I Miss You, I'm Sorry.

Lately I’ve been mostly lost and disappointed. I haven’t felt much of an urge to write, because I haven’t felt much of anything lately. But this blog is sort of where I’ve been the last while and a sort of collage of my thots that though may have been written never made it here to this blog. A couple things have happened between LA and now. I was in Europe for two weeks and during a Sunday morning “meeting” where our professor lead us in a “service” in a garden in Berlin I was reminded strongly of things I had felt and learned in LA and then he read us a prayer of saint Francis of Assisi:


May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers,
half truths and superficial relationships so that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,
so that you may wish for justice, freedom, and peace.
May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world,
so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.


That set me ablaze again for returning to LA, doing ministry, being like Shane Claiborne, what ever you want to call it. But then the rest of the trip went by, and soon I found my self back in the states and though I remembered the prayer I had lost the burning. Then one night at youth group something broke I began to scribble the thots on a hand out instead of listening to Adam preach, we sang the song “your grace is enough” and this was a few days after I got the chance and finally decided to return to APU. This is what I scribbled down:

Your grace is enough…
Why is it that I am so easily distracted? Not by anything particularly bad, just stuff. I am just so easily amused… But then as soon as I see you(God), whether it is in youth group during worship, or in the faces of the migrants in Mexico, or in the shouts in a march for justice, in the voices of my comrades, in the understanding of those that have experienced what I have, I just feel you. I remember. And I am beyond satisfied. I am cured of the itch for new things, I am cured of lust, I am cured of everything and in that moment its worth it. I promise you: “I will do what ever you lead me to do, as long as I find those moments, as long as I find you, and even if I don’t I will strive with every last breath to get over the mountain top to see your face again because I know that those who seek you always find you, and that your grace truly is enough.”

And then I decided to move to New Jersey to work for my grandfather… I got to go to a pretty amazing multiracial church there and felt so at home again. I miss that so much about LA. I was reminded again of my fellow LA termites, and missed them a lot when the pastor spoke on acts 4. The people in this chapter that had put Peter and John on trial were so struck with the fact that they were so confident and so sure of themselves and then realized that these were laymen with no training in scripture or formal education. They couldn’t say anything against them. And then, and this is what struck me, is that they had to take note that truly these men had been with Jesus. See there’s something about Jesus that changes you. And people can see it. I’ve seen it in my comrades in LA, I’ve seen it in the eyes of my friends at home. And as I remember all of the times I’ve seen it in each one of them, each one of you reading this, first I nearly cry... honestly…, and then I must truly take note that you have surely been with Jesus, there’s no other reason for your actions. But still I miss my friends from LA, because we’ve been through so much together, we’ve been through those moments together where we’ll never forget seeing Jesus in each other, and sometimes I feel like the thots I try to relay to others that were not there don’t have validity, like my thots and feelings are my own against an entire world of non understanding ness. But still I want those at home to realize how much I literally crave their company, how much pain their absence causes me, and how I so wish to let them be a part of my mind and thots. How hard it is to leave them all, when all I want is to sit around fires, sit on beaches, stand in parking lots, stay up late and just be with them, be with you. But as the song I sang in church this morning says, “Your all I want, your all I ever needed, I’ll lay it all down again, just to hear that I’m your friend.”


And I’m sorry but he has become all I want. His grace has proven to be more than enough. God has blessed me with enough foolishness to believe that I can make a difference in this world,
so that I can do what others claim cannot be done. And though I feel so sad, that I have let you all down, that I continually leave your company. Like I’ve lost so much. I will lay it all down again just to hear him say that I’m his friend. And this does not mean I wish to do it alone. I wish others would feel this way as well, or have the courage to admit that they do, and rid themselves of the fears of not succeeding in this game of life our society has dreamed up for itself and forced us to try to live up to. Because I myself am so afraid, and I desire one, just one, to come along side me. Because as Martin Luther King Jr. said its not being unafraid that makes you strong or makes you brave, its having the courage to go on even though you are terrified.