Even as I have been fully known

I had the privilege of speaking publicly in the sociology/anthropology department chapel today. I'm copying and pasting my speech so that you can read it.

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My name is Karen Hooge and I’m a senior sociology major. I want to be known and I want to be loved. I want others to care about me, about me truly and to accept and enjoy me in that knowing.

I spent most of my time at Wheaton wondering what the hype about community was.

And when I finally start to understand little pieces of it, the number of credits I have says I have to leave. I want to be known and yet I’m so scared. I don’t want to leave the people who know me.

At one point during my sophomore year I had a slight altercation with an individual on my brother floor. I had thrown a piece of crumpled up paper at a friend who was sitting a ways away and hit this individual instead. He looked at me and said “I don’t even know you.”

I don’t care.

Yet I cared more than I thought I should. It bothered me.

Did I feel sheepish because I was clowning around?
But he was so derisive. "I don’t know you. I don’t care that I don’t know you. And I don’t want to get to know you."

Well I have other friends who know me. Other people who care about me.

I think I was thrown into a small existential crisis as I began to scour my friendships and wonder who really did know me. Sure people enjoyed my friendship, but there always is a point where they don’t understand me fully. And I’m not just talking about the antics and the words and the appearance of myself.

But who knows my thoughts and my foibles. And how I enjoy feeling that other people are envious of me And how rejected I felt when I didn’t get accepted into Teach for America.. And how I got up in the middle of the night to hold my roommate while she cried even though I was really tired. How there's more of the functionalist in my sociological thought than I would care to admit. And how I wanted to stop praying when faith didn’t make sense but I was too scared not to. And all my failings and flashes of brilliance and on and on.

Did I even know them?

And did I want any one to know all of this? Wouldn’t they think I was small and petty and disgusting and selfish? That I was pretentious and self-righteous.

1 Corinthians 13. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Even as I have been fully known.

I came in a freshmen and all my prior years were unknown to the people I was living and eating and studying with.
I leave as a senior and all of these years will be unknown to the people I will meet and live and talk and share with.

But God knows all my years. All my days. My thoughts. I have been fully known and I am fully known. I will continue to be fully known.
I can rest in that. I don’t have to prove myself to my friends to my family to myself. God knows me. God sees me. And God loves me.

So it’s just me and God then, booyah. Not quite.

For some reason I need the body of Christ. After taking away my dependence on human acceptance because I see I am known by God, God gives me back to community. For we are social beings, but more than just our innate need for others is the call to Christian community. I do not choose the Body of Christ; I am chosen. For this reason, I cannot say to someone else, “I don’t need you.” Oh but I do say this. I say it in many ways. I say it by ignoring you as I walk by you and by not giving you the opportunity to share your story with me.

I am still afraid of being hurt if you reject me so I guard myself. I am also afraid of the awkwardness of not knowing how to handle something you share with me. I do not seek to know you, and I do not allow you to begin to know me.

But 1 Corinthians 13 still calls me. I have been fully known. I can be open and honest and vulnerable with the Body of Christ because I know that there is eternal acceptance beyond the human acceptance. When we let each other down there is forgiveness because there is one who holds our hearts.

When my own faith struggles and falters I can lean on the faith of those around me and those throughout time. And when others struggle, they can lean on my faith.
I can accept your vulnerability and failings because I know that you also are known truly and loved by God. I do not see you as you are, but one day I will, and I can love you.
I am frightened to leave a place where I have discovered community and being known but I am not crippled, because the integrity of who I am – all the pieces seen and understood together – is held by God and not by myself or by the people around me.

I’d like to end with some verses from Colossians 3 which have been meaningful to me in dealing with community.

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you so must also forgive. And over all these things put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

Arteries that don't pump life

I had an interview today in Chicago, and I took the Eisenhower Expressway into the city. I could not help but notice how the outbound traffic was backed up for miles and miles. I wondered if it would still be slow when I was finished with my interview.

On my way back, I decided to check out the traffic before merging onto a possibly slow-as-molasses traffic artery. And yes, the traffic was still barely moving. But I know my way around Chicago well enough that I found another road that would take me back towards Wheaton. This road wound through several neighborhoods, and the demographics of pedestrians and languages on the signs changed as I drove. Often the affluence of the neighborhood was apparent through architecture and the level of street cleanliness. Why are some areas so poor and others so wealthy? Why are these economic distinctions so often closely aligned with race? I would not have seen any of this if I was mindlessly cruising the Eisenhower with its tall stone walls blocking out most of the surrounding area.

Though I by no means am intending to imply that all people who use the Eisenhower Expressway are consumeristic, materially-driven suburbanites who only care about getting where they are going. But I was struck by the way that we are so used to the unpleasant and the disturbing being blocked for us. We know that urban areas often have more economic difficulties than the suburbs, so why remind us by daily assailing our eyes with such unpleasantness? It is easier to shrug it off and continue with making money and driving home as quickly as possible.

What is important in our lives? What are the foundational driving forces that provide the impetus to our actions? Are people really important or do money and security precipitate our choices more often than we care to admit? Does American society build people or do we build on people?

This post is also informed by thoughts on Barbara Ehrenreich's book Nickel and Dimed.

"I called you because you are poor."

I've been applying for jobs in the social service sector of Chicago, jobs where I will be "helping" people who are "less fortunate than I." We've been talking about this in our sociology capstone course, particularly because our discipline of study has given us tools to be able to help others. Yesterday one of my classmates shared the following passage from a book by Jean Vanier entitled Befriending the Stranger. Vanier founded the l'Arche communities, which work with people with disabilities. He has this to say about being in community:

God's ways are not our ways; God's choices are not the choices of society.
God chooses "the poor, the weak, the needy",
those who recognize their poverty -
not just a material poverty but an inability to cope with life.
...
the problem is that we refuse to admit our weakness, our needs, our poverty
because we are frightened of rejection.
We have been taught to be strong, to be "the best", to win in order to become "someone".
Since society tends to marginalise those who are weak we think that weakness means rejection.
So we try to hide our poverty for as long as we can
and to pretend that we are strong;
we build up an appearance of being in control.

We need to hear that gentle, inner voice of God who tells us:
"you do not need to pretend.
you do not need to hide your weakness.
You can be yourself.
I didn't call you to community first of all to help others
Or to prove that you were generous or efficient.
I called you because you are poor,
Just like the ones you came to serve,
And because the Kingdom of God is promised to the poor."