murlough23's Xanga

The Great Depression

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:11:16 GMT

Have you ever been depressed? I don't mean just a little bit down, having a bad day, or even a bad week. I mean slogging through a dull fog of emotions ranging from apathy to total frustration and anger, with even the things you normally enjoy the most offering little solace, for months on end. A true "dark night of the soul". If you haven't, it makes it really hard to understand when someone is going through it. If you have, then knowing other folks go through it too hopefully helps you to feel a little less like a malfunctioning reject.

I'm not depressed at this stage in my life. But I remember three distinct points earlier in my life where I can definitely say, looking back, that I was depressed. Sometimes I wonder if there's something I can glean from those times that might enable me to be more compassionate toward folks who seem to be going through it now.

I went through my first depression during late 1996 and a good chunk of 1997. Basically, the holiday season and the entire second semester of my sophomore year of college. The superficial reason for it was that I was bummed out over unrequited love - had a crush on a very good friend of mine that just wouldn't go away despite her indicating very clearly on more than one occasion that she wanted nothing more than friendship. So what, guys and girls both get depressed about this sort of stuff all the time. But it ran a lot deeper than that. It was a self-worth issue, being frustrated with my singleness, berating myself constantly for not being attractive or socially savvy or just plain "cool" enough for any woman to ever possibly be interested in me, much less the one I was darn sure I wanted to be with. It wasn't even like this person had rejected me and given me the cold shoulder - she was still a trusted friend who put up with a lot more of my insecure whining that honestly anyone should ever have to be put through. But my fixation cost me my self-esteem, and that started to gnaw away at my faith, making me think I wasn't good enough to deserve being over it and living life with an optimistic outlook again. For the first time, I truly questioned whether God would find me worth saving if something serious happened to me - like when I came down with an awful flu a week or so before the end of winter break and my temperature went through the roof. Over the semester that followed, a lot of the things I believed were deconstructed and put back together, and I slowly came to accept that salvation wasn't about me being a good person who proved himself worthy of it, and God's love wasn't always about giving me the thing that I assumed would make me happy. God loved me by answering a lot of those prayers with a resounding "No", and by taking away some of the things I had previously put my security in. I didn't get the girl. (Thank God; we both ended up marrying much better mates in the end!) I couldn't weasel my way out of the bad feelings by being the social center of attention and planning an awesome spring break trip. (I co-ordinated a camping trip at Joshua Tree, and my buddy's car broke down on the way, so we never made it.) I was totally unqualified for the summer job I wanted to get so that I could stay on campus and be around the girl I wasn't supposed to be with. I was stubborn. God was stubborner. But through that process of realizing what God's love looked like and what it didn't, I learned not to be so hard on myself, and to accept what seemed like a setback as a potential opportunity. I healed a lot during that difficult summer, and began my junior year of college honestly feeling like a new man. Boy. Whatever.

The second depression came in 1999 and lingered with me throughout the early part of 2000. Religious paranoia over the whole stupid Y2K thing was a factor, I'm ashamed to admit. I actually entertained the notion that it might all end and I'd be left behind to deal with the chaos, again doubting my own worthiness and missing the point of my supposed faith completely. Nearly going broke due to not having the first clue how to look for a job after finishing college was a more practical part of it, though - by the time I finally got hired and was bringing home a paycheck, I was surprised to find that the constant nervousness didn't magically disappear. Now I had to adjust to this new life - minimally furnished apartment, cooking my own food (mostly ramen and hot dogs in those days), no convenience of all my friends being right down the hall. And a very busy girlfriend who was growing weary of my constant stress when she did manage to free up the time to spend with me. Ironically, I had two of the things that I wanted most and feared I didn't deserve to have - I was in a relationship with someone who actually found me attractive, and a company had actually hired me! But the shock of adjustment was too much, leading to panic attacks (then again, that might have just been too much caffeine) and a constant feeling of things being way beyond my control. I saw a doctor about it in early 2000, believing that I was about to have a heart attack or something, only to be told I was young and healthy and just needed some medication to temporarily balance the chemicals that were going wacko in my brain. By the end of that year, what had once been terrifying - the prospect of being out in the world with my own job and my own income and basically calling my own shots - turned into something exciting. I learned to enjoy my freedom and not cling so much to other people to define my worth. And I dumped a good amount of my silly superstitions in the process. That changed my faith pretty radically - it made me see God's plan as a thing of infinite possibilities instead of one strict road that you get zapped for not following to the letter. It primed me for the church that I would end up checking out on the final day of that year, and that as of today, I've never left.

The third, and most recent, depression happened at a time in my life that's going to make most of you single people want to throw blunt objects at me. It happened right after I got married. Truthfully, it started earlier in 2005, as the stress of planning a wedding caught up to me and I had a lot of miscommunications with friends who couldn't make it and just got frustrated with a lot of people. It wasn't just having stuff to do - it was that feeling of losing control and not having that day I'd dreamed of for so long be the perfect thing that it was supposed to be. I'm sure a lot of people go through that sort of stress and have to learn to let go of the particulars when planning a wedding, but I don't know that it leads most people to long bouts with depression after the fact. Nearly running out of money had a lot to do with it - my hypochondriac nature got the best of me, and I was down at the doctor's office or the allergist's office way too many times that year, convinced I was on the verge of suffocating or going into anaphylactic shock after eating the wrong thing. My old car pretty much blew up the week after we got back from the honeymoon, and I still owed Christine's parents money for the wedding. (Her dad graciously forgave that debt.) It wasn't so much a depression full of the panic attacks and constant fear that I recognized from earlier bouts - this one was more about raw anger. Just when I thought I could do some good for another person and feel better about myself in the process, it would backfire and leave me angrier than before. And poor Christine - I was in such a funk that she had to take the reigns, plan fun outings, even insist we go away to San Diego one weekend just to get me away from it all. She was a trooper, never once letting me have the full brunt of the frustration she probably felt over me ruining what were supposed to be some of the most carefree days of our lives together. Ironically, that depression seemed to dissipate all at once on the day of my grandmother's funeral. Strange thing to say, because I was dreading going to the funeral of a relative I was close to and facing other relatives on my father's side of the family who I felt bad for not keeping in touch with. Christine helped make that day easier by suggesting a peaceful walk through a Japanese Garden earlier that day, and then at the funeral, I felt embraced by family members who I had unfairly expected to react to me with indifference. Wounds from the past closed up just like that. The future suddenly had surprising possibilities. And as 2005 closed out and 2006 began - the first year in a while where I didn't have to make big plans and prove what I could handle and be in control of everything - I vowed to enjoy that time that we had, simply to be together with no looming worries on the horizon. And 2006 was one of the best years of my life, largely because of the way that 2005's trials whipped me into shape.

So I wonder about loved ones who seem depressed right now. I wonder if we get this way because there's some lesson we failed to learn, or if it's much more of a pragmatic thing, like our sleep patterns are funny or we ate too much or not enough of some vitamin or chemical and that makes our brains go haywire. I wonder if the sustained periods of emotional funk people go through are some sort of a message, perhaps even God's love in disguise. A sort of renovation, if you will. I suspect that we shouldn't trust our emotions, that "Follow your heart" can sometimes lead you to the absolute worst place you can go, that we have to be honest about how we're feeling but not let those feelings dictate our decisions. I can't say if that's true for anyone other than me, because I don't walk in anyone else's shoes and because I'm not God. But I know that depressions's more normal than a lot of us - especially Christians - care to admit. And if we could just be honest about that, maybe somebody going through that struggle now would feel just a little less alienated and a little more like there's a promise of meaning and purpose and the ability to crack a smile again at the end of that tunnel.

U2 Concert Review: Blessings Are Not Just for the Ones Who Kneel

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:53:16 GMT

I was well aware, when I bought tickets to see U2 way back in April, that I was getting myself into a potential logistical nightmare due to the size and scope of any U2 tour. But having never seen the band live before, and having a reasonable minimum of commitments in my life now that I'm likely to never have again for as long as this band continues to exist with its full membership intact, now was the time to finally make the pilgrimage. But thanks to Ike and Joyce, the friends who ended up sitting with me, we didn't have to worry about parking at all, AND we were able to work a little exercise into the experience, by way of parking at Ike's office and walking the mile and a half to the Rose Bowl. It was a perfect evening for it, being neither too warm at sunset right before the show, nor too cold at around midnight as we were heading back. Aside from the idiot loudmouthed evangelicals on the street yelling at the droves of people to repent as they flocked to the stadium (seriously people, have you listened to U2's music? Those guys'll do far more good for God's reputation in the world than your picket signs and megaphones ever will), and the veritable amoeba that we had to squeeze our way into just to get through the gates into each successive level of Dante's Inferno, it was an enjoyable trip.

The Black Eyed Peas were the opening act, and even though all we could hear from the outside of the stadium as we awaited to be let into the tunnels was bass and some fuzzy semblance of singing, it was pretty obvious that they had declared "Let's Get it Started in here", which drove the BEP fans in the group into an obnoxious frenzy as we were pushed and shoved and compressed into a funnel. When we finally emerged on the other side, it was the only moment in my life when I can honestly say I was happy to hear Fergie's voice. To be fair, while it's not my type of music at all, the BEP are at least good entertainers who write catchy songs. If you don't pay too much attention to the lyrics, I can see the appeal of a song like Boom Boom Pow or I Gotta Feeling. And I'll admit to even kind of liking Where Is the Love? At the same time, the utterly stoopid lyrics of most of their songs are tough to ignore, and they seem to engage in more gimmickry than actual skilled performance. The most blatant ploy to win over an audience who likely wasn't overrun by rap fans was when they invited Slash on stage (I didn't realize who he was at first, and thought, "Who invited Howard Stern?") to play his signature guitar licks during a cover of Guns & Roses' Sweet Child o' Mine, which found Fergie trying her best to impersonate Axl Rose, while the rest of the BEP stood around and essentially did nothing. Entertaining, but it clearly shows who sucks up all the attention in this group. At least we didn't have to put up with Fergilicious.

U2 themselves didn't take the stage until 9:00, despite YouTube advertising a worldwide webcast starting at 8:30. This probably means that they ran over the time limit before the noise curfew was set to take place - this being a stadium in a valley surrounded by residential neighborhoods and all - but regardless, they played more than a full set and put 110% in to their performance. The stage, which had already been impressive to see before we even entered the stadium, due to how the spire at the top of it stuck out above the rim of the Rose Bowl, finally had the full scope of its functionality unveiled, as the massive circle of hexagonal LED screens above the stage rotated and expanded and contracted and proivided interesting angles on the various band members, who frequently left the cetner platform in which they were performing to walk around the outer ring and across moving bridges that joined the two rings, with fans who probably paid a hell of a lot of money in between the rings and sometimes directly underneath Bono, The Edge, and Adam Clayton. The pure visual spectacle was one aspect, but it was also very efficiently designed to ensure nobody had a bad seat with an obstructed view. This explains why the capacity of each show has helped the band to set personal records (and often records for each venue visited) over the course of the tour. I'm normally not impressed by "big and flashy", but I had to admire the thought and creativity that went into this.

Here's how the setlist broke down:

Main Set:

Breathe - Larry Mullen was the first one to take the stage, hammering out the raucous rhythm to this off-kilter opener, which is one of my favorites from No Line on the Horizon, but admittedly a difficult song as far as audience participation goes. It's high energy, and hearing it done live definitely overcomes the problem of weak production that holds it back a bit on the CD. It's more urgent than most of U2's latter-day offerings.
Get on Your Boots - This really should've gotten more of a response; it's such a high energy, goofy, fun song, and a great showcase for Adam's booming bass, which almost takes the lead over Edge's guitar. I think it hasn't done well as a single, probably because it's too similar to "Vertigo", which is honestly a better song, but this was still a blast.
Magnificent - My absolute favorite from the new album - they essentially hit the best three of their new songs right off the bat. I love how this song works on so many levels - it's danceable, it has those cimey guitar riffs that ring out across the stadium like U2's best oldies, it's a very spiritual song and yet it's very romantic, about two people uniting in praise of their Creator because they were simply born to do so.
Mysterious Ways - The first of many beloved classics played that night. Edge's funky guitar lick immediately got the crowd pumped, and while the tempo seemed a little more relaxed than on Achtung Baby, it was an excellent performance and the first of many joyous sing-alongs. No Line appears to be an attempt to recapture some of the sound and spirit of Achtung, so it makes sense that they'd go back to that well several times during the setlist.
Beautiful Day - Quintessential modern-day U2; it's hard to believe this song is almost a decade old already, since All that You Can't Leave Behind was the band's newest album when I finally declared myself a fan, and this song has only recently started to lose its "newness" for me. Old or new, I still get emotional when the chorus goes into overdrive. Bono surprised attentive listeners in the room with a small snippet of In God's Country over the closing notes of the song.
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For - This was the first of many memoments where it occurred to me that I was experiencing something live, here and now in 2009, that had been around since I was a kid. I hear these old songs on U2's albums from the 80's, songs that the world has seemingly memorized and that are "before my time", and somehow it doesn't seem believable to me that I could be actually hearing them live in concert, played by the original artist, and not have it be some silly radio station festival where a has-been band who hasn't done squat in 20 years grudgingly agreed to reunite for the cash while people stood around eating barbecue pork and funnel cake, waiting for that one hit song they loved way back when to be played. These words still ring true - I've met God. I believe. I'm saved. But I still hunger for so much more. I'm not sure how it was related, but they pulled out a bit Stand By Me (which is older than U2's own oldies) at the end of this one.
Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out of - A completely different arrangement, with The Edge on acoustic guitar and Bono on vocals, and Adam and Larry taking five. I still recognized it right away, despite the glossy keyboard stuff being stripped away. I didn't realize until this point that it was Edge who sang the main vocal line during the song's climax. I'm not used to hearing his voice out there on its own - to some extent, he can still hit those high notes better than Bono can.
No Line on the Horizon - Title track from the new CD. It had more of a charging guitar riff and it was more energetic in this context than its somewhat lackluster presentation on the CD, but it still wasn't a huge attention-getter. The material from the new album in general didn't seem to get much of a response. It's not a perfect album, but I think it's added some great stuff to their live sets.
In a Little While - This has never been one of my favorites, but Bono sounded better singing this one live than his ragged take on the album version. I know it's supposed to be "soulful" and whatnot, but he just sounds like he's gritting his teeth all the way through it on the album. They did some sort of an uplink to a "space tourist" on the International Space Station, who recited a few lines from the song's bridge at the end of it. Appropriate, for a stage show that looked like an alien spaceship about to take off.
Elevation - HOOOOO-oooh! HOOOOOO-ooh-ooh! Not that Bono needed any help with the high notes on this one, but we all threw the full force of our lungpower into it anyway. I would've lost my voice at this point if Ike hadn't thought ahead and brought us some bottled water after being brave enough to venture back through the tunnel between sets.
Unknown Caller - By far the weirdest track from the new album, and to be honest, my least favorite. And even this was a solid performance, with the odd, barked-out commands being displayed on screen and lit up like some sort of brainwashing sing-along. Bono was fixated on the words "You know your name, so punch it in", and I'm honestly not sure what's up with all the computer talk in this song, but I appreciate it a little more after seeing them do it live.
Until the End of the World - Continuing with the bizarre and unexpected, this story of Jesus betraying Judas from Achtung Baby concluded with Bono and Edge, on their respective moving bridges, reaching out to touch each other across the chasm, but then being pulled apart at the last second. Which one was Jesus and which was Judas? (I'm hoping Bono was Judas. Just because I don't want his ego to be that big.)
The Unforgettable Fire - Now this was a relic, and it was surprising that they pulled it out in place of a more expected tune from the same album, namely Pride (In the Name of Love). I almost didn't recognize it without the synth washes and "ambient panting" from the album version, but it's about the most "80's-sounding" of any U2 song, so it probably needed the update. During this one, the LED screens began to spread out and form a pattern of hexagons with gaps in between, maintaining the proportion of the images of the different band members portrayed on them - that's some ingenious set design right there.
City of Blinding Lights - The spire and floodlights at the top of the set went all aglow for this one. This was quite late in the game to finally pull out something from How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, but I suppose they wanted to go easy on that album after spending most of their last tour on it.
Vertigo - "Unos, dos, tres, catorce!" My other favorite from Atomic Bomb. Even if Bono can't count.
I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight - On the album, this one has a solid melody but they goofed on the energy by letting Larry take the backseat to the programmed drums. In concert, the drum programming worked to their advantage, as this seemed to be a complete remix of the song. Larry got up from his drum kit and looked thrilled to be joining the promenade around the outer ring of the stage as he banged away on his djembe. This version lacked a bit melodically, but it shook things up, as a song about going crazy really ought to do.
Sunday Bloody Sunday - The oldest song played, from 1983's War. Dude, I was five years old when this song came out. They played it traditionally, letting Larry's militant drum march carry the song. For me it's never gonna kick as much butt without the violin, but it's still awesome in just about any incarnation. Krista told me some couple in front of her and Tim was making out during these song. Sigh. Sometimes I have to wonder whether some of U2's fans even get the magnitude of some of their songs, or care it all.
MLK/Walk On - The main set closed with Bono's tribute to Aung San Suu Kyi, the elected prime minister of Burma, who has the unfortunate distinction of being 19 years late to her first day on the job due to political setbacks that I don't fully understand. Apparently U2's approach is to make noise about it by inviting fans from their ONE campaign onstage, to circle the band wearing masks of Suu Kyi, which is a bit corny, but it gets the message across. This is also not one of my favorite U2 songs, but the solemn eulogy that was originally placed at the end of The Unforgettable Fire as a tribute to Martin Luther King was interestingly repurposed as an intro to a rousing set closer.

1st Encore:

One - Another one of those songs that U2 will probably never get away with not playing. I'm still blown away by the layers of double meanings in this song's lyrics. It was made even more intriguing by a simple chorus of the hymn Amazing Grace tacked onto the end. Never thought I'd be standing in a sports stadium singing that song along with nearly 100,000 people, many of whom were likely drunk or high.
Where the Streets Have No Name - My favorite U2 song from the 80's. It bled in beautifully after the quiet ending of Amazing Grace. Whenever I hear this song, I think of setting out on a long road trip to somewhere new and exciting.

2nd Encore:

Ultra Violet (Light My Way) - Honestly, a strange choice for an encore. It's my least favorite song from Achtung Baby, an otherwise solid album. The chorus of "Baby, baby, baby, light my way" is just too straightforward for its surroundings, and doesn't Crazy Tonight kind of supersede this one by doing essentially the same thing? In any event, the visuals during this one were fascinating, with the band wearing jackets which glowed in the blacklights positioned around the stage, and Bono singing into and swinging on a strange, sterring wheel shaped microphone suspended from the spire above him.
With or Without You - The last of the obvious hits - except for Pride and perhaps I Will Follow, the band covered the bases and then some regarding their oldies. This one's a time bomb of passion waiting to happen - I know what's coming, but it still knocks me on my ass every time.
Moment of Surrender - The odd setlist choices culminated in the mellow groove of this finale, which began with an awe-inspiring effect as the house lights were shut off and only the glow of fans holding up their cell phones was visible, turning the stadium into a vertiable galaxy. I'm not sure this song quite invokes the feeling of euphoria that a band like U2 would want to close a set with, but I love the bass groove and Edge's understated solo. It's slowly becoming a favorite from the new album.

And that was the end, after nearly two and a half hours of uniformly great performances. As we made our way through the crowds and cars and trash and trekked back to the car, a line from "City of Blinding Lights" popped back into my head: "Blessings are not just for the ones who kneel, luckily." Bono audibly made a comment about "grace" after singing that line, and I don't remember what it was, but it was interesting when juxtaposed with his later performance of "Amazing Grace". I wish the obnoxious evangelists standing on the street with bullhorns could have actually experienced the show themselves and heard this. It would have probably fallen on deaf ears if they did, since your hardcore fundamentals are never going to be pleased with a "worldly" band like U2. But that's the essence of what U2 seems to be all about - blessings not just for the ones who kneel. There's something in their music which ignites, or at least highlights, a longing within people who may not come from anything near the Christian background that many of Bono's lyrics come from. There's something universal in many of his lyrics - not in the sense that he's saying "all paths are the same", but in the sense that he can take what he believes to be true and express it in ways that turn the Christian jargon on its head, that those with ears to hear can mull over and be intrigued by. It's not evangelism. There's no agenda. But it's a reminder to those of us with our didactic and pushy ways of trying to get the Gospel out there that sometimes all you need is just to write ans play and sing from the heart, and people will respect that even if they don't agree with it. Maybe they'll even come to believe a little more of it than they used to. But either way, they'll leave at the end of the night blessed by something that maybe they weren't expecting when they came in.

Who ARE these people?

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 23:56:37 GMT

I just hit the milestone of 100 Facebook friends. That's probably pretty laughable to some folks out there who know like 500 people on FB, but since I'm not actively trying to amass friends just for the sake of the numbers, and am trying to keep it to people I've developed some sort of a rapport with over the years (despite how delinquent I might have been about keeping in touch with some of them through venues outside of Facebook such as Email, or that ancient thing called the phone), 100 actually seems like a lot. Some are folks I met recently, who are just starting to impact my life in some way. Some have known me for close to half of my life now. (A few have known me for my entire life, or at least their entire life, but only because they have the distinct misfortune of being related to me).

So, because I'm rather OCD about list-making, I thought it'd be fun to list in order, as best I remember it, when I met the folks I now call "Friends" on Facebook, and try to recall the context, or the mutual acquaintance, through whom I met each of these people. I'm fuzzy on some of it. Some of you folks, I saw around for a while before we were ever formally introduced, so if you remember meeting me before I remember meeting you, then um, oops. It's not that you're not memorable; it's that my memory tends to blur months or even years of being in the same place together. Outside of college (when each year and place I lived was quite distinct), it's all a bit nebulous, but then, how many of you can recall how long you've known some of the people who are most important to you now? Hmmm? Got ya there.

So here's the last, roughly in order from most long-standing relationships to most recent acquaintances.

1978

Gloria Martin (aunt, probably not long after I was born)

1982

Eric Martin (younger brother, when he was born)

1990

Andrea Randall-Luyties (Prevailing Word Ministry, Youth/Jr. High Group)

1995

Lina Tam Yep (Occidental College, O-Team)

Sandra Gallardo (Oxy, through Lina)

Angela Mansfield (Oxy, InterVarsity)

Rachel Hamilton (Oxy, IV)

Jonathan Gunderson (Oxy, IV)

Catherine Quindipan (Oxy, through Lina)

Jen Silverman (Oxy, through mutual friend Mark)

Carolyn Suh (Oxy, through Lina)

1996

Kendra Powell Humphreys (Oxy, through Jen)

Nick Overfield (Campus By the Sea)

Nathan Young (Oxy, IV)

Calvin Liang (Oxy, same dorm)

Jennie Hardwick (Oxy, same dorm/IV)

Krista Blakesley Lucas (Oxy, same dorm/IV)

Tim Lucas (Oxy, IV)

James Berk (Pomona First Baptist, through Tim)

1997

Dawn Sikorski (Oxy, IV)

Jeffrey Chan (Oxy, IV)

1999

Fade Manley (Oxy, IV)

2001

Timothy Hui (Evergreen Baptist Church of Los Angeles, XRoads College/Young Adult Fellowship)

Cheryl Park (EBCLA, XRoads)

Danny Park (EBCLA, XRoads)

Kelsey Tanaka (EBCLA, XRoads)

Natalie Ho Lin (EBCLA, XRoads)

Joseph Espinosa (EBCLA, XRoads)

Kent Sellers (EBCLA, Hiking)

Winnie Wang (EBCLA, Hiking)

Terri Chan (EBCLA, Pasadena Sedaqah Group [Bible Study])

Mark Shimaura (EBCLA, Single Adult Fellowship/Hiking)

Ken Fong (EBCLA, pastor)

Jonathan Wu (EBCLA, pastor)

Francis Su (EBCLA, Pasadena SDQ)

Ada Chan (EBCLA, through Terri)

Lulu Wang (EBCLA, through Winnie)

2002

Christine Martin (Hawaii, online via some cheesy Christian singles website)

Kaomi Ruth Hickman (Hawaii, Christine's mom)

Toby Chi (EBCLA, unknown mutual friends)

Daniel Yee (EBCLA, XRoads)

Emanuel Ramos (EBCLA, unknown mutual friends)

Clara Tam Chan (through mutual friends from Pasadena SDQ)

Connie Huang (EBCLA, randomly at some lunch)

Sta-c Nt (Hawaii, through Christine)

Michele Itsuno (Hawaii, through Christine)

Lori Unemori (Hawaii, through Christine)

San Young (EBCLA, unknown mutual friends)

Tony Chu (EBCLA, unknown mutual friends)

Kalia Young (EBCLA, Hiking)

Keiko Ross (Long Beach, Christine's "aunt in the Hawaii sense")

Angela Hickman (Hawaii, Christine's sister)

2003

Joy Lewis (EBCLA, pastor)

Kai Shen (EBCLA, Chinatown SDQ)

Lori Higa (EBCLA, Chinatown SDQ)

Nancy Iwasaki (EBCLA, Chinatown SDQ)

Maryia Davis (Raytheon, co-worker)

2004

Mailin Young (through Nate)

Kenji Paul Shimabukuro (EBCLA, Church Camp)

2005

Amy Forrest (EBCLA, Passage College Fellowship)

Gabe Yee (EBCLA, Passage)

Raymond Pon (EBCLA, Passage)

Joyce Yu (EBCLA, Alhambra SDQ)

Caroline Chiang (EBCLA, Alhambra SDQ)

2006

Ak Chico (EBCLA, through Danny & Cheryl)

Christy Lin (EBCLA, through Danny & Cheryl)

Mimi Chen (EBCLA, Alhambra SDQ)

Ken Lee (EBCLA, Alhambra SDQ)

H. Michelle Kao (EBCLA, Alhambra SDQ)

Irwin Law (EBCLA, Alhambra SDQ)

Lonnie Yu (EBCLA, Passage)

Courtney Widger (EBCLA, Passage)

Alda Au-Yeung (EBCLA, Passage)

Martolemuel Au-Yeung (EBCLA, Passage)

John H. Lin (EBCLA, Passage)

Vincent Gu (EBCLA, Passage)

Michelle Simpson (Alaska, online via Jarchives)

2007

Carrie Law (EBCLA, Alhambra SDQ)

Rick Bautista (EBCLA, Alhambra SDQ)

Vincent Hua (EBCLA, Passage Retreat)

Dorothy Ngo (EBCLA, Passage Retreat)

William Jones (EBCLA, Alhambra SDQ)

Jessica Wong (EBCLA, Alhambra SDQ)

Deborah Southern (EBCLA, Passage)

John Liu (EBCLA, Passage)

2008

Isaac Gremmer (EBCLA, Alhambra SDQ)

Helen Lee (EBCLA, Alhambra SDQ)

Amy Yang (EBCLA, Branches Young Adult Retreat)

Lucy Yang (EBCLA, Branches Retreat)

Ian Tam (EBCLA, Branches Retreat)

Kelsie McPherson (EBCLA, Branches Retreat)

Carol Ly (EBCLA, Branches Retreat)

Lorena Cheng (EBCLA, Branches Retreat)

Win Dat Lam (EBCLA, Branches)

Reuben Kim (EBCLA)

2009

April Moreno (EBCLA, Branches)

Sheng Hua (EBCLA, Monterey Park SDQ)

Danny Lau (EBCLA, Men's Retreat)

Hsin Foo (EBCLA, Young Adult Ministry)

Joon S Han (EBCLA, Young Adult Retreat)

Esther Chan (EBCLA, Young Adult Retreat)

Joseph Chan (EBCLA, Young Adult Retreat)

Joanne Shoho (EBCLA, through Pastor Ken's Facebook)

Controlled Chaos

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 04:35:06 GMT

OK, so about that Mute Math concert... it's two days later and I'm still reeling. As I mentioned the night of, it was so energetic that it was exhausting to watch. Even though I've seen the band live twice before, there's something truly fascinating about watching a band dance on top of their own instruments, build other instruments out of salvaged electronic equipment, and seemingly rewrite the parameters of live music performance over the course of two hours. The fact that they put this same amount of energy and ingenuity into every show is mind-boggling. And the fact that when it's all said and done, they're making insanely catchy, beat-driven electronic pop music instead of some off-the-deep-end form of hardcore rock or rave music that is devoid of actual song structure or whatever, is the icing on the cake. It might not be exemplified on their albums as well as it could be, but this band has earned any buzz they receive through their live shows.

First you've got Paul Meany, a vocalist who can do smooth and relaxed as well as he does loud and hyperactive, who has an affection for the keytar but is also proficient on the two more commonplace instruments that it's derived from, and who loves to stand on and/or do backflips over his keyboard set. He's been an interesting character to watch ever since he used to do the rap vocals for Earthsuit. A band like Mute Math needs a frontman with pizzazz, but also one who doesn't let the showmanship get in the way of making good music. (Not usually, anyway.)

Then you've got Greg Hill, the guitar man who knows how to match Meany's energy with a highly tweaked guitar solo or a funky chord progression, or even use his instrument as percussion when the band goes into one of their more rhythm-obsessed passages. He also proves quite capable on the xylophone or piano whenever Meany's too busy running around like a maniac to sit still at a keyboard.

Most bands don't have particularly memorable bass players; it's a thankless job. But Roy Mitchell-Cardenas gets to be front and center during a few of his band's extended jams, especially the trippy "Stare at the Sun" and its outro "Obsolete", which find him moonlighting as a percussionist when he's not coaxing some phat sounds out of an upright bass that's at least as big as he is.

And then there's the secret weapon, drummer Darren King, who I've heard only has two arms like the rest of us, but he's never slowed them down on stage enough for me to distinctly count them. He very nearly steals the show out from under Meany on several occasions. It's by design. What other band would let their drummer dismantle his own kit during the encore, hand parts of it to fellow band members, and then go crowd surfing on top of his own bass drum? (This resulted in a wicked attempt at a stage dive that almost resulted in disaster - see for yourself in one of the YouTube clips below.)

Armed with all that musical wizardry, there's almost never a dull moment during a Mute Math show. To be fair, I still have to say that their older material is probably the best vehicle for them to showcase their talents, since a lot of the newer stuff from this year's Armistice came a bit closer to playing it by the rules, with less room for jamming. Those are still good songs and highly entertaining to watch when the band recreates them on stage, but as cool as the riff or bass line of songs like "The Nerve" and "Backfire", etc., may sound, they're compact enough to not leave a lot of room for the open-ended stuff. The single "Spotlight" (which I guess is what got the Twilight fans on board - crappy movie, savvy soundtrack) with its sweet vocal runs and handclapping, proved to be a little more open-ended, as did the funky "Armistice", which led into a bit of a non-seuitur jam at the end. And the album closer, "Burden", which finished out the main set, was definitely designed for that sort of thing... and yet that was the one song that didn't quite deliver. Meany just kept vamping on the line "I just can't hold it together" as the group kept chewing on the same drum beat and melody line, never finishing it off with the slow, contemplative section that provides the album's most profound lyric: "The devil is not the nature that is around us, but the nature that is within us all". It would have been so much more satisfying to have that lead into the final drum solo, but if only five minutes of a nearly two-hour show were a bit tedious, I honestly can't complain.

The songs that really got the audience going were the oldies, of course - the jerky, manic energy of "Plan B", the relentless syncopated rhythm of "Chaos", the bouncy giddiness of "Noticed", and of course the hyper-driven guitar riffs of "Typical". The band knew exactly when to drop these into the setlist for good measure, mixing the old with the new, and the only complaint I can make about the old songs is that several of them seemed abbreviated in comparison to how the band used to play them. We all know that "Stare at the Sun" is really just there as an excuse to have fun with the plentiful solos in "Obsolete", and we all know that "Break the Same" is designed to be a show-stopper to the point where the song itself gets lost amidst the band practically taking the entire stage apart in the process. That's fine. But these songs do have full sets of lyrics; it was mildly disappointing to have sections of them skipped altogether. Again, given how excitingly arranged and sequenced everything was, I really couldn't nitpick that point for too long.

While the band did leave out "Control" and the newer song "Goodbye", two of my favorites, they managed to surprise me with the songs that got included, most notably "You Are Mine". It's a dreamy little slow groove, probably the closest thing that the band has to a pure "love song", and that provided a good break in the exhausting display of energy where Christine and I could just put our arms around each other and drink in the mood. Since most of the new album is about the hard parts of relationships, the points where you choose to call off wars and admit defeat and go your separate ways, it was good to have the more optimistic stuff from the band's earlier days mixed in like this.

The band had a video screen set up behind them, reflecting the motif of the Armistice album cover, that was used to project random clips of old films and such when it wasn't projecting the actual band members in grainy black-and-white. At one point they even used the screen interactively, projecting four circles onto it while Greg Hill stood in front of it with drumsticks, banging out an electronic rhythm on pads that were hidden behind it as the circles lighted up when hit. That was an inventive approach that made "No Response" - not one of my favorites from the new album - come into its own as a much more intriguing song. Also savvy were the jazzy drums and slick upright bass of "Pins & Needles", which the band must like a lot since they saved it for the encore, and Greg Hill's slide guitar solo that filled in nicely where a string section would have shown up in the album version of "Clipping". These guys are quite skilled at making sure every song they play live deviates from the album version in (usually) interesting ways. It should be noted that the marathon encore, which ended with the one-two punch of the instrumental "Reset" and the aforementioned "Break the Same", will probably never sound exactly the same in any two performances. The audience itself almost becomes a part of the act at that point.

Here's the full setlist:

The Nerve
Backfire
Chaos
Clipping
No Response
Plan B
Stare at the Sun/Obsolete
Electrify
Armistice/untitled jam
You Are Mine
Odds
Noticed
Typical
Burden

Encore:

Pins & Needles
Spotlight
Reset
Break the Same

The opening act was a band called As Tall as Lions. I had never heard of 'em, and when they took forever to get going due to a detuned guitar that prompted an "extended ambient intro", I was prepared to expect them to be a waste of my time. But they very quickly changed my mind with some highly danceable rhythms, a real gift for syncopation and odd time signatures, a little bit of Mute Math-style communal percussion, and an "anything goes" approach with dual vocalists, keyboards, xylophones, a trumpet, basically anything to veer left from the typical radio rock sound. (I was bummed that they didn't bring the trumpet player out to help with Mute Math's set - he would have been right at home during the New Orelans-styled "Armistice".) I will definitely be checking them out in the future.

The venue, Club Nokia, kind of got on my nerves. The people there were cool - your mix of big fans who just wanted to drink in the visual and aural spectacle, and the clubbing types who just wanted to let loose and dance. Just watching those folks freak out right in front of us added a lot to the energy of the show, I think. Unfortunately, the atmosphere of the venue and especially the people who worked there just screamed "Too sophisticated for our own good". The security guards, while they have an important role to fulfill to make sure crowds don't get out of hand in a venue like this, were being real jerks, making people turn off their camera phones, interrupting folks in the process of having a good time to insist that they remove the slive of their shoe that was standing on the white line demarcating the walkway that led to the pit, and even telling me and Christine we weren't allowed to sit down and rest our cramped, weary legs in between sets. I could understand that if it were a sold-out show, but come on dude, we were sitting back against the wall and were staying totally out of people's way.

But the most irritating thing had to be the restroom attendants. I'm sorry, but this is a mid-sized club where relatively young folks come to hear rock music, not some snooty top-of-the-line private lounge on the East Coast or whatever. I do not need some dude to help me put soap on my hands and hand me a paper towel on my way out with the hope that I'll feel obligated to tip him! All this does is encourage folks to duck out without washing their hands at all, and contribute to the spread of swine flu. (Yes, I still washed them. And I did it all by myself, thank you very much.) Honestly, whenever a place has a "bathroom guy", it just makes it seem all hoity-toity and I never want to go back there again.

Oh, and I ran into Toby and Monica, a couple from our church, at the show. They used to lead one of the worship teams at our church and I had no clue they were even into this sort of music (I think Monica was still new to it, but Toby insisted he had been on board before Twilight, not that I had surmised anything otherwise). I figure if they can get a sitter and enjoy a night out like this despite being parents, then I shall be inspired to do the same, at least from time to time, when Christine and I are parents.

That's it for the concert commentary. Now, some YouTubes:

"The Nerve"

"Backfire"

"Clipping"

"Stare at the Sun/Obsolete"

"No Response" (from a different show since nobody posted the full song from this one)

And finally, Darren's crazy-ass attempt at crowd surfing:

A Little Church History

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 06:37:26 GMT

I had a funny thought about church today. All it would have taken would have been for a few events in my life to occur differently, and I might not be the kind of person who would want to set foot in a church today. I might not even consider myself a Christian at all. Let me back up and explain that.

I've been going to church in one form or another since I was 3 years old. I'm a little fuzzy on the details even though I've asked my Mom about it several times. All I can recall is that my parents didn't go to church for the first few years of my life - they had both been raised in the church to some extent, but at some point stopped going. My Mom decided she wanted to give it another go, so probably out of familiarity more than any other logical reason, she dragged me and my Dad to the Pasadena Church of the Bretheren. (Is the Church of the Bretheren even a denomination? It's obscure enough that I'm not sure how to classify it.) I can still remember that first day, walking up the entranceway to the sanctuary, seeing the church's name etched into its cornerstone, and pointing out, being the precocious toddler that I was, that it had 3 "R"s. That's one of my earliest memories that still remains intact - even beating out the only thing I remember from age 4, sitting in the waiting room with my grandma while my brother was being born. At some point while I was 3-ish, I must have said some special prayer in Sunday School that declared I was a Christian. I don't remember doing it. It was just this aspect of my life that was always there. I'm not sure a kid that young can be fully aware of the meaning of such a thing, anyway.

We stayed at the Bretheren Church until I was about 12, I think. I'm pretty sure it was around 1990 when we left, though we had long periods of general malaise when we'd skip church for weeks at a time because it got to the point where going was a real burden. The church had been through a few pastors, some who moved away to find better opportunities (one in particular who I really missed because he was simply a really nice guy and he had a son my age and I'd hang out at their house a lot), and one who was basically forced out of his position after some sort of scandal that I was too young to understand, but that in retrospect probably involved the dude cheating on his wife. The constant upheaval hurt this very small church, and since folks were too afraid of rocking the boat to discuss anything openly, people either argued and fought behind the scenes or just disappeared altogether. This hurt the church's resources, and eventually Sunday School ceased to exist, and us kids had to sit in "big church" and sing the boring hymns with the grown-ups, and basically nobody looked even remotely interested in being there. We took off when the average Sunday attendance had dwindled to about 30 or so. My Mom had grown sick of the traditional setting, anyway. I think she had been watching a lot of TBN (!) and she wanted to try something more contemporary. My Dad had also left; I'm sure she didn't see much incentive to keep going to a church where she'd be painted with a scarlet letter for having been involved in a marriage that didn't work out.

Through an old friend who I think my Mom had known since high school, we were introduced to Prevailing Word Ministry, a Charismatic church that had taken up root in what was once an industrial property on the outskirts of Azusa. I had been briefly exposed to these kinds of Christians on TV, but seeing them up close, singing their upbeat songs (which were as close to what I assumed was "rock music" as a kid who was raised on "no secular music" could have hoped to understand at the time), and watching people speak in tongues and get "slain in the spirit" and stuff was pretty wild! I had no idea church could be this action-packed, and hey, I was 12. I was easily impressed by showmanship, and looking back, that's what a lot of it was. I'm sure that there are genuine instances of people skeaping in, and interpreting tongues, and I'm sure that there are some people who have genuinely been healed by others laying on hands and praying for them. But I didn't know how to tell the Carman/Benny Hinn-styled spectacles that were popular among that crowd from the real deal at the time. So what I didn't realize was that a lot of it was just folks getting emotionally caught up in the experience that they wanted to have, and making church all about "the experience" and not really challenging themselves to face the truths of their own addiction to comfort, their own hypocrisy, their own judgmental attitudes. (I say "they", but I was learning as a teenager how to mimic that sort of behavior. It should be "we".)

At some point, I started to figure out how corny it all was. I started to notice the repeated lingo, the things folks said to make themselves sound like they were righteous and fervent and read their Bibles all day and stuff, but I noticed that the behavior didn't line up. I wanted to learn; I wanted to grow in my faith, but I didn't want to turn into a "Bible nerd", you know? I was well aware that I had a very different personality at church than I did at school, and another one when I was at home alone (well, trying to ignore the younger occupant of my bedroom, anyway), writing in my journal, sorting out what I really felt from what I was expected to feel. Couldn't these three things be reconciled? I didn't want to be like some of those kids in youth group who were unruly troublemakers (and there was some stuff going on among some of those high schoolers that I was too naive to understand at the time), but couldn't a guy be a Christian and yet take a realistic approach to how they saw the world?

I will say that not all of my influences at PWM were negative. I still credit one of the youth group leaders, Carol Ann, for getting me into Christian music, and corny as some of that stuff was at the time (early dc Talk, DeGarmo & Key, etc.), it eventually paved the way for me to approach music in general - mainstream, Christian, or just plain obscure - with curiosity. I kind of sucked up every style of music I could get my hands on because I was convinced that there were no types of music that Christians "shouldn't" make. (I didn't get over the "secular music" thing until much later, but moving from hymns to contemporary praise & worship to somewhat modern forms of pop and rock music was a big step nonetheless.) The folks who ran the youth and junior high groups made good attempts to take us on retreats and to get us involved in teaching the lessons. Their efforts just weren't enough to keep a group of kids mostly dragged there by their parents under control. The frayed edges started to show, and we had a lot of weeks where the folks who were supposed to run these programs for the younger folks just plain didn't show up, and we either had to sit in "big church" or get stuck with a substitute who clearly didn't know the first thing about youth ministry and was only there to fill in a gap so that we wouldn't be wandering off the church's property and causing trouble around the neighborhood (which wasn't the safest of neighborhoods). There was all manner of politics and power plays and theological rifts and other crap going on amongst the adults that I was only sort of privy to whenever my Mom got really frustrated about it. But then, I was glad that my Mom could be honest with me about that sort of stuff, that we could talk like adults even though I was still a teenager who just thought he knew it all. It was through those conversations that I learned to ask the honest questions, to point out the incongruities of the things we all say we belive and the things we actually do. My Mom was not only a formative influence in my becoming a Christian, but also in my asking the tough questions about whether I wanted to continue being one.

The tough questions didn't really come until college, though. I was still sort of on "Christian auto-pilot" as I got out of high school and decided to attend a collge close to home that threw a good enough amount of grant/scholarship money at me. I ended up at Occidental, and immediately joined the InterVarsity chapter there. It was the "good Christian thing to do". Folks from my church had me convinced that as soon as I went off to some "worldly" college, people would immediately start trying to tear me away from my faith, but actually, I think the real-world experience of being friends with people who were in that fellowship and also people who were not Christians at all and who had no qualms about voicing their frustrations with organized religions, actually helped to push me closer to God. I can remember how I felt after the first few IV meetings I attended - like this was turning from something I did just to "be good", because it was "expected" of me, into something I cared about and was passionate about.

But that was freahman year. Sophomore year, I got baptized in November, and figure I was home free, like this was the last time I could be tempted to turn away from my commitment or something. Then I got horribly depressed somewhere around Christmas Break, and it took me the better part of spring semester and the following summer to really come out of it. A series of events, all of which were honestly minor in retrospect but which seemed devastating at the time, slowly eroded my self-esteem until my earnest, youthful optimism was suddenly gone. That was a scary time, because faith no longer came "automatically" and I had to ask myself what I really believed. I wanted to just hear some sermon or song that would give me the "right answer" so I could convince myself not to worry about it any more. But the thing that had gone away was something that needed to go away. God was rearranging furniture there, asking me if I still had faith even when what I physically saw with my eyes looked completely hopeless. Was my faith going to become my own, or was it just going to be a hand-me-down thing from my Mom? I couldn't ignore the tough questions any longer. I couldn't pray it away. All I could do was be honest, and somehow I knew that if I came out of this, my faith would be stronger for it.

As for the church I had attended during my high school years, well, I'm glad I decided to stop going home on the weekends so that I could hitch rides there with my Mom. There was no "college group" there, no niche for me, and upon griping to the senior pastor about this, I was basically told, "Well, you've got to find a new niche if one isn't already there for you." I'm kind of glad that I was so put off by that remark that I decided I didn't need that place any more. The church continued to deteriorate until it was finally disclosed that the pastor had some sort of extramarital affair going on. Do you see a pattern here? I Shudder to think that some folks might just check out one church for a short time, or they might be hopping around to churches all their lives, and this sort of dis-interest in genuine maturity, coupled with infighting and harsh judgment and nasty skeletons in the closet, are all they ever seem to experience of church.

InterVarsity wasn't perfect, either. I grew a bit disgruntled with it when I got into my senior year, and some folks had theological differences with the woman I happened to be dating at the time, and I felt like I was getting ignored because I wasn't a newbie and wasn't heavily involved in the leadership. But I credit a lot of the Christians I met through that fellowship and just randomly on campus for keeping me honest, for entertaining my tough questions and sometimes for humoring me when I was having some sort of freakout that kept them up with me until 1 AM, trying to talk me down. God loved me through those people. As hard as it was to find a church that I felt comfortable attending from week to week after graduating (it took a good year and a half), I think that I probably wouldn't have bothered finding one at all if not for those folks rminding me of what was worthwhile about Christian community.

One friend in particular, Angela, had only overlapped with me at Oxy for a single year, but we had developed a rapport and I would visit her church, Glendale Presbyterian, where she helped lead youth group. It was a conversation that I had with her over lunch one day, probably after I had graduated and after she had moved away from L.A., that really smacked me upside the head regarding what I wanted out of a church. I said something to the effect of, "I just want to go to a church where there isn't all of the petty drama and whatnot and people have it together", and I think she made some remark like, "Well, why would they want you?" It probably wasn't as harsh as the humorous way that I like to retell it, but the gist of it is that I'm a broken person and I can't expect to find a place where everyone is perfect. I can only expect to find a place where people can be honest about their imperfections and hope to learn from them and be case studies of God working in human lives.

Not long after that, another college friend, Lina, was back in town for Christmas break and she invited me to visit her old church, Evergreen Baptist, with her. I knew little about it, and at that point I was just ready to find something and settle down. I was never aligned to any particular denomination, and I wasn't at all fazed by the church being mostly Asian, since I was used to that sort of situation in college. So after visiting with her that one week, I basically just kept coming back and planting myself there and realizing how rich and thoughtful the sermons were, how many opportunities there were to get ivnolved with various ministries and small groups, how this place seemed to want to encourage its folks to think for themselves and grow... not just to draw in new folks and then never bother getting them past the baby stage like so many churches do. So this is the church I've called home for almost the last nine years. I'm strongly convinced that if not for God putting certain people in my life, I could have probably given up on church - and maybe the Christian faith - altogether. I've certainly become enough of a skeptic in the last decade or so of my life that I could have missed the point entirely - that I am an imperfect person who needs grace and that I can't prove my own worth by aggregating some list of sins I've managed to avoid or good deeds I've managed to accomplish - and just turned to some vague form of agnosticism or something.

And you know what, I don't blame the folks who have seen the corruption and whatnot among the people who are supposed to be the Church's leaders, and said to hell with the whole thing. I see how easily I could have gone down that path. All I can do is hope we get our act togther someday and admit to our faults and recall that this is the reason we continue to need this Jesus guy in the first place. Without that, we make garbage out of the things we say we believe, and we can fully expect any mention of God or Jesus to be scoffed at.

So that's where I'm at now. I didn't get here by being some goodie-two-shoes. I ended up at the place the place I'm in now by way of grace and nothing else.

What Constitutes a Miracle?

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 03:35:48 GMT

I have a friend who's been in and out of the hospital a few times since giving birth this summer. Something about an abcess that developed in her digestive system either during or after the pregnancy. Though the prognosis looked sketchy, operating wasn't advisable due to the risk of infection, and there were no medical reasons to believe the problem would just go away on its own, I received a report the other day that the thing was shrinking and basically starting to disappear. (I'm over-simplifying here because biology isn't one of my better subjects.)

One side of me thought, "Oh great, that's the miracle we all prayed for", because even though I wasn't one of those prayer warriors logging hours as part of a round-the-clock prayer vigil for this friend, I had prayed for her. I remember sitting in church a few weeks ago, listening to some song about God the Healer that I can't even recall right now but that made me ponder why I had such a hard time believing God could heal my much less worrisome conditions if I fully believed God could heal hers. I didn't really care if the healing that came was explainable in scientific terms or not. I would still have considered it a miracle either way.

But then there's the other side of me, that wanted to know the mechanics of the healing, that wanted to explain it away, even though apparently doctors haven't been able to. (Which is silly of me, but I'm curious about stuff like this.) And then I started to wonder: Would this have still happened spontaneously if I hadn't been one of the people who prayed? What if less than a certain "quota" of people had prayed, or for less time? What if none of us had prayed? Wouldn't it still have been God's will to heal her? My mind boggles over things like this. I'm just glad that the healing happened.

I still recall some of the things that were discussed in a week-long prayer seminar I took at the final InterVarsity retreat at the end of my senior year of college, now an entire decade in the past. I vividly remember being incredulous at tales of prophets and God-appointed leaders in the Bible who had gone so far as to argue with God, to say, "If I pray for this one thing, will You do things differently?" or "If I can find this many righteous men, will you spare this city?", etc., and God actually changed His mind. Either that, or God played along. But I consider God a being to be taken at His Word. I don't think God would say stuff only to deceive us. So it's hard for me to wrap my head around this even though I thought I had the hang of it ten years ago. Why would God change His mind based on my measely suggestions, or even the suggestions of an army of 100 of my friends and family? If I'm sick and it's God's will for me to stay sick, who am I to argue? If it's God's will for me to be healed, why make everyone go through all of the machinations? Doesn't God get what God wants anyway? I say that not to sound selfish... I'm just the kind of guy who assumes God knows better.

And yet I still pray. I don't block out an hour of my morning to pore through the Bible, nor do I take long, regular walks through the woods while speaking in tongues or whatever. (Closest I'd get to that is attempting to sing along to Sigur Ros on my iPod). But I don't tell people I'll pray for them and then fail to do so - I'll set aside at least a few minutes to ask God for that requested favor. Or I'll bring up the request in small group, because for some reason, it's more natural for me to pray along with others rather than by myself. Somewhere inside, I must still believe that this makes a difference, even if I've got that logical side saying, "But wait David, God's smarter than you and has better plans than you could ever conceive, so what's the point?"

It's just interesting to think about this in light of the sermon series at Evergreen lately, on faith and science and how the two do not need to be in conflict. Today Pastor Ken suggested - though he didn't necessarily affirm - the notion that if God set up the universe by creating a bunch of physical laws and constants that humans would eventually start to measure and rely on in their daily lives (and many of which we've probably got left to discover, or will never discover, I might add), that perhaps God could simply set the whole thing in motion, like mixing cake ingredients and setting it in the oven for a certain temperature at a certain time, and have His hand on the world and everything that happens in it without ever "intervening" or breaking those laws. I'm sure you've heard this analogy before. Some refer to it as a "clockmaker". I was first introduced to this idea in college (by the same young woman who first taught me that faith and science need not be in conflict, and who I later dated), and I believed it for a while. Nowadays, I don't think I can commit to that idea 100%. Because it would mean that prayer is useless and that there are no "miracles" in the conventional sense. Everything is explainable, given the right tools to observe it.

My current belief lies somewhere in between. I think God has set up a system of constants and physical laws that will be obeyed 99.9999..... % of the time. But I don't think God just set it all in motion at the Big Bang only to dust of His hands and say, "Well, that's taken care of. Now I'll just kick back and watch the show for the rest of eternity!" I think God sees the need to reach in and tweak things here and there. In some ways, it's a moot point, because God knew at the beginning of time what prayers I would pray today; whether He set the universe up just so to answer my prayer and to not answer some other thing I prayed for, or whether He actually reached in and intervened in my normal biological process to heal my body, seems to be a rather trivial thing to argue about. Isn't it a miracle either way?

I can't answer any of this. But I still feel compelled to pray even though my instincts fight it. And I am still grateful that my friend is being healed. I'd love an explanation of how that miracle came about... but I don't need one.

Revolution Retreat Reflections, Part 2

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 20:06:46 GMT

So here comes the harder part of reflecting on last weekend's Young Adult Retreat - considering the things that were taught and how I will respond to them. Normally it's pretty easy for me to summarize this sort of thing, because the take-away is usually more of an adjustment to my mindset that will enable me to more easily see God at work in my life and the lives around me. But this time, the task is harder. Because if I talk about this and fail to do anything about it, it becomes more than just the usual "back to reality after a mountain high" sort of personal letdown. Letting these lessons fall on deaf ears would seem to go against the very spirit of why I believe in this Jesus guy in the first place. If I understand correctly, that's quite a grave offense.

Let me start from the beginning. Joon's first task was to debunk a lot of the assumptions that many of us "churched" folks had about Jesus from what we were taught growing up. We're used to hearing sermons from the writings of Paul - that covers the lion's share of preaching in a lot of American churches. The end result is that we focus the most on Jesus' death and resurrection, how to get saved, and how to adhere to a system of moral codes. None of these are inherently bad things. Christanity can't exist without the crucifixion and resurrection, without grace saving us from the thing we can't save ourselves from. And God does call His people to a certain standard of purity, one that we're probably all going to fall short of and in which we need to constantly realize our need for grace, but one that I think will better our lives if we stick to it as best we can. That's fine. The problem is that we've made Christianity so much about those behavioral parameters and about just getting people to pray the salvation prayer that we've ignored the years of Jesus's ministry leading up His death. And there are a lot of hard lessons in there that we seem to admire, but that we rarely seem to implement. If one really listens to what Jesus has to say, He talks about things like false piety, and the love of money, and the need to love the misfits and outcasts God loves, more than He ever seems to talk about sex or politics or addictive substances or foul language or whatever the hot-button issues are in most churches that get people all offended. We've set up a sin hierarchy that is not only theologically false - it makes us run the risk of failing to represent to the world what Jesus was really all about.

What we've essentially got is a problem with false piety masking laziness and apathy. We like to use a list of "do not"s, even down to specific words that you're not supposed to say in church (and Joon seemed to have a lot of fun bursting that bubble!), to cover for the fact that we don't give a crap about people in need, and that we're too wimpy to go the trouble of loving people in truly sacrificial ways. Joon asked what would happen if God took a hard look at our bank accounts and our calendars. We can be at church all the time and engage in our "quiet time" rituals and spend a lot of time and effort on things that, in and of themselves, aren't bad. But we often use those to feel better about our own personal "holiness" while our ability to affect positive change out in the real world is anemic at best. That's how I interpreted it, anyway. We sing and preach and pray about things that we don't actually go out and do. We love people in a "donation way" - we say, "Oh, I guess I could scrounge up some spare change or maybe a couple hours of my time for this cause - I won't miss it." We're not very well equipped to love until it hurts. We still trust in our own ability to provide for our own needs, and are unwilling to trust God to do that if we sacrifice on someone else's behalf to the point where we can't guarantee keeping ourselves in the black. hat's a hard one for me. It flies in the face of my pragmatic approach to life, that says I'm not well equipped to care for others if I can't guarantee I'll be able to take care of myself and my own family. (And I even struggle to let members of my own family or close friends depend on me on an ongoing basis. I'm stubborn about expecting to "teach a man to fish" and trusting that I won't have to keep "catching him a fish". I'm more of an empowerer than a sacrificial giver. I expect people to take care of themselves for the most part after I give 'em a little bit of assistance.)

But look at what Jesus has to say to people who spent their time acting holy, like they were close buddies with the guy, and who never learned to care for the "Jesus in disguise" that exists in this world's poor people, rejected people, despised people. People who we like to tell that God loves them, but who don't see the God in us acting to truly bring them into the family. Jesus's take on that sort of behavior is to say "Depart from Me, I never know you". This is harsh. It's scary. it doesn't quite jive with the meek and mild and loving Jesus we see in paintings. This guy still died to save me from those sins of apathy and pride and selfishness, right? I figure grace must be able to cover those, too, but the concept that people who claimed to know Jesus will turn out not to know Him in the end is downright scary. I want to know Him - not just for the sake of self-preservation (though there is that!), but because it seems like it will truly make me a better person and that in turn will enable other lives to be touched through my flawed life. I want to be used for more glorious things than I could accomplish on my own, but I'm afraid of the commitment. It's easier to just do some "random act of kindness" to assuage my conscience every now and then.

I fear that writing something like this and posting it on the Internet will prove me to just be a big blowhard who likes to hear himself talk when a few months go by and I've done nothing that is truly sacrificial. Or that it'll just look like I did it to show off. But who cares about what I'll look like? That's the thing that keeps me from acting on the things that the still, small voice urges me to do. Isn't it a good start if I can simply respond to the call, just show up for that first time, and know that I was not the cause of it, nor does the credit need to be mine for being part of it? That's a good baby step. I'm not creative enough to have some genius plan already mapped out for helping the oppressed or whatever. For now, I'm gonna have to let more ingenious minds with more malleable hearts take the lead on that, and be smart enough to get on board when it happens. But man, if the rest of this year goes by and still nothing had changed for me, I'm gonna be righteously pissed off at myself for hearing but not listening.

So, there you have it. That's why this retreat kicked my ass. It was a loving rebuke from a God who I figure loves me enough to not let me keep the blinders on forever. But paradigm shifts are hard. I'm gonna need a lot of mercy to get through the trial and error and fear and worry that I know I'm gonna come across if I ask God to truly change me based on what I've learned. But at least I know that, stubborn and lazy as I am, God hasn't given up on me.

Revolution Retreat Reflections, Part 1

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 05:56:47 GMT

It's natural, after returning from a church retreat, to have everyone ask, "How was the retreat?" It's almost knee-jerk, like asking "How's married life?" after someone's honeymoon or "How's the new job treating you?" during someone's first week in a new cubicle. But beyond the superficial "Fine." or "Good." or even "Great!", it's hard to answer such a question. Retreats don't last as long as jobs or marriages. But I think it can take time to truly figure out whether you were affected by a retreat in some lasting way, or whether it was just a mountaintop high to be cherished through pictures and in-jokes recollected later. All I can say for sure now is how I would like to have been affected by this retreat. But my oblique Facebook status remark the other day about how it kicked my ass wasn't just me being a goofball. It honestly and truly did. And now I have to hold myself accountable to not forget about it.

I'm still processing the meaning of the things that were taught - things which I agreed with, and in many cases even sort of knew intuitively before driving up there on Friday. So while that's probably the most important component of how the retreat went, I've got to mull it over a little more before I can really say what sort of a "revolution" it's going to spark within me. For now, I've decided I'm better off sticking to the logistical and recreational aspects of the retreat - stuff that might not involve a preacher imparting hard truths, but things that I think will hopefully play a part in how the retreat affected us all.

First, the logistics. It's amazing how much I took it for granted that retreats "just sort of happened" when I was in college, and even earlier in my church years. It takes a lot of people playing a lot of parts to plan out how to get a group of people out to a campsite far enough from civilization to bring them away from the worries of their daily lives, get them to interact with each other, and give them space to ponder and discuss what God is doing in their lives. This year, as part of the core team for the Young Adult ministry, I got to see that process in action, and while I don't feel that I contributed all that much other than the occasional "Will this work?" reality check and volunteering to co-lead a small group and lead worship on the last day (none of these things seemed particularly hard... well, more on Sunday morning later), I was amazed at how seamlessly the rest of the team pulled it all together. This was the retreat that was intended to breathe a second life into a ministry in the process of re-imagining itself. And I think it did that nicely - establishing what we as young adult Christians want to be about instead of just reinventing the same old social club. Joon Han was the perfect speaker to invite in order to bring up a topic that would really light a fire under people. But that's stuff I'll cover in more detail in Part 2.

Forest Home was a good spot to pick for the retreat. Being in a different section of the camp made it feel like a new place, which is good, because sometimes when I have retreats in the same places year after year, I expect a retreat to have the same "feel" as the previous one. The food was mostly good - a bit iffy when they got Asian food confused with a tropical theme complete with dry beef on Saturday, and mushy fruit at breakfast, but other than that, the meals were solid. There was no shortage of fun things to do during free time, but alas, the accommodations were a bit lacking, so I wasn't well rested enough to really get out and do much. I don't expect much from any camp in that regard - sleeping on a thin mattress in a wooden cabin with 8 or 9 other guys is always going to be difficult for me since I'm such an insomniac. But Friday night was about the worst night I've ever had at a retreat - too much light, too many noisy things going on outside, too warm and dry, and I got a backache from the small space I was cramped up in and the hard mattress that made tons of noise every time I moved. If not for the iPod to drown out the ambient sounds and lull me to sleep at least briefly (ironically, it was the music of Grizzly Bear that finally did the trick), I'd have been really pissed when I noticed the first rays of the Saturday morning sun peeking into the cabin. I must have slept 2 hours total. The following night was only marginally better. So I tried in vain to nap during Saturday free time, then woke up and found a note from Christine saying to meet her at the lake, and I hiked up to the lake and all over the campground and didn't find her until dinner. She had gone to the pond and was apparently waiting for me. So we both kind of wasted that afternoon. Oops.

You know what was really good about this retreat? Small groups. I don't consider myself much of a leader, which is why I was the only one who asked for a co-leader. As it turns out, Hsin-Hsin and I barely needed to do much other than get things going with a simple question or two at the beginning of our group times. She valiantly covered for me (as did Vincent!) when I was exhausted on Saturday night and blanked on what questions we were supposed to be discussing, but for the most part, the group led itself. You folks all know who you are, and you were very insightful and you challenged me about the idealism of living in Christian community vs. the tricky realities we have to navigate when we don't like certain things about the people we're called to love. Y'all were also troopers, putting a solid amount of thought into the very first group discussion even though everything ran late and it didn't even commence until 11:30 at night. Maybe my mind was still trying to process all that, and thus I couldn't sleep that night. In any event, that was a great experience and probably the emotional highlight of the weekend.

As for lighthearted fun stuff, the time that got wasted on Saturday afternoon was made up for on Saturday night when some folks suggested that we all lay in a grass meadow and stargaze. A few of us tried to do our nerdy best and explain some astronomical concepts like why planets glow and why they appear brighter than stars and how long ago the light from those stars was actually emitted, etc., but we were all at a loss to name any constellations. (Someone spotted Cassiopeia, I think.) There's something about the energy of getting a bunch of folks out in a strange place in the middle of the night, amped up on sugar from the s'mores they just ate at the campfire and rapid-fire smart remarks abounding, and just laughing yourselves all silly and just thanking God for the blessing of these funny people around you that you can't even see. Oh, and using all of that giggly energy to make lots of noise so you can scare away the bear that was rumored to be lurking nearby. And postulating on who would have to be sacrificed should the bear choose to attack. Good times!

Sunday morning was rough going. Jeremy, a worship leader from Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena whom Joon had invited to give the weekend a soundtrack, had done such a solid job (including introducing the group to the David Crowder Band song "Revolutionary Love", which I now had the tricky task of playing after him in my much more rudimentary, un-amplified style) that I was a bit intimidated about how my wavering early morning voice and beat-up guitar (which didn't seem to want to stay in tune due to the altitude) would carry on that spirit of worshipful reflection on the truth of how God loved us first and how we could better love others. As I joked when talking to Joon about how we were gonna handle the trade-off between my songs, his preaching, and communion, an off-key noise was still a joyful noise, right? Maybe. I was all nerves that morning. Came very close to starting "God Is Smiling" in the wrong key and confusing people. Then the projector went out in the middle of the more "reflective" songs, so I was like "Let's sing this last verse, just our voices", and people were like, "Uh, we don't have any words." (Thank God a few folks knew "O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus." Such an underrated, solid hymn.) But setting aside any snafus, I think God used that time. It humbled me. It reminded me that my best attempts at worship were broken if I couldn't go out after the singing of pretty songs was done and act on the convictions expressed within those songs. That's the part that's still the challenge.

You know, I used to view the "worship leader" types as the really deep and reflective ones who probably prayed a lot, were extra quiet and patient, who never got tired of the songs they sang, etc. And I've always been frustrated because when I do the "quiet time" thing, I don't really want to talk to God. It's not that God and I aren't on speaking terms. I just feel like the traditional means of seeking God out haven't really worked for me as much in recent years. So when we did quiet time on Saturday morning, I didn't ask for stuff. I just sang a few of my rudimentary, off-key songs and then just kind of sat there, wanting to know what God had to say. Knowing God's words would definitely be a lot more interesting than mine. And I didn't hear big, booming voice out in the forest or anything. But that day, it was like God was saying to me, "I've still got so much good stuff to give you through these people that you're in community with. You'll know it when you hear it. And it will knock you over and make you uncomfortable." And thank God for those people who are willing to say those hard things - whether it be preachers like Joon or Pastor Ken or Pastor Sharon, or whether it be the hard but good words of a friend who is brave enough to rock the boat when I've done something unloving. Without those people willing to be vessels, I'd still be living off of a Sunday school, apple-juice-and-graham-cracker faith. Don't know if I can claim to be light years beyond that maturity-wise, but at least I've got folks who won't stand to see me fail to grow. That's where the revolution begins.

So yeah. I'll address the ass-kicking soon.

We Are All Made of Stars

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 04:42:29 GMT

It amazes me that so many people of faith seem to fear science, and that so many who pursue science as their livelihood seem to scorn faith. I've taken it for granted that the two can be reconciled ever since the beginning of my junior year of college, when I had a discussion with a freshman physics major who also happened to be a Christian (and who I later dated for a couple years, but that's another story), who stated that she did not see any contradiction in reconciling these two things. It's one of those things that was intuitive to me even before then, but maybe I was afraid to state it, to say anything other than the pat answer about everything in the Bible being true word-for-word, and thus things like the Big Bang or Old Earth or evolution were outside the realm of possibility. I was afraid of the kinds of heretical accusations that might get thrown at me if I dared to suggest that something might be a metaphor, or a simplified way for God to explain things to an ancient people who could not grasp the concept of billions of galaxies with billions of stars in each, or even really the concept of a billion at all. Somewhere along the way, I stopped worrying about receiving about those accusations. And though I've known for a while that I belonged to community of Christians at my current church who encourage rational thought rather than running from it, it was affirming to hear a sermon on the subject of Creation and the science behind the Big Bang, and how the two things didn't necessarily have to contradict one another.

Of course, if you try to explain anything scientific in a setting where not everyone is a student of science, you're bound to have half of that information go over everyone's heads. Even though Pastor Ken brought up a deacon who worked at JPL and had solid working knowledge of the science behind the Big Bang theory, it was too much for a lot of folks to grasp. Part of it even lost me. But I was fascinated just to hear stuff like this in church, stuff that I'd heard bits and pieces of in school or read on websites that I help to put out on the Internet for the education of others, as a way of making my livelihood. Understanding was secondary, though. I figure humans have figured a lot of things out about the patterns that God embedded into the natural world, and even some who do not necessarily believe in the same God I do - brilliant scientists, as a matter of fact - have traced the universe back to that single, super-dense point of light and found that they could not grasp what existed a microsecond before it. Some hypothesized that maybe religion held the answer. Others simple acknowledged the possible limit of what science can tell us. This seems fair. Science tells us the whats and the hows; religion is the study of the whos and the whys. I don't see it as being religion's job to tell us the detailed specifics of how God created the universe - we have a blueprint, but if God were to explain the actual process to it, it would likely be even more complicated than what we've surmised about it so far. It might be a lot like explaining rocket science to a gnat. And I don't see it as being science's job to prove or disprove that God exists. Science has hinted at the existence of God for those who have been profoundly impacted by considering the vastness of God's universe. That's encouraging, but it isn't hard evidence - just a hint at something we can't statistically measure and we have to take on faith. Others have taken an understanding of the universe's mehcanics to mean that it somehow brought itself into being, or that there is no supreme being up there controlling it all. This too is not hard evidence.

I remember a conversation with a friend in high school, one who was probably a far more devout Christian than I was at the time. I had watched some TV special that explored various miracles of the Bible and explained how some things like the parting of the Red Sea could be scientifically possible, given the right circumstances. I was explaining this to my friend, and she shook her head and told me that miracles are miracles and we don't need to question or explain them, as if to say that this attempt at explanation somehow diminished the miracle. But for me, it didn't. For me, every little thing about physics and biology and chemistry and mathematics that my feeble brain can manage to grasp, even if it takes some of the mystery out of the way God's world works, just makes me more fascinated. Miracles don't cease to be miracles just because I can sort of understand how something might work. A cancer patient's tumor could spontaneously heal itself, and we'd call that a miracle, but if it responds to chemo and the patient lives to be cancer-free through documented medical means, is that any less of a miracle? God could have spoken the universe and all of its elements and planets and stars and species into being in an instant, with trees one second old having rings, and humans one second old having bellybuttons, and stars one second old appearing to be billions of years into their lifecycles, but if God created a massive explosion that slowly coalesced into the universe we know today over an extremely long period of time, is that any less of a miracle? I look at an idea like that, and I think, "Wow, God is unbelievably creative". Because there's an innate beauty in the imagination that it would take to set such a complex system in motion. Just because we might be able to explain things, that doesn't mean that God is not still at work within those things.

And maybe some parts of the Bible are quite literal after all, just not in ways that the authors God picked out could have conceived at the time. What blew my mind the most this Sunday was when Pastor Ken commented on the elements that constitute biological life, and how these elements had come together as the result of dying stars going supernova and creating those more complex atomic building blocks. Thus, we are all made of stardust. And God made from out of the dust. WHOA.

The Future of Worship

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 05:38:27 GMT

This post is sort of a concert review, and sort of following up on my thoughts about worship services that I posted last week.

Christine and I saw Future of Forestry in concert last night, at St. John's Presbyterian Church in West L.A. I was doubtful about whether we'd even make it on time since we left from Pasadena way later than we should have (she was at a baby shower and I was napping to recover from getting up early for a church function that morning). But the traffic was bafflingly good to us - a clear shot on the 10 all the way from downtown to the 405, when does that ever happen on a Saturday night? - and we got there early enough to be lined up with what looked like the membership of the church's entire youth and college groups, waiting to be let in. Christine commented that she felt old because we were clearly some of the only full-fledged grownups there. But then we saw this older Asian couple in line, and I was like, "See? We're not the oldest". I had the brief thought that the Asian couple looked like they might be related to Eric Owyoung, FoF's lead singer. But then I told myself I shouldn't perpetuate the "all Asians look alike" stereotype and forgot about it. Turns out they were his parents. See? I told me so!

The concert had an interesting light and sound setup, since the church was in the process of renovating its systems and didn't have everything ready for the concert. So the band had to set up their own sound, and the sanctuary was entirely lit by a massive amount of candles just below the stage. The ambiance was gorgeous as a result, but it was freakin' HOT in there, and I got a bunch of blurry photos due to the low light (I didn't want to use the flash because I felt it would be disrupting during several of the slower, more worshipful moments), so I'll have to try to describe what I couldn't capture visually.

The best way to sum it up is by saying that Future of Forestry is one of the few bands I can think of who have managed to marry a passion for creating artful music and a sincere heart for worship. Their music is clearly devotional, and sometimes directly worshipful in a context that would make sense during your average worship service. But often, it's about metaphorical expressions of a personal journey, especially on their new set of Travel EPs - Eric Owyoung writes about the experiences with God that he's still wrestling through or would like to have, and doesn't worry about whether a song has a simplistic refrain that we can all sing along to in church or whether it teaches some Biblical concept in a series of bullet points. For the most part he's comfortable letting the music speak for itself, and letting artistic creativity honor a creative God rather than just using it to show off. The band accomplishes this through a wide array of instruments, many of which were featured prominently during the concert. Eric Owyoung and T. J. Hill (apparently the whiz kid who took over when Nick Maybury left) were extremely busy, doing double or even triple duty during certain songs as they switched from one instrument to the next. Vibraphone, glockenspiel, accordion, theremin, and several large drums all played an important rtole along with the usual guitars, bass, and drum kit you'd expect from a band that still technically makes rock music. It's getting harder to classify what these guys do. And I like it that way.

The band showcased a lot of their new material, giving equal time to Travel I's lofty themes of airplane travel and encountering God in the lofty, emotionally soaring moments in life (which was beautifully expressed in the explosive "Colors in Array" and the meditative, almost romantic "Closer to Me" and "Close Your Eyes"), and to Travel II's more rhythmic, primal exploration of boat travel, using the shorelines and starts and moon phases that explorers from centuries past used to navigate the Earth as metaphors for a journey to Heaven (this added a lively energy to their concert in the form of the exquisite "Hills of Indigo Blue", the sing-along chorus of "Set Your Sails", and the dizzying handclaps and percussion solos of "So Close So Far"). A few classics from 2007's Twilight rounded out the set - "Open Wide" seems to be one of the band's theme songs and a cornerstone of any setlist, and I'm thrilled that "Sunrising", which has its own drum solo that feels like the very heavens pouring out onto the Earth, showed up early in the set.

But the biggest surprises for me were the songs that the band didn't write - they covered the Vineyard song "All Who Are Thirsty" and the Chris Tomlin/Matt Redman collaboration "Wonderful Maker", and gave both highly innovative arrangements, full of echoing vibraphone and subdued melodic twists and introspective programmed rhythms... the band added a sense of grandeur to two songs that I'd enjoyed for a while but honestly thought were kind of "out to pasture" at this point. This really got to the heart of what I think worship should be about - you have these songwriters who do try carefully to express something profound about who God is and who we are in light of that, and then people pick up those songs and unfortunately play them to death in sometimes uninspired ways, so what was once profound can become stale. It takes a group of talented musicians like this who can use instruments to support the meaning that the song intends for us to meditate on, rather than just rocking it out with guitar solos or doing whatever else the youth group might think is cool. (The young crowd was very supportive and seemed to be familiar with and excited about the band's music, by the way, which was refreshing. Where were bands like this when I was in youth group? Probably playing to teeny-tiny niche audiences in obscure venues because churches just didn't get'em and were busy sending kids like me to Carman concerts.) Hey, sometimes the "rock out" approach is what a confident, uptempo song of praise needs, and God bless the bands who made the first forays into that genre when most of the Church thought it was Satanic. But now it's in danger of becoming old hat, so we need bands like FoF who are trying to rethink how we approach worship, not just in a way that gets our attention with "cool music", but that really fits the mood and scope of the massive God that we are all hoping for even some tiny glimpse of.

Anyway, it was a great show. There was an opening band too, called Urban Rescue, and they seemed to do more of the typical "rock worship" thing while also bringing elements into the music that were similar to FoF's style... they clearly held FoF up as their "musical heroes", and while that's admirable and it's great that Eric and the others are giving a young band a chance to spread their wings and find an audience, Urban Rescue needs to find its own sound. Being imitators will only get them so far. They're clearly passionate about what they do; they just have to find a way to branch out and make it more of a personal testimony.

Here's Future of Forestry's setlist:

Hills of Indigo Blue
Sunrising
Traveler's Song
Open Wide
Closer to Me
Colors in Array
Set Your Sails
Close Your Eyes
All Who Are Thirsty
Wonderful Maker
So Close So Far
Someday

Photos are here, but don't expect much: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=34113&id=1048993457&l=8bf5186426

I would say that I left the building that night filled with a sense of hope that carried through to Evergreen's church service this morning. A mind-blowing sermon on the Big Bang and Creation (which I'll have to delve into in another post some other time) was extremely well supported by Nia Allen, Justis Kao, and an altogether classy worship team whose selections of songs like "God of Wonders" and "How Great Is Our God" honestly might have seemed old hat on any other day (honestly, I once proclaimed I'd be happy to never hear "God of Wonders" on a Sunday morning ever again, despite liking the song), but paired with the subject matter, these songs were pretty profound and I think that awareness added extra oomph to the way they led us all in worship. Sometimes it just takes the right musicians with the right hearts to help set an atmosphere of pondering just how vast God is, how unfathomably creative, how incomprehensible the fact that God cares about us humans in our teeny-tiny corner of the universe. We'll never grasp more than a fraction of a speck of that, I guess, but when the music matches the sentiment being expressed, at least for me, that's a little glimpse of Heaven.