The LoneTomato Stand

new home for the LoneTomato Stand

2010-02-08T08:36:00.002-08:00

I've moved on over to WordPress (sorry Blogger, you've been good to me).

You can now find me here: http://lonetomato808.wordpress.com/

Or you can always use the URL www.lonetomato.com. Both addresses will get you to the same place.

See ya there.

336. learning to read x-rays

2009-10-27T12:05:00.003-07:00

[preface]

It's been a long time since I've felt the writer's itch - that longing for the tortured joy that comes from writing.

And so I hope to be back at writing.

There's a good chance that it may not be as regular as the once-per-week that I used to strive for. School is a TON of work. I've done more reading in the last month than I've probably done in all the time I've been here in Seattle.

Anyway, there's lots going on with me and in my head and so I hope to share some of it with y'all.

It feels great to be back.

[end preface]

I've never been a huge fan of the Blade movies - I did like the second one more than the first and I don't remember the third even though I saw it. The description of Blade that other vampires often say of him is that he has all of their strengths but none of their weaknesses since Blade possesses superhuman vampire strength but can walk around during the day, which, of course, the vampires can't do.

Well an incident occurred recently that has me wondering if I'm like the opposite of Blade - that I'm one who has all of a group's weaknesses while sharing none of their strengths.

I'm speaking of racial privilege.

I don't know who reads my blog (especially now, after not posting for so long) and so I have no idea how much knowledge any of my readers may or may not have in regards to the issue of racial privilege. And so I guess I'll start by sharing the little I know about the topic.

In America, there are people from many different racial/ethnic backgrounds. And out of these differences, a particular group often has benefits, powers, privileges that those outside their group do not share. The privileged group may or may not be aware of these advantages and even if they are aware of them, they may not actively exploit them but nevertheless, they hold access to assets that those outside their group cannot attain. (Click here if you have no idea what I'm talking about - it's an excellent introduction to the topic.)

In terms of race, this is most often talked about as White privilege.

And that's a big can of worms but there it is, I said it, I went there.

But.

But that's not the only kind of racial privilege that exists in America.

I grew up in Hawaii where Asians are the majority racial group (link). As an Asian-American, that means I grew up being the advantaged group.

Among other things, this means that:

When giving me my receipt at Safeway, the cashier would say, "thank you, Mr. Ajimine" instead of just "thank you" like they do in the mainland (and this after they said, "thank you, Mr. Anderson" to the person in front of me).
Likewise in school (K-12-college), my teachers/professors knew how to pronounce my name without asking.
In local magazines and publications (the Honolulu Weekly for example) it was easy to find people who looked like me.
Although I went to a private school where it didn't happen (at least I never heard of it happening), I knew of a practice at some schools known as Kill Haole Day. On this day (usually the last day of the school year) white students were taunted and sometimes assaulted. White kids not coming to school on that day was not a rare occurrence.
The butt of racial jokes were usually white - the Portuguese, for example, were a common target of racist jokes.

Those are just a few examples but basically, what that adds up to is that I grew up never having to think about my racial identity. Because there were examples all around who looked like me, talked like me, behaved like me, I never had to worry about fitting in or standing out. And it pains me to admit this but in cases of blatant racism like Kill Haole Day and white jokes, I didn't really think about them. In fact, I laughed about it with my friends and didn't think it was a problem because that's what it is to be a member of the privileged group. I had the luxury of remaining blissfully unaware and unconcerned because I and those around me were not the ones affected.

In college I took a Political Science class where the professor spent a few weeks talking about issues of race and racism. Looking back on that time, I honestly can't remember much of what was said, but I do remember the prof talking about how even though Hawaii is very diverse racially, there were still problems of racism that were unjust and needed to be dealt with. But I didn't understand what he was getting at. My thought was, "hey, when in Rome, do as the Romans do," why can't everyone just behave like us and think like us and talk like us? Then everybody would get along. What I didn't realize then was that I was able to say "us" because I was in the "us" group and it was those outside my group I wished would change and fall in line and not make a fuss. Because it's far easier to want another group to change than to change yourself or your own group.

And then I moved to the mainland and the shoe was on the other foot.

Now I'm the one that feels the pressure (sometimes subtle, sometimes not so) to conform to the norms of the group in power so that they can feel comfortable.

And I suppose that's messed up enough as it is but here's the other thing.

Because I grew up with privilege growing up in Hawaii, I have little to no experience of what it's like to be the other - the one without privilege. And so not only was I one who had perpetrated acts of racism on others (I remember learning white jokes, laughing at them, then telling them to others) back then, I am now someone who lacks empathy when it comes to race, even now that I'm in the mainland and am part of the minority group. And by that, what I mean is because I used to be the one with my boot in the face of the other, I don't know what it's like to have a boot in my own face. And so even when the boot is there kicking out my teeth, sometimes I don't feel it.

That's a poor metaphor because how could I not feel a beat down like that? Maybe because racism is not always so stark? Or is it? One of the things I've learned from men and women of color in the mainland is that when you grow up with constant reminders of your marginalization and your otherness, when you grow up in an atmosphere where you're under pressure to conform to some impossible "norm,"¹ then when you bump up against privilege (personal or institutional), you're aware of it immediately.

Maybe a metaphor would help here.

When doctors learn to read x-rays, their teacher puts a film up on the illuminator and asks the students to point out what the image is showing them. As this process begins, the students just see white splotches on a black background. They can recognize structures like bones and maybe organs but that's all they see. Then the instructor puts his finger on one of the splotches and says, do you see anything there? And the students say no because that grey bit looks exactly like the grey bit next to it.

As their training progresses, they keep looking at x-ray films and they begin to get better at identifying normal grey bits from diseased or cancerous grey bits. After a while, it becomes second nature and so when they're with a patient discussing their x-ray results, they can point confidently at something they see in the image - something that the patient doesn't see at all.

I think that's kind of what it's like to learn to see racism for someone who didn't grow up seeing it. Imagine growing up in a household where both your parents were expert radiologists and so you grew up looking at x-rays. If this was your upbringing and you decided to become a doctor, when you went through your training and got to the bit where your fellow students were learning to read x-rays, you'd already be able to see what the instructor was trying to point out because you grew up with that skill whereas the other students just see splotches.

Unfortunately, unlike this metaphorical hypothetical, when it comes to race, growing up with an awareness of it (because you're in it, because you're of it) is a disadvantage, not an advantage because unlike the students trying to learn to read x-ray films, those who can't detect instances of racism aren't striving to learn to recognize it - a difficult process that takes months, years, maybe lifetimes.

And when it comes to racial reconciliation and advocating for justice, learning to see is only the first step. And as difficult as that step is, it may actually be the easiest because once you see, the next step is figuring out what to do about it.

Honestly, for myself, I'm still learning how to see. You'd think it'd be easier for me to recognize since now I'm an Asian-American in the mainland and so I'm sort of surrounded by it. But for me, it's still hard to see unless it's right there in my face. For example, a few months ago when I was working at a temp job at a copier company, the guy I'm working with asks me, "where are you from?" and I say, "Hawaii." He responds, "Hawaii? But you don't look Hawaiian." I explain to him that I was born and raised in Hawaii but no, I myself am not Hawaiian. Then he asks, "okay, so where are your parents from?" And I tell him that they were born in Hawaii as well. Of course by then I realized what he was asking me and so I finally said, "I'm Okinawan." And he says, "oh, well why didn't you say that in the first place?"

I'd venture to guess that some of my mainland Asian-American friends are reading that and groaning. They probably knew where my co-worker was going from the very first question because they've heard that question throughout their lives. Me? It took me a while to figure it out and even after the incident I just thought to myself, "hmm, that was odd."

And it seemed merely "odd" because that was a new experience for me. But friends who grew up with that kind of ignorance probably have a different reaction. Think of it this way. Say you're sitting in an airplane on a long flight. You get settled in and then you feel a bump from behind you. You don't think much of it because you figure that's just the person behind you getting situated. But then the bumping continues and continues and continues because maybe it's a fidgety kid with an inattentive parent behind you. The bumping, of course, drives you crazy and even when you ask the parent to ask their kid to stop, the bumps continue all the way to your destination.

Now say you get on a connecting flight. Again, you find your seat and are glad to see that the kid is no longer behind you. But if the new person behind you accidentally hits your seat, your frustration level spikes immediately and even if that's the only bump of the entire trip, you still have a general sense of unease just anticipating another jostling.

Imagine growing up with a lifetime of bumps. Often inadvertent, sometimes purposeful, but still there - bump after bump after bump. Imagine always feeling the sense of anxiety that the passenger felt on that second flight. Imagine feeling that all the time. Imagine living with the expectation of being bumped - knowing that it will come, sometimes subtle, sometimes direct and sharp and full of spite.

I didn't grow up being bumped. I was the one who did the bumping - sometimes unknowingly, sometimes with full knowledge of what I was doing. And I never felt compelled to stop other people from bumping because it didn't seem like a big deal. Because what's wrong with bumping someone - telling one small white joke even when there's a white person around? For me it's just the one joke but for that person it may be one more in a series of bumps that they've had to endure throughout his life.

And now I'm the one being bumped. But I just sat down in this seat and there have only been a few kicks from behind. I don't have that sense of anxiety or expectation of one who's been bumped their entire lives. Even worse, like the person who can't read x-rays well, I don't recognize it when those around me are being bumped and so it's hard to step in and to help stop it. Even when a friend gets bumped and asks me, "did you just feel that?" Sometimes I have to say, "sorry, I didn't." They've got their finger on the cancer on the film right in front of me and I can't see it. I can't feel it.

And that breaks my heart.

And so I'm trying to see. I'm trying to feel. I'm trying to learn.

But it's hard.

But it's vitally important because I can't fight a disease if I can't see it.

Because the bumping has to stop.

[POSTSCRIPT]

I wish I had finished this post a few weeks ago but it's been difficult for a number of reasons, not just because school has been keeping me busy. But I wanted to let you know that starting this evening (10/27/09), my church is beginning a three-week depth class on the issue of race called Faith and Race. It culminates in a one day conference called Skin Deep: A Conference on Faith & Race in the Church. If you're in the Seattle area, I highly recommend you attend the depth classes or the one day conference, preferably both.

[END POSTSCRIPT]

¹This is my understanding of what it's like to grow up as a minority in the mainland based on how I've heard the experiences of friends here. If I've missed the mark, please correct me through email or in the comments and I'll revise. Thanks.

335. my real job?

2009-07-29T11:25:00.003-07:00

see more Political Pictures

I had mentioned in the [preface] portion of my previous post that "because of an experience a couple weeks ago (which I'll also write about soon), I should be back on the writing bandwagon now."

Well, what happened was, I got a temp job at a company that sells and leases copiers to businesses. They had a particularly big order come in and they needed someone to help un-box new copiers and help get them ready to ship out. Sounded like a simple job and so I took it.

And then I got there and learned that these weren't just any copiers. They were these huge, heavy (over 400lbs), Konica Minolta bizhub c650 machines. I asked the guy showing me how to un-box them how much one of them cost and he laughed and said, "probably more than I make in a year." A quick Google search shows that they probably go for around $27,000.

During the course of my two day temp job, I helped offload and un-box about thirty of those along with their associated finishers (the bit that sorts and staples print jobs). And let me tell you, it was HARD work.

First off, just getting these monsters off the delivery truck. Did I mention they weigh over 400 back-breaking pounds each? Well the box they come in is probably about four feet high and there aren't any holes cut out of them so there's really nothing to grab onto. They come strapped to a custom-sized wooden pallet but the drivers advised against pulling on the straps because they break. They're designed to be off-loaded with a pallet jack, but they didn't have one that would fit the copier's odd size so they had to be moved by hand. The only way to move them was to grab under the lip of the cardboard lid that topped the box and even then, they're so heavy that the only way to move them was to shimmy them back and forth - get the left end out a bit then pull the right side around then go back to pulling the left end, etc.

The delivery drivers were expert at moving them around. I watched the driver maneuver one of the boxes to the end of his truck, where the forklift off-loaded them, then I turned to grab the next one. The driver had made it look easy so I grabbed hold of the lid and yanked. Nothing happened. I yanked again, as hard as I could this time, and still nothing. So I grabbed one side of the lid with both my hands and pulled again and it moved. An inch. I was soon relegated to pushing from the back once the driver pulled the box out enough for me to get behind. I think the driver appreciated that, but not as much as he would have if I had been able to actually drag one of those boxes by myself.

Then came the un-boxing which sounds like it should be easier than the offloading. And it sort of was, but it sort of wasn't.

Those boxes were made of the thickest, heaviest cardboard I'd ever seen. Luckily, it was only the outer shell that was big and heavy. The bits inside were smaller, lighter pieces of cardboard and bits of styrofoam. Everything got recycled and so after un-boxing one of these beasts, I had to throw the styrofoam in the styrofoam recycle corner and take the (heavy) cardboard to another area and throw it into the big roll-off recycling bin they had parked outside one of their warehouse doors. So while it wasn't quite as hard as moving the copiers off the truck, there were lots more steps involved - process steps as well as physical steps.

And there were about thirty of these damn things that needed to be un-boxed.

It took me most of two days to get them ready to go upstairs to the techs who finished the assembly and got them ready for the customer.

This is probably one of the hardest jobs I've done since I left my Iron Mountain job almost two years ago. I blogged a lot about that job - a bit about the job itself but more about an ornery co-worker I code named Harold. And it reminded me about another work experience I had many, many years ago.

Back in Hawaii, I was trying to start up my own music recording business. Whenever business was slow (which was just about all the time) I would do temp work to pay the bills. One of the first jobs I got was working for a large insurance company. The first time I was there I was working on the second floor where the all paper-pushers are. My job was almost literally to push paper from one bin to another. Of course there was some form checking and sorting and stamping along the way, but the job was basically to shuttle the paper from one tray to the next tray. And that first tray never got empty. I'd work my way down but after lunch and in the morning the next day, it would be stacked high yet again.

A few months later I got assigned to temp again at that same insurance company, only this time I was on the third floor where the executives worked. Even though it was the same company and I was only one floor up, the differences were dramatic. On the second floor, all aspects of productivity were tracked meticulously - keep track of how many sheets you process per hour (and make sure this number is always going up), ask questions if you need something clarified but keep chatter to a minimum, track the time (to the minute) you leave for lunch and the time you get back, you're allowed two breaks per day neither of which can be more than ten minutes (a bathroom break counts as a break), if you need a day off or need to leave early, be sure to put in a request at least one week in advance. And that didn't just apply to the temps. Even the regular workers were under those pressures.

On the third floor? Sure everyone had a job to do but as long as it was done before deadline, no one cared how much or how little time you spent on it. There were lots of people walking into one another's offices, chatting - sometimes about business matters, more often not. People regularly took long lunches and long breaks. If someone had to leave early to pick up a sick child or for a doctor's appointment or to play a last minute round of golf, they just sent an email and took off. As a temp, I didn't have all of those freedoms but still, it was far less stressful than when I had worked on the second floor.

Oh, and food. On the second floor there was a vending machine and everyone had to pay if they wanted snacks. On the third floor there was usually a box of fresh doughnuts lying around somewhere and pizza deliveries were not uncommon.

I worked on the third floor in the middle of 1999. I remember this because my job was to move their HR database from an old system to a new one. The Y2K bug was in the air and this company wanted to make sure it was safe. I guess they didn't have time to come up with an automated solution to port the data from one system to the other so they brought in a temp (me) to do it instead. So my job was to copy information like name, address, phone number, emergency contact, salary, 401k info, tax exemption info, etc. into the new system.

It was a big company so the job took a few weeks to finish. I remember one day I came across the entry for one of the top execs (not the top top, but the top that was handled by this level of HR). She was making a six figure income and that blew me away. I mean, prior to that I knew people made that kind of money but something about seeing the actual figure and a name attached to it drove the point home for me. Some people make LOTS of money - a yearly salary of $100,000 comes out to $8333 per month which is over two grand per week.

That afternoon while eating my lunch, I saw a grounds maintenance worker emptying out a trash bin. It struck me that the exec made more in one week than that guy did in an entire month. And the question that was planted in my head back then (which puzzles me to this day) was, "how can one person's work be worth so much more than another's?"

And I know there's a lot to that question, but sometimes we get lost in the complexities of an issue and maybe it's good to get back to basics. Why is brain labor worth exponentially more than muscle labor? That's a tough question especially when one considers that the body of the person who earns money with physical labor will suffer because of that as they age - they'll basically be used until they're used up. In comparison, the body of the person who earns money with brain power will (with proper care - which they can afford) be nowhere near as broken as the laborer.

And the comparison doesn't have to end with physical versus mental work. What about the differences between the work environments of the second and third floor? Why are those on the second floor driven and treated like cattle by the managers and execs just one floor up whose luxuries are paid for by those they (literally) stand over? Again, why is the work of the mind worth so much more than the work of fingers?

Those questions are far too big for this little blog (and my little mind) but I think it's worth asking.

Anyway, the reason I mention all of that is because my little temp job at the copier company reminded me of something.

I can write.

The grounds maintenance worker? The paper pushers on the second floor? The workers at the copier company? Most of them are doing that because they don't see any other viable options. And while I have met and talked to a few people who actually like physical labor and would choose to do nothing else, most of them hate their work but they do it because it's all they can do.

Me? Well, while my blog doesn't have a wide readership and my stories haven't had any large-scale publication, I can write. And while I would never equate writing with back-breaking labor, writing IS hard work. It's just a different kind of work and I need to be grateful that I have this option. Most importantly, I need to USE this gift that God has given me.

Like I said, I haven't had any huge successes with my writing (yet), but I do enjoy writing. Well, actually, that's not entirely true. I often hate writing. It's a torturous, arduous task, and I bump into my insecurities quite a bit. But that's the work and if I had to choose a life of that versus a life of heavy lifting? I'll choose writing and I need to remind myself that I'm blessed to have that choice.

334. my first fixie

2009-07-26T12:25:00.004-07:00

[preface]

Um, so I haven't been posting lately.

Sorry about that.

No good excuses, I've just been busy doing other things (and yeah, I've also been lazy and...well, more on that in a future post).

Anyway because of an experience a couple weeks ago (which I'll also write about soon), I should be back on the writing bandwagon now.

And so...

[end preface]

It all started with a craigslist ad for an old, beat up bicycle frame that was my size (48cm).

I already have two bikes, one of which is an old (circa late 80's) Fuji bike that I built up as a commuter. It has fenders to guard against the Seattle rain and a rack on that back that I'll use to carry my books once school starts. My other bike is a Vitus 992 racing bike. This is the bike I take out on fun, fitness rides. I've been wanting a Vitus for a long time and I thought my chance had passed a long time ago since I don't think they're in business anymore (even their wikipedia page is tiny) but when one came up on craigslist for a price I couldn't resist, I didn't resist and snatched it up.

So I have two bikes that basically cover all of my bicycling needs. Why did that old, beat up bicycle frame catch my eye?

Two reasons. One, because the guy was selling the frame for $10 or a case of beer. I drove a 12 pack of PBR out to his house and drove away with an ugly, rusty bicycle frame. And two, because I wanted to build up a fixed gear bike.

For those who don't know, the easiest way to describe the difference between a fixie and most of the other bikes out there, a fixed gear bike is one where it's impossible to coast - to not pedal if the rear wheel is moving. Imagine a unicycle where the pedals are affixed to the wheel - if the wheel is moving, the pedals are moving. A fixie is kind of like a unicycle with a front wheel.

With all the bicycle technology that's out there with gears and all, why would anyone want to ride a bike with just one gear that can't coast?

Well, when asked, fixed gear riders say that they feel at one with the bike, that it fosters good pedaling technique, that it's more fun than riding a multi-geared bike, that one just needs to ride one to understand.

Which brings me to the guy selling a frame for beer.

My goal was to build up this bike for less than $200. Trading the frame for a case of beer gave me a head start but if I had known then what a time and money sink it would be, I probably would never have bothered. But I didn't know and by the time I figured how much the rebuild was costing me, I was well past the point of no return.

I'll spare you the gory details of the build and fast forward to the photos.

This is the whole hog. I've temporarily nicknamed it "The Terror" because as a first time fixie rider, it's pretty scary to ride especially when coming to a stop.

From Fuji Fixie

Those green bits are painted with chalkboard paint. The idea is, I can write words or draw designs on those parts with chalk, erase and change them later. I've tried this out but haven't taken any pictures that include chalk drawings yet. It's hard to write words on tubes but drawing stripes and other designs is pretty easy.

From Fuji Fixie

I stole this idea from the Fixed Gear Gallery website (see this bike - my version is nowhere near as elegant as that guy's Bianchi but it works). The left brake lever operates the front brake as usual but the right brake lever rings the bell (no rear brake). The first time I took it out for a ride and needed to brake, I grabbed both levers (like I do on my regular bikes) and pulled and was surprised when I heard the little "ding ding" sound. Now when I ride on the hoods I make sure to keep my fingers off the brake lever.

From Fuji Fixie

One gear. 42 tooth chainring, 17 tooth cog. Nice and easy on the flats, a bit of a struggle on the hills and I haven't had the balls to try it out on any big downhills yet. I don't want to die a virgin.

From Fuji Fixie

I actually built up the front and rear wheels myself. Like I said, once I got into the project it started costing more money than I had wanted to put into it. One cost-cutting measure was to buy the hubs and rims separately and build them up. As a bonus, not only did I save money (most shops charge around $50 to build a wheel), I learned a new skill. Win, win.

From Fuji Fixie

So this is kind of cool. The night before I (finally) finished the build, I was perusing craigslist when I found a guy selling a Fuji saddle for $20 (did I mention the frame was a Fuji? match - match). I needed a saddle but wasn't willing to shell out $20 so I offered the guy $15. After threatening to walk away from the deal, the guy sold it to me for that price.

From Fuji Fixie

And finally this is me with the fixie. Don't let the shaka and the smile fool you - I was frustrated and pissed off at the bike when the picture was taken. Like I said, it was a really frustrating build and I had to make ~~three~~ four trips to Recycled Cycles to find little bits and pieces to get everything fit and working.

From Fuji Fixie

[update]

So I finished the build on Friday night and started writing this post that evening. I'm finishing and posting the entry on Sunday night and I've gotten to ride "The Terror" a few times now and I must say that I'm already becoming fond of this bike. It definitely demands respect - forget you can't coast and the bike reminds you in no uncertain terms - but it's also a pretty sweet ride. Again, I haven't taken it on any big down hill runs (or big up hill slopes) yet so I haven't had the full fixie experience yet.

I did swap out the platform pedals in those photos for egg beater clipless pedals but that pedal system is so easy to get in and out of that it wasn't as hard to learn as I thought they would be. It was hard at first to clip in while the cranks were moving but again, egg beaters are really easy to engage so it didn't take long to figure it out.

One last bit.

There are lots of people who ride fixies to look hip. I built up this fixie and am learning to ride it because one, I want to see what the whole one-with-the-bike-Zen-experience is about and two, riding fixie is supposed to teach proper pedaling technique. And putting this thing together from the frame on up has been a huge learning experience. Before this I thought I knew a fair bit about bikes but once I started the build I quickly ran into all the things I didn't know. Thank God for the internet where I learned some cool tricks like how to build my own headset press and how to get old paint off of a bike (my favorite low-cost methods: wet/dry sandpaper and wire wheel brushes on a drill - an angle grinder is supposed to work better but I wasn't about to spend money on a new power tool).

333. marbles...one by one

2009-05-18T22:10:00.002-07:00

Yeah, I haven't been writing again.

I mentioned a few posts ago that I got a temp job.

That's been keeping me busy.

On top of that I have a friend in town from Hawaii.

I've been trying to think of an analog for what I've been doing at my job and I think I've found one.

Imagine a big bucket of marbles.

What I do is, move these marbles, one by one, into another bucket. Once all the marbles are moved, I get another bucket and start moving those marbles (again, one by one) into a different bucket. A few days later I get the first bucket back - the bucket I moved the first set of marbles into - and they tell me to put those marbles (yeah, one by one) back into the first bucket.

My ten key is getting pretty good. If I can keep myself from getting carpal tunnel syndrome, it'll kind of be like getting paid to practice.

Anyway, I got lots to write about so stay tuned.

Thanks.

332. ISO "inspiration"

2009-05-02T21:20:00.004-07:00

So I don't know if you've heard, but Google is giving people a way to have some control over what shows up when people Google themselves.

Actually, I have no idea what this new Google feature is about but I signed up for it because I found out through a Lifehacker post that if you signed up for Google's new profile feature, Google would send you 25 free business cards (and that includes free shipping!).

I'm a sucker for free, especially when it's something as geeky as this.

Well, free isn't entirely free. In order to qualify for the free cards Google has a quota of information that you have to put in before they'll consider you worthy of free cards. One of the bits of information they ask you provide is your "superpower:" Some of the examples they give are, "flying, teleportation, eating chips and salsa." And that's just the sort of question that I can't just leave alone. I have to try and come up with something uniquely me. And so I came up with this:

My superpower:
I write really cool short stories when I'm in love. Singleness is kryptonite to my storywriting abilities...which is why I haven't written anything new in years.

Which I think is funny and me.

It's also true.

Last time I was on a story-writing kick was when I was infatuated with and chasing after a girl. Some of the details that served as seed material for some of my favorite stories (like this one) were based off of things I knew about her. And when it became clear that she didn't feel the same, the stories started to turn as well (as in this one). (And if you want to know how it "ends" - the story, not the relationship - you can read this one.)

Anyway, all that to say...

that I'm longing to write again...

...I just need some inspiration.

331. new updates

2009-04-29T21:49:00.001-07:00

So I (finally) started working a temp job today. I use the word "finally" because I've actually been on file at temp companies since January. At first it was just one then another and another until finally on Mondays I found myself calling five different temp companies telling them all that I was still available and looking for work.

I got a call on Tuesday from one of the companies telling me that they had something starting on Wednesday and would I be interested? I said yes.

It's basically a data entry job for a company that hasn't quite worked out the bugs in their software so information that's eventually going to be automated has to be put in my hand. It's tedious, boring work but honestly, I kind of like it. I certainly don't love it, but I don't mind it. The pay is nice (but not a lot) and it's nice to be out of the house again on a regular basis.

One thing I've learned from being at home so much is how to make my own food. I mean, I did cook for myself every now and then but it was usually really easy to make stuff like Spam and Vienna Sausage and rice and rahmen. Actually, those are still regular parts of my diet but one thing I'm getting better at is making eggs. I know two ways - scrambled and over easy. I'm still working on the over easy method (fresh eggs really help) but thanks to Alton Brown's show on eggs (on You Tube), I've had some of the best scrambled eggs ever. This has less to do with my cooking skills and more to do with the fact that I like my scrambled eggs runny and when I make it myself, I can make them my way.

All that talk about food may seem to have nothing to do with my temp job but truth is, all that cooking has gotten me geared up to make my own lunch and take it to work. I used to try and take lunch to work (back when I was working) but it was inconsistent at best. And a lot of times, it wasn't really lunch. It was a ghetto smoothie (bananas, yogurt, and apple juice). My lunch today wasn't anything spectacular (sandwiches, granola bar, and an apple) but it wasn't an option. That is to say, making and taking my own lunch was something I did without having to think about it and it's only because of all the cooking I've been doing at home.

Something else I've been meaning to update you on is my MacBook. A few weeks ago I wrote about how my church was going to pay for half of what it would cost for me to replace my stolen MacBook. Turns out they actually up and paid for all of it!

I love my church. I mean even before they did this for me I loved my church and I would still have loved my church if they hadn't help pay for an part of a new MacBook.

I really do need to write a post about Quest Church sometime soon.

Let's see...any other updates?

I cut my hair the other day in preparation for my temp job...

Um, no, I think that's about it.

I'm just counting down the days until I can start school.

And speaking of school, please pray for my friend Matt. He's on a waiting list for getting into architecture grad school and the deadline is coming up. He's done a ton of work to try and get in and he's great and really deserves to get in. Please pray for him when you get the chance.

Thanks.

330. extraterrestrials and the Body of Christ

2009-04-21T21:52:00.006-07:00

A few weeks ago on MSNBC's show, Hardball, there was a discussion between atheist Christopher Hitchens (who wrote God is Not Great) and senior fellow at the Family Research Council (a conservative, christian organization), Ken Blackwell. The discussion was about whether America is having a crisis of faith - a Newsweek poll shows that 68 percent of those surveyed believe that religion is losing its influence in America.

At one point, the host asked why it is that religion (particularly Christianity) is losing its hold on growing swaths of the American landscape. Blackwell said that faith in America has always gone up and down. Hitchens suggested that people's skepticism towards faith may have to do with the fact that one of the greatest threats to global peace and stability is terrorism which is itself driven by faith.

If I had to answer the question of why Christianity is losing its influence in America, I have a few ideas but the one I want to talk about here is this: The church really needs to make peace with science. In particular, the whole anti-evolution thing just needs to be dropped.

Crack open any book critiquing the theory of evolution (Google "intelligent design" for examples) and there's one word that you'll see over and over again and it's the word, "impossible." For example, they'll say that it's impossible for evolution to account for the flagellum of certain kinds of bacteria. Or they'll say that while microevolution happens all the time, it's impossible to find the sorts of transitional species required to prove the existence of macroevolution. Most commonly, they'll say that it's impossible for random mutation alone to account for the exquisite intricacy of even the most basic unicellular organism.

I won't go into countering those "impossibles" here because that's already been done in many books. One book in particular that I'll point out is The Language of God by Dr. Francis S. Collins - a christian biologist who headed up the Human Genome Project (when it comes to biological street cred, it doesn't get much better than that). If you want to see those "impossibles" I listed above dismantled, check out Dr. Collins' book.

In this post, I want to argue the more general point that christians need not fear the claims of science - that the church needs to make peace with the scientific world. Now I won't go so far as to say that we need to embrace all of science because just as there are questions and issues that the Bible isn't designed to take on (what's the atomic weight of helium?), there are questions and issues that science cannot tackle (what's my purpose in life?). What I am going to try to say is that religion and science cover two different aspects of the world and they both have a lot that they can learn from one another if they could just get along. I'm no scientist so I'm ill equipped to make the case that science needs to learn from religion, but as a christian, I do want to make a plea to the church to listen to and learn from our friends, the scientists.

Because I believe that there is much that God is trying to show us through them.

I suppose there are a lot of ways I could make the case for the church needing to accept the claims of evolution and other areas of science but I want to try a route that hasn't been tried before - at least I've never heard of anyone taking this tack.

I want to make my case by talking about...

Extraterrestrial life.

Now before you think I've gone all Coast to Coast AM and resign me to the lunatic fringe, conspiracy shelf, I'll have you know that a great many scientists across different fields believe that finding life outside of earth is just a matter of time.

Two reasons why I believe we'll find life outside of earth in the near future:

Turns out the universe is teeming with planets.

Planets orbiting around stars other than our own sun used to be just a theoretical possibility but today, with scientific tools specifically designed to detect them, planets and solar systems outside of our own are being found with increasing regularity.

According to the Drake equation, the greater the number of planets circling stars, the greater the possibility of there being life outside our own planet. And so as we continue to find planets, the chances of finding life goes up as well.
Used to be that scientists thought life outside of earth would be rare because twenty or thirty years ago, they thought that life was delicate and required a cushy environment in order to survive. For example, marine biologists used to think that the deep sea was a desolate, underwater dead zone, completely devoid of life because of the lack of light and the extremely high pressures. Then they started sending probes and cameras down and started finding hundreds of new species lurking in the deep. Similarly, scientists have found entire ecosystems living next to hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor - a highly acidic environment where temperatures can reach 750 degrees F. In fact, biologists have found so many creatures living in extreme environments that they've created a category for them called extremophiles.

The fact that life can be found in such extreme environments makes it all the more likely that life may exist in some of the extreme environments found in our very own solar system.

Just these two factors alone lead me to believe that it's very likely that we will find evidence of life in our own solar system in the very near future and by that I mean in the next few decades if not sooner.

My guess is that we'll find evidence of past life on Mars or one of Jupiter's moons and this life will likely be simple in nature. I suppose it's entirely possible that we will find complex multi-cellular life and/or creatures that are living, but that's almost too good to hope for.

And what will the church say when such life is found?

I'm sure some in the church will do their best to deny the findings as long as they can and as more and more evidence pours in, they'll finally they join in with the Flat Earth Society.

But what if, between now and the then when extraterrestrial life is found, the church were to make peace with science?

Because here's the thing. I'm having trouble finding links to back this up but I know that many of the first scientists were christians. For them, studying the world was a way to learn about God. Romans 1:20 tells us that "God's invisible qualities . . . have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made. . ." In other words, God has revealed himself not just in his Word, the Bible, but also in the universe he created. The first scientists saw this and figured that if they could better understand the world that he created, they might learn more about God.

Then somewhere along the way science and religion began to drift apart. And when Darwinian evolution entered the scene, things really went ape snatch. Some people in the church got it into their heads that scientists were conspiring to debunk the Bible and once their guard when up, all kinds of scientific claims became suspect. I've known christians who railed against quantum mechanics, claiming that the random, chaotic universe it describes is an affront to God who created an ordered, rational universe.

With all due respect to christians who fear science, the fact of the matter is that we have to live in the world that is, not the world that we think the Bible paints for us. Christians have nothing to fear from the theory of evolution because there's nothing in the theory that contradicts the creation account of the Bible. The important thing to realize about the first few chapters of Genesis is that it is NOT meant to be a step by step, blow by blow account of how God created life, the universe, and everything. The main point of those chapters is to show that it was God who did the creating - how he did it is nowhere near as important as the idea that he was the one doing it. At the same time, the Bible does describe God as being wise and in control of what's going on. That doesn't mean that randomness and strangeness at the quantum scale is any threat to God's sovereignty.

To take this idea even further, what if God is trying to teach us things about himself through the things we are learning about his creation? For example, what if through the ideas of evolution God's trying to show us that change isn't such a bad thing after all and that maybe we should be a bit more generous in our orthodoxy - allowing time and "natural selection" sort good theology from bad? Similarly, what if the chaotic nature at the quantum scale is God's way of showing us that even though christianity can get messy and strange on the personal scale, the body of Christ (his church) as a whole can remain solid and firm in the same way that quantum messiness is all but transparent to us.

If the church makes peace with science, it need not be embarrassed when evidence of life is found outside of earth. And mark my words, this will happen whether the church is ready for it or not. If the church sees science as a partner and an ally, it will be able to celebrate with the rest of the world at the discovery that our universe is thriving with life - glory be to God!

And okay, here's where I get really wacky - way outside the box and off the reservation. What if many, many years from now we make contact with intelligent, sentient beings - an entire civilization of them somewhere out there? Wanna know what I think might happen?

While I suppose it's possible that their religious ideas might line up neatly with ours (perhaps with their own visitation from Jesus) I think it's more likely that God (yes, the same God that we know, love, and worship) will have revealed himself to that civilization in a way uniquely suited to them just as he uniquely reveals himself to us here, today. And my speculation is that while elements of their idea of God will differ from ours, the main points will be the same - that God created everything, God loves us and is trying to help us (our unruly selves) to live and thrive in his creation - to right wrongs and to help the needy, the oppressed, and the marginalized.

Hopefully, by the time we get to this point in our own civilization, the various denominations of our own churches will have learned to get along and accept one another. Because if we're as divided and divisive amongst ourselves then as we are today, that's going to make for very thorny inter-galactic ecumenical communications.

In closing, I just want to suggest that maybe, just maybe, we should get some of our best theologians together to think and talk a bit about how our understanding of our place in the universe as informed by the Bible will change if/when evidence for life outside earth is found. I suggest this not just so that the church can be better prepared to respond to such a discovery, I also suggest this because by viewing theology in this broader context, we may find some clues as to how to be the Body of Christ here, today, now. But even without this extraterrestrial theology conference, the church as a whole really needs to make peace with science.

328. updates

2009-04-02T12:17:00.003-07:00

A friend (and blog reader) pointed out to me the fact that I sometimes forget to post updates on some of the things that have been going on in my life. And she's right. Lately I've been caught up in talking about my latest thoughts about christianity or about Bob and I've neglected talking about things like my job situation and my stolen laptop and my application to Mars Hill Graduate School and what's going on with my band.

Sorry about that.

And so, one by one:

My job

I lost my job back in October of last year. Back then I thought that I'd be back to work in a couple months at most. I thought this because for one thing, I'm a kick-ass worker with a work history and references to prove it and secondly, I was willing to do almost anything since I was planning on going back to school in the Fall. But here it is, April, and I'm still sending out resume after resume (six this week alone) and getting next to no call backs.

This is the longest I've been unemployed since college and to be honest, I'm going a bit loopy. It's getting harder and harder to not get discouraged - to not think that the lack of response from employers is a reflection of me and my abilities. But I'm trying and I'm continuing to plug away.

Financially, there are only three things keeping me afloat.

a. Unemployment Insurance helps a lot. But I only get a fraction of what I was making at my last job. If that was my only source of income I'd probably be out on the street by now.

b. Because of some restructuring at my church, I've been hired on as their Audio Visual Tech Lead which means I take care of scheduling the volunteers who run sound and PowerPoint during service and I fix things when they break. There are other elements involved with this position but that's the bulk of the week to week work. It's not a lot of hours and it's not a lot of pay but like UI, it really helps.

c. To be honest, the only thing really keeping me off the street is the support I've been getting from my parents. Without their help I'd be super screwed. And I have to admit that it's a bit embarrassing to be counting on my folks at my age...but I'm insanely grateful at the same time.

It's clearer to me than ever before how easy it is to end up homeless. Especially with the way things are financially right now.

It's not hard at all.
Stolen laptop

So this one is pretty cool.

My pastor felt bad about the way my laptop got stolen, especially since it was taken while I was trying to help get a Quest Global Presence meeting up and running. So he said that he was going to have the church pay for half of what it would cost for me to get a new MacBook!

Needless to say, I was stunned, floored, just blown away.

Apart from the immediate, concrete aspect of being able to be mobile again with my computing, there's a far deeper healing that I'm sensing. See, to be honest, I realize that I've come to see the church as a place that takes and takes from me. I mean, I know that they are there to support me if I ask, but asking doesn't come easy to me whereas giving does. And so the church takes what I give and waits for me to ask but I don't ask and so I don't get and while it may be unfair of me, I get to the point where I see the church as a place that takes without giving back.

Let me be clear here. I'm not talking about the church I go to now. Even before this generous offer to help me with my MacBook, I've always had the sense that my service was appreciated and there have always been people making sure that I wasn't taking on too much, guarding me against burnout. So when I talk about seeing the church as a place that takes without giving back, I mean some of the churches I had served at in the past. Not all of them, but some of them.

The fact that my pastor's offer to help me get another laptop came unsolicited really blows me away. I've said on numerous occasions that I love my church but, in a way that's hard to explain, this act has done some deep work of repair in me. It's got me realizing and rethinking some really bad ideas I have about church.
Mars Hill Graduate School

I got in!

I posted a status update on my Facebook page announcing my acceptance but for those who missed it or aren't on Facebook, yes, I've been accepted.

I'm super excited and I wish life had a fast forward button because I start late August but wish I didn't have to wait that long.

There are lots of reasons why I'm almost giddy with anticipation. For one thing, it'll be great to be in school while this financial tsunami blows through. But I'm far more stoked about the school itself.

It's a small school, probably under 300 students. It's probably best know for its president, Dan Allender. But I'd never heard of him until I started researching the school. I found out about the school through friends at church who were going there and one of the things that intrigued me from their stories about the place was how the study of theology is taken seriously but it is taken seriously so that it can be more effectively used in a people's lives to bring about healing. That is to say, studying theology isn't an end in and of itself. It's a means to develop a better counselor. And that's an important distinction.

We'll see if my excitement and expectations are warranted once I begin classes. But for now, I'm just glad that my life is finally headed towards something like a career, grad school being the first step towards that career.
My band

Not really sure what's going on on this front.

Earlier this year we started working with a producer named Brandon Bee. He's helping us write and produce a new song. I recorded my tracks back in January and I haven't heard anything from either of my bandmates about what's been happening since then. I know Brandon is a busy guy with his own band and he's touring to support an album he recently released. I'm basically going with the assumption that Brandon is out on tour and that the remaining tracks are being recorded on the days when he's back in town...which judging by the gig calendar on his MySpace Page, might not be for a while.

So that, in a nutshell is what's basically going on in my life - at least the things that are front and center on my mind.

There are lots of other things I'm hoping to write about soon so stay tuned.

As always, thanks for reading.

327. money, sex, power...and Bob

2009-03-24T23:05:00.003-07:00

I was asked an interesting question today. Actually, it wasn't really a question, it was a comment. More of an aside, really.

A friend and I were talking over lunch and somehow we got to the topic of that bit in the Gospels where Jesus was tempted by the devil (mentioned in Matthew and Luke). My friend said that there's no way he could have withstood those temptations, particularly the one where the Devil offers up the world to Jesus. He jokingly offered up a few things that the devil might have used on him - things he longs for but might never have - and said that if he were offered those things, he'd give in.

It was a funny moment at lunch but for me, there was a disturbing undercurrent to the conversation. Because as a way to continue the levity of the topic, I thought about offering up some things the devil might use on me that might get me to sell my own soul.

But I couldn't think of anything.

Not one thing.

And so I changed the subject.

Now before you think I'm trying to be all holy and cool by suggesting that I'm beyond temptation, that's not what I'm getting at at all. What I'm trying to say is that I couldn't think of anything that I wanted out of life - anything that I really desired, anything that the devil could dangle in front of me to entice me. And that worries me.

Sex? Nah, that comes with consequences and tons of emotional baggage.

Power? No way. With power comes responsibility and who wants that?

Money? Eh, that'd be nice but I'm a person of modest means. I don't like bling, I don't want to drive a fancy car, I don't want to wear fancy clothes (mostly because I have little fashion sense), I'm not even a huge fan of traveling and seeing the world (although I'd like to someday). I mean I am looking for a job so I can pay my bills and the rent but that would more or less be enough for me. If I could do that at a job that I didn't absolutely hate, I think there's not a whole lot more I'd want.

Money, sex, power - aren't those the things that entice most people? But, I don't know, I don't really want any of those things.

And I think that's a bit fucked up.

Because if I don't want anything then what am I doing here?

I suppose if pressed, I'd say that if I could be granted any personal wish in the world, I'd wish to write a book like Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz or Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies. That is to say, I'd like to write a book that brings Christianity back for people, making it real and vital and relevant once again. Because that's what those books did for me and that's something I'm truly grateful for.

And that makes me wonder as well.

What does it mean that some of the most important things in my life are books - those books in particular? Why isn't it the case that my friends or my family are most important to me? I mean, is it screwed up that a couple of books (inanimate objects) are what have made the most difference in my life?

I think this is another hint pointing me towards whatever awfulness Bob is about.

In my last post about Bob , I suggested that maybe Bob was that part of me that is still crying out for love - both to receive and to truly give love. And that's something that's bad enough, but what if it goes even deeper than that? What if I've lost all want and desire in my life?

Because if I'm not striving towards something that I want then what am I here for?

I wonder: If the devil has gotten me to the point where nothing he dangles in front of me allures anymore, what does that mean? Is that the coup de grace? Is his work done?

And then how do you get desire back once it's gone?

Maybe I should just go with the writing idea since it's all I have. Which is why I suppose I'm writing this post, which is why I write at all.

Truth be told, I do enjoy writing.

And I'm beginning to get the writing bug back again.

And that's a start.

326. the atheist bus - orthodoxy vs orthopraxy

2009-03-24T23:02:00.000-07:00

I learned from a post on my pastor's blog that a version of the Atheist Bus is going to be making a showing in Seattle and in the comments section of his post there are a bunch of responses (most of them positive last time I checked) to the idea.

In writing about all the money that went into the campaign (and the likely additional money that some church will put up to counter the atheist ads), my pastor jokingly suggest we start a third campaign spearheaded by the website:

http://Can’tWeFindBetterThingsToInvestOurMoneyInLike-HomelessPovertyWaterEducationMalariaEtc.com

A great point which gets at something I've been thinking a lot about lately.

What's more important - orthodoxy or orthopraxy? That is to say, is it more important to believe the right things or to do the right things?

Of course I think the answer is "both" but then what happens if a person only gets one right?

I mean which is "better" or "worse:"

- the athiest who (by the standards of Christianity isn't in line with orthodoxy) works hard to combat global poverty and injustice (and therby practices a kind of orthopraxy)?

OR

- the Christian who believes all the right (orthodox) things but fails to invest in anything outside his own church and his 401k (orthopraxy fail)?

Because behind my pastor's faux-website is the idea that maybe the debate between theism and atheism is a luxury we can't afford right now. There are far more concrete problems in the world that need our attention, our money, our intellect, and our creativity.

And I agree with that wholeheartedly. Which is why I struggle with the orthodoxy/orthopraxy thing.

Again, the ideal is clearly to have both but we can't always have both and so I guess the thing that I struggle with is this:

If doing the right thing is more important than believing the right thing then why "waste time" trying to convert atheists or other non-christians who are doing good work around the world?

Honestly, I'm not sure.

I do have an idea, though I'm not sure how strong it is and I'm even less sure that it's possible to implement.

But it's all I have and so I'll share.

I think orthodoxy is more important BUT I think we need to work on the orthos (right, true, straight) part of the word a lot harder. Because if we truly had right belief then right action (including working for local/global justice) would inevitably follow. That the question, "what's more important, orthodoxy or orthopraxy" even needs to be asked suggests that we're not getting the orthodoxy part right.

In my own personal utopia, here's how things would work.

It starts with this premise. The plan of rescue and redemption, as laid out in the narrative of the Bible and lived out through the life of Christ, is the ideal way to bring about the restoration of the world.

If you don't buy into that premise then everything else falls apart but if you do, then keep reading.

I think it's vitally important to see the primary work of God's revelation in the Bible as one that is about bring healing to a fallen world. Salvation and evangelism is a part of that work, but only a part, not the whole.

With that in mind, here's a kind of grossly oversimplified idea of how I think things should look.

Everyone (christians, non-christans, people of all faiths or non-faiths) who can should work at doing what they can to fight problems like poverty, human trafficking, AIDS, clean water, etc.

Now some groups will be more successful than others and I believe that christians who operate out of an examined, holistic orthodoxy (which includes orthopraxy), informed by the Bible, will be the most successful in the long run. They will be more successful because God's plan is the best one since he's the one that got everything started in the first place. Because of the successes of christians, other groups will sign on to be a part of the Body of Christ (little to no evangelism necessary) and everyone lives happily ever after.

And I realize that's an extremely arrogant scenario to lay out, but if my premise is correct then isn't something like what I lay out a possibility?

And maybe the thorniest part of my idea is the bit where I say that evangelism is only a part of what we as christians are to be about because that's not how things appear in the Bible. In the New Testament, in particular, there are tons of references to preaching the Gospel and people joining The Way.

But here's what I think.

I think the first century church looked a lot like that little scenario I laid out above. When those first new christians believed in the Gospel, they were signing on to a movement to redeem the world - to bring food to the hungry, shelter to the homeless, justice to the oppressed. They became christians to be a part of the radical idea that maybe revolution is possible not at the end of a spear but by turning the other cheek, by going the extra mile, by giving up your life in order to save it. And they joined because they saw that the christians' way of doing things was actually working.

So when the NT talks about the apostles preaching the Gospel, what they were preaching was not just accepting Christ, they were talking about accepting the whole of what Christ was about and that included accepting his call and challenge to redeem this fallen world.

And so yes, the NT does talk about evangelism, but where a lot of evangelism falls short today is where it only speaks of believing in Christ - it fails to go on to say that accepting Christ means carrying on his call of redemption and reconciliation. Anything less is missing the point.

I don't know.

This post has veered a log way's off from where it started. I've laid out some pretty bold claims and I've painted them out in broad strokes, failing to build them up in any systematic way.

But it works for me.

Welcome to my world.

Now if only my own version of orthodoxy would lead to more of my own orthopraxy.

325. thoughts on Hawaii

2009-03-21T09:59:00.002-07:00

I've been living in Seattle now for about two and a half years. I've been back to Hawaii to visit three times now.

As time goes by, I'm beginning to realize what a strange place Hawaii is.

Of course it could be the case that it's the mainland that's odd and Hawaii that's normal. Then again, maybe in America there's no such thing as normal. Every place has its quirks and charms, its beautiful spaces and its sharp edges.

Some of the things I've learned about Hawaii (and Seattle):

In Hawaii, there are almost no cool bars to just hang out in. Most of the bars in Hawaii have karaoke blaring away in some corner. And a lot of the bars look the same - sparse, white walls with beer and sports posters on them, generic tables, generic chairs, generic selection of drinks. In contrast, Seattle has a ton of really interesting bars - each with their own unique vibe or theme. And while they all play music in the background, at least it's not drunken wanabe singers or (even worse) crappy assed Jawaiian music.
However, Hawaii bars do have some of the most unique pu pu selections. I remember going to an Irish pub in downtown Hawaii where they served sashimi. Is there another Irish bar anywhere else in the world with raw fish on their menu?
Hawaii has very poor urban planning. On this last trip, there were a bunch of people from Seattle who were also in Hawaii (we were there to see a friend get married). One of these friends is an architect and she was the one who pointed out how it seems as if little to no thought went into zoning. And I didn't notice it until she pointed it out but she's right. Everything in town seems to just be strewn about haphazardly and the highway system is woefully inadequate to get the urban sprawlers back to their workplaces downtown.
A lot of places also leave much to be desired when it comes to interior design. One of the worst examples of this can be seen at the popular restaurant chain, Zippy's. The restaurant side of their Vineyard branch is particularly gaudy and ill conceived. I mean, I love their food but they really need to fire the person or the firm that designs their branches.
It's really hard to find people riding nice bicycles in Hawaii. There are lots of low-end hybrids and mountain bikes but very few nice road bikes. I remember when I first moved to Seattle I was blown away by the quality and variety of bikes I saw just tooling around town. And I don't just mean the big brands like Trek or Specialized or Bianchi. It's not uncommon to see people commuting on bikes like Kona, Surley, and LeMond. On top of that, every once in a while I see some really top end bikes on the road like Seven Cycles, Cervelo, and Davidson (my someday-dream-bike, made in Seattle). I also like that I can walk into a grocery store in Seattle with my bicycle helmet on and not get strange looks from the customers or the people behind the checkout stands. Doing so in Hawaii might get me one false crack.
I suppose the lack of nice bikes in Hawaii is no surprise considering what a bike-unfriendly place it is. There are very few bike lanes and drivers, in general, hate bicyclists (or at least they drive that way). I didn't realize this until moving to Seattle where almost all drivers give me a wide berth when they pass. On top of this, Seattle has lots of bicycle lanes, sharrows, and even bicycle paths - little roads specifically for bikes!
The famous Ala Moana Shopping Center is unique in that it is the largest open air shopping mall in the world. In addition, whereas most malls cater to a specific economic demographic, Ala Moana has everything from local grocery store chain, Foodland to nose-bleed priced haute couture shops like Betsey Johnson, Dior, DKNY, and Chanel. Show me another mall where you can buy a can of Spam and a Tiffany brooch without leaving the property. It also has the distinction of being named "one of Earth's four great mall fortresses" in Douglas Coupland's book, Shampoo Planet.

I don't mean to be all down on Hawaii. There are lots of amazing, great things about the place. It's just that...well, when I lived there, I was a townie - which, in Hawaii, means that I was someone who preferred to hang out in the city rather than go to the beach. And the city of Seattle is just so much cooler than the city of Honolulu. And so when I go back to Hawaii, all the places I liked to go (places I thought were hip and cool and with it) aren't as cool anymore.

Lots of my other friends are water people. They need to be near water, more specifically, the ocean. Lots of them couldn't imagine living anywhere but Hawaii. But water isn't as high a priority for me.

And then there's the race thing.

I've written before about how lucky I am to have grown up Asian-American in Hawaii, and the longer I'm up here, the more this sinks in. Not only am I fortunate to have grown up in a place where I didn't always feel different, where I wasn't teased for my appearance or my last name, where I never had to worry that my race might be making it harder for me to achieve certain goals. I was also fortunate in the sense that because I didn't have to grow up with those sorts of racist barriers and experiences, it's easier for me to not get worked up when racism comes my way. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there are times when I don't even notice subtle forms of racism in situations that Asian-Americans who grew up in the mainland would readily recognize as such.

I remember reading a friend's blog post where she wrote about a time where she was running in the park. She ran past a white woman who asked her, "where are you from?" My friend is Korean-American and grew up in the mainland and she immediately saw this question as a product of racist ignorance. She responded with a curt, "from America," and let her stink eye say the rest.

If it had been me in that situation, I probably would have just said, "Hawaii," and been on my merry way, never considering the racist undertones of the question.

Now an important point needs to be made here.

There may be some who will look at that and say, "why can't more people just be like Randall?" To which I would say that if anything, my response is the more damaging of the two because it doesn't take into account or confront what's really being asked.

The white woman, let's call her Flo, would never ask another white runner that question. The only reason Flo asked my friend where she was from was because she assumed that because she wasn't white, she must be from somewhere foreign and exotic. By answering with the snarky, "from America," she forced Flo to confront her own assumptions about who people are and maybe that will help her think twice before asking the same of another minority.

My lame response would have just perpetuated her stereotype allowing her to continue thinking, "all non-white people are from fascinating, far away lands and gosh, isn't it amazing that America opens her borders to everyone? Americans are awesome."

On the other hand, I hope that my mainland minority friends don't come down too hard on me for not confronting Flo on her question. Because I didn't grow up with regular experiences of racism, I'm just not as sensitized to it as mainland Asian-Americans are. When I hear Flo asking me, "where are you from?" I honestly just hear the question (and not the subtext) because I'm hearing it the way I would if the question had been asked of me in Hawaii. That is to say, I'd hear it as a mere question of geography, not as one of race.

I don't know, maybe after I've lived here for a few years I'll experience more racism and become sensitized to it as well. I don't know.

I'm really digging my time in Seattle.

I don't know if I'll spend the rest of my life here but I can say that I don't miss Hawaii as much as I thought I would.

And to be honest, I feel more "at home" when I arrive back in Seattle than when I land for a visit to Hawaii.

I suppose "home" really is where the heart is.

But I'm not sure my heart is anymore.

But that will have to wait for another post.

324. karma police

2009-03-10T16:02:00.002-07:00

"Karma police, I've given all I can, it's not enough."

I don't believe in karma.

I don't believe that what goes around comes around, at least not in this present lifetime.

Here's what I do believe. We all need to do the best we can with what we have, knowing, all the while, that it may never be appreciated, may never come back to us, may never offer us safety from "the whips and scorns of time."

But more on this later.

First, the reason I'm waxing philosophical: my beloved MacBook got stolen yesterday, basically right out from under my nose.

Here's how it went down.

I was hanging out at Q Cafe working on entries for a new blog I want to start (more on this when it gets off the ground). I'm typing away at my laptop when a friend asks me for some help with her computer. She's setting up for a presentation in a room just down the hall from the public cafe area. I think this won't take long and so I go and help. I'm probably away from my computer for ten, fifteen minutes max but when I get back to my table it's gone. I stand there looking at the empty desktop and try to puzzle through the mystery of why my laptop isn't there anymore.

Because the first stage of anything out of the ordinary is denial, I refrain from jumping to the obvious conclusion that it's stolen. Instead, I look in my bag, I go back to the room where I helped out my friend, I retrace all my steps and think through all the different things that I could have done with my laptop before it went missing.

And then I faced the ugly truth.

It was gone.

Once I realized that, I moved on to other thoughts and feelings. I thought maybe God was punishing me for not using the bulk of my unemployed free time to catch up on my writing. I became angry that my laptop was stolen while I was doing something to help a friend.

I quickly reasoned away the idea that God was punishing me. I don't think that's how God works and besides, my laptop was stolen in the midst of a writing session.

That second bit though, I have to admit that this theft brought back some old, latent feelings.

I was reminded of an entry (caution, potty mouth) I wrote back in '05 where I ranted about how frustrated I felt when I found that someone had stolen the brake pads off of my bicycle while I was at work. Back then, it wasn't really the brake pads that pissed me off - they were just the last in a string of frustrations I was having to endure at the time. The thing I was really writing about was the realization that doing and good and being good didn't mean that good would come back to you. And that was a pretty startling, sober conclusion to come to.

It was frustrations and revelations like that that led me to re-think my understanding of Christianity. A lot of the churches I attended and sermons I heard back then gave me the idea that God rewarded and protected those who were good. There was supposed to be a kind of one to one relationship between what you did and what was done to you. If you tithed, you'd never be poor. If you practiced abstinence, you'd marry a supermodel and have a rockin' marriage (and sex life). If you extended love and good deeds to others, love and blessings would come back "pressed down, shaken together and running over. . ." (Luke 6:38).

But of course life doesn't work that way. I tithed and was always struggling with money. I abstained but remained hopelessly single. I did my best to do good to others and then got my brake pads stolen. And that's why I was so angry in that blog entry. It's no fun learning that the theology that governed your behavior for so long was wrong.

Then again, the good thing about learning that you're wrong about something is that you can start to get it right. And that's what I did.

A few months after the angry rant, I put up this post where I came to this conclusion:

I realized that I could be kind and generous DESPITE the fact that it was a bad investment, despite the fact that it offered no yield. I could be kind and generous knowing full well that it would likely never come back to me, that it offered no guarantee of good friends, good jobs, good wife, not even a good reputation. I could be kind and generous as an act of sheer rebellion, as a subversive act of open aggression against a greedy, needy world. I could be the leader of a rebel force of one. I could strike out with guerilla attacks of random kindness. I sow the seeds of a revolution that seeks to overturn a world stuck in the trap of consumerism - where everything is seen as a transaction with one party profiting and another suffering a loss, where even free car washes are not really free car washes, where we are defined by what we own rather than what we give a way.

Yes, it's futile. Yes, I'm just one little man and my revolution of kindness will go unnoticed, ignored, perhaps even exploited by those who will take advantage of my cause. I acknowledge all those things, but I don't care. If I am just one tiny flame of light in a dark world, so be it. If I can allow the Kingdom of God to trickle into this fallen world through my life, I think that's as noble a cause as any.

It's mad, but it's beautiful. I just hope I'm up to the task.

Which brings me back to the thoughts at the top of this entry.

I don't believe in karma.

I don't believe that what goes around comes around, at least not in this present lifetime.

The person who stole my MacBook? He's probably done it before and he'll very likely do it again. He may never get caught.

Then again...

His life probably sucks. I mean, how bad must it be to go from place to place trying to take things, always being worried about being caught. What's it like to be living a life where you're always looking behind you? Maybe he's stuck in a cycle of addiction and needs to steal in order to soothe his angry fix. Maybe he lives for the high of the successful pull. Either way, there's no way I'd ever trade my life for his.

Me? I have friends who feel bad for me, who are offering to help in whatever way they can. And I suppose that's a whole lot better than being on the take and on the run.

And I have options. I've been trying to sell some things I don't use anymore on ebay and craigslist. If I get anywhere near asking price on a couple big ticket items (like my Felt racing bike that I'm finally admitting is too big for me), I'll have enough to get a new MacBook. Of course I was hoping to use that money to pay down some credit card debt in preparation for going back to school, but I should be thankful that I even have this option. A lot of people would just be SOL.

I'm fortunate in other ways as well.

I backed up that laptop about a month ago so I didn't lose all my data, and that's a HUGE plus.

And I'm glad that I'm put together in such a way that I understand that the laptop was just a thing and that I just don't have that thing anymore. I'm not all twisted up in a pretzel of anger or grief or jealousy. I'm not wallowing in self-pity.

You know, maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe things do come around - just not the same things. I probably never get my stolen MacBook back but I've got friends who are there for me. And maybe that guy has my laptop but I'm guessing he doesn't know what it's like to have friends who send consolation and support via Facebook comments and text messages.

All in all I suppose I'm actually a really lucky guy.

And maybe that's because of good karma.

323. for the late (far too early), great Rocky Green

2009-02-27T12:44:00.002-08:00

I learned last night that a good friend of mine succumbed to brain cancer recently. I met him back in Hawaii and he played a huge role in the way that I've remade my understanding of the Gospel and what it is to be a Christian.

His name is Rocky Green.

In addition to being a great friend and Christian, he was also a brilliant guitarist and songwriter. And I don't mean that in the "he played guitar every once in a while and was pretty good" kind of way. I mean he was a bad ass gee-tar slinger who, though he possessed chops for days, always played with restraint. He always put making great music ahead of showing off his licks.

Here are the lyrics to one of my favorite songs of his (sorry, I don't know the title).
Try clicking here to download a copy.

How can I show them what is good
How can I show them what is real
How can I teach them about love
How can I show them how I feel

I'll write it in the sky at night
I'll encode it in the sunset light
I'll carve it in the canyon side
So they can find it
Hiding in plain sight

I'll make creation resonate
From its head to its toes
I'll write a powerful song
I'll make it start off nice and slow

I'll write it in the sky at night
I'll encode it in the sunset light
I'll carve it in the canyon side
So they can find it
Hiding in plain sight

All of the universe will show them
That I designed them to be free
I will create them man and woman
And in their hearts I'll place eternity

And in their hearts I'll place eternity

You know, it struck me just now as I was writing out those lyrics. I always knew the song was about God's love for us but I just realized that it's also very much about how Rocky saw God. He saw God as someone who loves us so much that he spares no expense in displaying it across the universe. Rocky didn't just marvel at how much God loved him, he marveled at how much God loves us all.

And that last line, "and in their hearts I'll place eternity." Taken from Ecclesiastes 3:11, it really is a striking statement. And I never made the connection between our awareness of eternity and God putting it there as a way to know his love. But then again, perhaps it's only with eternity in our hearts that we can ever know "how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ," (Ephesians 3:18).

Anyway, I'll leave this post with a kind of reprint of a story that I wrote for him years ago.

It's called The Secret Chord.

Once upon a time, there was a man who played guitar with all his heart and all that was within his soul. Word of his singular talent spread far and wide such that whenever he'd play a show, he'd draw a crowd the size of a small city. And they would listen, rapt in awe. Women would swoon and men would cry and call their mothers between sets to apologize for stealing quarters from their purses when they were young.

But one day while writing a new song he went in search of a chord that would not come. Interval upon interval, he tried them all but none would satisfy, none were right.

Tours were canceled. Fans went wondering and rumors sprung up like weeds. His critics said he was done, washed up, expired.

And then one morning upon waking, he found it - the secret chord. The one jazz artists strive to find night after smoky night in empty bars. The one composers try to find at the bottom of flasks of bourbon. The one rock stars try to find between lines of cocaine.

It was a chord like no other. Bird, Bach, and Hendrix would have, all of them, traded their left hand for those notes. But it was Rocky Green who fished it out of the collective unconscious.

He took this chord to California, back to his love who was waiting for him there. And though she could not fully understand the weight of his discovery, she knew - deep down inside, where wisdom is born - that the chord was her's and that he had searched far and wide for the sound of it.

And she held him in her arms all night long as he played her song.

The end.

322. tell me about love (part 3)

2009-02-18T23:20:00.002-08:00

[PREFACE]

(Part 1 here. Part 2 here.)

This has been one of the hardest posts to write in a really long time.

According to the journaling software I use to write my posts, I started it way back in January 19th. That's almost a month ago.

It was a hard post for many reasons, but mostly because I think I'm being even more open and vulnerable than I usually am. On top of that, I'm not even sure about what I'm writing about and so being vulnerable about something I'm not sure about doesn't make for easy writing.

But I'm glad I got it out and I'm glad I'm putting it up.

This has been a tough nut to crack but now that it's done, I'm hoping to finally get back to posting at least one post per week.

Anyway, this is all just my (lame) excuse as to why it's taken me so long to put anything up.

[END PREFACE]

So I've written before about how since the start of 2006, I've been content as a single person.

That was an interesting time in life for me. Prior to 2006, my one aim in life was to try and find someone to love. More specifically, someone to love who would love me back (an important distinction). I used to complain endlessly about being single to the point that my friends would politely suggest that I shut the hell up and just date someone already.

And then 2006 rolled around and all that longing went away all by itself. I mean there wasn't any sort of grand epiphany that I had or any major life lesson that got me to change the way I felt about finding a girlfriend. Those longing feelings went away so cleanly that I didn't even notice that they had gone until a few months had passed. I was just driving around one day and somehow noticed that I wasn't pining for a relationship anymore.

In the months following my realization, there were two things going through my mind. First, I was wondering how long this contentment would last - I thought that I was somehow experiencing some sort of temporary reprieve from desperation and that one day the really bad, really lonely feelings would be back. Second, I wondered if there was any price to pay for this contentment. That is, I wondered if, in losing the longing that had plagued me for so long, I had lost something else at the same time.

Well two years have passed and I can say that I'm still very content with being single so I'm no longer worrying about that first bit. But the second bit? I think I'm beginning to realize that there was indeed a kind of price that I paid for this newfound contentment. And I'm beginning to think that the price may have been far higher than I ever thought it would be.

A little over a month ago I wrote about something that was eating away at me, something deep and hidden and ugly. I didn't know what this something was so I decided to call it "Bob." Anyway, I'm beginning to think that, in some way that is still unclear to me, Bob is a part of what it cost for me to have contentment as a single person.

And I realize I'm being obscure and vague, but it's because the connection isn't entirely clear to me either.

Let me see if I can write my way out of this.

There were lots of different reasons why I longed for a relationship prior to the liberation of 2006. Among them were these: I've always found women fascinating - the way they thought differently about the world, their soft skin, all the different ways they knew to do their hair, etc. I also longed for relationship because I wanted to know what it felt like to be loved by a woman. I wanted to be there for someone - someone who would be there for me as well. And of course I wanted to learn what I once called, "the warm, buttery language of touch."

I had all kinds of different reasons why I wanted to be in a relationship, but I think the main one was always - to learn about how to love and how to be loved. I remember at one point, I got close to having a girlfriend. It's a pretty long, pretty gory story (if you must know, see post 174) but suffice it to say that before it went bad, it was really good and I still (vaguely) remember how wondrously, vitally alive I felt during that time. And a big reason why I was looking for a relationship back then was to get that giddy, amazing feeling back - that feeling of loving and being loved.

And this is where I think I've paid a huge price for my contentment with being single.

See, it's taken me a long time to realize this but...and this is really hard for me to admit and write here...I wonder if I've lost my desire for and ability to love. And I don't just mean love in the context of romantic relationships. I mean love in all contexts. This is very difficult to write because it's embarrassing to admit and hard to face but I think I need to go there if I'm to get through. And I know that sounds like hyperbole, like I'm being overly dramatic for the sake of making my blog worth reading but in this case, I mean it just as I'm writing it. I don't think I give or receive love very well, if at all.

Actually, this isn't the first time I've thought and written about this. Back in post 284 I wrote the following, "What if I have no idea what love is? Because . . . I don't think I know what love is."

Maybe I've lost my ability/desire to love. And maybe that's because I don't know what love is.

I don't know.

But here's what I think.

I think that Bob is the part of me that still wants to love and be loved.

Because love is at the core of what it is to be human isn't it? But even if it isn't, then love is certainly at the core of what it is to be a christian.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

1 John 4:7-12

See, I wonder if after all those years of being an unhappy single person longing for love, I wonder if some subconscious part of me got tired of being lonely and frustrated and so it just kind of amputated that part of me - lopped it off and buried it away somewhere. And maybe it thought that was that. And I didn't think all that much about it because I was more than happy to be rid of all that old longing.

But maybe it wasn't just the romantic love part of me that got put away. Maybe love can't be so neatly dissected. Maybe all (or most) of my ability to know/give/receive love got buried as well.

But love is important, integral even. And if love is a large part of what it is to be whole, then despite the fact that I'm enjoying being single (being free of that old longing for a romantic relationship), something is very wrong in my life.

And that's what I think Bob is about. Bob may be that submerged longing for and need for love working its way back up to the surface. And love is patient, love is kind and perhaps that's why Bob only breaks through in moments of stillness and quiet and vulnerability.

So what now?

I don't know.

But something needs to change because I think this not knowing how to accept, not knowing how to give, not knowing how to ask for love is affecting me in more ways than I'm aware of.

Because (and this is also very hard to admit) there are times when I wonder about God's love for me. I mean, I know in theory that he loves me but I don't know how to experience, how to sense, how to feel that love. And turing that around, I'm not sure how to love God.

Maybe it's the perfect time for me to be attending Mars Hill Graduate School (I just realized that I haven't blogged about this yet...stay tuned, I will). Maybe working towards a Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology will help me work through these issues of love.

I don't know.

And so tell me about love. Is anything I'm saying making any kind of sense? Am I suffering from mountain-out-of-molehill-itis? Am I still missing the point about Bob?

I don't know.

321. 25 things about me

2009-01-26T10:31:00.001-08:00

So I got tagged on Facebook and while I usually don't respond to survey things like this, I figured this would be a fun, easy way to get myself back into blogging. I like this one because instead of replying to a bunch of random questions like, "who was the last person you kissed?" all I have to do is list 25 random things about myself.

And so, 25 things about me.

My nose is really sore right now because I'm just getting over a cold.
Eating Spam reminds me of home (Hawaii).
I get my best reading done while sitting on the toilet.
The first secular rock concert I went to was Motley Crue.
I can't remember the first concert I ever went to because it was a forgettable Christian artist. I do remember that whoever it was didn't bring a band. They just sang to pre-recorded tracks. Basically glorified (no pun) karaoke.
I've never had a girlfriend.
I'm horrible with remembering names.
I snore like a banshee. I probably need to get tested for sleep apnea but that'll have to wait until I get better health insurance.
I don't mind drinking horrible coffee but I can't stand poorly pulled espresso drinks. I heart Vivace.
All of my knowledge and experience with running and recording sound can be traced back to the simple question, "what does that knob do?"
I once saw three movies in two different theaters in one day.
I obsessively check the bicycle listings on craigslist even though I don't have any money to buy anything right now.
I heard the Honolulu Symphony play Beethoven's 9th while seated in the front row.
I'm a little over half way through this list and I'm already having a hard time coming up with things to share.
I suck at chess but I like playing online. My Yahoo chess rating wavers between the high 1100s and the low 1200s which is basically at the bottom of the food chain.
I honed my typing skills on the old Hawaii chat room, Saimin.
I'm a procrastinator. I usually make my New Year's Resolutions around February.
I want to eat at White Castle before I die. Not because I think they're going to be all that tasty, it's because the Beastie Boys rap about them.
Twilight is my favorite time of day.
Spring is my favorite time of year.
I hate roller-coasters.
I want to learn to fly someday.
I don't like wearing sweaters. I bought a few when I first moved up to Seattle but gave them all away.
Raymond Carver is my favorite author.
I got a small fiction piece published in a literary journal associated with Donald Miller. The journal was called the Ankeny Briefcase and only came out with one issue.

320. not being lazy...

2008-12-28T21:17:00.001-08:00

Just wanted to let you know that the lack of posts isn't entirely because of laziness.

I'm actually trying to finish up two essays that I need to write in order to finish my application for Mars Hill Graduate School where I'm hoping to get into their Masters in Counseling Psychology program.

I have until January 15th to get my application in but I want to do it right and knowing my penchant for procrastinating, I've set a goal for myself to have both essays done by January 1st. That way I can do some actual proofreading, as opposed to the half-assed proofreading I do in my blogs. Speaking of my blogs, I've noticed that I've picked up a lot of bad habits because of my blogging.

For example, I don't know if you've noticed but I sometimes start sentences with conjunctions like "and" and "but." I don't think that's technically wrong, but I'm pretty sure that it's not going to look good in an entrance essay for grad school. I tend to play fast and loose when it comes to grammar in my blog and it's been harder than I thought it would be to go back to writing properly.

My bad.

And (see, I did it again!) so it's taking far longer than I thought it would to get my essays done.

And so, it might be another week or so before I get back to posting regularly again.

And I want to because I really want to continue my thoughts on the whole Bob thing.

Thanks for your patience and I'll see you next year!

319. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

2008-12-24T08:44:00.000-08:00

Here's to a safe, fun, and happy Christmas.

And yeah, that's right, I built that snowman!

318. found another one

2008-12-12T13:41:00.003-08:00

[preface]

A few months ago, I created a new tag for my blog called Christians (see entry 303). The basic idea is this: I’m becoming more and more convinced that the work of Christianity has as much to do with redeeming the world - building the Kingdom of God here and now - than it does with getting people to pray a salvation prayer or understanding a set of spiritual laws. And so when I find a link that illustrates the kind of work that christians should be doing, I’m going to post it up and label it as “christian” whether the person featured is a christian or not.

[end preface]

It's been a while since I've put one of these up but I'm convinced I've found another "christian" - someone doing the kind of thinking and work that christians and the church should be doing. This time, it's a farmer who produces the best foie gras in the world. And I know there's a lot of controversy surrounding foie gras because of the way it's produced (geese or ducks are force fed far more grain or corn than they would eat otherwise which causes their livers to swell and get extra fatty and it's that abnormally large liver that becomes foie gras) but the way this guy does it, there's nothing forced about it.

Back in Genesis when God told Adam to subdue the earth, I don't think God meant the kind of unsustainable corporate farming practices we use today. I think God meant for us to do something like what this guy Eduardo is doing - working with nature to create something amazing. And for that, I'm slapping the "christian" label on him.

Check it out, it's a fascinating talk.

317. let me introduce you to Bob

2008-12-09T14:09:00.003-08:00

Something strange happened last night.

My church held the first of a two-part seminar titled, "Space to Breathe: Worship and the Arts." It was one part experience (they made us do stuff) and one part discussion (they made us talk about stuff), both meant to help us explore what worship is or what it can be. Because worship is so much more than a (sappy) musical genre.

I went in not quite knowing what to expect, but excited at the same time because I have lots of questions about worship and I'm always excited about any way to get the arts back into the church. Having both in one seminar sounded almost too good to be true. And while I did learn some great things about worship and art, I also learned something far more profound and important about myself.

But I'll get to that further down.

Well the night began with a kind of improvised labyrinth. The chairs (we don't have pews) were arranged in such a way that they created paths that led us to three stations, each of which had a kind of spiritual focus. There was a tidy little handout that led participants through the labyrinth with one page guides that provided hints and suggestions as to what to do at each station. I forgot to bring my handout home with me so I may get this wrong but I believe the three stations were rest, reflect, and respond.

The first station, rest, was the simplest. It was just a little corner of the sanctuary where we were asked to sit and wait and acclimate ourselves to the spiritual nature of what we were embarking on.

And thats when the strangeness began.

I think I knew I was in trouble the moment the darkness and the quiet began to envelop me.

It wasn't a voice, it wasn't the awareness of the nearness of the Holy Spirit, it wasn't anything that felt at all spiritual. That is to say, it wasn't something outside of me that I felt. Rather, it was something really deep down inside of myself that was making itself known. And when I say "deep down inside," I don't mean physically because I'm only 5'5" so there's not a lot of deep to go down into. I mean deep down in my spirit/psyche/soul - whatever it is that makes me me and not just a sack of proteins and enzymes.

Now I don't mean to break the narrative, but it's going to be difficult to continue writing this if this "something" that I'm referring to isn't named. And so I'm going to call it Bob. And if you're wondering why I'm doing this, try reading the rest of this post substituting the words "this something" every time you see the word "Bob," and you'll understand.

Bob was down there wanting to push through to the surface and make himself known. I knew this was happening because for some reason, Bob was trying to go through my tear ducts. And maybe that makes sense because if the eyes are windows into a person's soul then if something from within that soul is trying to make its way back out, well why not through the window?

And I didn't fight it. I knew this labyrinth thing was a spiritual exercise and I wanted to experience whatever it was that was there for me to experience. I let myself shed a few small tears but somehow I knew that wasn't going to be enough for Bob.

I spent quite a bit of time at that first station. I knew part of the exercise was to rid ourselves of our need to rush from thing to thing. And I wanted to give Bob a chance to do or say what he wanted. After I felt as if I had given myself and Bob enough time, I moved on to the next station - the reflect station.

This station was set up at the front of the sanctuary. On stage were a bunch of candles - big ones, small ones, lots of those tiny tea light candles. It was quite an array. But I didn't get all that good of a look at them. At least not at first because Bob started using my tear glands as punching bags. And I let him wail away. I cried that kind of hearty, convulsive cry - the kind that babies cry because they have no other way of expressing what they don't know how to express. And I didn't know what I or Bob was trying to express either but it must have been important because it wasn't going to wait for words.

I told a friend once that unexplained crying episodes were kind of like taking a shit for the soul. Sometimes we stuff things down and do our best to keep it down but then we get all constipated and the soul can only hold so much in before it starts getting ill and so it gives us the teary version of diarrhea. All that nasty shit that we didn't want to deal with at the time, all that stuff we thought was over and behind us, it all comes spilling out through our eyeballs and our nostrils.

I covered my face and wept into my hands. I didn't want to make a spectacle of myself and disturb the other worshipers and so I wept in silence. And of course I wasn't expecting this so I didn't have any tissue on hand. Once I was done with my little crying fit I realized I had two handfuls of tears and snot. I suppose the normal course of action would be to get up, go to the bathroom and wash myself off but although I didn't understand what I had just been through, I knew enough that I wanted to stay where I was as gross as I was. I wiped a bit of my messy onto my pants and spent a lot of time just looking at the candles on stage.

I switched back and forth between just being there in the moment and trying to analyze what had just happened.

Normally after a crying fit, a kind of peace descends because, to return to my shit analogy, the bowels are empty and clean. But that's not how I felt. I still felt broken somehow. I knew that Bob wasn't done with me yet, not by a long shot. And so I waited and tried to analyze and when I realized that though there was still work to be done, that Bob was done for the night, I moved on to the next bit of the labyrinth.

I never really made it to the last station - the response station. I mean, I walked over there but saw that it was set up as a kind of makeshift painting studio - there were paints and brushes and heavy paper and the floor was covered with tarp. But I didn't feel like painting. I thought about just grabbing a brush and some paint and letting loose on the canvas but I'm no painter. If I had gone that route, most of my time would have been spent thinking and hemming and hawing and not putting anything down. And so I went to the bathroom, cleaned myself up and went back to looking at the candles.

After a while, I and everyone else made it over to yet another part of the sanctuary where we finished up the discussion part of the night. It began with talking about what we had experienced in the labyrinth. A few people shared their thoughts but I kept mine to myself - not because I didn't want to share but because I had no idea what Bob was trying to do or say to me.

And I still don't.

But I have a few ideas about what Bob might be trying to get at.

This has been a really strange year for me. Lots of ups and downs (to put things into perspective, losing my job was probably the least of my downs). I think part of what Bob is trying to relay to me is that I've spent far, far, far too much time trying to help and fix others and not nearly enough time on myself. Another thing I think Bob is trying to get me to deal with is my spiritual life. I need to work things out with God.

And maybe that last bit about me reconciling with God sounds a bit odd or surprising seeing as I've done a bunch of posts about church and Christianity. But that's theology which may be another way of saying theory. A friend of mine (and fellow Quest blogger) recently put up a post where he talked about how the academic study of theology is often far removed from the actual work that the Bible is telling us to do.

In a similar way, it's far easier for me to ponder my own thoughts about what's wrong with the church and Christianity than it is to deal with what's wrong with me and my own Christianity. Part of the way I've been able to get away with this has to do with one of the problems I see with contemporary Christianity. I think far too much of it is focused on individual spiritual development and not enough on the work to be done out in the world. I use that as an excuse to not deal with the junk in my own trunk. It's a classic case of speck versus plank. I busy myself with specks while ignoring the freaking giant sequoia growing out of my own eye.

Bob probably has a bunch of things he wants to work out with me and now that he's made himself known, I'm going to try and not ignore him as much. Because he's not going anywhere. And I probably can't deal with all of Bob here in my blog but I'll cover as much as I can. Because writing is the best way I've found for me to work through issues and because writing for an audience forces me to be real and cogent and it forces me to flesh out the backstory - the history that gave birth to the issue in the first place - and that helps me as well.

And so, I introduce you to Bob.

Bob says, "hi."

316. random bits

2008-12-02T21:32:00.003-08:00

I've been working on another post in the Layman's Theology series but it's still a work in progress. Give me a few more days on that one.

In the mean time, here are a couple of random bits about me:

I have this thing where I rarely finish books. I don't mean that I start reading a book and stop reading somewhere in the middle (although that happens as well), I mean I read the book almost all the way through but stop just a few pages from the end. This happens with both fiction and non-fiction works.

Thing is, if I've made it to the end of a book, I'm very invested in it and dread getting to the absolute end where the book will be behind me. I don't want it to end and so I just don't get to the end.

Of course this poses a problem with works of fiction because while in non-fiction works, you usually have a very good idea about what the last few pages or paragraphs are going to be about (some kind of summary or recap of the author's conclusions), the end of a story is unknown. To get around this, with works of fiction, once I get near the end of the book, I'll flip forward and read the last few pages just to see how it will end. Then I go back to where I was reading and then read forward but still stop before I get to the bit at the end that I've already read (because if I read that far then I'll have finished the book which is what I'm trying to avoid).

This is one reason I like reading short stories. Because they're shorter, I don't get as emotionally invested in the book and so have no problem finishing. For some reason, I don't have a problem reading the last short story of a short story collection.
I hate my feet so I wear socks almost all the time.

Living in Seattle, this isn't a problem because the cold weather necessitates socks and shoes almost year-round, and so even though I don't wear shoes in the house, it doesn't look odd if I have socks on indoors. In Hawaii, I got around this by wearing shoes whenever I went to friends' houses and only wore slippers (flip-flops) at home when friends weren't over.

Why do I hate my feet? Because I have ingrown toenails on my big toes - actually on most of my toes, but it's particularly bad on the big ones.

I don't think it's bad to the point of being repulsive, but they're far from being properly pedicured (I can't cut them to the proper length anymore) and so I keep them covered up.
I part my hair on different sides depending on what day it is.

I wake up in the morning, take a shower, and before I style my hair I check my computer or cell phone to see what the date is. If it's an odd-numbered day I part my hair on the left. If it's an even-numbered day, I part it on the right.
And speaking of bathroom habits, here's how I brush my teeth. I squeeze a bit of toothpaste onto my finger (about half an inch worth). I pop this bit into my mouth and mash it into my teeth using my tongue. As I'm doing this, saliva builds up and once things get wet enough I start swishing it between my teeth. After a few minutes of this, I spit out what's in my mouth and then start in with my toothbrush.

Two reasons I do this. One, while swishing the saliva/toothpaste in my mouth, my hands are free to do other things, like shaving or styling my hair. Two, I like to think that this is kind of a poor man's mouthwash - that it gets the toothpaste into those hard to reach places like back teeth and between teeth.

And lastly. . .
I once saw three movies in two different cineplexes in one day. But I can't remember which movies.

I have quirks galore, but who doesn't?

Feel free to share your odd habits in the comments section.

315. the body of Christ (part 2) - that crazy uncle

2008-11-20T16:30:00.005-08:00

(you can find part one of this series here)

One of the striking differences between the way the Jews related to one another in the Old Testament and the way followers of Christ related to one another has to do with (for lack of a better term) social structure. In the Old Testament, there was a clearly laid out chain of command for both religious and social settings. In the New Testament, followers of Jesus had a much more egalitarian, communal, flat social structure.

All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and posessions to give to anyone who had need.

Acts 2:44-45

That's not to say that there wasn't any kind of leadership in the first century Christian church. Early on the need to appoint people into organizational positions was dealt with (Acts 6:1-6). However, these positions were meant more to maintain order and fairness than to create structures of hierarchy and power. In my previous post about the church, I talked about one common metaphor the Bible uses in reference to those who follow the example and teachings of Christ - the body of Christ. Another common metaphor is that of a family.

Jesus constantly referred to God as father. Not just that, Jesus instructed his followers to refer to God as father as seen in the Lord's Prayer. On top of that, in Mark 14:36, Jesus uses the Aramaic word, "abba," when addressing God - a word that basically translates as, "daddy."

This is a radical shift from the Old Testament (and orthodox Jewish practice today) where writing or speaking the word for God is taken very seriously. There's a hilarious story told by Shalom Auslander on NPR's amazing, excellent show, This American Life. In his story, he is told by his rabbi that his name, Shalom, is one of the names of God (there are dozens of them) and that he must never write it again. According to orthodox Jewish teaching, any piece of paper with any of the names of God on it is considered sacred - it "must never be thrown away, it must never touch the ground, it must never be covered." Instead, he is instructed to henceforth write his name, Shalo', with an apostrophe in place of the final letter.

Shalo''s is a contemporary story set somewhere in the US. Can you imagine how much more seriously Jews in Israel in the time of Jesus took the name(s) of God? It's easy to understand why the religious leaders went nuts, started pulling their hair out when they heard Jesus refer to God as his father, his dad. And I don't think Jesus did that just to taunt the rabbis. He was modeling a new way of relating to God and to one another - a way that looked a lot less like a political power structure and more like a family.

One more item before I get to what I want to get at. Take a look at this bit from John 17:20-23:

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one - I in them and you in me - so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

Some say that this is the only recorded prayer of Jesus that has yet to be answered. Because if you look at the church at large today, I'd say it's pretty clear that we are not unified or one. And I wonder if many parts of the US (and the world) do not believe in Jesus because of our lack of unity.

Anyone who has been in the church for any length of time knows what this disunity looks like. Couple examples from my own experiences:

Before I started attending the house church I was a part of before moving to Seattle, I attended a couple different churches that belonged to the Foursquare denomination. Churches in Hawaii that were a part of Foursquare fell into two broad camps: the Hope Chapels and the New Hopes. Both camps were very successful - lots of people came (and continue to come) to know Christ through these churches. But the pastors who were at the head of these two camps had very different leadership styles.

In general, the Hope Chapel churches were very bottom-up. They believed in raising up leaders from within the church by helping them discover what their gifts were and helping them find ways to use those gifts in the church. The New Hopes were more top-down. They believed in recruiting top talent in various fields because they believed that the people of God deserved the best.

Both styles of Foursquare church had explosive growth in Hawaii - both leadership models turned out to be wildly successful. So much so that Foursquare headquarters wanted to make Hawaii into its own district but when it came time to decide who would head up this district, the head Hope Chapel pastor and the head New Hope pastor were both candidates for the position.

Long story short, they created two divisions in Hawaii - one for the Hope Chapels and one for the New Hopes. I've been away from Hawaii for two years now and away from Foursquare churches for even longer than that so I don't know how much collaboration and reconciliation has taken place since then but looking at the Foursquare website, I see that there is a Mid-Pacific Division with Hope Chapels under them and a Pacific Rim Division that has the New Hopes. Of course I don't know all the details but come on, Hawaii is not that big of a place - the Foursquare churches there should be able to fit under one umbrella.

Okay, example number two:

One of the largest churches (if not the largest) in and around Seattle is Mars Hill Church. The lead pastor of this church is Mark Driscoll and he's been known to be something of a lightning rod. He's got strong opinions on a wide range of topics and he's not afraid to voice them. Of particular note is his emphasis on his own brand of Christian masculinity which he has called, Ultimate Fighting Jesus. Driscoll's hardline stance on this and other topics has made him a target of harsh criticism from churches near and far.

Both these examples show the lack of unity within the Body of Christ and there are tons of others out there. And this is unfortunate because this is not what he had prayed for on the night before he was crucified.

But how do we work towards this unity?

That's a huge and complicated question but there's one answer I know is wrong. We don't work towards unity by striving for conformity.

One of my favorite verses in the Bible is Romans 1:20 where Paul says, "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse." I find this verse striking because part of what it is saying is that God reveals aspects of himself through the world that he created. And this makes sense because just as one can learn things about an artist by examining the art that he/she makes, one can learn bits of what God is like by examining his artistry as displayed in the world around us.

Any cursory survey of the universe will certainly have this to say about God: he loves diversity. Nothing comes in just one shape or size or color. Stars, rocks, clouds, trees, birds, atoms - they all come in variations: yellow giants/red dwarfs (stars), granite/obsidian (rocks), stratocumulus/cirrostratus (clouds), oak/maple/fir (trees), lark/swallow (birds), lead/gold (atoms). There are over 900,000 known insect species and it's estimated that that's probably only about one or two percent of what's actually out there (stat source). Should I go on? On the grand scale of things, some theoretical physicists think that there are multiple universes (and there are multiple versions of this multiverse theory). Then on the smallest scales of things, there's a whole orchestra of elementary particles that make up any one of the 7*10^27 atoms in the average human body. It seems that God never makes anything in just one form or kind. Even God himself is understood as the Trinity - three in one.

All that to make the case that the way towards unity in the church is not through conformity. The goal is not for us to all look, think, worship, believe the same. The twelve disciples started their ministries after the resurrection of Jesus with their unique identities intact - they were free to be who God had made them to be - but they still worked together. They had their disagreements but the Gospel continued to be spread.

So if not through conformity then how does the Body of Christ work towards unity?

In the past, I've suggested that maybe we should "see the differing ideas within Christianity the way a botanist sees a garden - as a thriving system of bio-diversity. . ." (post 216). But that can be problematic because then you have to deal with the whole food chain thing - churches aren't meant to eat one another.

I think the metaphor of the body and that of the family are more useful.

I won't say a lot about the church as body because Paul has already worked that out in 1 Corinthians 12:4-31.

But the family metaphor is a really useful one because it's ripe for analogies. But it's also useful in the sense that perhaps one promising way towards unity is a kind of feigned civility - that face we put on at family reunions where we need to share a table with family members with whom we have some deep disagreement(s).

This idea of just putting our differences aside and just getting along is a nice one but the reality of the matter is far messier and more difficult.

A few months ago on my pastor's blog, he put up a post about Supporting Women In Ministry. And of course there are churches on both sides of the debate. Speaking for myself, for most of my life I've been in churches that allowed women to serve at all levels of leadership. But there are churches and denominations that do not support this view.

I won't lay out arguments on either side of the theological debate here. I site the example because it's one area where advocating for unity and body and family is particularly tricky.

See, as I often do when the topic of conflict and/or disunity in the church comes up, I try to make the God-loves-diversity-and-variety case I made above. I try to make a case for unity in the body of Christ. And so in the comments section of the blog I wrote the following:

I believe there’s room enough in the Body of Christ for both positions. Does this mean I believe scripture has no meaning? Well on foundational issues like the divinity of Christ, I believe the Bible speaks clearly and those choose to believe something else are probably outside of what it is to be a Christian. But on secondary issues I think there should be much grace and healthy debate. Maybe some will disagree, but I think the issue of women serving in ministry is a secondary issue that well meaning, sincere Christians can agree to disagree on.

Looking back now, I see that it was a pretty naive, insensitive remark - one that I could make without much thought because of the privileges I have been born with as a male. This point was driven home for me by some of the responses left by others (men and women) highlighting the dehumanizing, unjust nature of the position against women in church leadership. For example one of the other pastors at my church left this comment:

it always amazes me that so many men weigh in on whether or not women should be allowed in ministry. That you who are able to take for granted that you are called by God find it necessary to determine whether or not another person created in the image of God could possibly be given the same calling strikes me as astonishingly hubristic. That it could be said without exception or discussion that women are never gifted or called to lead a congregation is not a theological view that reflects any sort of care for women, or openness to the outpouring of the Spirit. To those who hold the opposite view, and claim to care for the women in their congregation, or to those who believe there is room for both views, I respectfully disagree. You have absolutely no idea, speaking of men here, what it feels like to have your very identity the subject of continual challenge and discussion. When I speak with someone who does not believe women should be in leadership, I feel that my humanity before God is not recognized, that my calling is invalidated, and that my ministry is seen as ‘less than’. I relate to the exhaustion of Catherine and others, and wonder if there will be a day before the Day of the Lord when we in the Evangelical church won’t have to have this discussion any longer.

I felt pretty stupid and small after reading that and deservedly so. Mine was a comment born out of the convenience of privilege. It was easy for me to put out there because neither side of the debate affected any part of my life.

And I don't know how to advocate for unity in this debate. I don't know that there is a unifying position.

And I wonder if that is what Paul is getting at in 1 Corinthians 13:9-13 (a continuation of the church as body passage I pointed to above). Until Christ returns and renews all of creation, we will see only partially, incompletely, dimly. And in this incompleteness, perhaps the only way forward is love - messy and awkward and broken.

Maybe it's like sitting at a large table at a family reunion. Maybe we put the relatives who vote Republican on one end of the table and those who vote Democratic on the other side. But we put them at the same table. Thanksgiving is coming up soon and I'm sure there will be tables around the nation where family members are dreading seeing that crazy uncle who smells like sour cabbage or the vegan aunt who will make everyone at least try a slice of tofurkey or the niece who's going to try and lure people into her latest multi-level marketing scheme or the cousin who's a registered sex offender or the in-law who just made it out of detox and so no one can have beer or wine. Do we make room for them? Do we not invite them? Or do we put them at opposite ends of the table (and do we keep the kids safely in another room)? Do we steer conversations away from minefields?

I use the table as an example because even as we are all divided and disagree, we all come to the table and take communion - a table separated by geography as well as ideology but somehow still the same table.

A few weeks ago Shane Claiborne came to my church and one of the things he shared was how he has disagreements with people in the Seattle area, alluding to Mark Driscoll who I mentioned above. He said that before coming into Seattle for this talk, he called Mark and spoke to him on the phone. Shane had wanted to have dinner with him while in the area but Mark was busy. However, he did assure Shane that he would let him know if he were ever in the Philadelphia area and that he'd make room in his schedule to have dinner then.

Driscoll and Claiborne are on opposite ends of the spectrum on a wide range of topics. I'd imagine that one of the few things they have in common is a love for Christ. If asked, they would both paint very different pictures of how they viewed Christ, but they'd be referring to the same person. Both see Christ incompletely - incompletely in different ways - but they are both looking at Christ. And I don't know what they'll talk about or not talk about if/when they ever sit across from one another at dinner (I'd love to be a fly on the wall for that conversation) but the fact that the two are open to the idea fills me with hope.

314. so what are you doing, Randall?

2008-11-17T13:37:00.002-08:00

I blow a lot of hot air about Christianity and church and how there should be more of a subversive, counter-cultural element to them. I sometimes hesitate when putting up such posts because I'm afraid of a question - a question that hasn't come up yet, thankfully. And so I'm thinking that I should take this question on preemptively. Because I'm actually curious about the answer myself.

The question I've been fearfully awaiting is, "so you're doing all this writing about Christianity - what are you doing about it? How are you living that out?"

And I first think of these lines from the Billy Bragg song, "Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards"

Mixing pop and politics
he asks me what the use is
I offer him embarrassment
and my usual excuses

Because I'm good at coming up with excuses: my band is my main priority right now, I'm unemployed, I haven't gotten all of my thoughts about Christianity figured out just yet, I'm waiting to find a life partner, I'm waiting to see if God wants me to be single for the rest of my life, blah, blah, blah.

I suppose the fact of the matter is that I'm honestly not sure how much my Christianity is lived out on a daily basis. And part of this has to do with the fact that while I'm do quite a bit of writing about myself in this blog, it's hard to know how accurate my self-reflection really is. Because there's no way to get any distance from myself because, of course, I'm stuck in myself.

Last week my church hosted Shane Claiborne who spoke on a wide range of topics. Among them was the idea that as Christians, we're called to "not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of [our minds]. . ." Romans 12:2. Shane said that there should be something peculiar about us, that people should notice that we're different somehow because we don't behave the way the world expects to.

And this isn't a new idea. I heard this same message for years when I was younger. The difference in the way Shane talked about non-conformity is in how it actually looks. Back then I was taught about non-conforming through all of the things that I didn't do - not drinking, not dancing, not hanging out with the wrong crowd. When it came to things I should be doing, they mostly involved personal spiritual development - praying more, reading the Bible and memorizing verses. About the only social aspect I was taught related to sharing the gospel or learning how to defend the faith.

While I don't think he would disagree with most of those actions (or non-actions) Shane's version of non-conformity had a lot more to do with breaking different kinds of broader, more uncomfortable worldly patterns - advocating for peace not through war but through non-violence, figuring out ways to live more simply with less of an impact on the planet, building and living intentionally in community (he argues that we would do well to reexamine the lifestyle of the Amish for hints as to how to live out the gospel in America), and a bunch of other ideas.

Anyway, I remember someone telling me back in high school that most Christians went through two phases: questioning your faith and your faith in question. And though I don't have it all figured out yet, I've thought about and understand enough of Christianity to know that my life has definitely entered the "my faith in question" phase.

If I had to make a case for my own Christianity, there are a couple somewhat concrete things I can point to as proof of my faith. First is the whole Harold Experiment thing I blogged about a year ago. That was certainly a case of me trying to live out my new understanding of Christianity. A second thing would be the fact that one of my roommates, Darwin, and I are co-leading a C-group (Bible study) for my church. The title and theme of the C-group is Jesus' Heart for the Poor - we read and discuss Bible passages relating to poverty and the poor and once per month we try to do something grassroots/hands-on at a non-profit or other organization that works with the poor. And speaking of the C-group, I can't speak for Darwin but as for myself, part of the reason I wanted to help with this C-group was to try and live out my Christianity in a more tangible way. I guess I've been asking myself this how-am-I-living-out-Christianity question for a while now - certainly since I've moved to Seattle.

But is that enough? I suppose none of us can ever really do enough because there's always more to be done. But God only calls us to use the gifts (physical, mental, spiritual) he's given us as best we can wherever we are. Looked at this way, I'm nowhere near where I should be. There's lots more I can do.

I mean for one thing, I should be writing far more often than I am. If I could wave a magic wand and create whatever life I wanted for myself, I'd create a world where I could get some of this Layman's Theology thing published and to be paid enough for it that I could read and write (and perhaps even speak) full time. I think that would be amazing. But I don't have a magic wand and so one of the best things I can do in the mean time is to continue working on the ideas that God has given me. Which is to say, I should keep writing and posting. Which I haven't been doing, at least not nearly as faithfully as I should. And that's sin.

But is thinking and writing enough? I want to be out there more but I'm a pretty introverted person. So much of the work that needs to be done in the world seems to be work for the extroverted and the entrepreneurial, the people who like getting out there and meeting people, shaking their hands and hearing their stories while sharing their own. Acts like that scare the hell out of me. Meeting new people generally stresses me out - it's not how I'm wired.

And so I wonder if just reading and thinking and writing are enough for me.

I don't think they are.

But I'm trying - co-leading a C-group dedicated to talking and doing something about poverty is a way that I'm trying.

But is it enough?

No, it's not but I need to at least be doing what I can - I need to start with what I can do now (writing) and trust that God will continue the process of maturing and movement from where I am to where he wants me to be.

313. and now, for your viewing pleasure

2008-11-07T11:16:00.000-08:00

I've never been a big fan of Halloween. It has nothing to do with Christian protests against the holiday. If anything, I think my ambivalence towards Halloween has to do with the fact that I spent YEARS trying to figure out who I was (some of that wrestling documented in this very blog) and so the thought of trying to be someone/something else, even for just a day, had zero appeal for me.

Anyway, I'm reasonably more sure about myself and so I wonder if that's why I chose to dress up this year.

Some friends of mine got an invitation to a "versus" Halloween party. The idea was to come dressed up in pairs or teams that symbolized some kind of versus theme. Some of the suggestions were: rock vs paper vs scissors or Eagle vs Shark or red vs blue.

My roommate and I came up with Boxers vs Briefs.

On a deeper level, we were actually representing Free Will (boxers) vs Determinism (briefs).

And now, for your viewing pleasure:

312. the body of Christ (part 1) - a radical hypothetical

2008-10-27T12:48:00.008-07:00

[VERY IMPORTANT PREFACE]

Make note of that word in the title, "hypothetical."

A proposition or statement of, based on, or serving as a hypothesis; supposed but not necessarily true

I stress that word because I've been reluctant to put up this post because while it does serve as an extremely good, very fruitful thought exercise, it's NOT TRUE! As good as it is in stirring the imagination, it's theologically borderline heretical so please, please, please remember that I'm merely posing a hypothetical to make you think.

Maybe "hypothetical" is the wrong word. Maybe there's a better one for what I'm trying to do with this idea but I don't know it (feel free to leave suggestions in the comment box).

One last bit. I doubt I'm the first one to suggest something like this so if anyone knows of books or articles that share a similar idea, please let me know. Thanks.

[end preface]

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. 1 Corinthians 12:27 (TNIV)

One of the central teachings of Christianity is the idea that Christ will come again. It's in the Nicene Creed: "He will come again in glory. . ." And Jesus himself speaks of his return in Matthew 25 and 26 (among other places).

Unfortunately, because of a particular brand of end times teachings known as dispensationalism, starting with the teachings of 19th Century preacher, John Darby and later popularized by the Left Behind series of books, the traditional view of the second coming of Christ has been upended. I won't attempt to take on dispensationalism in this post but if you want to read an excellent critique I'd recommend Barbara Rossing's excellent book, The Rapture Exposed (if you want the gist of it you can read her entertaining interview here).

Anyway, for the purposes of this post, suffice it to say that when I speak of the second coming of Christ, I mean it in the more traditional sense: that he will return once back to this earth to judge and redeem all of creation.

In the New Testament, Paul often refers to the church as the body of Christ. There are many examples but here's one clear one:

Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. Colossians 1:24

Do you see where I'm going with this?

What if...

What if the idea of the second coming of Christ actually meant that the church (as his body) is supposed to be his second coming? What if that was what was meant by Jesus' return to earth? What if Paul wasn't using a metaphor when he called the church the body of Christ?

Let me state again that I don't believe this to be the case - I believe that the actual person Jesus will return in person ". . .to judge the living and the dead" (to complete the Nicene Creed quote I began above).

But.

But what if the church as the body of Christ was to be the re-incarnation, the second coming if Christ? What if we (as the church) were solely responsible to bring about the redemption and reconciliation spoken of by the prophets? How would that change the way we thought about church and how churches prioritized their budgets and their mission statements?

See here's the thing. I think there are segments of today's church who are playing a kind of waiting game. They think that because Christ will return one day that all they have to do is wait for that to happen. The only job to be done in the mean time is to save as many people as possible by getting them to ascent to the Four Spiritual Laws and pray the Salvation Prayer. After that, all that's left to be done is to hone their personal spirituality and to try and get their friends and family saved as well.

And I don't want to dismiss the importance of those things with my little thought exercise. I just want to point out that there are other aspects of being the church that are just as important as salvation - that the FSL and SP are not the end all and be all of Christianity, that there's more to be done before Christ returns.

By thinking about what the church would look like if it were the only bodily second coming of Christ we were ever going to have, I wonder if we can get a more holistic idea about what the church is supposed to be (even though he is, in fact, returning).

A few examples would do well here.

If the church were the second bodily return of Christ...

We wouldn't be trying to create an alternate Christian entertainment subculture. Instead, we would be working to create viable works of art (in all forms) that existed and competed in the marketplace at large.
We wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the claims of environmentalists by citing our mandate to subdue the earth. Instead, we would do our best to preserve the goodness of God's creation for all time and all generations.
We would be far more active in trying to combat issues of poverty and suffering and injustice both locally and globally - because there's no way around the fact that they are our neighbor.
We might see the church down the street as collaborators (instead of competition) and might work more closely with them by sharing resources and ideas. Because the task of being the body is far bigger than any one church or even one denomination can handle on its own.
Despite the divisive nature of topics like abortion and same sex marriage, the church might work a bit harder at amicable solutions that do the most good for the people individually affected by these issues and work a bit less at shouting about which side is right.

Those are just a few examples and I honestly don't know how things would look in practical terms if my hypothetical were true (which, again, it's not) but here's the thing: I think the church would do well to organize its values and priorities as if it were true. Because we aren't called to sit and wait for the second coming. We're called to live our lives as citizens of the Kingdom of God here and now.

I've been saying over and over that my hypothetical isn't true but here's the thing. We really ought to be living as if it were true on both a large, church-wide scale as well as on an individual basis.

This is what it is to bring about the Kingdom of God. Being a Christian means representing the future, redeemed world today, here, now in this broken world.

Take a look at this bit from 2 Corinthians:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! . . .We are therefore Christ's ambassadors. . . 2 Corinthians 5: 17 and 20a

Take note of the phrases, "the new creation has come" and "the new is here!" Paul is speaking in the present tense. These things have already happened. When a person becomes a Christian, they become ambassadors of God's new creation. N.T. Wright puts it succinctly in the appendix of his new book, Surprised by Hope: "Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven."

And that's an amazing way to put it - "to colonize earth with the life of heaven."

But one very important thing needs to be made very clear if we aren't to misunderstand this way of reading the Gospel or what Bishop Wright is trying to say about it.

According to conventional wisdom, if you have a kingdom that you think is good and great and gosh, wouldn't the world be a better place if everyone were a part of it, the way you spread your kingdom is through force, violent and bloody. This is where the crusades missed the point entirely. According to what Jesus taught and the way he lived his life, the Kingdom of God spreads, not by force but by loving example - by turning the other cheek, by going the extra mile, by loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you (Matthew 5:38-44).

In a way, part of this hypothetical case is true. Part of the mission of the church is to become, in every way possible, the physical presence of Christ here and now on earth. But though we, as parts of the church, are citizens of heaven we are not yet wholely redeemed - we still only see part of the picture, not the whole. And so we'll mess up and we'll get parts of it wrong. We'll swing from being too strict to being too lenient when it comes to the law. We'll emphasize certain bits of scripture while ignoring other bits (because when's the last time you heard a teaching about wearing hats in church?). We are redeemed and made new but not entirely, not yet. And so we'll never get it all completely right.

And that's where my idea breaks down. But that's where the truth of the matter comes in and rescues me (us). One day Jesus WILL return to fix things front to back, top to bottom. And so while we'll get things wrong, he'll make all things right again.

Well, someone might ask, why not just wait 'til Jesus gets it right - why get it wrong in the meantime?

There's a parable in Matthew (21:33-44) that tells of a landowner who plants a vineyard. He puts some farmers in charge and then goes away to other business. When harvest time came, he sent some of his servants to get the fruits his vineyard had produced. Well the farmers greedily come to the conclusion that if they beat up and kill the servants that the will be able to keep the profits for themselves. The landowner sends more servants but the farmers do the same thing again. Finally he sends his own son thinking that they will have no choise but to listen to him but the farmers kill him instead. Jesus asks his disciples what they think the owner will do at this point. They respond that he will go himself to the farmers and dole out a beat down.

The parable ends with this ominous warning from Jesus: "Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit," (Matthew 21:43). This statement is given to the Pharisees but I don't see why anything Jesus says to the Pharisees shouldn't apply to everyone else. Besides, earlier in Matthew Jesus says that our righteousness is to "surpass that of the Pharisees." So I don't think it's a stretch to say that those who aren't working to produce the fruit of the kingdom are doing so at their own risk.

And I know this gets into the thorny arena of faith vs works and other really theologically overworked issues. I have my own thoughts about this (which I suppose are hinted at in the above paragraph) but a fuller treatment will have to wait for another post. Suffice it to say that I would personally rather err on the works side of the debate.

311. it's a whole new world out there

2008-10-24T10:42:00.002-07:00

Okay, there's no cute or easy way to say this. I lost my job this week.

As I understand it, the company I was working for had been operating under the assumption that a huge venture capital investment was basically in the bag. But the execs got a call from the VC people on Monday that said despite all promises to the contrary, they weren't going to fund us. Our exec fought hard to keep the funds coming but he said all the VC guy could tell him was, "it's a whole new world out there," referring, of course, to all the drama in the financial markets.

In this past month or so, listening to and watching the news, I had a really hard time understanding all the doom and gloom about the economy. It seemed like something that only investors and bankers and retirees or those who had signed one of those shady mortgages had to worry about, not something that would hit me. The pundits kept saying that this crisis would have dire and far reaching effects for great swaths of the population and I kept thinking to myself, "bummer for those people." I didn't think this credit tsunami would hit me.

Until it did.

So how am I doing? Well, I loved that job. It was probably the most fun I've ever had working somewhere, so I'm kinda bummed about losing it.

But.

But I'm also very grateful.

I'm going to have to go on a major financial diet but in general my monthly expenses are low. I've applied for unemployment and worst case scenario, I'll take some entry-level rudimentary McJob to get by until I find something more promising. So as bad as the job market looks, I know I won't need a lot to make ends meet and so while I'm not glad, I am grateful.

There are other people at my old workplace who aren't as lucky as I. I know some of them just had babies and that's a huge expense. And I'm sure many of them have fixed monthly expenses that are FAR higher than mine and so their job options are far more limited. Also, because of all the layoffs that are happening all over the place and the fact that the venture capital market is closed up now, they're probably going to face a very arduous tech sector job search.

While I was packing up the things from my cubicle I caught a glimpse at the guy across the hall from me. He was sitting in his chair, arms dangling at his side. He was staring down at the floor as if the unholy maw of a black hole were opening up in front of him.

Me? If I went into full-on lean, mean, borderline-ascetic budget mode, I could probably get by on an hourly wage of $10 or $11. That wouldn't be much fun but still, if that's all I need to get by, I can find a job that at least pays that.

And so I'm grateful.

But I am a bit wary about the job hunt.

I'm a strange sort of creature. I think most of my friends would say that I'm a pretty bright guy. I'm no Mensa candidate but I like to think I know a thing or two about a thing or two.

And I'm a relatively handy guy. I'm no Bob Villa but I know how to operate a few power tools and can perform some basic house maintenance/repair jobs. And I can usually find creative solutions to problems. At my last job I turned the rubber end of a plunger (the kind you use on clogged drains) into a headphone coupler. And back when I used to script/shoot/edit a weekly video for a church I attended back in Hawaii, I used almost every trick in the guerilla filmmaking handbook to create some really (I think) entertaining videos with basically no budget.

There are lots of little things I know how to do but none of them translates very well into a job.

On the other hand, I'm pretty open to doing almost anything. And like I said above, I don't need a lot when it comes to salary. I totally lucked out with my last job - it was a niche market of a niche market - and I doubt I'll find something as sweet again but I'm willing to do almost anything. My job hunt game plan is to spend the first month or so looking for another golden opportunity. The next months after that will be looking for something in the ballpark of meaningful work. After that I'll take any job that will have me.

I'm a strange sort of creature when it comes to the job market. I have a lot to offer an employer but my skill set doesn't fit into any neat category. And so I'm a bit wary about the job hunt.

But I'm also excited.

They say that when you're unemployed, your full time job is finding a job. And I agree. Craigslist and other job hunting websites are my first clicks in the morning. My resume is updated and polished up, ready to go (customizable per submission along with cover letter). I'm all about being a job search machine.

But that's not what's got me excited.

Although I plan on thinking of my job search as a job in itself, it's not really a full time job, you know? And that leaves time for me to get back at writing and that excites me.

Last night at my c-group (Bible study) when we broke up into prayer/discussion groups I shared the news about losing my job. One of the people in my group asked me if I had considered writing as a job and I told her that that would be too good to be true. Because I know there are jobs for writers out there but here's the thing. Writing is something that I love, but its only a specific kind of writing that I love - the random writing I do for this blog and the little short story things I toy with every once in a while. I love writing so much that I don't want to "waste" it on a writing gig that may lead me to hate writing. What I mean is, I love writing so I'll write whether I get paid for it or not. So if I do get paid for it, I want it to be on my terms. And that's not a very reasonable posture to take in the hunt for a job, but when it comes to writing as a possible career, that's that.

But like I said, I don't need to get paid to write. And so being unemployed will allow me the time I need to get back to writing - my writing, my way.

And you know, there's a feeble voice inside of me that is saying that this jobless situation could be exactly what I need - that maybe writing is my true calling and that I should take full advantage of the time that I have to do it - that my unemployment is actually a precious, divine gift from God.

And that has me excited.

In conclusion, I wanted to let you all know about my job situation. Some of you already knew either through phone calls or through my status update on Facebook, but some didn't. I also wanted to let everyone know that I'm doing well. I'm grateful, I'm wary, but I'm also excited. Which isn't too bad of a place to be.

Of course I can say this because I've only been unemployed for a few days now. I may be in an entirely different mind space in a few months but I'll deal with that when the time comes.

PS. prayers appreciated, thanks.

PPS. for anyone else caught up in the throes of or worried about this financial crisis, my pastor had been doing an AMAZING series about Faith and Money. Read his blog posts about it here or listen to his sermons here (look for sermons with the title, "Faith and Money."

310. "sermon" on the Kingdom of God

2008-10-21T11:23:00.002-07:00

[preface]

So a couple weeks ago I spent a few days in Hawaii visiting friends and family and stuffing myself full of poi and lau lau and katsu curry and ramen and other foods I missed. One thing I was really looking forward to was visiting the house church I used to attend before moving to Seattle. And a few days before the Sunday service, Blake, the guy who heads up the church, asked me to give a little message to the house church about what I'd learned since moving away - what had God been showing me about Christ and church and Christianity.

And I was stoked that he asked me because before I left the house church, we had been wrestling with a lot of big questions about what it meant to be a follower of Christ and what it meant to be the church and what it was that we were supposed to be doing with ourselves here on earth. And I felt as if I've been able to come up with...not exactly answers but some really promising and interesting ideas along those lines and was eager to share it all with them.

Anyway, what follows are from the notes I took for myself in preparing for what I shared that night at house church.

And it's a good way for me to get back to the Layman's Theology series I started more than a year ago.

[end preface]

I remember a bit before I left for Seattle, we as the house church were talking a lot about the Kingdom of God or as Matthew puts it, the Kingdom of Heaven.

I remember we spent many nights talking about this kingdom - what does it look like, how does it work, is it already here or is it yet to come, what's our role or place in this kingdom?

I remember that we spent a lot of time thinking about the Kingdom because Jesus seemed to speak about it all the time. Almost all of his parables are about this kingdom in one way or another but he’s often frustratingly open ended when talking about it. He calls it a pearl, a party, a net, like seeds and like virgins. And all of the metaphors seem to be pointing towards something that Jesus sees quite clearly but either because we can’t understand or because he can’t put it into words that we can understand, these metaphors aren’t entirely clear to us (and the gospels tell us that they weren't clear to many he was speaking to at the time - even to his disciples).

And I remember being frustrated by this because I was in search of a new understanding of what it meant to be a Christian. See, I was raised with the idea that Christianity and being a Christian was only and all about getting people to accept Christ as savior so that they would spend eternity in heaven instead of hell. And while I understood the importance of that, I couldn’t help but think that there was more to Christianity than that - a lot more. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were somehow missing the point of the Gospel.

And so I remember being frustrated with this whole Kingdom of God idea because I felt that it was pointing us towards something vital and important - something that could expand our ideas of what it meant to be a Christian. But at the house church, although we had lots of discussions about it, we never seemed to be able to get at what this Kingdom was about - how it works for us today.

I ended up taking all of these Kingdom questions with me up to Seattle and partly because of an amazing church that I found there and partly because of some really key books¹, I finally came to a new kind of understanding about what being a Christian is about and how this Kingdom metaphor works.

And so here it is - my thoughts so far on what it means to be a part of the Kingdom of God.

First of all, it helps to get into the mind of the people Jesus was speaking to when he spoke about this kingdom. See, part of the reason it’s hard for us to understand the Kingdom of God is because here in America, we’ve grown up in a democratic republic. On top of that, because of contemporary critiques of colonialism and imperialism, we’ve come to view the word "kingdom" (and the ideas of conquest and oppression that it implies) with a great deal of skepticism.

But put yourself, for a moment, into the feet of those in first century Israel. For them, being a citizen of a kingdom was all they knew. Their entire history was made up of good kings and bad kings and being taken over by other nations and living under the thumb of foreign kings. In fact, as we begin this story, Israel is yet again living under the rule of a foreign, pagan nation - this time, it was the Romans. And so while it's hard for us to understand what life was like in these (earthly) kingdoms, it's important for us to try to keep this in mind if we are to see the radical, revolutionary nature of the Kingdom of God. More importantly, it's only in this context that we can begin to talk/think about how this Kingdom metaphor works for us today. But more on this later.

Now as an extremely religious nation, there were various segments of the Jewish religious leadership who had different ideas about why it was that Israel was being ruled by the Romans. They also had different ideas about why God wasn't getting them out of this situation.

Some, like the Pharisees, thought that the reason Israel was under foreign dictatorship was because Israel was not living up to the standards of God - they were failing to obey the laws of the Bible. There were others, like the Saducees, who thought that the best we could do in this situation was to coddle the Romans - to try and work them as best we could. Then there were others like the Zealots (some of the twelve disciples were Zealots) who wanted to band together and take back Israel by force and bloody revolution. And there were the Essenes who moved out to the desert and isolated themselves from society - they were the ones who wrote and hid away the Dead Sea Scrolls.

This is the immediate social/historical context of Jesus' time, but before I get into what Jesus did when he entered the scene, I want to bring up one other bit of history. This time, we go all the way back to Genesis 12:1-3.

¹ The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you. ² I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. ³ I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.” (NLT)

This is basically the moment that the nation of Israel is born. It is because of this promise that Abram leaves his home and sets in motion the events that will lead to the nation of Israel. To me, the key parts of this promise to Abram are the lines about blessing - at the end of verse 2 God says, “I will make you a blessing to others. . .” and then again at the end of verse 3, “All the families of the earth will be blessed through you.”

I mention this because I think the main reason Israel got taken over so many times in the past and the reason why they were being ruled by Rome in Jesus' day was because they had forgotten this part of the blessing. They knew that they were God’s chosen people but they had forgotten that they were chosen so that they could be a blessing to the other nations...but again, more on this later.

So then, Jesus enters the scene and some believed that he was the Messiah - the one who would deliver Israel from the Romans and return Israel to a place of power in the world. These people are looking for an earthly, political revolutionary. What Jesus preached instead was an entirely different sort of world order. They wanted someone who would kick some Roman ass. What they found was someone who told them that if someone (like a Roman soldier) told you to carry their pack one mile, that they should carry it two miles. He told them to love their enemies and to pray for those who persecuted them.

And then just when he made his way to Jerusalem and people thought that he was finally going to take his rightful place on the throne and oust the Romans, he died on a cross.

Three days later, he rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples as well as to other witnesses. Some were still looking for a political Jesus - a Jesus to overthrow the Romans. Instead, Jesus tells them two basic things. Wait for the Holy Sprit and then tell everybody about me. And then he’s gone again.

And I’m not sure how exactly it happened (perhaps this is part of what happened at Pentecost?), but eventually the disciples and the followers of Jesus came to understand that this Kingdom that Jesus kept talking about wasn’t a political sort of Kingdom. It was, indeed, unlike any kingdom that had ever come before it.

His is a kingdom, not of physical, political power but a kingdom of love and forgiveness and reconciliation...wait, let me expand on that. The Kingdom of God can/should/will have physical, political effects but these effects do not come about through physical power (war). It isn’t a kingdom that comes about by force or violence but by sacrificing one’s self.

So then, finally, I can begin to talk about what I’ve come to understand about this Kingdom of God.

If you want a quick glimpse of what the Kingdom of God looks like, there are three places where it is especially clear. You can look to Eden before the fall of Man or you can look to the prophets when they talk about what the world will look like once God returns and redeems all of his creation. However, the clearest example of what this kingdom looks like is found in Matthew 5 - 7 (the sermon on the Mount). In those three chapters, Jesus outlines a radical new outlook on what it is to be a human being, on what our priorities should be and how it is that we live out our kingdom citizenship.

I said earlier that although it's difficult, the Gospels must be read through the lens of those for whom monarchy was the only political structure they knew. For them, if they were living under the rule of an unjust king, they had two choices - live with it or overthrow it. In the Gospels, Jesus offers a fascinating, new alternative. Jesus offers his followers citizenship in a kingdom not of this world but a Kingdom of God/Heaven. And Jesus spends his time on earth teaching and modeling how a citizen of this Kingdom behaves here, today, now.

What does that mean for us? As followers of Christ in America, although we live in and pay taxes to our government, we are actually citizens of the Kingdom of God - our lives, are to be lived out as citizens of God's Kingdom. And for me, the easiest way to understand what this means is to live now the way we would if the fall had never happened or the way we will when God returns to redeem his creation. The more we live this way, the more the Kingdom of God enters into, redeems, and blesses today’s world.

And that last bit about blessing is especially important. Remember earlier when I talked about how I thought the reason Israel had so much trouble through its history is because they forgot that they were chosen so that they could be a blessing to all the nations? In a sense, part of what happened through the cross and the resurrection is this task of blessing got transfered from the one specific nation of Israel onto all who called Jesus Lord - we Christians.

And while this will probably get me into trouble, I really want to emphasize this idea of being a blessing to all nations because I think large segments of the church today are in a similar position to that of the Jewish religious leaders in Jesus' time who thought too much about being God's people and not enough about being a blessing to those around them.

There are segments of today's church that, like the Pharisees, think that the reason why Christianity isn't the force they think it should be is because our nation has lost its moral compass. Then there are other segments (I'm thinking of the Christian entertainment industry here) who, somewhat like the Essenes, seem to think that what we need to do is to withdraw into a subculture - in this case, it's not a geographic withdrawal, but it is still an escape from or alternative to the culture at large. And then there are those like the Zealots who use the language of war when talking about the duty of Christians (think of those who wave those "God hates fags" signs or those portrayed in the movie Jesus Camp). Other parallels can be made but those most readily come to mind.

These segments (and, really, the church at large) can be seen as putting too much emphasis on being God's people and not enough on remembering that we are God's people so that we can be a blessing to all the nations. What I'm trying to say is that while it is true that Christians are God's people, our task as the people of God is to be a blessing. And this blessing comes about most naturally and readily as we live the kind of sacrificial life that Jesus taught and modeled for us - as citizens of the Kingdom of God.

¹N.T. Wright, Simply Christian
N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope
Brian McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus
Shane Claiborne, Irresistible Revolution

309. today's black plague

2008-10-03T12:02:00.001-07:00

Yeah, haven't been blogging lately.

But I will...soon.

In the meantime, just want to say that I'm writing from lovely, balmy Hawaii. More on that in a post to come.

And I wanted to call your attention to a website that aims to tackle the problem of XDR-TB - extensively drug resistant tuberculosis.

It's a pandemic waiting to happen and while I normally try to refrain from making the-sky-is-falling type statements, in this case it could very well happen. Here's why this issue has my boxers up in a twist:

1.The World Health Organization estimates that one person in three in the world today is infected with TB.
2. The average person infected with TB will likely spread it to 10-15 people per year.
3. This person might not even know he/she is sick.
4. The disease is most common in areas that lack the financial resources to prevent, diagnose, treat, and/or educate people about the illness.
5. Drug resistant strains of TB develop when treatment is mismanaged (not uncommon in these low-income, often third-world-type countries).
6. If this treatment mismanagement continues, a patient's TB can mutate into a from that is basically untreatable - it becomes resistant to any/all drugs thrown at it.
7. Because TB infects the lungs and can be spread through the air, it is HIGHLY contagious.
8. If XDR-TB becomes widespread (not unlikely) and makes its way into densely populated, industrialized nations (also not unlikely), we could very well become today's black plague or Spanish Flu. And a highly mutated form of XDR-TB that is able to infect people who were immunized against TB while young is not out of the question.

The really sad fact of the matter is when it comes to TB, an ounce of prevention is worth a king-kong-ton of cure. The vaccine is not expensive. But a poor country is a poor country and for them, even inexpensive drugs are out of reach (not to mention problems of infrastructure and distribution).

But we're not a poor country (not yet). The money spent in one day in Iraq (hell, a few hours of that would probably be enough) could wipe the problem of TB off the face of the earth.

Anyway, take a look at this video. Sign up on their site. Make your voice heard. Make a difference.

308. age as social construct...or not

2008-09-12T23:00:00.002-07:00

I’ve never been one to give my age a lot of thought. By that I mean that I’m one who neither looks forward to nor dreads his birthday. I think it’s a fun excuse get together with some friends and throw a party, but that’s about all.

I like to think that age is nothing more than a social construct - that it’s just a number signifying nothing, that all of the benchmarks that we associate with certain ages is just societal expectation that somehow seeps down from the ether of the collective unconscious. It doesn’t really mean anything.

I can’t remember when I started thinking about age this way. Probably sometime in my late twenties. I suppose it was a way for me to justify the fact that at 29 I had nothing resembling a career trajectory. According to my resume, in 2001 I was working part-time at a nightclub running sound. I was also doing temp work at various companies. In theory, my main job during that time was trying to run a recording studio out of the basement of my parent’s house - we had put up new soundproofed walls and I had made some pretty big purchases to make this happen. But the truth is, I was an abysmal business man. I was relatively good at recording bands but I had no idea how to promote my services or how to generate cash-flow.

So maybe that’s why I came up with the idea that age is merely a social construct - because I needed a way to justify my dead-end life at the time. According to what the world was telling me, as a 29er I should have been working at a decent job for a few years - a job that utilized the college education I received, a job that promised promotions or, at the very least, served as a gateway into higher paying jobs.

But that wasn’t where I was at.

But I didn’t feel like a loser even though according to the world’s timeline, that’s kind of what I was - a bum sponging off the parental units.

And so I came up with the idea that age is just a social construct.

I lived with this delusion for quite a long time. I mean, for a while I actually believed it.

In fact, I think it’s only in this past year that I’ve come to see how wrong I was about this.

Let me say that part of the reason I was able to sustain this wrong-headed idea is the fact that I had parents who put next to no pressure on me getting into the workforce in any sustainable way. I mean, every once in a while they would point to openings for state jobs in the paper but I told them that there was no way I was going to work for the man. I didn’t put it that way, of course. Rather, I probably said something like, “I don’t think that’s for me. I have a few leads for bands that want to record - I think the studio is just about to take off if we just give it a bit more time.” Actually, I have no idea what I said to keep my parents at bay. I don’t know how they put up with my lazy ass.

Of course the other luxury that allowed me to dismiss the effects of aging is the fact that I’m a male. On top of that, I’m a male who has no desire to procreate. I mean, of course I want to copulate someday and of course I want to do that properly within the bounds of marriage, I just don’t want to have kids as a result. So as a man who doesn’t want kids, the whole biological clock thing is a non-issue.

And maybe this is a good segue into some of what finally led me to face that fact that age does matter.

It's dawned one me recently that the dating pool for those in my age group is tiny. I suppose part of this has to do with the fact that at my church the single women are primarily younger 20 somethings - most of those who are older are married or engaged or in a LTR.

I think the reason I came to realize this is in part because of the speed dating fundraiser I participated in (and helped plan, I might add) and in part because of how I've been thinking about love lately. And so because of these things, while I'm still mostly content with being single, I have felt a bit more of a longing to find that someone who is...how did I put it once...

Strikingly beautiful, that's the way to describe it - her presence. Not a beauty that wafts at you from across the room like a deep blue perfume, but one that slaps you in the face reminding you that you're alive and in dire need of some aesthetic in your crude singular life.

Ha. Yeah, that's kind of what I've been looking for lately - someone who can bitch slap me out of the comfortable charms of singlehood. And they're out there, at my church in fact - sharp, smart, really beautiful women. And it's not that they're new to the church, it's more that I wasn't looking before...but I notice them now.

But.

But it's in noticing them that I the fact of my age and how it's not merely a social construct has really hit home for me.

There's a formula I learned a few months ago. It's a formula used to determine the lower bound for age-appropriate dating. In other words, it tells me how young of a person I can date without playing the part of cradle robber. The formula goes like this:

Y = (A/2)+7 where A is age and Y is the youngest person that someone aged A can date.

So I'm 36. Plug that into the formula and turns out the youngest person I can reasonably, appropriately date is 25.

Don't ask me where the formula came from or how/why it works, but it does have a kind of logic to it. The older you get, the wider the gap between your age and the youngest person you can date. For example, when you're 22, the youngest person you should date is 18 - a difference of four years. When you're 50, the youngest person you can date is 32 - a difference of 18 years. Which makes sense because the older you get, the less likely you are to exhibit major changes in personality or outlook on life and so hooking up with someone 18 years younger than yourself when you're 50 is not a huge risk because despite the gap, the 36yo is more likely to stay themselves than someone younger. And so the formula seems reasonable to me.

Well, it seemed reasonable to me until I looked around at my church and saw that there weren't very many available women over 25...I mean, they are there (and some of them are wonderful and attractive) but remember that I'm insanely picky when it comes to asking women out - far more picky (see here and here) than I have any right to be, but that's a topic for another post. However, if I forget about this formula, I'd say that there are a couple people I might consider asking out.

Now at this point, some might say that the formula is stupid, that love is love, that age really is a social construct and I should feel free to ask out anyone over the age of consent.

[important side note]

Please don't think that I'm thinking about dating 18 year olds. When I say there are a couple women I'd consider asking out who are outside the range of that formula, I mean they are just outside that range. So put down the phone, no need to call Chris Hansen and report me to Dateline NBC.

[end side note]

But I think that the formula is a good one and I do think that it's a bit odd for a 36 year old to be dating someone under 25. And it's not just the eww factor. A 25 year old is still in that area of life where their character is only beginning to settle and set. Contrast this to the average 36 year old whose personality and character are, for the most part, the way they're going to be. Now, I'm anything but the average 36 year old (I mean I'm the drummer in a rock band for cryin' out loud) and I think my personality and belief systems are still in flux. If age were only a social construct I'd say I'm socially in my late 20's. But I'm not. My birth certificate is not a construct and it tells me that I'm 36 so dating someone under 25 still seems wrong.

And if I can rant and complain a bit, nobody ever told me about how the dating pool shrinks dramatically once you get past 30. I didn't see this coming so I didn't think to get out there and date while the dating was still good. I mean, in the end there's no one to blame but myself. I should have been more aware of where I was in life - I should have seen that opportunities don't wait around forever.

But then again, for most of my twenties and early thirties, I WAS out there looking and trying to date. The problem then was, I was desperate and lonely and somewhat depressed (and women can sense that and it's not attractive). On top of that, I had no game (I was awful at flirting and/or making small talk). And I was still pretty picky even back then. And I was still struggling to unlearn all the bad teaching I got on dating during my early twenties. Add all these factors up and you end up with me the way I am today: if I were any more single I'd disappear.

So here I am. I still don't have game. I'm not desperate or lonely anymore and that helps. I'm a lot more sure of myself and I have a pretty decent job. If I can be so bold, I'm a pretty good catch. I'm pretty sure I'd make a kick ass boyfriend.

But the fish in the sea available to/appropriate for me are few and far between. Factor in my insane pickiness and the odds of me meeting someone are getting mighty long.

But don't cry for me Argentina, the truth is I'm content as a single person.

So in the end, maybe all this thinking about age and dating is all a moot point. Yes the dating pool is shrinking, but I don't mind being single all that much. And that's par for the course.

307. why your vote counts!

2008-09-01T09:42:00.003-07:00

[Preface]

I'm no political expert. I'm no statistician. But I am an American citizen and as such, I think it's shameful that only about 64 percent of eligible voters cast their ballot in the '04 elections.

What follows is a brief, very non-expert post about why I vote and why I think those who don't vote should vote - especially Gen Xers and younger.

Take these ideas with a huge grain of salt. They're based more on speculation than substance or research, but I think the ideas are interesting enough to put out there.

Maybe it's dangerous for someone as uninformed as I to be writing about voting, but my blog has very limited readership and so even if I'm crazily, wrong (which is not unlikely), I doubt it will have any huge impact.

I'm just saying all this so that in the very unlikely event that this little entry goes viral and Ralph Nader gets elected (more on this below), I want to make it clear that I never posed as anything other than a humble blogger who wanted to talk about why he thought more of his friends should get out there and vote.

[End preface]

The number of eligible voters under the age of 35 are notoriously low. According to U.S. Census Bureau statistics, only about 52 percent of eligible voters between the ages of 18 and 34 voted in the November 2004 presidential elections. As a comparison, about 68 percent of eligible voters between the ages of 35 and 64 voted. Move the years around a bit and the gap gets even larger: only about 47 percent of eligible 18 - 24 year olds voted compared to about 72 percent of those 55 and older.

The common excuses I hear from those among my age group are (in no particular order):

my vote won’t matter
it doesn’t matter who wins or loses, things will still be screwed up
I don’t like any of the candidates
I don’t know who to vote for

I’ll try and deal with those excuses one by one, but for me one of the most compelling reasons to vote is this one: BECAUSE WE CAN! Our forefathers fought brutally ugly, bloody wars to gain our independence so that we could elect our own leadership instead of being ruled by a Prime Minister thousands of miles away. On top of that, do you realize that women have been allowed to vote for less than one hundred years (Nineteenth Amendment passed August, 1920)? And African-Americans have only been able to vote within the last 50 years - after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed. These rights only came about after years of work and sacrifice. Bloody battles were fought. Tens of thousands of people marched and protested, hundreds sat in jails, many more were beaten, and many died brutal deaths.

Because they wanted their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren to be able to vote.

If nothing else, we owe it to them to cast a ballot.

But first let’s deal with some of those common excuses.

my vote won’t matter

Well, if you don’t vote, of course your vote won’t matter. And I understand that casting one solitary vote feels very small and ineffective. I also understand the feeling that regardless of who wins or loses, things never seem to get better.

But here’s the thing. Your one vote isn’t just your one vote.

Do you know why The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act (estimated to cost $1.2 trillion over ten years) passed in 2003 while nothing was done about the fact that almost all economic experts agree that the Social Security System will be out of money by the time Generation Xers retire?

Well, there are many reasons, but here’s one I don’t hear discussed very much. Remember those statistics I trotted out at the beginning of this entry? The one about how those over 50 are more likely to vote than those under 34? Do you think it’s a coincidence that a massive, expensive overhaul of the Medicare system that will benefit those over 50 got passed while the issue of the future viability of the Social Security System (which will eventually have a huge impact on those under 34) got nothing but lip service?

I mean think about it. If you’re a politician who wants to get re-elected (is there any other kind?), aren’t you going to work hardest for those who are likely to vote you back in? Put aside partisan politics for a while - forget about the Democratic and Republican parties for a minute. Just on the basis of age, if a politician wants to get re-elected, whose rights is he/she going to pull for - those who vote or those who don't vote?

The point I’m trying to make here is that even if a younger person votes for a candidate that ends up losing, their vote STILL COUNTS because just the fact that they voted gets noticed. If the statistics were flipped - if more people in the 18-34 block voted than the 50 and older block - I wonder if the future of the Social Security System (and other issues that will affect pre-boomers) would be taken more seriously.

To those in my generation and younger who don’t vote, how mad will we be when we get to retirement age and find that all the money that we paid into the system has been sucked dry? Do you think you’ll still feel as if your vote didn’t matter?

And now let’s take a look at these excuses:

it doesn’t matter who wins or loses, things will still be screwed up
I don’t like any of the candidates

The reason these are lame excuses is similar to the age explanation above.

What if the reason it doesn’t matter who wins or loses is because the same losers keep winning because nobody bothers to vote them out?

What if we don’t like the candidates because there are young, eager would-be public servants out there who don’t run because they feel like no one will come out to support them?

The way I see it, the only people who seem to reliably vote anymore are hard core Democrats and hard core Republicans. And so is it any surprise that even though the views of the majority of Americans lie somewhere in the middle of the two parties, often the only people that seem to run or get elected are those who are on the fringes of each party? Again, just as politicians will cater to the age group of those voting for them, they will also cater to those in their party who are voting for them. And right now, it seems like only the far Right and the far Left are getting out the vote. And so it’s no surprise that there are very few candidates who appeal to those in the middle.

Take the current presidential candidates as an example. In chasing the nomination, both Obama and McCain fought hard for those in their party who they knew would go out and vote for them and for the most part, that happens to be hard core Democrats and hard core Republicans. Of course now that they’re the nominees, they’re both repositioning themselves a bit more towards the center but that’s because it’s only now that more moderate voters come into play.

The point I’m trying to get at is that if you’re not seeing candidates that appeal to you, maybe it’s because they don’t think you’d turn out to vote for them even if they were to run.

I suppose, this is a chicken-egg conundrum. Are more moderate, more representative candidates not running because they don’t think the votes are there to support them? Or are we not voting for them because they’re not running?

And while the blame for this situation goes to both those who don’t run as well as to those who don’t vote for them (those who don’t vote at all), I put more of the blame on the non-voters; it takes thousands (if not millions) of dollars to put on a campaign; it also takes hundreds of long hours of hard, sweaty work; it takes putting one’s self out there in the most vulnerable way possible. In contrast, it only takes a few minutes to vote and it doesn’t cost a dime. So I don’t blame potential politicians for not running for voters who aren’t there because the costs for them are very high. I blame those who don’t vote because the costs are very, very low.

So again, I make the argument that every vote counts, even if that vote is cast for someone who doesn’t make it into office.

Which leads me to that last objection: "I don’t know who to vote for."

And here is perhaps my most dangerous assertion.

I think everyone should vote (especially, selfishly, those of my age group) if for no other reason than we need to get our voting statistics up if we ever hope to have our voice heard in D.C. (or in our local policies). And if you don’t know who to vote for, let me make this suggestion. Vote for the third party candidate.

For example, in the presidential election, you could vote for Ralph Nader. . In the 2004 election, 99 percent of the votes went to either George W. Bush or John Kerry. The remaining one percent was split between about seven third-party candidates.

If you want to vote but don’t know who to vote for and don’t want to risk voting for someone who might actually end up in office, try voting for someone on the ballot you’ve heard absolutely nothing about.

This way, the fact that you voted will "count" in the sense that it will be added to the tally for whatever demographic you represent. It will also have the added benefit of giving more credibility to third-party candidates which may (finally) break the two party monopoly in place today and make room for more new ideas.

In closing, I've always said that if you don't vote, you don't get to complain. If you don't like the way things are going in this country then vote. If you don't care a bit about politics, get out there and vote - casting a vote will pique your interest in the process if for no other reason than to see if your candidate made it in. And on a more personal note, if you've never voted before, it's kind of a rush. You're participating, you're out there at the polling spot with your fellow citizens. I can't speak for anyone else, but when I vote I feel more connected with and proud to be living in the United States of America.

There’s still time to register and participate in the historic 2008 elections. But don't delay.

Register now at www.declareyourself.com.

306. spoons and tanks and Bjork

2008-08-17T21:51:00.007-07:00

Maybe you’ve heard that story about how the difference between heaven and hell is the way they use their spoons. There are various versions of this story but the basic idea goes like this:

Some guy was given a pass to see into hell and heaven. In his peek into hell, he saw a large round table with a huge, steaming bowl of delicious soup in the middle. All around this table, there were people writhing in the throes of starvation because they had long spoons tied to their arms. The spoons were more than long enough to get to the soup but because of their length and the fact that they were strapped to their arms, they were unable to get any of the soup into their mouths.

So then he gets to peek into heaven and there he sees the identical setup - large round table, big bowl of soup, people with long spoons tied to their arms. But this time, the people were healthy and laughing and having a grand old time.

The guy turns to his guide and asks, "the two visions are the same but why are the people so much healthier and happier in heaven?" The guide replies, "in heaven, the people have learned to feed one another."

I don’t know, I think it’s a cute story. And I’ll admit that it made an impression on me when I first heard it many, many years ago.

But.

But I have to admit that there are times when I wonder when someone will get around to passing a spoon in my direction.

Because for a long time now I feel as if I’ve been doing my best to feed others - to help and to bless in whatever ways I can whenever, wherever I can - but to be honest, there have been many times lately when I feel as if I’ve been running out of empty myself.

A bit of clarification before I go on. I’m nowhere near as empty and broken as I was back in March when I wrote that "running out of empty" post. Big difference between then and now is that I’m not spending all my free time on my band’s CD or trying to plan a speed dating fundraiser. Back then I had zero free time - no time to myself, no time to recharge - it was just go, go, go.

Now? Well, now I actually have the luxury to decide what I want to do with most of my evenings. I’ve started running and biking again (I sold my old bike and bought a used Felt F70).

And so it’s not nearly the same kind of soul-crushing empty of the first half of the year.

But still, empty is empty and frankly, I’ve been somewhat at a loss to know how to replenish myself.

But maybe that’s part of the problem. Maybe "replenish myself" is a contradiction.

Which brings me back to that story about the spoons. I’ve been passing more than my fair share of soup to those around me but it seems to me that there aren’t a lot of spoonfuls coming back my way.

But here’s something I’ve learned about myself recently. I’m not very good at expressing need...because I’m not sure what I need. I’m not an easy person to buy presents for because I don’t know what I want. I’m not an easy person to cheer up because I don’t know what makes me happy.

And I’m very bad at standing up for myself so for the most part, I just don’t.

Ninety-five percent of the time, none of this is a problem because I spend most of my time trying to bless those around me - because if there is something that helps me to feel as if my life has meaning, it’s helping others.

But then what happens when it turns out that I’m the one that needs some help? I don’t know how to ask because I don’t know what I need or what I want.

It’s kind of like this:

There was a repairman who was great at fixing cars. He didn’t have formal training, he just kind of had a knack for it. He wasn’t in business as a repairman, he just made himself available to those around him. Often, when a repair called for a tool that he didn’t have, he’d go out and purchase it for himself. If he came across a repair he didn’t know how to perform, he’d read up on it and learn. He never asked for anything in return for his repairs - the joy of seeing his friends back on the road with functioning vehicles was reward enough.

But then one morning he got into his own car and turned the key but it wouldn’t start. And he couldn’t figure out what was wrong. He thought about calling on his friends to help but he knew that if he couldn’t figure out what was wrong with his own car, there was very little chance his friends would know what to do. Besides, even if he did call on them, he wouldn’t be able to tell them what was wrong because he himself didn’t know.

So who does the repairman call when he finds himself in disrepair? When he himself doesn’t know what’s wrong.

Of course he could pay to get professional help but that doesn’t seem fair does it? He doles out all this work for free but when he’s the one in need he has to pay?

See, helping other people, being there for friends, doing my best to help where I know how - that’s what I do, that’s what I enjoy doing.

But now that I’m the one who’s a bit broken, a bit empty, a bit not myself - I don’t know who to turn to and even if I did, I don’t know that I’d be able to adequately describe what was wrong.

Even here and now as I write...I love writing because often the process of putting something I’m wrestling with to words helps me get a handle on the problem. Often, insight will come to me as the sentences string themselves together and I end up surprised at the conclusions they lead me to.

But not this time.

I do have an outside thought as to what the problem might be but one of the problems with the conjecture is that even if it actually was what was bothering me, there’s no immediate remedy.

But it’s all I have so I’ll run with it.

There’s a book that I don’t particularly care for because I think the writing is weak and the example it cites are lame. It’s called The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. I think most people are familiar with the basic premise of the book - that there are five different ways (languages) that people give and receive love. If two people are speaking different languages (or even different "dialects" of the same language), then one or the other will feel unloved.

Well one of the other devices Chapman uses is the concept of a love tank. The idea is that people have this invisible love tank inside of them (tank as in vessel, not instrument of war). When they get "spoken to" in their language of love, their tank gets filled up and when their tank is full, it’s easier for them to be loving towards others. But if a person is constantly extending love but not getting their own tank filled, they will eventually run out and when that happens, all hell breaks loose - instead of feeding those around them with soup, they start bashing people on the head with their arm-spoons.

When I’m around some of my friends, I don’t quite feel myself. I’m more snarky and snappy than usual. I’m less likely to go out of my way to go the extra mile. I mean I do what’s required of me but lately I’ve been finding it hard to do anything more than that. And that’s not like me. And I don’t like me not being me.

And I’m wondering if it’s because my love tank is (out of) empty.

But what’s there to do about that?

Lately I’ve been trying to do more praying.

Prayer has never been easy for me. I mean, as a rather introverted person, it’s hard to do all the initiating in what feels a lot like a one way "conversation." (As an aside, there’s a part of me that’s not convinced that the word "conversation" is a good way to describe prayer, but it’s common enough that I have to wonder if I’m wrong.) But I’ve been trying.

The first couple weeks were the worst. My prayers were nothing but angry rants at God. I allowed myself to express some pretty raw frustrations to God in ways that aren’t very spiritually correct. But then I got over it a bit and while the frustrations were still there, I was able to pray about them in a more reasonable, less vitriolic way. And now I’m to the point where I’m more or less done ranting and am trying instead to pray for a way forward.

Basically, my prayer lately has been, "Lord, teach me how to love and how to be loved." And as I pray that, I mean it in two ways. I want to know how to love and be loved by those around me AND I want to know how to love and be loved by God. And if I could have my own way I’d want to know the latter before the former...but I’ll take them in any order God deems appropriate.

Funny thing.

Maybe this is answered prayer, maybe it’s coincidence, but about a week after I started praying this "teach me about love" prayer, I heard this amazing song thrown into the closing worship set at church. And then I heard it again a few nights ago which I find strange because it’s not a super popular song. But it speaks directly to what I’ve been feeling lately and so I’ll end this post with this song by Bjork. It’s called All Is Full Of Love and...oh shit! I just (now) saw the video for the song and the video shows a robot being repaired!

Anyway, here’s the video and the lyrics.

All Is Full of Love
Bjork

You’ll be given love
You’ll be taken care of
You’ll be given love
You have to trusts it

Maybe not from the sources
You have poured yours
Maybe not from the directions
You are staring at

Twist your head around
It’s all around you

All is full of love
All around you

All is full of love
You just ain’t receiving
All is full of love
Your phone is off the hook
All is full of love
Your doors are shut
All is full of love

305. another "christian" tagged...

2008-08-14T06:56:00.004-07:00

A few months ago, I created a new tag for my blog called Christians (see entry 303). The basic idea is this: I’m becoming more and more convinced that the work of Christianity has as much to do with redeeming the world - building the Kingdom of God here and now - than it does with getting people to pray a salvation prayer or understanding a set of spiritual laws. And so when I find a link that illustrates the kind of work that christians should be doing, I’m going to post it up and label it as “christian” whether the person featured is a christian or not.

Yeah, it’s a thorny move but...well, maybe more on this in another post.

And with that I bring you William McDonough who has an amazing vision for sustainable architecture and urban design. Genius.

(If the embedded video below doesn’t work, try clicking here.)

304. where did July go?

2008-08-04T21:18:00.001-07:00

I honestly can’t believe a month has gone by without me posting anything.

I mean I knew I was behind but I had no idea I was that far behind.

Sorry about that.

First some news to catch you all up:

1. I’m done mixing the new CD for my band, Harrison. I don’t mean to say that the CD is finished, I mean I’m done with it as in I’m sick and tired of working on it and so it’ll have to be just what it is. I’ll have more to say on this further down.

2. Uh...that’s kind of it.

I thought there was more to it than that but really, I think that’s really the only big news in my life right now.

And I guess it is kind of a big deal, I mean this project basically took up a whole six or seven months of my life.

But.

But unfortunately, I’m not really happy with the way it sounds. For lots of reasons.

For one thing, I don’t think working on a mix for a few hours every night after work is a very good way to mix. A lot of times I’d be in the studio after work and the way I would know it was time to quit, go home, and sleep was when I’d snap awake after dozing off (again) and realize I had no idea where I had last left off. I mean I was dozing off all the time at the studio because I was seriously sleep depraved but most of the time when I awoke I could remember what I had been working on and so could continue but when it came to the point where I’d wake and have no idea what I was doing - that was my cue to save for the night and go home.

In the end, I just got sick and tired of working on the damn CD. I know it could sound better. But I got to the point where I was no longer willing to sacrifice all my free time for it. And so I finished off what I could the best I could and basically said that’s that. There were a few more minor tweaks I took care of after the band listened to it but those were minor and relatively easy.

And so now I’m done with it.

And on the one hand I’m glad to be rid of the damned CD because I finally, FINALLY have some time to myself again.

But on the other hand, to have worked so long and hard on something that I’m not happy with - well, that sucks to a degree that I just don’t know how to express with mere words.

It feels stupid.

It feels like this: Imagine working on a huge, tedious, very detail oriented project. Maybe like building a house by one’s self. You spend all this time hammering away at little pieces - a little bit here and a little bit there, whatever you can do in whatever time you have. Day by day it’s one nail and one piece of wood at a time. You’re there on your knees working on this bit then working on that bit.

Finally you get to the point where you can stand back and see your work as a whole. You walk across the street and see the house as a whole for the first time and then realize something is amiss. It’s not quite square. It’s not something you can put your finger on but it’s just off. Not so off that you can’t see that its a house, but off enough that you know it’s not right.

And at this point, you don’t know how to fix it apart from tearing it all down and starting again from scratch. But there’s no way you’re going to do that and so you just say, "screw it," and declare the job done. It was a helluva lot of work but not something you feel you can be proud of.

That’s how this CD feels to me.

And it sucks.

When it came time to write the liner notes for the CD jacket, I didn’t list myself as the person who did the recording. I just wrote, "mixed and recorded by Harrison."

It’s pretty disheartening to say the least.

But it’s done...or at least, I’m done with it.

If I try to be reasonable, I’d say that it’s not awful. I mean, it sounds better than our first CD...but here’s the thing. I wasn’t shooting for "not awful." Whether it’s realistic or not, I was shooting for major label, big studio sound. I had a list of a few songs that had a kind of sound I was shooting for - songs I’d reference while mixing to make sure I was on the right track but somewhere along the line I missed a turn or something. At first I felt like I was getting closer and closer to that professional sound but at some point it was like everything I was trying was making the mix worse...well, not specifically worse, but at the same time, not closer to the sound I was shooting for.

But I’d already given up more than six months to this project and while I’m pretty sure I could have done a better job, I just didn’t have it in me. I was sick of working on it.

And so basically I gave up.

Anyway, we’re almost done with the graphics and the CD should be out by August or September at the latest. We’re also going to try and get it up on iTunes and a couple other on-line retailers. If you want a preview you can head over to our MySpace site.

In closing, don’t worry about me. I’ll get over the CD and my disappointment with it.

Part of my not blogging for over a month has to do with me sort of decompressing from all the work I put into the CD. I feel like I’ve been motoring away at 110 percent for over half a year and so I’m kind of taking a break. I’m going to try and take on as little extra responsibility as possible for the month of August, especially when it comes to the band. I feel bad about this because I have some big ideas on how to really make this last year and a half with the band a productive one. The music industry is in flux and I believe there are tons of never before seen opportunities for bands to blow up HUGE. Of course the only way to capitalize on never-before-seen opportunities is to try never-been-tried-before tactics and I have a few ideas tucked away in the back of my mind - promotional ideas that I’m dying to try out.

But not yet.

I need to get this damn CD out of my system. And so those plans will have to wait...you know, one way I’m going to know that I’m over the CD is when I stop referring to it as the "damn CD."

But blogging, that’s not part of this rest period. To the contrary, I actually feel a little better about the CD having written about it here.

That’s what writing does for me and I’m glad to be back at it.

Anyway, take a listen and (try to) enjoy.

Thanks for your patience.

303. new tag: christians

2008-06-26T18:18:00.003-07:00

I have a crazy idea.

It's probably wrong.

But such is life, no?

So I'm going to put it out there anyway.

I don't know if you've noticed, but my blog has a tagging feature where posts related to a similar topic are sort of grouped together. I'm not as good as some other bloggers are with tagging my posts but I do what I can.

I'm going to start a new tag, and I'm going to call it, "christians."

Whenever I run across an article or podcast or video online that I can share, I'm going to put a link up to it on my blog and tag it with this "christian" tag.

Here's the thing.

The people whose articles I'm linking to - they might not actually be christians. I mean, they might be, but I'm not going to check. But I'm going to tag them as such anyway.

Here's why.

(And here's where I'm probably wrong, but I hope you'll see my point.)

I believe that living a life that exhibits the values and teachings of Christ is far more important than praying some so-called salvation prayer or claiming to grasp four "spiritual laws," or following the Roman Road - if such a road was so important, why is it strewn about the Bible so?¹

And so when I find someone who is living in a Christ-like manner, I'm going to post them up and tag them as a christian whether they claim to be one or not.

Why?

Because I'm tired of christians who think that because they jumped through some evangelical hoops that they are somehow better and above those who didn't jump through those same hoops. I'm tired of christians who think that the hoops are the point and that once they're through that their only remaining task is to wait for death or the second coming.

Because I believe that among the primary tasks of christians who claim to follow Christ are these: reconciliation, healing and being a conduit of peace, joy, and love in a dark, dark world. I think anyone who tries to accomplish Christ-like tasks such as those are far more christian than those who just pray a prayer and feel content to leave the world as it is.

And so, here are the first two people who I am tagging as christians. And after listening and watching, let me know. What do you think. Are these christians? If they didn't claim to follow Christ, what would you call them?

Listen to this amazing story about Hal Halvorsen, aka Uncle Wiggly Wings. (Click on the "Listen Now" link just under the title of the story).

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91906449

And then watch this amazing presentation by Benjamin Zander - a man who wants to bring beauty into people's lives through art - classical music to be precise...but DO NOT let that stop you from watching his presentation - you won't regret it!

(if the embedded video doesn't work, try clicking here

¹ Now don't get me wrong, I do believe in orthodoxy and I don't mean to make light of tools that have been useful in leading people to Christ, but just as I wrote in my last post about how the stuff of the church can get in the way of what the church is supposed to be, I think sometimes the stuff we teach can get in the way of how we're supposed to live.

302. what if. . .

2008-06-20T11:56:00.002-07:00

A good friend of mine, still back in Hawaii, wrote an amazing blog entry a few weeks ago.

Funny story about him before I get to his post. I first met him in England of all places - in a little town down south called Okehampton. I was in England with a band I used to be in called Apartment 3 (they're now called Sunday Morning Chaos). So we're playing the first of two shows that we had up there (long story) and after our first song we turn to the crowd and say something like, "hey, we're from Hawaii. Anybody else out there from Hawaii?"

At the back of the crowd, one hand went up.

That's how I met Blake.

Turns out he had been backpacking and skateboarding around Europe. Somehow he heard something about some band from Hawaii playing somewhere in England so he jumps on the Chunnel and finds his way to Okehampton. Turns out he got to the town too late to get into the local hostel so he had spent the night before sleeping on a street bench.

Blake is cool like that - he's indestructible.

He's also a Christian who's with it and on it and understands that following Christ isn't about becoming the big man in church or about knowing the chords to the latest hot, hip worship song or about pasting little fishies on bumpers.

He's the guy whose idea it was to start up the house church I attended before moving to Seattle.

He's also a kick ass writer, which brings me, finally, to the entry he posted a few weeks ago.

A New Way

What if we as Christians tore down every single church building, 
had no worship team, 
no microphone for a witty, dynamic message,
 and no place to fellowship?

 Where would we praise?
 How would we worship? 
Where would we hear the Word of God?
 And where would we be safe to fellowship?

  Would we find that praise resonates in the depths of our hearts and share all the good things that God has done?
 Would we find that worship is a state of mind and a life devoted to God? 
Would we start going to the Word ourselves and allow the Holy spirit to bring revelation into our very own lives?
 And would we realize that we were never meant to be safe? That we were never meant to be separated from the world?
 That life is harsh and love is raw and gets dirty.

  If we tore it all down there would be no walls, no division between us and them. 
There would be no church names, just names of people. 
There would be no ministry teams, but we would find that ministry lies all around us.
 There would be no paid positions, only those willing to serve.
 We would no longer ask, "Why are they not coming to church for hope, love and truth?" because we would be bringing truth, hope and love into every aspect of life in a real and tangible way.

  What if we realized that God never wanted us to go to church, but that church is the "Body of Christ" and the "Body of Christ" are the people who follow the Lord? 
Church would no longer be a place we go to once a week, but rather, a NEW way of life.

I had two reactions to his post. First off, I knew exactly where he was coming from. He's had to deal with a lot of church politics bullshit in the past - really stupid things like not giving him support to go on a mission trip to Indonesia (or was it New Orleans?) after the hurricane because church leaders thought he didn't put enough of the folding chairs away after service, nevermind the fact that he wasn't putting away chairs because he was busy going out of his way to meet newcomers and people who he knew were hurting. This myopic, missing the point completely way of doing church is still all too common in Hawaii (the emergent thing hasn't really hit the islands yet...not that that's the barometer for authentic church life). Far too many churches think that the church is the walls and the chairs and sound system.

GONG!

As Blake's post makes clear, far too often the physical, material stuff of the church turns out to be a hinderance because people start equating the stuff of the church with the church itself. Maybe this is part of the reason why Christianity is often vibrant and passionate in places where the church cannot meet in public. Because in places like that, the church isn't seen as a safe place to hide from the world...because there is nowhere to hide. They don't have to come up with ministry plans to reach non-Christians because they're out there with non-Christians every hour of the day.

But.

But I had a second response to his post. There was a time when I would have been right there with Blake, tearing down the walls, but instead I found myself defending the church. In the comments section of his blog, I wrote:

I know where you're coming from and I mostly agree but there is a place for place. Tradition, while sometimes a burden, also keeps us from going off the deep end - keeps us connected with those who have come before us, who have built these walls with blood and tears and love.

  I don't believe we need to burn everything down and start anew. We leave what doesn't work for us behind and blaze new trails. Some will follow, some will remain. God will use us all.

And at first it surprised me that I would respond by supporting the church. And then I realized that I wasn't the same angry, frustrated Christian I used to be. And in large part, this change has to do with Quest, the church I attend here in Seattle, as well as the C-Group (Bible study) I attend.

Quest church, the leadership as well as many of the congregants, are all about living out Christianity in such a way that it's not only about building up the church building but about redeeming the world at large. There are lots of people who serve part or full time at non-profits and lots of people who donate money to these organizations. And then there's my pastor who's going to be starting up his own non-profit soon.

One of the really unique things about the non-profit that he's setting up is that it's a non-religious non-profit (see point one of this post). Why? I'll let him speak for himself:

[My wife] Minhee and I love Christ. I am a pastor. But this will not be a Christian organization. While we know we’ll partner and support many Christian organizations, the fight against global poverty is not just a Christian issue - it is a humanity issue. We care about preaching the gospel but we care equally if not more about demonstrating the gospel. We don’t care who you are. If you care about human suffering and are involved in the fight against global poverty, we want to collaborate with you.

Unfortunately he's gotten flack for this from some other pastors. They say they can't support his organization because it's not a Christian organization. I don't know which churches have said that, but I suspect that they're probably very similar to the churches that Blake and I were frustrated with back in Hawaii - churches that are missing the point of Jesus and the Gospel.

The way I see it, an organization that is run by Christians with Christian principles behind it IS a Christian organization. Period.

This non-profit organization that my pastor is setting up is just one example among many of the amazing, world-changing things that people at my church are a part of. I feel honored, privileged, and blessed to be there.

And that's why I surprisingly found myself defending the church in response to Blake's post.

And so I'll leave you all with this. For those Christians out there who think that the church in America has completely lost its way, please know that there are churches who are about far more than just growing their weekly attendance and retention rates or raising their weekly giving numbers. There are lots of churches like Quest who are grass-roots and hands on both in the community where they meet as well as in areas around the world in need of support; churches that understand that Christianity is not about waiting to go to heaven or waiting for the second coming but about bringing a bit of heaven to where we are here and now as well as living now the way we will after the return of Christ.

You are not alone.

PS. keep writing, Blake!

301. go speed dater, go!

2008-06-15T11:06:00.004-07:00

One mention of the word "date" and all my friends back in Hawaii start flipping out. On the MySpace version of my blog, I got a bunch (translation: four) of comments asking about the speed-dating event I mentioned in a previous post. And so partly for them, because they make up the first and often most loyal of my readers, and partly just for myself because it was a fun event that raises some interesting issues for me, I'll restart my writing with this event.

First things first, the event came about because of a brilliant move by my pastor. He started out the year challenging the various Community Groups (aka C-Groups, aka cell group Bible studies) to be a blessing to the neighborhoods where we met or to bless a local charity. But he did more than just issue this challenge. He put money behind it and called it the Good Neighbor Fund. Basically, the church gave every C-Group $200 and instructed them to use this money to bless those around them.

The members of our C-Group put forward some ideas which were voted upon and short story shorter, we chose to use the $200 as seed money to put on a fundraiser. But not just any fundraiser - a speed-dating fundraiser!

I advocated for this option for a variety of reasons. It was meant to be a inter-church speed-dating event and getting the Body of Christ to interact has been a passion of mine for a while now. Also, I liked the fact that instead of just putting the $200 into a smoking BBQ and inviting the neighbors over or donating it straight into a charity, we were investing it, growing it, multiplying it. And of course I thought about the ever-present fact of my singleness and the fact that this event offered me an end run around my normal laziness and lack of assertiveness when it comes to dating.

Maybe it's because I advocated for this idea but somehow I got picked to be a part of the team that would try to put on this event. There were seven of us: the planning team, alternatively referred to as the Cupid Crew or the Hook Up Crew. Despite the enormity of the undertaking, we refused to let the fact that none of us had ever participated in a speed-dating event (never mind trying to plan one) stop us. To make up for this lack of first-hand knowledge, we scoured the internet, we brainstormed like mad, we grilled friends we knew who had done speed-dating before.

I mention this because I want to make it a point to say that the people I worked with to put this event on are some of the sharpest, most dedicated, not afraid to lay down the law people I ever had the pleasure of working with. Seriously, I've been a part of lots of different teams for all kinds of events but the Cupid Crew was by far the most well-oiled, well-rounded (and prettiest...you too Dar) team I've ever been a part of.

But none of this is really what you're interested in is it?

You just want to hear about the speed-dating don't ya?

(If you 're interested in the mechanics of the event, you can read about it on our wiki.)

So I got to meet 15 delightful women in the span of about two hours (more "dates" than I've had in the past five years...damn, that's sad). Each speed date lasted about 3 minutes (it's not called speed-dating for nothing). In the days preceding the event I spent some time thinking about how to best use that 3mins. I thought that I would have to be efficient, that I would have to cut to the chase without scaring the other person off. I had to come up with a question that would tell me a lot about whether I'd want to spend more time with the other person in the minimum amount of time. And this is what I came up with:

"So hypothetically, if someone were to tell you that they wanted to change the world, what would you think about that person or that statement?"

That's it.

I mean, of course I made some small talk, but I always did my best to squeeze this question in somehow. Sometimes rather inelegantly. And the responses were interesting. They ranged from, "that's impossible," to "that's great but [insert various caveats here]," to "I think that's, like, so awesome...puppies and kittens are so cute" (just kidding about that last one, all of the participants were great).

Why'd I choose that question? Well, I don't know if I've ever come right out and said it but I have a secret deep down inside of me. I normally don't talk about this secret for many of the same reasons why asking that hypothetical dating question was an odd choice. But I'm going to share it with you all here and now. Don't tell anyone, okay? I want to change the world - make it a better place, a place more like Eden and less like Babylon. (So I guess in addition to the already long list of things I'm looking for in a life partner - see here and here - I can add "someone who wants to change the world.")

And that's a pretty audacious thing to say, I know (the delusions-of-grandeur response immediately comes to mind), but I believe in it. And I'm going to go for it. Soon. (Yeah, I see you snickering and dissing me but I don't care.) And if I'm going to have a girlfriend who's eventually going to be my wife, she's going to have to be on board for this crazy idea of mine (I don't know how I'm going to change the world yet but I'm working on it). And so asking that question made it easy for me to weed out those who I could see would not be suitable partners in chasing my change-the-world ideas.

Well, maybe it's because of my question, maybe it's because I had something stuck in my teeth, maybe it's because I forgot my mojo at home, but I didn't end up getting any matches from the event. We did find out from the secret match-making team (aka "The Triad," their identities kept hidden to preserve the sanctity of the hooking up process) that everyone (including me) got put on someone's list but not everyone had mutual matches. See what happened at the end of the night was, everyone submitted a list of up to five people who they met that they would be interested in meeting again. The Triad took everyone's list and if two people put the other's name on their list, they would be sent email addresses and the rest was up to them. So in other words, my name appeared on at least one other person's list but I didn't put that person down on mine so no match for me.

Honestly, I was a bit relieved when I got the news that I hadn't been matched. I mean don't get me wrong, I met some really great women but even with the ones whose names I submitted, they weren't really what I was looking for.

Despite not ending up with any dates, on a larger level, the event was a huge success. We ended up getting:

92 total applicants

30 churches represented among those applicants

58 participants in the event itself

32 matches made

and we raised just over $1000 after expenses

when the idea of the GNF was first presented, the guy who leads our C-group said that if we chose to do any kind of fundraising event, he would match whatever amount we raised. At first he was giddy at the success of our event but when we told him how much we raised, he turned a rather ill shade of green. Maybe we need to do another fundraiser for him.
so if he comes through with his matching promise (and I have no doubt he will, he can handle it) we'll have raised over $2000. Not a bad return on a $200 investment.
funds will be split evenly between two excellent local non-profit organizations.

We also ended up getting some really nice compliments from those who participated. And we also heard it through the grapevine that a couple other churches are thinking about holding similar speed-dating fundraisers (as an aside, one of the neat tricks about tucking a speed-dating event inside a fundraiser is that it makes participants more likely to...well...participate because they don't have to feel strange and awkward for signing up for a matchmaking event - they can tell themselves (and other people) they're doing it to raise money for a good cause).

So there it is. The speed-dating event. I have other things I want to say about the state of dating and relationships in my life but that will have to wait for another post (I wanted to keep this one on the positive tip). For those who commented asking about the event, I hope this satiates your voyeuristic curiosity. If not, drop me some questions in the comments section and I'll do my best to respond.

300. great googly moogly

2008-06-09T11:48:00.003-07:00

So I'm sure you'll be hearing tons of news stories about this in the next few days but at the latest Apple World Wide Developers's Conference, Steve Jobs highlighted a TON of new features for the next-gen iPhone.

I've never been one to get all mushy and soft when new cell phones came out. I'll admit that I did consider purchasing the first generation iPhone when it first came out but 1) budgetary restrictions and 2) the fact that I've been with Verizon since I started using a cell phone, kept me from making the switch.

But...

This new version is making me weepy with envy and lust and want.

In particular:

1. built-in GPS
2. 3G internet connectivity
3. new design with a flush headphone jack
4. tons of amazing new 3rd party apps
5. (this one isn't iPhone specific but it's so amazing, I have to mention it) MobileMe - a way to instantly sync all my data between my phone and my laptop and my desktop. It's an additional $99 per year to subscribe (it's basically an upgrade to what used to be called .mac) but I'm game, baller!

And...

My economic stimulus check is still in the mail (hurry up, Uncle Sam!) AND I just got a raise at work.

Plus...

Apple lowered the price of the new iPhone to $199!

And...

While Verizon has been nice to me, and I've never really had a problem with their service, their phones are butt fugly. Particularly their smart(ish) phones.

So when the latest, greatest iPhone hits the shelves sometime next month, there's a pretty good chance I'll be in line to pick one up.

Bye, bye, Verizon.

299. silent all these months

2008-06-02T21:32:00.000-07:00

Where have I been?

Two big items on my relatively small plate have left no room for blogging these past few months.

1. My band's new CD.

2. And a Speed-dating fundraiser that I helped plan and put together (and participated in).

Although most of the really hard work for both those projects is done, there's still a bit of work left to be done before I can completely sign off on them and put them behind me.

In addition to these large items, there have been a bunch of smaller things that have also been taking up my energy and my time.

a. About a month ago I put together a training seminar for people interested in learning about how to run sound at my church.

b. In addition to putting on this training seminar, I've been a part of a Worship Advisory Council (yeah, we're the whack) that has been trying to wrestle with questions regarding how we help facilitate worship on Sundays.

Hmm...you know, written out like that, that doesn't seem like much but please believe me when I say that writing is one of the things that I love to do most in life. It makes me feel special, it makes me feel whole, it makes me feel as if I'm truly using the gifts God has given me to make this world a better place - a world more like Eden and less like Babylon. Those four things (and a few others) have kept me from this thing I love - writing - and to you, my readers, I apologize.

But I'm back.

Very soon, I'll have the time once again to spill my guts, to rant and rave, to posit and to ponder.

I've got lots of things I want to say about what I've learned about myself these past few months, about what I've been thinking about the Body of Christ, about...well, you know this blog, I'm always writing about whatever random thing is at the front of my mind at the time.

Here's one thing I've been thinking about lately: if I have a limited readership it's because I don't follow any of the blogging "rules." I don't stick to one topic. I don't post consistently enough. I don't update my blogroll enough. I'm too silly and sloppy to be taken seriously by the really brainy part of the blogosphere and I'm too psuedo-intellectual for the casually surfing crowd. I don't post often enough and when I do, I write too much.

Anyway, thanks for being patient (if you're still out there).

More to come...very soon.

298 i robot?

2008-04-09T08:02:00.001-07:00

I've acquired the nickname "Randor2000" up here in Seattle. Miles (guitar player for my band) came up with the name and he says it's because of my geeky, sometimes robot-like qualities...I, uh think that's a compliment.

Anyway, I mention that because around church and at Bible studies I've occasionally been telling people that I'm really looking forward to seeing the upcoming Pixar movie, WALL-E, and when I mentioned it, a lot of people didn't know what I was talking about.

Well recently some of the people from my Bible study took a trip up to Vancouver for a mini-vacatiion. While there, the commercial for WALL-E came on the television and I pointed it out saying, "that's the movie I want to see." And one person responded, "oh, it's about a robot - no wonder you want to see it."

Until that point, I hadn't made that connection, which makes me wonder how much of a robot I actually am.

Computing...computing...computing

Anyway, click here to see the trailers. I highly recommend the Vacuum Vignette - the way the Pixar folks are able to convey emotion and narrative through sounds and subtle mechanical movements (note the way they use WALL-E's "eye brows" and the way WALL-E tilts his head and "squints" his eyes as it makes its exit) is sheer genius.

That little short and all the trailers never fail to put a smile on my face....dear Lord, maybe I am a robot!

297. cultivating "pearls"

2008-04-06T10:28:00.001-07:00

So my pastor has a really cool blog which he calls beauty and depravity. This week, as a kind of joke, he put the following exchange between himself and a Quest single woman (QSW) up on his blog:

QSW: What do you call a cute guy at Quest?

Pastor: Huh? Okay...what?

QSW: A visitor...

Pastor: [laughing] That's cold.

And I thought it was hilarious and so did some other people. But then something interesting happened. In the comments section, his innocent post touched off a flurry of discussion centered loosely around the topic of dating. It didn't take long for another QSW (not the one that told the "cute guy" joke) to put up her own blog entry in response which then got referenced in yet another post back on my pastor's blog which also garnered a ton of comments.

It's been quite an interesting and entertaining couple of days in the Quest blogosphere.

And since the topic is dating and relationships and church...well, of course I have to throw my hat in the ring.

Thing is, most of the comments (left by men and women) basically made the point that men should man up, grow some balls, and start asking out some of the amazing single women who call Quest their church home. And for the most part, they're right.

But.

But for some guys it's not that simple.

Take, oh...let's say, me as an example.

In the last few years of high school and the first few years of college, I was involved in a para-church organization that took a pretty hard line stance when it came to dating. Basically, their message was, "don't date because you can't control your emotions and your hormones. If you start dating now you're inevitably going to do something stupid like having unprotected sex (because we're certainly not going to teach you anything about contraception) and you'll probably get your girlfriend pregnant. You're going to stop going to church and fall away from Christ because you're too busy to go with your two minimum wage jobs (the only jobs you could get because you didn't finish high school/college) and so your kid will grow up outside a nice christian home and he/she will hang out with the wrong crowd and start taking drugs which will lead to him/her stealing items from your home which they will pawn off to support their habit. In the end, you'll die a miserable old man who never got to accomplish anything meaningful in life. All because you started dating before you were old enough to handle it."

You think I'm joking about this? Well, yeah, I'm exaggerating a bit but honestly, not by much. During camps and retreats, they'd often have a segment where they'd separate the guys from the girls and they'd give THE TALK, not entirely unlike what I wrote above. And they did more than talk. If a dating couple made the mistake of attending one of these camps, the counselors would do everything they could think of to try to break them up through the course of the retreat. They'd make sure the one couldn't see the other during free time. At every opportunity, the women counselors would talk to the girl and the male counselors would talk to the guy, explaining in no uncertain terms why they were too young and unprepared to be in a relationship. Their tactics were quite effective. Lots of couples either left halfway through camp, unwilling to put up with the bullying tactics, or left camp no longer dating.

Now you might be thinking, that's so screwed up - why did you put up with that kind of teaching? Why did you stay with that group?

Well, yeah, looking back now I can see how screwed up that all was, but at the time I didn't know any better. I mean I wasn't learning about dating and relationships at home. I love my parents and all but I never saw them modeling any kind of healthy interaction, let alone intimacy (despite the eww factor). And back in the day, I wasn't one of the cool, with-it kids. I was one of the nerds back when being a nerd was still a bad thing. No one in my circle of friends knew anything about how to get dates let alone what to say or do if we somehow went on one. So when I started going to these camps and hanging out with these smart, hip christian leaders who talked about how great their marriages were, why wouldn't I listen to what they had to say?

And here's another thing. Despite the fact that I now see that their views on dating were fracked up (I've been watching BSG oh hulu), they really did have some solid teaching and discipleship. I learned a lot from them and I might not be the christian I am today were it not for some of the values they instilled in me. I mention this because their being on point in most areas of christianity made it that much harder for me to dismiss their take on dating even if it seemed a bit odd to me.

Now at the same time, as I was growing up, men were being mocked and ridiculed on television, in movies, and certainly in the stand-up comedy routines of female comedians. Take a movie like When Harry Met Sally. Billy Crystal's character is basically a jerk. Not just that, he gives Sally (Meg Ryan) multiple lectures on how men are pigs who only have one thing on their mind when they're around women.

Or take a look at this bit from a song by Jimmy Webb titled, What Does A Woman See In A Man which ends with this bit:

And yet, dreaming of orgies in Vegas or Cannes
He preens and strikes poses Olympian
While she shoulders the cross
And lets him play boss
His nurse and long-suffering Samaritan

He brags about knocking the world on its ass
But oh when the shit hits the fan
She'll bail him out
She's the one with the clout
Only she knows how humankind ever began

Tell me what does a woman see in a man?

(complete lyrics here)

The song came out in the early nineties but in its own hyperbolic way, it kind of captures the man-bad-woman-good vibe that kind of emerged out of the eighties.

I'm sure there are much better examples of what I'm trying to get across which is the idea that I grew up in a time when the habits and attitudes of men were belittled in the media. Oh, and I just remembered a quote from a movie called Mindwalk that went something like, "you men have been in charge for so long and look at what a mess you've made of things. Maybe it's time for women to take the lead."

And one last item before I (finally) get to the point I'm trying to get across.

I suppose I just have the worst luck when it comes to women because despite all the dysfunctional instruction I received, I did manage to start sort of seeing this girl while I was in college. And it was stupendous, thrilling, bountiful and beautiful. It's like we were best friends from the start - we had similar interests, we finished each other's sentences. We felt instantly at ease around the other and found ourselves sharing things even our best friends didn't know.

But.

But we were just friends and when I suggested maybe we be a bit more than friends, she freaked out. She said I was betraying our friendship and she couldn't believe I would want to ruin something so special.

Now let me be clear here that it's not like I was suggesting we begin regular make out sessions in the back of my car. All I wanted was for us to see one another more regularly, to not date other people, to be able to tell our friends that we were seeing each other.

But she didn't want it. Any of it.

Don't ask me to explain. Her friends didn't get it either - they thought we would've made a smashing couple. Everyone saw that she and I seeing one another would have been the obvious, perfect thing. Well, everyone but her.

I'll spare you the gory (and I mean Stephen King/Clive Barker/GWAR gory) details but it went from amazingly beautiful to brutal and ugly almost overnight. I was a mess and she started seeing some guy who everyone thought was obviously wrong for her.

I guess this is all a VERY long, cumbersome way to respond to what some people said in the comments section of my pastor's blog posts which was basically, "hey guys, stop being spineless, safe, and weak and start asking girls out!" To which I respond, "it's not that easy for everyone."

I don't know if it was the batty teaching on dating I got from those camps or the fact that my parents didn't model a healthy relationship for me or if it was all the men-are-bad vibe I was getting from the media or if it was the brutal crash and burn of that early almost-relationship with that girl. I suppose it's all of the above, but add it all up and I guess you can see that dating doesn't come easily to me.

The amount I don't know about dating and relationships could fill a black hole and turn it back into a star again.

In the comments section to one of my pastor's posts I asked why women didn't do some of the initiating. One person responded that women do initiate by putting out signals.

Maybe I've never been signaled, maybe I haven't seen the Rosetta Stone and don't know how to interpret their hieroglyphics. Maybe I have so little confidence in the dating process that I refuse to see them. I mean if a woman came up to me with a sign stuck to her forehead that read, "hey, ask me out," I'd probably think she was just being ironic.

See, it's not like there's a school out there offering degrees in Lloyd Dobler. And yeah, there are books out there like Dating For Dummies and The Mack Within and The Game, but they all basically say the same thing which is "be confident - confidence is attractive." And I'm sure that's true but in the rare occasion that I do try and ask someone out, while my mind is telling me, "I'm the man, I'm a great catch, I'm so money I don't even know it," the thing that comes out of my mouth is, "so...um...don't feel pressured or anything because it's not really a big deal so feel free to say no because you won't hurt my feelings and I hope I'm not putting you in an awkward position because...oh, you know what? I just remembered that I need to buy bread so I'll be going now. Have a nice day."

Look, here's the deal. I don't write all of this because I want people to feel sorry for me. On any given day, I'm 99 percent content and happy and secure as a single man. And even on my most needy days, I'd say I'm still up around the 85-90 percentile. For the most part, I ~~like~~ love being single. My life is simple, my money is my own, I don't have to clear my schedule with anyone. I'm not saying my life is all diamonds and pearls but it's like Jay-Z says, "I got 99 problems but a b#$^# ain't one."

I put my story up to make the point that "man up, grow some balls, stop being a wimp" is pretty empty advice.

I don't know how many men can relate to anything I've shared but I'll bet they don't want to talk about it because who wants to admit that they don't have the first idea about how to date - something eighth graders know how to do? Because how much more unattractive will they feel they are to women by making such an admission?

And so I'll speak for them because I have nothing at stake. I love being single.

(Am I missing out on a beautiful part of what it is to be alive and human? Probably. Am I going to do anything about that? Not right now.)

The most sublime description of the modern dating scene that I've ever heard came from one of my college Political Science teachers (Chad Blair) who said, "some people are getting it, some people aren't." And I'd add that those who aren't are either too ashamed to admit they need help or have no idea where to get help even if they wanted it.

I don't know what the solution for this is. I don't know how to make men better, more whole, more confident. But sometimes the suggestion, "be a man," is about as useful as telling a drowning person, "learn how to swim."

296. keeping the dream alive!

2008-04-03T19:12:00.001-07:00

[preface]

So I'm still super busy. This week I've spent the past three nights out of four at our rehearsal studio after work, working on the new Harrison CD that we need to have done before our tour in July.

And truth be told, this is actually the second blog I've written this month. I won't post the first one for reasons you'll read about below and the only reason I've rushed to finish and post this one is because I really want to write a response to this post because I have lots I want to say on the topic.

So this is a bit of an unfinished post (as if my blogs are ever anything but), but stay tuned - another addition to the Dating & Relationships series is forthcoming.

[end preface]

So...um, being busy isn't the only reason I haven't been able to write lately. It's also because the things I wanted to deal with in my writing had to do with people in my band - people whom I care about deeply. I knew I had some difficult things to say and to share about them but of course, the blogging thing is a very public forum and I didn't want to air out dirty laundry where everyone could see.

But that creates a kind of problem for me because the way I think about and deal with problems is by writing about them and often, one of the few things that can motivate me to get to the hard work of writing is you, my readers. So, I came up with what I thought was a brilliant plan. I decided to write out my grievances as a blog entry but to not post it until I showed it to my band and got their permission to put it up.

That did the trick. I opened up the spigots of my sub-conscience and let loose a barrage of bile and accusation.

Now before I go on about what I wrote, let me say that my "method" of writing has to do with having an issue that's unresolved in my mind and working through it by stringing words and ideas together. It's been said that thought is parallel (your mind can process more than one idea at a time) while writing is far more serial (it can basically only deal with one idea at a time). With this band thing, I knew I had a lot of discontent brewing just below the surface, but when I started writing about it, I didn't know, precisely, the source of my frustrations. And so I just began by putting down the first thing that came to mind on the topic and went from there.

It wasn't easy and it certainly wasn't fun which sucked because for the most part, while writing is seldom easy, it is almost always fun (a sick, self-torturturous kind of fun, but fun nevertheless). Dishing out the frustrations I had with my band was like squeezing the puss out of a cyst or boil - it was painful and it was ugly. But it was necessary. And to extend the analogy, once I started squeezing the poison out, I started to feel better.

For the most part, the things I was writing centered around the thought that the source of my frustrations was the feeling that all the hard work I had put (and continue to put) into the band was being taken for granted - I didn't feel appreciated. I laid out example after example of why I felt this way. In the end I wound up with an entry that weighed in at four pages and almost 1,800 words. I finished the last bits of it in the hours before our Saturday rehearsal - I rushed the ending because I wanted to show it to the band and be done with it.

(As an aside, here's some sage, free advice to anyone thinking about sharing their frustrations with friends in written form: don't send the first draft!)

I showed up (late) to rehearsal and told them a bit about how I'd been feeling these last few months and then I told them about the blog entry that I wanted to post and gave them the copies I had printed out. We decided that they would read what I had written and discuss their take on the matter the next day before rehearsal.

The rest of that Saturday was odd for me. I wasn't sure how my band would take the things I had written. I didn't pull any punches. When given the choice between taking the direct, hurtful approach and the more subtle, passive approach, I chose the former. I took a bit of time out later in the day to re-read what I had written and I saw that there were things that I should have taken out or at least re-written. But it was too late for that and anyway, I figured maybe it was best that they got the unedited, unfiltered me.

Sunday was interesting. I'll spare you the gory details (sorry to deny your voyeuristic curiosity but that's privileged, band information) but suffice it to say that I was wrong about what I had written. I don't just mean that I said some unfair, hurtful things which I apologized for, I mean the crux of my blog entry was wrong. The source of my frustrations wasn't so much a lack of appreciation - the guys in the band know I put in a ton of work, even if they're not the best at showing it - as it was the feeling that as a band we had lost our fire and passion and drive.

See, here's the thing. I work my ass off for this band and I've invested a lot of my own money into items that benefit the band as a whole - this is on top of money I've put into my own musical gear. I didn't feel pressured to get this equipment - nobody asked me to do it - I did so because I believe in this band. I pour myself into the band because, if you'll allow me a moment of unbridled optimism, I truly believe that we have a chance at being the last monster band of the CD era or the first monster band of the internet era. And by monster, I mean the kind of band that crosses marketing boundaries and finds fans across a wide musical spectrum, the kind of band that people get tired of hearing because we're everywhere, the kind of band that sells out arenas and stadiums, the kind of band that people ape in karaoke bars.

I believe it.

All of it.

And so I work my ass of for this band.

But.

But I can't do it by myself.

The thing that was killing me was not that I felt unappreciated, it was that I felt as if I was the only one left who believed enough in the band enough to sweat and work and sacrifice for it. Maybe it's because the music scene is tougher than we anticipated. Maybe it's because we miss a bit of home. Maybe it's because all our personal differences and conflicts are heightened now that we're in a new environment. Maybe it's all of the above. Whatever the reason, these last few months it seems all the air had been let out of the Harrison balloon and our basket was in danger of running aground. We had lost sight of the prize and were doing just enough to get by.

I was a bit of an asshole in what I wrote about my band. They were gracious in forgiving me for it and the one really good thing (among others) that came out of it was that it reminded all of us that as a band we all have to continue to believe in what we came here for.

We didn't leave the comforts of home and the support of friends to play tiny shows to tiny crowds in tiny parts of Seattle. We left home behind because we believed we could take over the world! At least that's why I did it.

When I look back on my time in this band, I don't want to remember that we came to Seattle and found the scene too hard to break into and so we just played what shows we could and gave up after a couple years. I want to remember that we gave every ounce of ourselves to make it happen and even if we never got to play stadiums or arenas, we gave it our all on every stage that would have us.

As a band, some of us (myself included) had forgotten about that dream, that purpose, that fire and that's why I felt so frustrated at all the work I was doing for the band - because if I'm not doing it to fulfill a dream, then spending hours and hours working on recording, mixing, and editing songs for a new CD is just building the Titanic.

I gave some action items to my band - things that would show me that we still intended to shoot for the stars - simple things like responding to emails and keeping others informed about what we've been working on to make sure we're all on the same page, making sure we're working as a team and not as lone rangers (of which I was the most guilty). I've seen some improvement in these areas, not as much as I'd like but it's a start. And I know that as I'm working on the recording end of things they're working to put together our summer tour - we already have shows lined up in Portland and LA with more prospects dangling in the air.

And the cool thing about working in Seattle is that we've found some really talented individuals who really want to help us:

I really do believe that we can make it, that we can be an unstoppable monster of a band. And the amazing thing is that along the way, we've found some great people who believe in us as well - a savvy manager, a web marketing guru, a dope web designer (new website coming soon), and a photographer talented enough to make the monkeys in our band actually look like rock stars (no small feat, I assure you). And this is in addition to having an amazing videographer who's already shot two amazing music videos for us (see here and here...or here if those links don't work).

We've been blessed with resources that most bands only dream of. On top of this, because of the new avenues that the internet has opened, lots of the old barriers to stardom have come tumbling down. None of the old rules apply anymore - ask any crusty record exec and they'll tell you that they have no idea what their industry will look like five years from now. We are poised on the leading edge of a music marketing revolution. It will be a lot of chaos and a lot of false starts and dead ends. Some bands will get screwed, some will soar. It's going to be a bumpy, turbulent ride but I'm on board for better or for worse. And I'm betting big on better.

123. viva la revolucion! (redux)

2008-03-11T09:15:00.002-07:00

[preface]

So in my last post, I asked for prayer for some things I've been struggling through and I've been feeling better. Many thanks for all who prayed and commented.

Truth be told, the issues I'm struggling with are still there. They come up for me every once in a while and when I look back and think about it, it's pretty much the same issues over and over again.

One of the benefits of blogging or keeping a journal is being able to go back to older entries and see how you've dealt with things in the past. I woke up this morning and was reminded of the post I'm re-posting below. It's one of my favorites because (if I can be so immodest) it kicks ass.

I'm also re-posting the entry that I wrote one week after that one because (apart from having a hilarious ending) it gives balance and reminds me that Kingdom work is hard work.

On another note, I'm hoping to be back with new original entries soon so hang in there!

[end preface]

123. viva la revolucion!

I, in my naivete, used to believe that being a kind, generous person meant that kindness and generosity would be returned to me. I don't mean if I helped someone that I expected that specific person to be available to help me in return on some future date. I guess I believed in a kind of grand karmic bank account where good deeds deposited could be withdrawn from in times of need.

I've found that this is an exercise in frustration. The world is like a black hole for kindness - it goes in but it's a one-way trip. Now it turns out that apart from x-ray radiation, black holes do kind of leak minute quantities of mass due to quantum effects. In the same way, sometimes kindness does return but it's at a much, much, much smaller level.

The realization that kindness and generosity are bad investments has been a source of much frustration for me these last few years. I felt lied to. I had believed all those church/Bible study lessons that told me it was better to give than to receive, that JOY meant putting Jesus first, Others second, and Yourself last. I believed those things and put them into practice. And then I kept trying to figure out how giving was any better than receiving; and I kept wondering when the joy part of the JOY formula started kicking in. I can't say exactly when, but it finally dawned on me that those sayings were/are bunk. Receiving is better than giving in every way, and putting yourself last is a surefire way to kill joy.

It's been hard for me these last few years. I'd been a generous person for so long, that it's just a part of who I am. It didn't matter that the foundation on which I had built my generosity was made of sand, it was there to stay. Sometimes friends tell me to just forget about helping people and to just do what makes me happy. Well, helping people is the thing that makes me happy.

But doesn't that contradict your critique of JOY? Perhaps I'm not explaining myself well. What I mean is, I grew up believing that being kind and generous would cultivate a life where kindness and generosity would return to you - it would create an atmosphere of good will, (kind of like terraforming - turning the hostile air of cynicism and greed into sweet, breathable mercy). The realization that's been killing me these last few years is that there is no guarantee of return, in fact chances are good that kindness will never be returned. And that made me pretty salty because it's like I've been investing in a start-up that had already shut down. Think of those people in New Orleans who pumped money into hurricane insurance year after year only to have their home destroyed in a flood which is not something their policy covers. "Well then what good is all that money I've been paying for hurricane insurance?" That's how I felt about kindness and generosity.

So I get to the point where I realize that kindness and generosity are bad investments. I figured there were only a handfull of things I could do in response:

1. Stop being kind and generous. Switch to live and let die mode and just look out for number one.

2. Stop being kind and generous. Switch to being selfish and greedy instead.

3. Keep being kind and generous. Live with the frustration I'm feeling now, grin and bear it. Try not to go poastal.

4. Go poastal. Do not go gentle into that good night, go with a big fucking bang.

None of those options appealed to me because none of them were sustainable. Even option three, which is pretty much the way I've been living for years, was unappealing because it seemed pointless, stupid, absurd.

And then...

And then the skies parted, light broke through the darkness and the fog. The little bulb over my head flickered to life. I had a eureka moment.

I realized that I could be kind and generous DESPITE the fact that it was a bad investment, despite the fact that it offered no yield. I could be kind and generous knowing full well that it would likely never come back to me, that it offered no guarantee of good friends, good jobs, good wife, not even a good reputation. I could be kind and generous as an act of sheer rebellion, as a subversive act of open aggression against a greedy, needy world. I could be the leader of a rebel force of one. I could strike out with guerilla attacks of random kindness. I sow the seeds of a revolution that seeks to overturn a world stuck in the trap of consumerism - where everything is seen as a transaction with one party profiting and another suffering a loss, where even free car washes are not really free car washes, where we are defined by what we own rather than what we give a way.

Yes, it's futile. Yes, I'm just one little man and my revolution of kindness will go unnoticed, ignored, perhaps even exploited by those who will take advantage of my cause. I acknowledge all those things, but I don't care. If I am just one tiny flame of light in a dark world, so be it. If I can allow the Kingdom of God to trickle into this fallen world through my life, I think that's as noble a cause as any.

It's mad, but it's beautiful. I just hope I'm up to the task.

124. on empathy and faith

Empathy is stupid. It's a burden, a curse. It's a monkey on your back that just won't let up.

It's not an easy thing to feel this ache to help, to comfort, to heal but to not be able to. I suppose one can pray but so often, prayer seems to have so little reach. You speak it into the air and where does it go? What does it do? How is it supposed to work? And even after the, "amen," the ache is still there.

Better the selfish bliss of ignorance, to not know, to not comprehend, to not care. Better to wonder why they can't just get over it. Better to pity than to burn for resolution, to seek after some solution, whatever the cost.

To make another's pain one's own, to hear it echo in your own heart (a ping, tart and tang), to yearn for justice and redemption. What use are these when there's nothing you can do?

And a prayer seems like so small a thing, yet faith (the mustard size of it) can amplify, multiply its use. Faith, the evidence and substance of it, can be the only hope one can hold on to. And where do you place this faith? In the One who can turn water into wine, the One who declares that those who mourn will be comforted. In the One who wove the fabric of space and time in ten dimensions, confounding Mensa minds and atom smashers alike.

...but all that said, I still think empathy sucks.

294. running out of empty...a prayer request

2008-03-08T21:37:00.001-08:00

Sorry, I can't go into detail right now because...

1. Because I'm too tired to.
2. Because I just can't go into it here for various reasons.
3. Because I think I'm getting sick again and I'm going straight to bed.

All I'll say is, it seems like I've been running on empty these past couple months and it just doesn't seem to stop and so now it feels as if I'm running out of empty.

And so, a prayer request to you, my readers.

Honestly, I'm not even sure what I need prayer for...or maybe it's that I can't work up the energy to even think about it. If you think of me or if you remember this post, just pray that...pray that...

Well, just let the Holy Spirit guide your prayer for me - that will be enough, I think.

Thanks.

293. living in sin

2008-02-22T17:59:00.001-08:00

Well, I suppose this comes as no surprise to regular readers (and perhaps to irregular readers as well), but the Tomato Stand is taking a leave of absence.

Main reason: I'm just too busy.

Examples:

1. This month there've been four visitors from Hawaii in town and there's a couple more on the way. Entertaining, while supremely fun, is also time consuming.

2. My band is recording new material for an EP that we hope to take with us when we go on tour in the summer so that's eating up a bunch of my time.

3. I love my new job but the commute is KILLER. It's at least one hour, one way which means even if I drive (I try to bus whenever I can), the commute to work takes a two hour bite out of my day.

I believe there are other time sinks that I may not be aware of. I suppose it may be time to man up and start ordering and structuring my life more. At the very least I'd be able to see where all my free time is draining away to.

Honestly, I hate not having time to write. One, because I love writing, two because I know I'm disappointing readers (all three of you), and three because, frankly, it feels like I'm living in sin.

See, sin is not just doing things you know are wrong (sins of commission), it also has to with not doing things you ought to be doing (sins of omission). As inconsistently and as clumsily as I do it, I believe that writing is a gift that God has given me and for me not to exercise it is sin. I honestly do feel that badly about it.

Be that as it may though, I am going to be taking a break. I hope to be back at blogging by the end of March, hopefully sooner.

Pray for me, a sinner.

292. I'm not the only one - Hillary and Barack part 2

2008-02-08T07:30:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I wrote up a post where I likened Barack to a Mac and Hillary to a PC.

Looks like I'm not alone in thinking this: New York Times article, Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC?

From the article:

"On one thing, the experts seem to agree. The differences between hillaryclinton.com and barackobama.com can be summed up this way: Barack Obama is a Mac, and Hillary Clinton is a PC."

Does that make me an expert?

291. back soon...

2008-02-04T07:20:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the lack of posts. I've got some stuff brewing in the queue, but they're not done yet. Soon.

A quick update until I can get to the longer posts:

1. I really like my new job. It's a really geeky, techy company and the people are cool. What do I do there? Well for now I'm just helping out with miscellaneous maintenance tasks. I don't mean I'm sweeping floors or cleaning windows, I mean I'm helping out with some of the tedious, repetitive jobs that are a part of moving their products through the pipeline towards production.

2. The job is great but the commute sucks. If I drive, it normally takes about an hour to get there. If I take the bus it takes about an hour and a half. I try to take the bus because I can read on the ride there...and because it's greener.

3. The commute time is part of why I haven't been able to blog lately. Even if I drove everyday, the commute carves at least two hours out of my day. I thought I'd be able to blog on the bus but the bumpy ride makes typing too awkward and error prone.

4. My band has been working on recording new material and so that's been keeping me busy as well. We've also been meeting with some really cool people who are willing to help us kick it up a notch - band manager, web design team, and an amazing photographer!

Well, those are the big items in my life right now. There are lots of things I want to write about and so I'm trying to find the time. In the meantime, click here and help my pastor win in Metroblogging Seattle's blog competition.

290. a lighthearted take on Hillary and Barack

2008-01-16T07:01:00.000-08:00

I was hanging out with some friends last night and I mentioned something I've been thinking about as I've listened to the battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. My friends seemed to enjoy the analogy and I've never heard any news sources mentioning it so I thought I'd share it with the rest of you.

If the candidates were computers, Clinton would be a PC and Obama would be a Mac.

No elaboration, I think it's pretty self-explanatory and not to be taken seriously anyway.

(if the link below doesn't work, try here)

289. the Harold experiment

2008-01-13T09:13:00.000-08:00

For those who read my blogger blog (I also mirror my posts on MySpace), I don't know if you've noticed, but I've started tagging some of my posts. One of the tags is called The Harold Experiment and those posts are all about my ex-coworker whom I code-named "Harold." I labeled it an "experiment" because after a while, that's how it felt.

(Brief synopsis - if you're up on the situation, feel free to skip this paragraph.) See, I work in a small, specialized department of a much larger warehouse where it's just me and Harold. Harold is difficult to work with. He's not efficient, he can't (doesn't) prioritize projects, has a very short temper, and while I wouldn't go so far as to say he's lazy...I take that back, he's pretty lazy. He's also not much of a team player - unless you consider dumping all of the hard work on your coworker (me) teamwork.

It would have been really easy on numerous occasions for me to have reported Harold to my supervisors, and it was hard not to but at some point I came to see our little specialized department as a kind of laboratory and my interactions with him as a kind of experiment. I mean, I didn't think of it that way at the time, but looking back on it, that's an apt way to put it. It was a test to see if living out the Gospel in the way I had come to understand it really worked.

See, I've done a lot of thinking in the last few years about what it really means to live as a christian. One of the ways of understanding the Gospel that has been key to me is the idea that being a christian means living now the way I would if the fall had never happened or the way I will after Christ returns and redeems all of creation. So my little experiment involved trying my best to work with Harold as if he was a kick-ass, hard driving uber-worker even though he was the opposite of that.

That meant I had to bite my tongue a lot. There were so many instances where I wanted to blow up at Harold, shove his shitty work habits back in his face but I didn't. When his lack of initiative left unfinished projects strewn about, instead of letting them slip past deadline and pointing towards Harold when asked who was to blame, I stepped in and finished them for him. There were even a couple of occasions where I flat out caught him taking shortcuts that were clearly breaking company rules but instead of reporting him, I just told him I knew what he was doing and asked him not to go there again (and to his credit, he never did...at least I never caught him doing it again).

I don't mean to paint myself as a saint in this situation. I bitched a lot about Harold to some of the other people I worked with and of course I've dished it out in this blog but honestly, I did the best I could. And it's not like I had anything like a holy or reverent attitude about this little experiment. Especially in the past few months, it felt stupid and pointless because no matter how many times I finished his projects or cleaned up his mistakes, he just kept being his slow and lazy and unorganized self.

You know, looking back on it now, I'm not sure what I expected to get out of this little experiment. I mean, I did my best to not think about how unfair the situation was, how little he was working, how his lack of consideration made my job more difficult that it had to be, but I don't know if I ever expected anything to change. I just did my best to soldier on and do the job as if working for the Lord and not for Leroy (code name for my supervisor). I did my best to be Jesus to Harold.

It's probably the hardest thing I've ever done. And it took its toll on me. In the last couple months, there have been times when I've been working in the racks and I found myself punching the shit out of some of the boxes. See, in the racks, boxes are stacked three high and three deep. Sometimes the file you need is buried back in the last set of boxes and when you try to get it out, boxes in adjacent stacks get in the way and so you have to push them aside to get the box you want out. Normally all you have to do is tap the offending box a bit to make room but there were times when a kind of rage took over and I would start slamming the box with my fist, over and over again, as hard as I could.

The scariest part of this is that these little rage episodes didn't always coincide with Harold pissing me off. Sometimes it would just be an ordinary day where Harold and I were working on different things and everything would be fine until I'd run across some small, insignificant situation and all of a sudden I'm overtaken by an urge to throw something across the room or kick in the side of a box. Not like me at all.

And I've only been working there for a year. Harold's been there for five years so maybe it's no wonder that he's the way he is. But then again, Harold never had to work with a Harold.

Anyway, this past Friday was my last day working with Harold because he has the next week off (my last week at work). Normally I don't like goodbyes but I was really looking forward to the end of Friday because I knew that was going to be the last time I'd ever have to work with him. The day goes by like any other - me working like a dog and Harold working like a tree but in the last few minutes, Harold motions me aside and while I can't remember the exact words, he says something like:

"Randall, I've learned a lot from you."

Now I'm thinking he's talking about some of the work flow things that I've developed to streamline the process of getting orders pulled and out on time but then he continues,

"your work ethic and the way you treat people, I've never seen anything like it before and it's taught me a lot and I want to thank you. I know I'm not the easiest person to work with but you've really shown me something and I'm going to try to use some of what I've seen in you. So thanks, and I hope things go well for you at your new job."

I don't know how I kept myself from fainting or just staring at him with a blank look of disbelief. Instead, I shook his hand, thanked him for his kind words and wished him the best as well. He then walked out of our department, clocked out, and went home.

I couldn't believe it. That was probably one of the most stunning things anyone has ever said to me. All this time I thought he wasn't paying any attention. I thought, if anything, he was just taking advantage of my drive.

Earlier that day, I had been thinking a bit about what I was going to say to Harold when he left. I knew I wasn't going to lie to him and say something like, "it was a pleasure working with you," because it wasn't. I didn't know what I was going to say to him, I figured I'd just come up with something when that time came around. Actually, to be honest, when I did think of Harold these past couple days, I was relishing the thought of all the workload that I'd been shouldering falling squarely on him. I mean, we are training someone to take my place but she's new and so if anything, she'll be a drag on his productivity. I imagined our department full of boxes that weren't getting put away, orders that weren't getting pulled on time or correctly. I imagined the CSRs and supervisors coming down hard on Harold and once all that pressure hit his notoriously short temper, I pictured some really volatile, explosive situations.

I felt pretty stupid and evil and guilty for these thoughts after what Harold said.

I thought my little experiment was a failure, that soldiering on despite Harold's sloth was fruitless and futile. I thought I was a dolt for not complaining when I had the chance. I thought I was just banging my head against a wall that wouldn't budge.

But what if during all this time when I thought I was firing blanks I was actually planting seeds?

Of course the cynical side of me says he's just talk - that he's going to remain his slow, unorganized self, that he's going to push the bulk of the work on the new trainee. But what if some change does occur? What if he's been watching me closer that I ever considered? What if God's somehow used me to upset his world-view, showing him that there is another way to live? I mean, he's not exactly an effusive guy. Something must have been on his mind for him to open up the way he did. He could have easily just said, "good bye and good luck."

I don't know. My head is still reeling from the shock of what he said. I don't know if I'll ever see him again. I gave him my number because earlier this week he had mentioned that he was going to use his week off to try and find a new place to live so I gave him my number and told him I'd help him move if he needed it. Maybe he'll call, maybe he won't.

I don't know what's in store for Harold and I'm still processing the results of this little "experiment," but a part of me wants to believe that God will grow this little seed and give Harold new life. He doesn't have to be his crusty old self, that's just the hard, ugly shell that sin has painted over him.

And I don't know if not reporting his poor work habits was really the best way to live out the Kingdom of God (something I define as doing your best to make wherever you are a bit more like Eden and less like Babylon in whatever way you can). One thing I completely failed to consider is the work situation for the person who would take my place. If Harold remains anything like he was when I worked for him then Newbie is in for a world of hurt. Perhaps if I had known that I was going to be resigning for a new job a few months ago I would have worked more purposely at getting Harold to clean up his act so that the next person wouldn't have to face the brunt of his poor work ethic.

Again, I don't know.

But here's one thing I do know. God used me to make an impression on Harold and I don't know what God has in store for him but I feel humbled and blessed that I got to play a part.

Perhaps you've heard the phrase attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, "Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary." A brief Google search turned up this link that suggests that it's not really something St. Francis said, but the story surrounding the quote is useful here so I'm going to use it anyway - because even fiction can be instructive (sometimes more so than the truth).

Story goes that St. Francis took a trip out to the local village with the members of his monastery. When asked why they were going, he told them they were going to preach the Gospel. Once in the village, St. Francis started assigning fellow monks to tasks like fixing roofs and broken fences, helping farmers haul bags of wheat, helping people haul water, sweeping and cleaning dirty streets. They spent their whole day just helping the villagers in whatever way they could.

Late in the afternoon, one of the monks asked St. Francis, "when are we going to start preaching?" And that's when he supposedly replied, "Preach the gospel always. Use words if necessary."

I share this story because I wonder if in my imperfect, clumsy way, I've been able to preach the Gospel to Harold. I never shared the Four Spiritual Laws with him or asked him to pray the Sinner's Prayer, and I don't know if I've ever told him flat out that I'm a christian but he knows I go to church and I hope I've been able to share Jesus with him through the way I've worked.

I don't know. My (ongoing) Layman's Theology series is all about a way of understanding the Gospel that has made christianity rich and meaningful for me and there are many areas of my life where I'm trying to figure out how to turn thought and theory into lifestyle and application. My little Harold experiment was a part of this exploration and, thanks be to God, it's returned a surprisingly positive result.

Further study needed to verify long term effects of experimental data but that's (literally) not my job.

(preview) new job

2008-01-10T07:20:00.000-08:00

[preface]

Yeah, I got a new job and I have a lot on my mind about my old job...but I'm going to wait until I'm officially out of my old position before posting my thoughts. Call me paranoid, but I just don't want to risk being fired for insubordination because of something I post here (how's that for a teaser).

So here's the first few paragraphs of a much longer entry, the rest of which will be posted in two weeks.

[end preface]

The LORD is close to the brokenhearted
and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

The righteous may have many troubles,
but the LORD delivers them from them all;
Psalm 34:18-19

Well, I don't know if I would go so far as to call myself righteous, but I certainly feel as one who has been delivered.

So some of you know this already, but I recently got a new job! I gave my two weeks notice at my current job on Monday and I wouldn't call it was bittersweet because it was all sweet. Though now that I think about it, my supervisor looked kind of bitter after I told him I was leaving...

Anyway, I'm not exactly sure what my new job will entail but based on the interview with and tour of the company I had last week, it will be nothing like my old job. They told me some aspects of the job can get tedious and boring. I told them I've been stacking boxes for over a year now - nothing they can throw at me can come close to matching the monotony that was my old job. I'll be working for a tech company that has some really impressive voice recognition products that end up being used in in-car GPS navigation units and smart phones and probably lots of other places that I don't know about yet. Honestly, I still can't believe they offered me a position. Almost everyone there has a degree either in programming or electrical engineering. I have a degree in English Literature.

I have to give credit where credit is due and so big ups to George (who asked me to send him a copy of my resume) and Aaron (who got my resume from George and ran it by his boss...and I know he vouched for me so double thanks there). A few months ago, I wrote about how I was a part of a huge church renovation project. Most of the work I did there was with the church's new audio system and a lot of that work was done alongside George and Aaron. It was a lot of sweaty, dirty, sometimes intricate work but it paid off - the new sound system is bangin' and I can't help but think that seeing my work ethic firsthand made Aaron's pitch for my position to his boss that much more effective. Who says volunteering doesn't pay?

288. just a couple little links...

2008-01-03T21:47:00.000-08:00

Last week's post took a lot out of me. I deserve a break.

Oh, and in the comments section, of my pastor's blog, he said some nice things about my blog then (not so) subtly said I write too much, likening my posts to "novels."

It's all good because I know I ramble on and on. When I write, I make it up as I go along - I seldom (if ever) have what I'm going to say planned out. Words spill onto the page and while I try and do some minor editing (thanks for pointing out that spelling error, Nate), I pretty much just leave posts as I originally wrote them.

When I go back and read my old posts, it's obvious there's a lot of fat that could be trimmed but by that time, I'm sure nobody's reading those old entries so tinkering with them would be of no practical use.

So to give myself a break (and to keep this post to short-story length), let me just share a link to one of the funniest, most interesting blogs I've seen in a long time:

Local Girl's day in pictures

And if you haven't seen it already, Blogger has a feature called Blogger Play where (as I understand it) it takes photos that have been uploaded to Blogger blogs and places them randomly into a never-ending slideshow. It's hypnotic and fascinating. It's kind of like people watching but on a global scale.

http://play.blogger.com/

Enjoy.

287. thoughts on the trajectory of the Bible

2007-12-30T06:15:00.001-08:00

[preface]

How's that for a fun, provocative title?

When I first started my Layman's Theology Series, I originally planned on starting with foundational ideas like salvation and communion and then work my way up to some really big, crazy, likely controversial thoughts I've been having recently about God and the Bible and christianity.

And there are still some basic tenets that I want to write about like sin and prayer and worship, but I can't wait anymore and I want to fast forward to get some of the more crazy ideas out before I forget about them or get too scared to put them up.

I think most of what I've written before about my take on theological ideas has been well within the realm of orthodoxy - the ideas were gleaned from books I'd already read by authors like Brian McLaren, Anne Lamott, N.T. Wright, Lauren F. Winner, and others.

But I've never read anything like what I'm going to share below. It may have been hinted at and that's probably where I got the idea, but still, it feels a bit scary to post because I'm not one to just speculate wildly about the nature of God because, well, God is GOD, you know?

As always, I'd love to hear from you - what do you think, am I completely off in left field on this one?

[end preface]

So one of the things that's always puzzled me about the Bible is, if God doesn't change, then why does he seem so mean and mad in the Old Testament and so warm and full of grace and love in the New Testament?

Well what if God seems to change between the OT and the NT not because he is different but because society and social systems changed and so the way he related to them changed?

The best way to explain this idea is to think of parenting. The way parents treat and relate to an infant is far different than the way they behave when their son/daughter is a teenager or when they become an adult. And this is understandable because the needs and abilities of their kids change as they age. More and different responsibilities are relinquished to them as they are able to handle them.

What if the same thing is happening between the end of the OT and the beginning of the NT? Think about the nation of Israel back when Abraham and Sarah gave birth to it. It was helpless and small and undefined. Israel was very much like an infant at this point. Then think of the Exodus - the wandering in the desert and the complaining and the time when Israel entered the promised land. This could be seen as the early adolescence of Israel when it tested boundaries and struggled to find its identity. The rest of the OT can be seen as Israel's late adolescence and early adulthood where it was trying to find meaning and purpose while sometimes shirking responsibilities and suffering the consequences.

Now think of the way God interacted with Israel during these periods. During this formative time, God was pretty hands-on and brutal because he had to be because perhaps the young nation of Israel needed this kind of discipline and guidance.

Take the OT dietary and cleanliness laws (Leviticus 11 and on). On a pragmatic level, what if they were there to keep the Israelites from getting food poisoning and keeping them sanitary? I mean, think about it. They didn't know anything about microbes or how diseases spread the same way a young person doesn't know that fire burns or that too much candy leads to indigestion and bad teeth. Because they don't know any better, we grab kids' arms away from the flame and hide treats up where they can't get to them. And they don't get it - they think we're being cruel and arbitrary. When they grow and come to understand why we've kept things from them, we let them restrain themselves.

This idea could help explain why God loosened up on the dietary laws in the NT (Acts 10:9-16). What if his change took place because enough was known about how to properly handle and cook meats?

I don't know nearly enough about culinary customs of the time so I have no idea if this way of looking at dietary laws holds any water, so maybe that's a bad example. How about this one.

The heavy-handed nature of God in the OT can be likened to old-school parenting. I'm talking spankings and no-TV, no-phone, no-internet groundings style parenting. Children need discipline and because they can't understand the long-term consequences (growing up to be an asshole) of bad behavior, a firm hand is needed to keep them in line.

Think about the early years of Israel. Before being delivered from Egypt, they didn't have any kind of governmental structure, they didn't have written laws, and little in the way of customs - basically, no culture. In a way, the only defining characteristic of the people of Israel was circumcision. That sounds to me like a pretty wooly, loosly organized band of people - hardly the stuff out of which to birth a nation.

So God intervenes and literally lays down the law. The Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) are where God lays down rules and customs for the people of Israel. And there are lots of them and if your use your imagination, doesn't it read a bit like a parents laying down the rules of the house and chores for their children?

But kids don't like to follow rules or do chores so a firm hand is required to impose order. This need for parents to be firm helps me understand the way God acted out the way he did during the Exodus where over and over again, he comes down hard on the Israelites. For example, there's this episode where the people of Israel are tired of eating manna day after day (forgetting that manna was a gift, appearing miraculously every morning) and they yearn for the taste of meat (Numbers11:4-35). And God gives it to them along with a plague that killed many - the story seems to suggest that it was the ones who complained about wanting meat that died there.

And there are lots of stories like this in the OT.

Maybe this picture of God violates our modern sense of justice and compassion because the punishment seems excessive in the extreme but the brutal fact of the matter is that the birthing of a nation is a messy, bloody, painful process (take a look at any political revolution of the past century). For me, reframing God's heavy hand as the discipline of a loving parent towards an unruly, young nation helps me see the Bible as a seamless work rather than one that portrays two different, unreconcilable Gods.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Fast forward a couple hundred years or so and we see the birth of Christ. By this time, Israel is a fully fledged nation (albeit, one that is under the thumb of the Romans). They have a robust culture and identity as well as social structures that do their best to keep everything in line. But they seem to have forgotten something. Perhaps afraid of invoking the wrath of God, they have become all about following the law. They have forgotten that they were called to be a blessing to all nations.

And so Jesus enters the scene to remind them. But because Israel is older and wiser now, the reminder comes not in the form of fire and brimstone but as a man who walked around, healed people, and challenged religious leaders.

Once a child becomes an adult - gets a job, starts making his/her own decisions, takes responsibility for their mistakes - the relationship between parent and child becomes less top down and becomes more peer to peer or mentor to mentee. The parents will always be older and have more life experience and so retains the right to offer guidance and advice but when advice is not heeded, it's allowed to happen - they don't get out the old spanking paddle.

And that's how I see the move from the OT to the NT. It's not that God changed, he just changed the way he related to his people - a shift that occurs because of the "maturity" of the nation of Israel.

Well one might object, what about the NT story where God strikes down a couple in the early church after they lie about how much of their possessions they donated (Acts 5:1-11)? Well I see the same parallels I outlined earlier. Just as the early, less organized nation of Israel needed a more firm hand from God, the early, less organized church needed to be reminded that this was a serious business they were involved in. And to my knowledge, it's the only story in the NT of people being struck down like this for sinning.

Of course the parenting metaphor is not a tight fit. I only use it to provide a kind of framework to talk about why God seems so different between the OT and the NT, but why do I do this? Why do I try to justify and make sense of God's behavior? Is there a point to this or is this just some intellectual exercise?

The reason I share these ideas is because for me, they help make the Bible real and relevant for today. Because if God changes the way he relates and reveals himself to his people based on how they are able to receive him, then this shift continues today and we need to be sensitive to and aware of and looking for the way that God is relating to us as we are here and now.

See, some christians are still trying to experience God as he expressed himself in the Old and New Testaments. They want to see healings happen, they want to hear the taingible, audible voice of God, they want radical intervention. And let me say now before I get flamed that I don't discount such desires - I do believe God still heals and that he does choose to express himself more palpably to some people - but I also think that in general, God is choosing to relate to us today in a different way than he did even in the NT.

Why? Because we as a society have grown and changed and matured.

Here's what I mean. Some christians lament the fact that God doesn't seem to be healing people the way he did in the Bible but here's what I think. I think God has given us the gift of medicine and science and he is waiting for us to use these gifts to bring healing to the sick, the poor, and the needy.

I have a friend (let's call him D) who used to live in Hawaii who was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Now this is a guy who has experienced big miracles in his life. For example, when he first moved to Hawaii, he didn't have a car and started praying for one. Lo and behold, someone walks up to him after church that week and says to him, "God told me you needed transportation so here are the keys to my old car." But that's not the crazy part. See, D drives this car around for a week and discovers that it's a piece of shit. So he gives it back to the guy saying, "I don't think this is the car God has for me." Then a couple weeks later, someone else from the church gives him a car - this time an old (but fully functioning) Cadillac!

I share that story to show that this is a guy who's not unfamiliar with God's provision. So last year he gets diagnosed with a brain tumor and the prayer chain goes into overdrive. He's got lots of Pentecostal-type friends so they pray for radical intervention and complete healing but that doesn't happen. He has an operation and recovers completely. But he didn't have medical insurance so he got stuck with a mega-buck bill from the hospital. However, donations and support checks start appearing from friends and long story short, he's able to cover all medical costs.

The point I'm trying to make is that maybe a hundred years ago, prayers for God to heal D's tumor would have been answered because there was no other way for D to survive but now that the technology is available, God let the tumor remain so that he could let the church step up and provide the financial support D needed for the operation.

Today, I think that praying for medical miracles in cases where there are already treatments available is like an adult asking his parents to continue giving him an allowance instead of getting a job using the college education that his parents paid for.

Let me try and say this another way.

Take a look at this bit from John 14:11-14:

Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

Some look at verse 12 and conclude that by doing "even greater things than these," Jesus meant that christians will be able to heal the sick and the blind and the possessed. And Jesus does mean that, but not necessarily in the sense of laying hands on a lame person and seeing his/her legs instantly made well again. What if by "greater things" he was referring to modern advances in prosthetics technology and the opportunity to help victims of land-mines in places like Cambodia and Afghanistan and Burma?

Maybe that isn't as sexy as a flesh and bone healing but while some christians are waiting on God to provide healing power, I would argue that God is actually waiting on us to use the knowledge and technology that he's already given us.

Because some still expect an OT/NT God, they point fingers at him when he doesn't provide relief in Indonesia or New Orleans or Sudan. What we don't see is God pointing his finger back at the excesses of Las Vegas, at outrageous CEO salaries and corporate profits, at all the money our government is throwing at the war in Iraq. More ominously, God is pointing his finger at mega-church ministries that fly their pastors around in church-owned lear jets and provide $23,000 commodes (NPR story).

To finish off the parenting analogy, I believe that today in these modern, technological, scientific times, our society can be likened to a highly skilled adult and maybe God seems to be more hands-off today because he wants to see what we will do with the skills he's blessed us with. As a social species, he's moved us through birth, adolescence, young-adulthood and now that we are older, wiser, and better able to navigate this tricky planet, God wants to see what we will do.

The resources exist today to eradicate diseases like malaria and tuberculosis that are still ravaging developing countries. It would take a fraction of the current military budget in the US to provide clean water and sanitation for the 1.1 billion without it (2000 WHO report). Can't get your head around a number that big? The UN estimates that the global population topped 6 billion in October of 1999. That means about one in six people on this planet do not have access to clean, safe water. Think of six of your closest friends. Now pick one of them and contaminate his/her lifetime water supply with parasites, pesticides, and industrial waste chemicals. Then watch them waste away while you go on with your own comfortable life.

I mention the problem of clean water because I'm excited about something that my pastor is working on. He's blogged recently about a non-profit that he wants to set up and while I'm not exactly sure what it is yet, it seems to be exactly the kind of work that pastors and churches should be doing - helping to redeploy the gifts that God has blessed us and our country with to those truly in need.

Not to dis on any others, but my church is the bomb, yo.

Here's the deal.

It's easy to read the headlines and to be overwhelmed by all of the problems out there. But those problems aren't the problem. The solutions to those problems exist today, now. The problem is $25,000 desserts, perfumes that retail for $2,150 an ounce, a military budget that is looking to spend $439.3 billion this year (that's about 1.3 billion per day) - a fact that wouldn't be so bad (because defense is a priority) if the money were being used wisely but sadly, it isn't (warning, this story will make your blood boil).

God is not aloof or ambivalent. He wants desperately to take loving care of this world he's created and the people he's populated it with but he's not going to go in and fix things - not when we already have what we need to fix them ourselves. The reading of the Bible that I'm putting forward suggests a trajectory where God is placing more and more responsibility and expectation on us as we are able to handle it. Again, not because he's lazy or doesn't care but just as a parent of talented children wants to see them thrive with the talents they have, I picture God in anxious expectation just waiting to see the "greater things" that we will do with the resources he has equipped us with.

But he's not going to wait forever.

286. just a little something for Chrismas

2007-12-25T09:01:00.000-08:00

Thanks, one and all for reading. Honestly, if it weren't for the trickle of hits I get on my Site Meter counter (as well as the fact that people start complaining if I don't put anything up for a while), I don't know if I'd write as much...or at all.

And so this is for you who put up with my inconsistent writing and my potty mouth and my excuses. It's a poem by Allison Smythe (I hope she doesn't mind that I'm posting this). It's about searching...and I won't say too much about what it's about because that takes half the fun out of enjoying poetry.

Maybe this is an odd poem to share at Christmas, but I guess I chose it because the words she uses and the way she deploys them are just so beautiful. It reminds me of what I love about writing: words. And maybe for some that seems to be an odd thing to say but I really do love words. They're so much fun to play with.

Take a word like "obfuscate" which means to "render obscure, unclear, or unintelligible," (from the Mac Dictionary). Just pronouncing the word obfuscate makes your mouth work, twisting your tongue and lips into odd, uncomfortable shapes. And just look at the word - all those odd consonants and vowels jumbled together. The way the word sounds and even the way it looks perfectly conveys its meaning. That is a kick ass word!

And I love how a word that normally means one thing can be used in an unexpected way or in an unexpected context and it still makes sense - you know exactly what it's trying to say.

At my church, the sound equipment is located in a tiny loft that is only accessible by a retractable ladder. I usually run sound at the 5PM evening service so I use the ladder quite a bit. Well recently, I'd been noticing that the piece of wood that the ladder was attached to seemed to be pulling out and I was worried about something going awry (that's another great word). I shared my concerns with leadership and they had some people look at it and they said that the problem was merely a cosmetic one - that the box to which the ladder is attached is secure and sturdy. But to ease my concerns, they added some reinforcement and that put my fears to rest.

I share this story because when the engineer took a look at the ladder and said he was going to add reinforcement, the word he used was "beef," as in, "I'm going to add some beef up there." And even though he wasn't going to lather the anchor point in hamburger meat, I instantly knew what he meant. I love that about our language.

And one last brilliant example before I get to the poem.

Take a look at this line by one of my favorite singer/songwriters, the late great Kristy MacColl (two links there):

"But I'm not crazy, no I'm just mad. . ."

That's genius right there, even out of the context of the rest of the song. It's brilliant because in that line, the word "bad" means two different things (mad as in angry or mad as in insane) and the fact that the line makes sense both ways gets you that much more in the head of the character in the song.

The English language is just so much delicious fun.

"Hunt the Thimble" by Allison Smythe

That game we played as kids:
You're getting warm. . . warmer. . . warmer. . . hot!
maneuvering as if by remote control for the hidden
thing -- someone's red sock, lollipop, or secret

note, knowing the hunt was richer than the prize.
It's not so simple now if it ever was
simple, the universe as we have known it
inflating in theories of everything.

Hints lie everywhere like feathers
in a chicken coop, scattering just as you
bend to pick one up. God, the child's
game, with all his halls of doors.

It started with a word
in a language that never was and every stab
at translation in our currency of morning
and night, of skinned knees and long departures

slants a bit of the original intent and thus complicates
the game. Maybe it's all the concrete under
our feet or that mountains eventually hitchhike
to the sea or that I haven't read every book

not yet written that makes time something that needs
to be found and cut loose from space; perhaps
there is something like light that we have
not yet detected but can't stop looking

for and the one who hid it laughing
because there is always another door
cold. . . colder. . . colder
and the hider always has the most fun.

You know, it struck me while copying this poem, how apropos it is for this month of December. It's been a great year overall but this month has been difficult and not just because of Christmas. I know of at least three friends at my church who have lost loved ones this month and I know there have been others at my church who have suffered the same. Just in this month.

And honestly, even for myself, it's been a hard month. Writing that post a few weeks ago about love - it made me face some uncomfortable realities in my own life and even though I like to think that my life is on a pretty even keel overall, I wonder if I'm just ignoring the hidden rot underneath.

And even though that poem seems to end on a dour note, there is (THERE IS!) "something like light" to be found even as we stumble towards and away from it. And to bring it all, clumsily, back to Christmas, isn't that what Advent is all about? The fact that Light came into the darkness via a baby in a manger to show us the way. And this Light remains.

Merry Christmas, all.

285. going back to school at Berkeley and MIT...sort of

2007-12-22T08:24:00.000-08:00

The internet is amazing. So much better than television.

Did I mention that I don't have a TV where I live? It's funny because whenever I go to a friend's house where the TV is on, I sit rapt in attention, glued to the tube regardless of what's on. I mean it's not that I miss having a TV because back when I was in Hawaii, the television was my crack cocaine. I was an addict. I'd sit down to watch a show while eating dinner and next thing I knew, it was 2AM and I was watching yet another infomercial. And this wasn't a rare occurrence. So like I said, when I'm at a friend's house and the TV is on, I watch the way a recovering alcoholic watches their friends drink.

Not that I miss it. The other day I was at someone's house and we were watching NBC's Battle of the Choirs. What a heaping pile of a show. And what's up with Nich Lachey's choir winning out over Patty LaBelle's? Lame-o!

Anyway, back to the internet.

I found out recently that UC Berkeley posts some of their courses online for FREE. And you don't even need to sign up or anything. You just click on the class you want to sit in on and watch. I'm currently watching the Physics for Future Presidents course - a basic survey of fundamental physics principles. I've also got my eye on the Integrative Biology classes.

Also, a friend recently put a link up on facebook to online courses that MIT offers!

I am in geek heaven.

I must have been a really good boy this year because Santa has hooked me up.

284. tell me about love (part 2)

2007-12-17T07:54:00.001-08:00

Couple weekends ago I was asked to play drums at my church's morning services (two morning services). During the second service, the band gets together during the sermon (since we've already heard it during the first service) and hangs out so we can get to know one another better or catch up on what's been going on. This week, the worship leader asked an interesting ice-breaker type question. He asked us to share something that no one or very few people knew about us - something we felt comfortable sharing.

I shared that I'd never had a girlfriend but not for lack of trying. When I shared that, I thought it was something only my closest friends knew but after thinking about it later, I realized that I had already shared this fact in my blog (see entry 162). So I guess it wasn't as much of a secret as I thought it was. Maybe I should have shared how I went skinny dipping in the ocean in the first early hours of January 1, 2000 (true story).

I'm not sure how the other members of the worship team took what I shared about being single, but it's funny because later that day while we were packing and cleaning up after church, the worship leader asked me if I'd be willing to go out with someone who was Chinese. In jest, told him I'd go out with anyone with a pulse. The truth of the matter is, the list of things I'm looking for in a significant other is pretty long and esoteric (see blog 62 and 275) but I'm open to the idea that the person I end up with might be someone I never would have expected so consider this an invitation to set me up at will.

All that said, I've also written before about how after years of longing, pining, craving a girlfriend, I've found ample contentment as a single man. And I have. Among other things, I've come to appreciate the freedom being single affords. I can go where I want, when I want. I can eat whatever I want wherever I can get it. And that's one less gift I have to buy this year.

But in the back of my mind, I know I'm missing out.

In my previous post about love, I wrote a bit about 1 Corinthians 13. Paul ends that epistle with this line, "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love," (1 Corinthians 13:13).

Honestly? If asked, I suppose I could rattle off a list of ideas that I think describe love but it would be like me describing the surface of the moon - I've seen pictures but I've never really been there.

And I've heard it said that in order to get love you've got to give love. But how do you give something you don't understand? When I heard this idea, I figured the best way to show love would be to give of myself to others - to help in what ever ways I could and I think (at least I like to think) that those who know me will say that I'm someone who will drop what I'm doing at the drop of a hat if I see someone with a need that I can fill.

But what if that's not how love works?

Take a look at this other piece from 1 Corinthians 13 - this time from Eugene Peterson's paraphrase, The Message:

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love. 1 Corinthians 13:1-7

Ouch.

What if all the generosity I gave that I thought was love was just "the creaking of a rusty gate?"

What if I have no idea what love is?

Because (and maybe this is the secret that few people know about me) I don't think I know what love is.

And that's a pretty screwed up thing to write but there it is.

Well, let me clarify that a bit. Of course there are people in my life who I love - family, the guys in my band, friends back in Hawaii, new friends in Seattle - but even with these people, it's sometimes hard for me to know how to love them. I know I love them, but how so? How do I show it, how do I live that out?

And if I have uncertainties about loving those I love, how am I supposed to love my neighbor or my enemy or Harold?

[insert long pause (say, 20mins) where I'm staring at the screen, wondering if I should write this next bit]

I hesitate to write this because, to me, it sounds terribly self-indulgent and selfish and spoiled but it's where this entry is headed so I may as well just go there.

See. . .

I. . .

I wonder if I'm not sure what love is because I don't think I've felt loved in a really long time.

Is that okay to say?

There's a really popular book which I haven't read but I've heard a lot of people talk about it so I'm vaguely familiar with its concepts. It's called The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. In it, Chapman talks about five "languages" of love - five different ways that people experience and give love. They are:

1. Words of Affirmation
2. Quality Time
3. Receiving Gifts
4. Acts of Service
5. Physical Touch.

I don't think I speak any of those languages.

Well, let me qualify that. I think I show love to others though acts of service. But I don't know if that's how I receive love. In fact, looking at Chapman's list, I'm not sure if any of those is how I receive or feel loved.

There are lots of different versions of this Love Languages book. There's a Men's edition, a children's edition, and a teenager's edition. I think I need a geeky introvert edition. I'd feel loved if he wrote that.

I guess I write all of this to make this point. I wonder if the easiest way to learn about how to love and be loved is to, well, be in love - ideally with someone who loves you back. And so I wonder if I need to get over the comfort I've found as a single person and put myself back out there and try and find someone I can grow old with.

I don't know.

So tell me about love.

What's the best way to give and receive love?

What is it about modern society that makes it so hard to express and/or feel loved even as we are supposedly more "connected" through cell phones and email?

Should I get off my lazy, single ass and put myself out there more?

Lastly, I got no game when it comes to dating. Does anybody think reading this book would help me learn some moves?

283. What It's Like to be Shy (fiction)

2007-12-05T08:17:00.003-08:00

I was about to start on this week's post when (for some reason...probably to delay the actual work of writing) I took a look at my "secret" blog where I used to post pieces of fiction that I was working on. I haven't put anything up there in months (like since April).

Anyway, I'm looking again at what I had posted there and I came across this little story and I was cracking up because it was so much fun (if I can be so modest). And I thought I'd share it with ya'll.

Just a note, this is FICTION! It might sound like me and while it's loosely based on me, it's not about me (mostly).

Hope you like it.

What It's Like to be Shy

At The Coffee Shop:

I dress anonymously. I avoid color and fashion. Blue jeans and a dark (but not too dark) shirt.

I sit in the corner and face the window. I used to face the wall but one of my friends (one of four) told me it makes me look a bit crazy and kept me from blending in.

I scan the crowd but avoid eye contact. At the window in the front of the shop there is a row of barstools and a counter where patrons rest their lattes while flipping through the local weekly or write on their laptops. Sometimes I'll spot a woman sitting there whose hair style attracts me and I imagine that she has a face with a beauty unique to my quirky aesthetic. Sometimes she turns and shatters the illusion, but more often than not, all I ever get is her ear lobe and the curve of her chin. And that can be enough.

At the Barber Shop:

When I get a trim, I always hope for a stylist who just cuts hair, who doesn't bother with small talk.

I would never say this, because that would be too forward of me, but as I'm sitting in their chair, I always think to myself, "please, please, just cut my hair. Don't ask me how my day has been. Don't ask me what I do for work or for fun. Don't ask me if I've seen any good movies. Don't ask me about the latest reality show."

"Just ask me how I want my hair done (short and thinned out), ask about my sideburns if you must (just even them out), but overall, just let your scissors do the talking and I promise a generous tip in return."

In a Group Setting (say at a staff meeting):

People are often surprised at my insight and willingness to speak up. They think that because I am soft-spoken and reserved one-on-one that I would be more so in a formal group setting.

What they don't understand is that it's the personal part of personal interaction that I find acutely uncomfortable. Speaking in front of a crowd is easy because in a group, people become anonymous, impersonal, other. And when someone from the group responds to what I say, they are responding to the idea presented not to me, and that makes me feel safe.

Sometimes after a meeting where I had been especially vocal, a person will come up to me and ask if I would be interested in discussing my ideas further with them, perhaps over lunch. I find a polite way to tell them I can't and that surprises them. I don't tell them this, of course, but I decline because that's just too much, too close for comfort.

Perhaps I miss out on promotions this way, and I'll admit that it's frustrating to watch people with an abundance of social skills but a dearth of intelligence work their way up the pay scale, finally settling in a position where their ignorance can flourish.

At the Bookstore:

I head first for the magazine rack, but my time there is short - catching up on the latest computer news and reviews. Most of my time is spent among the Literature shelves, particularly the New Fiction section.

Some recommend meeting women in the grocery store but that seems wrong to me. How much can you learn about a person based on vegetables, meats, and starches? I find the bookstore much more telling. I mean if I see a woman smelling the rind of a cantaloupe, what does that tell me, that she likes fresh fruit? But if I see a woman flipping through Sylvia Plath, I know she's hurting something bad. If she's reading Jane Austin, I'm thinking she's probably got impossibly high standards. Jack Kerouac tells me she's probably too bohemian for me and Toni Morrison that I'm not smart enough for her. And on and on. Much more informative.

Of course, being as shy as I am, all I ever do is watch. . .or what's the more modern word for it? I lurk. And if I see a woman reading Douglas Coupland or Michael Chabon or T.C. Boyle, I just dream about what might be if I had bravado, and lines, and looks.

In My Dreams:

I'm taller and better looking. I dress better because I know how to dress better. I'm smooth and suave. I have women at hello.

I had a phase where I dated casually and widely. I unintentionally stole a couple girlfriends from their boyfriends though I didn't know it at the time. However, I am now past all that exploration because I have found the love of my life. She is warm, witty, sharp, and in possession of natural, effortless beauty.

We work at our relationship. We do our best to fight fair. We agree to never hold grudges and we try not to.

I enjoy spoiling my love with style and surprise. I send her random, gooey text messages while she is at work - things like, "all u ever have to be is u and I'll fall in love over and over again." I imagine her reading those messages in the middle of a meeting. I imagine her hiding her smile behind her hand, pretending to cough. After the meeting is over she shows the message to her girlfriends and they laugh while wondering why their boyfriends aren't as wildly romantic.

She finds surprising ways to return my favors. She sneaks a secret cup of pudding into my lunch bag. She draws a heart on the back side of my spoon so I don't notice it until one of my coworkers points it out. He laughs at me just as her coworkers laughed at her but he laughs for a different reason, though deep down inside where he'll never admit it, he laughs for the same reason.

[the end]

BTW, if you'd like a link to my "secret" story blog, email me (lonetomato at yahoo dot com) and I'll send you the link.

282. preliminary thoughts on Faith and Race

2007-12-02T23:14:00.001-08:00

I've mentioned before that through the past few weeks I participated in a class my church put on called Faith and Race. It was an eye-opening, challenging, paradigm-challenging experince. So much so that I hardly know where to start thinking/writing about it, but one of the first issues we discussed was that of privilege - White privilege in particular.

Now let me say up front that as an Asian-American who grew up in Hawaii, I come from a unique (compared to the mainland) background. According to what I could find on the U.S. Census Bureau website, in Hawaii, Asians make up almost 40 percent of the population while Whites account for about 26 percent. In contrast, even in a city as diverse as Seattle, Asians make up about 13 percent of the population while Whites account for nearly 70 percent. This means that my experiences growing up Asian-American were very different from that of Asian-Americans who grew up on the mainland.

I mention this because one of the things we learned in our class was the idea that more often than not, people who have privileges because of their race never have to think about, acknowledge, or otherwise be aware of their privileged status. In contrast, those without privilege are constantly confronted by the fact that their life is different from those who hold privilege.

Those are pretty loaded statements so let me unpack them a bit by talking about why I say growing up Asian-American in Hawaii is different from growing up Asian-American in the mainland.

In Hawaii, it was no problem for me to find people who looked like me and understood my cultural background. I grew up with lots of other Asian-American kids around me in school and in my neighborhood. Teachers knew how to pronounce my last name without asking. Among my peers, it wasn't hard to find role models who looked like me. The cool kids were Asian-American. The bullies were Asian-American. The jocks were Asian-American. The homecoming king and queen were often Asian-American. That's not to say that there weren't any White or African-American kids around, there were, but the point I'm trying to get across is that in Hawaii as an Asian-American, I didn't feel out of place and I never had to think about how my ethnicity affected me.

In the Faith and Race class, it was painful to hear some of the Asian-Americans in my group talk about their experiences growing up in the mainland. For them, their race walked into the room before they did. In other words, when they walked into a new classroom, the first thing the other kids would see was not another student but another Asian student - another other. They were instantly stereotyped - imprinted with whatever images non-Asians had of them - and they had to actively work past these stereotypes (often one person at a time) before they could be seen for who they truly were.

Growing up in such an environment takes its toll. And it's not like the problems are confined to high school. These experiences take on different forms in adulthood and only serve to reinforce the conscience/unconscience/subconscience idea that as an Asian-American, they are not the norm.

When we talked about privilege in the Faith and Race class, I felt like someone who had been on both sides of the fence. In Hawaii, I was part of the group that enjoyed privilege but now, in Seattle, I am outside of that group. One of our readings for that class was White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh, and in her article she lays out a long list of conditions that benefit her because she is white.

In our class, we used this list in an exercise where we looked at each item and answered "yes" or "no" as to whether we could claim that privilege in our lives. We tallied up our individual responses and the class facilitator asked those who were able to check off forty to fifty items to stand on one side of the room, those with zero to ten to stand on the other side of the room and also designated areas in between for those with ten to twenty and twenty to thirty. Most people were at the ends of the room, kind of like an inverse bell curve.

It was a stark reminder of just how divided we still are in this country because of race.

For me, the difficult and interesting part of this exercise was realizing how my responses would have been different if I were back in Hawaii. For example, the first quality of privilege listed was "I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time." And I could say "yes" to that in Hawaii but not in the mainland.

I make it a point to state up front that I grew up Asian-American in Hawaii because I don't know what it's like to be a minority the way Asian-Americans in the mainland do and because of that, I feel as if I'm in a kind of odd situation. I want to talk about my thoughts coming out of the Faith and Race class but my perspective is different from those of mainland Asian-Americans, so please don't take the things I write as definitive in any way in regards to the Asian-American experience. I'm just some guy who's trying to think through some issues of race through his blog.

But.

But before I say more about faith and race and racism, I realize that I need to read up on the subject a bit more. I feel now the way I did years ago when I first started asking fundamental questions about Christianity. I knew there were ideas that I had about being a Christian that just didn't sit right with me but I wasn't sure why. It took a lot of reading, a lot of writing, and countless hours staring at my computer screen trying to think things through but I finally have some...not answers, but a kind of rough sketch of beliefs that have made Christianity more practical and real and livable for me. I've been sharing a kind of summary of my most recent thoughts about being a Christian in what I've recently called my Layman's Theology Series (ongoing...stay tuned for more episodes).

So to continue my education on issues of race and racism, I picked up Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum's book, Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? I'm only a few pages into it but I already feel my perspective on the world opening up.

I realize that I'm opening a huge can of worms, but I love living in America and being an American (and Asian-American). I think it's the best place on earth to live but there are a lot of huge problems that this nation will have to deal with if the American experiment is to live on. Race is certainly one such issue. As the racial makeup of America continues to change (census data project that whites will be a minority in America by as soon as 2040), issues of race and racism will continue to come into play.

If I have one minor criticism of my church's Faith and Race class, it's that while it did a great job of highlighting the problems (subtle and not so) of racism, we never went on to talk about potential solutions and how Jesus would have us (as individuals and as the body of Christ) move forward.

But I understand. Advocating solutions in issues of racism is a touchy subject but I believe that the metaphor of the Kingdom of God that Jesus speaks so much about is a kingdom where the problem of racism no longer exists. I also believe that as christians, we have an obligation to work towards this vision of the kingdom, and it would help to have some ideas about what that might look like.

But you can't deal with a problem unless you know what it is and for helping me take the first steps in better understanding the problem, I'm truly, superlatively grateful for the class.

281. tell me about love (part 1)

2007-11-21T08:11:00.000-08:00

You know, it's happened twice already. I write about some frustrating situation at work and through the process of venting on the page, I come to some epiphany that helps make sense of what I do (see blog 267 and 277). But you know, despite these new insights, somehow my coworker seems to find innovative new ways to just plain piss me off.

I don't really want to get into the latest ways he's been getting on my nerves. I want to delve a bit deeper into what I wrote about in my last post about work. In that entry, I talked about how I decided to try my best to treat Harold as a hard-working peer even though he's actually a hardly-working one. And for a couple weeks, it went really well. I mean, he didn't work any harder or faster but he seemed to be in a better mood. As for myself, because I wasn't always scrutinizing Harold - watching him out of the corner of my eye to catalog all the ways he wasn't working - I was able to relax as well and just do my job.

But you know, just when I think I've seen the limits of his poor work ethic and lack of empathy for the amount of work I put in, Harold somehow manages to find a new way to just frustrate the hell out of me.

But that's not what I want to talk about because it's really just more of the same ole situation.

There's something else I've been thinking about. See, the reason I decided to try and treat Harold as a peer was because I took a fresh look at some of the things Jesus said in the Gospels - in particular, the bit where he talks about loving your neighbor as yourself and loving the less than perfect the way God loves us.

And the bit that's tripping me up is that word, "love."

In 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, Paul talks about how doing what seems like holy work without love is equivalent to banging a cheap cymbal. And then he goes on to describe love in that passage you hear at so many weddings (appropriately so, I might add):

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Now if those are the elements of love then how am I doing at work with Harold?

1. patient - most of the time (1).
2. kind - try to be (1).
3. does not envy - there are times when I wish I could just sit around instead of breaking my back lifting boxes but besides that, there's not a whole lot about Harold that I envy (1).
4. does not boast, is not proud - I sometimes complain to one of our drivers, telling him how much work I've done that day compared to Harold so I guess I fail on this one (0).
5. is not rude - nope, not me (1).
6. is not self-seeking - nah...although I'm hoping for a generous raise once my yearly review comes around (1).
7. not easily angered - that's me (1).
8. keeps no record of wrongs - I try to forgive and forget but it's hard when Harold keeps reminding me (0).
9. does not delight in evil - I don't like evil (1).
10. rejoices with the truth - that's why I blog (1).
11. always protects - well, I haven't reported my complaints about Harold to my boss yet, does that count as protecting him (0)?
12. always trusts - I don't trust Harold (0).
13. always hopes - I do hope he'll do better (1).
14. always perseveres - well, I'm still working there...(1)

Ten out of fourteen ain't bad right?

But here's the thing I've been thinking about. Is living out the qualities of love that Paul lays out really love? I don't think so. The qualities that Paul lists are like signposts or indicators that show that a person is motivated by love. In this way, I think it's an all or nothing list.

Here's what I mean. Pregnancy tests work not by going in and verifying that an egg has been fertilized and has attached itself successfully to the uterine wall, they work by detecting the chemical/hormonal changes that take place once those things have happened. In other words, the test doesn't verify actual conception, it tests for signs that conception has occurred. Now in order to weed out false positives, the tests look for a multitude of indicators. If it doesn't find all the right signs, it returns a negative result. (Don't ask me how I know this.)

So I picture Paul writing this letter to the Corinthians and he comes up with this list of qualities that describe someone motivated by love. This is the last thing he writes in this letter and it's pretty long already so I'm thinking he's not all that interested in compiling a comprehensive inventory. Instead, he highlights the sure-things, the things that have to be there if someone is truly motivated by love. So these are the essentials, the bare minimums, and like the pregnancy test, if you ain't got all the signs, you ain't really lovin'.

There's another reason I know I don't treat Harold with love. I have zero respect for the guy. I don't know how to respect someone who consistently takes on the lightest workload possible (leaving me to do the heavy lifting), someone who doesn't check his work (twice in the past couple months I've had to hunt through the shelves to find boxes that Harold scanned in wrong), someone who complains when a rush order comes in because it means he'll have to get up out of his chair and actually do something (since I'm probably already out in the racks working on something else).

But he's my neighbor and Jesus wants me to be Jesus to Harold.

It's so hard to remember that Harold has been fearfully and lovingly made by God, that he is not beyond redemption. It's so hard to look past all the sin that's distorting the beauty God gave him. But that is my job as a christian.

I don't know.

Tell me about love. How do I love this guy? Does going through the motions of love count for anything? What would loving Harold look like?

280. stay tuned..

2007-11-17T14:58:00.000-08:00

I apologize again for not keeping up with my one-post-per-week "rule." I had another friend visiting from Hawaii last week and that cut into my time quite a bit but that's not the only reason I didn't write.

There's something that stirring in my subconscious - I can sense it but it's just brewing, sorting itself out beneath the surface. I'm not exactly sure what it is. To be honest, it could be something as mundane as a new idea about the lunch I make to eat at work. Or it could be some profound breakthrough as to how I can change the world through the way I live out my belief in Christ.

That's not to say there's nothing on the conscious side of the brain that I'm working on. There's quite a bit on the plate there as well. One item I've been thinking about lately - the other night at my church's Faith and Race class, we saw a powerful short film about race and racism called The Color of Fear. It's a pretty brutal film that highlights just how far we still need to go in terms of race reconciliation. This film, as well as the readings and the teachings I've been going through in this class, has given me lots to think and write about. But I'm not quite ready to do so yet.

On another note, I just discovered that they sell poi at Uwajimaya! Next week is the final week for the Faith and Race class and we're having a pot luck where people are encouraged to bring something unique (or not) that they grew up eating. I already knew of a place where I could buy Spam musibi (and yeah, I know I could make it myself but I'm far too lazy and sloppy in the kitchen) and so I was planning on bringing that but then I had a brilliant idea.

If you've never had it before, poi is cooked taro that's been mashed into a paste. It's an acquired taste. People who try it for the first time describe it as purple Elmer's glue. So my plan is to take poi to the pot luck. I'm guessing that most people will taste a bit of it before politely moving on to the next dish which means that at the end of the night I'll be able to take the bulk of it back home with me.

Yeah, I'm evil like that, but there are few things better in this world than poi for breakfast.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned.

279. thoughts on communion

2007-11-04T09:20:00.000-08:00

The act of taking communion (aka the eucharist) is supposed to be way up there when it comes to the sacred rites of the church. Indeed, in some denominations, the act of taking communion is considered the high point of the service. The rite is observed in a variety of ways - I've experienced everything from very formalized, liturgical services to very informal ones where the elements were placed on a table at the front of the church and people were invited to partake as they felt led (taking a piece of bread and dipping it in the grape juice/wine). There was even one service I attended where the ushers passed out tiny covered plastic cups filled with grape juice. At first I couldn't figure out where the body/bread part of communion was until I noticed that the "lid" of the cup had two layers to it. Under the clear top layer was a tiny wafer that symbolized the bread and below that was the actual cover for the juice. You were supposed to peel back the top layer to get the wafer and then peel back the second layer to get at the juice. Surreal, to say the least.

It's still rather embarrassing to admit this but until a couple years ago, I had only the vaguest notion of what it was I was doing while taking communion. I mean I understood that we were remembering Jesus and obeying his command to "do this in remembrance of me" (1 Corinthians 11:23-25), and that the wine and the bread symbolized Jesus' blood and body, and while I suppose those are the nuts and bolts of what's happening, it just didn't feel all that meaningful for me. I did my best to participate with a sincere heart. I tried to think of Jesus dying on the cross for my sins, I tried to confess my sins before partaking so I could receive the elements cleansed, but I still didn't get it. I mean, it just felt like going through the motions.

Before moving to Seattle, I was a part of a house church back in Hawaii. We took turns teaching on Sundays and although I can't remember how it happened, I got picked (or maybe I volunteered) to share a message about communion. Actually, now that I think about it, I do remember a bit of how this teaching opportunity came about.

We had been meeting as a house church for a few months when someone observed that we had never had communion. We all felt bad about this and so the next week we brought bread and wine and decided to give it a go. One of the features of our house church was that it was very open and discussion oriented. Before we shared the communion meal, someone asked the simple question, "what are we doing this for?" And then one by one we began to admit that beyond rote Sunday school answers, we didn't really know. Despite our ignorance, we broke bread anyway but we also said one of us should do some research and share what they learned. And then I got picked...or maybe I volunteered, I still can't remember that part.

I put nose to grindstone. I read the accounts of the Lord's supper in the Gospels and the bit in 1 Corinthians 11 and 12, but I had heard these portions of scripture so often that they didn't help much. So I consulted the all-knowing Wikipedia, but that just gave me a raft of doctrinal history which was about as useful to me understanding communion as learning how to operate a printing press would be in learning how to read. I knew what I needed was to get in the heads of the disciples as they sat around the table with Jesus in the upper room - what were they thinking as they heard Jesus tell them to eat his body and drink his blood?

That's when I found N.T. Wright's book, The Meal Jesus Gave Us. An excellent book and while there are brief bits where he picks at some obscure doctrinal nits, it really helped me reach a deeper, fuller understanding of communion. Much of what follows came about with help from Mr. Wright's book. (I've put my own slant on it so if you disagree on my take on communion, don't slight his book, it's probably my mistake.)

In order to get a fuller understanding of communion, we need to take a trip in the way back machine - way back to 1500 BC, to Moses and the Exodus. I won't rehash the entire story but the salient points are these. The Israelites were held in captivity and made slaves of the Pharaoh until God spoke to Moses through a burning bush, instructing him to free his people and take them to a land that God had chosen for them - the promised land, flowing with milk and honey (Exodus 3:7-10). Ten nasty plagues ensued, culminating in the death of all the first-born children in Egypt. However, this plague passed over the Israelites. To this day, the Passover holiday is celebrated by Jews around the world as commanded by God. It's a time when they remember both their ancestors' suffering under slavery and the work God did to free them.

More significant for this discussion on communion, it's this Passover ceremony that Jesus shared with his disciples where he poured wine and broke bread and told us to do likewise (Matthew 26:17-19). As with everything else in Jesus' life, this is no coincidence - it's a date with deep, beautiful, nuanced meaning.

As I understand it, the Exodus is central to the identity of the Jewish people. Had God not led them out of Egypt through Moses, they say that they would still be living as slaves. In the same way, one of the central tenants of the christian faith is the idea that through the death of Jesus on the cross, those who believe and follow Christ are freed from being slaves to sin (Romans 6:6-7).

But the Passover story doesn't end with freedom. Once freed from Egypt, the Jews wandered the desert for forty years before being led to the land promised to them. And just as times of adversity build character, it was through this time of wandering that the "character" of the Jewish people was developed. Lauren F. Winner puts it this way in her excellent book, Girl Meets God:

"In The Star of Redemption, [Franz] Rosenzweig discusses [Jewish] time and calendars and holidays. About Pesach, he writes, 'The welding of people into a people takes place in its deliverance.' And that, it seems to me, is what both passover and Maundy Thursday are about - making a people. In the Exodus, the Jews are transformed from people into a people and at the Eucharist, instituted there at the Last Supper, we Christians are transformed into a people, too." (Winner 173)

I happen to believe that christians today are like those Jews wandering, stumbling, complaining towards the promised land. They were working their way to what would become Israel. We are working our way to the Kingdom of God - the time when Christ will come again to finish the work of redeeming this fallen world. For me, seeing the Eucharist in this way transforms what was once a staid, Sunday school answer - "we take communion to remember Christ's death on the cross" - into a vibrant reminder that we are all on a journey, that as bleak as the world seems, there is a promised land ahead of us. And I don't think it's a stretch to say that when Jesus instructed us to "do this in remembrance of me," he meant for us to remember both what he did on the cross as well as what he will do when he comes again.

[warning: unorthodox view ahead, please don't stone me]

To be honest, there are still times, while taking communion, that I find it difficult to remember what I'm supposed to be remembering. And I wonder.

As many churches do, my church celebrates communion every Sunday. Other churches I've attended took communion on a monthly or quarterly schedule. But for Jews, the Passover meal is a yearly event and as such, it's a big deal. The ceremony literally lasts all night and it's full of discussion on what the different foods symbolize. In taking communion every week, I have to fight the temptation to think of it as just that thing we do every Sunday.

I wonder if it would be better to take communion just once a year and to make it a really big deal. I think it'd be great to devote one service every year to a fuller discussion of the Last Supper and how Jesus was reworking the Passover celebration. Can you imagine how deep and meaningful drinking the wine and eating the bread would be on a Sunday like that?

Now I know some christians get together on Passover week to celebrate a christian Seder, but this is seen as kind of a fringe thing done only by hardcore christians. And I understand that devoting a Sunday service during Passover week to focus on communion would interfere with Easter Sunday but how about the week before or the week after or maybe some other date entirely?

I would love to see a Sunday where the whole church gets together and celebrates a Seder meal together...but that's just me and my two cents.

278. not slacking off...not exactly

2007-10-29T22:48:00.002-07:00

Yeah, I didn't post last week. But I had friends from Hawaii in town.

Also, on Monday nights I've been attending a series my church is hosting called Faith and Race. Thoughtful, challenging stuff.

I'm ninety percent sure I can get to another post in the Layman's Theology series by the end of this week but right now I'm working on something to put on my bass drum.

Here's a preview:

There are places out there where you can send in a design and they'll custom make you a bass drum head but that route costs about $100.

I have other plans. Not sure if it's going to work but it'll be a helluva lot less than the mail-order version.

Wish me luck.