After that, I met with a pastor from Vessels of His Love Church in Wheaton. He and a Wheaton student drove out here to the city to have dinner with me at Cafe Catedral.  It was a blessing to talk about relationships, money, manhood and ministry with them.

Today’s scripture: Hosea chapters 1 and 2.  Why did God command Hosea to marry a prostitute?  What does God’s love for Israel tell me about God’s love for me?  About my love for the people in my life?  Reading about infidelity and “whoredom” was a little uncomfortable for me after going through 16 hours of domestic violence training this week.  I am sensitive the the ways in which patriarchy and marriage are culturally framed in the bible.  But, if I listen to the Spirit, I know that what God is saying doesnt have to do with patriarchy and gender roles.  It has to do with trust, faith and love.  It has to do with how I treat other people every day, and whether or not I live my life (and lay down my life) to love my friends, my enemies and my God.

other scripture for the day: 2 Samuel 22

I have decided, as a way to celebrate this Lenten season, to blog regularly for the 40 days of Lent. I have been praying and preparing for this Lent season more than I usually do. Given all the transitions and new-found busy-ness in my life in the last month or so, the prospect of 40 days of seeking and opening myself up to the gift of God has felt all the more attractive. I want these posts to be like markers along the way on a journey. They will be reflections and thanksgivings about the ways I see God at work in my life each day- from the mundane to the sublime. No great themes or categories. Just honest prayers, hopes and observations.

So today began with freezing rain stinging my face as I walked to the L at 6:30 in the morning. Meeting Veronica at Dunkin Donuts for a half-hour was a highlight. We usually don’t see each other until the weekends. Later on it began to snow, and snow hard as I watched from the 23rd floor of a building downtown. I was there for the domestic violence training that my internship is paying for me to attend. I have learned so much in the last two days. It is like being in college again, in a sense, de-constructing patriarchy. But it is geared toward practitioners, of which we are quite a diverse group. Social workers of every stripe, police counselors, clinical counselors, agency administrators, advocates. Several of the women in the training are survivors of DV who have worked in social services for decades serving other women who are victims of abuse and violence. It has been so inspiring so far to hear their stories and share a time of learning and insight with them. Thank you God for these people, and especially for the men who already have given me great hope with their demonstrated compassion, intelligence and love.

It was still snowing, but not as hard, when I took the subway to Loyola to attend the 5pm Ash Wednesday Mass. Its the first time I have gone to a mass here in Chicago, and it was nice to see the room full of students. The scripture that spoke to me from the readings was from Joel chapter 2, particularly verse 12:

“Yet even now,” declares the LORD, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your garments.”

I think of Ash Wednesday as a kind of mourning. The ashes reminds us of repentance, our own sinfulness and mortality. Of the death that had to happen in order to atone for our sins. Henry Nouwen speaks of Lent as a time of purification, of exposing our “ambiguous relationships and our ambivalent attitudes.” To me, that means focus. Focusing on our lives so we can identify the things we hold onto too closely and the areas in which we are ambivalent towards God. I am glad to start this season with a reminder of who I am– mortal, sinful, made from dust. In 40 days, we will celebrate the Lamb who was slain and rose again so that we could have new life and go from ashes to beauty.

I pray that during these 40 days, we would see God’s hand in our lives taking us and those around us from ashes to beauty.  Particularly, for me, that my time in the DV training would not be about anger, hopelessness or self-focus.  But that clients and those who give their lives to helping them would see the beauty of their work and survival amidst the ashes of brokenness and violence.  Beauty is God’s promise.

For the rest of my birthday, we went to play pool, have beers and saw I am Legend.  Afterward, took the bus to Bennigan’s where my dad bought me Corona and we shared shots of Crown Royal.   I am grateful that this was my first birthday on my first full day in Chicago.  It was perfect.

Today I moved most of my stuff into the small room I will call home for the next who-knows-how-long.  The floors are glossy finished wood.  The kitchen smells of Trader Joe’s.  I can park my car in a driveway!  Its pretty nice.  Now I just need a bed.

I have been getting to know the area today, and I landed at a small corner cafe only 3 blocks from my place called Cafe Catedral.  Thats the Cathedral Cafe in English.  An apt title, because the place is filled with very, very Catholic art.  There are even replicas of the Sistine Chapel frescoes on the ceiling.  Next to the creme and sugar station is a counter with a thick, old Bible next to a poinsettia underneath a portrait of Mary and Jesus– only one of many such portraits in the place.

They have free wi-fi, too.

More updates to come.

Since I last posted, I read The Road, which was beautiful and satisfying.  Also got really into investing.  I have literally dozens of websites that I check quotes on, do research, learn terms and vocabulary, get analysis, and generally just learn as much as I can before I start putting a portfolio together.  Strange how those things used to bore me to death, and now it’s like my number one hobby. 

There are only three weeks until I will drive east and enter the Midwest, to make it my new home.  A new journey, a new place to seek and find the Lord, his love and grace, and more of his family.

In preparation: listen to Sufjan Stevens.  look at internet maps of Chicago and study them in detail.  Buy warm clothes.  Ask God for hope for my family as I leave them.

As I enter Chicago and begin a new phase of my life, I will turn 26 years old.  A year ago, I sat back and thought about what it was I wanted to do.  What makes my heart come alive.  I have tried to pursue those things, and I am sure that the Lord will show me that there are more things I have not yet seen that will draw me towards His work in new ways.  But as I set out this time around, I am reflecting back on some treasured words that I have received during this last year of sabbath and healing.

Last month, I began reading the Book of Daniel.  I started reading, but I could not get past the first chapter.  I read it over and over again.  Something was there for me, I was sure of it.  I let the story and the words have a space in my mind and my heart.  I let them speak to me.  But I knew I had to keep looking.  I suggested to my girlfriend that we study the text together (inductively, of course   That filled it out more for me, but I felt there was something more personal that I was missing.  I thought of a verse that I had read a few days earlier- 2 Samuel 5:12.  David had just been anointed king, and made a covenant with God before he stepped into his role.  For years he had fled in the desert, living in caves, hated by those who pursued him relentlessly.  At 2 Samuel 5:12, the author inserts the line- “And David knew that the Lord had established him king over Israel.”  The word knew stuck in my head and repeated itself to me.   Of course David knew- God just told him!  But I thought about it again.  No.  David knew.  David’s knowledge was not information, it was not a re-iteration.  It was his lifeblood.  It was what sustained him when he had no home, no food, no ally.  He knew who he was.  He knew what God had done for him.  He knew his God.  And he knew that God had made him king.

God knows that I have a stubborn tendency to question who I am.  To question what I am capable of and what I should do.  If God had made me king, I would wonder, “Should I be king?  I mean, a king has power and status and influence.  There has to be something wrong with this.”  It is shameful to admit, but often humility is a mask for low self-worth, cowardice, self-protection.  So, what if God made me ‘king’?  Would I know it, or doubt it?

I was pondering this along with Daniel 1, when went to church in Wheaton with Veronica.  The pastor had asked the Holy Spirit for a word for every one of the men in the congregation.  The whole service was just her giving these words to the men.  I had only been there three times before, but she had remembered me, and had a word for me.  Her word was from Daniel chapter 1- verse 4.  The verse describes the young men that were brought to Babylon from Israel, their qualifications and the fact that they were to be educated for three years “in the language and literature of the Babylonians.”

The pastor told me, “You are in the midst of what this verse is talking about.”

It has taken a lot of praying and personal growth to get to a place where I am confident and trusting enough to graduate school or travel to Latin America or apply for fellowships and scholarships.  What gives me hope is that men like David and Daniel, who knew the position that God had given them, continued to be devoted to the Lord, to seek him and to obey him (and I try not to forget the warnings about how sin can cause you to lose what God has given you).

All this to say, I believe that we are always more in God’s eyes than we are in our own.  Self-protection comes from fear, and it keeps you from what God wants to give.

I am excited about where I am going, even if I can’t fully see how I will get there.

tally ho!

Anyway, enough of that.  I am well, now.  The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is over, which is sad because I enjoyed seeing hundreds of hot air balloons in the morning sky as i drove to work.  New Mexicans are very proud of their balloon fiesta.

Being sick has allowed me some serious couch time with my dad, which has been nice.  We watch a combination of 1. major league baseball playoffs, 2. Jimmy Stewart movies and 3. Documentaries on the History channel.

The playoffs are fun, because both of my dad’s favorite teams are in them- the Colorado Rockies and the Arizona Diamondbacks.  I am sure that has something to with the fact that those are the only two teams whose stadiums my dad has visited, AND that they are the only major league teams in states bordering New Mexico (Texas, of course, doesn’t count.)  I think that most New Mexicans, if you asked them, would support the Rockies instead of the Diamondbacks.  I was always raised to believe that we New Mexicans have more of an affinity with Colorado than with Arizona.  We both share the Rocky Mountains.  We both relish in our distance from and disdain for California.  (While Arizona just wants to be California’s Mini-Me)  But what I think it boils down to for my family is that, in fact, our family came from Colorado. My dad’s side at least.

The funniest part of the whole thing to me, though, is that while we watch the Diamondbacks and the Rockies play each other, my dad cannot decide which team’s hat to wear.  Last night he wore his Rockies hat, because they were winning.  But he still felt an allegiance to the Diamondbacks.  After a few moments of silent wresting with the dilemma, he came upon a sage solution:  Put the Diamondbacks hat on the dog.

Too bad it didn’t fit him.

This story in the NY Times made me cry.   It brought me back to that feeling, that discomfort  and that sense that something is deeply wrong and God is deeply grieved.

I don’t really have anything else to say about it.

I am into my 2nd week at my new job. I was placed by a temp agency in a local hospital, filing medical records for 40 hours a week. Its good hours and so-so pay, but very very monotonous and boring. I like the people I work with, though. We talk about music, politics, their kids. A 50-something woman named Mary Ann talks to me endlessly about her unusually talented niece who goes to art school in New York. She shows me her paintings, her photos, a CD she recorded. Her admiration for her niece is contagious, but I can’t help but wonder what part it plays in her own life.

I have been listening a lot to NPR recently. I love it. Almost every day I hear a story or a commentary that I have to “amen” out loud in agreement with. A recent interview on Democracy Now with Naomi Klein made me practically fall in love (with her ideas…of course) This amazing video summarizes the theme of her new book. Today, another amazing man was interviewed: Norman Solomon, and I was blown away with some of the most clear, prophetic words I have heard in a long time about our nation and the ‘bigger picture.’ You can listen to the October 3 interview with him on the Democracy Now website.

This was at Cafe Mestizo in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago, in the middle of September. I had a great time visiting with Veronica- especially visiting her church friends and going to an Ozomatli concert. Also, we went to the Water Tower campus of Loyola University, where we met with a professor who is leading a migration studies program in the school of social work that works with a Jesuit university in Mexico City.

A couple weeks later, I was informed that I had been offered admission to said School of Social Work. Yes!

It has been a long and prayerful process, but i feel like i am heading in the direction I want to be going, that fits with the calling God has placed on my life, and God is blessing it. Getting there has been very difficult, though.

I am at home with my family, and after three months, I have learned 1. the reality of spiritual warfare (again) and 2. I can’t do it alone. I have tried to do it alone. I have tried to have a relationship with God, to pray for my family, to love them, to bring my own sin and pride to God….all alone. I have even tried to uncover the roots of why (in the sin of self-protection) I choose to be alone, hidden. That also, I have learned, must not be attempted alone.

I have been reading and thinking a lot about disappointment. Disappointment, i think, is at the core of much of our behavior as wounded children of God. Our parents disappointed us. Our friends at some point, our significant others. The world is disappointing. We even look at these disappointments and conclude that God himself has disappointed us. What I am learning is that it’s true. The world is deeply, deeply disappointing….in such a way that our souls’ longing often cannot be contained, and so we frantically seek relief (relationships, food, porn, success, status, drugs, sex, order, isolation, violence, power, entertainment, religion…)

The thing is, God does not offer relief. That is not his business. Yet no one feels the disappointment and the darkness of the world more acutely than the Father who created it. He created us for love, for intimacy and for holiness. How terrible for him to see that things are not as he created them to be! I cry when the dysfunction of my family explodes around me. This summer I have allowed it to drop down into my gut, and not run away. It hurts. It hurts that things are not the way they should be. It hurts when people hurt you (a redundancy, but needed to get me out of intellectualizing of the pain) It hurts when people you love are hurting. It hurts when people are oppressed in the world and things to not seem to get better. Letting the tears flow has been healing for me, not because I feel relieved, but because in the disappointment of the world, only God offers hope. Only God offers hope.

I heard a quote the other day…”Christ will be sweet to me if sin be bitter.” Oh how true! Grace is amazing because my sin is so insurmountable. Salvation is the most beautiful thing I can imagine because the lost-ness of the world (Iraq, Darfur, Burma, Manila, Bangkok, L.A…) is so crushing. I will thirst for God, because drinking anything else is disappointment and despair.

I pray that I would have the ears and they eyes to see the gifts of God. The good things that come from God even out of the disappointing corners of daily life. My friends, who love me imperfectly, but with the love of God. My mom and dad’s prayers said for my brother daily. The people of God, the church, of whom i will always be a part. The encouraging words of my girlfriend, which God delivers to my soul even when I am too sad to receive them.

Lord, help me to choose out of being alone.

I have been exploring poetry more myself these days. Rainer Maria Rilke and Pablo Neruda are who I have been reading mostly. There is a line in one of Rilke’s poems that makes me pause and have that certain feeling I know well, but can’t describe….

You are the bird whose wings came

when i wakened in the night and called.

Only with my arms I called, because your name

is like a chasm, a thousand nights deep.

That is from a poem in The Book of Images. It makes me think about all the other ways in which we ‘call’ without ‘calling.’

I told the people at Big Brothers/Big Sisters that I am not going to take the job. This the 2nd promising job that i have turned down in the last 6 months, and it doesn’t get easier. But I am learning that a decision made in faith is not one in which I anxiously attempt to have my cake and eat it, too.  I want to go to graduate school.  I want to be trained in a new city for a work that I will love, the work that God made me for.  I have been planning this since before I was offered any of these jobs, and I am at peace about that decision.  Why is it that when other options come up, I am not at peace with them, yet I worry about not jumping at what is available?  I feel at peace once again about my plans for the next few months.

Other interesting parts of my daily life in New Mexico:  I usually get out of the house sometime between 9:30 and 11:00 AM.  While I am driving, looking for a place to go (usually one of four locations of a local coffee spot called Satellite) I listen to a combination of public radio and Christian radio.  The Christian radio I listen to is mostly sermons and talk, because I really don’t like contemporary Christian music geared toward ‘the younger generation.’  I get a lot out of the sermons, usually, but I have to change the station when they begin talking about modern-day Israel or the ACLJ defending Christians’ “rights” in hostile foreign countries.  That’s a whole other discussion…

The other portion of my car-radio listening time is taken up with public radio, and the only show I am usually in the car to hear is Native America Calling, a nationally syndicated radio talk/news show about issues effecting the Native community all across the country.  I don’t think this show airs in California, and I really like being able to hear it.  The guests they have on are usually very insightful, awesome people.  My only beef is with the host of the show.  I feel like he doesn’t belong there at all.  He is very passionate, but he rambles on and on in his introductions, frequently getting way off topic.  He never seems to be on the same page with the guests when it comes to the boundaries and vocabulary of the topic.

Anyway, I don’t even know what his name is, but I applaud his commitment and passion.  I’m just being a complainer.

So…another thing that tripped me out last week:  When I visited that Evangelical mega-church, they were going to have communion after the sermon.  A man came around with a tray of what I assumed was the standard grape juice and cracker.  He came up and handed us each a small packet that looked exactly like a CoffeeMate packet of creamer.  The plastic was clear, except for the top foil, which was purple and double-layered, with dove and cross designs on it.  In between the two layers of foil was a small cracker.  Peel off the foil completely, and you get to the grape juice, just as if you were about to squeeze it into your decaff brew.  I had never seen anything like that before, and I got a kick out of it.

Music: If you haven’t already, I highly recommend the new Common CD Finding Forever.  It is the second Common-Kanye West collabo, and is rich with Chicago soul flavor.  Both Common and Kanye adamantly rep that city.  One song in particular that I think is necessary listening this season in “Misunderstood.”  Beneath Common’s narrative lyrics about a young man and a woman struggling to make it through in spite of tragic circumstances, there is Kanye’s beat, which gives me goosebumps every time I hear it.  I did my research, and found out that what Kanye did (which is pretty much his signature style) is took an old soul record, and modified it only slightly in order to produce a frickin amazing beat thats not only classic Kanye, but seems tailor made for Common’s lyrical style.  The record he took was an obscure Nina Simone record “Live in Paris 1968.”  On it, Nina Simone sings a soul-shakingly awesome cover of The Animals’ 1965 hit “Don’t Let me be Misunderstood.”  The Nina Simone cover in itself is a bad-ass song, but to hear it in conjunction with Kanye and Common is frickin amazing.   If I knew how to link to an audio file here, I would, but you’ll have to check it out on your own.

peace

I got really hooked on Facebook’s TravellersIQ Challenge in the last couple of days.  As a former geography bee champion, I am perfectly suited to demolish the competition in the game.  I am not ashamed to say, that I rank in the 10th percentile in the World Challenge.  That means out of more than 300,000 people who have played the game, only about 3000 scored better than I did.  Yeah.  That is how I do.

I’ve been visiting more churches.  I went to this HUGE mega-Evangelical church.  They have a bookstore called “Parchments” and a cafe called “Solomon’s Porch.”  They have free Wi-Fi and coffee for $1.00, so that is cool.  I was kind of overwhelmed when I went to the Wednesday night service.  I wasn’t prepared for the sheer size of it, and also the extravagance of the physical structure of the church.  Everything is clean, sleek and expensive.  The cool thing about a church like this for me now is that they have the resources and diversity in ministries that (might) make it easier to find a group of men with whom I can have fellowship and accountability.

I’ve been reading Zadie Smith’s On Beauty.  I really like it so far.  She really articulates awkwardness and discomfort well- the awkwardness of academia, race and the daily strain love/hate conflict within dysfunctional families.  I can relate to the character Jerome…

Still waiting to hear from Loyola.  I am feeling more and more sure about the choice to move to Chicago in December/January.  That would also mean that during the next four months in Albuquerque, I should get a part time/low stress job and have the freedom to enjoy solitude, rest, reading while I am blessed with the time.  I have also been itching to travel again.  I have been looking at mission organizations and human rights orgs that send people to Latin America to study and observe.  Money is low right now, but I really have no other limitations.

The job search has been slow but steady, and a bit random.  I am still in the consideration phase of the Big Brothers/Big Sisters position.  I have also applied to be a driver for the City government and a substitute teacher.

Life at home has not been as hard as I thought it would be.  It still is difficult, and I find myself not wanting to share space with my family sometimes (annoyed, irritated)  But I’ve been blessed with a comfortable room that i have been able to make into my own space.

Thats all for now…