creative: all things new

Well, the Earth is completing one more lap around the sun, and it's time to celebrate. Then it's time to start all over again. Put like that, it sounds monotonous. The same old winter, spring, summer, fall; rainy season, dry season; days, nights; breakfast, lunch, dinner; and so on.

But for most of us, these cycles are actually refreshing. Why? Because they are never actually the same. We grow older, wiser, move to new places, meet new people, have children, have new life experiences, and so on.

See, God is making all things new. The crappy things don't have to stick around forever. We also might lose some of our comforts, because when we are uncomfortable, we grow, experiencing completely new things or experiencing old things in new ways. God is making all things new, and we are also making all things new, because God commissioned us as co-creators as we steward this Earth. So go, create, re-create, and have a blessed new year!

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them; 
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’
And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’
Revelation 21:3-5a

giving it all away

Well, it’s Christmas Eve. I didn’t write anything super Christmas-ey, but I thought I’d just share a brief reflection as I’ve been reflecting on the life and impact of my Grandma Elsie, who passed away recently. At 97 years old, she lived a long, full life. While it’s hard to see her go, the time she spent with us was beautiful, and I’m glad she’s with Jesus now.

Grandma loved to crochet, and she was a one-woman scarf and blanket factory. A few examples:

She, with assistance from my Grandma Betty and my Mom, put together a beautiful granny square blanket that took tremendous effort. Indeed, many couches and beds in our family are adorned with blankets crafted by the crochet master herself. Each year, all of the kids in my Mom’s (her daughter’s) elementary school class took home a handmade scarf for Christmas, courtesy of Grandma Elsie. Grandma crocheted baby blankets for newborn children of friends and family, and for stillborn babies as a comfort to the mothers and families of the lost child.

Her impact was far reaching. She touched the lives of so many people – so many people that she would never have the opportunity to meet.

Crocheting was one of her gifts, and maybe even a calling. At her funeral, the pastor said something that really struck me. She crocheted so many things, and what did she do with her work?

She gave it all away.

This kind of giving was not like: I have so much and you have so little, so here you go; but was out of a posture sheer joy and abundance. This kind of giving looks more like: this is what I do, and I want to bless you with it.

I think that’s one more characteristic of a calling that I’d like to tack onto my ever-growing list. It’s a part of you that’s so valuable, and yet so abundant, that you can’t help but give it away, to the glory of God and all people. Maybe there is a Christmas message in there after all.

I hope this is true for my calling, and I pray it is true for yours.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.
Hebrews 12:1-2

creative: one in seven

This is a poem I wrote during our US-2 midterms back in September 2014, which was a time for the missionaries in my class to come together in NYC for a time of reunion, reflection, and equipping. During one session, we were asked to write a short poem or prose about Sabbath, and this was my response. I pray we could all find a little more time for Sabbath in each day and each week.

One in Seven

Six days of the week are planned, scheduled, outlined, and detailed. The alarm rocks me to consciousness at 7:00am. These days are crammed with meetings, works, chores, duties, things to be excited about and things to deplore. It’s a race – can I get everything done that I said I would do before it’s time for lights out, tap out, conk out?

One day,
just one,
in seven is left,
set apart,
unstructured.
I finally get to sleep in!
With nothing but a blank slate ahead of me,
I get to decide with God what we will do together today.
My biggest responsibility is to make sure I get the rest and rejuvenation I need.

But that’s a huge responsibility in itself. It becomes a burden to set aside that time. I permit commitments and responsibilities to slowly leak in, crowding out the Sabbath, breaking the plan for having no plans.

But why do I allow this day called holy to become much like the other six?

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If you refrain from trampling the sabbath,
   from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;
if you call the sabbath a delight
   and the holy day of the Lord honorable;
if you honor it, not going your own ways,
   serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs;
then you shall take delight in the Lord,
   and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth;
I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob,
   for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
Isaiah 58:13-14

newsletter: issue 3 - year one and beyond

Hot off the presses, here is Issue 3 of my newsletter!

July 23, 2014 marked the first day of my second year of service as a missionary. It’s cliché to say, but also true, that the year flew by, and it’s hard to imagine now that I only have about 9 months left before I finish! Although, 9 months is a lot of time, and I look forward to continuing to grow and finishing strong. Before too much more time flies by, here is a little update on my life and times! ...

I hope you'll download the full newsletter and read on. If you'd like this to arrive in your inbox or mailbox, please send me a note and I'll get you signed up. Also, consider passing this along to some young adult you know who might be interested in mission service.

Thanks for your support in many ways, and Happy Thanksgiving!

Prayer requests:

• Big praise and joy that I've finally started some medicine which is helping my back to recover from my bout with spinal arthritis!
• Continued guidance on where God would have me go and what God would have me do next.
• Healing for those affected by Ebola, and creation of a strong healthcare infrastructure in West African Nations which will help prevent disease outbreaks in the future.

reblogged: challenge accepted

First appearing on Nov 15, 2014, this is guest blog I wrote for The Book of Fellows, the blog for United Methodists Young Adult Missionaries. Check it out and see what my peers are up to and thinking about!

Over November 7-9, 2014, a few of us Young Adult Missionaries traveled to Denver, CO for Imagine What’s NEXT. Through music, messages, conversations, and fun, this UMC gathering gave college students, and folks from agencies and organizations, time and space to connect, worship, and consider opportunities for service and vocation.

On Saturday evening, we were issued the $5 Challenge. As we departed for dinner and evening worship downtown, the organizers gave each participant $5 cash. We were not to keep this, but to use it to make the biggest impact possible in downtown Denver. They gave a number of ideas like buying a package of socks to give away, treating someone to dinner, or buying a bus pass for someone. They encouraged us to take pictures of our experiences and post them on social media with the hashtag “#5challenge.”

As for the missionaries, the gears in our minds were spinning. Personally, I had just given a talk earlier in the day, and one of my points was an old standard at Church and Society: we often fail to make the distinction between acts of charity – temporary assistance for urgent needs – and justice – lasting transformation aimed at God’s Kingdom. God calls us to both through our lives of faith (Micah 6:8, Matt 23:23), but we often focus our ministries on charity. For us, the $5 Challenge was to think and act outside the box and do something a little closer to justice.

An idea budded and blossomed during break time: what if we bought sidewalk chalk and wrote messages of inspiration, encouragement, advocacy, and awareness on the streets of Denver? We ran with it. After dinner, we fortunately came upon an office supplies store 5 minutes before close (yes, we were those annoying customers). Six of us went in and spent $3 on 3 packs of chalk. We hit the streets.

Before our eyes, the results multiplied like fishes and loaves blessed by God. People read our notes as they walked by, some engaging us in conversation. Some people wanted to write words of wisdom and inspiration for themselves, so we gave them chalk to take with them on their own journeys. We tagged each of our notes “#NEXT14″ so that socially-networked passers-by might go online and see what else we were up to at the conference.
 

I like to think that people’s lives were changed, even just a little, by our “street tweets” – that someone would know that Christians carry messages of hope as well as challenge – that another might grow in their awareness that all people are valuable and treasured – that yet another would come to realize we were created to be alive and vital. A few strategic and beautiful words, bathed in the power of the Spirit, have the power to transform lives forever.

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, order your disciples to stop.’ He answered, ‘I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.’ –Luke 19:39-40

back in action + creative

 

Welp, it's been almost 3 months since my last blog post. Oops. So much for posts every Wednesday. It has been good to take some sabbath from the blog, and I've also had some pretty major life events in the mean time which have distracted me a bit.

In August, I moved from the Capitol Hill neighborhood to an amazing group house with 5 other Christian young adults in Petworth. We live in "intentional community" - we take turns cooking for the whole house, share all our groceries and food, split up house chores fairly systematically, pray together before meals, and generally enjoy life together. It's actually a lot like living with great family.

I've struggled with severe back pain, which kept me from going to work for about 3 weeks in September. The doctors diagnosed me with axial/ankylosing spondylitis, or spinal arthritis, which could lead to spinal fusion if left unchecked. This is chronic, and is likely a complication of another condition I have called ulcerative colitis, or inflammation of the large intestine. Both are inflammation and immune system related. My pain level is much decreased after a course of steroids, I'm back to work, and I hope to start some longer-term treatment with medicine soon. My roommates have been extremely supportive as they have surrounded me with care and food!

Near the end of September, I started to recover and felt well enough to go to New York City for US-2 midterms, which is the halfway-through-the-missionary-program time of gathering, reflection, equipping, and sending. I had a blast hanging out with my sisters in mission again. And yes - I'm the only male US-2 in my class.

Through The District Church, I've also started a small group book study with a friend. The group is based around Dallas Willard's book "Hearing God." We're all about listening for God's voice and guidance through forming a closer relationship with God as we discern our various callings in life. We also spend time just enjoying each others' company and eating snacks. Let me know if you think you'd like to join us!

Finally, I'm coming to the realization that I've only got 9 months left as a US-2. Just 9 months! The natural question is: what comes next? I'm still quite interested in engineering and think about it almost daily. My work as a US-2 has sharpened my understanding about the many struggles humanity faces, and how Christians have a general calling toward ending those struggles. There are a number of ways I see to integrate the two worlds of engineering and faith-based justice, and I've enjoyed the opportunity to explore those intersections.

Over the next weeks and months, I'm going to share more about these and all of the other things I'm thinking about and experiencing. I just wanted to take a moment to catch up and summarize. I hope to be back in action on at least a semi-regular basis going forward.

I also want to introduce a new feature of my blog. I think I'll just call them "creative" posts. I discovered that one of my great joys in life is doing work with my hands - manual dexterity - tactile thinking and learning and processing. I actually do some artsy things on occasion, like drawing, writing, poetry, alternative prayer styles, cooking, and I might even try my hand at brewing beer at some point. I've kept many of these things tucked away, but I plan on sharing more of them.

One type of drawing I like to do is graffiti-style sketches. Below is one I did on Sunday while I took some sabbath time.

Prayer requests:

• That I am released from or can make peace with the pain I experience with the spinal arthritis
• Continued guidance on finding a fulfilling vocation when I finish the US-2 program
• Relief for our may friends, brothers, and sisters in West Africa who struggle with Ebola

training memories: beets and kale

This is guest blog I wrote for The Book of Fellows, the blog for United Methodists Young Adult Missionaries. Check it out and see what my peers are up to and thinking about! The image below is an original digital collage created by searching Google for images of "beets and kale" and taking a screenshot of the result.

Nearly one year ago, I started training as a missionary. I was in the process of passing off, dumping off, and shrugging off 6 years of grad school and entering into something completely new.

During training, I entered into relationship and covenant with 28 other amazing young adults who are committed to serving God and all people. We spent 3 weeks together where we bonded over many things. One of them was food.

Much of our training took place at Stony Point Center, a retreat center in New York. Stony Point has an organic farm, and a good amount of the food they served for meals came from the farm.

As farming goes, certain crops become ripe and ready at particular points in time. For us, two staples were beets and kale. On our first day, we savored all of the ripe food, plucked from the earth hours earlier, cooked, and delivered to our dinner plates. With food that fresh, I swear you could taste the sunshine it bathed in as it grew. Over the next few days, there was plenty more, and also prepared differently for variety. “Beets and kale again? Yes please!”

By the end of training, we were pseudo-prophets, predicting what vegetable duo would be served to us that day. We groaned, both because our taste buds longed for something different and because someone told another bad beets and kale joke. We beatboxed, not using the phonetics “boots and cats,” but instead “beets and kale.” These common vegetables became legendary.

Near the end of our training, we reflected on the entire experience. As much as we remembered about justice, spiritual health, living in community, and many others, we could not shake “beets and kale” from our minds. It went on the summary list.

In an epiphany moment, I tied it back to my own story. I had been living a beets and kale kind of life. I plugged away at the same old thing day after day, not really loving it and not really sure where it was taking me. The chance to serve as a missionary changed everything. I got to leave that old life behind and go on an exciting journey that God called me to.

July is a mad season for Generation Transformation Young Adult Missionaries in the UMC. My missionary class closed year one and enters year two of service, the class before us finished their term, and the new class of missionaries was recently trained and commissioned in the Philippines.

In this season, how will we choose to leave behind the ordinary, the mundane, and the everyday beets and kale in exchange for the abundant life promised to us by Christ? Can we leave behind everything we want in order to follow the One who promised everything we need?

As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake—for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people.’ And immediately they left their nets and followed him.
Mark 1:16-18 NRSV