To wrestle

When I was in second grade there was a school shooting at an elementary school in my town. 5 kindergarten students and a teacher were killed, 29 students were injured. At the time I didn’t know the details, my parents were careful to shield me from these gruesome and terrible events. However, I do remember the beginnings of “stranger danger” shortly after. Along with fire drills and earthquake drills we started doing “intruder drills”. During these new drills our teachers would turn the lights off in our classrooms and tape paper to the windows in the doors. We were told to sit quietly while the teachers and staff practiced checking the school grounds for any adults who didn’t belong there. I am sure this gave comfort to many of the parents of students at my school and perhaps even to some of the students. However, I experienced a sense of foreboding. A place that was once safe began to feel uncertain. As we began to talk about the dangers of strangers it was not only school that didn’t feel safe but also the whole world. There were strangers everywhere! I would shy away from people I didn’t know even when my parents were around to assure me everything was ok.

I was in high school when the shootings at Columbine High School happened. This time I was old enough to be fully aware and informed of the details of this tragic event. We talked about it at home, at church and in school. I remember sitting in a crowded and noisy school hallway and feeling utterly and helplessly isolated and alone. The walls were closing in. It was not simply strangers that were the problem; my own peers were dangerous suddenly. What could cause such violence in people my age?  

This past Friday, when I logged onto Facebook for a quick distraction while I waited for a program at work to load, I was once again faced with a staggering grief and confusion that was too heavy to bear. I scrolled through post after post and then news article after news article about one of the most heinous and disturbing crimes I have ever read about. Mostly Friday is a blur for me. I felt like I was tumbling through darkness reaching my hands out to grasp something solid to hold myself up with or lean against but the more I scrambled the less sturdy I felt. I tried to work but continually found myself sitting at my desk staring blankly into space trying to make room in my mind for this new reality in which a young man would choose to kill his mother and many, many young students in her school before killing himself.

I still do not know what this means or how to appropriately respond to it. I hardly know what or how to pray for the victims and their families or for the young man who committed this crime and his family. I have opinions about gun control and the state of mental healthcare in the United States, certainly, but more than anything I kept thinking about the fact that we are in the middle of Advent, that we are practicing waiting with joyful anticipation for Christ the baby. On Friday this just felt like too ridiculous a juxtaposition. How can a baby be strong to enough to bear the enormity of this pain and anger? How can we be hoping for a baby when what we need is a champion? I wanted to laugh or cry at the impossibility of Christmas and the longing instead for Good Friday.

As I have continued to process the events of Friday, though, I have begun to think about Jacob wrestling with God in Genesis 32 and about David and his Psalms of lamentation, such as Psalm 88. In all of the ugliness of this world perhaps one of the most profound graces is that God is big enough to take all our anger and frustration, our pain and our grief and wrestle with us. God does not respond by telling us to come back when we’ve calmed down and are ready to have a rational conversation. God does not insist on holding us and rocking us until all our tears are spent, though certainly this is offered. God meets us in the ring and wrestles with us. God is also not a bully that smacks us down in the ring to show us how much weaker and smaller we are. God will wrestle with us for as long as we need to wrestle. We can scream and cry and spit and kick and God does not shy away or reprimand us. No, God wrestles.

And I have needed to wrestle this weekend. I am still wrestling. But I am also deeply comforted to know Jesus the man pleading in the Garden of Gethsemane, to know that sometimes this world was also too big for him, that some burdens felt too heavy for him to bear. Jesus wrestled too. It may seem cheap or simple right now to find solace in a savior who knows what it is to fear, to grieve, to face uncertainty but I have come back to that knowledge over and over again and from it found reassurance in his tender and generous love for me and for all. So I will continue to wrestle. And in the next week I will hold onto a hope that by the time Christmas comes this year I may have let go of some of the weight of this past week and be able to celebrate the beauty of the vulnerable Christ child who is helpless for his mother, as we all have been and still are sometimes.

Once Upon a Speed Date

My friend and I arrived at the Press Club a few minutes after 7:40 and, neither of us having eaten dinner, debated whether to run across the street to the Walgreens for a Cliff Bar before going in. Anxious about being late we decided to skip Walgreens. We need not have worried. We were the first ones there for the Speed Dating event, hosted by Pre-Dating. It was to be held downstairs in an enclosed section of the bar. The rest of the venue was taken over by a Match.com mixer event. We descended the stairs feeling like the redheaded stepchildren of the dating world and slinked into the empty section of bar that would eventually be filled with a collection of individuals that resembled the Island of Misfit Toys. At least, that's what it felt like to me next to the chic, glamorous bustle of the Match.com affair as I stood watching the other speed daters arrive.

I registered, ordered a glass of wine and mingled with the other women there while we waited for things to begin. Almost all the women there (8 total) came with a friend or two. We were all dressed in business casual attire. For me speed dating is an entertaining adventure, a source for fun, to be laughed about. It is inherently social. I would never consider going without friends. Yet, each of the 6 men who signed up came alone. Each was awkward in his own way. Now, I am not saying that I am not also awkward or uncomfortable at times (as will be demonstrated below) but with this particular collection of men there was an air of lonely desperation. The women were there to meet new people and to have fun with their friends. The men were there to meet new people because it felt like this was the only way left to them. Am I being cruel? I hope not. I could be completely wrong but I am not the only one who left with the same impression.

Because there were more women than men each of the women sat through two 6 minute sessions with no male counterpart to talk to. These awkward moments were spent sipping wine, sneaking peaks at our phones and eventually getting to know the other woman without a partner for that round. During the 5 - 10 minute break halfway through the evening one of the women commented that it was actually easier to make new female friends at these events than to meet men she wanted to date. Too true.

I spent the first round without a partner. I looked around and sighed. Other than one extremely tall man (6'10"!) all of them were short, round and/or balding. I do not want to seem shallow or judgmental. I am under no delusion that I epitomize the standards of female beauty. It cannot be escaped, though, that first impressions matter and that at these kinds of events we will each be noticing one another's appearance, especially if we have no one to sit with to distract us with awkward conversation.

After 6 minutes our host, Douglas, rang his silver bell with a heart for the handle and the men stood up and moved counter clockwise to the next woman. The very tall man sat next to me and introduced himself. When I introduced myself and told him my badge number he wrote my name down in the wrong section of the little packet of paperwork we were given at registration. Without thinking and without hesitation I pointed out that he should turn the page and fill out the next portion.

"You're a teacher, aren't you?" he asked.

That shut me up! One, because he wasn't far wrong and two because I had decided not to tell any of my "dates" that I am a youth minister. I hate to admit that, it still feels skeezy to have resolved to intentionally leave out that I work for the church. My experience here in the Bay Area, though, has taught me that it is not so sexy to be a Christian, especially a fanatic one who has actually sought out employment at a church! So, my plan was to simply avoid it all together and just tell them that I work for a not-for-profit in the city, which is true, if only in part. As one of my friends who was with me pointed out, "You don't have to let them know everything all at once." Right. I would be mysterious.

Or, at least, I was going to be until the giant point blank asked if I was a teacher. Of course an option would have been to say no because, in fact, I am not a teacher and just leave it at that. But my every impulse is to be honest, full disclosure is in my nature. Walking into the evening planning to conceal part of what I do, what I love, was already causing me too much anxiety. How could I not acknowledge how close his guess was to the truth? So I stuttered and hemmed and hawed and finally blurted out, "Well, not exactly. I do work with youth though. Why?"

"Because you just corrected me. You're obviously used to being in control and making sure things are done right."

Well damn.

More stuttering. I tried to tell him (the one prospect there who was even remotely promising!) that just because I pointed out the way the paperwork was meant to be used it was not an indicator that I am, by nature, critical and controlling. I tried. I did not succeed. I stammered. I faltered. I honestly do not know what, if anything, I actually said.

Finally he interrupted and asked what I do with youth.

Crap. I wasn't going to talk about that! "Um, I'm a youth minister at an Episcopal church."

He raised his eyebrows.

Yep, I should have kept my mouth shut. Note to self: learn how to lie. At least a little.

"So...what do you do?"

This is representative of most conversations while speed dating. What do you do for work? What do you do for fun? Blah. Blah. Blah. By the end of the night I had said that I like to read and write so many times that I felt like I was rehearsing lines for a very boring play that no one, ever, should have to pay to sit through.

"Ok, I have to ask you my 'make it or break it' question. If you had a superpower what would it be?"

Unexpected. A bit unusual. Silly. Better than church for a first 6 minute conversation.

"Do you have any pets?"

This first conversation was the only one that evening that strayed from the script, save one, in which we discussed whether football or baseball was the better sport.

Douglas rang his bell and it was time to start over with someone new.

Much of the evening was unremarkable. To my surprise I found myself intentionally emphasizing that I am a youth minister at a Christian church in an effort to deter interest. One of the men literally blinked and shook his head in a very cartoonish way in astonishment when I told him.

"Minister? That means you must have a lot of training?"

I felt a little foolish when I had to answer "Well, no, actually. I suppose the term minister is misleading. I am not ordained. I didn't go to seminary."

"But you can quote the Bible?"

"Um, a little." I had to stop myself from laughing at how uncomfortable he was when he asked that and how uncomfortable I was in answering.

Another man moved here from China fifteen years ago. I asked if he goes back to China to visit regularly. He shook his head and looked at me like I was being ridiculous for asking that. "No, the last time I was there was 5 years ago."

"Wow. So is your family all in the states?"

"No."

"That must be hard. I moved here from Chicago a year ago and it's hard to be so far away from my parents and sisters. I miss my sisters very much."

"Really? Why?"

What kind of a question is that!? I tried not to let too much confusion be revealed in my face or tone as I answered, "Because I love my sisters. I want them to move here."

"Oh...well, Sara, besides loving your sisters what do you like to do for fun?"

Really?

Really!?

Next please!


This was the second time I had been speed dating. I had fun. I would do it again. It is not, however, where I anticipate meeting someone to have a lasting, meaningful relationship with.

Adventures in Dating

I officially entered the world of online dating this week with one of the most ridiculous and awkward first dates. My excitement for the date largely stemmed from his height being over 6’5”. Perhaps I have finally learned that there are more important things in a man than his being very tall?

From the very beginning we got off to a bad start on Tuesday when he arrived 2 hours late with no apologies. Now, to be fair, when he said he’d be at the North Berkeley BART station between 2:30-3:30 I perhaps should have suspected him to be less than prompt. However, not wanting to keep him waiting, I got to the station right at 2:30. I sat on a bench, pulled out my book and offered thanks for such a beautiful day. At 3:00 I received an e-mail from my date informing me he was running late and probably wouldn’t be there until 3:30 or 4:00. I sighed. At least I had a good book to keep me occupied (I was reading Jane Austen’s Persuasion). At 4:30 I started getting a bit anxious. Did he get off at the Downtown Berkeley stop instead of the North Berkeley stop? Was I being stood up? Should I just call it a day and head home?

As I was getting ready to leave he came rounding the corner. He explained that he ended up driving from San Francisco and that there was more traffic than he anticipated on the Bay Bridge. He then stopped, shook my hand and said “I’m Sam” (his name has of course been changed). I smiled and said “Nice to meet you, I’m Sara.” His response was “Yes, I think we’ve established that.” I’m still not sure what to make of that. At the time I just gave a little laugh and suggested we head to the café. Our walk to the café was unremarkable. Actually, I can’t really even remember what exactly we talked about. I had been so nervous and uncertain about meeting someone from the internet and after a less than stellar first impression I mostly remember feeling relieved and much more up to the task than I had initially credited myself being, even if there was some disappointment about the person himself.

We arrived at Café Leila. I ordered a decaf latte (it was 5:00 at this point, after all!) and he ordered jasmine lemonade and a sandwich. I suggested we sit outside, which was almost the entire reason I wanted to go to Café Leila. He hesitated and said he didn’t want to sit in direct sunlight. Ok, so did he want to sit inside? Well…as long as we could sit in the shade, we should be ok. We found a spot under a large umbrella and sat.

“Sorry,” he said, “I’m just a bit of a vampire.”

“Oh, do you mean you burn easily?”

“Well, that and I like to drink blood.”

Uncomfortable laughter.

“But don’t worry not human blood…at least, not usually.”

My smile faltered. Surely he was kidding; I only wished he would indicate as much!

His sandwich arrived. I asked questions. He answered. He said “like” almost every other word, sometimes several times in a row. At one point I counted “like” 7 times! It was as if he was a CD with a scratch on it, skipping over and over. Perhaps I am being insensitive but having studied oral rhetoric I am pickier than most. Maybe he had a stutter. Maybe he was nervous. Either way it was distracting. 

I was bored.

At one point he randomly asked me if I babysat much when I was a teenager. Yes. Yes I did. Did he? A bit. Sometimes he was good at it sometimes, sometimes not. Mildly intrigued I asked him what he meant.

“Well, I babysat some girls in my neighborhood and I didn’t always…I mean boundaries were difficult…I mean, it’s a long story…”

He probably didn’t mean what it sounded like he could have meant but there were alarm bells going off inside my head at this. I work with young people and have gone through many training courses aimed at preventing sexual harassment and abuse his halting explanation did not entirely sit well with me.

When he was halfway through with his sandwich he interrupted me to apologize for “spacing out.” I had been totally unaware.

“I do that sometimes,” he explained, “when I’m digesting.”

“Oh, that’s ok,” I assured him, not quite sure at all.

When I asked what he did for work he confessed that he has been unemployed for a year and a half. He is currently trying to figure out what he wants to do next. Previously he worked as a computer programmer and, in an effort to explain why that’s not the best fit for his personality he asked if I am familiar with and believe in Myers-Briggs. I do. I told him that I am an ENFP.

“My mom is and ENFP. I think I can relate.”

Two things went through my mind at this moment. The first was, “I am NOT your mother.” I had to bite my tongue to keep from blurting this out. The other was whether he would be able to relate to me as an ENFP if he didn’t know anyone else with this same personality type. I did not pursue either thought.

When he was finished with his food he sat back and said “I think I’m 90% done.” I glanced at his completely empty plate and glass. All I could do by way of response was to chuckle. “No, I’m just kidding, I think I’m done. I just need to digest.” Again with the digestion! 

“Ok, well would walking help you with that?” I asked. 

“Yeah, I think so.” 

I gathered my things and made to get up but he stopped me. 

“Actually, I think I just need to sit for a few minutes.” 

I settled myself back down. 

And we sat.

At last! We left the restaurant and headed back to the BART station. As we began walking he asked me what my “world vision” is. When I asked for clarification he asked what I believe about the universe. Again, I pressed for a more specific question. He explained that ENFPs tend to be idealists and he wanted to know if that was true of me. Yes, I am an idealist. I am passionate and care about many causes and issues but I have difficulty focusing or committing to one. I am distractable. For example, I love to write stories but I rarely finish them. I have a string of stories started and characters created but other than poems I couldn’t readily think of a completed project.

“I don’t really understand what you’re saying but I’ll try to relate.”

Is my experience really so unusual? I took a deep breath and quickened my steps, quite ready to be heading home alone.

When we were almost at the train station he told me his mom thinks he’s the second coming of Christ. I did not know what to say to this! “Don’t worry, I’m not. It was just a weird message to grow-up with.” Indeed.

We finally made it to the station and his waiting car. I wished him a safe trip home. He hoped I had a good rest of my day. We parted ways. I began to walk home a bit dazed, not quite sure what I had just sat through. However, as I started telling my sister Hannah about it I began laughing out loud as I strolled down University. It may not have been a successful match but I am still highly amused by the experience. I have a date on Saturday (obviously with someone else) and I am feeling much better prepared to tackle the beast that is online dating.

Buena Vista

This weekend All Souls went on a parish camping trip to Big Sur. It was my first time in this part of California. As I was preparing for the trip and talking to people who have been there before I heard about how beautiful it was. Knowing this did not stop me catching my breath as I drove along the coast on highway 1. It was spectacular. For the first time I stopped at the little "Buena Vista" points along the highway to take pictures and soak in the beauty of this world. Below are a few (ok, many) pictures from a horseback riding trip some of us took and from my drive home. I am humbled and blessed to be living in such an extraordinary place.

Buena Vista - Pictures

I like this picture mostly because of my horse's ears sticking out at the bottom.

My faithful steed, Brittany.

If only my finger weren't peeking in at the corner!

One with the crowd

John 19: 12-16
From then on Pilate tried to release him, but the Jews cried out, 'If you release this man, you are no friend of the emperor. Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the emperor.' When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus outside and sat on the judge's bench at a place called The Stone Pavement, or in Hebrew Gabbatha. Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about noon. He said to the Jews, 'Here is your King!' They cried out, 'Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!' Pilate asked them, 'Shall I crucify your king' The chief priests answered, 'We have no king but the emperor.' Then Pilate handed Jesus over to them to be crucified.

This week, as I have thought about crowds and what it means to be part of a crowd, two experiences have continued to come to mind. The first is from when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade and the teachers in the Stockton Public School district went on strike. My dad was a high school teacher at the time and I got to picket with him and his colleagues. The second memory is from when I was in high school and on the youth council in the Diocese of Chicago. The council, a group of teenagers, wrote and presented a resolution at our diocesan convention that a group of older, more educated clergy and laity would vote on. I don’t really know what exactly the teachers were protesting when they went on strike, but we did end up back in school after 2 weeks so at the very least some kind of an agreement was made. My senior year of high school, youth were granted voice at convention and the following year they were given vote. To this day, a large delegation of youth attend and participate in diocesan convention in Chicago.

From an early age I learned that crowds can be used for good. I understood the potential power and influence groups can have and how important they are for giving voice to the voiceless, causing change, fostering community. However, groups can be abused and used for ill. Certainly the crowd calling for Christ’s crucifixion was not acting out of love or grace or compassion. When I think of crowds like that I think of Nazi Germany or the Ku Klux Klan here in the United States. There are endless examples of how individuals have been corrupted by groups, how crowds have done evil instead of good, caused harm instead of healing.

I had a hard time this week coming up with a literal example of when I was actively, vocally a part of the crowd shouting for Christ’s crucifixion. I could think of numerous times when I was silent and passive, melting into the background instead of speaking up against cruelty, and perhaps that’s not entirely different from being one with the crowd. The more I sat with the Israelites shouting “Crucify him! Crucify him!” the more I was reminded of something from a book I love by Martin Smith. Every Lent for the past 5 years I have read “A Season for the Spirit”. Martin Smith has been one of the most influential people in my personal spiritual formation and “A Season for the Spirit” has been central to my Lenten experience. Smith writes about the “selves of the self”, arguing that we are each of us a “tiny universe” containing the entire world. It’s a mind bender of an idea but it has had a profound effect on me since the first time I read it. It thrilled me to think of the atoms of my body having been the atoms of stars as Origen preached and Martin Smith quoted: “You yourself are even another little world and have within you the sun and the moon and even the stars.” What a beautiful image!

But beyond the sheer poetry of it all two things struck me this past week. The first is that there is a crowd inside me, inside each of us. This is what Smith means when he refers to the selves of the self. I have my very own crowd clamoring and raging inside of me. I am wracked with self-doubt and self-loathing. I constantly berate and internally flog myself for all of my mistakes and failures – real and imagined. I analyze and re-analyze things that I say and do, pointing out with excruciating detail and unforgiving criticism what I should have said or done, what I should not have said or done. Sometimes I can quiet the crowd, or at least ignore it, I am certainly good at faking confidence. But sometimes my angry, disappointed selves get the better of the whole and I stumble into the hiding places of depression and anxiety, sure that they (I) must be right about me, that I am worthless. If I am a little world, a little Christ even, if Christ truly lives inside of me and loves me then the internal victories of my crowd are certainly little crucifixions, denials of the reality of good and rejections of grace.

The second piece that has stayed with me as I read and re-read Martin Smith’s book is that if we are each a tiny universe then we also contain all sin. Again, an overwhelming idea. If I am the universe then so too is all the sin in the universe in me. There is no room for the self-righteous posture that my sin is not as bad as their sin. This is what is so powerful about shouting “Crucify him! Crucify him!” during the Passion on Palm Sunday. I was born in 1982 so it is clearly true that I was not literally part of the crowd that day. And yet, in a mysterious and paradoxical way it is also true that I was literally part of the crowd that day. Their atoms are my atoms, their sin is my sin. Smith quotes one of my favorite literary characters, Father Zossima, from The Brothers Karamazov who says “Take hold of yourself and make yourself responsible for all men’s sins. My friend, believe me, that really is so, for the moment you make yourself responsible in all sincerity for everyone and everything, you will see that it really is so and that you are in fact responsible for everyone and everything.”

As daunting and heavy as this burden is I also find it beautiful. If we contain all sin do we not also contain all grace? Isn’t that what makes Good Friday so good? I can accept ownership of all sin if I can also receive the outpouring of all grace in response. And I do believe in radical grace, uncomfortable, unfathomable, scandalous grace. Christ came and took on human form. He knows what it is to be the crowd, to have a crowd in him. And still he loves us. Still he dies for us. I do not pretend to understand his dying, but I try to live into the hope of his resurrection. And because of that, if there is grace for the crowd that called for Pilot to crucify Jesus there must be grace for the crowd within me and hope that I can be healed and am forgiven.

Half Moon Bay

On a whim today I decided to go to the beach. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day and I just couldn't bear to spend it inside. For a variety of reasons I had not been to the ocean since moving out here and I have been itching to do something about that and soon. Soon became this afternoon. I chose Half Moon Bay because it is where my parents brought us when I was growing up. I can't say that it was a particularly nostalgic experience but it was beautiful nonetheless. Some pictures are below. They are a lot of the same in some ways but I just couldn't stop pulling my phone out for "one more". I only wish that I could include for you the sounds and smells at the beach as well. The crashing waves and the salt and the seagulls....anyway, this will have to suffice.

Half Moon Bay - Pictures