community (written last weekend)

Life is an interesting thing.

This weekend held something for me: opportunity. I had few plans beyond sundown. History Club vespers Friday night and Religion Club Christmas Party Saturday night. I've been in need of some spontaneity.

At History Club vespers, I had a short side conversation with Dr. Dodds about how my sense of community at WWU has changed for me since I moved out of the dorm. I know so few people here. I don't live with them. I don't eat in the cafeteria with them. I don't know them. That's just that. They're them. I don't know their names, who they are. I'm not in a position to change that and it's not all bad. It's just a fact more than a complaint.

At vespers I enjoyed people watching. As it ended and people began filing out of the sanctuary, I realized again just how few people I know. Vespers used to be the place where I saw everyone. I knew everyone... Now, I sat back in my pew and watched. Eventually, I ended up having an interesting conversation about God and the Seventh-day Adventist church with a few friends that I haven't talked with in awhile. It lasted. Awhile. And it was good. We listened to each other. We had different stories and experiences and therefore different opinions, but we were accepting. I felt accepted.

That's why I'm still searching. That's why I still go to church, to vespers, to an SDA university. Community. I don't feel it with the general WWU church. I don't even feel it on campus. But I felt it there. I feel it each Wednesday at lunch during my small group. I feel it at Worm Ranch on Fridays. And it's good.

I may have lost my greater sense of WWU community. And while that's sad in some sense, I'm glad. I may have had one-inch deep relationships with everyone on campus (this is not meant to diminish my many great, deep friendships during my dorm years - I still have many of those friendships, but it was more rare overall...), but I now have even truer communities, where deep and accepting discussion takes place. That's positive. That's community.