Barack

"I had no idea who my own self was. Unwilling to risk exposure, I would quickly retreat to safer ground." I think this is a great window into Barack at the time he is referring to himself in this quote but also who he is today. Pride is something that every man deals with and Barack is no exception. He is admitting to us that at this point in his life he was pretty arrogant and prideful. But in admitting that to us in the book Barack is revealing to us that he has largely overcome his pride and humbled himself in many different veins of the book in telling us things such as this conversation with Ray. "Maybe we should give the bad-assed nigger pose a rest"(Barack), to which Ray responds confused, 'What pose?" After I read this I kind of had a "hell yeah" moment because Barack is a success story for the people who don't know themselves. He was caught up in "being black" and Ray (who "is black") helped Barack make the next step to being himself by calling him out. I think it would be safe to say most college and high school kids (and some adults) don't know who they are because they're so caught up in fitting in or going with the flow and they need a Ray to call them out or push them out on the edge.

Tony Campolo

Spirituality is having a dramatic increase in our generation today. Everyone wants a spiritual experience of some kind. The only problem is that the portion of our generation that's looking for a "spiritual" experience is seeking it through a vein other than Christianity. When Tony came on stage my immediate assessment was that he was sincere soft spoken, gentle mannered speaker but that was my assumption before he opened his mouth. It made a lot of sense when he told us he attended a black church back home and it was obvious that his pastor had taught Tony some things when it came to speaking. Dr. Campolo was lively, young in nature, and invigorated to share with us what invigorates him. According to Campolo, we're missing a big chunk to our faith and relationship with God because we have very little ritual in our churches today and ritual is what bolsters your faith and binds you together with fellow believers. Campolo ended by telling us about Ignacian Spirituality. It means to clears your mind and focus on Christ and wait for Him to connect with you and absorb you. Campolo told us that this was a ritual that he practiced every morning. After listening to Dr. Campolo for just 30 minutes I was impressed by him and it's no surprise that Shane was impacted by him considering all the time that he was able to spend with him.

Community

The communities that I’m a part of all deal with relationships with people. The communities that come to mind are my family, brothers and sisters in Christ, my friends at home, and my friends here at Belmont.

The only community that I’m a part of that has rules is the one where there is an authority over myself; the community of my family. In that community I’m expected by my mom and dad to honor what my they tell me to do or what not to do. The principle behind that rule is that they are my parents and they have authority over me, thus I must act in compliance with what they say.

In all the other communities that I’m a part of there are strictly expectations. Whether it is my friends at home in Kentucky or my friends here at Belmont, it’s the same expectations. This is because they are both based on relationships and in relationships there are expectations that you will respect your friends and you will honor their perspective as much as your own. Naturally we all fall short to that one because we are all selfish in nature and look out for ourselves first and then our close friends second. I think we know these expectations because we’ve grown up and learned what a relationship is about and how they work and if you don’t honor these basic expectations then the relationship will no longer exist.

The community amongst friends is a unique breed. It’s a community that almost every person is a part of. But what is its purpose? I think the easy answer is to just have fun, but why do we have this desire to have fun with peers and what makes these communities work? I think of my friends at home, we all started hanging out my sophomore year in high school and what brought us together was that we all shared a similar view/focus on life at the time. Our focus was to have fun without getting in trouble, and honor God, and girls. So I guess our common “goal” is what united us together and the expectations grew from there to maintain those friendships and bolster our “goal” as friends. (I put goal in quotations marks because what friends sit down and discuss what they are about? And I think goals are usually something that are announce so that everyone knows what they are working towards, which isn’t the case in my friend group)

The difference between my family’s community and my friends community is that there are rules in my family as well as expectations and growing up with three sisters is where I learned how to interact with people in a relationship. It’s good to have a firm foundations for your other communities from which the of lesser communities spawn from. In regards to the particular rule amongst my family that I mentioned earlier I think rules are easier to break because you more than likely know the consequence rather than when you don’t meet and expectations they can create a riff in a relationship and (or) hurt people. Another thing that contributes to this that I touched on earlier is that we are all selfish in nature and these expectations and rules hold us accountable and remind us to not just focus on our own desires but also the needs and desires of our peers whom we want to keep as friends because it’s always so much fun to be together.

How did I become a part of this community? I became a part of my community of friends because I went to school with these guys and as we hung out we slowing realized that we liked being around each other and began to share the same “goal” as we grew deeper in our friendship. When communities are formed there is an unspoken exclusivity that is naturally formed unintentionally. So when other people came along it wasn’t that they were too weird to “be a part” but it was just that we didn’t jive with each other and they didn’t feel the need or want be a part. Most of communities are exclusive in some way shape or form and most of the time it is unintentional.

The community of brothers and sisters in Christ I think is the most natural and raw community that exists. We are all united by our joy in the Heavenly Father and His victory in the end. Because of this, anyone who shares these beliefs is automatically “in” in the community. That’s is what is so great about God’s community of believers, there couldn’t be anymore nonexclusive because God wants everyone. As you delineate down from this broad group there are smaller communities all they way down to two or so people, that are exclusive in nature like my community of friends at home.

Communities are one of the many joys that we get to be a part of in this world. To maintain them we have created expectations and sometimes there is necessity for rules too. We are all united in a grand community are earthly beings and that is why there is a need to help our fellow communers if they are under-privileged, have a disagreement, or any of them that need help because that’s what communities are about; helping people who have a connection with yourself through a common goal or relationship.

Irresistible Revolution. First post

"Just as believers are a dime a dozen in the church, so are activists in social justice circles nowadays. But lovers are hard to come by...Lovers, people who are building deep, genuine relationships with fellow strugglers along the way, and who actually know the faces of the people behind the "issues" they are concerned about" Lover is what shane would tell people was his occupation when they asked him what his occupation was. Not only was it an answer for people who were looking to identify him with an occupation but he truly believes that is his occupation/purpose. I think that we are so consumed (including myself for sure) with the things of this world that it's almost impossible for "us" to comprehend what it would be like to give everything up and genuinely (and I mean genuinely in every element possible) and become a lover. It's hard for me to take the command to get rid of everything I have literally and that is because I'm so consumed by the material things of this world. I can only speak for myself on that but I know I'm not the only one. Shane does a good job and stating the obvious in its simplest of terms and this quote is a great example. Shane couldn't be more spot on and simple, we need genuine lovers to take over the church (not the building) and lead more people to be genuine lovers.