Hope Travels North

Last time I was in Tijuana, I encountered hope traveling north toward the US Border.

My friends and I were in Tijuana to listen and experience a piece of reality from a vantage point unfamiliar to our everyday lived experience. We had just spent time in a temporary shelter-turned-community/home where immigrants from across the globe were resting in the midst of their journey or settling in to a new season of life in Tijuana. As we left this micro-village, an old van pulled up to the sidewalk out front, and the rusty door slid open.

We had heard of this caravan from my friend Jon, who was helping to guide our time in Mexico. There weren’t many details, other than that this group had been traveling for a long time from Central America. The rusty door slid open and out came women and kids and men and grandmas and babies. They were tired and hungry; they needed a bathroom and fresh diapers.

Their intention was to get to a U.S. port of entry and request asylum.

Their hope was to be seen and to be heard.
Their hope was to share their stories of violence, threats, abuse, and corruption.
Their hope was to receive some measure of grace – in the form of asylum or some reprieve from the hell they were fleeing.

It was a caravan of humans, each filled with a hope corresponding to their own unique story.
I didn’t get to hear each of their stories.
I hope they have been heard.
I hope they continue to tell their story.
I hope they have been received as a people of hope, as humans rather than headlines.

I fear they have been cast aside as threats and as strangers.

May we listen to the stories told.
May we see humans and neighbors. 
May we receive the hope traveling north.

Sol LeWitt and the ReCreation of the World

The other day we had the chance to slowly move through the SFMOMA, one of my favorite spots in the Bay Area.

I spent a while sitting in proximity to a few different pieces by Sol LeWitt, an American conceptualist.

LeWitt’s work appears deceptively simple, using little or no color and simple geometric shapes and patterns.

“By repeating and varying a single principle, he created sculptural structures that were aesthetically satisfying even as their internal logic was pushed to the edge of irrationality.” (SFMOMA)

SFMOMA has a room filled floor to ceiling with several of LeWitt’s wall drawings, intersecting lines emanating out from several loci in bold primary colors.

These drawings are simple and they are beautiful.

But what struck me most was LeWitt’s conviction that the true art lay not in the product but in the idea or concept. The piece of LeWitt’s art I was looking at (Wall Drawing 273) was an original LeWitt, and yet at some point the wall would be painted over and a draftsman (following LeWitt’s instructions) could recreate the art on a different wall without losing the originality of the art.

Although it would resemble Wall Drawing 273 as I saw it (LeWitt’s instructions dictate the number of lines, the number of locus points, the color of the lines, etc.), the shape and size of the wall, the lighting of the space, etc. would all change the dimensionality and feel of the next iteration of Wall Drawing 273.

Again from SFMOMA’s bio on LeWitt, “each of these impermanent artworks consists of a set of the artist’s instructions, something like a musical score, with the actual execution carried out by someone else.”

Unbelievably beautiful.

And now for some theological reflection…

I couldn’t help but wonder if this isn’t the pattern of creation and recreation that we find in the Christian Scriptures:

impermanent artwork: Genesis 1’s depiction of Eden isn’t static or sculpted; the garden is meant to flourish, multiply, grow, and change.

set of the artist’s instructions: not a blueprint or schematic, but a coherent yet loose invitation into the ongoing (re)creation of the world

something like a musical score: LeWitt’s concept for Wall Drawing 273 isn’t beautiful in and of itself, although it is, in some sense, the art. But when the instructions are drafted onto a wall, the art takes a shape and form that can inspire awe, breathlessness, wonder, reflection, inspiration, etc.

actual execution carried out by someone else: This is perhaps the most profound, the openness and willingness of the artist to invite other’s into the recreation of their art (not as the artist per se, but also not not as the artist). Every iteration of Wall Drawing 273 will be different, but they can all be true.

The entirety of the Christian Scriptures invites humanity into the project of (re)creating the world with a coherent invitation into the shape and form and concept yet with an unbelievable freedom to expand and innovate and adapt within the conceptual artistry.

 

 

Passion Versus Addiction

The difference between passion and addiction is that between a divine spark and a flame that incinerates…

Passion is divine fire: it enlivens and makes holy; it gives light and yields inspiration. 
Passion is generous because it’s not ego-driven; addiction is self-centered.
Passion gives and enriches; addiction is a thief.
Passion is a source of truth and enlightenment; addictive behaviors lead you into darkness.

You’re more alive when you are passionate, and you triumph whether or not you attain your goal.

But an addiction requires a specific outcome that feeds the ego; without that outcome, the ego feels empty and deprived…

Addiction is centrifugal. It sucks energy from you, creating a vacuum of inertia. A passion energizes you and enriches your relationships. It empowers you and gives strength to others.

Passion creates; addiction consumes.

Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts

I know the future. I ignore the future.

This is not unrelated to what I wrote a few days back.

The last few months have been a bit of a blurry season with a lot of travel, additional projects our family has taken on, and the regular rigamarole of the days between Spring and Summer.

I was in a conversation with some friends the other week about meaning, happiness, fulfillment, and the rhythms of life. We talked about work-life balance, finding joy in everyday moments, and navigating the frustrations of various seasons of life (a lot of them involving the complexity and noise of life with little kids).

It struck me that despite the present feeling fuzzy and complicated, the future is crystal clear.

One day I will wonder why I worked so much.
One day I will wonder why I didn’t spend more time with my family.
One day I will wonder why I spent so much time feeling stress from artificial or actual deadlines.
One day I will look back with both fondness and regret for the season I wake up to every morning.

I know the future, a beacon warning ships away from a dangerous coastline.
I ignore the future, a whisper of what will be but need not be.

Bronnie Ware was a palliative care nurse who spent time caring for those in their last stage of life and chronicled the five most common regrets people had looking back on their life:

• I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
• I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
• I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
• I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
• I wish that I had let myself be happier.

We know the future.
May we not ignore the future.

And may I never, never, never grow so old again

I awoke early this morning, hoping to catch some time of quiet reading before the inevitable wave of chaos, volume, and wonder that is our kids waking up. I grabbed some leftover coffee I stashed in the fridge, opened a window, and sat in my favorite chair with a book.

In silence easy
To be born again
To be born again

About a half a second later our youngest woke up, ready to be “out! done!”

I went to help him out of his crib and thought maybe he’d play quietly while I read a bit. But it was time for “milk! milk!” And so I got him some milk.

And then it was time for “dance! dance!”

It was definitely not time for “dance, dance.” It was time for quiet, silence, coffee, and a book.

But he was insistent. He leaned in, patted the carpet where we have our family dance parties, did a few spins and leaned in again – “dance!”

So I popped on Astral Weeks and we danced.

You turn around you turn around you turn around you turn around
And I’m beside you
Beside you, oh child
To never never wonder why at all

As we danced, our oldest awoke and ran out, smiling and laughing. Within a minute we were all on our backs doing bicycle kicks. It was impossible not to laugh, smile, and find joy.

It was the best of all possible mornings, but when Krissy returned from her early morning working at a coffee shop, I had already entered a space of forgetful frustration:

“The boys have been cranky since they woke up.”

Looking back from the vantage point of this afternoon, it’s a slow release of silent and spoken curses and regrets. But also a glimmer of grace as I remember and solidify the true reality of this morning’s magic.

You breathe in you breathe out you breathe in you breathe out you breath in
you breathe out you breathe in you breathe out
…
And I will never, never, never
Grow so old again.

God, help me never, never, never grow so old again that I miss these morning moments.

Fail Well and Live Truly

Failure lands somewhere on the spectrum of death.

Which makes sense, because failure is endeavoring to bring something to life – an idea, a project, a hope – and resulting in something other than life, i.e. death.

Yesterday, I invited our community at Open Door to consider risk, failure, experiment, and practice as deeply embedded parts of our formative journey of faith. Luke 9 paints this picture well in the life of Jesus and his followers – they are sent out to do the things Jesus did and along with some success, they also continue to experience failure. Being called, sent out, saved, etc. does not guarantee success – quite the opposite, it seems.

Few things have painted a better picture of this for me than Patti Smith’s performance at the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony honoring Bob Dylan as the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

After this performance, Patti Smith profoundly reflected on failure, artistry, and life in this New Yorker piece. Smith writes:

The opening chords of the song were introduced, and I heard myself singing. The first verse was passable, a bit shaky, but I was certain I would settle. But instead I was struck with a plethora of emotions, avalanching with such intensity that I was unable to negotiate them. From the corner of my eye, I could see the the huge boom stand of the television camera, and all the dignitaries upon the stage and the people beyond. Unaccustomed to such an overwhelming case of nerves, I was unable to continue. I hadn’t forgotten the words that were now a part of me. I was simply unable to draw them out.

This strange phenomenon did not diminish or pass but stayed cruelly with me. I was obliged to stop and ask pardon and then attempt again while in this state and sang with all my being, yet still stumbling. It was not lost on me that the narrative of the song begins with the words “I stumbled alongside of twelve misty mountains,” and ends with the line “And I’ll know my song well before I start singing.” As I took my seat, I felt the humiliating sting of failure, but also the strange realization that I had somehow entered and truly lived the world of the lyrics.

I’m struck by Smith’s phrasing of this “strange realization that I had somehow entered and truly lived the world of the lyrics.”

While failure is on the spectrum of death, there is something about moving through the experience of failure with integrity, trust, and hope that allows us to truly live.

May we learn to fail well so that we may live truly.

Resurrecting Ghosts

If you walk across the US/Mexico border into Tijuana, you will likely cross a large pedestrian bridge moving from the border to a tourist-y downtown section of Tijuana. As you walk across the bridge, you cross the Tijuana River which, at this spot, is a concrete channel with a deep vein down the middle and slowly sloping walls. The channel is large enough that cars could drive along the river on either side of the vein – a massive concrete basin that, both times I’ve walked across, sits mostly empty – a little water but nothing else.

But it wasn’t always empty.

At some point the concrete river bed was a living, breathing neighborhood, called El Bordo. The population of El Bordo was largely men and women deported from the US into Tijuana. Most were not from Tijuana and may have never been in the city before. Some were not Mexican, some didn’t speak Spanish. But they made a home in the concrete channel of the Tijuana River. There was no where else to go.

Sometimes community pops up in the most unlikely spaces.

It wasn’t the best neighborhood in Tijuana. There was crime and drug use. Many residents could not find work. The channel served as a concrete quarantine for those who made their home there. There was not much hope. The word ñongos was used to describe the area – a problem, a blight. Those who lived in los ñongos were the unseen, the walking dead. Some called them ghosts.

Samuel Pérez waged peace on behalf of the ghosts living in El Bordo first by seeing them and immersing in their lives. He walked their streets, he heard their stories, he took seriously their hopes and dreams. He recognized that no vision for flourishing in Tijuana could overlook El Bordo. Samuel’s work and passion involves agriculture and environmental sustainability, so he worked with the neighbors in El Bordo to construct dozens of raised garden beds in the middle of this concrete city. He saw humanity in their faces and advocated on their behalf.

The ghosts were beginning to breathe.

Samuel described the transformation of some of these neighbors – “they were becoming like humans again.”

My heart raced as I heard Samuel’s story, a story of resurrection happening in this place I was standing.

He did not belabor the point, because despite the miraculous recovery of life Samuel witnessed, the story took a sad turn. El Bordo was cleared out by la policía, possibly because El Bordo was impacting the flow of tourist dollars from the US into Mexico. What good could come out of El Bordo? 

Samuel said he did not know where the former-ghosts were now living; the garden beds had been destroyed. What was once a community beginning to breathe again now existed as a stark and empty concrete channel.

God have mercy.

May we become the people who learn to see ghosts.
May we become the people who speak in valleys of dry bones.
May we see breath enter dust and begin to breathe.

May we witness not only to the resurrection of Jesus but the resurrection of the world.
May we witness resurrection in the neighborhoods that have gone unseen.
May we witness resurrection in the neighborhoods that we call home. 

The Fuzzying-Up of Facts and Finding Wisdom’s Way

When I was a boy, we used, in order to draw oft’ the harriers from the trail of a hare that we had set down as our own private property…drag a red-herring, tied to a string, four or five miles over hedges and ditches, across fields and through coppices, till we got to a point, whence we were pretty sure the hunters would not return to the spot where they had thrown off (William Cobbett)

Misdirection, bombasticism, and the fuzzying-up of facts seem to be sending all of us ‘over hedges and ditches, across fields and through coppics.’

I’m not an epistemological foundationalist but neither am I a relativist.

It’s an honest and worthy struggle to dig in to what is real.
But it is a struggle.

I’m worried we are being invited to ignore what is real for the sake of what is interesting (to draw on the previous post, quoting David Foster Wallace).

May we carefully listen.
May we closely discern.
May we strongly object to fabricated falsehoods.
May we see beyond charades, smoke, and mirrors.
May we not lose sight of the Real.
May we find wisdom’s way.

Be as Uninteresting as You Can Be? (Thoughts from David Foster Wallace)

I stumbled across this David Foster Wallace interview from almost 15 years ago.

A few of my thoughts are at the bottom after the snippet.

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DFW: No one is asking questions about the connections between how we live, what we drive, and the things that are happening [in the world].

INTERVIEWER: Are there means of rebellion [from the status quo]?

DFW: There are people doing it all over the place…The people I know who are rebelling meaningfully don’t buy a lot of stuff and don’t get their view of the world from television and are willing to spend 4-5 hours researching an election rather than going by commercials.

The thing about it is in America, we think of rebellion as this very sexy thing that involves action and force, and my guess is the forms of rebellion that will change anything meaningfully will be very quiet and very individual and probably not all that interesting to look at from the outside.

I’m now hoping for less interesting than more interesting.

Violence is interesting. Horrible corruption and scandals and rattling sabers and talking about war and demonizing a billion people of a different faith in the world – those are all interesting.

Sitting in a chair and really thinking about what this means and why the fact of what I drive might have something to do with how people in other parts of the world feel about me isn’t interesting to anybody else.

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Here’s the full interview.

Whether you agree with DFW or not, it seems strikingly applicable to our world, perhaps particularly this week.

Parts of it also strike me as complexly-privileged, specifically the ability to “wait it out” with quiet, uninteresting, rebellion.

But I am especially struck by the gravity of the “interesting” and how it plays out in the stories of our world.

I (do not) believe in the god named Scarcity.

I like to think I don’t believe in the god named Scarcity, but the last few days have reminded me that my subtle allegiances to Scarcity are surprisingly strongly-held.

Scarcity peaks around a corner when all the wrong lights flash on my car’s dashboard (you know those lights – the ones you have to flip through your manual to find out what they mean and they say “stop driving your car right now and take your car to the dealership,” even if you’re not sure how to get to the dealership if you stop driving your car).

The whisper of Scarcity is heard when bills (even expected bills) all show up on the same day.

Scarcity doesn’t strictly operate in cash but shows up in the deluge of meeting requests, pressing deadlines, and wasted minutes or hours of a long commute.

Scarcity laughs at the seemingly-endless buzzing drone of notifications, pop-up reminders, and unread messages in your email inbox.

Scarcity says the water is rising and you’ll never find dry land again.

Scarcity’s song’s melody begins with “There is not enough. You do not have enough.” and rises to the refrain of “You are not enough. You will never be enough.”

Scarcity invites me to surrender to fear, to give up, to prey on myself and others.

I rarely, if ever, have strong, mountaintop, “Come to Scarcity” moments.

But the draw, allure, and movements of Scarcity are more subtle than that.

Some days I actually do believe in this god I don’t believe in.