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.

top_5_lists

Top 5 lists!!! (check out previous years: 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006)

Songs

1) Sigh No More - Mumford & Sons 
2010 was the year of Mumford mania. only controversy here was which song to pick. "awake my soul" might actually be my favorite, but this one kicks off the record and sets the tone for everything that follows: a quiet start, a big build, and a huge payoff. killer lyric: "love that will not betray you, dismay or enslave you, it will set you free, be more like the man you were made to be."
2) City With No Children - Arcade Fire
from their incredible album, "the suburbs." they upped the ante with this effort. killer lyric: "you never trust a millionaire quoting the sermon on the mount, I used to think I was not like them but I'm beginning to have my doubts."
3) Invented - Jimmy Eat World
it might be that i love this band even more now than i did ten years ago. their stuff holds up, and they've aged well. soundtrack to over a third of my life. crazy. killer lyric: "i'm one more here, some old-time pioneer, who believes with shaken faith, i still have some cool."
4) The Ladder - Andrew Belle 
saw this humble songwriter at cafe 939 here in boston and fell for him immediately. melancholy, wise beyond his years, and gentle in his approach, The Ladder was probably the one non-mumford album i listened to the most this year. killer lyric: on a ladder from there to here i'll climb, all this clatter between my ears i find, does it matter if i can't clear my mind, there's a right and a wrong time.
5) Bloodbuzz Ohio - The National
weird song, and not one that at first listen you would imagine to be humming hours later, but it is totally catchy. and at first glance the lyrics seem surreal and bizarre but end up being quite profound on repeated listens. killer lyric: "i still owe money to the money to the money i owe, i never thought about love when i thought about home, i still owe money to the money to the money i owe, the floors are falling out from everybody i know."

Books (required reading)

1) Practice Resurrection Eugene Peterson
the fifth and final installment to his "conversations in spiritual theology" series, which is my all time favorite canon of books on theology. i absolutely, with no hesitation, recommend these books to anyone the least bit interested in theology.  
2) Almost Christian Kenda Creasy Dean
maybe the "problem" with youth ministry isn't youth pastors, or the culture, or facebook, but the church? that's the central question of this startling book. dean argues that the "problem" with youth ministry is that we (adults, the church, theology) are not giving kids a compelling story to live, rather we are simply asking them to be "nice" (the cult of "moral therapeutic deism"). challenging stuff.
3a and b) The Seven Storey Mountain Thomas Merton and God Was In This Place and I, I Did Not Know Lawrence Kushner
a little bit of mysticism here in the middle of the top five list. these authors go about this in very different ways (one is Jewish, the other Catholic; one a midrash, the other an autobiography), but both push the reader to open themselves up to presence of God in the midst of us: right here, right now.
5) The Wisdom of Stability Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
a challenge to buck the cultural trend of constant movement and upward mobility and to see stability (calling one place home) as a spiritual discipline.

Book (non-required)

1) Born to Run Christopher McDougall
one of the most well written books of any type or genre i have ever read. i actually like the next book on the list more, but McDougall gets top billing for doing an amazing job at weaving everything from bio-mechanics to anthropology to good-old-fashioned sports writing into a masterpiece. you don't have to like running at all to appreciate this work.
2) Are We Winning Will Leitch
i love books. i love books about baseball. i love books about coming of age. i love books about quirky/semi-dysfunctional young guys who finally decide to get their stuff together. this book is all of that in one. changing the setting to san francisco would be the ONLY way to make me love this book more. i look forward to reading it again soon.
3) Cardboard Gods Josh Wilker
in many ways this book is very similar to Are We Winning, only the era is different and the style a bit more literary. i loved holding and looking at this book, and reading it wasn't a chore either =)
4) Zeitoun Dave Eggers
eggers made a name, and a fortune, for himself by telling his story (some would say "exploiting" and "embellishing" but i would vehemently disagree). since then he's taken to telling other people's stories. this is the most straight-forward, simple storytelling eggers has done, but it still packs an emotional punch. i love what he is trying to do and i hope he keeps on doing it. 
5) All Souls Michael Patrick MacDonald
talk to anyone who has lived in boston for the last 20 years and they have an opinion on this book. a strong one. a customer at starbucks who grew up in southie and moved out when he went to college calls it a "pack of lies." our friend bob says it's pretty accurate. the divisiveness makes me think he hit on some sort of truth. very helpful in illuminating some recent boston history, the racial tensions and divisions that still exist, and the yearning for peace that still permeates our streets. 

Movies

Didn't watch many movies this year, again. I will point you towards Willie's excellent movie blog because he will probably have some good year end stuff up soon. Here are a few i did enjoy in no particular order: Toy Story 3, Inception, The Town, The Fighter (love the Boston area films =), and I will be watching over and over the Giants' World Series DVD!

58059

happy_holidays


good times with the fams in california!

57959

so it begins...

57859

books


i've actually read a lot of the books in this book. does that make me pretentious, well-rounded, over-educated, or someone with too much time?

57759

other_stuff

the AFC Mentoring project has been taking up a lot of my/our time lately but it's not all that's been happening around here! here are some pics from Sojourn's last leadership community, our christmas tree, and a drawing i found at the offices on monday morning (thanks northeastern guys =).

57659

light

tonight was the moment we've been building towards...the prudential center honored Adoption and Foster Care Mentoring with their 31 Nights of Light ceremony and "the Pru" was lit up in AFC's colors for the whole city to see.

many, many great stories to share from this. two stand out to me: 1) AFC Mentoring was extremely grateful for our help in pulling off this event and expressed it often and in very meaningful and authentic ways throughout the night. 2) our students definitely helped make the evening a huge success and i think they all walked away seeing that they were apart of something big and important...that they were apart of a Kingdom moment.

enjoy the pics!

57559

conspire...


at sojourn's last leadership community we began to dream together about taking on a major challenge to bless the socks off of someone this christmas. the last few years we have been participating in the advent conspiracy movement as a joint sojourn/reunion effort and we felt that as a collegiate community we were ready to do something a little audacious this year.

our brainstorm and some subsequent conversations led us to decide that this year we really wanted to bless Adoption and Foster Care Mentoring (AFC Mentoring).  CJ, one of AFC's board members, attends reunion and is a part of one of sojourn's community groups. he told tim, our director, that AFC had been selected by the Prudential Center as one Boston's Outstanding Non-Profit's of 2010. the "pru" holds a ceremony each night of december for all the non-profits selected (here's an article from 2009's "31 nights of light"). 

AFC is excited about the opportunity but also somewhat bummed about not having known sooner (which would have helped them plan to make the night really special, specifically for the kids and their mentors). we were immediately drawn to this organization that is taking seriously James' words to care for the orphans (1:27)...for more info on why mentoring kids in the adoption and foster care system is important, click here. sojourn continues to be drawn towards partnerships that help build up and invest in the youth of our city.

after some discussion we felt the best course of action would be to help make this night (december 7th) a night to remember. so, we are going to throw the kids and their mentors a party. we want to honor them and the work they do, and offer them a gift they can always cherish: recognition.

i am really excited about this endeavor for what we can offer AFC, but i'm also excited about it because i am seeing students stirred to serve and give themselves away in tangible and impressive ways (to pull this party off right we need to raise close to $5000). i'm seeing students reach out o their friends and networks and invite them in to this story. i'm seeing students take ownership and sacrifice in ways we've never asked them to before. they are jumping in with both feet and attempting to tell a great story.

i want to invite you all to join us too. this story can be your story as well. here are a couple of suggestions/ideas...

1) pray with us and for us...we have a lot of work to do and a lot of money to raise in a short amount of time. this is a great and worthy challenge but this won't happen without God's gracious intervention. prayer is huge.

2) consider sacrificing alongside of our students...you may not live close enough to give us your time or "presence" but you can give a few bucks...even $5 goes a long way (and that's only one latte to give up this week =)...one less gift could mean one huge memory for a foster care child and their mentor.

if you do want to give $ you can do so at our facebook cause page or if you don't feel comfortable with facebook send me an email and i can give you a physical address to send check to (both methods are safe and all the money goes directly to this project).

either way, joining the cause page or lending your prayer support or giving your money, shows a tremendous amount of support for AFC and for our students. your support helps give them a vision for what being a part of a bigger story looks like and becomes an answer to their prayers.

thanks for taking the time to read this long post and hopefully we can join together to tell an amazing story this advent season!

57459

lexington


for the first time since labor day amy and i had a free weekend with no church/sojourn events, no classes, no weddings, and no conferences. so, we took advantage and made our way to lexington, ma. spent some time walking around minute man park, hanging out in downtown lexington, and enjoying the beautiful fall weather!

57359

leadership_and_teams


sojourn leadership community tonight: the marshmallow challenge...the importance of community and "doing it together" (ala henri nouwen)...dreaming about advent conspiracy projects...nehemiah as a case study...and banana pancakes.


enjoy the pics...

57259

one_more_giants_post

one more thought on the world series victory. every fan takes a certain level of responsibility for the outcome of their team's games. most of the time this is an unhealthy level of responsibility =) my not-so-secret-shame is that during game 6 of the 2002 world series i called my friend bruce as dusty baker was removing russ ortiz from the game with a 5-0 lead. the giants bullpen that year was "nails". with the game going to the 'pen needing 8 outs to win it was as good as done and i foolishly jumped the gun. so, of course the resulting disaster was my fault...

...but if i blew 2002 then i should get some credit for 2010 (or, at least, my friend devin should). i've already told this story in this space but a quick summary here will be helpful: devin calls a sports radio station thinking he might win an autographed tim lincecum ball and ends up with season tickets. SEASON TICKETS!!! of all seasons =)

well, devin, because he is a saint, used his blessing to bless us and support Sojourn on a recurring basis. i love that in some weird way the 2010 World Series winning San Francisco Giants are supporting campus ministry in Boston. this is the crazy upside world we live in now. 

how's that for a redemption story!

also, this guy has been the best pitcher in major league baseball for the past three seasons...go figure:

57159

giants_win_the_series

where to start? a few weeks ago i highlighted the "torture" of being a giants fan. i could go on and on about what this means to giants fans. just ask one. for me, though, this is a different world. anything is possible now!

the only regret i have is not being able to call my grandma boutry. she would have LOVED this team, and she would have loved this moment.
---------------------
for the next week or so baseball nerds will try to figure out this giants team. the new school guys will talk about strikeouts, homeruns, xfip, and a bunch of stuff like that. they will drool over the pitching staff and the extra base hits. the old school guys will talk about team effort, grit, determination, and gamers. 

the "team" angle of this story is certainly legit. the list of hero's is long: ross, renteria, huff, uribe, posey, sanchez, lopez, affeldt (game 6), bumgarner, cain, wilson, even burrell hit a 3 run bomb against the braves and jonathan sanchez struck out 11 in that series as well.

that said, 2 people stand out to me. bruce bochy used to be a source of joy for me and my dad back when he (bochy) was managing some of those punching bag padre teams. the look of exasperation on boch's face when some middling reliever would leave a hanging slider for bonds to whack 500 feet was a guaranteed laugh for my dad and i to share on a random august afternoon. when the giants hired him in '07 i thought the pick was pretty uninspiring. have to tip my cap though, he had the best month of any manager i can remember in a long time. several teams have won the WS in the past few years in spite of their manager, but everything bochy did this postseason turned to gold.

however, the old cliche is that players play the game and that's why, for whatever its worth, if i had to pick one guy as the MVP/most-important-player it would be tim lincecum. no other player perfectly represents san francisco, and no other player on this team better encapsulates the whole.

lincecum is a baseball mystery...no matter how much they analyze him no one really grasps how he does it...how does such a weird little dude dominate so thoroughly? how does this giants team win a world series? mystery...

lincecum beat derek lowe (NL pitcher of the month in september), roy halladay (probably the NL Cy Young winner who was coming off only the second playoff no-hitter of all time), and cliff lee (the "unbeatable" cliff lee of recent post season dominance) twice. he won all three game ones...the giants (for all the torture talk) never trailed in any of the three series they played in the playoffs. he threw 37 innings (16 more than any other giants' pitcher) and had 43 strikeouts, a 2.43 era, 0.92 whip, and 4 wins.

renteria is a hero, cody ross will never have to pay for a meal in SF again, and buster is the future, but the Giants are not champions without tim lincecum. 

57059

readretreatserve

yesterday 20 of our students were plunged deeply in to the question: "what is the church's role in culture?" through reading, reflection, discussion, and action this question was explored with the intention of raising more questions, most specifically: how do we translate what we've learned today back on to campus. good stuff...i feel like students were challenged and encouraged at the same time, and while this experience was intense and condensed that question, how do i interact with culture, is one we wrestle with everyday.

56959

world series

this:

and this:

56859

progress

If all the news you have of my life is culled from my recent twitter and facebook updates than you might think that the Giants are the only thing going on right now. As fun as it has been to watch them make this run, there is actually a lot of really great stuff happening in ministry!

Our northeastern group is growing numerically and deeply. This last week we had a bit of breakthrough with them: the first girl joined our weekly meeting and we had one of the best “honesty” moments of the year as they wrestled with the story of Joseph in Genesis. It was awesome to see them move beyond easy answers and sit in the tension of messy stories.

We have our first Read.Retreat.Serve. event coming up next weekend. The response so far has been great...it looks like we could have 20-25 people attend this event which would be a new record. I really love RRS because of the way it demonstrates our values so clearly to students and it raises the question of how to engage culture for students in a fresh way. 

I am probably most encouraged by our progress at UMASS-Boston. A month ago we nearly lost our RSO (registered student organization) status, but now, for the first time, it feels like we are really starting to gain momentum.  We’ve seen new people join our weekly meeting and it seems like this is a time that students are seeing as really valuable to them.

We are (finally) launching our SAT tutoring program next week at UMASS, and I am excited to see students take ownership of this and get involved. I love seeing students get passionate about an idea that helps promote kingdom values (The “hope” bracelet you see pictured is something I bought from a girl in our group who is raising money for a students without borders project.)   

UMASS-Boston is still a work in progress as we try to figure out effective ways to minister to students at that campus. Our experiment of the week involved setting up “baggo” in a central location and inviting people to play with us (picture is of the game but not on campus).  This went remarkably well and we played for over two ours and met about 15 new students. Slowly but surely we are establishing a presence and becoming part of the fabric of the campus.

A month ago I was in a bit of a funk trying to see the “win” but right now I am feeling super encouraged about Sojourn’s progress on campus this semester!

Also, go Giants.

56759

56659

being_a_fan


i am obviously enjoying the Giant's playoff run so far. it's been fun to "go through" this with amy who has never had the awesome privilege of experiencing my behavior during a playoff swing. 


in my life time Giant's baseball has been a "tortured" affair (to use the trendy descriptor of this 2010 version of the team). i recently explained the torture of my particular life from '85's 100 loss team, to '87's NLCS collapse, to the WS earthquake in '89, to the team almost moving to tampa, to the bonds era, to the marlins in '97, robb nen and the one game playoff in 98, to benny agbayani in 2000, to falling 2 games short in 2001, to the world series collapse in 2002, to the marlins again in '03 (this time with the horrible iconic images of jose cruz jr and jt snow), to the late season disaster at the hands of the dodgers in '04 (darn you steve finley), to the dark ages of '05-'08, to the "are-we-really-going-to-waste-historically-good-starting-pitching-with-this-lineup" of last season, to some of my sojourn colleagues. i don't think they look at me the same way.


baseball seems to produce a special kind of suffering...a suffering that cannot be brushed aside for a week and engaged only on sunday's...no it is deeper and more pervasive than anything other sports can offer. giants fans, often overshadowed by the red sox (until 2004) and the cubs and the indians and various other teams, have suffered as long and as traumatically as anyone.


this postseason can end triumphantly and ecstatically or with another chapter of suffering written, but either way, without a doubt, i will be back next year (sooner actually because i will likely be scouring the internet for off season news). 


i've been reading some excellent baseball books recently, and the one seen here (are we winning) is now safely among my all time favorite books. will lietch nails what it means to be a fan:


"these men (referring to management and players) can go somewhere else: dusty baker can go to chicago and then cincinnati. jeff kent can become a dodger and an astro (i changed examples here for the sake of the analogy). we have no such options. we're not going anywhere.


when you break it down, what exactly is a sports franchise? is it a succession of ownership? an institutional philosophy? a corporate machine? pretty orange and black uniforms? all of these can be changed...


...but when people talk about The Giants, they are not talking about players or managers. they are talking about us. that's the constant. that's the single continuous line..."


Go Giants!   

56559

jimmy

amy and i went to the house of blues on friday night to watch jimmy eat world play their songs. i always get worried right before a show by one of my favorite bands...i get afraid that this will be the show where i notice a huge drop off and i'll be super disappointed. but jimmy did not disappoint.

two thoughts on this show: watching/listening is like reading old journals...this band has been a part of my life since my freshman year of college. that's five albums, tons of downloads, and a couple of eps worth of songs. several of these songs have helped shape and define eras of life: college, post-college, colorado, marriage, boston, and a whole host of events in the midst of all those eras. as the band played songs from their entire catalogue i was transported back in time to all these eras. the band has become a soundtrack for my life, a music memory device.

the other is that this is the band that amy i share more than any other. what makes these shows so special is that jimmy has been important in both of our lives and while we both like a lot of the same artists jimmy eat world is a common language we share. and that is kind of special.

here's "goodbye sky harbor" from friday night:

56459

greatness

born to run is the best sports book i have ever read. i love books like this: the author weaves a variety of stories and topics together around a central narrative...it's a book about running and yet it reads like a suspenseful thriller. it's absolutely fantastic writing.

it is a book about running but it's also a book about love, passion, anthropology, biomechanics, shoes, crazy people, ultra races, joy, and what it means to be a good person. all of this information crafted and told by an expert story teller.

the most compelling part of the book to me centered around a crusty old cross country coach at adams state (in alamosa, co not too far from durango). this dude unlocked every secret of running and training from a scientific standpoint, but still felt like he was missing part of the puzzle. 

coach vigil: "couldn't quite put his finger on it, but his gut kept telling him that there was some kind of connection between the capacity to love and the capacity to love running. the engineering was certainly the same: both depended on loosening your grip on your own desires, putting aside what you wanted and appreciating what you got, being patient and forgiving and undemanding."

later in the book the focus turns to scott jurek, the greatest american ultra-runner ever.  jurek would win races and then spend hours at the finish line encouraging fellow runners and cheering people on. the author writes: "what Coach Vigil had sensed about character...Scott had been his entire life. the reason we race isn't so much to beat each other, but to be together...Scott learned that early on...other runners tried to disassociate from fatigue by blasting ipods or imagining the roar of the crowd in Olympic stadium, but Scott had a simpler method: it's easy to get outside yourself when you're thinking about someone else."


good stuff!