The Evolution of Loyalty -or- My Tribe**

I have friends I never have to think twice about. I have friends that have, at some point in my life, crossed over the threshold from being my friends to being something more like family. I can't rightly call it family, in the most technical sense because we do not share the same blood lines or have legal documentation to prove our relationship. So instead of family, I think I can call it a tribe (if for no other reason than it is the coolest sounding alternative).

The one force that makes this sense of tribe so real, necessary, and comforting is loyalty.

Being back in San Antonio always affords me the chance to be with a group of guys that are amazing. We are different. Different ambitions, different races, different beliefs, and different personalities. But the one thing we all share is our unspoken committment to one another. I can't tell you how confidence-infusing it is to know that you have people that are willing to fight for you. These guys would do anything for me. It doesn't matter how much time or distance gets between us, the loyalty does not diminish (even when it is freezing its ass off in Iowa). Likewise, there are things I would do for these guys that I wouldn't do for any other reason.

Sometimes I wonder when this threshold was crossed, and at what point this immutable depth and loyalty formed; I can't put my finger on the day. I watch a movie like Good Will Hunting and I get eyes full of water thinking about my "tribe" and the guys who would (and this sordid bunch might quite literally) "take a bat to someone for me." To know I am so fiercely loved is the greatest euphoria I have ever felt.

I was always afraid that my tribe would become static... that the hometown guys might always be the only members (which wouldn't be a bad thing!). But people continue to cross the threshold in ones and twos into this world of mutual committment and loyalty. There are people who I've found becomming a part of my tribe over these last four years in college, people who have become just as loyal and intimate.

I love these people. It is through these relationships that almost the complete entirity of the experience of my faith is formed. These relationships are where I see and experience God. Because I know that a depth of loyalty and love even into complete abandonment of concern with self is possible and happens, I can believe God's story. I can believe that a God would abandon concern for its self and love humans, just to share a returned abandon and love.

You people are the reason I believe. You know who you are.

**This post could have easily carried a much different tone, a tone that some people might describe as "ghetto" which I choose to call "socially and culturaly liberated" instead. The following phrases were paintstakingly removed from the original post: "representin' the set" "real recognize real" "holdin' it down for my people" "soldjuh's" "lookin' out for the squaw" "they don't know who we be" and "From the East Coast, West Coast, and in the Dirty Souf"