Communitas.

There's a big push in the Christian world (at least, among my generation) toward all things "community" and "relationships" and the like. I am intrigued by it all, from New Monasticism to Nieu Communities to less-hardcore versions like my church's "journey groups" (intentional, spiritually-focused relationships between three or four of the church body).

I can't say I embrace it all though, at least not practically. Part of me thrills at the thought of being refined by fire (as it surely would be for this girl, who loves her privacy dearly) through an intimate community of believers that reaches out to the surrounding community-at-large just as much as it grows closer and more connected to each other and God from within.

But...

The problem with the other (bigger) part of me is that, ironically, I have finally achieved what I have been aiming to achieve for the last 24 years. I am settled in a nice apartment in a lovely part of town with a great roommate and a wonderful church and great friends and a good job, and am heartily time-invested in several causes that are important to me...and the last thing I want to do is to shake all that up.

And I will admit something that I have never before dared to admit beyond the confines of my own mind: for several years, I've had a Jonah-esque fear that God may one day ask me let him shake my life up, and move me far, far away to who knows where, to do who knows what.

I've never admitted that aloud, because I have this dumb idea that I will jinx it into happening if I do (as if I could trick God into not asking, simply by never mentioning it...)

I think that's one reason I have been pretty adamant about not ever making big life plans for anything further than 6 months out - because if God did want me to do something totally uncomfortable, at least it might be less painful than if I had to be absolutely ripped away from the roots I had been so focused on growing..

That, and (and this might sound stupid, but it's honest) I have this idea that doing anything for God - like moving to a rural South American community, or joining a ministerial community in my own state, or what have you - means begging people for money, and the very thought of that makes my insides cringe. Fundraising makes me miserable - it rubs hard against the grain of my very personality, and I never want to have to do it.

Ah, me. Call me a coward, but I'm just not going to think about any of that much, for now.