bittersweet: coffee and guitars

One night last week, I dreamt about the religious group I associated with my freshman and sophomore years of college. When I say associated with, I really mean hung out with the group all of the time as a disciple. I was totally into this group, which held co-ed study groups, where we discussed C.S. Lewis, drank coffee, and those who could played on their guitars. This organization also held a larger "big group", which at the time was actually called "Big Group," where incredibly talented musicians played contemporary worship songs, and people from all of the smaller groups hung out and afterwards went to a local restaurant to eat. Many of you who read this blog probably attended one or more of these events with me, if I didn't invite you. Anyways, this group was cool and hipster, and it meet my social and spiritual needs.

but all things change. and by the end of my junior year, I left and never looked back. This organization focused more and more on the things I disliked about the Bible Belt and American Christianity, and hindered my social and spiritual growth. Sadly, few people in the organization tried to stop me, but I did not miss it and often looked back on those times as wasted cv space.

There wasn't anything special about the dream, aside from I didn't know where I was at first. I talked to my friend from the freshman year group who eventually became an employee of the organization, but I don't remember what was said. This, too, is not unusual, because she always made the effort to include me-- even after I left. What I remember most about the dream is that I did not forget it: the bittersweet smell of the coffee, the hum of the acoustic guitar, the flow of people coming and going into the huge meeting room on-campus, visiting and murmuring like little bees.

And for the first time in six, nay, seven years, I missed being in that community.


The haunting pain came back a day or two later after the dream when Mr. boyfriend and I went to Barnes and Noble after eating at a local restaurant. We were discussing a book list that was circulating among Facebook friends, which had both The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as a separate book from the Chronicles of Narnia. Mr. boyfriend and I lambasted the book list for its lack of depth, which included limiting C.S. Lewis to his children's series. As we walked into B and N, and he went to the sci-fi section, I went to find C.S. Lewis. I knew the B and N in my current residence carried a bloated Christian fiction/religious right section, with Lewis and other must-reads such as Anne Lamott and Donald Miller tucked away here and there. And the irony and loneliness of the moment overwhelmed me.

Here I was doing the same thing, with acoustic music playing in the background, and the smell of Starbucks coffee wafting through the air, looking for C.S. Lewis books, feeling that same inner hunger, six, seven, eight years later. I did not buy anything, as I owned most of what B and N offered of Lewis' works. I also did not want to buy anything. I wanted something money can't buy. Community, yes, but what should it look like? How should it function? Mr. boyfriend and I have some really good friends up here, but are we a community? And what about larger communities? Do coffee drinks and guitars really make a community? A blog?

Community, I think, is about opening up to others and letting your guard down, but our uber-competitive society values individualistic pursuit of happiness over communal good. And so we shut down and shut out. I don't want to re-create the religious organization, which continues to evolve and grow on its own, but I'm still looking for that niche.