Streamlining

I’m connecting with excerpts rom Greg Veltman’s  “Making Friends for Life.” Comment, Sept. 2006, 34-39:

 

“I learned if I wanted to have a life of integrity and real knowing, that I would have to struggle to see how things connect.  Seeing Steven Garber as a mentor and model of connecting knowing and loving was of vital importance for my college years. “

 

“In his book, The Fabric of Faithfulness, he lays out three things that can help college students find these connections.  To oversimplify, they are: 1. A worldview that is able to explain adequately human existence nd human action in the world, 2. A mentor or teacher  who is an example of living the tensions of the story—teaching how to order priorities and contextualizing ‘information’- with conviction, a dedicated knower, who teaches the meaning of ‘to know’, and 3. A community, a modeled in the setting of hiher education, and reinforced by communities following the college years.  A community is a common context of living where one is challenged to live responsibly, being refined and sharpened in relationship with others as one embodies the knowledge and ideas of one’s worldview.  I have since been in pursuit and blessed to have a life full of these things. “

 

“The streamlined life is not worth living.  Community and Friendship are things to get tangled up in.  They aren’t easy or efficient.  But they give meaning to our lives.””

 

“ In her book My Freshman Year (Cornell University Press, 2005), Rebekah Nathan recounts her research project, living in a residence hall on her campus and seeing the world of student life from the inside (she was previously a faculty member in anthropology). …Their highest goal, it seems, is to have ‘ the perfect schedule.’  The students she observed were looking to get in, get a diploma, and get  out—the fewer distractions, the better.  They were not about to let classes and deep relationships get in the way of their pursuit of a better life as college graduates.  These students suffer from what Michael Flynn’s band Slow Runner calls being ‘Streamlined.’”

 

‘Now loneliness is so refined

            It’s streamlined

I slip through doors, I pass the time

Streamlined

I want to be

Weighted down

Tangled up

In the thorns of love

But this year I

Ended up

Streamlined

All extra weight

I’ve left behind

Between the rain

Beneath the signs

I want to be

Tangled up

Weighted down

Lost and found

Cause these days I

Just walk around

Streamlined.'

--Slow Runner, “Streamlined”

 

“Today’s students live in a culture that tells them to be streamlined.  It is less painful, and it will get you where you want to go most efficiently….Being streamlined is the process of being bumbed to the world’s crying and laughter.  It is to retreat into oneself.  Our fear of intimacy allows us to take the path of least resistance.  Streamlined.”

 

From Veltman, Greg.  “Making Friends for Life.” Comment, Sept. 2006, 34-39

This description is so deeply ironic to me.  Just last week I began to picture myself in terms of smoothed edges or uniquely grooved edges.  If I’m truly unique as God continues to emphasize throughout Scripture, nature and my personal experience, then to live as though I can adapt to anything, without preference, needs, fears, passions, un-replicated connections, is incorrect, a fallacy in the face of the reality of who I am: ridged with grooves of Spanish, big hips, the color green, psychology, passion for prayer, facilitating mending broken minds, Hawthorne and Dickens, recycling, Plumb and more.  I am not streamlined.  I feel like I just caught up with reality.  I’m a little out of breath, realizing how much I’ve wasted and missed trying to disconnect myself from my friends and my family in order to get ahead.  Who’s racing, H?  Who told you that you were in a hurry?