Finding Momentum

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 pricks of nee­dles in my shoes. That’s the kind of place where the mist envelops your eyes and causes you to blink, over and over and over again. Mem­o­ries of the bell ring­ing on the steeple, call­ing us in for din­ner as we would push past adults with under­stand­ing smiles to get to turkey and gravy and pump­kin pie, stuff­ing our­selves and run­ning back out into the wild, pre­tend­ing we were secret agents.

But there it was again in a dif­fer­ent form, car­ry­ing us back from LA through the fer­tile fields of the Cen­tral Val­ley, sun­light streak­ing over our heads and we drove back and debated whether we were old or not. That pre­vi­ous night at the wed­ding I asked my table if they’d ever really felt old, and that maybe the bet­ter ques­tion was whether we ever wished we were young again. We all laughed it off, or at least a bit ner­vously. I won­der if there’s a slight ter­ror to the feel­ing of it over­com­ing us, afraid that maybe one day we’d wake up and feel some gloom of extra grav­ity and it’d hit us: oh crap and we’d carry this fear to our twenty-fifth year high school reunions, strung ’round our necks like medallions. But there rush­ing past sunkissed fields lis­ten­ing to coun­try croon­ers I won­dered if I’d ever really grow old, with the sun on my back and laugh­ter, sweet laugh­ter around me.

I think the warmth of autumn reminds me that all things must change, they must grow and move in sea­son. One day I know I must be old, and I will have known a love that is young and weath­ered, resilient and yield­ing and tested True. I will have known the courage of a lit­tle boy, spo­ken to the weighty fears of my young man self, into the matu­rity that awaits on the other side, the line that we will not know we have crossed until the leaves have long since changed their color.

This morn­ing I woke on the wrong side of the bed, know­ing full well I couldn’t go back to sleep in this heat. I was annoyed that it was already 7:15 and it was already too late to get to prayer, too early to go to the office, too late to go for a run and too late to go back to bed. So I hung around in a daze of sleep debt and won­dered why it couldn’t be 10 degrees cooler, why I felt so tired. I tried to read scrip­ture but just got annoyed at how good it was, how soggy my cereal was, and how I couldn’t con­cen­trate and how far I felt from Jesus. I got mad at how guilty I’ve been feel­ing about it all–about what exactly?–I don’t know. My jaw is sore; I’ve been grind­ing my teeth in my sleep lately. It’s my wake-up call to the fact that I’m gen­er­ally really stressed, but never really aware of it.

If you lean too hard, you’ll go tum­bling out of shad­ows, into the lake. Look, like how the leaves strain against their cuffs in the wind, lean­ing into the gold­en­rod breeze. Look at the lovers lean into each other, rac­ing against sun­down, lips brush­ing freck­les, freck­les brush­ing blades tick­ling toes.

There is no time for think­ing now, but the mechan­i­cal slap­slap of feet against pave­ment. I can sum up Murakami’s book: what does he think about when run­ning? Noth­ing. Justin’s been read­ing more about run­ning lately and let­ting me read his books. I real­ize that I enjoy how mechan­i­cal it is: I like the for­ward lean, the rhyth­mic labor of breath­ing, dri­ving for­ward, but not too far for­ward lest you tum­ble (where?). I’ve been feel­ing more aggres­sive with my run form, enjoy­ing the feel­ing of being fast and the brush­ing of warm rays on my back. It’s going to get me in trou­ble.

I lean into the whoop­siedaisy turn lane and find that will be occu­pied in three-two-one but thank­fully I reel back in and thank my lucky stars. A wan­der­ing Kia once leaned into me and gen­tly lay my bike down in the bike lane. I am happy to report I didn’t go down with it, but won­dered in a few pan­icked moments if peo­ple would do their bet­ter think­ing lay­ing down.

With much sigh­ing, a flock of pho­tons once bar­reled into the earth in a lazy arc, leav­ing ten­drils of dirt-dust in its wake. The sun bathed us in a lemon­ade glow in the evening–I tried to catch it in the viewfinder, but decided to let the moment stand silent, solemn by my side, the way you would imag­ine you would feel in one of those movie-moments preg­nant with mean­ing, voiced by a steel gui­tar. On the way back from Port­land I imag­ined just that, feel­ing like our car was the only one in the world, lean­ing into thin slices of day­light. I caught myself singing along to the stereo, and at that moment thought that we should drive to the world’s edge, then go some more.

Crater Lake, OR

On the heels of that post and in a dif­fer­ent spirit, I also want to say that I’m thor­oughly enjoy­ing this trip to Port­land with some friends. Good eats, good com­pany and a lot of cof­fee, food trucks, walk­ing, cook­ing, good beer, beau­ti­ful runs, down­time, and trees.

That, plus like 30% of our wak­ing time has been spent at this table at Powell’s City of Books. Books are cool, kids. I am reminded that I like words, par­tic­u­larly ones that are strung together nicely.

Justin and I on move-in day.

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 unusual traf­fic at the house a few doors down. I’m find­ing I’m mak­ing assump­tions about peo­ple by their race and eth­nic­ity, and let­ting fear get in the way. It’s nice to sit inside and not go out. Or go out, and not have to come back till late at night.

I can’t hide behind lofty ideals, or mere words and lip ser­vice. This isn’t easy, again. My fear is cloud­ing every­thing, and it’s taken me a few weeks to admit it.

The Regen­er­a­tion interns and I are wrap­ping up our year here at church. What have I learned?

This was the year I stopped roman­ti­ciz­ing urban ministry.

I hon­estly came in with the idea that I was going to be really warm­hearted and be an amaz­ing res­cuer and friend of the poor who could really see peo­ples’ human­ity past their issues. Instead, I found myself bit­ter at a lot of folks. R, who was doing great in his alco­hol recov­ery, stole from us. We banned M from sleep­ing on our porch steps because her sharp urine scent was too much. P sleeps in the bushes, but occa­sion­ally defe­cates in the lot. I learned to dread the sound of the door­bell, which meant incon­ve­nienc­ing me to run up and answer the door and heat up some food. I hated being inconvenienced.

I learned that the poor despise the rich with the lens of enti­tle­ment, and the rich despise the poor with a lens of lazi­ness and deserved­ness. I now see the com­plex web of power struc­tures, decades­long injus­tices, and peo­ple that give up in the face of over­whelm­ing dif­fi­culty. I wres­tle a lot with a desire to escape and turn my back. I hes­i­tate to press in. I know now, ever more than ever, that we both need Jesus to hum­ble us and equal­ize us.

This was a year of community

Take our recent bap­tism from a cou­ple of months ago. R*, an African-American mem­ber who has wres­tled with a long his­tory of alco­holism and other issues, was prayed over by P, an older white man, S, a hapa young pro­fes­sional, and Betty, a wheelchair-bound white lady. I looked at the pic­ture and won­dered what can explain this except the Gospel?

Or the time that Eric engi­neered a sled so that we could take Betty, wheel­chair and all, down to Ocean Beach for a bon­fire. What can explain that?

Or the times that we hit up In-n-Out at ran­dom times in the mid­dle of the night, or did a monthly San Tung run, or chowed on Yummy Guide after a Betty dropoff. I’m going to remem­ber run­ning trails with Nate, or swim­ming with Eric and Justin. And there was that one time that Eric did my chores for me while I worked on some pro­gram­ming project because he saw I was stressed. <3.

This was a year of slow­ing down

I real­ized that I live from task to task and thrive on stress. I need to stop this. I know this because I feel really antsy if I go the whole day with­out knock­ing any­thing out from my todo list. I will lit­er­ally feel like exploding.

We live in a world of to-do lists and Get­ting Things Done. I am learn­ing to stop, chat, laugh, and listen.

This was a year of humility.

I never liked doing my clean­ing chores, or being asked to do some­thing that was really incon­ve­nient to my sched­ule. But those ser­vice times were pretty sweet if I had the right atti­tude. I will say that I got a lot of ser­mons knocked out while scrub­bing toilets.

This was a year of get­ting bet­ter at peo­ple things

…and not be so clue­less with friend­ships and rela­tion­ships ‘n stuff.

This was a year of recentering

And in the end, I want Jesus’ real­ity more than ever. I’m learn­ing that God’s a good dad, and I can trust him.

My nephew, he’s the one in Afghanistan. Some­times I wish I could take his place because if I go… (silence) it doesn’t matter.

Lis­ten, I ain’t gonna lie about it. I’m an alco­holic. I don’t drink because I’m sad. I drink because I lii­i­i­i­i­ike drinking.

I don’t know if I can trust you any­more, man. You lost my trust.

Hey, can I get a flash­light? There’s some­one behind these bushes.

You got a bite to eat? Listen man I just need a bite. Did I come too late? What time is it?

I been all around Oak­land, and this is the safest place to be.

Get out. You can’t just come in here and help your­self to our food.

Is she breath­ing? Yes? Okay let me call the ambulance.

Lis­ten man, I feel hurt I don’t know who’s mak­ing those accu­sa­tions about me but I’m telling you I ain’t sell­ing the food. It hurts me that they’re say­ing these things.

It’s Essie’s birth­day today! (singing of birth­day songs).

I told you not to sleep on these steps but I saw you here last night.

Me and her are gonna get mar­ried on the 14th.

Rico thinks he’s gonna die. I think he’s given up.

Rico’s been doing real well lately. I think he’s turn­ing a corner.

Lis­ten man can I say a prayer for us?

Chan­nel­ing Ice Cube:

• 94610 prayer walk with church com­mu­nity. Gary shared that doing these walks builds hope in us… helps us remem­ber there’s hope for Oak­land. Give us eyes and ears and a heart for the city and our neigh­bor­hood. And after­wards I bought a brioche knot + a pizza slice at Ariz­mendi and 2 peaches from the farmer’s mar­ket. Freakin good.
• Did a 35-mile loop from Regen to Lake Chabot and back via Sky­line with Eric and a friend. Noth­ing but godaw­ful fatigue at the end. Came back and passed out for a good while.
• Microwave TJ curry for din­ner + a diet Coke some­one left in the fridge. Amazing.
• Sent Betty back with Kylan. Today I didn’t mind.
• Cleaned bath­rooms and the kitchen, and enjoyed the alone time. Thought a lot about how I’ve changed this year.
• Sat out in the night air for a few min­utes and just took it in.

I don’t know what it was about today but it just felt good. God’s been good to me.

My favorite photo, a photo by andrewhao on Flickr.

Hey Dad, I think I’m only start­ing to real­ize that I’m lucky to be your son.