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...

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...

The last few weeks have put me through the wringer. I can scarcely remember the last time so many converging factors amounted to a barrage of crises to manage. External circumstances and the changing landscapes of work launched me into a realm of terrifying speculation about whether or not I would have a job at this time next year. If things stayed the same, or continued to develop at their current rate, I would be forced to leave my ministry assignment at the end of the academic year, earlier than I would have planned. My mind grappled with a catastrophic sense of having to make a decision without the freedom to do so unencumbered by the failures of others. I have been reeling to recover a sense of rhythm, clarity, and peace in the midst of a difficult and ongoing process to move forward. Luckily, I had the chance to have a literal escape by visiting some close friends for the weekend. Although Santa Barbara is in the midst of its warmest months of "summer" (a phenom...

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...

We go through phases in terms of the stories that really captivate us, that connect to our humanity, connect us to each other, and to our deepest selves. Growing up as a kid in the Nineties, I remember a slough of disaster movies. Comets, asteroids, volcanoes, and other things threatened to end all life as we know it. We counted on people smarter than us, the scientists, engineers, and astronauts, to save us (unless you're Michael Bay, who will tell you that it's easier to train oil rig workers to fly into space than it is to teach actual trained astronauts how to use a drill). Later, in the early Aughts, it was fantasy that took over. The post-9/11 era taught us to depend on clear lines of morality, of good versus evil, and epic quests and heroic virtue that will rid the world of the darkness. That decade ended and ushered us into an era still in its heyday: that of the Superhero. Although Marvel and DC have different textures and color palettes, they both tell the sam...

26 Martyrs of Nagasaki, Japan. When it comes to literature, as with any other art form, there come to mind a few standouts of the many books I've read over the past year or so. I've let Dostoyevsky take me through Raskolnikov's anguish in Crime and Punishment. I liked the book so much that I eagerly took up The Brothers Karamazov, drawn to the story of intertwining lives as Alyosha, Dmitri, and Ivan find themselves amidst the brokenness of their family and how it shaped their (quite different) worldviews. Then there are the sci-fi greats: Frank Herbert brought me to Arrakis and I watched Paul Atreides ride sandworms to overthrow the villanous Harkonnen dynasty that usurped his family's claim to the planet they all call Dune. I picked up Walter Miller Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz, which let the realm of monastic life provide a terrifying lens through which we view an apocalyptic and fatalistic future. All of these books have left a mark, introducing me to cul...

Ashes smear my forehead, spread by a minister at the Cathedral a few blocks from my apartment in downtown Fresno. This morning was chilly and foggy, an appropriate winter chill cloaking our valley after an unseasonably warm few days. Yesterday I shared a beer at a favorite local spot and reminisced on the past few weeks and on the resolve that I bring into this new season. As I sipped the dregs of the delicious IPA and wondered how long the last taste would linger on my tongue, my thoughts turned to this turn of the calendar, to this next forty days, to fasting, prayer, and generosity. Lent has begun. Over the years the season has brought new meanings for me. For most, Lent means giving something up. There's an awful movie made about some dude giving up sex for an entire 40 days, and that's saying something about how relevant this observance is. Truth is, I was barely more reverent. I gave up meat during my freshman year in college, and that proved too difficult. I think I...

I keep an ongoing journal to collect my thoughts, scribble reflections, prayers, and even poetry that I create or find inspiring from others stunned by the beauty and sophistication of the world. Since I started taking my faith seriously, I mean really seriously, it's been the journaling that has helped me organize my thoughts and give words to reflections and meditations that should be processed or else could get lost amidst so many other priorities. One of the quickest aids to writing, journaling, and especially, in learning to share your thoughts beyond the unedited pages of a handwritten notebook, is the gift of following in the footsteps of a skilled teacher. Reflecting on the pages of my journal can be a difficult task, but revisiting some of the works that inspired my writing, beyond scripture itself, is a rich and rewarding experience that I hope will continue to influence me. Thus I'm compelled to chart this journey of spiritual formation by noting the most influen...