.ubuntu.
Welcome to my life! Not sure what's going on? Neither am I.
I just graduated from Azusa Pacific University with my BA in English Literature. Now...well, now I am adjusting. I am adjusting to life as it is, rather than what I thought it was while held captive (by my own will) in the "APU bubble," as it has been called.
Life in college was great--I learned a lot and laughed a lot, and I plan to continue doing both of those, as long as God keeps me here on this earth. But the thing about college life that still has my mind spinning, is the multiple dimensions it pulled me through. In one respect, I despise the culture of APU life because of the inward focus and self-elevation I witnessed and endured, "all in the name of God." At the same time, I never experienced a closer community and sense of family, than that which I felt by the people who came into my life during my time at APU.
Another dimension of the college life that still gives me whiplash, is the awareness factor. I feel that my first two years at APU and my last year and a half represent the two groups of people on the APU campus: 1) socially (in the larger sense) unaware and ignorant to the reality of what actually happens in our world, and 2) budding awareness and eagar participation in the discovery and action toward social issues, justice and truth. Both have positives and negatives, and without going through the first, the second would have been meaningless.
Being white, a US citizen born in 1986, and a woman, there are certain experiences I will never go through, and can never completely identify with. After spending 4 months in South Africa (actually after just the first few weeks there), I hated the fact that I was white. It took awhile to reconcile that, and realize that God made me who I am and loves me the way He made me, and if our world, our deluded world and culture has placed some obscure priviledge on having "white" skin, then how am I going to use that "priviledge" for Good? Even in saying that I feel elitest and crazy, but I am humbled by an almighty, gracious, omnicient, loving God who is the creater of all things and Savior of all people. I am nothing, and He is everything.
This marks the beginning of my journey, of life--post school, post childhood...entering humility and servanthood. Here I go--ready to endure whatever it is I have coming, but never ready to settle and be comfortable.
.ubuntu.
A person is a person through others.
"A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed."
--Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 1999
