Getting to Know You

Thinking about connections today.

Or something like that. The connections between people. At Camp, we're all deeply connected. This is your-friends-know-you connected. This is in-your-face-love connected. You can't be antisocial, it's just not going to happen.

Back at FCC, they break up. We don't seek to connect with the other people anymore. We don't make as much eye contact, we don't search people's faces, 'cept for the other staff. We want to be left alone. I hear about all the bad things that can happen, and suddenly going for a run at night through the city isn't fun and relaxing, me-and-God-time in the dark, it's a chance for someone to get hurt. Where I'd laugh off the random propositions I get thrown downtown, now they're a little scarier.

And I don't want to be scared of people. They're people. People matter. Really. Of all the stuff God's made, people are something different. People - you can hear a person's story, and hear it again, and hear it again, and they'll tell you different parts of it, different perspectives, every time. And you can watch their eyes, and the way they move their hands when they talk, and listen to the points that they highlight, and figure out what matters to them. And you still don't know them. Not really.

Signscout knows me deeper than anybody else. K knows me not as deep, but in some weird dimension, like deeper across a broader area than anyone else. Santas has known me longest ('cept my parents). Think about that one. I've known Santas for two decades, and I still don't know all of her. She's an adventure unfolding. So's Signscout. And man, I can't even think about what an adventure K is, because I was looking forward to having that adventure for the rest of my life.

And we get hung up on what the houses look like. Seriously?

Last night I was getting my books out of my band locker, and around the corner I could hear a guy talking to someone else about a girl. And every line from him just hurt a little somewhere. He was praising her, but it wasn't her he was praising - it was the house. It was that she wasn't too skinny, but she had the right curves, and she did this amazing thing with her eyeliner, and he kept talking. He wasn't saying anything bad about her, or even that crude - but he didn't say anything about who she was. It was all about what her house looked like.

That's all it is. The body's just the soul-house. If the house gets wrecked, it's not like anything bad happens to me, I just move out. We admire houses for their architecture, or how pretty they are, etc., but my favorite houses to hang out in are the ones where my friends are. I like Miller's house because the gang's all there. I like lilr's house because I get to play with the baby and see my friend and share time with her (okay, and we make pretzels). I love coming in here because you're here.

I appreciate the house more because you're in it. But whatever house you lived in, no matter what it looked like, that's the house where I wanna be. There was a guy that I wanted to marry, and I told my girlfriends (if not him) that I'd marry him if he were a quadriplegic. It wasn't that what he looked like didn't matter - it was that the real value was who was there. Same way you can appreciate a pretty house - I can appreciate that my guy's physically attractive, but the real value of the physical is that it's containing him.

And now he's getting fussed because he's losing his hair. So not listening. :) Although, it must be noted, we're no longer looking at getting married.

The real value of the house is who lives there. The real value of the body is what's inside it. That's you. Your value is beyond financial estimate. There's an awful lot of money in this world, but there's only one you. There's nothing I could trade to get a you - just no comparison value. You're so far beyond anything else out there. And I want to hear your story. And I want to get to know you.

Though, from what I've seen, that could take the next twenty years. :)