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I've been visiting churches for the past few months, and I've promised to do a thorough sweep of them all. I haven't forgotten, but I do have one more church I'd like to visit before I do a broad sweep of the Austin area congregations. A brief trailer for each church I've seen - large/mainstream Evangelical, Episcopalean, emergent-but-not-really, Korean...so stay tuned.

In addition to this, I've been reading one of the best books I've read in a while - C.S. Lewis' "Miracles". I hope to write on this one in a bit too - I wish I had read this sooner, like at Rice when I was questioning the validity of Christianity (instead of the random slew of poor-quality literature that I read instead). In particular, I took a humbling message from one of its chapters that talked about the validity of ideas despite misinterpretation (I confess I've probably been a bit of in intellectual snob in my treatment of other Christians =\ not something I'm proud of). Anyhow, in a future post, I'd like to do my best to convince any readers of this blog to read this book as well, because I found it very stimulating, with just the right balance of intellectual rigor and accessibility.

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Thus, this post acts as sort of a placeholder, awaiting more important and thoughtful posts. Ironically, my time in Austin (cue sermon-like tie-in to actual content!) seems to feel much the same - for now, my years here at UT feel like they're just being used to wait it out until I get a job, or (God willing) get married, or move back home, or experience a more important event in my life than just work and grad school.

As the novelty of being somewhere new wears off, I'm finding myself spending more and more time alone. It feels hard to go out and meet people - there hasn't been a Friday night large group for post-grads, and investing a chunk of time into hanging out with one person can be awkward if they're not someone you know well/feel comfortable with. I don't feel like I should try to invest in a college group on campus either, otherwise I could see myself just trying to relive college instead of moving on and growing. Whatever the reasons (and I'm still sorting thru these), I find myself alone at home a lot, doing a social thing maybe once a month at best. Currently, I'm blogging because I feel fairly lonely, which is a pretty terrible reason to blog (still, perhaps something constructive may come out of this - especially if anyone has any comments/advice, they'd be much appreciated).

In trying to reason why I feel so lonely here, I came up with the following chain of logic: I don't feel very connected to Austin (tied in to investing in Austin is the church search as well...), so I'm not too motivated to connect myself to Austin either, and therefore have not built a stable group of friends to be around here either.

I got an email from a friend commenting on how hard it was to invest in a solid church community given that he would only be around the area for a few months. Somehow, though I will probably be here a good few years at least, I seem to have motivations similar to someone who's just passing through a town. Since I have friends in Houston, family in California, it's difficult to see myself giving either of those up to stay here long-term. The whole feel of Austin seems much too "cool" as well, and I don't really feel like I fit in well with "cool" kids (hence I loved Rice).
In the end though, I still believe I should make the most of my time here. While I don't THINK I'll have the college experience all over again, forming deep friendships everywhere I go, I KNOW I won't get anything done isolating myself either.

Any thoughts/experiences/advice on adapting to a new place?