Nothing is Sacred

Sorry for the delay in updates. My church had a break-in.

Last Thursday I was scheduled to leave for the airport at 2AM to pick up some guests, specifically members of Joyce McMillan's family. Before/after I left, some rogues came in from behind and raided our church. They popped the lock handle off one of the windows and made off with about 20 computers (including the one recording our security cam footage) and a flat-panel TV.

I'm better now, but I'm in a bad place. I was livid the first couple hours when I heard. I seriously thought the day would end with me charged with assault, and part of me wanted it to. I managed to shut myself away from everybody and slept through the anger.

I keep staying up till like 3/4AM, hoping maybe that by staying up, I'll be keeping the church safe for a little longer. I'm real tired, though. So I'm not in a very bloggy mood.

Is nothing sacred? Why would they choose a church, a place of worship, of all places? Putting aside whatever prejudices you might have about organized religion, if it was just the building of an organization that does charity work in the community it would be unpardonable to steal from them. And that's pretty much how it is out here.

I mean really, I've been out here for almost a year, and the
main goal of this church has just been to help the community, religous conversion aside. We run Saturday morning English lessons for elementary kids. Three times a week we have computer classes for adults. We have a joint park revitalization project with the local government and nearby Buddhist temple.
There's monthly visits to nearby schools for story time. There's is no in-your-face evangelism or theologically-based exclusion.
We're just people getting together and doing good works.

Doesn't that count for anything?

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Delirium

I like talking with friends.

Don’t get me wrong, for the most part I’m pretty introverted. I guess developing coping mechanisms and the ability to amuse yourself (electronically or otherwise) comes with being an only child. An only child of a single-parent family. And only child of a single-parent Asian family in a town of all white people. So no, Jack Thompson, not all of us who play video games are gearing up to become serial murderers. Some of us are doing it for, y’know, entertainment.

But there are several points in your life where you’ll meet somebody and really connect with them, so much so that anything becomes viable subject matter. Poop, art, artists, coffee, right back to poop, it’s all up for grabs. And it’s not boring in the least, because the dialogue is serving the true purpose of interaction. It’s not so much what you talk about, but the information you get about the other party. This can be straight-forward, when one talks about feelings and emotions, but even when evaluating different movie preferences, you get an insight into what makes them tick. The latter is important because, as a manly man man, comparing different predilections is almost all you have to gauge personality.

Of course, being fairly introverted and (let’s face it) slightly self-absorbed, I go long times where I just don’t talk to people. Old friends, good friends, family, I just don’t communicate about matters that don’t have a practical value (“Where is the water closet?”). This was a huge problem in college, where half the experience is getting out and talking to people. I found some friends, most of them just like me. A little bit on the quiet side, playing video games and watching movies to pass the time. But thankfully, they weren’t all.

So I had/have/has/will-have-going-to-have this friend, um… for tradition’s sake we’ll call her Delirium (no, not that Delirium). She’s been a really good friend to me, despite long absences and foisted drama on my part. It’s been that way since the beginning. The beginning being 9/11, for those that didn’t know. It was a rough time for everyone in the States, and aside from those of us who knew people in New York, our proximity to D.C. added another layer of cocern and agitation over the whole thing. Not a lot of people emphasize the Pentagon and its attack nowadays (except for the crackpots), but it was a regular commute for people who lived in our area.

I kinda missed the whole thing myself; I was asleep in the library, already cutting class in the second week of the semester. But the impact on life extended for weeks afterwards. I trudged to classes despite angry rants by some professors that having classes after such an event was ludicrous and asinine. But every day I came back, there was a freshman (it was my second year) glued in front of the lounge television, absent-mindedly eating peanut butter from the jar. It was the first time she had moved away from home, and the sheer drama and scope of the event overwhelmed her a little bit. I made a joke about her not having classes, to which she offered a feeble response, and it just grew from there.

I can’t say we were already the best of friends, or that we were always there for each other. College drama has a way of drawing lines in the sand and suddenly you find that you’re facing off. Sometimes your life is filled with pressing obligations and you get so caught up in them that you don’t notice how little time you have for the old things. There are moments where you’re a complete dick and just cut ties refusing contact even when you know they could use your support. But surprisingly, we’re still friends. Despite changing allegiances, emotional episodes, living together for a year (can’t believe she put up with me), I look back and I know my life is better because we both aspired for a lasting friendship and would eventually rebuild.

She graduated before me and we had a very understated goodbye. No tears on my part, just kind of a hug and a wave. She’s back in her home town now, doing the graduate school thing. She’s got a boyfriend (who is an awesome dude, so hands off), and they get along great, problems and all. She’s still figuring out life but I think she’s happy with where life is going, if not with where life exactly is at the moment. But I’m glad to have her as a sister, and I just thought you should know.

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