Spirited Shenanigans: End-of-the-World (or Just China) Freakout Rant (Love and Sentimentality Included)

Another long period of blog-less-ness. I guess it just goes to show how incapable I am of stretching myself over two distances. One day, I will write, and I will write well and consistently… today, obviously, really isn’t that day, much to my chagrin and shame. So, again, heartfelt apologies to all those who still take a few moments to check in here once and awhile.

Awhile back, while washing the dishes (yes, we actually wash the dishes here… no dishwasher, no hot water) my mother and I began to talk about the next few months. She said,

“Soon we’ll have to explain to Di Di (little brother) that you’re leaving. He thinks you are staying forever.”

Yes. The end. The end is in sight, and it’s scaring me out of my wits. I’ve spent the last 9 months of my life immersing myself in an utterly different culture, an entirely different lifestyle, and entirely new spiritual depth. It’s been so beautiful. And I’m so, SO terrified of loosing it when I come home.

I’ve been thinking a lot about home lately, what it will be like to suddenly face the System again. I know it will be hard. After this huge experience, here in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by people who love God and chase life with a passion… it will be hard to try and re-plug myself back into the System’s matrix. I’ve mentioned the System before, way back at the beginning of this whole adventure… I described it as the world’s way of making it clear to us that, as humans beings, we are meant only to make money, and everything in life that is thrown at us, somehow boils down to that (refer to my earliest posts if you don’t remember what in the world I’m talking about). But after spending such a long time out of the System, I began to see it was much more than merely the drive for success and self-promotion that I thought it was.

The System really is, in my eyes, the overwhelming pallor or brokenness that covers the whole of the human race. It’s our broken way of making up for the fact that everything is NOT as it's meant to be. We’ve created our own standard for life that really isn’t Life at all.

Now, some of you may find all this a little strange, and probably a little melodramatic. That's okay. At this point, I'm more just ranting than anything else.

But I will say this… living for 9 months in a place where there, for me as a foreigner, there are no standards for "coolness" to compare myself to, no standards for fashion, a lack of human contact, a lack of materialism, a lack of natural beauty… living for 9 months in a practically physical wasteland… has been the most beautiful experience of my life.

Because, when everything is stripped away, all your comforts, all your relationships… when all the fluff and fuzz and fat is boiled down, and it’s only you, a mirror, and God… you begin to see things pretty clearly.

You see them for what they are, why they are important. I can see the System now, and I can see its effect on my faith back in the U.S. And I tell you… it ain’t pretty… because what the System does, from the moment you wake up to the moment you fall asleep, and sometimes even between those times, is try to bombard you with all sorts of lies.

“You have to be in total control your life: You have to hide your brokenness and issues. You have to fit in.You have to be cool. You have to be smart. You have to be successful. You have to be a leader. You have to be organized all the time. You have to plan your future. You don’t have time for God. You have to worry if you want things to go well. You have to go to an amazing college. You have to make money, but if you do, you’re automatically an evil capitalist. You have to be powerful, but if you are, you are automatically an evil bureaucrat. You have to believe in things, but you can’t defend them if you want to be considered a tolerant person. You have to be an intellectual, but you have to be apathetic and drink only black coffee. You have to be strong, but you also have to be "real." You have to be thinner than that person on the magazine cover, but still healthy and totes confident about your food choices. You have to be counter-cultural, but not too counter-cultural. You have to be the best, but you can’t expect people to like you if you are. Oh, and also, JUST BE YOURSELF. It’s easy.

You guys get the gist… or at least, I hope you do,

It’s not that those things haven’t been a part of my life while I’ve lived in Beijing, but they certainly have been removed to such an extent that’s allowed me to live free of them… and as a result, see God more clearly. I've realized God doesn’t need you do DO anything, or to BE anyone to be in relationship with you. He simply wants to set you free from a system that only ever distracts you from the true desires of your heart. Because, the bottom line is… we desire fulfillment and love. But I’m not convinced there are many people out there today who’ve actually found fulfillment and love in the ways I’ve just described. If you have, let me know.

Anyway, (sorry for the tangent) I’m not sure people will understand. I KNOW I wont understand - I keep hearing that counter-culture-shock is even worse than initial culture-shock. It’ll be like plunging under the ice in a Harbin river after enjoying the warmth of a beach on Cebu. People will ask me about my trip;

“How was China?”

“AMAZING. Life changing!”

“Yeah? Well, that’s cool! Let’s go get pizza!”

Not that there’s anything wrong with pizza or short conversations, but I am a little apprehensive of facing questions from people who wont necessarily have the patience or time or even the genuine interest to know what’s beyond their own world.

Like I said, there will be a huge counter-culture shock. I’ll be tossed right back into the spiritual craziness of life under the System’s umbrella… the confusion of re-conforming, busy-ness, distraction, the Hamster-Wheel of Success-Pursuit, a lack of God-consciousness, a lack of passion for things bigger than the next grade, the next party, the next boyfriend or girlfriend, the next promotion, the next bla, bla, bla, bla, bla…

It sounds silly, but at the core of it all, all I want is to be close to God. You would think that’d be a hard thing to want in a place where faith isn’t really the most celebrated of life-paths. But China, ironically, really is the only place I’ve been able to open my eyes to His heart on a daily basis without fear… fear of loss, fear of others’ thoughts, fear to trust… because, in China, I’ve been blessed with a lack of System. My deepest wish is to bring this new bravery, this new Love, back home with me. I want others to know it. I want others to feel their deepest desires and dreams filled, their heart-wounds healed, and I want them to see that the world is not just living for tomorrow’s test, tomorrow’s dollar, tomorrow’s hookup, tomorrow’s game, tomorrow’s job-offer, tomorrow’s WHATEVER.

We have one life. One chance to try and do something good in this broken world of ours. One span of 100 years or shorter to let God do something great in us or through us, one lifetime to know and be known by Love itself.

And we sit there, stuck in our little systemized schedules, liking statuses like “Some idiot double-parked,” on Facebook.

My heart breaks.

He DIED to give us LIFE, and this is what we do with it? We're meant for so much more.

Now, I don’t want any of you to read this and think that I’ve suddenly gone AWOL - I do want to come home.

When I rant about the System, that means I rant against all the things that would keep my home and the people there from living out the glory they were born with. And my dream, like I said, is to see my home and the people there free. My class at my high school… all those precious girls who’ve made my life so rich… living totally free… free from the weight of unnecessary academic pressure, free of worry, free of bad relationships and broken hearts, free of hurting homes, free to be the girls, no… not girls, women they were made to be. Free to live in Love. And I know they can be! Just because the System may try to control our lives, doesn’t mean it owns our hearts. And, like I always have said, our hearts are the most important thing about us.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

End-of-the-World (or Just China) Freakout Rant (Love and Sentimentality Included)

No comments:

Post a Comment