I spoke with Lena the other night (a completely unexpected blessing) and Kristin and Brynn last week. I spent 5 days with Kim in January. I saw David and Leanne last fall. I spent a weekend with Whitney before I moved.  The mood from the diaspora of Resonate appears the same no matter if you left 2 years ago or 5 months ago: walking with Christ is a struggle post transformational community.

It is easy to think that the community of Resonate was just church community, that ideally, it can be found anywhere, with the same ease as long as you find a great church. But leaving Resonate is just like graduating. For some it happens at the same time, and for others, like Kim and I, it happens quite a while later. But it turns out biblical community in a collegiate driven church in a small farm college town is not something that is easily replicated in the big city (as Keith has said many times).

As I was talking to Lena we were verbally processing what our walk with the Lord has been post Pullman. I am sure there is a bit of glossing over the rough patches but we also remember and admitted some of our darkest days were in Pullman in the context of Resonate. So it’s not all fuzzy warm memories.  We are not what you might call “in the valley” but more like wandering around aimless in the desert. Apathy, indirection, lack of discipline and a general floundering of what life with God looks like when it is not around significant community are the names of our game.

In some ways it makes me smile. I appreciate now more than ever the gift I was given for those 4 years. Friendships that are deep and real and true and that can be re-engaged at a moment’s notice. Accountability too I miss. What I wouldn’t give for an hour with April Young that makes me cry!

It is just harder when the people you do meet are at different stages of life and you live far away and have to get up earlier to go to work. Or when try as you might you can’t get past the Sunday service at church because they have for some reason made entering into community obnoxiously hard.

I am in my 7th month in Denver, having attended church faithfully for all but November (that’s another story) and this week I will get to attend my first “fellowship group”.  I led a small group/village almost every week of the year for the past 5 years and I haven’t attended one once since I moved here – not for lack of trying mind you. It blows my mind. I did actually visit one but it was all teaching and no participation. It felt like class on a Saturday night. It was all I could do to not want to take over the whole thing. Turns out I miss leading them, although I always knew I would.

I will own up to my lack of discipline and just laziness. It seems like I am ready to blame my lack of engagement on the temperature of the room or how tired I am or anything else that would make the situation less than perfect. Things just move slower in a big city and it is hard to get used to. Friendships. Community. Finding a job.

I was talking to Lena about how I need to start seeing this as “my summer vacation” or “semester abroad” or those other times in your life that you know ahead of time might be hard to be a faithful disciple as your routine and location changes. I created plans for all those times in my life, so why not this one? And yet I struggle to create a plan for something my heart is not engaged in. It is an age old story…the chicken before the egg…discipline turns into love which turns into joy which turns into discipline.

I am hoping I am learning lessons right now that I won’t need to relearn again and again. I plan on moving again in another 4 yearsish and if my dreams come true I will hopefully live many places in my lifetime. The other half of me lit up and turned on in the presence of Kim and Kristin and Brynn and David and Leanne (those two are doing the best out of anyone I know, I should take notes) so I know there is something deeply missing from how I am living my life right now and that in itself is motivation. I am not willing to lose myself and who the Lord shaped me into being every time I move to a new place. Hopefully though I will get better and better at the transition, preparing for my known weaknesses and taking a much more active stance in the whole thing. After all, I will honestly never move back to Pullman, so there ain’t no turning back.

I flew in and was met by the most lovely Wittman ladies, Kristin and Brynn. The next morning Kristin made us waffles and then we wandered around the mall just chatting and being silly.

Then I headed over to Katie Young’s house and met her family and chilled with the engaged couple for a while. We headed out for a night on the town bachlorette style and if I had been in Denver instead of Seattle I would have given our waiter at the Tapas restaurant my number!  That night reminded me one of the reasons I enjoy being in people’s weddings. Usually all the bridesmaids don’t know each other as they represent different stages and locations of the bride’s life. However when you are friends enough of the bride to warrant being in the wedding party you usually know her pretty well, and obviously like her. So getting to know the other great friends of the bride becomes really fun and sometimes you even make great friendships that last after the bride has left town (Melodee!). I love that process of meeting other ladies that are equally as awesome as the bride and it makes for a great wedding experience.  Plus I learned my ex village co-leader Noah Andrew Olav Holt will be on the groom’s side and means I can wear heels no problem since he will be escorting me down the aisle ;)

The following morning I coerced my friend Jill and her young son Jackson to have lunch and drive me to the airport.

As I said earlier it was those nostalgia moments though, that helped make it more than just a trip to see friends. Here are a few of the things that made me feel at home:

1. The seattle airport. Silly I know, but I even spent a night there coming back from the Aleutians in grad school.

2. Hearing “now boarding for Pullman/Lewiston” over the intercom at the airport.

3. I-90 E to Spokane signs

4. Driving past Pike’s Place Market

5. Talking Activate things with Brynn

6. Talking old NCM days with Kristin

7. Jill and I eating at Panera, like our first date 8 years ago!

8. Telling Katie’s family how I knew Brad, and remembering back to those core group meetings at One Way the summer before we launched.

9. Having Katie whip out songs from musicals and random movie quotes that make me smile at our mutual obsession with musicals and movies.

8. Mt Ranier popping through the clouds as we flew back to Denver.

These movies I have been seeing instead are in that lovely zone of being entertaining but also thought-provoking. They have been telling stories of real life and since real life is messy I couldn’t say all these movies have been “fun”.  Let me list some of them so you get a feel for what I am talking about.

The King’s Speech

The Black Swan

Rabbit Hole

Country Strong

My Name is Khan

The Fighter

The Social Network

Company Men

True Grit

Some are big budget pictures, some small indie flicks, some are based on true stories and others pure fiction, but they have all been deeply satisfying to watch – even if that means crying through parts of them. There is a lot of struggle and a fair amount of death. Sometimes everything turns out fine, in others the endings are bittersweet or even tragic.

I am glad so many of the Oscar Best Picture nominees this year are movies in this middle range – not pure entertainment but also not movies you think you “should” go to because they are phenomenal from the filmmaker’s standpoint, not necessarily enjoyable at all to watch from a viewer’s standpoint. I still need to see 127 Hours and The Kids Are All Right and then for the first time in years I will have seen all the Best Picture Nominees. You might think that is silly but it’s important to me. I will also actually be home to watch the Acadamy Awards, for the first time in four years. Not being a sports fan this yearly rite of passage is kinda like the Super Bowl to me, so I am stoked.

Anyways, I recommend all of the movies above and I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

p.s. True Grit made me laugh out loud repeatedly

Instantly I was reminded my love for science is not a fleeting whim, it is something permanent that the Lord created space for in my soul. Being in the presence of so many scientists was life giving. I sat in on a session about Congressional Science Fellows. To become one you are chosen from a scientific organization and join a congressman’s/senators’/committee staff or a federal agency and lend your scientific expertise to the issues of governing the nation. Hearing them talk I became incredibly intrigued.

I whine about partisan politics with the best of them, frustrated at the drama, short-sightedness and selfishness of the whole system.  But policy is important. Most of the grassroots social justice movements are aimed at eventually creating enough movement to change policy at the highest level. So maybe learning how the process works, what makes it hard, and how to do it better, if only for a year, would be a worthwhile goal toward my ever expanding dreamto change the world.

Except that you need a PhD.  They seems to think you need to be an “expert” on something. I have held the position that scientific research is not one of my strong suits since leaving graduate school. But maybe if my heart was really in what I was researching I could stand the 5 years of academic workaholism.

The last day of the conference I attended a session on Ocean Acidification. Around 30% of the anthropomorphic  CO2 being released into the atmosphere is being absorbed by the ocean. This is changing the ocean’s chemistry, acidifying it. This will change the saturation depths and locations of certain minerals in sea water – especially the ones many sea creatures use to make shells. And these creatures are the primary food source for many other fish, such as Alaskan Salmon.

Sarah Cooley, the speaker studied the Mollusks in particular. She researched all the current scientific information on the scale and locations and time frame of ocean acidification and how it would change the aragonite (the mineral that makes up these shells) saturation point. Then she looked at all the countries around the world and created a vulnerability index. Which would be most affected based on how important mulloscks were to imports, exports, tourism, the protein needs of the population etc. Then she factored in all sorts of other variables on the stability of the various nations. In the end she combined the science of climate change with a social science study on the nations of the world. She called it studying the socio-economic impacts of climate change.  In that split second the previously amorphous and nebulous passions in my live coalesced into a single statement: I want to spend my life exploring the socio- economic impacts of climate change.

So here is the new plan:

1. Chill out in Denver for the next 3-5 yrs. Get a job, pay off debt, accumulate a retirement and savings account, enjoy single life in the city.  Take some seminary classes, retake all my calc classes and add in some economics and the GRE, again.

2. Apply to sustainable development PhD programs, most notably at The Earth Institute at Colombia University. They only take like 8 people a year so I will be setting my eyes toward it but not banking on it. My heart is to help solve international problems stemming from climate change on the world’s poorest, in the most multi-disciplinary way possible. There are many sustainable development Master’s degrees but few PhDs and even fewer that focus on the science as opposed to the policy or economic sides.

3. Apply and get accepted to be a congressional science fellow and move to Washington DC for a year.

4. Get a real job again. For the UN.

So there it is, the 10 year plan. Who knows if any of it will happen or how on earth working at a mutual fund company right now fits in but I have a direction to head which is the most important thing, a more concrete vision of a way to actualize all these stirred up passions in me. I just wish it didn’t mean returning to the humidity of the east coast.

So two weeks ago I started reading a book by one of my favorite authors, Jeff Shaara. It was a historical novel about WWII, specifically the African and Italian campaigns, written from the perspective of many of the major historical figures involved. Up until I read this book I knew nothing about that part of the war other than what I gleaned from Casablanca and The English Patient.

So today after church I went to a local bookstore, bought a new Bible, as I am a sucker for new Bibles at new phases in my life, and started to read. After a few minutes a WWII Vet (identified as such by his hat) sat down next to me with his book. After a while he asked me if I was reading a Bible. He said he recently returned from a trip from N. Africa – Italy – Austria – Germany with a young girl who whenever the conversation died between them would pull out her Bible and read. He then asked me if I was a born again Christian and would I mind telling him what that meant.

So many things were racing through my head. When  was the last time someone asked me to explicitly share the gospel? Could I even do it? It couldn’t be a coincidence that I just started getting interested in WWII, and the N Africa/Italian campaigns in particular. It kinda felt like Jesus was saying ” I know you are rusty, but welcome back”.

So instead of just defining “born again” I explained it in terms of the mini version of my story with Jesus. He said he had started reading the bible after this trip with these kids (it wasn’t just a girl he was traveling with but a group of college students, taking them to important places from WWII) and didn’t understand it. He didn’t even know why he was reading it except that he was getting old and should look into it. Then he told me about the trip. By the end of the conversation I learned he was a regular here and his name was Alan.

The whole experience made me feel welcomed home. I had quite forgotten the thrill it is to share the gospel so openly. I didn’t even feel the need to “close the deal”, something I have struggled with in the past. I felt like I had just been given this great gift, so unexpectedly, by my Lord. A little reminder of who I really am.

Today is my first Sabbath in three and a half months. It was timely. Last week, my second week attending a new church, I felt my heart stirred in affection for Christ (those words came most readily to mind from my friend Josh Martin) in a way that I haven’t experienced since I moved here. Sans community I have very much been living a secular life.

While I would never recommend ditching Christ, church or community I have noticed an interesting by-product of my recent secular life: the disappearance of guilt. For at least the last five years guilt has been a constant presence in my life, probably exasberated by the feeling of what my life with Christ “should” look like when I am on staff in ministry. I couldn’t find a way to escape all the expections I was putting on myself. There were seasons of grace but guilt was the constant.

So now having barely spoken to Christ, read my Bible, and been without biblical community, my desire to return to Christ now, catalyzed by finding a better church, is one without guilt. I feel no need to gravel at the feet of Jesus. I have confessed and apologized but I don’t feel the pervasive need to “repent and repeat” ad nauseaum so to speak.

How freeing that has been. I can see it in how this past week has played out. Sunday my heart was stirred for Christ and Monday I started a new job. It was a busy week of a steep learning curve, quitting Target and finishing shifts there. So I didn’t really spend any time with Christ. But here I am sitting in a bookstore Sunday after church reading my Bible without the guilt and the “should haves” hanging over my head.

What a marvelous feeling to have your default position switch from guilt to grace.

… the smell upon exiting the airport: damp air and lush plantlife

… the smell of Park Ave and the reminder of all the picnics and high school memories

… the smell of the lake on the property of my childhood church reminding me of all those times in the water

… the smell of the monterail at the Magic Kingdom and popcorn at MGM

I didn’t make it to the ocean but I am sure the smell of the Atlantic would bring back a veritable flood of memories also.

I have heard before that the sense of smell is the sense most tied to memories. And I have experienced the sensation of a smell taking you back to a time and place. But on this trip, the smells brought sadness with them. For while it is nice to experience home again and to try to remember all the little moments of my twelve years here, that fact is, my family is no longer here, only one friend is left (and maybe not for long), I never get to share my childhood or my home with those that I now deeply love, and the friendships that I thought would last have all passed away. Eight years with some of my friends in middle school and high school – eight years of growing up and acting out and skipping school have faded into “maybe I will let you know I am getting married” … or “maybe I won’t”.

Above all, it is these lost ties that sadden me most. I am just as at fault as they are. I found a crew to run with in college and after sophmore year didn’t really look back. Schedules became different and we were all in too many states too far from each other. We grew apart, into the adults we would become. I guess I had always thought that those eight years would still warrant an e-mail letting me know that in fact, just as we had dreamed about in my backyard pool, you had found the love of your life.

But I am also realizing in my stay here that even if you stay close and talk regularily friendships still change. Your lives are no longer as intertwined and your experiences are no longer mutual. And maybe that’s ok. Maybe its better to allow and embrace the change rather than to fight for what was. And possibly this would allow me to better embrace the current relationships in my life that are deep and meaningful. Maybe these people don’t have to meet the standard of these former relationships of my past. Maybe they can be what they are and stand on their own. Because in all honesty, even the relationships of the past are not what they once were.

And maybe I can do the same thing with God. How could our relationship look the same as those first love years when I am not the same? His constancy remains but my instability by definition means that our relationship will always be dynamic and progressing. Maybe I could allow it to be such rather than beat myself up over my inability to recreate the past.

Maybe in moving forward, living in the present, I will find that He is already here – and so are you, my family of my present.

• I know almost nothing of US history beyond WWII. I am was amazed at how similar things are in our country right now concerning the Iraq War and what was going on during the Vietnam War. Some of Nixon’s quotes you could swear Bush plagiarized. Its creepy.
• This past year I have been a part of a group at Resonate called Activate. We were tired of being ignorant American Christians knowing that peace and justice and mercy should not be relegated to NGOs. So watching these peace advocates during the Vietnam War era I feel like for the first time I didn’t think about them as wierdo activists but people who so deeply believed in something they could not but act. I admire that they chose to rise up ut of their tv chair and fight for something.
• John Lennon is amazing. He knew very well how much media attention he had. He and Yoko very intentionally used this media obsession to get air time for what they deeply believed in: peace. The documentary shows John being willing to look like a fool because he believed that the power that he could wield was more important than his personal image. At Glorieta we listened to Michael Kelley disect the parable of the Shrewd Manager. Its a tough one and I am not sure I have ever understood it until now. Jesus commends the shrewd manager not for his actions but for his shrewdness – for leveraging his resources and influence well, for making the most of an opportunity. Michael Kelley described an aspect of shredness as “to have an eye on the future and making choices towards the future”. I think Jesus would commend John Lennon.
• The FBI was freakin’ scary back then.