The Big 3-2

I suppose an occasion like today (technically yesterday) would be a good excuse to resurrect the dead carcass that is my blog. Thirty-two good years and I'm still going strong.

Here are the highlights of the past few months.

I am going to UCLA in the fall for graduate school in computer science. As I was making my decision to go I was fluttery with anticipation and excitement, but since then the thought of missing San Diego, DivX, and the comforts of the home here (not to mention the pains of finding new housing, finding a new tenant for the house, moving, and the prospect of adjusting to new roommates) have found me more recently a bit subdued and not a little bit nostalgic. And while a lot of close friends have moved away, two friends have actually moved back, making my move all the more poignant.

I should also mention that I did manage to get rejected from quite a few other schools as well. Quite an exhilarating experience for the ego, the rejection thing. I heartily recommend it.

My grandfather was recently diagnosed with stomach cancer. My mother is in Taiwan right now, doing what she can to tend to him. From her reports at first he did not want to accept treatment, but it sounds like now he has changed his mind and will undergo chemotherapy. Although I have grown up separated by both an ocean and a language, I have always respected grandpa and admired his noble contribution for many years as a clinical doctor in the village where he lives. And of course the fiery character that is my mother certainly speaks volumes of his influence. I wrote him a letter recently but it seemed like such a feeble attempt. I have deep appreciation, nonetheless.

I have been working a lot on a project of Mark's invention called InfoZealot.com (please be patient if the site is down — it's under construction!). It's been a lot of crazy hours but it's already been very rewarding. And now with the prospect of bringing on some other people to do development, I think it will have a good chance of picking up some real momentum.

I am no longer attending a church regularly. Occasionally, usually at the suggestion of a friend, I visit a church now and then. I have had countless discussions with friends regarding that decision and, more specifically, my perspective on God and Jesus these days and it probably would do some good to try to express it here. At the very least my numerous attempts at explaining it have forced me to refine and revise my thoughts. And although I have probably talked to everyone I know about it, I certainly haven't tired of the discussion yet.

[...]

Well I've been trying for about two hours to express it but it is starting to go long and to lack coherency so I will have to finish it later as another post. Stay tuned, if you dare.

P.S. Joel if you read this, love the blog. I took a couple of days but now I'm all caught up.

Operation Safe Place Accomplished

The Dream Team (most of it anyway)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Here's a little blurb I wrote on my trip to Waveland, Mississippi.

There is no reminder of how much we are at the mercy of our surroundings quite as profound as the site of a disaster like Katrina. And there is no example of purity and innocence quite as vivid as a child. And that innocence served as a sign of hope — for recovery and renewal. During this trip I was able to stand right on the coast of the gulf, where the grace of God manifest in a rising sun over peaceful waters stood juxtaposed against the wake of destruction on shore — collapsed houses, clothing strewn about, boats floating in trees instead of water.

You want these people to watch your kids?

The children I was able to spend time with did not seem too affected by the disaster and were just happy to be kids. It would have been interesting to know how much each of them lost exactly but that was not our role there and I was glad to be able to bring them a sense of normalcy as their parents sought aid from FEMA. I know there were other groups that did hear from the kids about things like having to dig through rooftops to survive.

Hotel Morrell

Aside from the kids there was also the muggy heat of the day and frigid cold nights to deal with — the first two days were quite warm but then a cold snap hit and we ended off the trip with at-freezing temperatures at night. Waking up at 5:30am, working with the kids until 6pm, having to share the mens' bathroom with the women for a day or so, fighting off mosquitoes, was all part of the adventure. I wasn't really prepared for an entire week without laundry facilities either, which made for some creative wardrobe rotation.

So Spoiled!

The most rewarding part was spending time with people, both those on the trip and also others who had come to Waveland just to help out. Some were there just to give massages to the other volunteers. Many were there serving food — several from our group helped too. It stirred faith in mankind to see so many people sacrifice so much just to be a small part of the enormous task of healing a part of our country and nation.

Some of the devastation

Song devotionals, late night Sonic run, Pete being More than a Woman, never-ending pork and dance parties at the Wavy Gravy, terrible "Texas" accents, ultimate frisbee, sleeping bags full of Repel, Wild West, endless Matis Yahoo, the peanut gallery, Team Weenies! Thank you, everyone; this trip has been a wonderful adventure and full of great memories!

More devastation

Check out more pictures at Shutterfly. Unfortunately I only have photos from about the first third of the trip; my battery ran out as Crystal M. got a bit snap-happy. Thanks everyone: Erwin, Tracy, Charlene, Adam, Bryce, Sam, Jesse, Yolanda, Georgiana, Erika, Crystal M., Crystal Z., Natalie, Nereida, Lan, Janie, Pete, Faith, and Priscilla!

Time to Reflect at the Gulf

Watch this space for more photo links. Also stay tuned for a video, coming soon.

HOPE Operation Safe Place

As all of you know Hurricane Katrina and subsequent similarly devastating events have brought the frailty of human existence to the forefront of our minds. I will be traveling to Houston, Texas, and eventually Mississippi, from the 11^th to the 19^th of this month volunteering with two joint programs called Operation Safe Place and Project Kid. There I will spending time with a team of 19 others from San Diego, meeting the needs of affected children.

A lot of the details are somewhat sketchy as things coming together within a very short amount of time, but from what I understand we will have a specific curriculum to teach to the kids. We will be staying at housing specific to the volunteers in Waveland, Mississippi and probably travel every day to where the kids are to spend time with them.

<DivX Specific>
Somewhat akin to our own Project Backpack, we also have received a number of backpacks from UCSD that we will be distributing appropriately.
</DivX Specific>

The web site detailing the original program is http://hopeww.org/sections/events/index.htm. The specifics with traveling to Mississippi are a very recent development.

If you are interested in contributing to this event please let me know; HOPE Worldwide is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

Wish me luck!

Three-Day Tour

On July 9^th Michelle, Cyndie and I went to see Wicked at the Pantages.

The biggest news I have since last writing is probably my mini-road trip with Ben and Nick last weekend. We had such a great time — my throat was sore from talking so much I think. That or the drier climate. This is just a straight run-through of what we all did so it might be quite banal but here goes.

On July 15^th Jill visited San Diego for a job interview.

First, on Saturday night I went to George & Kim's wedding with Christena. That was a lot of fun. A lot of the old crowd was there from eAssist. Good memories. Apparently Gary, Jeremy, Alex and Sashi are heavy into the Goowy thing for now.

The classic Yosemite photo.

Nick and I were going to head out that Saturday night but I got home really late so we decided to wait until morning to leave. We dropped off his friend in LA and then headed to Fresno to pick up Ben, who had gone up there the day before for a big family event. We picked up Ben and headed to Yosemite.

Me, Ben

We only spent a few hours there but managed to spend some time wading in a cool stream and catching sight of El Capitan and Half Dome. We tried to figure out whether moss really grows on the north side of trees or if that was just an urban legend (it's true) and also spent time talking about ghosts, absolute morality, feral children, and deciding whether to attempt a real hike (we didn't). By the time we got our bearings it was time to head to Joel & Joanne's.

El Capitan (the mountain, not Ben)

We arrived at the Leongs' place around 11pm and spent the next four hours debating John's baptism and listening to Joel's crazy ministry stories. To clarify, that's "crazy ministry stories," not "crazy ministry stories." Fun stuff. The next morning we goofed off a bit and tried to keep Ben off Diablo II long enough to meet Adelaide for lunch in Oakland.

Joel, late-night stand-up

From there we dropped Joel back off at home and headed down to San Jose to the Winchester Mystery House. We endured the 65 minute tour as we tried to decipher exactly what our tour-guide was trying to express to us. She kept putting the em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LA-bles and it was really throwing us off. My favorite part was the stairs that led to nowhere. Super creepy. In fact when my mom reminded me that I had been there when I was young I seemed to remember getting creeped out by that. Or maybe I just manufactured that memory. Also Ben whooped me at Street Fighter. I guess I'm a bit rusty.

Adelaide at lunch

After that we ate at a nice italian restaurant and debated what the word "gambit" meant. I really like Santana Row, which is the mall where we ate. Later on the way to my folks' place Ben was trying to find out the exact constraints of Fischer 960 that create 960 possible starting positions, which I had mentioned earlier at dinner.

Ben

At home my folks have this screen setup with a projector and surround sound so you can enjoy the whole movie-going experience. I was quite impressed actually. We ended up watching "Spartan" and "Bringing Down the House," both of which Joel had lent to Ben, which probably explains their dubious entertainment value.

Nick

The next morning I had setup breakfast with Carrie in Los Gatos while the guys slept in. It was great catching up and of course I had some theological questions for her. Fun fun.

Carrie at the Iron Skillet

Back at home mom loaded us up as usual, we said our goodbyes and headed out to the Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz. Along the way we managed to discuss information theory and the tracing back of a train of thought. During the tour we of course couldn't help but debunk everything that the tour-guide was spewing forth. Ben seemed the least willing to concede but I think everything was pretty well explained. It was very entertaining at any rate.

Mom, Chuck

On the way back to Fresno we discussed a bit more about my current spiritual situation and also the idea of ubiquitous, unlimited energy. And after we dropped Ben off Nick and I talked more about biblical inerrancy and eschatology. Finally I arrived home around midnight and our trip was over. What a crazy three days, haha! Thanks again guys, I had a blast.

Winslow's Congregational Email

My apologies to any unlucky reader expecting to see signs of life here over the past few months. I have been making quite a few changes of late, some of which are detailed below. At any rate I am authoring this post mostly to make a record of an email I sent in response to a broadcast made by Winslow to the entire San Diego Church of Christ. I won't post his actual email here since I don't have permission, but suffice to say it was basically state-of-the-congregation-type address, which it turns out is not very good. He showed some statistics on how much the congregation has been shrinking over the past five years, and some plans to combat it. He ended his email with a humble plea to anyone thinking of leaving the church to reconsider and to please speak up. I was moved enough to write back:

Thank you for your heart-felt email. I will share with you some of my thoughts since you took the time to share your heart. Hopefully it will give you some perspective and may help you in your quest to help the church in its current condition.

For the past 12 years I have been a member of the San Diego Church of Christ. However, over the past month-and-a-half I have made the decision to start visiting other churches, doing some soul-searching and trying to get perspective. So far I have gone to a Presbyterian church, an Evangelical church, and a few non-denominational churches. When I first made my decision, I wasn't quite sure all of my reasons — I just began with the realization that although I was attending Sunday church and other meetings regularly, inside I really did not have the desire to go. Since that initial decision I have thought a lot about why I made the choice to step away and have been able to clarify what I have been feeling.

I have been in the singles ministry for the past eight years or so and I think that this fact has a lot to do with my decision. Without ministry growth for the past few years, the dating prospects become pretty hopeless. More than that though, is that without a feeling of investment in the singles, there isn't even much hope for the situation to change. Any investment of staff at this point is probably going to be geared towards the campus ministry, which is completely understandable. Unfortunately I don't think I have another five or ten years to wait for that influence to trickle into the singles ministry. While the Fosters have admirable hearts for the singles ministry and have done a great job overall, their work has been at such a high level and so broad that their influence has not been able to really take hold anywhere, in my opinion.

That is my feeling from the ministry perspective. From the regional perspective, I felt a certain stagnation. Specifically — my region has strengths and weaknesses, most of the pretty obvious. The characteristic strengths would be things like: educated, strong-charactered, influential, eloquent. The main weakness would be: lack of warmth or heart. Now in my mind, this is all completely acceptable — every region, every person, has a personality and character. But if we go so many years without even some kind of plan of growing in or even acknowledgment of these weaknesses, I begin to feel like things will not change, at least not very soon.

At any rate, after doing my best to champion these causes for a few years, I have come to a point where I feel like I am not getting my own needs met sufficiently to continue serving in a sustainable way. So I have decided that for myself, I need to take an active role in my own decisions and find a place that I feel has the resources and potential to help me where I am at. And who knows; I may get to a point someday where I feel strong enough and have been able to incorporate what I've learned and bring it back to the San Diego Church of Christ.

In summary, here are my suggestions, if I may be so bold.

• Focus on finding a way/learning how to inspire people to desire church growth. For a while I did not think this was important, mostly as a response to feeling forced to for so many years. And unfortunately I think the leadership has shied away from it first because of the backlash, but second and more importantly because I think it doesn't really know how to truly inspire people without control tactics.
• Humility has not been our church's strong suit especially with regards to other churches. I think that the time has come to swallow our pride and look to grace outside of ourselves and find help and direction from other successful churches. All forms of redemption require a point of realization that we cannot do it by ourselves — why not for the church also?

I am not sure where my steps will lead me at this point in time but for now I consider anything a possibility. Also I hope that in no way has this email been patronizing or condescending or offensive to anyone. Thank you for your time.

Well, we'll see what happens.

I Am

Well yesterday I had a few things I really wanted to write down but I was too tired and I figured I could remember them until I had a chance to record them. Unfortunately I think I figured wrong.

Ah yes, I remember. Well one of them was a concept that I heard from Barbara De Angelis (warning: links to a very fufu page) when I dropped into one of her seminars last week. Paraphrased, it is:

If I don't allow people to know the real me, then any love they give me is counterfeit and I will therefore never really experience it nor be truly filled by it.

Which means, if in fact I am portraying a certain image, no matter how much people love, respect, and care about me, I may not truly be available to receive it, and it would be my own responsibility to change that. Now, this isn't terribly revolutionary — I'm sure if I thought about this I could have come up with a similar perspective — I just have never really heard it phrased in a way that really made me want to examine the contrast between who I am and who people think I am.

That seminar, by the way, was pretty amazing, despite the fact that the majority of attendees were old, white women. When I walked up to the ticket booth the lady asked me, "Can I help you?" as if it wasn't already obvious that I was going to buy a ticket. She seemed pretty surprised that I was there, I guess. Anyway, I was most impressed with the Question and Answer time she had after her speech — she seemed remarkably perceptive in diagnosing relational issues in a very short amount of time. Throughout the seminar I was also impressed with this feeling of giving, empowering, and grace that she seemed to give off. Good stuff.

At any rate I left with the distinct desire to focus much more seriously on figuring out who I really am, what I really need and how I'm going to get it.

The other thought I have been mulling over now and then relates again to Christianity and evolution. I have been considering how evolution has really served to shape and perhaps even correct my concept of Christianity.

Consider our typical American Christian concept of God. If you start young enough, many of our ideas resemble an old man who wants people to do good and not bad. This is a useful illustration when we are too young to understand much else, but most adults are at a point where this preliminary characterization is simply not enough.

Another concept of God that I think is pretty popular in our culture is that of being chosen by God, or somehow special in His eyes. This is an idea I have really given a lot of thought to before (wow, almost a year ago!). In my mind, I cannot reconcile the idea that God loves all people equally and yet at the same time considers me (or anyone else, for that matter, besides Jesus) special or chosen. Either you love all those around you equally, or there are some you love more than others. I don't think it can be both. It makes sense that we would try to fit God's idea of love into the mold of our reality of humanistic love — after all, no human being can honestly say they love all mankind equally.

That conflict troubled me for a long time, and so I find myself revising my understanding of God and His love. It is not something that fits our human understanding of love, it must be bigger than that. Strangely enough, this bigger concept of love feels to people (myself included) to be a colder, less romantic kind of love — that God loves all people equally and wishes for all to be saved. And it that sense, I think it seems to resemble evolution (or maybe, natural selection).

Well I've written about as much as I coherently can for now...to be continued.