Echoes and Moments

Heaven in 2017. As the shards of my consciousness reform after the inevitable energy drain received in the aftermath of an intense five-day urban program (and the final project for my ministry with InterVarsity), the depth of my awareness for the wounds of young people returns. When the reactive depression recedes like a strong tide, and the wind stings my face beside a salty shore, and the connective tissue in my thoughts, emotions, and passions resume their normal furious pull -- there is another, deeper crisis in miniature, the point where my courage falters, a split-second where the absurdity overwhelms and paralyzes. In a talk I gave at the end of Day Three of the program, I described the work of French novelist and philosopher Albert Camus, who evolved from the same colonial European milieu that produced Derrida and dialogued with the great existentialists (whom he never enjoyed being lumped in with). He is famous for giving flesh to the concept of the Absurd, which in br...

I remember vividly the first time I spoke in the capacity of a preacher, unmediated by the role of worship leader, MC, or other function that was separated from the platform of public engagement from the "pulpit." In this case, it was a flimsy black music stand, standing near the aisle between unnecessary rows of black chairs set up in a room at Allan Hancock College, where I spent the first two years of my career as a campus minister. It was a warm night in April, free of the fog that normally cloaks coastal Santa Maria like a blanket, or the persistent winds that funnel from the sea into the inland valleys festooned with grapevines and fruit orchards. That year was one of radical reorientation to a new life out of college. I lost the dependable rhythm and purpose of a regimen of courses, for I had recently graduated from Cal Poly a few months before. I also lost the emotional support of a long romantic relationship, and was just feeling the stabbing pain and gut-twistin...

I wrote in a previous post on the abundance of high quality, richly textured music that we've been able to consume, to digest, to chew on, to sit with, to allow to mess with us over the last year. I still believe now, as I did at the end of last year, that we are in a new age of music, one where artists have the potential to go beyond the constraints of the medium of their chosen tools: sound and voice, to arbitrate culture and influence the conversations that shape our society. To reach the standards set by Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé, and even (as divisive as he is) Kanye West, is to dialogue with the biggest questions of our existence: what is important? Why are we here? What makes us human? This last question concerns me as I survey the variety of music available for us to choose. As a form of art, music is inherently a description, sketch, and reflection of the humanity that creates it. You can see the ideas that my favorite band, Radiohead, wrestles with when they mov...

Zdzisław Beksiński, 1981. Of all the things that I've longed to write about, this post's subject matter might be the most complicated and convoluted. Without knowing where the tangled threads of this identity will lead, I still find it critically important to unpack the implications of my heritage as a white man: both how I personally engage, understand, and value my white ethnic identities, as well as how the current political and social climate forces me to grapple and wrestle with this whiteness. It is a journey not without pain, but like all questions of identity, a deeply meaningful one. Each stream in my multivalent identity as a person of mixed ethnic backgrounds has developed in dramatically different ways, and at critically different points in my life. My Latinidad has stayed with me the longest, manifested as I was curious enough to critique the implicit racism I saw imbedded within the culture of my (mostly white) suburban school in Virginia and contrasted w...

This post is a long time coming. From porch-side conversations with my best friend to evening phone chats with my girlfriend, a certain label fails to elude me as I continue the trek through my late twenties as a rank-and-file member of the Millennial generation. Although this label overlaps, to an extent, with the generation before (X), I have warily accepted its use to describe certain tendencies that I embrace, no matter how much I feel it eviscerates any real depth to which I hold certain of my likes, dislikes, and convictions. I am talking about the divisive label Hipster,  one that has been leveled against me by my students, by certain friends, and others. At first blush this title might conjure images of a thirtysomething, tattoo-wearing, mustache sprouting, oddly dressed entitled upper middle class white person, and though there are some excellent examples of how that came to be the case, it simply doesn't describe me at all. Upon deeper reflection, there are certain areas...

The Transfiguration, John Giuliani After I wrote my last post , many of you reached out to me with words of encouragement, support, solidarity, and appreciation. All of this I am immensely grateful for, especially since much of what I wrote delves into deep, unexplored, and certainly vulnerable parts of my being. There is a challenge in writing to invite your readers into your journey, whether through story, song, or poetry, each form allowing the writer to share a larger narrative where our humanity is allowed to shine through a little more freely. So much of our culture, I lament, is focused on self-perfection and independence. Individualism is a gift; it is not wrong. Yet it is only part of the story. Paradoxically enough, I've found that in order to reach into the deepest parts of my unique identity, I must explore the stories of the many who came before me. As I learn more about my ancestors, particularly those Indigenous peoples of the American Southwest, something awak...

2015 is shaping up to be a good year for music. Already we've had immense and game-changing releases from the likes of Kendrick Lamar, Sufjan Stevens, My Morning Jacket, Tame Impala, and Wilco. This year we can expect our horizons to be further expanded by Foals, St. Vincent, and (as I go into giddy fan mode), Radiohead. It's easy in the midst of this to forget that there is a good deal of art out there that recognizes the intensely spiritual side of our human journey. Lamar and Stevens' latest efforts are obvious choices for those artists not being played in church settings (although they arguably could). But more on that later. My concern is to look back through the realm of contemporary sacred music from across traditions to see just how our Christian faith shapes our expressions today. Unfortunately, much of the landscape is bleak. I've had my issues with the label "Christian" as applied to music, and I would agree with Michael Gungor that applying ...

Landscape near Tucson, Arizona. This summer I've been busy, and it's finally caught up to me. Between my last post  and today Fresno's climate has increased from "tolerably warm" to "oppressively broiling," several summer blockbusters have been released to either box-office records or critical acclaim , (guess which one I preferred), and the nation reels in the wake of yet another terrorist massacre at the hands of a gun-wielding white supremacist. On one of my trips midway through June, I listened to eyewitness reports on public radio and nearly had to pull my car over because I was crying so bitterly. Through the hours of the night and the early morning rays of the sun my prayers rise with so many around the world, both in my neighborhood and abroad. Though my privilege and education insulate me from many of my brothers and sisters who experience suffering daily, I stand in solidarity with them, as I've chosen a journey that puts me in int...