Tuesday nights are wild here at New College. Smoke and drink, Funk and funky wardrobes usher in the second half of the week. It’s 10 pm. Students crawl from various studying nooks about campus to the central Promenade for the mid-week ritual. Tuesdays are Drunk Funk. The mass invites to neighboring colleges, the smell of the substances, and the thumping bass beckon any and all to rest from work and join our community in clamor and revelry.
It’s not that classes don’t start at 9am and it’s not that we don’t have plenty of work to be doing (because we’re at one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country). It’s not even so much about the booze and weed, because those can be had individually and many of us don’t even partake in the substances. It’s because New College recognizes two things: the need for rest and the joy of community.
While students at Harvard and the like are drilling away at equations and provocative literature without reprieve, we party. Because of our hippie persuasion, we have found a deeper need than simply toil and spoils.
We need rest. We need to just be sometimes for the sake of being. Rest reminds us that we are not success, we are not our goals or our society’s goals. It reminds us that there are greater things; things like love, passion, purpose, joy.
New College (with a 80% agnostic or atheist population) has taught me that God is all about rest. God created us to be and by just being we glorify him. Why? Because God made us in his image. Because, before the fall, before “original sin”, there was original glory. Because, far beyond the work of our hands, we were made to be God’s beloved creation.
This reminds me of the countless meetings I’ve attended and heard about at New College; the food drives, the tomato picker’s rights campaigns, immigration reform, picketing for better treatment of the Sarasota homeless; Earth Justice Squad meetings, the All Power to the Imagination Conference, signing petitions for better waste management in our cafeteria, brainstorming sessions for ecological reform on a national level.
New College students get things done, God things, because of rest, because of choosing being over succeeding. And because of community.
Back to Drunk Funk. Amidst the ambiance of smoke and sound, there is a fraternity, a commonality. I’m a Christian, many are not. But we are all human. We’re all sojourners of this life. We talk, eat, and live together. We even pray together on occasion. Tonight we rest together.
Community. No agenda. No Stereotypes. No divisions.
This is my testimony. It has become my vision and desire for the church. Not that we sacrifice the Truth of Jesus the Christ, because he is and forever shall be the only hope for creation. But that we truly embrace eachother. That we love.
Very well said. Thanks.
ReplyDelete