Finding Momentum

Some RBO youth take off at the start line.

One thing I like about vol­un­teer­ing with RBO is the chance to meet up with kids from all dif­fer­ent parts of Oak­land. This year I was paired up with S, a kid from the Fruit­vale dis­trict attend­ing a local char­ter school just a few blocks from me.

S is a soft kid, a quiet kid. He isn’t quick to vol­un­teer him­self, so our runs con­sist of me talk­ing a lot, or ask­ing him ques­tions, and him politely answer­ing them.

Our worlds are dif­fer­ent — I grew up in wealthy Saratoga, where our biggest con­cerns were about our GPAs, study­ing for the SATs, or when we’d inherit our par­ents’ cars. S grew up in the hood, where every­body around him is gang-affiliated. Every Sat­ur­day morn­ing at seven he jumps on two buses and comes out to our work­outs on the south end of the lake by himself.

His best friend is Z, a slen­der Mexican-American kid like S, who became fast friends at their cur­rent school. Z has already devel­oped the qual­i­ties of a young ring­leader — brash, hand­some, funny, a friend of trou­ble, and still hes­i­tant and vul­ner­a­ble behind his per­sona in a way that thirteen-year olds are.

Our work­outs together would con­sist of the two friends run­ning together, and Z vol­un­teer­ing unin­vited facts about his friend: “Did you know that S is the hand­somest guy at school. He’s a player.”

S: (chuck­les to himself)

Z: “Him and me stopped being friends because he was see­ing this girl, and I told him that she was trou­ble but he wouldn’t lis­ten to me.”

Me: “Oh yeah? What’s she like?”

We talk about her at length.

Me: “So what’s the deal with you guys now? You’re still friends right?”

Z: “Yeah, I went away and wrote him a let­ter and said I still wanted to be friends.”

Two weeks later S reports back to me: I’ve bro­ken up with that girl, Z was right.

And then he tells me he’s dat­ing some­one else now, her friend. I laugh.

—

What’s it like when every­one around you is liv­ing a grit-filled life? When cop cars and sirens and gun­shots are your com­mon reality?

“Me and my sis­ter are close” S says, “but she pro­tects me” — her sis­ter was jumped into a gang two years ago (I am sur­prised to learn she is only 14).

They are close, but so far apart. S has resolved to keep his head up and out of gangs, but his sis­ter is deep in gang life. They’re close, they fight, yet they love each other. He tells a story of nearly get­ting jumped him­self, but for the protests of his sis­ter, was let go.

“How do you stay out of the gang scene?” I ask him.

He shrugs. “They kind of know you’re so-and-so’s sis­ter, and won’t bother you.”

—

On one of our runs, Z and S were run­ning together when S blurts out, “Z once made me swal­low a staple”.

“What? How did that hap­pen?” I ask.

“He dared me.”

Z’s eyes twinkle.

“It got stuck in my throat and I got scared and I had to go to the hos­pi­tal”, S says.

“The worst part was at the hos­pi­tal, when I had to talk to his mom.” Z shud­ders. “She’s hella scary.”

S just laughs.

—

On our Oak­land Half Marathon run this year, S and I were run­ning past the West Oak­land entrance to the Port, and I was talk­ing to him about all the things we could see if we went over the bridge — Mid­dle Har­bor Shore­line Park, the Cru­cible, Brown Sugar Kitchen. “Have you seen those things before?” I ask. He responds no.

A half mile passes in silence, and then he vol­un­teers, “There’s so many things I haven’t seen… it’s tough to see past all the violence.”

We run a bit more in silence.

—

S and I run a steady, paced half marathon together, and you can see his spir­its rise as he pushes through his pain to get across the fin­ish line, tired and happy. Z is some­where behind us, hav­ing cramped up but he fin­ishes too. And I’m over­come with pride for S and what he’s fight­ing for in his life.

Tired and happy.

Mike calls me out of the blue.

I pick up the receiver to a sonic wave of grief. They shot my baby, he wails, they took my girl.

You loved her a lot, I offer, the words stum­bling out of my mouth.

I loved her like my own.

Her daddy passed away in Novem­ber. Harry. He helped me move into my apart­ment, put in the down pay­ment… now he’s gone.

Wail­ing, the sobs come in waves. Bub­bling, snort­ing, snif­fling. Mike is a mess.

Lis­ten.

I took Jubrille shop­ping just last week to get boots. Right out here — that Skech­ers on Ban­croft? Gio­vana didn’t like this one pair that Jubrille really liked oh God oh god oh gawd oh god

Silence from time to time… hello? Silence. Hello?

I’m still here.

She was the last of 2012… I wish I was the last of 2012. I’m done, Drew, I’m done. It hurts so bad. Why’d they take my baby?

How’s Belinda?

The sob­bing con­tin­ues. She’s… bad, Drew. Belinda’s doing bad. You gotta call her man.

Jabrille, Gabriel, Jabrille, Gabriel — like the angel. Here’s her picture.

Mike shows a video to me from his phone, tak­ing his time to swipe through about twenty dif­fer­ent pic­tures. There the image is, her room, shad­owy in the after­noon, the sun fil­ter­ing through dark cur­tains. Grad­u­a­tion pho­tos, bags from var­i­ous stores taped to the walls — FOOT LOCKER, FOREVER 21, H&M. There is the sound of Mike chok­ing back tears. There is a man in the room too, his arms slouched over his knees, giv­ing Mike & cam­era a long look.

Be strong Mike for my mom and my sis­ter. Pull your­self together. You can’t cry.

Gio­vana is shut off. Won’t talk. Can’t blame her. Her dad just passed too. And now her sister…

At the farewell funeral I met Gio­vana, who looked a lot skin­nier and wider-eyed than I had imag­ined her being. She was only a year older than her sis­ter, and walked shyly around the mourn­ers, talk­ing in side glances with her high school friends who looked pained and out of place. Some of them were smil­ing — whether it was the incon­gruity of it all, or using humor to mask deep sad­ness, I didn’t know.

The can­dle­light vigil was last week, but oh man. It’s gonna rain, Mike says, I gotta get there and get the teddy bears in her room.

I’m feel­ing out of place. The King­pin owner comes over to our table. Mike says: you hear the news. They took my daugh­ter. Shot over New Years. The shop owner comes over and clutches Mike’s phone loosely. Yeah. He looks con­cerned, then hands the phone back to Mike.

Every­where I go I see girls that look like Jabrille. I stop and look at them. The other week we came out here and she bought boots at Skech­ers here. Right here in Berkeley.

Belinda says now you gotta help me raise the girls. So I say to Gio­vana: first thing is you can’t go out­side. Don’t hang out with your hoochie mama friends. And she didn’t say nothing.

Over our table now Mike slides over to me an open news­pa­per, the SF Chron­i­cle, opened to an arti­cle about Malala, Pak­istani girl who got shot by the Tal­iban. Read this? he asks. So sad.

You gotta be strong, Mike. Wait till this all blows over. I gotta be strong. I gotta be strong for Belinda.

Jubrille’s view­ing was the first view­ing I’ve ever been at, and she looked… unnat­ural. Plas­tic. There used to be a soul in there. Mike would stand over the cas­ket and kissed her on the fore­head. Justin and I stood awk­wardly and waited in line and paid our respects and then, feel­ing a bit of dis­place­ment, we sat down in the pews and let Mike sit behind us and rat­tle on about his plans for the obit­u­ary. The entire scene felt unreal. Chil­dren run­ning around, crawl­ing under the pews, laugh­ing. Belinda, who I finally met, was nicely put together, chat­ting it up with loved ones. I’d over­dressed; I had thought to dress up, but felt self-conscious in my tie and nice shoes. Walk­ing back to the van Justin remarked to me and nobody in par­tic­u­lar, is it not crazy that this kind of thing hap­pens in Oak­land twice a week?

Ran into Mike on a rainy day in Berke­ley. We finally got a photo together.

Years have passed since I’ve last writ­ten about Mike. I see him every once in awhile in Berke­ley, still. I think about him from time to time — won­der how he’s doing. I catch him out the cor­ner of my eye the week before I leave for vaca­tion, hang­ing around at Gypsy’s. “Mike!” I call back to him, and he turns around with a big grin on his face. The side­walks are soaked.

“It’s my birth­day tomor­row” he tells me, and I remem­ber how close to Christ­mas it is.

We swap phone num­bers. He’s in pos­ses­sion of an Android phone now. “How does this thing work?” he asks and laughs to him­self. He’s show­ing me pho­tos of him­self, now tak­ing classes at a culi­nary school in SF. Some­thing about that seems incon­gru­ous to me and I chuckle inside… but Mike, well I believe he has the gump­tion and work ethic to pull it off. I tell him I owe him a birth­day lunch, and we part ways.

–

Flash for­ward a cou­ple of weeks, and it’s the first Tues­day of the new year. I’ve left on a run and Mike’s left me a voice mail while on my run. I lis­ten to it on the way back, and his voice is hol­low, blue, grief-stricken. “Drew,” chokes the voice on the other end, “they shot my baby girl.”

Damn.

I look up the news arti­cle. Jubrille was 15 years old, wanted to be a teacher, and was on her way to the mall with her sis­ter and another friend. The shooter was another teen.

OAKLAND — A pile of flow­ers, can­dles, teddy bears and farewell notes grew by the hour Mon­day after­noon on a quiet street in East Oak­land, but they were lit­tle com­fort to Mike Harris.

Har­ris, whose long­time fam­ily friend Jubrille Jor­dan, 15, was fatally shot at the site Sun­day after­noon, was awash in tears as he sur­veyed the makeshift memorial.

“She was my sweet­heart. They killed my sweet­heart,” said Har­ris, a neatly dressed man in his 50s, as he wiped his eyes. “What hap­pened? I don’t know, I don’t know.”

Jubrille was Oakland’s 12th child killed in 2012, and its 131st homi­cide vic­tim in one of the city’s dead­liest years in recent memory.

–San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle, “15-year old girl gunned down in Oakland”

She was also Oakland’s final homi­cide of 2012. Mike picks up, and I barely make out his words through the sobs.

Happy new year!

Last night I spent a good amount of time look­ing back at my jour­nal and saw a few threads that ran through last year:

If 2011 was a year of risk-taking, then 2012, I’ve summed up, was a build­ing year, a year to build a rhythm and estab­lish a flow. It was a full year at Blurb, com­mut­ing back and forth from SF. Keep­ing up the same rou­tine at Regen. Stephen Min­istry on Mon­days, Cir­cuit train­ing Tues­days, Wednes­day morn­ings with Jeff, home group on Thurs­days, Sat­ur­day morn­ing runs, Sun­days with Betty. Rou­tine and rhythm. It can be good for you.

Know­ing who I am, build­ing a flow can be some­thing to set­tle into but the risk is that I can get too com­fort­able.  But I found myself up against the real­ity that your ideals often have a hard time match­ing up to your real­ity. So on a seri­ous note, last year was also the first year that I felt like I was just… coast­ing. And it felt hor­ri­ble, the thought and feel­ing that the kind of life I should have been liv­ing should be filled with more risk, more Jesus + his pres­ence. I’m learn­ing that I can often­times fall into rou­tine and for­get myself and why I’m here.

There was a sea­son — I remem­ber it well — last year when I sat down and wrote down every­thing I was feel­ing — frus­tra­tion with my life, hon­est doubts about my pur­pose and my faith and a slew of ques­tions for God or Jesus or who­ever it was that was over­see­ing my life. Life in Christ is filled with joy, right? Then why wasn’t I feel­ing it? I was tempted to give it all up again.

The inter­sec­tion of your faith and your daily life can dis­con­nect some­times, and things had derailed for a long time before I noticed it. The cyn­i­cism was sub­tle, but would crawl into things and inner dia­logues. It would rebel against pat answers I saw peo­ple giv­ing around me, or the cul­tural dis­con­nects I’d see between the church and Real Life, and a bro­ken world.

The burnout was pal­pa­ble, but here’s the thing: it was some­thing that I didn’t do any­thing about. I kept up the same rou­tines, held the same smiles and had the same answers. But inside there was a gnaw­ing ques­tion that reap­pears from time to time: what is real about my life? Where was that sense that the world is on the brink of some­thing glo­ri­ous that I felt so often when I was younger–when things had a surety about them, and answers were more black and white, and joy was real because you were laugh­ing, too? What about the inter­sec­tion of dirt & the divine, mir­a­cles I used to see, or evi­dence of the super­nat­ural? Where does that stuff just go when you’ve lived with­out them for so long?

Talk­ing to Jeff, I was reminded that the times I felt alive in Christ were the times I was tak­ing risks. So a lot of last year was about ask­ing myself — where am I going? Where are places I can grow and risks that I can take? And there were a few themes: liv­ing in Oak­land, iden­ti­fy­ing with the bro­ken, friend­ships and broth­ers, youth & com­mu­nity, silence & solitude.

To be hon­est, a lot of that has not mate­ri­al­ized, and a lot of that were gushy ideas lack­ing struc­ture and thought and a strong heart.

God, I want that for this year. I want more faith, more expe­ri­ences of your grace. I want courage to fight for peo­ple I love and defend the things I believe in (and vice versa). I want to run toward con­flict instead of away from it. I want a stronger, more com­pas­sion­ate heart, and I want to run with peo­ple that show that too. But I mainly want to sense your near­ness and know you with the famil­iar­ity of a son.

Com­pet­i­tively, this was a good year. I ran a 3:05 PR at Napa (yay!), but missed Boston by sec­onds (argh).

I was frus­trated with my plan­tar fasci­itis, but that gave me an oppor­tu­nity to go into the swim and the bike and there were a lot of good mem­o­ries doing long bike rides: Mt. Dia­blo + Mt. Tam with Bruce and friends. I also learned to swim in open water! Did my first Olympic tri, with a crazy cur­rent. Got a few friends to do a Tri for Fun. Come Octo­ber, the PF began clear­ing out and I started hit­ting the trails again :)

2013 will be the year I attempt my first 50mi race, and I’m really look­ing for­ward to the train­ing runs on the trails. I think I’ll end up doing a half-Ironman in there some­where. And per­haps another attempt at Boston in the fall. Nate’s going to be train­ing for West­ern States, and I fig­ure if I run with that guy enough I should be in good shape…

2012 was the year I started get­ting seri­ous about pho­tog­ra­phy! I’m find­ing that I’m learn­ing a lot more about the craft. Fig­ur­ing out the tech­ni­cal details is impor­tant, but more than that, it’s about work­ing with sub­jects, mak­ing them feel at ease. It’s about find­ing light and keep­ing your eyes open always and going with your gut. It’s about tak­ing risks and try­ing new poses and set­tings. Wedding-wise, it’s about plan­ning, prepa­ra­tion and being on your toes. I have a lot to learn still, and I’m excited about 2013’s new assignments.

Wejoinin was kind of on the back burner but Hsiu-Fan and I are near­ing the com­ple­tion of a Rails 3 upgrade. More on that soon on my tech­ni­cal blog.

I took trips to Port­land, LA, and even South Carolina.

I went to more than a few wed­dings and saw quite a few friends get hitched. Congratulations!

And… I started dat­ing again. The feeling’s a lit­tle sur­real, but I like her a lot :)

Immanuel, God with us. Immanuel, God with us. Breath. Breath(e). God is with us.

Breathe out, Immanuel. With us. With breath, with us.

There are two themes run­ning through my jour­nal lately — one is of intense grat­i­tude: about the things I’ve been given and how much I didn’t deserve them. They are filled with thank­ful­ness about how things have unfurled with Annie. It’s got a lot of awe and won­der at the beauty of the out­doors and the sheer awe of creation.

But its coun­ter­part is writ­ten from a part of me that is uncom­fort­able with my com­fort — feel­ing some­times an almost-arrogance at how much I’ve got­ten things fig­ured out or how much I’ve learned or where I am in life. I think a part of myself senses a puffed-upness in my soul, or is wary of a front that I put up from time to time. It’s a false self, tied up in sched­ules and enam­ored by Hav­ing It Together.

It’s hard to put my fin­ger on it, but it comes and goes with a sort of numb­ness to the Gospel that creeps up, accom­pa­nied with var­i­ous fla­vors of cyn­i­cism. Think­ing to myself that the times I felt God’s pres­ence the most were the times when I was hum­bled the most and almost want­ing to crawl back to that place again, if only to sense the close­ness of my father.

Bank­rupt… maybe that’s a word I’m look­ing for. When I was hum­bled and beg­ging for God’s pres­ence in my life. And now that I’m in a place of plenty, there’s that sense that I’m look­ing into mir­rors and still miss­ing the real thing. Jesus, be near to me now. I want to know your voice. I want to know sim­ple things to be impor­tant things, like iron friend­ships and unyield­ing broth­er­hood, like being a part of your move­ment, like see­ing redemp­tion and mir­a­cles and Grace rock peo­ple for good, like hum­ble love that is beyond reproach or ridicule.

In the recent theme of grace, maybe one of the rea­sons I really like coun­try songs and the myths they tell is because you can feel the grit in the sto­ries. Coun­try pro­tag­o­nists live out their flaws fully (for bet­ter or worse) but there’s always that redemp­tive thread.

Or maybe I just want to drive a pickup truck.

Onward:

A ques­tion worth explor­ing is: how does my iden­tity as an Asian-American man affect my per­cep­tion of grace (and my fas­ci­na­tion with south­ern white cul­ture)? Is it self-aware irony, a hip­ster thing? Does it say some­thing about the dom­i­nant cul­ture I live in? Does it reflect on my own view of Asian mas­culin­ity (or lack thereof)?

Top­ics for future dis­cus­sion, but hon­estly, I do really just want a pickup truck.

I’m sit­ting at Cof­fee Soci­ety here back home,  jour­nal­ing and feel­ing gen­er­ally over­whelmed by God’s good­ness. I’m not sure when I felt it, but it might have been yesterday’s slow, ram­bling run through the foothills from pre-dawn dusk to mid­morn­ing cool, or expe­ri­enc­ing the long-anticipated togeth­er­ness of a Thanks­giv­ing meal. Or maybe it was just hang­ing with Annie over lunch and being able to feel like a big brother again, or that my dad just dropped a new iPhone in my lap… just like that. I’m see­ing move­ment in my life, and things feel like they’re com­ing together. I just had the thought… I can’t deserve much of this. Things shouldn’t be this good.

I’ve been real­iz­ing lately there’s this dichotomy in how I see myself — on one hand, I have a very outside-in view of myself, painfully aware of oth­ers’ per­cep­tions of myself and always try­ing hard to do things that cre­ate a pol­ished image (see: Ennea­gram 3, of which I’m becom­ing increas­ingly con­vinced of). I can expe­ri­ence myself as a high-performer, a com­pas­sion­ate human, and gen­er­ally rad dude.

Then there’s the other part of myself that’s pretty painfully aware of my flaws and short­com­ings. It knows my hid­ing places and how often I can retreat to them… the places in myself that I expe­ri­ence fears and insecurities.

The achiever in me lives in fear of fail­ure, the sense that things can’t always be this good and I can’t enjoy good things because I’m bound to eff things up, or the sneak­ing sus­pi­cion that some­thing cat­a­strophic is around the cor­ner. The hid­den places in me are always wary of being exposed, or wor­ried that I won’t live up to expec­ta­tions (whose?).

The longer I live the more I’m real­iz­ing that these two parts of myself are redeemed by the Gospel. In the Gospel I can acknowl­edge my imposter and bro­ken self. In the Gospel I begin with the fact that I deserved no good gifts, but then I am given some­thing truly Good. It grounds me and hum­bles me, and most of all it allows me to yield and expe­ri­ence gifts for what they are… and allow myself to savor the sig­nif­i­cance of this delight: that I’m sim­ply his son, and he’s a good Father to me.

Oak­land, tonight I swam in your streets and felt the cool of your night. I think to myself how I feel strong when the pull stroke feels easy, and think to mem­o­rize the tones of the sky at dusk when I pull to the side for air — half the sky a fad­ing incan­des­cent red, the other a flu­o­res­cent blue. I find, for a few moments of grace that peo­ple shim­mer with a quiet mys­tery when they’re under­wa­ter, the light from the pool lamps refract­ing, flex­ing, arc­ing over their bod­ies. To you, Oak­land, I feel a sense of sheep­ish­ness, I

con­fess it’s taken me years to learn to love you and I real­ize it’s because I’m still guarded when I’m around you. It’s taken time to under­stand why the bus lady sings blues­fully to her­self at the stop. She does not want your change, but she wants you to rec­og­nize her and see her, approach her and hold her. You too have a dual per­son­al­ity, you like your sis­ter are hot and cold. Your peo­ple strug­gle up against each other and quar­rel, I remem­ber how Pan­cho would come back to our steps every night after we told him to leave–no dis­re­spect, he insisted–but we’d start up all over on the same note. You’re my partna right? Right, I’d say, know­ing it to be the fee­blest lie, and won­der­ing if he was being face­tious or if I was the most cyn­i­cal man on earth. You’re my partna. Push and pull, push and pull. Oak­land, I real­ize I still don’t

get you but I can’t let that get me down, because I still sense the elec­tric buzz in your veins, and I have that freeze frame photo of the shim­mer dur­ing that swim. I still have the sen­sa­tion of lin­ger­ing night warmth from the soil after a hot day and the small-sensation I get stand­ing under the expanse of your patchquilt sky.