Finding Momentum

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 […]

My grand­fa­ther (ah gong, or 外公, but we call him gong gong), dri­ven by winds of Com­mu­nist change, arrived in Tai­wan in the 1940s. He was a Fuzhou busi­ness­man, 26 at the time. He was a busi­ness­man, rel­a­tively wealthy and edu­cated, and fled from the incom­ing Com­mu­nists. He met my grand­mother (ah ma, or 外媽 […]

On the days when the weather is right, I swear I can feel the tickle of young love: the kind that’s radi­ant, invit­ing, and easy to fall into. It’s sim­ple and charm­ing and as light as goose­feath­ers. On some odd days, I can vaguely remem­ber the approach to the precipice of old love, woolen, worn […]

I smelled it com­ing last week, but it didn’t arrive until today. It smelled like autumn, it was warm rain, tick­lish; it was musty with dia­mond dew and faded mem­o­ries of run­ning through these trees at our old church camp site, red­wood trees tick­ling the clouds and the sweet fra­grance of pine cones and the […]

The most dif­fi­cult (and yet I sus­pect one of the most reward­ing) part of this year’s intern­ship has been to sim­ply sit with some­body and lis­ten. Yes, it’s been mad­den­ingly dif­fi­cult with Betty, the lady pic­tured above. Ask any­body; I’m a busy, hyper-scheduled guy. But to lis­ten to some­one is to really allow your­self to be […]

I remem­ber, Feel­ing the weight of heart­break­ing silence slip through my fin­gers, pool­ing at our feet. It is thicker than water. Discovering that love must be coaxed & wooed, and bear­ing the frus­tra­tion of not know­ing how. The pain of the real self left undis­cov­ered; the throb­bing, sting­ing dis­ap­point­ment you feel as a boy. The terror […]

A few cloudy Sun­days ago I was watch­ing Bruce play with Dar­ren on the steps of our church. Scream­ing fire trucks were storm­ing our street. Bruce ran down the steps, swept a wide-eyed Dar­ren into his arms and ran down to watch the com­mo­tion fade down East 15th. Darren’s eyes were bright and mouth was agape. […]

I just came across this verse (1 Peter 4:8) and real­ized that God was rock­ing me with it. I mailed it to the other interns (text: “bah!”) because they know how hard it is for me to serve peo­ple I don’t get along with. But… like Justin men­tioned the other day, what if we changed […]