Winter Retreat Talk

Hello everyone!

We had to give a talk at Winter Retreat as second years. Hope you enjoy!

When Amate told us we’d have a leadership role at winter retreat. I have to admit I was really excited. I’m secretly a bit of a control freak and was thrilled at the thought of leading first years in an exercise. Naturally I was a bit surprised when I learned I would be baring my soul in front of everyone. I guess I shouldn’t be shocked: this is Amate after all. Also, I was reminded of the bible quote: those who seek to be the greatest must be the least and if you want to lead you must serve. Oh well.

When I joined Amate, I imagined community primarily as a supportive institution to strength myself for the service I’d be doing. It was a very self-centered interpretation of communal living. Not only that, community is easy when you picture a collection of your high school and college friends that are therefore you on a difficult day. Sure, what couldn’t you accomplish with such a supportive group? When I got to my first community session in orientation, I realized it wasn’t all going to be about me. A bit of a shock, but an important one. No matter, I then pictured a community like the Christian community in Acts. I got excited imagining myself part of such a loving, faith filled group. However, as Dostoevsky once said, “the love of reality is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to the love of dreams.” Great quote.

Reality quickly struck when I began to have inter-personal conflicts with housemates. To be honest here, I’m not talking about run-of-the-mill controversies with dishes or chores that truly bothered me. Rather, I needed to address issues of deep resentment of the very presence of people that challenged me so much. To this day, I don’t fully understand these feelings. I almost began to fantasize that some housemates would lie awake at night plotting ways to drive myself crazy.

While I don’t fully understand why this happens, I know it has something do with my ego.

In the true Amate way, I tried to explore my feelings of anger, resentment, fatigue, annoyance. There were some mornings when a housemate’s presence stirred anger and impatience in myself. A voice would grate on me. Someone’s joke annoys me. People could sometimes be simply unbearable. I examined those emotions and found it often wasn’t the other person that was causing me pain. It was often a deep insecurity and hatred of myself. Sometimes I don’t like the timbre of my voice, my jokes are stupid, I often annoy myself. Instead of learning to love myself or be patient with myself, I hold myself to such an impossible standard and funnel my anger outward and hold others to an impossibly high standard.

I got better at this. I learned to be patient with myself and realize that emotions are rarely about things actually even happening in the present. Usually for me, an emotional reaction is about confronting baggage that I haven’t confronted. When I strive to love myself, I learn it’s easier to love others. Things in people you used to hate become charming quirks. Once I’m able to process emotions, I find it easier to love another. Then when someone is actually angry or mean I can be patient and try to learn why someone lashed out. Every time I’ve explored and talked about it, there was a reasonable reason. Communication is paramount in community.

This year, my struggle has been more about my interactions with the community as a whole. I learned how to be much more patient and considerate in my one-on-one interactions with others. I learned how to be with others, then how to build relationships based in love…but I struggle to be a member of a community. When it comes to community, at this point I’m only able to see my failures. I fail my community because I seek to be God. I become obsessed with being right that I struggle to accept any vision that isn’t my own.

Sometimes, I even find that not only do I seek to be God, I seek to be an angry, old-testament God that demands loving sacrifices (otherwise knows as chores).

So this is where I am now. I recognize my failures but cannot see a way to fix these issues. Communal living has been life giving to me and while it has made me a better person, I do realize I have such a long way to go.