself and get to heaven now?  Why wait?”  I figured God would accomplish His will either way, with or without me, so I wanted out of life.  After meeting with these guys for a while I began to realize that the conceptions I had of Christianity were leading me into a miserable life and that what they had to offer may be better.  So I found out that they belonged to a Mennonite Church called Christ Community Church.  I went for a few Sundays to check it out.  I thought it was wierd at first.  They followed a lectionary, worshipped with a classic ‘catholic’ liturgy and did this thing called house church.  I thought house church was cool.  We would gather in smaller groups at people’s houses and connect over lunch.  I entered their catechism, which was longer than I had anticipated, a year, and it culminated in my baptism on Easter.

I am a Mennonite Christian, unhappy about the denominationalization of the Church, but entering the conversation for inter-denominational reconciliation from a Mennonite perspective.  As a part of this messy-broken thing called Church, I believe that God is using the Church to bring forth his kingdom to restore the world to right relationship with God and with man.  Sometimes I don’t see how this is possible, but I believe that God loves his creation and will patiently and lovingly bring about redemption.  I want to be on board, and I think that among other things it consists of ‘rehearsing the grain of the universe’ with other Christians on Sundays and as a part of that community bearing witness to the self-giving Love of Jesus with each other and with those outside our community, including our neighbor and our enemy.  Its hard, it sucks sometimes, but I think that because God is a Trinity of Divine communion it is the shape of reality for man to be in relation with other people and to give ourselves to one another in self-giving love.

So, after a long post on identity I leave with the hopes of moving “further up and further in” (CS Lewis) to the life of God.