Traveling Preacherman

I have decided to quickly write up a little update to my blog as I have stolen Nathan's computer. I thought it might be important to crystalize for myself, some of the thoughts that I have been having as I have gone through my experiences this summer. Particularly since I am in a different place than when I left.

The last Early Night Show I did, I had a theme of how life kicks the crap out of you and how all there is left to do is pick yourself up again and push forward. For me, the summer has been really good for me personally. It has been busy and that's what I like especially if it's doing stuff I like. I have been writing scripts and working on talks. I have been performing and speaking to churches and youth alike. I have been doing work that I really enjoy.

In fact, I have been enjoying it so much, I wish I could do it all the time. It would so awesome just to continue to travel from place to place and doing whatever was needed wherever I was. I like the variety and meeting new people and that I can be creative in presenting games and ideas.

I have been learning a lot about myself and why I do the things I do and why I have done the things I have done. For the first couple of months in the summer, I have been talking to a counsellor and sorting through some of the things I have been dealing with internally and understanding my dark passenger.

I think one of the reasons I really like doing this style of ministry, is because I got to stay with billets. Some people really dread it and I can understand the downside of always having to be social, considerate, and polite as a guest in a home, but for me I really liked it. I think it has to do with the idea that I got to stay in a home with people that even for the few days we would stay there would care about me and what I was doing and where I was going. It was like having a surrogate family. This summer, I realized why I liked the surrogate family. It's because it was better than my own family.

Ever since my dad died twelve years ago, it was really the death of my own sense of family. Dad was my best friend and was more of the glue in the family than I realized. I've come to reflect on my experience with my growing up and noticed that although I may have spent more time with some of my friends from the school, I have had the most intimate and meaningful conversations with my dad. He was the one that would balance out my mom who I think had a hard time raising Darwin and myself. When he died, so did that balance.

The source of meaningful and even tolerable conversation in my home disappeared. I have had and continue to have trouble connecting with my family on a deep level and going to these places where families and individuals are more like family to me than my own has been good for me. At the same time, kind of tragic. I like to travel and go to these places to find a sense of home and learn how to have a family which is so backwards for so many others. I think that is why the ideal of a wanderer appeals to me so much.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the summer because the work has kept my mind busy and doing something that I feel is of value. I am putting my skills to work in a positive manner and getting encouraging feedback. I want to continue doing what I have been and am looking at opportunities to come into a situation and offer my unique set of skills and continue moving on.

I am considering the idea of short internships at various churches and looking to help with their dramatic presentations and youth programs. That way I can focus on writing and performing and introducing thought-provoking drama and comedy sketches to churches and looking to possibly establish a drama team for when I leave. In the event that my style is not appreciated, I would be moving on soon anyways and I would be helping in their youth programs with perhaps planning events and games and connecting with youth which any church could use.

I like the image of a traveling preacher who comes in and alongside a church and introduces new ideas and impacting the way things are done and challenging the body before moving on. It would use my abilities and shake things up a little bit. I believe that drama and comedy has a place in the realm of the church but it is not fully realized nor is it's potential understood.

Eventually, I will have to settle down and sort things out, but maybe this is what I need. I have felt more at home in the homes of strangers and maybe that it is where my home truly is for now. I can see what family looks like and acts like and most importantly feels like. Then I can start my own.

I don't fear for my future and I can see hope in what I am planning. It is almost reminiscent of the early apostles and the "Littlest Hobo", both of which are awesome. I think that's where I am going to leave it for now, but this has been a great summer and many other things are tumbling around in my head and I will talk about them later, but just know that I am happy and hopeful.

"There’s a voice that keeps on calling me
Down the road is where I’ll always be

Every stop I make, I’ll make a new friend

Can’t stay for long, just turn around and I’m gone again.

Maybe tomorrow, I’ll want to settle down,
Until tomorrow, I’ll just keep moving on.

Down this road, that never seems to end,
Where new adventure, lies just around the bend.

So if you want to join me for a while
Just grab your hat, come travel light – that’s hobo style.

Maybe tomorrow, I’ll want to settle down,
Until tomorrow, the whole world is my home."

- "Maybe Tomorrow" by Terry Bush

Rae Family Christmas

I had a good time at the Andersons' for their Christmas dinner. It's amazing how many people that they invite to the meal as they extend the table by adding two addition tables that reaches into their living room. They have family and friends of all sorts, good food and good conversation.

What I appreciate about their family is that they are great example of how a family looks. They evidently love each other, share that with others and there isn't a falseness about it. They are inclusive to the guests at the table and there is a distinct sense of community. I have been blessed to get to come back here for the last several years. It's almost like I'm some sort of distant cousin.

Over the last couple of years though, I have been getting an itch. I am slightly uncomfortable as I approach their door. Not because of anything that they do. It is purely me. But I start thinking about how I am still requiring them to be my venue for a Christmas. If they didn't have them it would not be much of a Christmas at all. I have been trying to ween myself off of their dinners. The first couple of times I went, I was fine with that because I couldn't get home and I figured that it'd be a good thing. Now, I still need that dinner to have a Christmas and that doesn't sit right. For myself, a couple of times is fine, but now I feel like it's a sign of me not getting my life in order.

I really wanted to go home for Christmas. I wanted to go with Darwin back to Minnedosa and spend it with mom and have a semblance of a real Rae family Christmas which we have not had since 2003. Last year, the three of us were together but we still couldn't summon our own Christmas so we went to the Andersons'. This year was supposed to be different, but it turned out the same because I don't have a lot of money.

What it all comes down to is that I really want a family but I don't know how to create family. I see how the Andersons are at Christmas and I want that for my family. I realize that a lot of people are not the Andersons and I also realize that the Andersons assumably are not perfect (although evidence of that is not apparent), but that's what I want to work toward. I have no idea what that looks like. I saw it again last night as I was hanging out with my friends, Brad and Trish. They had their Christmas tree up and lights and little Christmas decorations that they put up together and gifts under the tree. When I saw how many gifts they had under there I was kind of taken aback. It means that either they bought a lot of gifts for each other (which I can totally see since they are definitely still in that lovey-dovey honeymoon phase) or that a lot of their family had sent them gifts. I'm not a big materialist and I don't want a bunch of stuff at Christmas or anything, but they definitely had a connection to their family and possibly to their extended family that I do not. The Andersons have so many in their family they have to do an arrangement of one person gets one other a person a gift instead of requiring everyone to buy a gift for everyone in their battalion. They have too many people for Christmas. I have to buy two and I'm done. And I have a ridiculous extended family.

Both my mom and my dad come from the generation of ridiculous family sizes. My dad had something like nine brothers and sisters and mom had eleven or vice versa. But we don't see any of them. I don't really know any of them. I think the state of my family is evident in the fact that I don't even know the number of them. I have tried to go and see some of them, I try to talk to them at funerals (which is the only way I have seen my family). I know I am not blameless in this because I have family in the city that I don't see but I haven't carved out time for them.

Admittedly, an extended family the size of mine is perhaps a little much for a person to try to keep current with, but I don't even have this family thing figured out enough to have a proper Christmas with them. That doesn't seem right to me.

That's why when I go to the Andersons for the nth time or see Brad and Trish's tree I regret the state I am in. I thought this Christmas was going to be different. That I was going to make it different, but I didn't have the discipline to do it. When I was with Rebecca, I was actually looking forward to Christmas, because I thought I could make it different. Move towards a family. However, I have to come back and leach another Christmas for my brother and I from a family that knows family.

Don't get me wrong. I love the Andersons and their welcome for my family to the table. I don't want this post to come off as an attack on them. If anything, I want them to know that they are the model of family I want to emulate for my own. It just sort of hurts to go there. Just a little.

This all said, I am thankful to God for growing up in a family, broken and lacking as we are, that is not an abusive one. One where we know each other's faults and want what's good for each other, it's just that we can't seem to pull it together. I am thankful for a brother that is my reminder of a life of simplicity. A life that is content with who he is. I am thankful for a mother who has done her best to bring me closer to a savior that she strives to follow. I am grateful to have found a church family that in times of need are willing to bring me into their family. I am grateful to have some fantastic people who are there to encourage me and challenge me when I need it most. I am thankful for the example of Jesus that gives me a structure to develop myself as a better person.

I am thankful for Christmas, not only as an important religious holiday to remind us that Jesus has come to show us the way and also to remind us that he will come again, but I am also thankful for it as a cultural day to reaffirm the importance of family. Families can be the shelter that helps us through the rough spots and give us the encouragement to become better people and better followers of Christ.

"Is there a cure among us?

From this processed sanity?

I weaken with each voice that sings

In this world of purchase

I'm gonna buy back memories

To awaken some old qualities"

- "Run" from Collective Soul's Dosage