At total risk to my own sanity, I have entered a world without a people behind me.
And even as I sit here and write it, I'm not sure what it means. But I do know that the "aloneness" which I haven't been able to fully identify is at home here, within this one fact.
The question is, what is a community? Is it a gathering of like-minded individuals, who may find solace in each other's company? Or is it a gathering of disparate minds, each one going its own way to an individual oblivion?
If Seattle is a community, then we're a community who doesn't talk amongst itself (look up the Seattle Freeze).
I'm sure UW is a community somehow, but I haven't the slightest idea how one interacts within it or what the point is.
The Church is a community that exists only insofar as the beliefs of its members are the same. Well, couldn't that be merely coincidental? And what do we do when "our" Church believes to some degree in that which we cannot? In the past I would have said that a single discrepancy cannot undermine unity, that I could retain my own individual beliefs in the face of that which I deemed wrong. I would have urged others to feel the same--that if a sermon or teaching did not represent your beliefs, you need only affirm your own and endure upon the strength of your own belief.
Now I'm not so sure.
I guess the only point I'm trying to make is that I feel like a person who's gone out on their own, a politician who has no funding, something like that. And I want to believe that that is an okay way to live. Well, whether it is or not I at least know where I stand and why I feel the way I do.
