Community, Spirituality, and Time

 Without explaining I'll dive right into my first blog.

How does one separate community from spirituality and time wasted from time well spent? So often it seems that a day is slept through or we wake up early yet accomplish nothing. When I was growing up my mother constantly badgered my brother and I to not play games but instead work, even if the work required for the day was completed; she was acutely aware of the idea of wasted time. I too, for a while now, feel a strain between enjoying others company and growing with them and avoiding games entirely to become more productive. Yet as I have attempted to cut myself off from games it only seems that humans are cursed to waste time. Rather than playing WoW or LoL, I go on facebook or watch YouTube, or maybe even play a game of basketball with a stranger. How can one qualify time wasted versus well spent? There must be a growth of something for that time to be utilized well, and there must also be balance. The last week I have hung out with several different people and not done what I had originally planned; I thought the time was well spent but it left me troubled and cranky. Contemplating why, I realized it was because I was not accustomed to spending my time away in that format and therefore it made me uncomfortable and I thought that my entire week may have been thrown away. Seeing the impossibility to judge clearly how valuable my time is to others I think the time was actually well spent but I need to prepare my mind for it in the future because being out of balance and peace of mind makes me unhelpful to others. Being recently conditioned by my classes to read books I have found that in order to feel productive I need to lace my time spent with friends with academic reading. I have not read the Bible in a week and believe that is one of the sources of uneasiness. Spending time organizing my thoughts is important for peace as well as some quiet time.

To address the first question I don’t know exactly. When looking and the words spirituality and community they are so broad and senseless; people say everything is spiritual and community is anyone you know. I taught myself to enjoy unhappiness, imperfection, and lack. These things being common it seems logical to embrace them rather than shun them. The word ‘enjoy’ might not fit fully but it seems better than ‘endure’ and I would like to think that I have achievement a sort of harmony in life rather than a struggling conflict. Knowing and embracing of these issues leads me to a content life and a sort of controllable destiny being formed out of my goals. One of these goals is to be in community with God. The carving of a heaven out of the earth is impossible but with spiritual clarity and patience God provides a haven of peace that I live in everyday, hungry or full, frustrated or calm. I try not to worry about problems and I generally succeed except in the realm of my community. I look at my community and so often I think, “What are we doing?, What am I doing?” There are the everpresent poor throughout the world and we feel obligated to quarter off a substantial amount of time to enjoying ourselves with videogames or role-playing. Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” but we have taken that too far meaning that we need to take care of ourselves and then love the neighbor. I love myself enough to play videogames for hours on end yet I have not done real service since 2008? That seems like I love myself much more than my neighbor. I am kind to all I meet and try to guide people to truth but there is a lack of effort still, but where can I love my neighbor more? I can list off excuses but the real problem I think is I am blinded to see how I can love my neighbor; I do not know where to even start.

Spirituality should be embedded in my community, I should arrive at the Porcu house and instead of hearing, “herp a derp brosef” there should be “You know what I learned/witnessed today…”. I want to help people, yet I see Alex going to Israel or those with World Vision doing so much more than I am right now. I don’t think I am called to the foreign mission field but everywhere is a mission field and we need to be involved. There must be a need network that allows Christians to see all the needs in their county community and plug into those. There is more in Riverside that needs to be done than painting my mom’s garage and wiring the church, and the act of doing something is of high importance for growing in your faith and Christians’ kindness should be evidently different than that of others. The book of James talks about how faith without works is dead and there are certainly deeds of kindness and kinship throughout our group but “it is easy to love those that love you” and we need to love those that we don’t know in order to show the divineness that we are called to imitate rather than have people think we are following a simple moral code. In conclusion maybe the reason that I struggle with the spirituality versus community is because I feel there is a definite separation, a gap that should not be there. I should go to my community to learn how I can help others, but instead I do not help others often enough.