The Musician

The writer shook his head quickly after catching himself in a daze staring at the performers’ feet. Under the clench of the banjo’s hypnosis, his eyes slowly moved up the feet of a wooden stool, across some dirty Vans, over a pair of cut-off jeans, focusing on the banjo sitting on a man’s lap.

Notes danced across the strings up to an over-caffeinated, nerve-jangling bluegrass jingle. The audience began standing, clapping, and dancing, but the writer went unfazed. He stayed fastened to his chair, barely tapping his foot along. The harmonies of the band members seeped into his ears, and he sunk deeper into his chair. Unintelligible joy wrung his core, compelling him to clamp his angst-filled hands to the sides of his seat to keep upright. Approaching the end of their set, the folk band hit three powerful chords and took a bow.

The writer, tense in his seat, watched as they exited the stage. The voices in the coffee shop got louder as a small woman with an acoustic guitar timidly walked onto the stage and started her sound check.

Looking across his shoulder, he saw an abstract painting along the art wall. Scattered lines had never looked so appealing. Nonpictorial elements never quite made sense. Abstract hardly looks like anything. How could one connect with it? He got up and walked over to the painting, marked by red and blue. The polar contrasting primary colors took form in sharp jagged marks as though a frustrated feline got a hold of some paint and failed to contain her composure.

“What a mess,” said a startling voice beside him.

The writer turns to see the smirking banjo player standing behind him. “I like it... but I’m not quite sure why,” he responds.

“Why does it matter?” inquires the musician.

Perplexed by the question, the writer muttered, “What do you mean?”

“It’s just some paint on a piece of paper,“ the musician suggested as the woman on stage started her slow, faint finger picking and humming.

“Making some sort of emotion-stirring arrangement,” argued the writer. “I gotta know why. Could it be because of the color choice?”

The musician turned to face the performer as she began to play more loudly. “Why must you know what it means?” he asked.

“I wanna make sense of it and write about it later,” he said.

“Don’t do that. You’ll ruin it. You’ll demean it to something to be understood, when it’s something meant to be seen and felt,” the musician dreamed. “Imagine a sunset. They’re gorgeous. Oranges, yellows, and reds spewed across the sky. You never say, ‘That’s pretty. Why is that?’ It just is. You stare at its beauty and marvel. It has no meaning, except that the sun is going down and nighttime is coming. The same with art. Draw conclusions on it all you want, but ultimately you just have to let it touch you how it does,” the musician described falling more in love with the performers soft voice and melodic guitar.

“Well, it makes me feel very anxious,” he confessed, watching the heads in the crowd sway from side to side.

“Anxious?” he asked. ”The beauty of art! What a man can do on a rail cart with just some paint and paper.”

“Rail cart? What do you mean?” asked the writer, puzzled by the random statement.

“I made it on the rail cart,” he completed.

“You made it? So you know what it means?” asked the writer eagerly.

“Just because I made it doesn’t mean I know… Let it tell you what it means,” suggested the musician.

The writer takes another glance at the painting and becomes drawn into the crooked winding stokes jettisoning off the canvas. The vocals of the singer became louder as she approached the bridge. Cruel red strands streamed down the piece, switching back and forth, crossing mournful blues, creating tainted purples. The triple strums from her guitar reverberated in the writer’s ears, and welling with uneasiness, he turns away from the work of art.

“I don’t think it speaks English,” he jokes, attempting lighten up his own mood. “But rail cart? I’ve always wanted to do that. For how long? From where to where?”

“Denver to here, where my sister lives,” he says, pointing out the female singer from his band earlier.

“That’s so far!” he exclaims. “It must have been insane! Was it sketchy?”

“Let me just say double check before hopping on a cart,” he snickers. “Waking up to a transient leaning over you asking where the cookies are isn’t really the best thing to wake up to.”

The two laugh, and the conversation continues. “I bet it was boring. What do you do for so long?”

“Well, I took a few breaks because I knew people along the way. Gotta get off those trains for a little and just walk around. But on it… I just made art, like this, and noise.”

“You made noise?” asked the writer.

“Yeah, like the ruckus I made on stage earlier with my banjo,” smiled the muscian, bobbing his head to the female performer’s acoustic cover of a pop song.

“Ruckus? I’d hardly say so. You’re a talented musician!” the writer affirmed.

“No, I was just making noise, plucking away. I don’t really know if I can do that again. I was just so into the music that I got lost in it,” he mused. “The same thing with life. You take it as it comes. You’ll waste too much time worrying and trying to change something that can be used just the way it is. I can’t handle too many missed opportunities. Life is far too short, and there is far too much to do to stick to the same ol’ same ol’.”

The writer, moved by his words, looked back on missed opportunities. where he could have landed a corporate level job in Moscow but declined when he looked at the idea of a new country. He could hardly stop going to the same coffee shop to write. He thought about hundreds of small cafés that populated the Portland Metro area and regretted the small pea-sized lack of adventure.

“I see you’ve made a friend?” interrupts a young woman. “I’m Julie. I’m sure my brother has charmed you.”

Exiting his mind, he returns to the present: “Beyond words. You have quite the character for a brother.”

“Yeah, a character that will soon be the next murder victim on a daytime tv show,” she nagged. “I offer to buy him a plane ticket and instead he tells me he’s gonna take the train. He said the train would be more relaxing and he could see more of the country. Later to found out that the train he took wasn’t quite the train I had imagined.”

“It was more fun that way!” the musician chuckled.

Pushing his shoulder back, “More dangerous is more like it.”

“Eh, just making it interesting,” he says gently lowering his eyes to the floor.

“Yeah, just make it out alive, and the time you don’t…” she says, pausing in frustration. “Have at it, but you worry me.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be safe,” he reassures, pulling her under his arm.

“Good,” Julie sighs. “Well, I just remembered we have to pick up my roommate from the airport. She’s there waiting right now and is too scared to take the MAX.”

“Sounds like you need to tell her to be more like your brother,” the writer smiled.

She laughs. “Maybe a little but too much and he’ll be a bad influence,” she says giving her brother a friendly glare.

“Well, let’s get going. It was nice meeting you,” she concluded as the two scamper off backstage.

The writer stood staring at the painting as it shouted nonsense at him. “Am I thinking to much?” he thought to himself.

Presence

She placed her elbows on the table and tilted her head slightly downward. I could see her starting to wipe the inner corners of her blue eyes, the corners where our tears tend to manifest.

For the past two hours, we had been catching up on life over the past several months, with minor flashbacks to the past few years. A lot had happened since our days together in high school, the days when we surprisingly didn’t share as intimate conversations. Now, we shared moments of laughter and seriousness, connecting in a new way. Sure enough, our conversation started taking the anticipated shift. You know, the shift to my recent “second coming out,” as I call it.

She had been around the initial coming out, six years ago that spread around my little conservative high school that I talk so much about. Back then it was the word that I was fighting my same sex attractions, but now the story is different.

“It would be hard to feel that way and know that it is wrong,” she said.

“It eats at you.”

I told her how it would tinker with my friendships with my guy friends, keep me up at night, and make me think it would be better to not be alive. Don’t worry, never seriously and never suicidal, only that in the sense that I wouldn’t have to deal with it, and it would be gone. “A pastor at your church and I actually got coffee and talked about this not too long ago, but I had no idea what to say to him when he asked, ‘What has changed from your conservative background to where you are now?’”

“Yeah, what has changed?” she asked.

“Well, I know you’re not going to agree with me, and it probably won’t make sense but…” I shared my take on me and God, me and the Bible, and me and the church. As I shared more of my thoughts, her eyes began to tear up. I could feel her fighting herself, fighting her tears and fighting her comments. We’ve known each other since late elementary school, and I had faltered from our upbringing.

It was difficult for me to continue to talk, knowing that she didn’t agree with anything I said, but I wasn’t trying to persuade her. We made that clear from the get go. This wasn’t an argument. It wasn’t a debate. It was a reunion of two long-lived friends. I knew what she believed, and she knew she didn’t need to tell me. We were left with one another, with no ulterior motives. Just the other, opposed in belief but united in love.

Her presence was powerful, that she wanted to sit and hear what she didn’t belief. Something amazing is found in the mere presence of two individuals. “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them,” we’re told. In this moment, God used her empathy painted across her face as an inspiring work of art. The beauty of what God’s work cannot be beaten. It makes us marvel in God’ presence, and until we slow down with one another, we cannot see the unique beauty of God’s design for relationship.

God tells her to be quiet,

him to speak up,

and them to stand.

It’s in “the other” that we see the universe that which is God, the incomprehensible character that we cannot see on our own. We make God so easily to be understood, and then, “the other” shows us this “new” beauty. Through a chipper laugh, or maybe a heartbreaking cry, God reveals more of God’s self, and until we come together, the relational character of God cannot be seen. Our part is to sit in the presence of one another and there discover the presence of God.

I'm an Atheist

His eyes looked extra blue today. It may have been that slim fit white polo with light blue stripes or the glasses he wore because he knew it would make me happy… and he probably didn’t want to deal with his contacts, but for story sake, it was for me. I even got to try them on.

I reached over the table and snagged the glasses off his face. I needed something to entertain me as we waited for the African American server with a bindi piercing on her forehead to bring us our Thai food. As I put them on my face, I realized that my left eye could see about fine, but my right eye, it struggled. We joked about how blind he is, in one eye, and shifted our dinner conversation.

I had just got back from coffee with a friend who was visiting from college, and I shared with him how she melts my heart whenever she comes to mind. No, not the romantic melt-my-heart, but the love that says, “I’m so lucky to know an outstanding and unique person such as you.” You know, sometimes you absolutely love someone for who they are, mostly their quirkiness or maybe their originality.

One time after we got coffee together, I blew her a kiss. She grabbed it out of the air, threw it in her mouth, and chomped down. The attention I got from the rest of the coffee shop for my outburst of laughter left me slightly embarrassed. “Oh my gosh I love you,” I laughed as she walked away.

I continued to tell him how my friends at my university blow me away by the depth of their character.

“Praise Jesus,” he jested, sipping on his Thai iced tea.

He knows I go to a Christian university. We joke about it sometimes. If anything, he grew up with more of a Catholic background, but he’s not a really fan of Christians or God, or so it seems. I don’t blame him. It was a difficult task for me to stay connected to the church, and I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t gone for the Christian college emersion technique.

“Shut up,” I jokingly sneered. “They really are outstanding people, beyond the Jesus stuff. I think you have the wrong idea of Christians.”

These wrong ideas are the shackles that inhibit people from gaining a better understanding of God, the immense jungle that we limit to some trees, vines, and coconuts. If we hold on to these limitations, we will never see the different breeds of animals sneaking through the jungle brush, the trillions of species of insects bouncing across the leaves, and the families of delicious fruit hanging from the limbs of the zapote trees.

God is more than we Christians share. We’ll throw out words like “omnipresent,” saying that God is always with us, but we leave out where and fear to say how. I’m an atheist too when it comes to the tree-vine-coconut God, the expansive, over-arching figure evaluating our every act. I believe in the God who is already present in miniscule good that seen all around us, in both the acknowledged and the neglected:

Revealing in the cycling ministries of our Mormon friends,

Renovating in the truth-demanding, honesty-yearning questions of a non-believer,

Reconciling in the authentic and healing love found between two homosexual men.

Through extensions of the love and Spirit of God, the work of God is displayed in the crevasses of each relationship between individuals.

One of our greatest problems is starting with the lofty idea of “God,” where people already have their lack-love, judgmental presuppositions and theories that must be broken down. Perhaps we should start with Truth, Hope, and Love, the things that everyone believes in and longs to see. Tell them to pray to Truth, to sing of Hope, and to paint for Love. Then, hopefully, they discover that these three figures all have the same name, Yahweh.

Christianese: Just Stop Talking

The barista steamed some milk from behind the counter as he and I shared a conversation and exchanged our words. From time-to-time, some words would roll across from his corner.

“Sin jadfjal jdfa dfasf asf blessed. Asd kfajdf dfjaldfj Eternity sdj kfj akdj salvation.”

I’d slip them under the table, discreetly trying to dispose of them without him noticing. I didn’t want to hear more words that didn’t make sense to me, but more came my way.

“Everything happens for a reason. Okdja kdjf la accept Jesus aljdf lajfj. Walk with God adkfjak adkf affa.”

My hands were so busy that my blank stare probably gave away my preoccupation. It’s hard to translate these words into a logical understanding. I was thinking so hard that I didn’t even notice how tight I was clenching my jaw.

One might say that my ears were so touched by his words that nothing else was coming in. I’d say I was in thought and stopped listening. Instead of trying to throw away the words, I just let them roll off the table. It’s easier that way. They throw themselves away, yet you still see their ambiguity.

Christianese is simply an English dialect of exclusion that has tainted our communication with others. As Christians, we’ve been programmed to speak a certain way, use certain words, and throw out certain phrases. We use them so often that they develop some presumed meaning that we actually don’t even know the meaning for, but we’ll say it just because it sounds nice.

The moment our language starts to reflect something that which is of Christian descent, the validity and worth of the statement can get tossed out the window. It doesn’t make sense to those outside the church.

“Christian” has developed a meaning and reputation outside the church. Christianese connects people to their idea of the church, but many of these ideas are negative, reconnecting people to the accept-Jesus-or-go-to-hell messages of their past. That method is direct without-a-doubt and may be valid in some eyes, but that game plan doesn’t make someone want to come to the church or be associated with a Christian.

There is no ideal conversion tactic, but we act like scaring people into the Christian lifestyle is the best way to get them on our side. Who wants to constantly hear that God loves them but they are going to hell unless they do such and such? First, what exactly is this such and such? Second, when is this such and such enough that we won’t go to hell?

We’ve started taking on a responsibility that is not ours. It’s not our obligation to make the connection for our friends.

It’s better to lead by action than by words.

It’s better to show people Jesus rather than spout off the laws he challenged.

It’s better to express the character of God than point out the sins she washed away.

Our fancy shmancy lingo is not enough to change lives of our comrades around us. They don’t want another speech about why they’re going to hell. We need to surprise them that all Christians aren’t the same and redefine their image of church.

Instead of reprimanding their poor decisions and pointing out their consequences, listen to their story and enjoy the relationship. It’s okay not to give some sort of advise, and it’s okay to leave “God” out of any advise that you do decide to give, leaving your words with the truth of reality without the Christian mumbo jumbo.

The life-changing part of the Christian lifestyle takes place on its own. You can’t force someone to believe something. They either do or they don’t. That change of mind comes on its own and cannot be constructed. Thrusting belief on someone is pointless if they don’t have a receptive mindset. Otherwise, they tune it out before you even get to the punchline.

Stop talking. They’ve heard the speech. Let them see the character of God for themselves.

Dialogue

The sun shined through the cracks in the blanketing clouds in the sky as they drove to a coffee shop for live music in downtown Portland. The rain had just stopped, and steam danced on the road as the cars drove over.

“I can’t wait to fall in love with a girl and marry her,” said the singer-songwriter to the writer in the passenger seat, turning down the singing and strumming guitar coming from the stereo.

“Why?” the writer asks. “Everyday at Powell’s, I’m interrupted by the over-affectionate couples giggling in the corner. I always think that such things just interrupt self-enriching opportunities. Why would I want to be interrupted by someone nagging me, wanting to hang on my whim?” he confessed, putting down his mug half full with some Stumptown coffee that he brewed just before leaving his house. “

“You never want to hold a girl in your hands and simply enjoy each other’s presence?” he dreamed, tightening his grip on the wheel.

“I have many friends whose presence I can enjoy, why put all my eggs in one basket when I can have many baskets for all my eggs. I mean, it’s more of a juggle but in the end, it’s more reliable,” the writer mentioned coolly, quickly rolling down the window for a splash of fresh air.

Droplets of water trickled onto the windshield. “Nothing you’d only want to share with a particular person?” He questioned, turning on his wipers and swiping away the guises that disrupted his thoughts and his vision. “Wouldn’t you like to say, ‘There is this one individual who knows me inside and out, and I can trust her to be mine’?”

“I much rather be happy that I am known inside and out by all those that I know, and thus be know for who I am, instead of only being know by one person. Besides, relationships are really about taking,” he remarked, sipping from his mug once more. ”You take from this person because they can give you such and such an feeling, and then you become upset when they fail to give it to you any longer. When that time comes, you move on to someone else, and they keep whatever they took from you. To me, all I see is selfishness, especially when you say someone is only yours,” resting his mug on his lap.

The rainfall increased, and the singer turned up his wipers to keep his composure. “You have to know there is more! That tinge, the twinkle, sparkle, jazz that you feel when you’ve just met her. Goosebumps shoot down your arms when she giggles because perhaps your joke actually was funny, and she dances through your thoughts as John Mayer sings you a lullaby through your bedroom speakers,” he mused, fancifully dazing into the taillights in front of him. ”Tell me you know what I mean?” he asks, waiting for affirmation.

“That feeling exists,” he agrees, “but because she gives me that ‘sparkle,’ I want to keep her around? It’s not about her but about the feeling that I can take from her. With every passing moment, I continue to rob her. That feeling, that attitude, is hers, and I would hate to corrupt her as she is. I would hate greater that she could corrupt who I am and steal from me,” he jeered, shaking his head as the thought of manipulation and self-loathing ran its fingers up his spine. “Love is a double-edged sword, swinging like a pendulum and causing harm as it swings. It cuts away what makes me who I am and replaces it with who she is. Oh, God, spare me from corruption and save her from the enslavement of another. Please, provide us with the ability to remain unaffected by the persuasion to another’s dreams. No person should have that much control rendered to a single individual. Slowly we become carbon copies of who this person has made us to be,” he ranted. “Each person has a void, and everyone fights to fill this void with the love of someone else, a void that should be filled with the purity of the self, enriched by others in small doses. Then again, everyone is lazy of course, unwilling do things themselves. Why make your food, when you can walk down the street and have someone else prepare it for you? Then you don’t have to pull out the dishes, make the food, and then clean it up. Everyone pushes their responsibility onto someone else, and I refuse to give in to such laziness. Too many people are lazy. If all are lazy, then nothing will be accomplished.”

Distracted by the conversation, the singer almost missed the exit. “Yet the economy is driven by the laziness of its consumers: ovens versus building a fire, microwaves versus the oven, bikes versus walking, and cars versus bikes,” he replied, as he swings the vehicle over to the exit lane. “Where would we be without laziness, the birthplace of each new invention?”

“We would be in the places of individuals in developing countries around the world. Our selfish laziness is criminal, focused on how we can make ourselves better. Our sales go to the latest iPhone, those over-priced sandwiches, and those ‘cute’ new shoes. God-willing, I hope to live the minimalist life in efforts to get Rhonda out from under that bridge and Roland from that tribe and going to school. Call me Robin Hood, for I guess I actually do intend to steal,” he chuckles. “I will steal the drive to succeed from the ungrateful and replace their drive with the heart of the unlucky, the ones unfortunate to live in a house and the ones who have to constantly stack up the hay to keep the torrential rains from entering their hut. I want to steal opportunity from those who were born with it and return it to the ones who Chance overlooked.”

The rain stopped as they approached the coffee shop, and another idea escapes the singers mind as he parks his car, “We need the hard work of the ungrateful, as you call them. That way they can give more.”

Exiting the car, the writer raises his voice to speak over the car. “What are their intentions though?” asks his pessimism. “The currency of diligence is spent on the inessentials, the futile,” it follows up.

As they approach the shop entrance, the singer restates, “The rich, they have the potential to give more in their wealth. When they continue to work, they can provide more help with their prolific wealth.”

Walking in the door, the dimly lit old warehouse was filled with a couple dozen people, and spotlights pointed to the young woman on the stage accompanied by three musicians: one with a guitar, one with a banjo, and one on a cajon. “Potential, opportunity, that’s what it is,” the writer theorized as they looked towards the stage for two empty seats. “Nothing more than good wishes that never make the transition into action. Justice comes in action.” Spotting two seats over to the right, by the wall of artwork, he points, “Oh! there by the impression of the Eiffel Tower.” Making their way over to the artwork, the French architecture brought back his memory of the French language. Quickly thinking of an analogy, he weasels out, “I noticed when I was taking French, ‘faire’ is the verb for ‘to do/ to make.’ Doing brings about fairness. One must make justice into existence, not merely intend for it.”

Unphased by the French, the singer chuckles and mocks, “I like how you incorporated that French. It barely made sense, but I understand what you are saying, I believe.” Laughing at his momentary lack of wittiness, he admits, “Yes, yes, I won’t try that one again.” But he didn’t care, he was too drawn by the somber melody streaming from the banjo. Never before had the instrument lured him like this before.

Proposing another idea, the singer interrupts the writer’s trance, “Here though, if the small things aren’t taken care of, how can one focus on the larger things?”

“I love the idea,” he hesitantly agrees as he re-enters the conversation. “Surely, the lazy create simple jobs for those searching for the opportunity. Then the lazy are free to create better things for… yet the other lazies,” he laughs once again. ”It’s like the sweat shops over seas. Those factory workers work for far less than they ought to, and then we benefit from their hard work. A friend of mine in Beaverton is trying to start a clothing company, and he shared with me that could have clothing made in China for an unbelievably low price, $3.50 per pair of shorts to be exact, and yet he sells them here for $40.00. Manipulation of the inopportune for the benefit of the lazy, and when do the lazy give back to their inopportune labor-doers? I see the same in love. We either give ourselves to or take from the other person so that we can feel affirmed in whatever way. It’s just a game of stealing and maximizing. I know that after some time, I will be robbed of my ambition, and Rhonda and Roland will not receive the opportunity of the lazy and the ungrateful.”

Trying to turn around the writer’s negative thoughts, the singer wonders, “Could it be though that she complements you and enriches that ambition rather than steals it?”

Pausing for a moment and refusing to accept his idea, the writer asks, “Why then can we not simply be partners-in-crime and nothing more?”

“Because it won’t end there. You know it!” he cried. “The feeling will be there, and you won’t know what to do with it. Once that sparkle or whatever you want to call it begins to fester, it will make even the wisest of men do the silliest of things.”

“We’ll see. We’ll see,” he murmurs, unsure of how to continue his ideas of individuality. “We are here now… Let the music take us,” he requests, returning to the carefree twang of the banjo again.

Idaho Moonshine

Give me a large body of water and a night sky, and I’m gone.

Mid-July amidst the summer heat of the Pacific Northwest, my high school youth group drove your typical yellow school bus almost 400 miles to the Dworshak Reservoir. The expanse of pure Idaho water runoff covers sixteen and a half acres amongst the forests and meadows in the northern half of Idaho.

A few pick-up trucks followed behind this sweat-culminating clunker of a vehicle. Each pulling behind them high-performance wakeboarding and water ski boats for a week of camping, water activities, and of course, God.

Growing up in Oregon, I’ve gone camping more times than I can count, and I was ten the first time I was pulled behind a boat with a rope in hand with a board strapped to my feet. Camping and water activities were old news. God though, God was a different story. I started going to church when I was 8, but God is different from church. I heard the stories, but the stories weren’t my life. They hardly made sense to me. God is interesting.

By our campground at the reservoir, I found a rock surrounded by water. The rock was close enough for me to hop onto but just away enough for me to disconnect from the high school flirtations and playfulness behind me. I sat here with my legs tucked up to my chest, resting my chin on my knees.

This was my getaway rock, a place to reflection and a place to interrogate God.

“Why did you make me like this?”

“Who must I be?”

“What am I supposed to do?”

Looking over the blue, each ripple reflected the uneasiness of my thought, shaken by the winds of realty disrupting the serenity of childhood innocence. When the wind stopped, I could remember the simplicity of my life before I understood what sexuality was, before I started understanding I wasn’t like the others.

The most enlightening moments came in the most absence of light, when the sun had gone and the moon would shine over the darkness with the glowing specks from the heavens above. Connecting the dots gets harder as you grow older.

As I listened to the water lap onto my rock, my mind faded farther from the woods and deeper into the lake, and my body shrunk in the growing expanse of the darkness, the crevasses of my heart.

From time to time, one of my youth leaders came and sat with me. He’d say a few words to make his presence known and eventually leave: “I’ll leave you to think, Sean.”

One the last night of camp, I receded to my rock, and he, too, later came to join me. This time though, he didn’t leave so fast. He sat with me in the silence as time passed.

The raging pressure of my questions was groaning to be heard as mellow worship music could vaguely be heard in the distance. After several moments, I became calm enough to share, and I disrupted the silence. “I have this struggle, with homosexuality,” I told him.

On that night, our conversation began. It continued the next day,

Throughout the following years,

and carries on until today.

On that rock, I feared entering into a deeper relationship with him. I feared being exposed. I feared being known, but to fearful Sean’s surprise, this friend has been one of the most influential individuals over the last four years of my life.

We have the same perception of God, fearful, distant, and unknown. We sit on that rock, pondering about God, when God comes and sits with us, saying, “Hey, I’m here, but I’m going to leave it to you to take that extra step.” The invitation is there, but God can’t do anything if we fail to participate.

We constantly wait for God to do something spectacular, to sweep our feet from under us. It’s not until we make a move into what is around us and see that this whole time we’ve been missing what has been going on all along, the flexibility, uniqueness, and extravagance of each relationship within God’s creation, where God instilled God-self into the fine fabrics between everything that is. How we interact in the creation shows our participation within it, our own unique and divine connection to the Creator.

If each one is a part in the body of Christ, how are we of any use if we fail to function as that body part? Let alone, how are we to know what body part we are if have never put ourselves to use? Hand, serve those who need to be served. Eyes, show us what we need to see. Feet, take us where eyes cannot go. And lips… speak the justice of the Creator that we others may weep at the injustice, discovering our parts and entering into the depth and beauty of Creation. For here, in participating in Creation, all things acknowledge their place, their function, their use. Outside of this participation, we continue to remain severed from that which we were designed for, through, and to, the Creator.

We Did It: A Nationals Thank You

For this Oregon boy, the sun was scorching, and the air was humid. It was an hour before the championship race of the 400-meter hurdles at the NAIA national championships in Marion, Indiana, and I could hardly keep my head on right. He and I were jogging over to the indoor facility to warm-up, and my disoriented thoughts shifted from the race in an hour to all that has happened the past few days. He read my nervousness, and affirmations overflowed as he jogged at my left:

“You’re the best.”

“You know that, right?”

“No one on that track is faster that you.”

I believed him, sort of. He’s my confidence when I don’t have any. Right before I’m about to slip away, he keeps me grounded, but as I tried to focus, I couldn’t get over the fact that he should be in this race with me.

The day before, he was rounding the end of the final curve the first heat of the semi-finals, and I just finished setting up my starting blocks for my heat to come.

Coming into the semi-finals, he was ranked third, I was ranked first, and our main competition was sandwiched between us in second. I came into the semi-finals knowing I just needed to make it to the final round, not an ounce of nervousness touched me.

Watching from my starting blocks, he came out fairly slow. He has this energy reserve for the last half of the race, and I waited confidently for it. He picked up his pace and moved from fifth place in the race to second and started chasing down our main competition who was in first.

I lost him behind the bodies that occupied the throwing event arena, and then moments later, I saw his body laying on the track. He hit a hurdle and went down. That’s when anxiety hit me. “We’re gonna go one, two. I don’t care what order, but we’re going one, two,” he’d been saying all season, but now, I realized it might only be me that runs in that championship race.

Pulling my hair and cringing, I turned to a teammate in the crowd who I had talked with earlier. By the time I had turned around, he had gotten back up trying to catch all who had passed him. He lost too much in the fall and couldn’t make it back into the race to qualify for the next round.

I wish I could have switched places with him. I much rather have my teammates perform well rather than myself, but it didn’t seem like that was going to happen. A teammate who could have easily finished in the top 5 for her heptathlon made a slight mistake and got disqualified. Another teammate had a bad first day in the two-day decathlon event, far from what he had done before. Another teammate has been on her way to the 2012 Olympics but has been battling injuries the last two years and fought for her opportunity to make it to nationals and get tenth. Now, my partner-in-crime for the hurdles wouldn’t be coming with me to the championship race.

Before the race, I wondered, “Why me? Why should I make it to this position, this opportunity? They deserve it so much more than I do.”

I ran for those who deserved it, for those who worked hard and yet missed this opportunity, but what I accomplished isn’t solely my own. Without the deserving, without you, my determination would be faltering. Your efforts pushed me to do my best, and whatever happened was because of you. I wasn’t running. We were running.

We often forget the power of influence in our lives. I could not have made it to where I am without the people in my life. God gave me a gift, and my coaches cultivated it, making it stronger than it would have been any other way. You, my friends, encouraged me to offer my best, walking or maybe even running with me along the way.

We are compilations of the people in our lives, and the impact from others is incredible. The times when we win and the times when we’re lost, people are there, nudging us and telling us that we can do it. There are the few who break us down, but we can’t neglect the significance of those relationships where others tell us that there’s more that we don’t see. Unfortunately, we lack the ability to calm our minds and listen to the voices saying, “You have this. Keep going. Don’t slack off. You’re better than you think you are.” They’re there, but we have to stop yelling over them.

Thank you all for whispering in my ear. Whether you told me I could do it, gave me good conversation, or showed me what I couldn’t see, who I am is composed of each of you. We did it. We won nationals… and so much more.

I'm proud of you.

The road to love

Whether it is teaching that the Bible is a scrapbook or that water expresses emotions, professors and speakers at Point Loma make an effort to help us question things, inviting us to know things for ourselves, rather than regurgitate a worldview that isn’t necessarily our own.

In the spring semester of my second year at Point Loma, I experienced grueling challenges in my faith. I remember my prior beliefs—cultivated by my small private fundamentalist Christian high school in Boring, Oregon (yes, Boring is the name of the town)—constantly being called into question as I was challenged in discussions, both in the classroom and by a friend. But the real icing on the cake was when the ASB Director of Spiritual life came out.

By the end of the semester, my beliefs had been sufficiently and effectively called into question. Unfortunately, that’s where it left me: faithless, godless, and broken. Challenges arose from all directions, but there was no hospitable environment for me to wrestle with beliefs.

Being gay on Point Loma’s campus made this process exceptionally difficult. How am I to reconcile my faith when a key contributor to my belief system is the “hush-hush” topic on the campus? It’s like Point Loma seems to think everyone else is living in less sin than I am, making my sexuality a fault. When I was eight-years-old, it wasn’t a fault that I liked the shirtless men in the movies instead of busty women. When I was twelve-years-old, it wasn’t a fault that while holding Hayley’s hand, I secretly wanted to kiss Jake instead.

When something—a truth—is discovered to be applicable to one’s life beyond a superficial level, people grow as individuals. Those experiences allow the questions of our hearts—wrought out of who we are—to be directly addressed. Without them, these central questions of our lives remain ignored. And as Christians, we are called to be without ignorance.

Point Loma is neglecting to foster a community where our experiences can be shared fully and without censorship. I fear we have preached so much that Jesus is the Way but have disregarded that there are many roads.

What is making that unbelieving student want to learn about our faith? Or that struggling gay Christian to say, “I still want in on this thing you call Christianity”? Where can our experiences be heard without the questionable smirk on her face or the reprimanding glare in his eyes?

Fostering the areas in which we already believe ignores the importance of investigating the areas in which we doubt. Too often Point Loma leaves its students where it left me, broken and aimlessly wandering a road; hoping that in the end, we find something that brings us back to the faith, back to the church, back to God. Until then, we walk.

Gift of Life

She and I had just enough room to sit and talk. We were in the nook of the stairway of the coffee shop, the spot where the stairs go up mid-level and then switchback-like the trails I hiked back home in Oregon during the summer. A few days ago, she emailed me about some research and needed some friends' influence for her social work, and ironically, sharing my story excites the once fearful child inside me. She pressed the record button on her iPhone, and our conversation rolled.

“When did you first know?"

“Why did you decide to come out?”

“What has changed since then?”

These were fundamental questions which, to my surprise, rarely come my direction, causing the answers I spouted out to be insufficient. Consequently, our conversation neared an end, but she made one last request, “So tell me about the most recent date you’ve been on…” the interest and eagerness in her voice booming.

“Well, I haven’t really been on a date,” I responded, “… but here’s the closest thing I’ve had…” She stops the recording, and I began describing my day with that I-definitely-wouldn’t-hate-bringing-you-home-to-momma-Lewis-but-let’s-be-real-I-have-no-idea-what’s-going-on friend, who strikes my fancy just a little too much.

“Do you like him?” she playfully interrupts.

Pausing, “I think so…” I said reluctantly, fearful of the truth I was admitting to her yet more importantly myself.

She peered into the chapters of my life – both past and present – that passed like a freight train blowing through a railroad crossing, leaving one oblivious as to what was just seen. The barriers go up, and we cross the tracks to continue down the road.

Her questions brought me back to that train, where I noticed that the blur of a passing train was composed of countless carts with different colors and signs of graffiti, along with that one with the transient sleeping in that open door.

Moreover, the most important change since coming out became evident moments after our conversation: the newfound affirmation that never existed in my life. My life is my life. What shame do I have for my life and all the authentic beauty that accompanies it?

Up until a few months ago, I rummaged around for someone that I believed could bear the weight of my story, and to muffle my actual story, I filled conversations with heavy words dancing around spirituality – never giving my old friendships justice. I turned our moments together into a test of having them prove themselves worthy in my eyes. We deem individuals unworthy by holding onto presuppositions based upon the few who treated us poorly.

Girls, not all guys are the same.

Gays, not all Christians are the same.

Friends, not all people are the same.

Truthfully, most people aren’t like those few who made us think otherwise. While the words and actions of the few are crippling, the general community understands your uniqueness with some of the best gifts to offer, questions and listening ears.

Our lives, whole lives, are like that brook – as the Creator inspired from the beginning – in enriching relationship with the creation, with the Creator, and with one another. If we continue to withhold the areas of our lives where God's grace is necessary, how can we be a testament to God's grace? The words of our lives are those waters that which sink deep into the soil and give life and beauty to the forest around us. Friends, each life is a gift of life to the other. Share It.

Illusions: Let's Be Real

The summer following my senior year of high school, my youth pastor invited me to be a counselor at a Bible camp located along a beach in Washington. My good friend (who had done it the year before) and I would be sharing a cabin of eight rowdy six to eight-year-old boys. This would be my first experience entertaining so many children that I didn’t know.

There was one boy I remember in particular, standing in the check-in line with his orange long-sleeve tee, camo pants, and crocs, rotating from swinging on his mother’s arm to bouncing in place. Jarred was a handful to say in the least.

The first evening at camp, the counselors take all the kids to play at the beach as the sun sets. My co-counselor took the batch of seven to the beach, while I lagged behind looking for Jarred. I arrive to the cabin to find Jarred sitting on a bunk, looking through the Pokémon book that he brought.

“Come on Jarred, let’s go to the beach,” I request, holding the door open with one hand and signaling with the other.

“I don’t want to go to the beach,” he whines, flipping over another page.

“Jarred, we have to meet everyone else at the beach.” I urge, naïve as to how to really handle the situation.

“I don’t want to go to the beach. Every time I go to the beach, my dad yells at me,” he moans, lowering his head and almost shoveling out a tear.

Dumbfounded, I could only walk up to him, give him a side hug, and reaffirm, “Jarred, we’re not going to yell at you. We just want to play.”

My first two years at Point Loma were much like Jarred’s experience at camp. So many people told me that they loved me, that they cared for me, but those statements weren’t enough. There was a single obstacle I still had to overcome, myself, always looking back on those words my friend said back in high school:

“I don't like the way you live and don’t feel like associating with you. I was just blind to the way you are I guess. Sorry man.”

As humans, we have a way of nurturing our imaginations, fostering them until they become deceptively real to us. We start perceiving reality through the lens of these paralyzing illusions,

acting cautiously,

speaking quietly,

and responding defensively.

Eventually, life becomes a game of control, where we are trying best to avoid pain and lead a safe life. We try to live in this reality that isn’t true, where our biggest fault is giving these fantasies the characterization of truth, as though they were indeed real.

These fantasies provide us with the illusion that we know what will happen. We feel we can control each outcome, and we begin ignorantly, yet unintentionally, shifting ourselves to the place of God and becoming God. Sadly, the God of reality does not live in these illusions, because God does not live in anything that is not real. God lives and works in reality, cultivating that which is.

As our own god of these imaginations, we leave only ourselves to deal with them. Once these fantasies collide with reality, where God exists, what we thought would happen actually doesn’t. Consequently, we try to take the reigns once more, moving ourselves back to the position of God.

At some point, the pressing pains of loneliness and the fantasy-given crying desires for truth become too much to bear:

That he wants to kill himself,

That she sees no way from that emotionally and physically abusive relationship,

And that no one can sympathize with a gay friend.

Until these imaginations become understood for what they are and these emotions are encountered, they will continue to torment us, hiding God’s presence from us.

My two-year-old idea of Point Loma – that honesty brought more heartache and that the quiet life is the better life – came crashing down when these emotions like thorns could no longer be suppressed. I reconstructed my Point Loma and discovered the presence of God that I prohibited from flourishing before. The friends, teammates, and professors, that I believed would turn away, welcomed me back in and came alongside me and said, “I still love you.” Everything that I though was real was proven otherwise. This place is not what I thought it was. It was what I thought it couldn’t be.

Without these people, God’s people, we can’t see the godlessness of living in illusions or that God only exists in reality. Without realizing the illusions of imaginations, these fantasies become the focal point and create a false reality. But once that realization arrives, the time comes to move beyond imagination into reality, advancing from the absence of God to the presence of God.

The Invitation

“Emotionally, how does it feel to be wrong?” asked Kathryn Schulz in a presentation I recently watched on TED Talks. Peering out into the crowd, she listened for some responses.

“Dreadful.”

“Embarrassing.”

A thumbs-down from the girl in the background.

Schulz points out that these were great answers, but they were answers to a different question: “You guys are answering the question, ‘How does it feel to realize you’re wrong?’” She continued, “Being wrong feels like being right.”

Much of the time, we live our lives thinking we’re right, especially us as Christians.

Recently, a fellow Christian and I sent messages back and forth, aiming to resolve a conflict. “Sorry that I expected as a man of God you would…” she wrote, feeling my Christianity threatened. “Apparently we are in two different places spiritually,” the following sentence proclaimed.

The statements interrogated my spirituality deeply, as I saw her godliness surpassing mine, and suddenly, I sat astonished.

---
The other week, I was sitting in a small group meeting. Fifteen guys sat in a circle, discussing what it looked like to follow and Jesus and what that looks like in our life.

“I realized I don’t have to worry because God has it under control,” said one. “God just wants to spend time with us,” reaffirmed another.

With almost each self-focused statement, my heart pounded in my chest.

“It’s not about you!” my heart pressed but properly failed to have the audacity to say.

As Christians, we’ve started missing what’s important. We discover it’s so easy to point fingers and so easy to make ourselves feel better, but is it really about either? We look in the mirror declaring all the ways we’ve done right and denouncing the places where we’re just a little off.

Proud we reprimanded him,

Ecstatic we defended Genesis 1,

And thrilled we can honestly say we’ve never had a sip of alcohol.

We’re told to be humble, but we develop this pride as though we have the answers to all of life’s questions. Instead, we just end up pointing fingers at those who have yet to realize that Christianity is the antithesis of discrimination. Once we stop judging others, stop praising ourselves, and start stepping back, we realize what we missed before and see all that’s wrong with the world.

That we should not have a faucet in the kitchen, the bathroom, and the other bathroom, along with a hose protruding from the side of the house; and they should not need to walk five miles to find clean water.

That she should not complain about a soft overripe apple, and he should not be living underneath that bridge, hoping tomorrow brings a meal.

That I should not worry if he will text me back, and she should not sit in the comforting darkness of her own room, wondering about the best way to take her own life.

In neglecting something greater than ourselves, we make Christianity to be about morals and God to be our therapist. We forget the portion of our spirituality that is an invitation to be a vessel of God and a tool for God’s work among humanity. We think we have this whole Christianity thing figured out but forget the part where we’re saying we know the will of God:

Why she has cancer,

Why he had to die,

Or why I’m gay.

We were placed in a unique relationship to God, a relation that says, “I am God. You are human. I know. You don’t.” The words come back, and we are humbled and left with an invitation to work within community, seeing to it that this invitation does not end with me and reaches beyond you.

This invitation to participate goes to my uncle who denounces religion, to that guy I almost dated who called me ignorant for being a Christian, and to each individual who told us that we had to change in order to be accepted in this community. The invitation is a beautiful gift that catches us off guard when our heart breaks for them and melts for him, reminding us with the words, “You are well, but remember, they need you. Love them for Me.”

Fundamentals

My small private Christian high school could be described as decently conservative, maybe overwhelmingly conservative, practicing some of the you-say-a-swear-word-you’re-going-to-hell Christianity and turn-or-burn religion.

Detentions were handed out for saying the word “fart” and don’t even thing about saying “c-r-a-p.”

The Bible was taught as a science book, the key to all knowledge, and evolution was that bad “e”-word.

Bad things don’t just happen because adversity is God’s judgment and punishment for all the times you don’t follow the commandments.

Blessings are handed out to good people, but don’t worry, grace still exists… somewhere.

My sophomore year of high school, I was dating this guy. I would hardly call it dating, but at the time, we labeled it, so I’ll label it now. He went to a different school, but we would see each other at track meets. Between events, we’d leave the track, talk for several minutes, kiss goodbye, and walk back to the track.

Some of my good friends heard what had been going on, and news began to travel. Eventually, it made it to my track coach… some other parents… and some teachers. Sure enough, I became a big target.

Warming up for my district meet, a parent pulls me aside and asks me if we can talk in the bleachers. We sit down, and our conversation begins: “Sean, if you were driving a car, and I knew the bridge ahead of you was out, I would be a fool to not warn you.”

Not exactly what I was expecting, but she continued, “Other parents and teachers are giving me a hard time because they know what you have been doing...”

Caught, and my eyes began to water as I became more disconnected from the conversation, or lack there of. Amongst my anxious staring, foggy eyes, and sorrowful sniffles, I made out, “Sean, God has no reason to bless you.”

Images of my track career going down the drain began flooding my mind, and my please-God-to-get-good-things background began to solidify. Grace had no place because of course, I had to earn grace. I had to work hard enough, and then I would gain God’s favor because God only gives things to the righteous.

I put my shades on to cover my watery, bloodshot eyes and finished my warm-ups. I won four events that day, and I didn’t leave the track with my boyfriend at all.

God blessed me with a place that taught me the key to success: please God and gain the desires of your heart. Why offer your life as it is and allow God’s will to work in your life when you can work to please God yourself and gain self-righteousness?

Grace never really made sense to me there, but that’s all right. One extreme showed me the other extreme, and indecisiveness taught me to look for the median.

Sometimes God meets us where we are, where Christians are too afraid to go, working in the lives of the undeserving:

Saving an adulteress from being stoned,

Embracing a bewildered lost son,

And kickin’ it with the outcasts.

Jesus taught the futility of all people, the lack of ability to do it oneself. Sin is best manifested in the idea of thinking that one can live this life on their own, thinking that everyday can be handled without the presence of God, without the Spirit.

The debt has been paid, and we have been taught to love God and to love others. Too many times have I tried to understand God and save others. I don’t know why it didn’t make sense earlier: love others, embrace them as they are, and let the Spirit take care of the rest. It’s all I can do.

Relentless

I never really understood how I broke his heart, crushed as some would say. He knew my priorities from the beginning: “roommates, friends, then whatever else.” Despite my loneliness, I knew I did not want to find my comfort in a relationship.

He could always see that I was struggling, though. He could see I had feelings for him but could not abandon my beliefs. He could see that I was lost, not knowing between right and wrong, failing to just give up. This made some of our conversations heated.

We were in his car overlooking downtown San Diego – from where some would say “make-out point” – when the words “I envy you” slipped from his mouth.

“Why?” I said, sitting up straight, slightly raising my voice, and feeling him dig a little deeper into who I am.

“Because you’re a Christian...”

The shock eased me back into the seat of his car because there, at that moment, I remembered my beliefs are so deeply integrated into my being that to be apart from them is to be apart from myself.


---
Café Bassam is by far one of the best coffee shops to have a conversation in San Diego. Antique trinkets populate the shelves, and painted portraits decorate the walls. Dozens of round two person tables provide “spots on spots” for seating, and of course, the chai is choice.

A friend and I exchanged moments from the past few weeks with our mugs half-filled with Bassam’s regular chai. We hadn’t carried a long conversation for a little over a month, and much had happened.

After remembering claim after claim from smitten friends emerging from broken relationships, I complained, “I don’t get love. I don’t think it exists.”

“Of course you do!” His tone speaking to my doubt, and instantly, stories of his past relationship filled my mind.

“Oh yeah,” I mumbled. “You’ve seen it...”

“You know it exists,” he quickly interjected, and I had no choice but to confess,

“Yeah, I know it does. I just don’t get it so I’ll go with ‘I don’t think it exists.’”


---
The spring of 2011 was a rough time for me and my spirituality.

My philosophy class tinkered with my thought, and my friend – a philosophy and theology major – kept the questions rolling. Weeks passed, and the questions grew along with my lack of peace. One day, my confidence in God held strong, but the next morning, I would wake up doubting God’s existence.

As much as I tried to abandon God, I couldn’t escape. No matter what, I couldn’t escape the idea of God and my belief in God’s existence. Call it my background, what I was taught, or whatever. But as much I said, “I don’t think God exists,” somehow, I believed God was there. Somehow, I believed God was present.

Then, I encountered love. All the times I’ve been shown love are the times, I’ve been shown God. All the times I ran from the love of my family, the love of my friends, the love of others, are the times I have been running from God and God’s presence in love.

---
I had this dream once, one of those dreams where I was being chased – not by a dog, not by a bear, not by an alligator, and not by another person, but a dinosaur. A big-ass tyrannosaurus obliterated each of my footsteps behind me, ready to dismember my body bite by bite.

Approaching a cliff, the consciousness of the dream became aware to me, and I realized, “This is a dream, and once I hit the ground at the bottom of that cliff, I’ll wake up and be away from this monster.”

Flying off the edge of the cliff, I watched the ground from limbo. As the ground got closer, I anticipated the jolt that would bring me back to reality, and I hit the ground.

I didn’t wake up, and seeing the carnivore tumbling in the sky above me got me running once again.

Even when I thought I knew a means to slip away, my attempt failed, and I continued to be pursued.

Love is the relentless force out there chasing after me, and there is nothing I can do to escape from it. The more I pull away, the more it surprises me. It’s revealed moment after moment. It’s prolific. It’s everywhere. It’s God, God sweeping me off my feet and showing me there is something more, something better.

Walls (Part 3)

<-- Walls 1
   <-- Walls 2

The wind had a slight chill to it, but luckily, there were few clouds in the sky, making the sun shimmer off the ocean and into my eyes, making me squint as I looked at the San Diego skyline just across the bay. His luster-filled blonde hair didn’t help too much either.

A few months beforehand, he and I sat on the cliffs where we finally reconciled the moments that went unaddressed: the reason why he had so little to say, the reason he waited so long to call, and the reason why he became so distant.

Denying my tears, I kept listening as my abandonment – birthed at that cafeteria table – cleared the air tainted by months of passive aggressive bitterness. I always found comfort in his voice, and the more he spoke, the more I could see the guilt I imposed start leaving his heart.

There, we were restored. There, we were made new.

---
He was biting into his burrito when he looked up at me asked to hear more of a story I told him earlier: “So what happened with those two guys?”

“Oh yeah! I forgot about that!” I muffled with a mouth full with bacon burrito, thinking back and remembering a conversation we had a few week ago.

We sat in his room, rallying a tennis ball around his room, trying to keep it off the floor. As we bounced the ball off the walls, bunk beds, and mirrors, we kept our conversation just as alive. We were killing time until his laundry finished and could walk back to our friends’ condo just down the road.

The laundry finished, he loaded it into the dryer, and we left. We walked silent until I asked him, “Did I tell you about what happened with these two guys?”

“No, you didn’t! What happened?” he replied, eager as a kid in a candy store.

“Oh man, we have a lot to catch up on…” I smiled, searching for a starting point to my soon long story. “Well, back in the beginning of last semester, there was this guy…” I started.

Strolling down the street, jaywalking to the other side, and entering into our friends’ neighborhood, I constructed the groundwork for my story.

As we climbed the massive flight of stairs to our friends’ condo, we approached the condo’s doorstep.

“Should we stay out here and keep talking or should we go inside?” He stated, subtly implying the awkwardness if I continued to talk.

“This is a good point to stop,” I insisted with a cool smile on my face. “But the crazy part comes next,” assuring him that what he knew was unsatisfactory in the grand scheme.

---
“So I left off at…” I continued, sharing the heartbreak, the kissing, and the confusion, more than what I have dealt with personally in a while.

He engaged with me as I told my story, not just letting me tell it but also letting me immerse him into it.

After I finished, our conversation continued to flow, and we caught up on life: our goals, our aspirations, our struggles, some stupid decisions, and the list goes on.

I revealed to him how in the months following that conversation on the cliffs, one by one, I started opening up to my friends and, brick by brick, I tore down my walls.

My fellow Oregonian and closest friend my first two years of college found out after I told her, and she finally realized that I never actually did have that crush on her.

That friend I made the beginning of this semester tugged it out of me that night I sat, for hours, slouched in the passenger seat of her car, head pounding.

My tenderhearted roommate called me an idiot and embraced me after I hinted, “I understand if you don’t want to live with me anymore.”

Lastly, that friend, who despite his misunderstanding, said those powerful words, “You’re my friend, and I still love you.” Providing me the opportunity to finally see the Love of God, and changed it all.

With each of them, nothing changed. They were willing to walk through it with me and be present. The greatest relief overcame me because I had been exposed but for once, not disowned. I could be honest and no longer pretend.

---
As time passed, our conversation approached a timely end, and we got up from the picnic table. Getting closer to his car, he fired me one shocking question, “So, what does your ideal guy look like?”

“Are you serious?” I chuckled, failing to think of another straight friend that had asked me that question before.

“Of course, it’s no different than you asking me what do I look for in a girl,” he laughed, as we both got into the car.

Driving away, we started talking about boys, and I realized I was no longer trying to impress him. I wasn’t trying to hide myself. I was just being, myself. Nothing more, nothing less. Just Sean.

Walls (Part 2)

<-- Walls (Part 1)

Inside our cafeteria, we have short tables each accompanied by two chairs sitting on both sides, "date tables" as we call them, ideal for a laid-back and highly unromantic date in the university cafeteria. That’s not why we are here though.

---
Sometimes, outstanding individuals catch you off-guard. I met this guy who was a character of love, or so I thought at the time. Whether it was random road trips, artistic bouts, studying, or philosophical discussion, much of our time was spent together. He became the friend I had continually asked for. He seemed to be one that was on my side and could something was wrong, but I still could not tear down the walls.

Two years beforehand when I initially built these walls, they held firm, but the autumn following their construction, I left for school in sunny San Diego: "This is staying in Portland. There is no way this coming to San Diego." I would tell myself that eventually, it would go away. I was wrong. It followed me.

---
We sat at one of these date tables when I prepared for one of the most difficult conversations I would have in over two years.

Suppressing my feelings for so long only made them stronger. Closing myself off only made me more insecure. I longed to be known, but I failed to let them in.

"Oh, Sean, the track guy," people would say. I cringe and anxiety builds when I become associated with track. To me, it holds only a small portion of my life. I like music. I like art. I like feeling my heart melt as I sit at Filter Coffee House, listening to Bon Iver and pouring my life out into a red, Bible-sized notebook filled with graph paper.

Embarrassed, I thought if only they knew me, they would want nothing to do with me as I replayed the toxic tape once more: "I don't like the way you live and don’t feel like associating with you. I was just blind to the way you are I guess. Sorry man."

To liberate myself, I had to be there. I had to be sitting with my friend staring at him in silence, scrambling for the words I wanted to say. I had to release those tears that I kept tucked away.

Finally, I said it, chiseling at my walls: "I have this gay struggle." Seeing a perplexed look on his face, I continued, "It plays into so many areas of my life, and I don’t know what to do. You have no idea." I vented about past problems with my father and betrayals by friends, the reasons I had these walls.

Time finally started to pass, and we glanced at the clock. It was two minutes past 1:30pm, and we were late to class already. We parted ways, and there it stopped.

We didn’t talk for a while. I’ll blame it on busyness, but I still take it personally. The next week was finals week, loaded with studying. After that, school was out, and he was gone. Our conversation was never finished, and I almost felt it again, abandoned. The walls still remained, and I continued with my normal pattern, reservation.

A month and a half later, my phone rings. He called, and we caught up, on the surface level, getting nowhere, but at least I knew he didn’t completely leave me, shutting me out. At least, he contained an ounce of compassion, but hollow words only last so long.

Walls (Part 3) -->

Walls (Part 1)

The rain splattered across my windshield as my wipers raced to remove the thousands of droplets so that I could see. Portland, Oregon tends to get a little wet. My hi-beams guided me through the old country roads; so far out they lacked streetlights. The night felt sinister.

I was on my drive home from my high school small group when I decided to text a good friend of mine. For about a week and a half, this friend had been treating me very differently.

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I did my devotions before school everyday at the coffee shop just down the road from our high school. Around the time I would finish up, my friends would come and sit with me. He would arrive later, order his quad-shot caramel latte, and sit with us. He stopped.

During lunch, we and a few of our other friends would go off-campus, grab some food, and bring it back to the school’s parking lot. My friends and I would sit in the back of his lifted Ford Ranger, eat our lunches, and have a good time. These days, they left without me.

He distanced himself from me and stopped talking to me. I wished it had been something different, but I knew exactly what it was.

A week and a half prior, after failed attempts of calling my mentors, I felt overwhelmed by shame and said some words to him that I still regret to this day: “Dude, I messed up. I did something with a guy.” He had known that I was gay for about a year, but the whole time, we had been trying to get me a girlfriend. We failed.

He said he was busy, and he quickly finished our conversation. There, I began my descent, and as soon as an earthquake crumbles a bridge, we got to where we were, distanced.

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A message came back and finally, I understood what he had been trying to do. His words tore me like lion devouring its prey.

"I don't like the way you live and don’t feel like associating with you. I was just blind to the way you are I guess. Sorry man," I read on my dimly lit iPhone screen.

My eyes began to water as I continued my drive back home. That night, I didn’t sleep. The blow to my already flustering guilt drove me into one of the lowest points of life.

“If that is what I’m to expect from my best friend, no one will know this about me. I’ll figure it out on my own,” I would tell myself.

These hurtful words provided the perfect foundation. On this statement, I built my walls. I pulled myself away and removed my loved ones from one of the most vital pieces of my life.

Starting from the ground up, I laid down a brick of rejection, followed by a brick of shame and a brick of depression; and the self-loathing-based cement held them firmly in place. Soon enough, I cut myself out.

Walls (Part 2) -->

Pain In Sincerity

It’s two o’clock in the morning, and pinholes of light pierce the dark night sky. The melodies of Arcade Fire trickle from his speakers, and the sounds of somber crashing waves climb up the cliffs and reverberate throughout his car. From time to time, we have done this. From time to time, we have late night conversations, but the essence was different.

Before, my brokenness bound me with impenetrable grandeur walls, leaving others wandering the deserts of my soul as a thirsty nomad, waiting for a drip of enlightenment. But this night, we talked about how far I had come. Those walls had finally come crashing down, and I finally started making sense of who I am.

The conversation flowed, and I started piecing together more parts to the puzzle and finally made the connection.

“I can’t do this,” I thought to myself. My selfish actions had already hurt him, and I knew hurting him more would be excruciating. After I had already crushed him, I had to destroy his hope.

A lump of anxiety grew in the back of my throat as I scrounged for words, debating my statement’s worth. Absolutely. I pride myself on my honesty. I had to be honest. I grabbed my head, looked down to my feet and, like vomit. Out. It. Came.

“Sorry, I don’t feel the same way anymore. I’ve moved on,” I stated as I slowly looked over at him, knowing the words would not be taken well.

The anguish on his face peered into my eyes as his feelings of rejection washed into my core. My heart grew heavier with each second we held eye contact. His soaking eyes spewed guilt into my being, where it still continues to writhe.

Breaking someone’s heart hurts. It hurt me to have hurt him. It hurt encountering the pain of acknowledging that I am the source of pain for someone I still care about as a human being.

Greater than that pain, though, is realizing that he offered me the most genuine gift he could have, himself, and I denied it. He deliberately and dangerously offered me the gift of his affection, and I had to say, “No, thank you.”

At times, the price of honesty is brokenness. At times, we don’t want to hear it, but at least this conflict is derived from genuineness instead of insincerity. Genuineness presents the situation as it truly exists, independent of blind-hope that wrongly guides a victim to the flourishing of his pseudo-optimism.

The hole that I dug with blind-hope got deeper with each interaction. Every shovel full of dirt and dishonesty piled into one towering mountain on which he stood, making for one flattening fall when I finally realized what I had been doing.

Sincerity inhibits that hole from getting deeper and that mound from getting higher. Sincerity makes that fall slightly less miserable, slightly less traumatic. I would much rather know that I’m pursuing something genuine rather than blindly chasing something that fails to exist because once I reach the mountain’s summit, it is one shredding descent down the abyss to come.