Roadside Tamales

Show Me YOUR Glory!!!

2010-07-13T01:12:00.000-07:00

After a much needed weekend on Coronado, I made my way to the evening service at Grace Community Church, Sun Valley California, to see what the Lord might engrav

e upon my heart this night. What a treat! Dr. Steve Lawson has been at Grace

for the past coule of weeks as Dr. John MacArthur is on a much deserved holiday - and he is so full of passion and excitement for the word! (Plus he has this great Tennessee accent to go with it all). His sermon was titled pretty simply: “Show Me Your Glory.”

Here is a prayer that ought to be on the heart of every believer! The sermon’s focal point was the mercy of God, but what stung deeper into my heart, was Dr. Lawson’s declaration of the power of this prayer – in its intensity – to dig the believer out of the shallow cup of lukewarm Christianity into the depths of faith.

I wish that I had my notes from the sermon right here beside me so that I could quote Dr. Lawson and reference all of the verses that went into this point, but it isn’t, and it is getting late, so I ought to finish this and find my way to bed instead.

This year I have been blessed many times over in my proximity to countless teachers of sound faith and doctrine, but this is not enough – as Dr. Lawson pointed out – this has to be a personal prayer, not just a congregational prayer – this has to be a declaration, a plea, from the deepest shadows of my soul, not just an utterance of my lips. I am as yet a lukewarm Christian – I am drowning in my academic, nonchalant, lackadaisical approach to scripture. Even in the shadow of such great teachers as I have found myself this year, it is not enough until my commitment to scripture, growth, and to The Lord is personal, and even then I will fall hopelessly short.

Let me make this plea public then, let me cry out “Aba! Father!! SHOW ME YOUR GLORY!!!” – but let this be the plea of the depths of my spirit as well, as of every believer.

Though I am floundering in shallow water, there are many who have sampled the depths but have begun to stagnate – to this Dr. Lawson so helpfully pointed out that there is always something more to learn of God’s Glory than has already been divulged. This prayer belonged to Moses first – among the most affirmed men in the Bible – having visited God on Mount Sinai already, surely he knew more than modern men already – but yet he recognized that he had still more to learn.

Father I pray that I may never (again) forget that there is infinitely more of you for me to come to know – may I never grow bored in seeking you, searching for you in my heart, and learning of you in my mind. Stitch my soul into the fabric of your believers so that I may become one with the body, that my eyes might see your glory in every piece of creation around me.

In Your Son’s precious name,
Amen.

Frequent Flyer

2010-07-11T00:57:00.000-07:00

I was home for a brief visit in June - really brief. In all, I was gone from Hollywood for 11 days. I spent 2 days in Denver, 1.5 in Wichita, 6 in Oklahoma with JROTC, and then 1.5 more in Wichita. (It is no wonder I make such a point of stopping to smell the roses)

----- WOAH! -----

Needless to say, by the end of it all, I was much in need of a breather. Can't say I really got one in Hollywood, the first week back I was right back to work - Wednesday, June 30 (2 days after my return) was big day for Outreach supporting a homeless connect day in the South Bay area. There aren't often moments to breathe on the golden coast, though - at least not when your tour guide is a non profit.

We did manage to get away, though, my roommate Kenna and I.

I have some amazing friends living on Coronado Island and have been more than hospitable to us on three occasions now. The first time they were not home and so let us know how to make ourselves at home. This second time they are and what wonderful conversation! I would have thought that I was looking for time away in this vacation, but truthfully, I was merely searching for time with the right people - close enough to Hollwood for a weekend, but far enough away that we can see a star or two in the sky.

Tonight was the best fun I have had in a very long time. We went for a drive after dinner around the island - locals definitely make the best tour guides! Jim and Marilyn (our lovely hosts!) have a ruby red slug-bug convertable and plenty of stories to tell about the island, as each of them lived out here toward the end of their high school years. The houses are incredible and so is the view - and the jokes.

These are the people whom we must cherish forever! The stories that we have here to share with each other in faith and for the sake of growing one another are invaluable, and I must say that I am impressed by how generously they are offered to us their home, their hearts, and their love.

God blesses us by planting angels discreetly all along the path that we must walk, and I wonder that we might have uncovered some this weekend. Amidst many hugs and promises to see each other again, we will bid them goodbye tomorrow morning and head back to Hollywood -but I know for a fact that here I have recharged, and next week my heart will be overflowing with the love that they have lent to me.

What a perfect weekend!

Apologies and Fleas

2010-07-05T01:35:00.001-07:00

I have begun to neglect this part of my duties, quite regrettably. So here I will aim to stop that. My hope is to continue with this not just here and now, but also on into my air force career. This blog, and the e-mails that I get when I (as I have been) begin neglecting it from time to time - are an excellent proof of my supporters out there. I need it, I need the kick in the pants, and I appreciate every one of you.

Since my last post in May (which was itself rather emaciated) the whole of my life in Hollywood has been thrown into a bag, shaken up, and poured out haphazardly to create a whole new scenario - a much better one, I hope.

I have been through stress like even USAFA could not teach me about. I have been home for a week to remind myself of a military environment through JROTC Summer Camp. I boarded the plane back to Hollywood to finish up these last 28 days with enthusiasm. I will no longer be working at PATH as I have for the rest of this year - and I have embarked on a journey to both end this year well, and to leave this house in much better shape than I found it in.

To say the least, this amounts to only a brief recap. I anticipate, however, that there will be ample opportunity to write in the coming days. Tonight it hit me that I won't be going to work and I was ecstatic. There are many things around here for me to work on these 2 and a half weeks - from gardening to fixing our toilet . . . which completely died tonight, much to our discomfort :( . . . So I can add all of this to the list of *fleas* that I have picked up this year:

How to shoot a basketball

How to cook for five

How to delegate more effectively

How to fix a faucet . . .

How to fix a toilet (joy)

I have to go to bed now so I suppose I won't try to make everything make sense. What I really wanted to say is yes, I am still here, and OH YES!!! I am still learning at incomprehensible rates . . . I will share more in the days to come. What an underrated sounding board blogspot can be! I have missed how this time with my lawn-mower-wanna-be computer forces me to reflect and organize my reaction to what I am experiencing here. I will get back to it. I need it.

Futures

2010-05-07T01:27:00.000-07:00

To say the least, my perspective on life has been changed tremendously over the past month or two – how long has it been since I last posted? For one thing, my short term future has been set, though not literally in stone, it’s about as close as it gets. The academy has accepted my application for reappointment and I have accepted their offer. I have signed my life away, or at least a 7 year chunk of it.

(In other news, the fan in my computer is dying and making an awful racket, which has contributed to my lack of blogging – and computering in general)

I will be spending a week this summer as a Platoon TAC for JROTC summer camp at in Gruber Oklahoma; Funny how futures link back to so many memories. I think that my path through the academy was laid in for real at JCLC the summer after my freshman year. Lt. Col. Kennedy decided to sit down at my table at lunch and talk to me about them. I guess I was more than a little convinced.

The biggest uncovered future, I guess, really is nothing but an uncovered past: What got me here to begin with – both here to the academy and here to California.

I did not join the Air Force to become another among the many. I joined with the intent of becoming one among the many but not cut quite of the same cloth. The defining moment that most easily illustrates that came from a day that I am certain none of my classmates even took note of.

State benchmark testing was well underway, and as such, we were not in our usual classes when the pledge of allegiance started (have I blogged about this before? I’ve told the story so many times before . . .). I was generally in my JROTC class – where of course everyone at least stood, even if they refused to say anything. This day was different.

Instead of saying the pledge with my fellow cadets, I was surrounded by my IB classmates – my colleagues who were earmarked to be the best in whatever field tickled their fancy. It didn’t even occur to me that the pledge might mean anything different to them than to my JROTC classmates. When the intercom cordially invited us to stand however, I found myself to be one among two who chose to participate – I think we were both shocked, because I could not hear them saying anything and I could barely hear myself.

The best and the brightest don’t believe in this country – so why does it come as any surprise when things begin to fall apart? – but that’s really not the point at all.

Since then my purpose, my intention in serving has been to protect the freedom of my classmates not to stand up if that is what they should choose. That is something that I easily forgot in my first two years at USAFA – making this year a necessity.

This past Saturday we participated in the May day march in San Diego – they are held around the country, but that is where we were. I was extremely uncomfortable with the situation on the way there, however, I was so directly reminded of my initial intent – and another layer to it – that I am without regrets for going.

It is imperative that the people in this country who have a voice lend their ears to those who do not. That is what we did on Saturday and that is another layer to what I hope to do through whatever avenues I have available to me – through whatever career paths this all may lead me down. I will follow this faithfully – and pray that I never again forget the roots that led me here. Without them, I am but another grain of rice in a vat of horchata.

This country has the potential to rise to even greater heights – or to fall to all-time depths. The deciding factor will be our investment in its success.

You Don't Have to Yell

2010-04-03T00:10:00.000-07:00

So called reality

Right there on my TV

If that's how life's suppose to be, well

Somebody's lying

Being transplanted into Hollywood has been a trip, to say the least. I never would have considered that this would have been possible even a year ago. There is a plan in all of this somewhere, though I cannot seem to find the map. Perhaps I was never supposed to find it here. Certainly not yet. I am wandering blind - feeling blind, I have but one place to turn. There is no compass for life but to call on God for guidance. Certainly the media, the common culture, has not given us a good pillar to lean on.

The camera's on and we can tell

To keep your fame you have to yell

Cause tensions build

And products sell and

We're all buying

I hope we're smarter than this

I am surrounded more than ever by the wrong signs here. I thought that it was hard to ignore the nuances of our culture of lust before entering into the entertainment hub of the world. What did I know? Here it is on every billboard, every street corner, the side of every building. At least they are not still advertising the release of the latest "Grand Theft Auto" video game. I am not sure, though, that those adds were any more perplexing than the adds that I see for the 'sassy' shows - the ones full of drama and most of all of glorified defiant women.

Everybody take a breath

Why are all your faces red?

We're missing all the words you said

You don't have to yell!

I caught myself this week forgetting to breathe. It is so easy to let that happen here. I have come to the conclusion that I am not cut out to be a social worker (that was never really in question) at least in the sense of case management. Certainly this placement has done exactly as it was intended to in stretching me well beyond my comfort zones. I am grateful. I am also grateful that I have discovered this here rather than after years of pursuing it or something of the like. I love that the days are nonstop and that we are not confined within the walls of an office, but to some extent, this job is too far outside of those walls, or any walls. How do we stop to breathe when our job is to make it so that someone else can? The paradox, the hard but necessary balance, is to learn to stop and breathe with them.

Draw your lines

And choose your sides

Cause many thing are worth the fight

But louder doesn't make you right

You don't have to yell,

Oh, You don't have to

Over all of the babel I am having a hard time hearing the truth - and when I do, I am not so sure that I am listening. The lessons to learn here are innumerable - both good and bad. I cannot know if I have picked up on the right ones or if I am still floating in a sea of folly. Here is a reminder to look back at the quiet ones. I have a book that is my "AHA" journal for the year - it was suggested to us by someone who spent a year in Doolos - a similar program. In it, of the six lessons that I have recorded since I began again, 4 relate directly to love. Love for sure is a quiet lesson for us to learn, and a quiet reassurance when it has arrived in our hearts, quiet support for our people - barely a whisper. Love is the first lesson, the foundation, the whole support structure of our faith and (should be) of our lives.

I turned in to hear the new

I don't want you point of view

If that's the best you can do

Then something's missin'

And experts on whatever side

You plug your eyes,

You scream your lines

You claim to have an open-mind

But nobody's listening

One of my coworkers likes to express tidbits of wisdom from time to time, usually he says the same one for about a week at a time, over and over, but there is some usefulness to it - if only because it is a good memorization technique. This week he has been throwing in "God gave us two ears but only one mouth; heed the ratio" at every opportunity. There is something to it, to say the least. I hope I was quiet long enough to hear him this week. I pray that I will learn the quiet necessary to hear God whispering his way through my life. If I am yelling he will not force me to be quiet so that I can hear him, but he will be waiting when I stop to take a breath.

Everybody take a breath

Why are all your faces red?

We're missing all the words you said

You don't have to yell

Jesus explained to his disciples the new commandment, greater than the others, to love one another as he has loved them. By no means is this command new until we consider that in Jesus' life we have a standard clearly illustrated for us in Him. Jesus, too, was soft spoken. Have I already drowned him out? Have I already refused to hear him once too often? I pray again for my heart to be broken, especially here, this night that is Good Friday - Father FORCE me to see the pain that I am causing for my savior, even in this moment, by my sinful nature...

Divine Providence

2010-03-25T23:17:00.000-07:00

Tonight as I walked into my house I was crying in a way that I have not cried in years, if ever. Quietly, yes, because my roommate is asleep, but uncontrollably all the same. I am filled by a mixture of dredged up sorrows and abounding joy.

I finally had the courage to bring up years of pain with a friend of mine from the campus ministry that I have been attending at USC, and the thought of it being lifted, the mere prospect, is utterly inconceivable.

In second grade was the first time that I remember my knees hurting me - I thought it was nothing more than growing pains. When I was 12 is the first time that I remember mentally noting that my shoulders hurt longer after swim practice than they should have, some thing deeper and different from that good sore feeling. Since then, things have most definitely gotten no better.

Tonight I spoke with my friend who is a physical therapist - who goes to GOC - and who could potentially mitigate something that I have dealt with for years and years. This is a Polaroid of the church in action. Just like when our water heater went out, this is the church wherein the members offer their expertise to each other for the greater good. What a beautiful model!

Whatever happens, I want to praise The Father for years of struggle and rerouted dreams that have led me here and allowed me to experience the immeasurable significance of this moment. Even as I sit to type this my shoulders are bothering me. My knees are quiet.

I cannot play cello without pain. I cannot walk or ride to work without pain. I cannot swim without it, I cannot play horse with the kids without it. I cannot sit for a long period of time - especially in an airplane - without wanting to scream. Even if this does not work, I will have an answer and know where to look for the next step to ending the daily, hourly pain of this broken and depraved body that is my temple before God.

I feel like a broken record - I have for years, and I feel like tonight someone was kind enough to lift the needle into the next groove so that I may have peace again.

A Piece of Gum

2010-03-08T23:29:00.000-08:00

As an employee of PATH I have become very aware of the homeless population within Los Angeles and within Hollywood especially.

We operate in sort of a contradictory manor really; we are trying to help the people we encounter on the streets - to get them into shelter and ultimately into permanent housing - and we are working to create conditions where they want that shelter. In other words, we are working to make them comfortable and to be their friends and at the same time raising awareness so that the community will make them less comfortable, making shelter a more enticing offer.

Sometimes, it feels like working on a double standard, but really it makes sense. So long as a homeless man can get every bit of sustenance that he needs sitting on a street corner, he has no reason to actually make a change. Making that change requires tremendous effort and means following the rules of society - which many homeless deliberately rebel against.

We do not give the homeless money. Money can be used to buy any number of things that perpetuate homelessness, from alcohol and drugs to companionship to hotel rooms. Giving money to a homeless person allows them to feel that even in their predicament they still have some control over their lives - a desired commodity, but not one that is helpful in getting them into shelter.

On the job, we give homeless lunches to keep them for the day, but given that we see them only once a week, our rations are not what is sustaining them. We bring around clothing and blankets as well, and items for personal hygiene. Off the job, however, I rarely have anything of the sort handy. I think that I have found a perfect medium, however.

I still do not want to give money to the people of the streets, however, there is this one man whom I have passed many times riding home from the gym or walking home from the bus stop. He does not ask for anything when I pass by, which makes me more inclined to offer something at all, and he gratefully accepts what I offer - gum.

As a Christian, I find it very difficult to balance not giving money to our clients with still wanting to help - there is no way that I can always have an old pair of jeans or a sandwich in my backpack to offer, and even then, it's not entirely helpful. But by giving this man a piece of gum as I ride past, I have given him something pleasant to chew on, something that will help his teeth, and something that will not sustain him. So I have made him a little more comfortable, yes, but I have not given him the means of continuing to live this way here.

Even if he doesn't enjoy the piece of gum (I haven't stuck around to find out) He smiles and thanks me for it, and it ministers to my heart to know that I have at least extended a hand to say hello. The first time that I passed him I had literally nothing else to offer. Now I make sure that I have gum with me to share. The best things in life are those that we can enjoy in community, whatever that community may be. Who knows, maybe that piece of gum will be the thing that opens the conversation about shelter at some point.

Or maybe next week he will still be waiting for another piece of gum.

Which Way Your Heart Will Go

2010-02-21T16:41:00.000-08:00

Today after church, a couple of my friends from GOC (the small group I attend on Thursday nights) asked that I share my journey to faith with them. We had been talking about theirs and it kinda became my turn. I have told it a good number of times since I have been here so it has gotten a little easier, the short version of it has anyway.

I fell away from the church sometime in middle school for a multitude of reasons, but truly the important part is not why I turned away so much as that I came back home. The beauty of it all is that even in my running away I was never lost. And when it was time, God knew, and he drew me back into his fold. Through all of my unfaithfulness to his word and to his people, I always had Christian friends, and they felt it too, when it was the time.

A certain friend of mine in high school started bugging me in my senior year about coming to the youth group that he and a number of my JROTC friends had been attending regularly. When I got a car I finally relented. The family that I found among my peers was incredible, and the youth pastor's sermons were as well. He had this way of speaking, straight from the word and unapologetically relating what it said and what it meant. I was in. I pray that one day I will be able to say definitively that from that point I was in for life (It's probably a little too early to tell at this point).

Two weeks before I left for the Air Force Academy, I asked my youth pastor to be baptized. I don't know what exactly triggered it, but I felt very intensely that I wanted at least to be baptized before leaving. The next weekend we spent a good amount of time talking about what baptism meant to a believer. I know that it wasn't really as long a time as most people undergo, and I will likely attend the classes at some point while I am here in California, but it was what felt right at the time. The following weekend was a pool party at one of the member's houses, and there in the backyard swimming pool, LP said a prayer, we donned the white robes, and I was baptized.

At the academy, I again went through a period of struggling again. I had taken on far too much already, and often did not feel that there was any room left for God. I spent the first semester and a half in tryouts for the cadet honor guard, a place where God most certainly was not. Honor guard took up a tremendous amount of time and an even greater amount of energy, and demanded complete dedication, in essence, honor guard took over the throne room of my heart for that time, and left no place for my Lord, Jesus Christ.

With the end of honor guard I returned regularly to the Saturday night bible study that had become my second home and family during my time as a cadet . . .

Tonight I was reminded of all of this while listening to Mason Jennings. The lyrics aren't explicitly Christian, but there are definitely some Christian overtones - or I am going to say that there are.

In essence, the song is about the chances in life, the fact that everything has lined up so perfectly so that the guy in the song ends up with the perfect girl - God's timing:

Where would I be right now
If all my dreams had come true
Deep down I know somehow
I'd have never seen your face
This world would be a different place
Darling, there's no way to know
Which way your heart will go

Anyway, it really made me think about the way everything has lined up so perfectly to bring me here in this year, in this time, in this way. I am not at a point where I have even an inkling of what it will all mean to me by the end of the year, however I am quite certain that this is God's plan unfolding in front of my eyes.

It makes me think also of some of the hard times that have come to us since we have all been here in Hollywood. Certainly the timing of our sorrows and pain is every bit as much in God's control as our times of joy.

I don't have an outcome to savor like the singer of this song, but I do have an all knowing God in whom I can place all of my trust - I do not need to know the future because He knows it already and has placed his mark upon it.

"God, Check the old guy"

2010-02-20T21:23:00.000-08:00

I got an e-mail today from someone who I think I have given far too little thanks in getting me here. However short our time in missionary ministry may be, none of us function without the support of our people 'back home'.

Whatever field we enter into, there must first be someone, some group, to help prepare our hearts for the ministry that we are seeking. For me that was my bible study in Colorado Springs - though none of us knew it at that time. Mrs. Anna and Dr. Warrick taught the scriptures plainly and without apology - and planted the seed in my heart to travel and to explore it more deeply and the people in the bible study, the other cadets, taught me through their works what the love, grace, and family of God looks like among us.

Dave, my Shepherd from First Presbyterian Church of Wichita, was among the first to understand my earnest search for where this call would lead me. My original thought was Guatemala. There were a few positions available for translators and such working with Habitat for Humanity and for other organizations that we found, but there was one problem . . .

There was this other old man, more conservative and more sedentary who didn't think that going so far was really necessary - especially not as a first mission. (He is a very wise old man :D) . . . so I started to look closer.

My pastor from First Pres suggested the Young Adult Volunteers program, and ironically, I found the DOOR side of the alliance by chance online. Paired together I began to look into going to Denver, but that was . . . just too close to home.

I did not understand it at the time, and quite honestly I was a little resentful that I wasn't going to be spending my time somewhere in the jungles of Guatemala among the Quiché indians - but I would have been so lost!!! How great is the wisdom of God (and a couple of old guys) to keep me here, to plant me in the city of angels (an ironic name) for a year of exploration and growth.

I owe tremendous thanks to those people who have helped me to prepare to be here and to those who helped to make it happen. There is no mission where there is no preparation. I am so blessed to have come to such a city of contrast as this and such a city of extremes. There are those here who are intensely faithful and those who no nothing more about the word than the names - and our presence here is as a bridge. Sometimes I wish that all the churches in the world could have ministries just like this one, to reach into all the neighborhoods in their own countries with just as much intentionality as we put into reaching into other countries. There is poverty and need and anger and pain as real here as in the slums of Eastern Europe, the plains of Africa, and the jungles of South America.

Our eyes just have to be open to seeing it.

Emotional Kaleidoscope

2010-02-19T17:06:00.000-08:00

I have a definite case of the warm and fuzzies and yet all I want to do at the moment is curl up and cry. I am overjoyed and overwhelmed and so confused by the sudden and intense alternating highs and lows here.

The week is over, the weekend has arrived, and as I suddently have the time to stop about what has happened in the past two weeks (last weekend I didn't have a chance to stop and breathe) all the emotions are crashing upon me simultaneously.

First and foremost, our house has felt the pain of another family loss. Kenna is back in Arizona for over a week and we have all felt the grief and the love that spills from her heart this week.

We have come together in prayer as a household to lift her up and her family - which is a joy because in the midst of this tragedy, our house feels more like a home than it has so far . . . I don't know how I feel in the midst of all of it. I am dismayed by the intensity of my own sense of loss.

This past weekend we went as a house to a seminar as a house, one on the Song of Solomon. Granted, none of us are getting ready to enter into a marital relationship, but this was another chance for us to all worship together, of which we have taken very few. This also was a joy, and we spent the day with Matthew and Darcie and Charlotte as well - it was so incredible to hear their take as well!

On outreach on Wednesday we dealt with one of our problem clients - I say problem client not because he is so bad in himself, but when we first brought him in there was some miscommunication and he did not have a TB test. Before we even got a chance to get it taken care of, he ended up back in Cedars Sinai hospital. On Monday he was discharged, but the bed that we had for him was no longer available - and nobody was working because it was President's Day . . . so we had to tell him that we couldn't still take him in.

This Wednesday I played cello in the Ash Wednesday service - which came off quite nicely, but required a good amount of preparation . . .

. . . and on Wednesday I left work at 9am to spend the day with Kenna up until her flight home. The service was quite emotional for me.

Afterward I recorded some things (don't tell Dad (: It's a surprise . . . actually I think I told him last night).

Thursday . . . was a long day. And then came today. Today we did data entry at the office until around 2pm and then took one of our clients who finally moving into his own home grocery shopping and then to his apartment. The furniture is set up already and he has all of his linens and his pots and pans . . . I am soo soo happy to see this finally happening. It has been almost 5 months since he finally agreed to come into shelter. It has been over a year since he began the process of getting a section 8 apartment. This is his first home as I understand it in 13 years. He is 68 and in so many ways reminds me of my own dad. It will be weird not seeing him around the shelter. My only hope is that he finds a way and a reason to stay active.

And then when we got back to the shelter, there were the girl scout cookies that I ordered *finally*

I am just so tired after all of it. I don't really want to take a nap, but I don't particularly want to stay up either.

My time here has been amazing beyond all of my expectations and I have no doubt that it will take me years to understand all of the things that I have seen here so far. As I was riding my bike home tonight, I couldn't help but think back to the first Tuesday here, I think it was our second day overall? When the tamale man raised his voice in our alleyway, that is when I realized that this place really was different from Kansas.

On the way home there is always a fruit vendor with mangoes and strawberries on the street corner by a couple of schools and along the streets there is always someone selling chips and ice cream from a push cart and in the large white box trucks that seem to live in our neighborhood there is always fresh produce.

Sometimes I forget that this place isn't the one that I grew up in. It is so easy to become accustomed to the sights and sounds around us and almost become comfortable. This week there have been reminders of the discomforts in this neighborhood as well. I have about three posts worth of things in my mind that could use sharing.

Truly this neighborhood is ministering to us as much as we are to it, if not infinitely more. I have so much to learn here, if I remember half of it, it will all have been worth it.

Learning to Love

2010-02-01T22:41:00.000-08:00

The most personal of emotions, Love, wears a different suit in every relationship. Yet somehow it remains perfectly and eternally the same. What I am learning, slowly and painfully, is that Love is present everywhere and in everything, I just have to be willing to see it.

I have a tendency to search for love with my eyes closed. Sometimes I even throw my compass away and run. God truly has not left me alone here, but I am hiding; I am lying to myself so that I cannot hear him.

I know love only because My Father in Heaven first showed me. I find all around me the remnants of His wisdom and glory, but without putting on his eyes again every morning, I am missing the very sweetest sensation of God's Grace on Earth.

Thank you Father for waiting so patiently for me, thank you that you will wait for me again and again; thank you for my brothers who wait as well. I pray that you will cleanse me again daily, hourly, and give me the eyes to see your pervasive Love. Amen.

From Coffee Shops to -

2010-01-30T17:10:00.000-08:00

I must say that I'm becoming rather fond of the culture of coffee shops. Whoever got this started actually knew what they were doing. I am finding that these are some of the best places to get away and to really think about what exactly is going on here.

Change is in the air in a very big way here. Among the dwellers, mostly. We are finally getting to that point where we are comfortable enough with our surroundings to branch out a bit and to be comfortable with the niches we have carved out.

Will has become a good friend to many of the high school age kids in the area - a very positive thing for the neighborhood for sure. Curtis seems to be most involved in the kids that he deals with daily at work - he often gets home late enough that he has no more than a half hour to spend with our neighborhood itself. Alex often gets the unsavory job of keeping the trouble makers in check, and Kenna does an excellent job of letting the kids know that they have crossed the line.

Kennna, Alex, and I are around for the greatest amount of time out of the five of us which gives us greater opportunity to connect with our surroundings. I have to say that I have rather fallen in love with the kids here and it will be exceedingly difficult to leave at the end of the year.

I find myself most drawn to the younger kids that come by, from Angel who is 5 to Yessenia and Larena, both 12. They are cousins, Yessenia and Larena, and don't come terribly often. They have been asking us recently when we will be having them over for a girl's night. Hopefully it will work out in the next week or two.

It occurs to me that mum has been asking for a while that I post about what I do from day to day - I guess I've been a bit remiss. I won't do that now, but in the near future for sure. Things stay pretty busy, and for now, I am being pointedly unproductive - for my sanity's sake.

Welcome Home

2010-01-26T22:31:00.000-08:00

*I have yet to proof read this*

I find that I always have a list in mind of the things that I want to write that stays there for quite a long time here. Writing is so hard sometimes, perhaps mostly because I am hopelessly inefficient.

I have been back for a couple of weeks now and sometimes it feels like we only get to sit down as we are going to bed. It is just as busy here now as it was in the weeks leading up to Christmas and the new year. The ease with which I occupy every last minute of my day never fails to amaze me - it's often not positive. This weekend was an excellent reminder of that.

We spent the weekend at a monestary in the desert maybe an hour and a half from home yet completely removed from the city in every direction. The focus was solitude - and how I needed it!

At home (Kansas home) things are often quiet; personal time is in an abundance. Here, not so much, though I suppose I am often the talkative one. It was so nice though to get away from all of the sounds and the complete sensory overload that I call home.

We spent the day in silence - no talking. I know that some of my housemates got bored with the quiet. I suppose it makes sense, coming from younger families with younger siblings.

I welcomed it.

So often I feel the need to awkwardly fill some void that opens up between me and some unsuspecting near-sitter. But why should I feel such a keen obligation to do so? Silence is such a beautiful thing! In silence, I run no risk of falling into an uncomfortably political conversation in which nobody knows enough to formulate an opinion. In silence, I don't have to fear offense or affliction. In silence I am free to look back into myself and unwrap that inner voice that I often drown out with mind candy.

There is danger to it too of course. I definitely drank way too much coffee yesterday . . . which has resulted in my less than healthy state today (I'm sure there were other factors too). I am cranky today and frustrated with people who don't want to communicate directly. I am stressed because PATH has some big events on the horizon, one of which I am supposed to be spearheading and this three-day weekend every weekend thing is crippling in getting it all lined out. Tomorrow will be the moment(s) of truth.

The next on my list, fed into I suppose by this exact thought is Rick Holland's commentary on women in the work force. That actually fits so perfectly that I would e-mail him if only I knew him better. All I can say now is that it is now 10 til 11 and this week I have promised myself an 11 o'clock bedtime. I must bid the world good night and pray that it will reappear when I open my eyes tomorrow.

Thank God for opportunities to break shells and ignorance on such solid stones as His foundations

Wendy

links

2010-01-01T23:46:00.000-08:00

http://doornetwork.org/

http://doorhollywood.blogspot.com/

http://alexcornell.blogspot.com/

http://www.curtismonts.blogspot.com/

http://kennakoch.blogspot.com/

What does a year of service look like?

2009-12-19T10:12:00.000-08:00

I think it would be safe to say that I am a bit of a busybody . . . and a bit of a perfection- ist also. I tend to get antsy when things aren't moving, to feel lazy and guilty, and to get frustrated when the plans get wrinkled, torn, and turned inside out. So when something isn't going on somewhere I feel like time is wasting and start to question why we are all here. I am starting to learn though.

When things aren't moving is when I have time to worship God.

In a Martha world, I am most definitely Martha, right down to the last detail. When I see someone else enjoying God while I am serving, I immediately judge them as being lazy, but that's hardly the case! What kind of world would we live in if there were no room to enjoy anything??? I for one would embrace it and burn out probably in a matter of weeks.

There are days on outreach when I become frustrated because everything is moving very slowly; we found a pile of Christmas cards and just had to see what they said or stopped off for breakfast on the way to Westchester - but those days often turn out to be the most blessed. One of the mornings we took a woman in to take a shower - a woman who usually doesn't even want to talk. One of the mornings we just happened to be eating in the same place as someone we had been searching for for weeks.

So a year of service isn't a sprint.

What it is, I think is so much more elusive. So far it has been late nights and early mornings, blisters and skinned knees, jumping fences to retrieve balls, digging through mud and clay, hands coated in cinnamon, gingies, piggy-back horsies, and sooo much more. Most consistently, it is a constant reminder of why I had to come here . . . why wouldn't I come here? I came here for a formative year, come what may. I will get one. I am getting one. I think too that it will be far more liberating that I could ever have imagined.

Imposing Chaos

2009-12-15T00:31:00.000-08:00

My first reaction when things aren't going my way is always to do more, to become busier, and to impose ever more structure on the life that I'm living. It isn't the most effective thing to say the least, to find something crumbling to pieces and scramble to build a wall around it fast enough that all is not lost. Needless to say, it's quite stressful and, despite its surface appeal, completely ineffective.

So I've tried a million times to explain to everyone that I know and love and to the senatorial nomination committees why exactly I left the security of finishing school with a guaranteed 5-year job for free and came here. The economy just did a nose-dive and the world seems as though it couldn't be any less certain, and yet, here I am.

Here I am at the heart of the entertainment industry in the heart of a city I wasn't even really interested in visiting 'ministering' to a group that I didn't even know existed before I got here. I came here with a desire to be challenged and stretched, and it is true that every moment of the day I find some part of me stretched so far that I can hardly believe what I am seeing. All around me is chaos.

I am struggling with it. Well, mostly I am stomping my feet and shaking my fists. I don't have any control over the hundreds of lives that I touch or am touched by throughout each and ever day. In most of them, I don't even have a real stock. I am also not in control of how they affect me day in and day out.

The heart and soul of America is here, all around me. The beauty and the majesty of this country is in every building and especially in the palm trees that tickle the sky. I cannot control anything that is around me and very little of what is on the inside. These kids, these homeless, these ladies next door are reminding me day in and day out what it means to be a citizen of this country, and what is so crucial to protect. . . but are they mine to protect?

I have so many questions to answer this year - I only hope that I will find that balance between trying to have everything set up most all of the time and letting go. I hope that the answers to most of those questions will be revealed to me in my time here, and I thank God for this blessing of being able to come here and to experience this.

This will be a year of questions, but a year of answers also.

More later, perhaps more coherent thoughts; it's bed time!

Cliche

2009-12-12T19:50:00.000-08:00

I get the feeling that defining my year by the recipes we use would be terribly cliche. I know for a fact that it would, actually, or at least I would feel like it was. . . but with cooking a family-style meal almost every night, I guess that it would be rather fitting.

I grew up eating at home almost every night with the family around the table. Mum did it for a number of reasons - I suspect they're the same as mine. It's practical; with everyone eating the same thing for dinner and the ingredients being rather cheap, you can get some stunning varieties for relatively little. It promotes fellowship - not really much of a choice in a family, but here we have to be a little more intentional about it. It keeps everyone in touch, even if the conversation is completely vapid.

It reminds me of home.

We are ridiculously busy here from week to week and on top of it all we're expected to live in this thing they call 'intentional community.' If we were unintentional about it we would still have Monday's together by virtue of the program. I think this is better though. I guess in a lot of ways what we eat is defining a big part of my year. However horribly cliche it sounds, food does bring us together.

Tonight's Recipe: Shepherd's Pie

Left-over chili, thawed
1 lb. ground beef thawed
left-over mashed potatoes
more mashed potatoes because we need to use the potatoes before break
a can of corn
cheese

Directions:
Spend two hours talking to the guys about what we want to do today since we really haven't left the house. Realize that nobody has a plan or a particular desire to go out and decide to save the money. Spend another indeterminate amount of time talking about random musings and decide that whatever happens we need food. Get frustrated with the pace of things and decide to make something. Start looking through the fridge until something makes sense. Pour chili, drained corn, and ground beef into an oblong baking dish and stir it around. Top with mashed potatoes and cheese and send runners to the grocery store when it's not raining so hard. Ring the dinner bell when everyone gets home. Eat.

Giving Thanks

2009-11-28T22:34:00.000-08:00

This year was officially my first Thanksgiving away from home. I suppose though that Thanksgiving hasn't every really been a big holiday for us though, so it wasn't so terrible. I didn't really have time to think about missing home anyway. Staying busy in that way is certainly a blessing.

Kenna's dad and his wife came to visit over the holidays and did our cooking - that was an absolute blessing - and we had kids from the neighborhood to keep us company in ample supply. The whole ordeal saw the consumption of two spectacular turkeys, most of six pies, an impressive mound of dressing, and all of the usual accouterments.

We also had cookies out for the kids to decorate, the paper chains that we all pitched in to make in the week leading up to the festivities, and a turkey pinata - also made with the help of the neighborhood.

When I say that Thanksgiving was never a really big holiday back home, I suppose that it's mostly because I was never very involved in the preparations and the clean-up.

"Suck it up and DO it!"

2009-11-19T23:17:00.000-08:00

On Thursday nights I attend Grace on Campus bible study. GOC is an offshoot of Grace Community Church, which I have chosen to be my home church. Our shepherd for the group is Peter, and tonight he, as usual, had a provocative and very relevant message.

Salvation is no more for us than it was for Lot's wife if we try to take it on our own terms, if even in being rescued from our sins we knowingly and willfully turn back and long after our sinful ways.

Peter has been going through Romans with the group, particularly Romans 8:

"Therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful humanity to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in human flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit."

Last week we hit on accepting that we cannot save ourself by lists and works of our own - that we can't do anything to deserve the full grace and glory of God that we are promised by our faithful walk. This week we were reminded of the 'By no means' that follows most assertions that our works cannot save us.

Does this mean that we should live meaningless lives of sinful conquest? By no means!

"Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation - but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. For if you live according to the sinful nature you will die; but if the Spirit in you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live."

This is where this week rested. "If you put to death the misdeeds of the body . . ."
This is not a change that any of us can make on our own, but it is a choice that we make every time we decide to or not to indulge in worldly pleasures.

Kako (pronounced like spanglish chocolate cake: Cake-o)

2009-11-12T22:30:00.000-08:00

Tonight I asked God to show me something, to speak to me in the way that he does, something that would pull at my heartstrings. That wish was most definitely granted.

I went to bible study tonight at USC, about an hour bus ride from home. It's always pretty interesting - I am starting to understand why Curtis would almost look forward to that time. I look forward to that time. Maybe I will go on rides around the city just to tour the busses. Forget the Kodak theatre.

The sermon was on Romans chapter 8. Our shepherd is a student at Master's Seminary up at Grace Community church - and he does very well relaying a solidly founded message. If you are familiar with the passage, then you know that it is about dying to sin and life in the spirit. It was most definitely heart wrenching to hear, and yet another reminder that grace is the only way to heaven - I will never get there of my own works. I need to be reminded of that so frequently!

Afterward I didn't much feel like hanging around for a ride home. This has been a very long week and it was time to get going. So at 9:30PM I walked out of the Fishbowl chapel on the USC campus and headed for the bus. It was at the exchange between the 204 and the 10 that I met Kako.

I was standing a ways from the bench and she was sitting – there’s kind of the unspoken rule that you stand far enough away from everyone that nobody could lunge at you. Not that it’s really that likely, but everyone does it. Everyone is something like 8 feet way from everyone else. A girl asked to borrow my phone, talked for a while and gave it back. The bus maybe took half an hour to arrive, so I asked to sit down.

I was reading Blue Like Jazz, and with the conversation already started, Kako read a quote off the back: “I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn’t resolve. But sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.” Kako was heading ‘home’ from a piano recital that she had been watching. We got to talking about music, about cello, and the about The Soloist.

I haven’t read it yet. I told her that my sister wanted me to because it is about cello and it is about homelessness – cello is very near to my heart, and homeless is worming its way in very quickly. She read it when she became homeless. She was reading it while she was on skid row – and in her words, it was so very very accurate. She saw the scenes leap off the pages and into her life. “I never thought it could be me; I never thought I would be the one on the street corner.”

She said that she would be homeless tonight, but that she had been through the program at New Image and through transitional housing and that tomorrow night she would have her place to stay. I can only pray that she wasn’t fibbing. They do that, not wanting to admit where they stand, even in admitting most of it. I pray to God she was telling the truth.

She got off at the same bus stop and left in the opposite direction and my heart was breaking. A woman of at least 60 years and maybe 5 feet tall with her little wire wheeley-basket walking down Melrose at 11:00 at night to sleep somewhere maybe under a bush and in the house in front of mine there are 16 beds that are empty more than half the nights of the year. And I couldn’t offer her one.

My heartstrings had been pulled. I wanted to scream and laugh and cry at the cruel reality of the moment all at once; I was joyful at the story that she told, horrified that she should have to tell it, and appalled at my own helplessness in the situation. You don’t think of the homeless as being so well mannered, soft spoken, and taken by classical music. I forget sometimes how human the homeless are sometimes, even in a line of work where I get to know them better everyday, some almost as old friends. Kako felt like an old friend. I want to adopt her as my grandmother, and MS as my grandfather.

I gave her a business card. If her story holds true, she wasn’t homeless for a full year, and she will never have any reason to call me. If not, then I will be overwhelmed with joy and sorrow at once when she calls – joy because I will know how the story ends, and that it ends with her in a house of her own, and sorrow that such a beautiful woman for whatever reason had to experience such a brutal reality.

Thank you Father for the sight to see and the ears to hear such beauty. I fear, though, that I have spoken with one of your angels and let her walk away without giving her a bed to sleep in. Forgive me.

Home Home

2009-11-10T00:21:00.001-08:00

I feel like I've finally come home. Or rather that I got there this past Thursday.

One of the first things that we do here as a group is to give our testimonies - our life stories, our walks with faith, and how we came to be in this place. Matthew pointed out in mine that I mentioned my search for 'home.'

Home, of course, is the ultimate place of comfort and belonging that we all have somewhere - or all long for somewhere. I was at home in high school. I had a very close group of friends. I have struggled, however, to come home again since then. I couldn't stay in high school forever, I had to go to school and that ultimately meant leaving Wichita, and besides, my friends were leaving too. So my journey began - I left home.

At USAFA, home was the Warrick's bible study. The Warricks are a beautiful couple who have devoted a portion of their life to the bible study that they hold for cadets in their home on Saturdays, at Arnold Hall on Wednesdays, and pretty much wherever we ended up on Fridays. They were an inspiration and provided a safe space for us all. They were home for the most part, but I didn't always feel quite at home there.

Here in California, though, I feel like I have come home again. Thursday night I started going to a bible study called Grace on Campus held down at USC - about an hour's bus ride away - where the people are so genuine (much like at the Warrick's) and the message is pure. Thursday night I felt at home.

Sunday I went to church at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, and afterward to lunch with the same group, and the feeling remains. Here is a place where I can find a niche that is wholesome and challenging and where my walk will be strengthened. Here is a place where I can learn the love that makes our homes warm - and that makes us open to feeling that warmth, because really, it has always been all around me, but I haven't always been able to feel it.

The winds brought cold water

2009-11-01T21:45:00.001-08:00

The past few weeks have been weeks of interesting challenges. Two weeks ago was our experience with internet fasting - definitely a positive experience. This past week was a bit colder outside and a bit colder on the inside too. This past week we spent without hot water. Really it was only three nights, but those three nights were the coldest we've had so far in SoCal.

The first night, when we'd decided the water was definitely not going to heat up no matter how long we waited, we all took the trek outside to the water heater - Curtis decided to make the journey shirtless. Needless to say, we didn't find any warming news. The burner was rusted and covered in a puddle of water.

What really matters though, isn't that we found the problem, or that we didn't really know what to do. What matters is that the next night the youth group was over - and their leader had a friend in construction.

The water heater here heats water for three houses. It's big. When Matthew went to look at new water heaters the prices he was seeing were somewhere around $3,000 for a replacement. But that friend, the one who works in construction, offered to help us out - and showed us where the pros shop and the water heaters cost $1,200.

How could any of us have known when the youth group started coming what a resource it would turn out to be? There are so many surprises here in everything!

We recently finished reading Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. It's definitely a hard book to get your head around - but here was our first glimpse of what he was talking about. Here was our first glimpse of the old adage: "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours." It's all so simple - yet so simply incomprehensible. It reminds me of the part of the book where Shane talks about a conversation with his pastor, early on in his journey, when he asks why there are no miracles. The answer is simple - there still are, just as there were back in the day, but we are all so insulated in our checks and balances and our reserves and excess that we don't see them anymore. I think there is truth to that. I know there is.

How easily could we have gone out and bought that water heater and made our budget stretch around it rather than asking some advice in the matter? It's so easy now to crawl online and answer all of our questions - our hyper connectivity has separated us all. So what if we stepped back and started talking again? What would that look like?

Piecing it all Together

2009-11-01T21:21:00.000-08:00

So we're slowly coming to understand what this neighborhood can be all about. I do sometimes wish that I had come with maybe a little more idea of what I wanted it to look like, but maybe it's OK that we've taken a moment to look at what's here for us. I am realizing how far out of my element I really am here - and yet somehow how perfectly there. Maybe that's exactly how I'm supposed to feel.

Monday nights we're going to have a small bible study. It's mostly Charlie and Tato and a few others. The ones who want some more personal time with the bible. I think that one we'll try to make a little more of our study as well. It should definitely be a good time to center ourselves and really sink our teeth in.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are our outreach to the neighborhood. It's really pretty great to see a bunch of kids come over. I'm hoping this can take more shape than it has so far, but I'm not so sure how to implement that.

Wednesday is the day for the youth group coming over - they're pretty self contained, though we definitely participate. It amazes me how differently two cultures can reach the same spiritual unity. I can't wait to see what all we have to learn from them!

Friday's are usually pretty open - which is good, because we need to breathe at some point. I think we're probably going to switch out a bit as well. Saturday is our Sabath -and pretty closely guarded largely because of the warnings we've gotten from previous dwellers. Sunday of course is church and time for fellowship.

From 7:30 to 4:00 Tuesday through Friday we all have a 'day job' - all of us with homeless agencies. Alex and I work on the PATH outreach team. It's a pretty interesting occupation to say the least. We're not just reaching a hand out to these people once in a while, we're walking to find them, waking up early some weeks to find them, and getting to know many of them on a very personal level. For our colleagues who have been working at PATH for far longer, they have become far more than just clients. There is pain and passion in the job - and personal investment in each and every person we shake hands with, talk about shelters, and hand over a lunch.

I have to say I am particularly fond of speaking with the veterans. For whatever reason I feel a connection to them. I want to reach out to them all the more. We are helping two of them to get into apartments at the moment. It's pretty crazy. One of them has been on the streets a good 15 years. They are both so full of stories.

I definitely understand some of the objections that I have heard to this line of work. We struggle with trying not to be enablers, and I suppose at maybe one lunch a week (we work different parts of the city on different days) they would not be enabled by us alone. We do reach out to everyone that we come across, but if they refuse us, we merely turn and walk away. If they want to come with us to the shelter, we as that they get a tuberculosis test and are ready to take them as early as the following week - all we as is that they show some effort, some sincerity.

It's crazy to think that so many of them don't even want to change their circumstances, but what can we do but respect that? There are those who break our hearts every time they shake their heads but thank us for the lunch. There are those who seem to have no reason to be here, but every one of them has some motivation. Why is a question far to complicated to even begin answering. Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that for one reason or another they are happier there than elsewhere. I cannot imagine it, but I suppose I also understand on some level. We met a man two weeks ago making roughly $3,200 a month living in his van. He'd been homeless 8 years. Said he used to drink - a common underlying cause of homelessness - but had been sober well over a year. He said he just didn't feel like there was any reason to pay some $900 - $1400 for rent. It makes perfect sense from that perspective. What is a shower and bed really worth if you're not used to having one? It's a different way of thinking for sure.

I have great hopes for this year. Things are coming together so nicely. I only pray they continue in the same manner. What an amazing world we live in!

Charlie

2009-10-13T00:56:00.001-07:00

What exactly our neighborhood ministry looks like this year is really up to us, the five of us living here in the house on Gregory. Certainly, we all have some idea of what we think that it would ideally look like. Just as certain, we would each come up with something completely different if we were to set about writing our own schedules and programs for the year. That would be assuming we tried to tell the neighborhood that we knew what it needed better than it knew itself. So we decided to wait, give it some room to breathe; we would wait for the neighborhood, for God, to show us the direction we should be traveling in.

We have been praying for some form of outreach that would include the older kids in the neighborhood instead of just the younger ones, mostly under the age of 14. Thursday night of last week the neighborhood whispered a request in our ear. There are some teenagers in the area who have recently come to Christ - and they wanted to hold a bible study in the community house. This house is one of the very few places where there would truly be enough room for everyone (I'm wondering after just one week if even it is big enough) where they also felt comfortable enough to ask about using it. How could we possibly say no?

When Monday night rolled around, 8:00 PM we were ready - not necessarily for the best to show up at our doorstep, but for something to show up. I know that I was skeptical - We've been here barely a month and I can definitely see where people might take advantage of us because of that. This was nothing like that though.

Really, they didn't need us there at all - we were merely the providers of a house of worship - and participants as well. We sat down in the circle along with everyone else, and then Charlie got up to speak.

The kids in this neighborhood have been through a lot - to say the least. Some of them smoke and drink. Some of them have for years. All of their lives have been touched by gang activity. Charlie just got out of jail.

Charlie found God while he was in jail. When he found God, he also felt a call to return to the neighborhood where he grew up, where he smoked and drank, and where he sneered at former Community House occupants and this strange Jesus they kept talking about. He's come full circle now. Now it is his turn to share - and not just in blurbs that he has heard someone else say a few times over from the pulpit, but truly from reading the word himself, from embracing the word and from studying it. Goodness knows he had the time to do it, yet I am amazed that after so many years of shielding his heart from God's love, He was there all along. Charlie knew through it all that he was there.

Whether this ministry needs the five of us city dwellers or not is debatable. Charlie and his friends brought this study into the community house on the breath of the community's needs. Such a study could so easily go in hundreds of directions, but we have chosen to continue watching it breathe as it will - this ministry is a blessing to us as well as to them; Charlie's story may even have impacted us more than it did some of his peers.

Joy

2009-10-12T01:08:00.001-07:00

Joy is the transcendent happiness that comes from the little things as well as the big, from a positive outlook on living life; Joy doesn’t fade away because of stubbed toes and jammed fingers, but instead rejoices in the friends made through trials.

This weekend, Joy came to us in the aged and weathered body of a woman who has undoubtedly seen countless trials – and countless miracles as well. It was a chance encounter too. Curtis said hi to her because she had a huge bowl of ice cream that she had just gotten and he couldn’t believe that she was going to eat so much. Then she asked where we were sitting and joined us there.

Joy is somewhere close to 80 years old – a year or two more? No less. She’s been coming to Forrest Home since 1939 and helped build the lodges and the cabins and the ropes course. She has been a camper and a helper and made it to all of the college conferences from 1951 to around 1960. Her favorite song is How Great Thou Art. She sang it for us, this morning actually – what an amazing gift!!! There is something so ethereal and breathtaking when children sing, and something the same about the elderly. She still plays the piano with great strength.

I pray that when I come so close to the other end of my time here I will have as much independence as Joy, as much faith as she wraps around herself, and such a wonderful bunch of friends both young and old. I pray that I will happy in my old age and have a wonderful story to tell like hers. I pray also that when I am 80 I will be able to sit down and enjoy my bowl of ice cream right down to the last bite with the generations that will follow and be proud of the future that I see following behind me.

Praise God!!! And may we all find our portion of Joy and delight in the world around us J

ARose out of the Pavement

2009-09-30T18:30:00.000-07:00

Here in a jungle of concrete

where the wealthy grow vaces of exotic beauty

are so many corners unadorned

where the raggamuffins grow everyday miracles -

And up out of the pavement arose

not alone one but so many

with tiny buds turned blooming grace

overlooked for an unwashed face with a grain

of sand between the petals we'll tread across it

and never see it

because it is yet small and our faces are upward all

gazing further down the boulevard at futures distant

as the stars are many yet closer

than that flower to our notice . . .

It is still blooming.

It will go on; she will go on and he will.

Every bud a son and daughter, a friend and foe -

help - reach out and love and tenderly

say

'Hello.'

Smile

Become a rose that arose

out of the pavement.

Skid Row

2009-09-27T20:33:00.000-07:00

Welcome to where the sidewalk ends - literally.

This isn't America - this is not how Americans live. This is not legal. This is not what we believe in.

So . . . Why was I able to get there in a matter of minutes? Why would I be able to find some small piece of this in so many big cities?

I am here with the sole purpose (as far as my job placement anyway) of serving the homeless. Yet I didn't come to skid row to reach out a hand - This is a place where PATH does not extend its hand as it does in the rest of the LA area. For one thing, that would be impossible. We take sack lunches to the people who live around the city and even in areas where there are only ten or twelve homeless it becomes unsafe for our group two to four to engage them. The sheer numbers of people on skid row crammed onto one small strip of sidewalk could easily overhwhelm us.

Here there are shelters; the Weingart shelter is where we were headed for a meeting, the Mission shelter is just up the street. There are three or four others in the immediate area. And there were people. Everywhere. The sidewalks were blackened by constant use - like the black spots that grow on sidewalks where gum has been dropped only without any space in between.

This is so much of why we are doing what we are doing and yet it is something that we really can't address. This is one of those problems that can't just be touched on one or two levels, but has to be pulled at the root - everywhere.

This is something that takes a community, a culture to fix.

This is a stark reminder of why we do what we do.

Hands

2009-09-27T18:38:00.000-07:00

My father has big, strong hands. They are calloused and weathered and stained, yet so warm. On the surface they are an amalgamation of scars, shadows of experience. I have heard their stories since I was first old enough to ask “What’s that one from?” My father’s hands are his story; they are a guarded exterior, strength, skill, and the warmth that is his gift to the world. Every mark is a memory. When I look at my hands, I want to see in them as rich a history as in my father’s.

I came to the academy in the summer of ’07, just over a month after graduation, and in the first few hours, my hands became acquainted with the dirt. My hands became stained with the dirt of Jack’s Valley and slipped on the sweat pooled on the floors of the dormitory hallways. I froze my fingers into the snow on Stillman field and ground away the rocks of the landing zone with my knuckles. In my first two years at USAFA, I learned to fly in the silent bliss of a glider, completely powerless on its own. In silent bliss I learned that I had the tools at my disposal to go anywhere I desired, yet at they same time, that I could not get there on my own.

In those moments of powerless flight, looking out over Colorado Springs, the mountains, and the academy, I realized the vastness of the world around me. In my tiny craft I became simultaneously aware of the paralyzing limit of my experiences. From my tiny bubble with wings, I looked out on the world and knew that I had to find out more. I saw my hands clutching the stick as if I could somehow change the inevitable descent back to Earth. I saw the immaculate state of my hands. How could I lead even the smallest contingent with so little knowledge of the world around me?

I realized my call and my desire to extend my hands in another direction before returning them to the cockpit. I needed some new marks on my hands, some more dirt, more sweat, and most of all service. There began the journey to change the defining scars on my hands. The marks left behind by this year are already deeper – and they will not dwell on the surface of my hands alone, but also in my heart. My hope is to return better prepared to take on responsibility and to accept leadership within the squadron. With new strength and determination I will tackle the challenges of cadet life whole-heartedly.

Reality LA

2009-09-20T15:26:00.000-07:00

Part of our program here is that we branch out from our comfort zones and try new churches. Today's stop was Reality LA.

Reality LA is a young church that meets in a high school auditorium. The stage is set with the praise band to one side, and of course the obligatory slide show with lyrics and talking points. The band opens, the room is dark; there is a red light just bright enough that we can see them - and what an amazing sound! Here, the focus is not on the singers or the band. They are low key, but the sound and the lyrics, they carry power.

The sermon too was so enriching. The word was not watered down, by any means, instead it was an explication without shy aversion from the hard line message: We are saved by grace alone; there is nothing that we can do to save ourselves; only through Christ can we find life.

I am loving the energy and the vibe. For sure this is a church that I will return to.

Roadside Tamales

2009-09-20T01:31:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the city. It's written all over the place around here. Not in those words, of course; 'Bienvenidos' is not in the graffiti. The welcome is in the art, the crowded streets, and the outstretched hands that only want some of your change. You weren't going to save it anyway, right?

What a beautiful city! When I thought of graffitti at home I thought of a tagged overpass and an occasional trian car from the big cities. I thought of an under appreciated and misunderstood art form. Nobody mentioned to me the art in the streets when I said I was coming to hollywood. But who would recognize a Banksy in another city without being plugged into the artist community? Expression is everywhere, the messages as unique as their medium.

The people here too are a wonder to me. Their sheer number is astounding; this neighborhood never sleeps and in every building around us there are multiple families. Appartment style, of course, but there are so many! The neighborhood never sleeps and then there's the tamale man.

Our first morning here at seven in the morning someone in the alley started yelling. I had no idea what was up at first and ran to the window to see what was going on. And then i understood him: "Tamales asados!"

I've been told that all the venders have their own special cry and that on Saturdays there are many more of them that come through. It's crazy to think of staying afloat in this economy selling tamales or working as an ice cream man walking up and down the streets or selling vegetables at the vegetable stands in the neighborhood. They must have second jobs as well.

A Covenant with God

2009-09-11T09:08:00.000-07:00

Here is something that I have not done in a while. Goodness knows it's about time I do.

This week is our second of orientation. It's more personal this time though. This week we are in Hollywood, the five of us who will be here fore the year, doing everything we can to lay the groundwork for a successful year. Most importantly, we are working to grow the bonds with each other that will guide us through this year of intentionality and introspection. Among the list of activities, our house covenant will lay out the governing principles that we as a house aim to follow in the coming year; I want to go a step beyond that.

I struggle as much as anyone does to try to right myself with god, and while I know that by grace alone we are saved, I know also that this doesn't mean that I can continue in my sin repeatedly committing the same offense while still pretend that I am right with god. So This is it. This is where I will lay that sin down before God in all his glory and beg for his forgiveness.

God has said that before we come to the temple to worship and to take communion we should clear our own hearts of wrong doing against our brothers. That we both forgive them for those things that we have been holding against them, and that we seek their forgiveness. So first I will endeavor to seek forgiveness for those people whom I have wronged in my life.

That we should love our brother as ourselves is crucial to our faith. I have not only overlooked loving my brothers and sisters, but also have overlooked loving myself - not in the material sense, but the unconditional, and without that I am crippled; with out that I cannot be open and loving to those who surround me.

This year is about intentinality. This year I have to manage my time; this year I have to choose how I am spending it. This year I will call home and keep in touch with the friend I have left scattered across the country. I have been so disconnected these past few years; it's time I became a friend worth having.