Where to End?

If there was ever a blog that I wish I could pour myself into, it would be this one. I'm struggling here, trying to channel thoughts and feelings through my fingertips and into this text in some superhuman, kenotic effort , knowing that no one possesses the words- or has the gift- to say exactly what they mean and have it truly understood or felt at the same intensity as the one who wrote it. Such is the limitation of language. Derrida knew his stuff.

I've written before of how life is often like a hurricane: a concantenation of endless anticipation followed by a fury that lasts far less long than the antipcation itself, but still seems to last an eternity.

Today I had two tasks to accomplish: one fairly quick and easy, the other long but not without reward.

The first was to meet with our realtor, to ask a few questions in regards to the 16 page document that lay before us, develop a plan of battle, and then sign, sign and sign. Oops, missed one, sign this one. On Thursday night, we received an offer on our house. On Friday, we parsed the offer, discussed options and concerns (the close date was shockingly short), and on Saturday we gathered in a small conference room and signed our counter-offer, which simply consisted of putting the close date out a few weeks later.

Within a few hours, our 'counter-offer' was accepted. Our house is now off the market, Subject To Inspection, and in the month of July it will pass out of our hands and into those of another.

Shortly after signing the offer, I climbed into my new car (another blog, another day) and made the once-quarterly journey to Canada to pick up my prescriptions.

As usual, the automative arteries of Seattle were clogged and sluggish: stop-and-go traffic through the city center, up past the Mercer exit and all the way up through the U district. I was wearing my jacket, as all of us have had to do during this past April, May, and now part of June, and the clouds circling above the city divested themselves of some mist which- not sure what button was what in the new car- meant that it took me 15 minutes to find out exactly how to set my windshield wipers on 'intermittent'.

The freeways finally coughed, hacked, and spat me onto the open highway, leaving the mess of traffic where it belonged- stuck in that miserable city.

My mind was filled as I drove: so much to think about. So many logistics to consider. The deal was done and the ink was drying. I had applied for a transer/promotion at work and received it. My wife had requested the same transfer and received it. We are California bound, now, and that quite shortly as well.

As I pondered this, the logistcal questions fell away from my mind, and as I neared the Canadian border I realized that this may in fact be the last time I see this city that I have loved so dearly, deeply and unequivocally.

It is hard to explain, certainly to myself, but also to those around me who know and love me. From that first exploratory moment when I stepped from the plane and onto the Vancouver tarmac to explore seminaries in Canada, I felt that I had found 'home'. There is no way to describe it in any way that make sense, other than in the words of Tenessee Williams from Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, where you feel the 'click': that moment when everything goes right. I knew then, and even know now, that I could live in that city for the rest of my life and never want to be elsewhere. In our discussions of posthumous disposal, my wife wants to be cremated and her ashes be spread in the Pacific ocean near where sharks dwell. For me, I want my ashes taken to Stanley Park and scattered to the winds that blow along the ocean near the quay.

My time in Seattle has been like living in a 'shadow city'- a darker, meaner, dirtier cousin- sure, it's still the Pacific Northwest, but it's an angry city. It is soiled and squalid and full of people with small minds and large ambitions, where everyone angles and deals and claims they work for Microsoft and in every transaction ask 'Could I get a discoont?'.

It's as if you have lived at the foot of the Alps for years, able to see the scope and beauty of those peaks everyday, never tiring of the majesty before you. And then you have to move to Fresno, CA, but your new landlords paint a clumsy landscape of the Alps on your bedroom wall to make you feel more at home. That is the best and only way I can describe it. It's a fake; a poorly orchestrated representation. I am not sad to leave it behind, and I am certain it will shed no tears at my departure, either.

Almost as if to underscore this point, the closer I drew near to Canada, the more the clouds the broke through and the sun peeked out, casting a welcome warmth onto the ground below. I stopped at a rest stop near the border and removed my jacket, and revelled in the 70 degree heat. I climbed back into the car and passed through the border, trying to drink in every detail, because I realized that I now do not know if I'll see it again anytime soon. Or, indeed, ever.

Suddenly, this all-important errand that I wanted to complete as quickly as I could so that I could return to the project that is my current life faded in urgency, as I realized that this might be my last chance to carress those few touchstones that had meant so much to me over the years.

Driving across the Oak Street Bridge, I took the first turn-off and not the second, which would have taken me to where I needed to go to complete the business I had come up for. So, rather than circling around and heading west on Marine Drive, I turned east towards the city center, and turned right on 16th. Driving a few blocks, I came to 71st, my old street, and turned down the crowded street. I pushed past the parked cars and came to rest in front of the tiny stucco and cement house I had called home for 3 years.

This 800 square foot top floor of a house, with a walled ledge and the cement steps that led up to the house. It was here I lived with the unfortunately named fellow seminarian, Ron Knickerbocker. It was in this house that we discussed theology and women with equal fervor, played Madden Football endlessly on the Playstation 2 and tried to write our theses (he finished his: I didn't). I parked my car where I used to park my old 240SX; the sound of the motor familiar to my cat, Leo, who would always come running from a corner to greet me as I came home at night from leading a bible study or a day of preaching and fellowship. He would mew, following me towards the house, alternately running ahead of me towards the door, and then back behind me as if trying to hurry me to open the door for him.

The house had changed very little, and I hoped that our ancient landlords, Al and Marie, were still in possession of it and were doing well. They were a dear couple who, for unknown reasons, hated Ron but loved me. Al was from Nove Scotia, and spoke with the heavy accent of a native Norwegian, and Marie could talk (without accent) for hours. And often did: whenever they called on some business, if Ron answered, they always asked for me. I would talk for an hour with her, only to have her come to the eventual point that she was calling for- which usually required an answer from Ron in the first place. They also adamantly refused to allow us to do any yardwork, and there was more than one occasion when he or I would arrive home to find two septuagenarians working and sweating in the yard, clipping, raking and mowing. It was a bit discomfitting, being an able-bodied 20 something doing nothing while 'grandma and grandpa' worked in our front yard.

Despite much change in the neighborhood, this tiny house was still the same, and I wished Al and Marie health and happiness in these later years. I climbed back into the car and drove away, this time heading west again on Marine Drive, my destination this time being the scenic drive that led to the University of Bristish Columbia campus (or as some of my Chinese college students called it, the 'University of a Billion Chinese'), to see my old seminary one last time.

The road to UBC was populated with bikers, taking advantage of the warm weather and sun, cycling earnestly as frustrated drivers tried desperately to find space to pass them. Slowly the caravan I was in made it onto the main college drive and the road opened into a few lanes.

Once free of the bikers, I was able to circle onto "Theology Lane", or "Religious Row", thus dubbed because there were 4 different theological schools all within blocks of each other. In fact, often I would have a class at Regent College, and then have to literally run the 3/4 of a mile to Carey Theological School (where the sorely missed Stanley Grenz taught) to make my next class.

It had been a few years since I'd last seen Regent College, but there was no mistaking it as the sun reflected off the multi-windowed front which always seemed to have a slight tint of green to them when the sun shone directly on them.

The seminary itself was locked for the day, but the square in front was still open, and in my mind's eye I could see seminary students sitting with Ross, the homeless man, sharing a meal with him and talking some near-blasphemous theology. He was radically irreverant, but had adopted us just as much as we had adopted him, and I had been one among many students who shared a lunch with him on cold winter days. It was and is a socially progressive school, and Ross never went hungry, nor was he ever pressed to 'accept Christ'. 'I believe in God, and Jesus and the Virgin Mary and all that,' he told me once, 'I even talk to them now and then. They've done alright by me.'

I hope we did alright by him, too.

Despite the addition of a couple of walkways, and what looked like the broadening of the lower level where the library was kept, the school appeared largely unchanged: this architecturally unique building that caught my breath the first time I lay eyes on it. Even the laughably small student parking lot remained unchanged, holding enough parking spaces for maybe 20 students. If they carpooled. Progress and priorities.

While there was so much more that I wanted to see- downtown, Broadway, Burrard and Georgia St, Stanley Park and the Lion's Gate Bridge- but these were long diversions from the one place that I had to go to: The Lord's Love Church, where I had served as an assistant- and then associate- pastor for 3 years.

I remember driving up to the church for the first time in June of 2000, for my first interview with the church leaders. I almost didn't get out of my car. It looked run down and unkempt, the grass uncut and the stain-glassed windows either had mis-matched panes or was broken: even during the three years that I worked there, I was never able to figure out which.

The cement walkway that led up to the entrance and the nave within was cracked and pockmarked, and as you stood from the sidewalk looking up at the church, the upper portion of the apse had Chinese characters written on it, with the English title written in much smaller letters below it. The ONLY reason I exited the car that day of my interview was the rationale that this would be a good experience in interviewing for church positions. It was to be a lesson in honing my interviewing skills and articulately answering theological questions thrown at me quickly. I planned to go that far in the process, and then pursue it no further. I had no idea that I would eventually fall irretrievably in love.

Driving up in June of 2008, almost eactly 8 years to the day that I first saw it, was like driving up to it for the first time again. It was still in need of a paint job, and the grass in front desperately needing cutting. The sign board out front still proclaimed Rev. S.Y. King as the reverend, though he had retired even during my tenure, to finish his book on the Psalms. I had the privilege of being mentored by him for a year. A gentler, more humble man I have never met, but with a sharp wisdom that either belied or augmented his 85 years of life. Working with him had been a singular, unforgettable honor.

SPOILER ALERT: Here's where things get 'religious'. Mac, if you're reading this, you may or may not find this interesting, but I think it is germane to past discussions.

Standing there in front of the church, it seemed like it would have been the most natural thing in the world to reach into my pocket, retrieve my keys and enter the church, making my way back to my tiny office in the tiny main church office.

But this was mine no longer: someone else now occupied it, and it- all of it- was no longer my job. My job has changed now. I am soon to be a father, and I am preparing for that. My job is to provide for my family. To love and support my wife, to make money for the company that now employs me.

So I stood there, in front of the church, in the middle of a dying afternoon, while behind me on the sidewalk turbanned Sikhs and Chinese students walked back and forth. And at that moment, I closed my eyes, clasped my hands, and prayed.

I prayed for forgiveness, for it has been long since I have done so, and even with the best of intentions there is much need for forgiveness. I prayed for those people who called this church home- whether I knew them before or never knew them at all. I prayed for peace within those dilapidated four walls, and for the Spirit to bless and work within them.

And then I prayed for myself.

For a season, I had been called to them- for whatever mystical, humorous and ultimately cruel reason- and had been so lucky to have been there, with them, for that season. I don't know if I did them any good, but I know they did so for me- and maybe that was what it had all been about, anyway.

And so today I prayed for the NOW- the immediate. The 'here'. And it was for nothing, other than for the guts to finally surrender and accept another calling. Not to the ministry, not to the church. There is a fine line between 'practical joke' and 'outright cruelty', and I have no wish to tap-dance along that dangerous line.

Mac, and all others exploring this framework of thought, forgive the young Jedi bucking the wisdom of the master, but there is no Saturday for us. I appreciate Eugene Peterson's attempt to try and answer this obvious gap we live in, and of course the famed Willard tension between 'now' and 'not yet'. But Peterson is as much a poet as he is a theologian, and there are times when what at first analysis seem analgous simply does not have any correlation.

'Saturday' is despair. It is hopelessness. It is the crumbling of every thought and dream you've ever had, and it is the bitter divestment of identity, as everything you had seen and believed up till then has been nothing but dust.

When I think of the dicsiples, those clods who couldn't believe that Jesus had died (never mind the fact that he'd been predicting it from the start of his ministry), the only thing they knew is what they had bought into was a lie. They had seen bread multiplied and the dead rise. Some had seen him transfigured, while all of them had seen him take on the established orders of the day... and win.

And now this. Christ died yesterday. Tomorrow, he will still be dead. In a few days he will stink, despite the lineaments and oils rubbed into his brusied skin. In a few years, dust. And it is not just the waste of the last few years of their life, or the future and the stigma they will now have to live under: these followers of the slain 'messiah'. The worst, and what is most unimaginable to Christians nowadays is that, with his final cry (had they been around to hear it) and last breath, everything become meaningless.

We do not live in a pre-resuurection world. We do not live in that Saturday, and our while our lives are filled with struggles and confusion, we still have that ultimate hope that the disciples lost when Jesus breathed his last. I appreciate Peterson's attempt to articulate the confusion and tension we live in, but it is not without hope. No matter how hard we try and identify with that Saturday, we know about Sunday. We know what happens then.

Our tension and difficulty is not living in hopelessness, but rather it's living within befuddled hope. What he is doing at present, as we wait for the 'kingdom now' is as confusing to us as it was for the disciples when they heard Christ's proclamation at the heighth of his ministry that he came to die.

I am at the busiest, craziest hurricane of my life now. And today as I stood at the foot of the church, looking up at it, I wondered today just as I wondered then: 'what the hell am I doing?'

If you had pulled me aside on that first day of work when I had been hired by the church, and told me that I would suffer a breakdown, lose my ministry, not finish seminary, live in squalor doing penance, then pull forward out of it, get married, find a 9-5 job making decent money, have a child on the way and be moving back to California (a place I vowed never to return to)... I would have never entered that church, for I wouldn't have wanted that fate. I wouldn't want the failure, nor the pain.

But now, having made it through the shit, I wouldn't be anywhere else in the world.

There are times when my head whirls, and I have no idea where I got to where I am. But I am here, and during the roughest times of all, I still believed. I didn't want to, and I feel guilty at the times when I felt hope, for I felt I wasn't even deserving of that palliative gift. But it was there. I didn't know the future, I could only live in the moment. Maybe some people want to call it 'Saturday', that soul-crushing day after crucifixion but before resurrection, but it is not. Because I knew, even in my most despairing moment, of the risen Christ, and even in my bafflement and self-castigation I could not divest myself of this belief.

If Christ bore the sins of the world on his shoulders, it was the disciples who carried the despair of loss and meaningless on their shoulders for us.

For a day.

We do not need to live in 'Saturday', for they did so for us.

I closed my prayer, left the church, finished my errand and turned towards home. I felt called to be there.