155/365

if you stare
at the emptiness
long enough,
waiting on nothingness,
with the intention
to will something
to life, putting your
hands on the keys:
mindful, mediative, still.
desperate. patient. faithful.

they are,
after all,
nothing
but words
we drape
on the everything,
like dew
ready to expire.

Sports Have Never Brought Me Joy

I have never really understood faith. Couldn’t ever really trust it. Just doesn’t feel right to have a belief in something based on conviction over proof. So when it comes to religious matters, I am a bit of a cynical curmudgeon. Prefer my science to my bible. My Darwin to my Jesus.

But like I do every September, I am taking inventory of a part of my life where I do have faith. A part of my life where even after repeated disappoint and failure, I go back looking for more pain and suffering. A part of my life, that has never brought me joy, but one that I look to with a naive stupid faith- that maybe this is our year. That maybe this is the year that the Oakland Raiders will bring me joy, some fate glimpse at salvation.

There is nothing that should give me a hint that the Oakland Raiders will be anything but a laughing stock again this year. I have written ad nausea how often they have tested this faith. It is so hard to be devoted to a team that are ridiculed on every sports talk show I watch. They’re hated by almost everyone and derided by the very press that should have some kind of allegiance to the hometown team. They literally and figuratively just can’t win no matter what decisions they make.

To be a Raider fan is to be a glutton for punishment. It is to sit hopeful on the cusp of what could potential be another losing season in a litany of losing seasons. And to add insult to injury this is the last season where the good people of Oakland can pledge their undying allegiance to a team that has brought them nothing but pain with no sign of succour in sight.

But like other people of faith worldwide, we sit hopeful on the eve of the first game- a Monday night affair at home against a vile and hated rival in the division. The stakes are already at play-off pitch. To start the season 0-1 and the rest of the the division at 1-0 and the Chiefs next week, would make  useless all the hours I have spent reading up on players, following the draft, listening to sports talk repeatedly say how useless our coach is, how inept our owner is, how worthless our time. To start 0-1 would be a hole to deep to dig out of so early in an season not yet born.

But what if…this young team with 12 starting rookies actually is faster and better than any team we have had in a while. What if the lunatics Gruden brought in like Burfect and Igonito really have matured and are leaders in the locker room, what if our three first round picks are the foundation for the future and we weren’t idiots to trade away Khalil Mack, what if Gruden and Mayock, despite the circus that Antonio Brown brought to town have built a culture of winning, or at least not one of humiliating defeat, what if our quarterback, who is on the cusp of being run off the team, gets the message and stops hearing footsteps, stays standing and actually wins some games?

That's a lot of what ifs, I know. But what is faith if not confidence and trust in a system?

We have the hardest schedule in the league. (Five straight away games) We travel the most miles, one game in London. The AFC West is made up of two potential Superbowl contenders with the Chiefs and Chargers, and nobody, I mean nobody, thinks we will be anything but embarrassing.

But like Job, perhaps we are just being tested. Maybe this twenty year humiliation in the desert of disappointment is just a test and as soon as we cross the river Jordan we hall be freed. Pretty I mixed up a bunch of bible stories, but you get the point.

Nobody but the faithful in Raider Nation can make this journey yet again. Because in the end, on the brink of a 16 game season, a season that we have been waiting for since last December, what else can we do, but pour our devotion and undoubting faith into the only team we have ever loved.

Win or lose, this is our team. We want to watch the players we have learned to love play under the lights in one of the oldest most rundown stadiums in the country.

It all really does seem kind of old testament biblical if you look at it right. Maybe I do believe in faith after all. How could you not being an Oakland Raiders fan? Just Win Baby!

Fractured And Scattered

“An empty shell seems so easy to crack
Got all these questions don't know who I could even ask
So I'll just lie alone and wait for the dream
Where I'm not ugly and you're looking at me.” Pearl Jam


It’s easy to feel sorry for yourself. Especially when you are not at your best. Broken bones. Dampened spirit. Heavy funk. The fixes are not easy and they are seldom quick. It can take weeks, sometimes months to get your priorities back in order.


I think I am finally on the edge of moving some things around inside and coming up for air.


It’s hard to tell when this latest tailspin started for me. It is definitely been around for longer that last week’s broken bone. I was talking to my mom today. Telling her about how anxious I am to get back to work, back to my life, back to normal and she asked me if I thought that maybe this broken ankle was the universe’s way of telling me to slow down.


Stop. Think. Reevaluate. I shrugged my shoulders and let her words linger, afraid to think too deeply on them.


I thought back to when I stopped feeling so fantastic. Because at the end of the summer, I was at a peak. I was rested. Excited. Pumping on all cylinders. I had a great time with my family. Saw old friends. Spent time in the trees and great cities and towns. I was on fire. Life was great. So what happened?


My new role started off great and I am still loving it. School has been good. I am not super excited with how I am teaching, but the new responsibilities make up for my early curricular confusion. Work life is solid. Kids give me energy and my peers are as always top notch.


But early on with Karen’s passing, things went a bit off the tracks. That was emotionally taxing. My first real close death and the travel and the stress and the falling behind was a lot. I am not sure I really processed it all as soon as I hit the ground running back in Singapore. I would say that is when it started. All the death this year- Ali, Bowie, Prince. Twinkle.


Then off to Vietnam. A good conference, but I didn’t feel I was great. I was there. I did my thing, but it didn’t feel fresh or new or exciting to me. I felt stale and like I was faking it.


Then I started cheating a lot on my vegan choices and felt terrible about that, and then I think it all came to a boil on November 8th.


Three-way conferences and the election.


I became obsessed with the news and the plight of everyone affected. It felt like the world was going to end. I literally could not look at Trump’s face. I am not sure why this election hit me so hard, but it feels like the forces of darkness and evil are alive in the world. This is beyond politics. This is some cosmic shit. Like we are being swallowed by doom. Like something out of Lord of the Rings. Like everything we cherish and value and love is on trial and the courts are stacked against us. I internalized it all. Add that on to my existing issues that I already mentioned and I was spiraling downward without a way out.


For those of you who have been reading for a while, you know that I was allowing myself to slowly wallow in the downward spiral, toward the end of the year. That was plan. To let myself be gross and sad and just wait out 2016. Not healthy I know, but it felt easy and good and like I somehow deserved it. My second mom died and everything I find vile and repugnant was the president of my country. So I cold eat some McDonalds and feel sorry for myself.


Then I broke my ankle. After the first good day I had had in a while- there I was- skating along feeling the breeze, enjoying the sunset, feeling the concrete below my feet- I was contemplating the change, the rebirth and then I did something stupid: I tried to do more than I knew how to do and I was forced to stop it all.


A week in bed, no work but more anxiety, time to be alone and think, choking on the politics and I was getting worse. January 1st couldn’t come fast enough, but today something changed.


I watched a movie called Gleason about NFL star and ALS survivor and hero Steve Gleason. I cried almost non-stop from start to finish. I can’t say it plainly enough.


This movie will change your life.


There was so much I wanted to say as I watching it, but I am left a little in the blank right now. I still have a few big life changes coming up in January, that I am more and more excited about. I am still working out the details, but I am hoping that these new changes will allow me to refocus my goals on my priorities. To really spend my energy and life force on the things that truly matter to me, instead of scattering myself around too thin. That is a great image- The latter part of 2016 has left me scattered.


And thanks to this movie I feel I am raking up the leaves and ready to start putting some plans into action.


The next couple of weeks will still be about healing. Physically but also mentally. I am a literal metaphor right now of a fracture. School will come to an end and those anxieties will pass. I hope to reconnect with my family and try to celebrate Christmas joy. I am looking forward to seeing my in-laws and spending time with friends. We may or may not go to Thailand, but we will rest and heal and be well again. The future is looking bright.


This shittorm of a year is almost done and for that I am hopeful, but more importantly a new year is on the horizon. I am healthy (ish). I am loved. I am filled with the fire of life and I am tired of being burdened by sadness.


Do yourself a favor and watch Gleason right now! You will not regret it.

I Went To Church Today

I went to church today. Yup. Church. Me. Today.

This is not some allusion or metaphor about me sitting on a beach somewhere lost in my spiritual ramblings. It is actually what it says: I went to church today. Complete with prayers, hands in the air (not my hands, but there were hands in the air) and the ole praise Jesus and a smattering of amens. Before I get into what it was like, let me start with the why. Several people who knew I was planning on going to church today asked me why, and while I tried to think of some reasons on the spot in the social environments where they asked, as you know I am better at articulating ideas in blog form. So why did I go to church today:

Because I want to be the kind of person who says yes to life more often than I say no. I want to say yes when it is easy and fun, but I also need to say yes when it is complicated and uncomfortable. I want to know, see and feel what other people value before I make judgements, and if I am doing it right I hope not to feel the need to judge at all. I want my ideals and values to be rooted in experience and understanding.

I went to church today, because I am curious about other people’s beliefs and how they think and make sense of the world. I spend so much time glibly proselytizing my atheism that I thought it might do me some good to spend some time in a church. While there, I was thinking that maybe I need to go to a Hindu temple or mosque next, so if you want to invite me I am down to go.

I went to church today because someone who listens and interacts with my rambling asked me to come, and I felt I owed him the respect he has shown my ideas. If I am going to be passionate about my values and ideas- art, veganism, peace, music, whatever it is, then I have to respect other people’s passions and give them the benefit of the doubt.

I went to church today because if I claim to be an open minded person then I have to be open minded in action and not just words. I have to listen more than I talk. I have to take-in as much I give away. I have to learn as much as I teach.

So for these reasons and maybe a few more, I went to church today. What was it like?

It was pretty great. It was exciting, musical, artistic, joyful, passionate, warm, welcoming, intimate, communal and honest. I haven’t been church in a long, long time and the times I have been it has never felt like this. I have always felt uncomfortable and bored and disconnected. But not today. I arrived a bit early chatted with some folks about day-to-day things, had some coffee, listened to a few songs and listened to Hamish give a well researched, interesting, and personal sermon about how to read the bible.

This is not a post to argue or debate the merits of his ideas or beliefs, that is what a bottle of wine might be for, but I appreciated his sentiment, his passion and his skill as an orator. I didn’t always agree with what he said and there many times when in my mind I was saying, ‘’but, but, but….what about…..and…..but, but, but.” I let it go and listened with an open mind. It’s amazing what that can do for your intellect as well as your spirit.

At first I spent so much energy pulling away and judging the people as they smiled too wide or praised Jesus too enthusiastically. It didn’t feel real to me. The cynic in me felt they were faking it. I guess because this type of devotion is not real for me, but I tried real hard to just be there in the moment and relate to what was being said without the need to argue all the time, which is what I usually do at religious events.

Before I go on, let me say that I enjoyed my time at Inspire Church. If I wanted a community of Christians to get to know this might be where I would start. If I created a church, this might be what it would look like. If I needed this type of faith, this might be the place where I would look, but honestly I don’t feel I need it.

It was nice to see these people so happy and bonded and worshiping as a family, and although I could appreciate what it was doing for them, I knew as I walked away that Church is not for me. Not because of anything this church itself was doing or not doing, but I guess I just reject the very idea of faith.

I started thinking about this idea of being consumed by god, jesus, faith, grace whatever you want to call it, during one of the first songs. They sang something like Jesus you are my everything and nothing I have is worth anything without you, or something like that. Which got me thinking- what is my everything? Is there one thing that I pour my entire soul into? One place that holds my complete heart and mind? Do I value anything so much that I consume it and allow myself to be consumed by it?

The answer- I hope not.

The world and the pieces of me in it are too rich, too complex to be poured into a vessel as one-sided as a singular faith. How can there only be one god, one faith, one church? I have faith in so many things, so there is no way I ever want to put one name around it all. If I closed my eyes, and raised my hands and praised any one thing, I feel like I would be doing a dis-service to all things. I don't ever want to see the world through one lens, even if that lens is the all-loving Jesus.

Beyond the stories and the bible and the sin and the language of worship and redemption and all of the devil and god and heaven and hell, my understanding from today is that it all boils down to love. The divine whatever it might look like. Compassion. Peace. Empathy. I get all that. I just don’t want to dilute the image through the lens of faith in Jesus. Those ideas of divinity, in my humble opinion, do not need Jesus, a god or a church.

It's a great story, the story of the Israelites and the covenant with God, but just one in a series of others. I can't, I won't reduce the divinity into such a simple cup.

I hope that it is enough that I live a good life. Try my best to be righteous. Understand that I am fallible and broken and wonderful and in pain and full of love without having to brand myself in any one faith. Or in faith at all. There is no one thing that I feel so consumed by.

I loved seeing the people today so happy and comfortable in their faith in Jesus and their approach was refreshing and made me happy too.

But I think I will keep walking down my own road and looking to see what else I can find. I am not sure what that church looks like or if I even need one. I have met many people on this journey and we have shared many stories and songs and our own twisted sermons along the way. These meanderings seem be enough for for me. Today my searching took me into a church, and I am grateful for the hospitality. And honestly, Hamish I look forward to coming back if you will have me, you have a cool thing going.

But for me the end of the journey can never be in any one church, actually for me there is no end to the journey.