Kaleo 09/10

Hello my family of k7. My last post was in September, so I figure that I have a lot of catching up to do. Here goes...

I have just come through a long and difficult semester at Eastern. It has not been an enjoyable one either. There have been many blessings that I can easily attest to however. Probably the greatest part of this semester is what I am learning in my classes. The material is so rich and I am reading all sorts of great books, and having great discussions with profs and classmates. I have had the opportunity to read Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, Boethius, St. Augustine, Dante, Shakespeare and the like. Other blessings have been a great roommate who I get along great with, we are a good fit for each other and we hang out a lot at school. So while this has been a hard semester, it has not all been bad. That being said, I have been frustrated a lot with Eastern. I like the honors college that I am in, but I do not like the Eastern. It is a social justice type of school, made famous by Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne. It seems as though Eastern has locked onto social justice and this is evident in everything from the clubs that the school promotes to the speakers that they bring in several times a week. Don’t get me wrong, social justice is key to the kingdom of heaven, however it is not the gospel in its entirety. I feel as though Eastern has forgotten the rest of the gospel - Jesus Christ! - and has adopted a social gospel; one that is only concerned with social justice, where as the true gospel automatically incorporates social justice, but also so much more. This has been a main frustration, and there have been others as well. Such as people being part of a homeless ministry for no other reason than to have the image of an “ordinary radical” like Shane Claiborne, but in reality, they only want to be part of this group in order to hold an image. They do not focus on giving hope to those who have none. I have also been frustrated with the fact that I have still not found anybody who seems to share a similar heart as me, I do not feel as though there is anybody that I have met who is a kindred spirit for me. Consequently, I have been fairly lonely this semester, despite the fact that I have been surrounded by people. There are people to go to Philly with, people to go to church with, people around all the time, but still, I felt unknown by those around me and lonely. I decided to transfer to Briercrest because I felt as though it would be the best place for me to develop into the person that I want to become. I looked at the people that I knew from Briercrest such as the great profs that we experienced, and some of the students that we encountered throughout our year and I was attracted to their lives, and thought that Briercrest would develop me into that type of person. I thought that it would also be the best fit for me too. So I filled out all the paperwork, made rooming arrangements, pulled out of Eastern, transferred my credits and everything. I was all ready to go until I had a conversation with my dad. He didn’t talk me out of it, but I realized through it that I could not leave Eastern with a pure conscience, knowing that I had given it my all. I could not Eastern because in my decision to go to Briercrest to become the person that I truly wanted to be, I had moved farther from the person that I wanted to be. I want to be a man of faith, endurance, steadfastness and integrity, and I feel that in order for me to become these things, it was necessary for me to stay at Eastern. If I were to have gone to Briercrest, I would have done so out of a lack of faith, that when the going got tough, I would have given up and retreated due to my own insecurities. My dad reminded my of Abraham’s journey that when God called him away from his friends and family to go to a far off land, the first thing that happened when he finally arrived there was a famine. So he made a journey in faith and when he got there, things sucked! Things were never promised to be easy after he had made a difficult decision to move. So this is where I find myself. In an unenjoyable experience that I must persevere through. These were my thoughts as I was going through the semester.

Now that I have been home, which by the way has been awesome - really restful and low key, I have had time to reflect a lot on this semester and have some more things to add to this review. There was a quote in the valedictory address that said, “Whoever loves his idea of Christian community more than the community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even if his intentions are ever so earnest, eager, and sacrificial”. As much as this described our first semester together last year, I think this describes my last semester at Eastern. I had been holding on to my ideas of what community looks like and what my type of friends looks like and what my extra curricular life looks like all based on my experience of last year. Consequently, I see this semester now as one where I had been the source of my own destruction. I found it hard to truly love the people around me. I had the expectation that the institution I was apart of would provide the means for me to grow in my faith. In many ways, I was highly disillusioned. I think that this last semester I had been waiting for God to do what he had planned for me, but I was waiting with my head down and essentially my attitude was something like this: “this sucks...I don’t like it here...things will never get better...this isn’t the place for me...I wonder when God will come along and make everything great.” I feel the need to return to Eastern at least for another semester, however this one has to be different. I must wait for God with my head up, full of eager expectation, and full of hope. I must live each day thinking about how my words and actions that I do this day will contribute to what I hope to see happen in the future. I feel the burden on me to go back into this homeless club that frustrated me so greatly and to restore it, starting small, but being bold and faithful in this group. I know that I must go to Eastern not seeing it as an institution, but rather a collection of people all in very different relationships with Jesus. I need much prayer for this, because as of now, I am not excited to return. I do not have much hope at all for what this semester may bring. I am wondering how I am to love these people that frustrate me and how to be a beacon of hope to others when I do not have hope in me to begin with. I know that we have every reason to hope because of the gift of our Lord Jesus, and I know that we know how to love because of his example of love towards us, but perhaps I need to discover these things anew before I return. I am learning lots in all of this. Things like what the call is for a Christian who is a student, and things like what Christian community looks like in a “Christian university” setting. I would be excited to share with any of you these things if you are interested. It is a huge lesson for me to learn in all of this, but is one that I must walk through in order to become the person that I desire to be, and to be the person God calls me to be. But please be praying for me that God would fill me with hope for what he will do in me and through me and around me next semester, and that I would have an excitement and anticipation for January 17th (when I return). Pray that God would be filling me with a new vision and new eyes to see through - eyes that see the people around me the same way that Jesus sees them. And finally, pray that the word of God would dwell in me richly, and that it would be a natural disposition of mine to be in communion with God.

I trust that this break will be one of great celebration of our Saviour with friends and family, full of good food and good times. Rejoice for the light has now come to shine in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it!

Much love to you all,

Jer