58759

leaders


so good to have our student leadership team together for the first time this semester! as i've said a few times, i am super excited about this semester and what lies ahead (big things in my opinion).

58659

older (friday_reflections)

i'm 30 and i still quote from dumb and dumber quite often. but i work with a population that was not even in grade school when this movie was in theaters! 

they say you are most effective, in ministry, with those ten year older and younger than you. i think about that from time to time, especially when kids are talking about some youtube video, or a new gadget that i have never heard of and for sure will not know how to use.

i also grow weary with some of the drama that comes with the territory. whether you take bio 102a or 103b, or whether or not so and so dropped you as a facebook friend, is not always the most interesting conversation for me. however, at one point, i was that student, consumed by what i was supposed to be doing with my life and all emo-ed out with girl problems and the weight of the world.

i find myself wanting to tell students all the time: "it's ok, this is the easy part, enjoy it, everything is going to be fine." that's me at 30: mr. cliche. 

but i don't want to be mr. cliche. for the second reflection in a row, i find myself circling back to the wise words of henri nouwen. in his excellent book, In the Name of Jesus, nouwen tackles some of the common temptations of leaders. one of them is the temptation to be relevant. 

consider this: "The leaders of the future will be those who dare to claim their irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation that allows them to enter into a deep solidarity with the anguish underlying all the glitter of success, and to bring the light of Jesus there."

i love the line "the anguish underlying all the glitter of success," because that describes the condition of the modern college student so well. nouwen prescribes contemplative prayer as the antidote to the temptation of relevance. it is in listening to "the voice of love" again and again and that we find the answers to the issues of the day, to the underlying anguish, to the pain.

the coolest thing about getting old, at least so far, is that you realize that what you have offer the next generation is not coolness (you will never out cool them), is not stuff, is not even life lessons, but hopefully love. nothing that i do or create or think up will be as cool as what they can find on tv but who will love them well?

as i get older that's the question that keeps me up at night.

58559

more_NEU!


northeastern's weekly gathering is back in the flow. good group this week...three new people with more on the way! i can't stop saying how excited i am about this semester...it is going to be the best ever.

58459

snow_day


aftermath of the storm yesterday (not the kind of pics we use to recruit to people to boston =)


also, amy posted yesterday...check it out

58359

Northeastern!

great time tonight dreaming and scheming with the northeastern crew (and team building...check out the pics!). this group is gearing up for the process of becoming a Registered Student Organization. i am inspired and humbled by their drive to make this happen, by the ways they "get it" and see this as important step, and their desire to see more students find their way back to God. way to go guys!

58259

goals

amy and i just got back from kelly's in eastie where we spent some time working on our goals for 2011. goals about our careers and neighborhood involvement, personal/individual projects and things we want to accomplish together.

one of my personal goals is to try to find more ways to channel my passions into productive and creative endeavors. i love baseball, but a lot of the time that passion dissipates into time wasting efforts like fantasy baseball or clicking on endless links. this year, though, i am trying to be more intentional about these kinds of things.

so, i am helping launch a new blog. it's called "baseball monk" and we can be found at baseball-monk.com.

i say "we "because (and this is my favorite part of the whole project) i get to do this with some of the dudes i grew up with. we all have moved from the Bay Area for one reason or another, yet retain our passion for baseball generally and for the Giants specifically. so doing this "in community" is especially fun. jon huckins, josh stover, and tim spier will be joining me on this endeavor.

so, for those of you who enjoy baseball, or you just like passionate people writing about one of their favorite topics, go check it out!

tim's first article is up today. josh wrote our most popular piece to date. and i recently posted a three part series over the break that you can read here, here, and here.

enjoy!

58159

others

one of my goals for 2011 with this blog is to get back to using it for more reflection on my/our experiences and the things we are learning. hopefully, 3 fridays a month will be "reflection" posts, and then the rest will be the typical pictures and updates. here then is my first installment!

as i head in to my third new year in Boston (and Amy in to her fourth!), we find the question, do you feel Boston is home now, being asked of us a lot. What a fascinating question! on the one hand, of course it's home: Boston is where we live and work and do life and that's home no matter where you are from. on the other hand, i find myself telling people (and i really believe this) that we could live in Boston for 25 years and we will still be Californians.

living in Boston has been an interesting experience for both us. speaking for myself, i have never lived anywhere else where I have so strongly felt "alien" or "other" (of course i've lived in California for 83% of my life...the time we spent in India as a family i was only 1-2 years old, i looked "other"...anyway, i do have to admit there is a not a lot of experience to draw from). this is a hard phenomenon to explain to people mainly because it's just a feeling, a prevailing awareness, that i "from" somewhere else. there are superficial differences like dress and accent, and challenges that are inherent in moving from coast to coast (like navigating a new city, weather, etc). but the best way i can describe this is just that there is a deep, underlying, consistent awareness that this is not "home".

now, we both love Boston. it is a great city (the second best in the country: i have scientific proof that SF is the best), and we love all that it has to offer. we have great jobs, strong community, a fantastic neighborhood, a wonderful apartment...we've been blessed over and over again in our married life here. there is a lot to be grateful for and a lot to enjoy.

but when i get stressed out and tired i find myself fantasizing about In-N-Out Burger and highway 17 and real beaches and some KNBR (the Sports Leader) and Los Gallos Taqueria and being closer to family and northern california lakes and weather that fluctuates between 55 and 75 and not having to pay to drive on the freeway because it is actually free and this:

during our recent holiday visit amy and i spent the last 24 hours exploring San Francisco. we grew up in the area but never lived in SF, so to call us locals would be a stretch. but i've been there enough times to still have a deeply ingrained mental map of the city. while we were there we never got lost, instinctively found free parking all day, and tracked down many of our favorite spots (i even found a Boutry family favorite restaurant in Chinatown). there was something profoundly familiar about the whole experience. i still struggle with that sense here. it can be quite easy for me to get lost in Boston (it doesn't help that i will never shake seeing the ocean as my western reference point).

i hope this isn't taken as complaining, we do like it here! but, it is VERY different and that feeling of being "other" hasn't dissipated in three years, if anything it has grown.

the question, is Boston home, is a tricky one. yes, we make our home here, but it is not home if you get what i mean.

and, in many ways, this is a beautiful thing. as a church we've been exploring the Exodus narrative on sunday mornings and other OT stories in community groups. much of the OT contains the stories of displaced people, people far from home, people feeling distinctly "other" and "alien".

our neighborhood has one of the highest concentrations of recent immigrants of any in the city. as much as i feel like a fish-out-of-water, imagine what it must be like to grow up in Brazil or Colombia and then find yourself trying to make it in Boston in January with language and distinct cultural differences and barriers on top of all the other adjustments.

henri nouwen, in his book Reaching Out, discusses what healthy spirituality looks like and concludes that hospitality is part of the key. he writes "when we are willing to detach ourselves from making our own limited experience the criterion for our approach to others, we may be able to see that life is greater than our life, history is greater than our history, experience greater than our experience, and God greater than our god. that is the poverty of the heart that makes a good host. with poverty of the heart we can receive the experience of others as a gift to us."

i think that displacement, the awareness of being other, can be transformed in to this poverty of the heart. and as we love and lead students from all over the world and our neighbors here in eastie, openness to others is vital. maybe the best people to help integrate outsiders are outsiders.

will i still fantasize about California? probably...i mean look at that picture up there! but i am learning to embrace my "otherness" as a window to experiencing God's heart and the stories of others in a more meaningful way. and that is pretty exciting to me.