living in the projects

I like personal development projects. Sometimes I think I would never have "developed" as much as I have so far, if I hadn't thought of games and competitions to trick myself into "growing." A few favorite memories come to mind:

1. I gained a number of new and strange experiences in college when I became "The Dollar Dare Girl." Nothing naughty. Just like peeing my pants in the middle of the street, eating dog food and strange concoctions made at Denny's after midnight, drinking the juice of brussel sprouts, licking a little boy's shoe, climbing things, etc. I made a good deal of cash, too! I probably looked like a stripper, my pockets full of one dollar bills, but no.

2. A poetry game with my friend Matt Miller. We decided it was too tempting to poeticize only about melancholy things, even though there is in fact more beauty in "the good." It's just too easy to seem trite or sappy about "the good" and feel all profound and original when in the depths of despair. So we would send each other three images a week and the other person would have to write a not-morbid poem inspired by each image. It was a thrilling experiment, and I think I grew a lot as a writer.

3. When feeling really poor, my college roommate Jessica and our friend Tyler and I decided to stop spending money on anything other than necessities. Food was not considered a necessity, since we all had cafeteria meal plans. It was extremely challenging, and I declare that stretching the thrift muscles can be quite fun when done in community. It leads to... shall we say creativity? I concluded the only thing I needed to buy was kleenex. Everything else I could find for free some way or another.

4. My brother Eames and I have challenged each other a couple of times to Healthy Eating. This reaquired strict guidelines and serious consequences for deviation. It was a fun bonding experience, and we were very successful in establishing good habits.

5. At Agape Villages Foster Family Agency, where I worked a couple years ago, the whole office staff started healthy living experiments. It was so fun to encourage each other in our different goals. One did Weight Watchers, another Nutrisystem, and all of us became more active in our daily lives. When I quit working there, everyone literally looked DIFFERENT! It was crazy. The power of peer encouragement is mind-blowing.

6. I have had the privilege of sharing a room with many amazing ladies. Chrissy (in Sacramento), Jessica (Sophomore Year in College), and Sarah (Senior Year) were roommates who joined me in praying before bed every night. It was such a relationship-building experiment, and was way more effective at ensuring I turned my heart to God each day than flying solo.

7. TC JAMES started as a group of strangers who challenged each other to meet every Friday afternoon and pray for the world. My heart was with the struggles of Other Peoples, but this community grounded my ambiguous feelings of compassion. And some of my best friendships were born of the experience.

8. Moving into a low-income apartment complex in Sacramento with a group of eight 20-something suburbanites was an effort in learning to care for the marginalized people in our city. It wasn't enough to drive out there and tutor the kids once a week. For me, they needed to become my neighbors who I saw everyday. The tutoring program needed to be next door, not across town. And this shift did help me reorient. But it taught me about my spiritual immaturity more than anything else. And again... I made deep and life-changing friendships. This seems to be a pattern. Maybe the reason I love a project.

Now a new "game" is beginning. It's called Project Fruit. An anonymous friend and I had mutually realized how little our lives reflected "The Fruit" that the Bible describes as being representative of life "in the Spirit." Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Eek. So our process is to look at one piece of fruit each week, read about it, and seek to fertilize its growth in our day-to-day. I expect good things. And... I AM a bit nervous. My life needs to change. But. Change. Is. Hard. Cheers to a a little game to put the fire under my ars.