Finding Momentum

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

There was some sort of relief, I decided, in hav­ing set foot in the Occupy camp and find­ing it quiet. Wednes­day, Oak­land was paraded across the global con­scious­ness as national news media dis­played scenes of urban war­fare, with ghostly images of terror-stricken faces sent helter-skelter across the air­waves. Zach showed me the front­page of the […]

I had a hard time accept­ing it, but I finally have to admit that I’m afraid to live in my new neigh­bor­hood. We found out the other day that our place was robbed two months before we came in. There’s a lot of char­ac­ters that hang out around the liquor store down the street. I think there’s a lot of […]

The more I stay here the more I real­ize that I am tired, I am self­ish, I am resent­ful. I am being changed–yes–by enter­ing the lives of peo­ple in poverty and see­ing the grace of being invited into their lives. Yes, I am learn­ing from them a sim­ple faith and a sim­ple life. But it is […]

Thanks for your gen­er­ous dona­tions. We raised $1140 for IJM!

At about 10AM this morn­ing in the mid­dle of Albert’s ser­mon, Mrs. Hu bursts into the sanc­tu­ary and I hear a flurry of hur­ried mur­mur­ing behind me and the flut­ter of a hun­dred heads turn­ing. “Some­one call 911!” Mrs. Hu, wife of Pas­tor Jack Hu of the Chi­nese con­gre­ga­tion we share our church with, was robbed […]