the cool people table

i loathe cliques.very seriously. as a young girl, starting in kindergarten, i was the kinda kid who had all kinds of friends from all kinds of cliques and groups. i was nice. my long time best friend was a girl most people found odd at least until high school when she found belonging amongst “burnouts” which led her into trouble, but ive always loved her all the same, for the person she is at her core. i was able to hang with her friends and never try smoking, booze or anything. i also had lots of guy friends. played mostly ‘keep away’ and ’500′ at lunch time and climbed trees and rode bikes after school with the boys. none of them were boyfriends and it didnt even enter my mind until much later. guys are still my favorite friends by far, so long as you keep them friends. i think it was easier when i was young. i was free to be a non sexual girl for in jr high, it was a wonderful childhood. i wasnt bombarded with sex everywhere until later highschool. the lunch room is a class, in behavioral science. i recall walking into the elementary school lunch room, thinking of where to sit. lots of kids would say “lisa, sit here!”,since i was a nice easy to get along with person. yet i scope the landscape all the same: my groupology: dorky guys. dorky girls. actors. athletes. bad kids. cool people. beautiful pop girls. nice girls. bullies. averages. duets…… and someone sitting alone. bullies pick on dorks and loners. sometimes therefore i sit by a loner.when i was in first grade i got irritated enough to kick a boy bully very hard in the balls for the sake of this boy loner, who was being called a loser. i went to the principals office for fighting, but got a good job pat on the back! awesome life moment.loners are often very intelligent and beautiful. just gotta look. boys are physical when they are mean. girls fight with the mind. they knife the self esteem of those they deem less than. they can be evil. my reason for guy friends. i always wondered , if they are so awesome, why pick on others? so sometimes id tell them they were awesome since maybe they didnt believe their own tooting. moreso, id go play with someone who didnt want all the drama. just wanted to swing on swings together. i acted some. sat with the actors. they are often confident kids who make their own fun. lots of clean fun. smart and funny. still my friends. athletes are cool, but they can be exclusive sometimes, i try to stay from getting caught in that. dont mind bad kids. unless thay are having bully or self centric moments. i listen to their stories. they arent bad, actually. they seek boundary. they just seek. they want to belong. they are inclusive. if someone included them , maybe they wouldn’t chose the bad. i like intellectuals and deep thinkers who often duet, because they value their thoughtful discussion. i realize that i have parts of me that connect with all the people i talk to. i basically dress different, thats all. i liked skirts and tights, and playing ball like that. i love sitting at different tables. i felt most comfy with others who valued not just being comfy. so you may not find me with them, although remaining good friends with them. mostly no one group ever cared if i was with another group. that was awesome. i never stayed in exclusive groups too long. it narrows your friend field. except. the cool table. they minded. and it got bad later on in high school. early in highschool i was in with cool people. i was cool people i guess. and i wanted to keep those friends. i cant say why other than the fact that something makes you feel like you gotta be cool if you can, it is how you will be known. it is how you are named. the entire world labels you this way. i was afraid that without a good label. no one would ever look at me and find that im basically pretty good all around. but the clique jumping bothered my cool friends, i guess. one day while i was a nikko’s restaurant after football, i was with the cheerleaders and so forth, worrying about how we look, tossing our hair, and hoping football guys look at us like happens in all the movies and stuff. and some of my actor friends come in and sit down. some of my real best friends were at that table. i sat to talk with two girls, one was upset, she wanted to tell me that her dad was in rehab. a cool person representative pulled me aside to say that i needed to make a choice, if i sat with those losers, (one of the guys was gay) i could no longer come back to hanging with them. that was like cold water being poured on me and awoke me from my dream. i had been caught in the cloud of coolness.ez decison.dump cool people. i am still friends with a most everyone and a couple of cools as well, they admired my actions. the friends i lost were never friends, i discovered. i think this is why i like jesus. i like his radical non clique style. following him is awesome. his world open to all cliques his eyes see the insides of all the people he knows that we all connect inside, we just dress different its like hes been there all along with me, and now my eyes are open to something more. feels like this part of alice in wonderland where she discoveres this entirely new world………. im excited. no more cliques to manage. true god without religion. im free! and i look around the lunchroom of christian faith. groupology: i see a family of people not broken into cliques the rich suburban equal with the one with no home. the hardcore and the nerd, instant friends. the beauty finding beauty beneath the beast the old and the young learning together the street wise and the sheltered shaking hands, erasing lines. our heritage based on our creator beautiful. but -there remains in this christian faith the cool people table. of cool christians who have made that cool name everyone knows it, they wrote a cool book. they have a degree or job title, some are cool but dont wanna be. there are some standards that keep you at this table. “reality, sweetie”. gotta market yourself in this consumer driven world to get to a place to use those gifts of yours. oh, not to be compared to the outward snottyness of my nikkos friends. we christians dont do that sometimes i think they dont even know they are caught in the coolness cloud. jesus my plea! can i be? still truly free? to live like i think You wanted from me? for as i am follow You i become uniquely me i want to use my place to share grace with all but is there a place? in the church world space for a leader who wont market who wont cater to consumer Christianity? i will die as a try to live His ways free of churchianity to lead people to organize a structure that is not an organization to include different people since we all have a pink tongue to keep structures a support and not a squelch of life to love with out an agenda because thats what love is and keep learning what it means to lose my life is this what it means to overcome?

Tags: change, faith, hope