Playing/Praying

At a recent barbecue, our kids were inside watching the game and I was outside with Joy and Lucas. We were playing some kind of chase/adventure game, of course, and the bad guys were gaining on us. Joy sat in the wagon, holding on as we avoided fallen oranges and leaf piles. Lucas tore around on the tricycle, shouting out instructions. “Watch out! They’re coming” There was a moment of tension as we braced for the onslaught.

Suddenly, Joy had a smile on her face and said, "Jesus help us! The bad guys are going to get us!"

"Lord, please help us!" I said.

Lucas made some explosive noises and then said, "It’s okay, they're gone."

"Thank you Jesus!" I said.

"No, that was me," said Lucas.

Lego N.Y.

This is random, but if you have not seen illustrator Christoph Niemann's Lego art in the New York Times, you have to check it out. Here's the link: I LEGO N.Y.

Here's a sample:

Starbucks Monday

While comparisons are odious, they seem appropriate today at Starbucks. I notice an Asian man in line ahead of me. He is short in stature, dressed in black, lean, muscular, armed to the hilt. His flak jacket, emblazoned with “Los Angeles District Attorney,” gives him a boxy, almost robotic look. Similarly equipped, his companions wait for their coffee with quiet intensity. They are ready for action.

In contrast, I am unfocused and foggy in my blue fleece jacket--a portable blanket. I am equipped with multiple pens, an uncharged I-Pod, bus tokens, a Bible, a software manual, three journals (spiritual, observations, reading), an AM/FM radio, and a digital audio recorder in an old eyeglass case. I am prepared for something, but not until I drink my coffee, pray, and catch the latest on NPR on the way to work

Overheard

On the train:

• "I don't trust nobody. It's every man for they self. Everyone got his own way of hustling, and that's mine."
• "No, Del Amo station. Del Amo. Delano's a prison."
  

Starbucks:

• Today: "Tell me the non-positive then!"
• "We live in L.A., we don't help people."

A Construction site, an unseen person:

• "%&@#$ Johnny Cash...%&@#$......God!

Redundant Problems

Spam e-mail is horrible. Then again, sometimes the subject lines are brilliant, even approaching the koanic. Here's one that almost enticed me to read the whole thing:

"From Juergen: Redundant problems will fly away together with extra weight."

A New Favorite Quote

Over the weekend, Caroline said that I should drop everything and read Roald Dahl's book, Danny the Champion of the World, immediately. Fortunately, I only waited a day before I got around to it. Here's a great quote from the book: "Ah yes, my darling, there is a whole world of sound around us that we cannot hear because our ears are simply not sensitive enough."

Wonders Abound

From the train platform at Del Amo station, I observe a man in a tree. He stands on a slender branch, a modern halberd extending from his hand. A chainsaw dangles from a rope, but he is unfettered. The man tests his weight on a branch, then steps blithely without the use of his hands. He is hatless, crewless, and ladderless — a long row of trees in his path. When the train comes, I consider letting it pass to watch his artistry for another moment.

---

Isaac and I are on the road outside of Pasco, Washington, in the cab of a 24 foot truck. His father’s ’68 Mustang is behind us on a car carrier. There are sun-drenched vineyards to our left and to our right. With the windows down, the smell of grapes is intoxicating.

---

We are poolside, craning our necks to witness baptisms at Fountain of Life Covenant Church. It is one of those days when the pain and sadness that surround us — envelop us — separate like clouds and the rays of the sun warm us to the core. Today, the kingdom of God is palpable. John is in the water with Chef Mike and his brother, Rudy, in their oversized white robes. Mike came to faith and then invited his brother to “come and see.” Here they are in the pool being baptized, first Mike, then Rudy. When they are done, they hug John, and then they dive into the water and swim and splash toward the deep end of the pool. Lucas, age 4, smiles and says, “It’s just like the Olympics!"

Politics, Politics, Politics!

In case you’ve been preoccupied with the elections, as I have, Real Clear Politics is a great site. The site features the most recent articles on the election. They also include links to news articles and opinion pieces from many perspectives. For example, the site has links to these two headlines: Barack Obama for President - Washington Post and A Liberal Supermajority Would Move the Nation Far to the Left – Wall Street Journal. I don't usually click on the links to Karl Rove's opinions, but it's good to be exposed to a range of opinions.

Another great site, in case you grow tired of the Main Stream Media, is the blog God's Politics, which features Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo, and friends.

Books, Bradbury, and Snoop Dogg

It's not a happy time to be a book lover in Long Beach, CA. We knew it was coming, but the official news is that our chaotic and wonderful Long Beach used book store, Acres of Books, is closing its doors on October 18, 2008. The CRA plans to redevelop the area and the owners decided to sell the property to the city. In June, Ray Bradbury spoke at the bookstore and described it this way: "I love this place. I love the smell of it. When it used to rain...I'd come to Long Beach, I'd come here to the Acres of Books and I'd go in the back. The back section has a tin roof, and you can stand there, with the rain beating on the tin roof, making you feel good. And you're picking up the books, and you smell them, and you're alone with your loves in Acres of Books. That's why I'm here." (As transcribed by lbreport.com.) It’s not pithy, but I know exactly what he meant!

Fortunately, another book crisis was averted when, on September 9, the City of Long Beach adopted a budget plan that included funds to keep the main library open. Earlier this summer, the city proposed to close the main library in order to save $1.8 million. A public outcry, including a visit by Snoop Dogg (see the picture below if you don't believe it) and a lecture by Ray Bradbury, forced the city to revise its plans. A Press Telegram article on Bradury's lecture ended with this quote: "Long Beach is part of my life," he said. "I'll be back to help you the next time you need me." Thanks Ray!

What Are You?

Lucy always saves her hard questions for bedtime, usually after the Bible reading, and the praying, and the singing are finished. I can’t recall how we got on the topic, but last night we talked about ways to answer the question, “What are you?” Of course, the obvious answer is: “I’m a person.” (This question is usually followed by, “No, I mean where are you from?” and then, “Where are your parents from?” with the goal of determining your race or ethnicity.) I told her that she could say she is both Japanese-American and White, or European-American. Lucy instantly responded, “Wait, we’re white? Who’s white?” (I was a little shocked, then I explained that Caroline’s ancestors are Scottish and English so that makes her European-American.)

Come to think of it, I've had my own moments of confusion in conversations about race and ethnicity. I attended the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing in April. I had a great time, met tons of people, and had many enjoyable conversations. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that I had inserted an unusual level of awkwardness into around a dozen conversations. Several days after the fact, it dawned on me that when people had asked me about my background they didn’t want to know about my undergraduate education. I saw two other Asians at the Festival--out of a crowd of around 3,000 people--so I guess I would have asked about my background, too.

Two Unexpected Highlights

I pulled out Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring (yet again), and I was struck by two passages from the first chapter, “A Long-Expected Party.” As the years pass, I don't rush through as quickly to get to the action.

“The fireworks were by Gandalf: they were not only brought by him, but designed and made by him…They were all superb. The art of Gandalf improved with age.” (I hope that, like Gandalf, my art--chopping vegetables? skipping rocks?-- will improve with age.)

“Many young hobbits were included, and present by parental permission; for hobbits were easy-going with their children in the matter of sitting up late, especially when there was a chance of getting them a free meal. Bringing up young hobbits took a lot of provender.”

A few months ago we started buying provender at a place that Mark Mikasa calls “Costco-land."

Visual Absurdity at Work

There are many strange sights in and around our building. We have a main elevator that doesn’t usually work, a service elevator where one must press “5” to exit on the fourth floor, and other oddities. Here are a few images to give you a flavor of the absurdity we see every day. (My favorite is the “No Smoking” sign next to the Liquid Nitrogen tank.)

Glorifying God Following a Day of Trouble

John gave a sermon on Psalm 50 with an emphasis on verse 15: "call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me." Unfortunately, I'm much more likely to call upon God and less likely to glorify Him. In light of this, here's a partial list of times that God has delivered me:

1. Once, at the bus stop on the corner of Jefferson and Normandie, a teenage gunman started shooting from across the street. The abuelita a few feet away from me was hit in the leg, but the ambulance came quickly and she was okay, all things considered. The other seven bullets missed all of us standing at the bus stop.
   
2. The first summer after college, we returned to the neighborhood after our first year away at fancy colleges. After bowling one night, two guys with shotguns robbed five of us on our way home. Everyone was okay and we only lost around $8.
   
3. On April 29, 1992, the day of the Rodney King verdicts, our boss closed down our offices at 54th and Crenshaw a bit early. I hopped on the bus, around 4:00 p.m., rode to USC and got off the bus without realizing that the L.A. riots had started.
   
4. I was robbed a couple of other times, once on the way to work at USC, once when Reid and I were jogging home, and once on the bus. People said they had weapons, but they didn't use them.
   
5. In high school, a van drove by at a very slow rate as my friends and I stood outside of the auditorium after rehearsal. A guy leaned out of the window and yelled something at us as the van passed by. I was mad, and in high school, so I flipped them off. The van backed up and I said, "We've got trouble." My friend Wing added, "Right here in River City." A guy in a white shirt and baggy jeans jumped out of the car, looking angry. "Hey, it's only Tim," he said. It was a gang banger, but, fortunately, it was my friend Victor.
   
6. Also, it might sound small, but I made some really good progress on a writing project for work today. Caroline and I prayed about it on the way to work this morning. We sought the Lord, and He answered us.

God delivers us from all of our fears!

Parables

Susan (Cho) Van Riesen has said some memorable things over the years, but I particularly remember two things that she said as a student and as a young InterVarsity staff member. First, she said that she had conversations with God where she would say something and He would answer. (My thoughts about interacting with God were revolutionized!) Second, she said that life was full of parables if we had eyes to see them. I was reminded of Susan's words during our recent vacation with the Parks family.

Parable #1

Two days before we left for Big Sur, our packing lists were set, but we were not sure what to do. Fires raged out of control in the area and sections of Highway 1 were closed to traffic. The campground was open, but smoke engulfed the coastal area. Should we travel to Big Sur only to be evacuated? Would the smoke make camping miserable? Should we change plans? We spent several hours disappointed and anxious about our ruined vacation. We desperately needed a few days in some kind of wilderness. The next day, when we decided to abandon hope of camping in Big Sur, Richard called us with amazing news: their friends had offered their condo in Mammoth to us for 5 nights, completely free. The condo had comfortable beds, a beautiful view of the mountains, and, our kids' favorite part, cable TV.

Parable #2
As we drove along Highway 395 from Mammoth to Tioga Pass, Caroline pointed out the results of a recent fire. On one side of the road, a wide swath of trees stood completely blackened. The fire had jumped the road and burned many trees on the other side as well. We looked to the left and right and noticed a pink ground cover that we first mistook for fire retardant. Looking intently, we saw that everywhere the burn area was covered in lovely pink flowers.

Sometimes God reveals mysteries and sometimes He just makes things as plain as day.

Flashback: Clarence and the Monkeys

One summer night in South Los Angeles, Richard, Reid and I sat on the porch and listened to our friend, Clarence, talk about monkeys in the Vietnamese jungle. Clarence would often stop by in the early evening, asking for a dollar to buy a hamburger at the corner burger joint, or a cup of juice. He lived in nearby boarding house and came by when he was hungry or bored, which was quite often. He was a huge man with a large round head, thick hands, and a crooked nose—the result of his years as a boxer, he said. Clarence acted like a kid at times, widening his round eyes as he asked for a cookie. At other times, those eyes would well up with tears as he told us about some of the things that he’d done during his tours in Vietnam. “I don’t think God can forgive me,” he said. Even if I had a collar on, I don’t think he would have believed me when I told him that God could forgive even the worst things. He just cried and ate his burger. Then he would suddenly snap out of it and act like nothing had happened. We didn’t know if he’d experienced a brain injury as a result of boxing, or using drugs after his tours of duty in Vietnam.

On that summer night, Clarence was especially lucid as he sipped his plastic cup of juice. “Have you ever eaten a monkey?” he asked us. We exchanged glances then shook our heads. "Barbecued monkeys,” he continued, “That's some good eatin'." When he was in Vietnam, the members of his squad were often out in the bush for extended periods, growing tired of MREs and hungry for meat. When desire outweighed inconvenience, they hunted monkeys. with their M16s. "They’re hard to catch, too. The big ones are smart and they fight back, throw sticks , scream. But when you catch 'em and put 'em on a rotisserie stick. Mmmm."

Maybe it was the summer heat, but we pictured ourselves with Clarence, half a world away. We sat there for a moment of silence and imagined Clarence savoring his dinner the way that he put away a cheeseburger and fries.

Commuter Snippets

At the bus stop an older man looks at me and we say hello.

“How are you?” I ask.

“Fine, thank you, but my arm is swollen.” He rubs his left arm and stares off into the distance. “I think it’s gout.”

* * * * *
A young man covered in tattoos (“562,” skulls, a web on both arms with a Shelob-like spider, others that I can’t recall) entered the train, sprawled in his seat and noticed a young woman seated across the aisle.

She was in the process of scraping off fluorescent orange from her nails.

“Do you know about the great stuff that comes in bottles and takes that stuff right off your nails…, nail polish remover?” he said in a droll manner.

“Yeah, I’ve heard of it,” she replied.

Do You Believe in Miracles?

In the interest of counteracting an overwhelming desire to sulk, here are a couple of great amateur basketball moments.

Once upon a time, Debbie and a dear family friend, Trinh, played for the Florence Nightingale Middle School Nighthawks. Our family went to a Saturday tournament to give them moral support, but we expected to be home early. King Middle School, the tournament favorite, had a roster filled with taller and quicker players; some even honed their ball-handling skills in the Saturday Japanese-American League. What Nightingale lacked in height, they didn’t make up with experience. Some of the Nighthawks even played in tennis shoes. Needless to say, they weren’t supposed to succeed.

If memory serves, Nightingale overachieved and reached the championship game. They were outmatched in terms of skill and physical size, but the other team went cold went cold in the finals, missing lay-ups and getting frustrated. The score was incredibly low, in the teens, I think. In the second half, the game was close and the Nighthawks trailed by a point in the waning seconds. The crowd assumed it was over, but they got the ball back and someone put up a wild shot. Trinh jumped up, avoided the trees, and came down with a rebound in the paint. As she went up for a shot, she was fouled, and the ref blew his whistle. With three seconds on the clock, Trinh was going to the free throw line with a chance to win.

The opposing coach, with predictable gamesmanship, called timeout to ice her. There’s no way a junior high schooler can overcome the pressure, I thought. Maybe, just maybe, she could send the game to overtime. Trinh returned to the line after the timeout and calmly hit the first free throw to tie the game. Impossible! She got the ball back from the ref, bounced it, and sank the second free throw for the lead. We jumped up and down and rushed the court when time expired. Trinh, thanks for the memories. (Note: I spoke with Debbie today and she couldn't remember beating King.  Maybe it was a consolation game. By the way: I'd still trust Trinh to sink free throws in crunch time.)

Finally, this video from two years ago made me choke up. A friend from high school sent it to me the other day. It's a great story about an autistic boy who played an amazing game for his high school team.

Sometimes You Lose

Last night was one of the most painful nights in Laker history, no doubt about it. It was so awful to watch the end of the game that Lucy curled up in my arms. Daniel left the room and tried to watch the Cartoon Network. Caroline said, “Now I remember why I don’t like basketball.” I woke up a couple of times in the middle of the night and wondered if it had all been a bad dream. Unfortunately, the Lakers allowed the Celtics to come back from an unprecedented deficit in the NBA Finals. Wow, that smarts. I almost feel like Debbie after Miami lost to Penn State in the national championship game. (She went to her room and slammed the door after Vinny Testaverde threw an interception at the goal line to end a brilliant last minute drive.)

The loss brought back a bunch of bad memories. Maybe I need to forgive Larry Bird for waving the towel and McHale for grabbing Kurt Rambis by the neck and slamming him to the floor. I don’t remember if I cried when the Dodgers lost to Reggie Jackson and the Yankees in 1977, but I cringed when Daniel checked out a book on Mr. October a few months ago. My blood pressure rises when I see Bevo, Vince Young, or burnt orange. (No offense to any UT friends out there...) And I still can’t believe that USC lost to Stanford last year. I know that you win a few, but sometimes it’s true what Maime Trotter says to Galadriel Hopkins near the end of The Great Gilly Hopkins: “All that stuff about happy endings is lies.”

June 12: Loving Day

At Fountain of Life Covenant Church, we have a large number of multiethnic families and nearly all of the married, engaged, and dating couples are interracial. I'd list them all, but there are already three examples within the Sato family. (And I'm not biased when I say that FOL has some of the cutest kids around!)

It's almost easy to take interracial families within a multiethnic church for granted, but this morning I heard a story on NPR and read a blog post by Edward Gilbreath, an author and editor at Christianity Today. (Read the post here and follow his links to other coverage.) Forty-one years ago today, anti-miscegenation laws were struck down by the Supreme Court's decision in Loving v. Virginia. Richard Loving, a white man, and his wife, Mildred, a black woman, were banished from Virginia and threatened with imprisonment for violating the Virginia Racial Integrity Act of 1924. Here's a quote from the act:

"It shall hereafter be unlawful for any white person in this State to marry any save a white person, or a person with no other admixture of blood than white and American Indian. For the purpose of this act, the term "white person" shall apply only to the person who has no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian; but persons who have one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian and have no other non-Caucasic blood shall be deemed to be white persons. All laws heretofore passed and now in effect regarding the intermarriage of white and colored persons shall apply to marriages prohibited by this act."

It's hard to believe, but California's own miscegenation laws were struck down by the California Supreme Court in 1948. Read a brief summary. It's harder to believe that Charleston High School in Mississippi held its first ever interracial prom just a few days ago.

Lakers in Six

“There’s absolutely nothing like a championship run to bring this city together,” said Lewis MacAdams on NPR’s “Day to Day” radio show. (Listen to the story.) He described the Laker flags on junky pick-up trucks and nice Mercedes-Benzes, fist bumps between poets and store clerks, and the general elation of Lakers fans around the city. Well, he probably wrote the story before the first two games of the series – and before the fight at Staples Center at the Game 2 screening (see the LA Observed post) — but I loved it anyway. Frankly, it’s true. People are quite willing to offer perspectives on Paul Pierce’s amazing recovery/healing, discuss the free throw disparity, and even cut people deals. (Back in 2001, a printer gave me a huge discount on a project and even rushed the delivery because we talked about the Lakers before we started doing business!) When the Lakers are doing well, it's easier to break the ice and cut across ethnic, class, and age divisions. A couple days ago, John and Becky saw a guy in a Kobe MVP jersey and had an evangelistic conversation right in their front yard. The power of connecting through powerful common interests cannot be underestimated.