Finding Momentum

We’re all hold­ing hands on the street. Bear on my left, a stocky, griz­zled Fil­ipino dude wear­ing a hard expres­sion under squint­ing eyes. Pan­cho on my right, a wiry black man with a thin face and a black “OAKLAND” beanie with big, gothic let­ter­ing. Cece is between the men, fin­ish­ing a prayer: “And keep us […]

Blaise Pas­cal, one evening, recorded a spir­i­tual expe­ri­ence he had. It affected him so much that he sewed it into the lin­ing of his coat until his death. He titled it The Memo­r­ial: L’an de grâce 1654, Lundi, 23 novem­bre, jour de saint Clé­ment, pape et mar­tyr, et autres au mar­ty­rologe. Veille de saint Chryso­gone, martyr, […]

The longer I spend around a church, the more I see that peo­ple are really, really bro­ken. And that’s really good for me to see, because I’m start­ing to grasp how deep the Father-love really is, and how uncon­di­tional it is. Loud are the songs of bro­ken sin­ners. Henri Nouwen is teach­ing me to stare […]

I really admire Eric’s patience with peo­ple. After Evan­ge­lism class he spent an hour and a half with a wheelchair-bound Betty Dunn, doing geneal­ogy searches with her and look­ing at pho­tos on Flickr. I nor­mally don’t have any patience with peo­ple like Betty, because I want to send her home as soon as pos­si­ble so I can […]

I feel pretty com­fort­able walk­ing around shirt­less. Sun­day at 3pm before ser­vice I walked into the chapel sans shirt to find Albert there doing cou­ples’ coun­sel­ing. Guy: hey, he’s shirt­less. Albert: yeah (silence)… he’s an intern. I blame this all on Dave, who is shirt­less over half of the time. My diet con­sists two parts peanut […]

Man, God is totally wreck­ing me with this Betty thing. It’s been hard not to be cold to Betty after our repeated con­fronta­tions with her. To not let bit­ter­ness take root every time I feel like I see her act out of (what I believe to be) enti­tle­ment. And well, if I had to call it […]

It’s only week 2, but I already have my list. You shouldn’t be a Regen intern: Guar­an­teed con­flicts with peo­ple. Jan­i­to­r­ial work involv­ing urine, mildew, and mold. Always being avail­able can take its toll on you. Some­one always eats your food in the fridge. Boundary-setting is uncom­fort­able. Sat­ur­day chores are long and hard. There’s a stray cat we can’t […]

Betty is a home­less lady who has a bit more of a com­fort­able rela­tion­ship with us. So often­times in the morn­ings she’ll be fix­ing some break­fast for her­self in the shared kitchen space that we have. Unfor­tu­nately, we’ve been notic­ing some food going miss­ing lately and sus­pi­ciously show up in hers. I saw her in there […]

Our God is like a lion. Relent­less in judg­ment, burn­ing in his pas­sion for his church. There is a wild grace about it now; that the com­ple­ment to love and grace and mercy would be his judg­ment, sov­er­eign, beau­ti­ful and good. I see it now. I want it. Jus­tice in this world, our God will […]

How long, O Lord? Will you for­get me for­ever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take coun­sel in my soul and have sor­row in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Con­sider and answer me, O Lord my God; light up my […]