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.