Oodleday

The guy next to me on the plane is sleeping and keeps nodding off with his head on my shoulder. The gelled spikes of his hair are poking into my arm as I type this. Coach is not the place for those of us with a personal bubble of sorts (and on Southwest it’s ALL coach), which reminded me- I need to tell you about my epiphany.

So I brought two books along with me on this sojourn- Under The Banner Of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer- a book which I love and devour ferociously in one sitting whenever I have the chance to read for that long- and Blue Like Jazz by Don(ald) Miller, who you may not have heard of but among young Christians at UT is kindof a big deal. People know him. I believe it was last year that he actually spoke at Rez Week but it might have been the one before.

An aside- I had a brief layover in San Diego (we didn’t even change planes, Haley, or I would have called, I swear) and they told all the people getting off the plane at that point to “stay classy”. Cracked me up.

Anyhow. Don Miller. Blue Like Jazz. This book had been recommended to me at least a billion times before I finally was in the market for a new book and thought to buy it. I enjoyed it very much but found it to be a pretty breezy read until I got to the chapter about community. I could have seen that coming from a mile away. Damn.

In this chapter Don talks about how selfish he was and then someone encouraged him to live in community with others and he quickly learned to better interact with people. He realized how much he’d been selfish with his time and compassion, that he wasn’t really interacting with people on their terms and how he needed all this space. He talks about reconciling with a roommate of his that he’d not been getting along with and finding out that the roommate had never felt valued in his presence. “That’s terrible”, I thought. “I think I make people feel valued…I try to…maybe I do? I don’t know. I do. Whatever.”, and I shrugged it off, but could not shake another passage- it remains on my mind-

“Living in community made me realize one of my faults: I was addicted to myself. All I thought about was myself… no drug is so powerful as the drug of self. No rut in the mind is so deep as the one that says I am the world, the world belongs to me, all people are characters in my play. There is no addiction powerful as self-addiction.”- pp. 181-182 (abridged for length, emphasis mine)

I am an addict. I am an addict. The worst kind of repulsive parasite- I am addicted, and at the expense of others I have fed on what wrongly sustains me. I am addicted.

To myself.

I am addicted to myself.

There is absolutely no other way to say it. My self-absorption, self-centeredness, and crippling self-awareness has drawn my curiosity inward rather than outward- rather than know the concerns and hearts of others I strive to understand my own. Rather than ease the pain of others I tend my own. Rather than heal the lives of others I fruitlessly dress my wounds. I talk about myself rather than listening and I look in the mirror for things to change rather than out my window. I desire to change the world so I can be heroic instead of being gracious. I am addicted to myself. I read that and something clicked. I had an idea of where this imbalance was coming from and finally a name. I am addicted to myself. My behavior has been shameful and I am thus ashamed.

Don talks about how living in community helped him to grow in his faith and in compassion and love for others and how he learned how to give love away freely, not as if it were a gift for others to earn. And while I’m not entirely sure I’m being called to live in community (I think it might be better for the community in question if I didn’t, slovenly as I am), I do feel like I am being prodded to grow, as if I’m being pushed through the eye of a needle to get into heaven. Laura talks about God refining her through her relationship with Regan and this is something I’ve seen in her, that has been made evident, and I think if I ask for it God will refine me too somehow, and help me be kinder and more loving towards others. Graceful. I long to have more grace. If I love others I will be loved. If I let myself feel that love I won’t need to…how should I put this…If I feel that then I won’t feel it necessary to maintain this destructive inner dialogue where I have to constantly build myself up and pass it off as deserved immodesty. That all stems from self-obsession, from self-addiction. No wonder my heart isn’t bigger- it’s ingrown.

So with this inspiration I think change can be effected. I’m excited. I want to change.

July 31st, 2006 | Category: Daily, Theology | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL