One thing I’ve noticed since moving to Durham is that young adults in this area is pretty transitory.   This might not be anything geographically unique, but  we come for a couple years go to grad school and then move on.  I first spent extended time in Durham in the Summers of 2001 and 2002  when I was here for an internship and since 2003 it’s been home.  I’ve seen many people come and go.  Someday I will also and I imagine I’ll go with mixed emotions.  I haven’t always enjoyed the time I’ve spent here.  I feel like there are more loose meandering threads than anything clear or concrete.

Without relatives in this area I probably would have never come and upon arrival and I started attending Durham Mennonite Church with them.  For as long as I’ve been there it’s been missing a solid group of 20-somethings.   Brad and Beth Yoder moved into the area and from them I found out about this Mennonite Church Plant in Chapel Hill.  I visited but the service for me at the time was a bit much and I didn’t return until about 4 years ago.  In that time it had changed to something I found more palatable and since then I’ve been attending both churches.  Those who have sojourned there and at Durham have gotten me into a fair number of things.  From Fred and Elizabeth Bahnson I got involved in Anathoth Garden.  On Tuesday nights I try and get out to to the work session in the garden, It’s a bit of a haul but there’s a potluck after the garden work is done and a Mexican lady makes these fresh tortilla’s that are to die for.  Jonathan and Leah Wilson-Hartgrove were part of the same Christian Peace Maker Team as Shane Claiborne and I got to know some of the folks from Rutba house as that formed and gotten to know something about the New Monastic Movement.  I led the youth group at Durham such as it was until everybody graduated from High School about two years ago.   We did a few things with Raleigh Mennonite and I got to know folks from there.   So I feel like I’ve formed a life here, but it’s spread out, everything requires driving 20 minutes to get there and I move from event to event, group to group without a lot of connection.

… Cue Ramble On - Led Zeppelin …

So when the Jesus for President tour comes to Raleigh I’m only mildly interested, I think I know a bit about this Shane Claiborne character.  I figure I know the community he’s writing from and his story, but even still it’d be fun to see the pageantry.   He and Chris Haw didn’t disappoint as it was more than I expected.  Their dialogue interspersed with fragments of song from the Psalters was raucous, awesome in the classical sense and I love that sort of thing.  But I feel like I’m in the choir.  I’m not really sure we’re the crowd who should have been there.  I’d have loved to see how a bunch of Southern Baptists or Presbyterians would have reacted.  I thing that most us of attending probably agreed with him going in, so for us it’s nice hear another voice speaking counter to the market.  It’s refreshing to hear a prophet who isn’t shilling for the man.  It allows us to tune out the messages in the media a little while longer.  So although the audience might have been the wrong one, to me it was the audience was the most significant part of the evening.  Amidst this motley crew of 700ish people that showed up, there were those I know from the Mennonite Churches in the area(Greensboro, Graham, Raleigh Durham and Chapel Hill), people I know from playing Ultimate Frisbee on Sunday afternoons, people I know from Habitat from Humanity, from Anathoth and from Rutba house.  It made me really happy to feel like all these fragmented pieces that seem so disconnected are part of a larger community, if only for one night.