Invoking Inspiration

I was taking a few moments to reflect on how life has progressed in the past months, and reviewing my blog entries in the process.  I realized that, while I have told the following story many, many times to many, many people, I haven't put it on paper (or digitized it, as it were).  So here we go, the short version: how did I get here?

When I was in college, I found myself to be an atheist.  For all the things church and religion had to offer, I just couldn't find a place where they spoke to me.  What did I believe?  Well, I thought of some connection between the people of the world, the plants, the animals, and the earth.  I couldn't quite explain it, but the best equation I could come up with was the Force from Star Wars.  I also believed in signs, and followed them as best I saw fit for me.  I thought of this as the world speaking to me in a very confusing and non-specific way.  Whatever it was, it came down to really just trusting what my instinct were telling me.

Of course, my instincts weren't telling me anything after I finished college.  I didn't have a job, so I moved in with my grandparents in Colorado.  I've always lived close to my maternal grandparents in my life.  After my parents divorced when I was very young, I lived with them (as well as my sister and mother) in Lincoln, Nebraska.  When my mother moved us out to California when she finished college, my grandparents followed for their own reasons six months later.  Though my mom and grandparents moved many times in the Bay Area from the time I was in kindergarten to the time I was in college, they never lived more than an hour apart.  So even when I lived in Omaha, Nebraska, with my dad for some of my elementary school years, my grandparents were always there when I visited my mom.  And, of course, I moved in with them in Colorado less than a year after they had moved there, and then they came back to California less than a year after I did.

Especially by the time I finished high school, I didn't have a very good relationship with my father.  Well, it's not that it was a specifically bad relationship, but more like it didn't really exist.  We were down to seeing each other one week out of the year.  Since I lived near my grandparents, I looked to my grandfather as a father figure in a lot of ways.  He was the one to take me to baseball games in San Francisco.  He was the one that helped me find my first nice suit jacket to wear.  He took me to the beach.  He taught me how to garden.  Actually, he taught me how to transform a garden thought moving flowers, installing planter boxes, laying bark, and lots and lots of digging..  He spent time with me that I otherwise would have missed in any male role model.

My grandfather was a minister, as was my grandmother.  He experienced his life as providing love for all those he encountered.  He was a leader in early movements to legalize gay marriage.  He found social justice to be not a dream for tomorrow, but a way to live life today.  And he passed these things on to me.  Even though I moved away from church, sometimes as fast as I could, the lessons and ideas he taught me stood firm.  One I cherish: in all the time I knew him, I can only recall one time in which his patience was pushed to the limit enough to yell at me and my sister, a stark contrast from my dad.  I strive so hard to do the same.

My grandfather also had Alzheimer's disease.  It was hard to watch him deteriorate as I lived with my grandparents in Colorado.  It seemed worse with each passing day.  I worked at Walmart while I lived with them, and the time I spent at work kept me from spending time with him.  I didn't complain, because I had to work, and I tried what I could to do my own things while still spending time with him, to try and be a solid foundation for him.

After three years in Colorado, I moved back to the Bay Area, and my career continued to grow.  I was promoted to Assistant Manager after my grandparents moved back to the area as well, and so my ability to spend time with them diminished even more, and of course his condition continued to worsen.  I remember looking at him sleeping in reclining chair in their house one day, feeling he wouldn't be around much longer at all.  So when I got a call at work one day telling me he had a stroke, I figured this was it.  We more or less spent his last week with him at the hospital before he passed after the whole family had finally gathered.

I listened to all the stories of his life in his memorial service, and I was in awe.  Imagine all of the incredible things in his life he did, and imagine all the things I hadn't done in mine.  There were so many ways I wanted to be like him, and helping people was another.  I suppose I did that at Walmart by providing goods at a low cost for people who didn't have a whole lot of money, but that wasn't it for me.  I felt best helping people directly, and I needed to find a way to do that.

Flash forward six months, and I had figured out there was something I would be so excellent at: becoming a minister.  Of course, there was one small problem: I still thought of myself as an atheist.  But then I had a conversation with an old family friend, another minister who I respected very much, and she asked me about this connection I experienced, and if that connection could be God.  Amazingly, I hadn't considered that before.  New perspectives are always inviting to me.

The next month, I quit my job at Walmart (another story all its own), and three months later I was at the Pacific School of Religion.

I don't know where I'm going from here, or how I'm getting there.  Even in those moments of doubt, I take a minute to remember why I came in the first place.  I am here to love.  I am here to help people.  I am here to continue the work that my grandparents started.  I am here to honor the memory of my number one hero.

Today, I celebrate my grandfather's birthday. He is part of that connection, the mystery of the spirit of those that come before us and those yet to come.  This year, he turns 86. I know as long as I cherish his memories and live his legacy, he isn't gone.  Every day, I am proud to have his spirit in me, and to honor the love and peace he sought every day of his life.

Rising Waters at Night

I don't know if I've ever told this to anyone before.

I usually can't remember my dreams.  I'll wake up and know I had a dream, but I can never remember what it was about.Of course, this wasn't always the case.  The first dream I can remember involves a bunch of ninjas swarming our house in the middle of the night, and me quite easily fending them off.  I was maybe five when I had this dream.  Triumphant me at an early age.

I also remember having a recurring dream type.  I say that because it was never the same dream, but it followed a similar storyline.  Also, I don't think I'd call them nightmares, because I wasn't really that scared during or after them, but I would were bothersome.  They also led to some nights of less sleep than usual.

They involved tsunamis.

Last night was another one of those nights.  In fact, I had two last night, one for each time I fell asleep.  The characters and places always change in these dreams, but the story essentially follows as thus: there is a tsunami warning called, we all head for higher ground far into the realm of safety, and then the tsunami turns out to be much, much worse then we thought.  No matter how much higher ground we find, the waters rise with us, coming up behind us so very quickly.  There is a lot of damage, but as far as I can remember no one ever is actually hurt.

But the waters rise far above all of our expectations, and there is no escape from them.

We found out about the devastating earthquake in Japan late last night as we closed down La Vals for another Thursday night of fun.  I can't even remember the conversation we were having when it all disappeared so quickly.  One person pointed to the television and we all stood transfixed by the images.  Shaking, fires, and rising waters destroying everything that got in the way.  A few folks made some necessary phone calls, but mostly we just watched what happened, and what continued to happen.

We commented on how you could tell where the coastline was supposed to be, how the area behind it was full of expanding water, and how the huge area of sand revealed by the ebb of the water was quickly filling with a massive wave ready to strike again, adding more to the destruction.  It was horror.  I can't imagine what it would be like to be there.

After we all came home, I stayed up later trying to learn more.  It was an 8.9 earthquake, fifth most powerful in the world since 1900.  The tsunami watch wasn't in effect, and then it was for Hawaii, and then it was a warning for Hawaii, and then a watch for California, and then a warning for California.  I thought of friends in Japan, and I thought of friends up and down the west coast.  I thought of friends who had families in those areas.  I thought of the church I went to on Sunday, a Japanese American church I aspire to do my Field Education at, and I took a moment to remember thanksgiving for living high on a hill, far from the shaking and out of danger from the rising waters.  I also remembered that I live mere blocks from a fault that could unleash our own catastrophe at any second.  I sent my love to those in peril, and wished them the best of all possible outcomes: safety and peace.

I went to bed around two in the morning, but I wondered about those dreams I used to have about tsunamis.  Perhaps that's why I know what I'd do if I was at the beach during an earthquake.  I'm not sure if you could run faster than I, not because I run in fear, but, because of those dreams, I have a healthy respect for the power that mother nature can unleash from something I think of as so beautiful every other day of the year.

And the dreams returned.  Climbing ever higher, we found each house after one before, battered by the waves when we entered, falling away into the churning sea as we left.  In these dreams, I often turn around to see a wall of water hundreds of feet high coming straight for us, overtaking the rest of the rising waters.  The wall of water hits us, yet somehow we survive.

I woke around five this morning, after the first dream.  I grabbed my phone for updates, and found the tsunami was hitting Hawaii, but thankfully there wasn't much damage.  Blessings for the early warnings.  I tired to get about to sleep, but it took almost two hours before I finally found peace again.  Except not, for here was dream number two.  How do tsunamis find their way to Nebraska?  How do I survive when the water crashes through the broken windows, filling the house I'm in again and again.  And this was a house I grew up in, no less.

I woke again at eight, in time for my alarm to go off, as it does at eight every morning.  How am I to go to a meeting on four hours of interrupted sleep?  Right, others would love to have that problem right now.  I turned on the TV to find the tsunami hitting the Bay Area.  Not much damage at first, and then we see the boats in Santa Cruz breaking moorings and crashing into each other.  Juxtaposed with the sinking boats was the image of surfers paddling out to ride the reverberating waves.  People cried about their lost boats.

We didn't hear much else on the news for a bit about how Japan was getting on.  Was this because it was the middle of the night?  I couldn't muster empathy for the lost boats of Santa Cruz when there was the specter of lost homes and lost lives across the world.  All I can think of is love, peace, and hope, and doing what I could to help, even if I am halfway across the world.

To help, you can donate to the UCC effort with an online donation, or a check sent to your local church or the Wider Church Ministries (details for both are on the website).

Or, you can simply donate to the Red Cross by putting an extra $10 on your cell phone bill next month when you text REDCROSS to 90999.

Sometimes I feel like there are rising waters in my life I'm running from, trying to keep my head above the turbulent water line.  Life can be overwhelming. Maybe that's why I dream of tsunamis.  But in my dreams, I always somehow make it through, just as I always make it through life somehow.  For some in Japan yesterday, as in so many other natural disasters we've seen in our lives, there was no making it through somehow.  I pause to remember them, even though I did not know them, for the loss of one life is a loss for us all.