40 for 40 (January 2020)

The goal of 40 for 40 is two fold: (1) I want to take some time (a year) to slow down, stop reading so much new stuff, and (2) create space to revisit books that I have loved or considered formative to this point in my life.

Part of the quest is to fight my propensity to consume. I love reading new things and that’s not bad, but it does make it hard to deeply digest, or to go back and revisit. New is always better, right?

So, my hope this year is that I’d spend some time reflecting on the journey to 40, sit with some past favorites, get to know the “old Steve” a little better, and see if these books I’ve loved have aged with me, or if they are simply relics (ebenezers) from the past.

I began with Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. For the past 15 years, if you had asked me: “Steve, what is your favorite book,” there’s been a 90% chance (or better) that this would be my answer.

I first read this book in the fall of 2003 on the advice of one David Crowder. I met him at a concert that my friend was running lights at, and I asked him what I always ask people: what is the best book you’ve read this year? He said, “Everything Is Illuminated.” He had just released Illuminate (coincidence?).

I re-read the book two more times: once on a trip to India in the fall of 2004, and again (in hardback for the first time) in 2007.

All three previous readings were in my 20s, pre-marriage, and well over 10 years ago!

My takeaway re-reading it now: it is a young man’s book.

It’s still amazing in many ways. Hard to believe the author was in his 20’s when he wrote it. The scene where he describes the Nazi’s coming to take over his grandparents village is still one of the most harrowing passages in any book I’ve read.

It’s a book about memory and making sense of the stories that have produced us.

And it’s great. But as I said before, it is a young man’s book.
Full of fury and urgency and sexual tension.
Full of longing and a desire for everything to mean something.
But not as weighty as I remember it feeling 15 years ago.

Young people have, and can express deep wisdom.
And getting older is no guarantee that we will grow in wisdom.
And yet…weight. Everything Is Illuminated just feels lighter now than it did then.

Which, interestingly, is sort of what the book is all about: memory, how we change and grow and evolve as people, how the perception of an event changes depending on our moment in time and our proximity to that event.

It’s a brilliant book, written by a brilliant young man, and I mean that in the best sense possible.

—————

Next up is The Book of Lost Things. There was no method to choosing this book next, but it makes for a fascinating contrast.

The Book of Lost Things is also a clever and a wonderful bit of writing about memory and tragedy and processing the traumatic events we experience in life. (First read in the fall of 2007.)

John Connolly reimagines classic fairy tales as the main vehicle for his narrative. I remember this technique being more shocking the first time around. I don’t know if I’ve just read more gnarly things, or watched too many movies, but there was very little shock value during this reading.

The particular copy I have has a big section at the end that gives the reader the background on each fairy tale and I had never read that before, so this experience was much different simply by taking the time to read through all that information.

I found the experience of reading this book much easier than I remembered it, but the ending was no less meaningful (and it is one of the best endings to any novel I’ve ever read).

And it’s the ending that gives the book weight and that provides a sharp contrast to Everything Is Illuminated. This is an old man’s book. It has less urgency, but more weight to it.

And so, my initial response, two books in to this adventure, is a sense of (a) relief. I confess to being mildly concerned that I would be devastated by “old Steve’s” taste. But, (b) also a sense that it is good to be in a different place than I was back then.

Can’t wait to share more next month…

40 for 40 (2020 Books)

Yesterday I published my 2019 book list. Check it out.

Today, let’s talk about 2020. Happy New Year!

I turn 40 this year. This milestone is obviously a time to pause and reflect, and one thing I’ve decided to do is to set a very different reading goal for the coming year. (My other big goal is to try to run a marathon).

This goal comes from two places. First, our church community is thinking a lot about spiritual formation and disciplines this year. One of my personality traits is to constantly seek and acquire new information. This is not a bad thing. But sometimes I can get caught up in needing to always be reading the “new” thing.

So part of my goal this year is to cut down the flow of new information, go a bit slower, and revisit some of the things that have formed me over the years.

Which leads to part 2: I’ve read a lot of things and been deeply formed by a lot of what I have read. There are a number of books that have been extremely important at different moments, but many of them I haven’t revisited. Some of those moments are now many years old. I’m interested to see: were these books I loved about that moment in time, or was there something timeless about what I was encountering?

Either way, it will be an interesting means through which to reflect on my 40 years. My hope is to then post something here about each book, what the original moment was like, and what it was like to read that book again at this stage of life.

A few ground rules: I could only pick one book from an author, even if I REALLY like that author (I did make one exception to this rule, but rules are made to be broken). I also sometimes picked a book that was more representative of the author, and not actually the book I enjoyed the most (this will make sense later on when I do the reviews). I also picked 39 because I want to leave room to remember something or change the list if needed. Finally, I tried to pick books from many different eras of my life.

Here’s the list:

Books of the Year

This year I got back on track and achieved my reading goal: 75 books! Here are a few that stood out to me (in no particular order):

Category 1 (Spirituality/Theology):

The Year of Small Things: Life in Davis has created a sort of reverse culture shock for our family after years of living in the “hood.” There was a moment on the soccer field this fall where we discovered that a family on our team was looking at the two houses for sale in our little development. The dad made it very clear they were really only looking at the more expensive of the two. That type of thinking is extremely prevalent here, and so figuring out how to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly is actually more complicated than we expected. This book has been a good gift to us, creating a lot of great conversations about how to live counter-culturally in this place we find ourselves in.
The Kingdom Life: Our church community is going to be experimenting with a year long journey through various spiritual disciplines, so I read a ton of spiritual formation books this year. This was the best book on formation I read. It is a great blend of theological reflection and practical ideas. Plenty of content to generate conversation as well.
Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: In all of that formation reading, this book stood out, partly because Ruth is the best, and partly because this was the one formational book that focused on the life of the leader.
ReUnion: Every year there’s a book that ends up on my list, and in retrospect I have no idea how or why it did but I am sure glad that it did. Here’s 2019’s version. Bruxy is character, but his writing and thinking is extremely refreshing. This will be one I go back to often in the coming year(s).
Faith Formation in a Secular Age: Hands down this was the most consequential book I read this year. Fair warning: it is not easy to read. He repeats himself a lot, he quotes many, many people, there are a billion footnotes, and a lot of terms that are not familiar to most outside of academic circles. But it is so good and so important for any church that is serious about mission in the 21st century.
Honorable Mentions: Formational Children’s Ministry, Good News For A Change, The Color of Compromise, Desire of the Everlasting Hills, Raising Disciples, The Strangest Way, Faith For Exiles, The Making of An Ordinary Saint

Category 2 (Non-Fiction)

The Away Game: There are a million, billion, fascinating stories happening all the time, and one of the gifts of books is discovering what a few of those stories are. Here’s a great example: the story of the Football Dreams academy and the search for the “Next Messi” among African teenagers. Fascinating!
The Good Neighbor: Mister Rogers has experiences an incredible resurgence in this cultural moment. The book is excellently put together and does a great job exploring Rogers’ faith background as the foundation for his TV philosophy.
Improv Nation: If I had to pick one book for book of the year, this is it. Some books tell great stories, some books are full of incredible ideas and information, and some books are just brilliant writing. And then there are books where the author pulls of all three. And this is what we have with Improv Nation. A wonder to read, while at the same being informative and full of unreal stories.
The World As It Is: Some will write this book off as Obama propaganda, or an attempt to justify a particular career era (by the author), and it may very well be both of those things. That said, what this book really is is a reflection of the toll positions of power take on people. Spoiler Alert: the toll is significant.
She Said: This book is being heralded as an inside look at the story that launched the #metoo movement, and it is that. But once again, so much more is going on here. In our era of deep distrust of the media, this book is a case study in just how deeply researched news stories that comes from major publications are (and have to be). Sure, some stories get published too soon or without enough corroboration, but if you want to know what really goes into reporting big, breaking, stories check this out.
Honorable Mentions: The Job, The Power of Habit, Atomic Habits, I’ll Be There For You, Talking To Strangers

Category 3 (Fiction)

Simon Serrailler Series: I’ve spent the last two years reading various mystery series, and this one is great. It’s very character driven, very British, and can be a bit slow (in comparison to a typical American detective novel), but it is so, so good. These are great novels that happen to be about a detective, rather than detective novels.
There There: Some debut novels make you wonder how did this happen? How did this thing come out of someone who had never done this before? This is one of those books, plus it’s a fascinating look at the city of Oakland.
Honorable Mentions: On the Come Up, Witch Elm

Seeds

He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.” Matthew 13:31-32

In our public discourse there is a lot of noise, a lot of bombast.

In reaction to the noise some people keep turning up the volume,
while others bury their heads in the sand.

The Kingdom that Jesus speaks of often looks more like the latter,
but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

The Kingdom comes in hidden,
small,
seemingly insignificant ways,
but it’s far from head burying,
or piously removing oneself from the fray.

The Kingdom operates in an entirely different mode.

With that in mind I would like to briefly tell the story of my friends at 1951 Coffee Company. 1951 (named after the year the UN created the official Refugee status), is the brainchild of Doug and Rachel.

Doug has been a committed member and servant at our church for a while,
and it has been a great pleasure to root him on.

Doug was working for a non-profit serving refugee’s in the East Bay (Oakland has been a sanctuary city for years and is one of the largest refugee resettlement areas on the West Coast). When the job became more about serving the organization than the population, Doug and Rachel started searching for something else to do.

Their idea, of combining their (and the Bay Area’s) love of coffee with job training, started to gain some traction.

The past year plus has been a wild ride of getting established as a 501c3, starting the training program, fundraising, and seeking a permanent space.

Our church cafe has served as the location for the training program. 25+ folks have been through a two week process and graduates have gone on to work in many local shops and cafes.

The organization found a great spot in Berkeley, started work on remodeling, and recently opened their cafe space.

And right after opening, the Executive Order effectively putting a hold on refugee admittance to the US came down. The timing could not have been better for business, and 1951 has been getting all sorts of great press.

I am grateful to have been witness to this journey,
and there are two things I especially love about this story:

They did it. A lot of people (myself included) have great ideas that never come to fruition for a whole bunch of different reasons. It’s hard to see a vision through all the way to the end, and while they are far from done, 1951 crossed a significant finish line in January, a line many great ideas fail to reach.
They haven’t ended persecution, stopped the mass-migration of peoples, or eradicated dictatorships, but they planted a mustard seed, and it is growing. As it’s branches grow, I’ve been amazed at how many people have been involved in the process. Many of these folks are from our church community, but all over the bay area and the world too. That’s the power of the growth of a kingdom seed.

In a world with a lot of noise,
I am, more and more,
looking for mustard seeds.

And I am looking for folks (myself included) willing to do the hard work,
the cultivating work,
for these seeds to grow.

I can find hot takes and big headlines without looking very hard.
But, I want good stories and better art, not more hot takes.

There is a lot of quiet good happening below the surface,
under the radar,
off the big grid.
Do we have the eyes to see it?

Seasons (Or: Hey, I Still Have This Blog)

It seems blogging has become a once-a-year exercise!
Between two full-time-working parents,
a 4 month sabbatical for our lead pastor,
and long, long list of other circumstances,
here we are: a year between posts.

Which means, let’s talk about seasons.

Life is full of rhythms and patters:
day and night,
school year and summer,
the literal four seasons,
and more metaphorical seasons like “your twenties.”

It just so happens this big season we’ve been in neatly filled the 2016 calendar year. Kind of nice how that worked out.

This season was, probably, the toughest of our lives.
Sure, other seasons have been more intense,
more tragic,
more challenging,
but this was a year of unrelenting demands
and logistical hurdles
unprecedented for our little family.

Another way of saying it: 2016 was the most adult year of my life.
Thusly, I’ve found myself pulled by the two great temptations one faces when in a challenging season.

First, the temptation to go back.
Back to a (perceived) “better,” or “easier” time.

It seems this is the great desire of our age.
Perhaps its information overload.
Perhaps it is fear about a changing world.
I’m sure many others have argued these points more eloquently,
but there is a surge of nostalgia for the past.

Whether that’s a simpler cultural era,
a less tumultuous political environment,
a more pure church,
whatever it might be,
there are powerful voices calling us backwards.

On a personal level, new seasons require a kind of grieving.
A chapter is over, and a new one is beginning,
and it’s okay to mourn the end of that era.

But, you can’t go back.

And even if you could that season changed you
and this one you are in is changing you
and if you could recreate that time
you are not the same you.
It would not be the same experience.

And then there’s the small matter that God is always going before us.
The story of God as revealed in scripture is a story that relentlessly moves forward in time.

I fear for those wanting to go back that they will miss the God who is out in front of them calling them into a better future.

Second, there is the temptation to fast forward.

I have an old friend who always reads the last chapter of a book first,
and then works their way back towards that already known ending.
That is one way to a read book, I suppose,
but it is not possible in life.

Fast forwarding your way through a challenging season may feel like a good idea, but it will short-circuit your growth. There is a reason you are here and there’s something to learn here and the question is will you learn it? Have you woken up to what is happening right here in this place?

Now, I feel the danger of this post slipping into some sappy,
just enjoy the moment, man,
kind of application.

There’s some truth there,
but if this year has taught me anything it is that
the truth is grittier than you might expect.

Per usual, nothing helps me learn and appreciate all of this more than our kids.

We have a four-year old and a two-year old.
One of my struggles in parenting is that when we leap over a hurdle with our oldest, I have a hard time accepting we still have to get over that hurdle with our youngest.

For example, there have been sleep hurdles,
discipline hurdles,
potty training hurdles.

And when we get past one of those (say potty training)
it feels like a huge victory.
That season is over!
Except it isn’t,
I’m still changing diapers.

Sometimes I want my youngest to catch up with the oldest so we can track together and jump these hurdles together (i.e. more efficiently). But that’s the temptation to fast forward and it is an illusion.

The other challenge of parenting is you wake up one day
and all of a sudden your baby can talk back.

Or that kid who you were terrified to drive home from the hospital with
because you realized you had no idea what you were doing,
is now going through the school options process,
and will be in kindergarten before you know it.

And nostalgia creeps in, and you (I) want to go back.

The gritty truth: these challenging adult seasons require a lot from us.

Most of all it requires that we show up,
day after mind-numbing day,
to make the next batch of oatmeal,
and wipe the next round of runny noses,
and purchase the next round of groceries,
and pray,
and punch in at work and do your best job even if you are tired,
and sit with the next round of broken people try to make sense of their lives, and park yourself in front of the computer to type the next sermon,
and point people to bigger truths when no one knows what truth is anymore,
and pray,
and share good news with whoever will listen,
and shake the dust off when they won’t listen,
and make sure the car has enough gas in the tank,
and call the friend you know is hurting,
and pray,
and write the thank you note that needs to be sent,
and read the same Curious George story for the millionth time,
and fold another load of laundry,
and in the middle of all that know that God in that place.

It’s Been A Year

A year ago I dropped Amy and the kids (one of whom was only 4 weeks old) off at the airport. I then turned around and began packing up a yellow Penske truck with all our worldly belongings.

Some sweet friends helped with the packing and the cleaning.

Then there was a pipe to smoke, a meal to eat, a few final goodbyes, and then off to the airport again to pick Dad up and start the drive west.

And so, here we are. A year in California. Almost a year in Oakland.

I’ve been through 3 major transitions in the last 10 years. First, Salinas to Durango. Then Durango to Boston (with the added bonus of bachelor to married man). And then Boston to Oakland.

Each transition involves a loss and a gain.

An embracing and a letting go.

Over the past year, I’ve actually really struggled to know what those things were as I’ve processed this experience and this transition.

It may turn out that as another year comes and goes I discover that what I thought I was embracing and letting go of where not really the thing.

But, this is the best I can say at this point in time, a year out.

Letting go? The thing I was a part of had an aura around it. It was cool. It was new and fresh and moldable and had good graphic design and your pulse moved a little faster when you heard about what we were up to.

There were questions and debates and creative thinking and good books were read and discussed and argued over and the envelope was pushed.

Not so much in the new thing. Now there’s more of a weekliness, a grind, a steady pace, and a walking with brokenness in broken places.

Bottom line: it’s not as cool.

But, the embracing.

The embracing of being wanted, instead if simply needed. Of transformation, not just creation.

Embracing being embraced.

Embracing all the strange and unexpected steps that led to this particular moment in this particular place.

The point is not which is better. The point is living into the moment and opportunity that is present right here, right now.

I’ve never been good at that, so the opportunity to learn how to do this is a gift.

To embrace.

All Joy//No Fun

It has been a while since I’ve posted here. One of my goals for the new year is to get back into a rhythm of blogging.

So we begin with a new reflection on parenting. Since the last time I posted anything both of our kids had birthdays, and so we now have a 3-year old and a 1-year old. Which is crazy. Where did the time go.

Anytime I think about parenting I think about the title from Jennifer Senior’s excellent book.

Some people freak out about this title because it feels sacrilegious to question being a parent at any level. Others roll their eyes in a jaded, sort of, “tell-me-something-I-don’t-know” way.

I find most parents, especially of younger kids, tend to go to one of these extremes. Happy-to-be-doing-this roboticness, or totally unsubtle resentment that these little people have robbed them of their “old life.”

Is there a better way to hold the tension?

Parenting is certainly not “no fun.” I have so much fun with my kids. Especially now that they are able to do a lot more and play and jump and talk (well more so the older than the younger, but they are both very interactive in their own ways).

But it is hard.

Our youngest has had a much more difficult time with teething than the older and I’ve spent a few midnight moments in the kitchen trying to rock him to sleep with the help of the humming refrigerator. Precious moments in some ways, but not exactly fun.

Discipline: incredibly important, but not a hoot!

Parenting is also not “all joyful.” There are some painful moments of recognizing one’s own selfishness and broken patterns of behavior.

There are painful moments of seeing those patterns show up in your kids.

There are painful moments of seeing selfish and broken patterns show up in your kids that you know didn’t come from you. They’re just there.

There’s an incredible potential in these tiny humans to break our hearts and if you have any kind of imagination you can see that potential early on.

And yet, there is so much joy. Dessert Friday. Visiting Grammy and Papa and G. Going to the park. Playing catch. Jumping Jacks. Reading books. Dinner together. When the oldest disobeys and then says to you: “Daddy, I want to be in right relationship.”

Live with that paradox parents. The old life is gone, this is a new stage, a new season. And it’s messy and frustrating and thrilling and boring and good.

And it will be transformative, if you let it.

Trust In the Slow Work

I have a list somewhere of posts waiting to be written, but my list has been sorely neglected in recent times.

In part, this is due to the glorious fact that life is very full right now.
Not overly busy or hectic, but full.

My productivity in the everyday world of work and family has left little margin for musings in the digital realm.

The other part of this writer’s block, though, is due to grief.
There’s been some stuff to grieve on our end.
Personal stuff like grandpa and transitions and the hard work of letting go.

But there’s also been a lot to grieve on a larger scale as well.
Shootings and division in the church (globally) and all sorts of variations of darkness.

I don’t often know how to respond to many of these things in my own daily life, let alone in this space.

So, I’ve sabbaticaled from blogging and really from engaging on-line in anything other than the Warriors and our family adventures. Like Job I felt the need to “proceed no further.”

Which has been quite refreshing actually.

I think the great, evil, seduction of the digital age, and of blogging in particular, is you craft something and you put it out there and there’s an implicit hope/desire/belief in an immediate response.

Whether examining my own life, and my own failings, or lamenting the unceasing darkness pervading our world, I am easily seduced by this immediacy. By action and results.

Things should change. Now!

The Jesuit philosopher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said: “Above all, trust in the slow work of God.”

To do this, I think, means being connected
(not in the online sense, but in the everyday sense),
to actual work in the real world.

I feel the pressure and the pull, especially as a church leader, to do or say something incredible.

Chardin reminds me that incredible things happen when I eat dinner with my family.
And discipline my kids.
And read the Scriptures on a daily basis.
And listen to and pray with and for hurting people.
And slog through the difficult work of creating a different kind of community.

In the last week or two I’ve seen some pretty amazing glimpses of light,
cracking through these dark times,
and it’s those beautiful,
flickering beams of light that help me keep trusting in the slow work.

Rejoice With Those Who Rejoice

I’ve been around church(es) for a long time now, so I’ve heard my fair share of references and reflections on Romans 12:15.

“Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.”

The vast majority, if not all, of the references/reflections/sermons I’ve heard on this verse have to do with the second part, the mourning part.

Usually when something bad happens we like to say this as a reminder of our duty.

Mourning with people is extremely important.

Mourning with people exemplifies empathy, sympathy, and emotional intelligence, not to mention spiritual maturity and the sacrificial love of Jesus.

But, why haven’t I heard as many (if any) references/reflections/sermons on “rejoice with those who rejoice?”

And what does it even mean to rejoice with someone? Does that mean giving them a high-five, or a pat on the back when they are pumped about something good in their life? Or is it something deeper than that?

I think it is easier for us to mourn with those mourn.

Positively, pain binds us all together, so I think it can be easier to access those emotions and connect with someone experiencing pain.

Negatively, I think we get a sort of “hit” from coming alongside someone and walking with them through their pain. This is not necessarily bad, but I think mourning with someone puts us in a helping role, and we tend to feel good about ourselves when we help someone.

Sharing someone’s joy doesn’t give us quite the same sort of ego hit that mourning does.

I’ve found rejoicing with others to be really hard to do personally, and I’ve felt its absence, in my own experiences, in some pretty profound ways.

In a competitive world it can be hard when someone else achieves something, or reaches a new stage of life, or is just simply celebrating a level of success that we haven’t reached yet. Seeing someone else succeed might make us insecure about our state of life, or disappointed in what we haven’t accomplished.

In other words, rejoicing with others seems like a bigger test of character than mourning.

Rejoicing with others requires a true sense of humility. To truly share in someone else’s joy means that we are totally focused on the other. So focused that their joy becomes our joy.

And that’s hard to do.

But, this is one of my new life goals. To revel in their success and fun and excitement as much as I would my own.

I want to be great at rejoicing with those who rejoice.

The Gift of Good Words

I am absolutely convinced, as an avid reader, that books find me more than I find them. They find me in all sorts of ways (Amazon’s crazy algorithms, word of mouth, browsing a good bookstore), but they are finding me a lot, these days, through the recommendations of my wife.

A book she shared with me that has been speaking to us in this time of moving and transition is Bittersweet by Shauna Niequist. The book is a meditation on change: change that comes through loss and pain and gaining and growing.

Her words have been a good gift to us.

Here’s some fun words about California:

I have a thing for California, possibly because the four years I lived there during college were the wildest and most disorienting years, punctuated by some of the sweetest moments in all my life. Possibly because California, both in its geography and its personality, is so many worlds away from the Midwest that just being there makes the world feel bigger. I love California for its otherness…

Amen.

Many of the life events she reflects on, miscarriage, parenting, leaving a church/church job, finding new community, moving “home,” are very similar to the big things we’ve been through in the last 3 years.

Sometimes there’s only so much processing you can do on your own, and you need someone else’s words to express what you’ve been through. Or, you just need to read and know that someone else has been through the same thing and felt the same things you’ve felt.

Anne Lamott says the best sermon is: “Me too.”

And in all the truthiness of that thought, Bittersweet has been the best kind of sermon for us at this season of life. I resonate deeply with this:

I wanted for this bittersweet season to be over. I felt so strongly…I’d be free to move into another season, one of life and celebration. But this is what I know: they’re the same thing, and that’s all there is. The most bittersweet season of my life so far is still life, still beautiful, still sparkling with celebration. There is no one or the other, as desperately as I want that to be true. This season wasn’t bittersweet. Life itself is bittersweet. There’s always life and death, always beauty and blood…Life after death…I’ll celebrate the resurrection of Christ with everything in me this year, pleading for a resurrection inside my own battered heart as well.