waking up
Got Put in My Place!
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So for the Haven Christmas Party, all three house groups and the friends they brought went at it in a very engrossing game trivia-type game. There were logic puzzles, US history questions, and pop culture items. The Thursday group (my group) was clearly in the lead despite our small numbers. Thanks to Irving, Richard, and Samantha who graciously joined our team, we were pretty much unstoppable. Until the last page, where one question boosted the flailing weaklings’ (the Monday group) numbers:
Who was the Top NBA Scorer of all time? 5 bonus points for whoever can guess the point total rounded up to the closest thousand.
Do you know the answer? WITHOUT Googling it?
Okay, so lemme first say that there were some REALLY hard questions that were worth one one point, and compound questions with each part only worth one as well. But this question, for some reason, was worth five times the amount. Absurd. Maybe it’s because Dave King (sports freak) put the questionnaire together.
What was more absurd is that Leo (from Monday group) got it right.
The answer:
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, with 38,387 points. Leo guessed 39,000.
So the worthless, good-for-nothing team edged by the smartest team, because of a ridiculous point value championing relatively worthless knowledge. To cap the night off for me, I took home a combination snow globe/picture frame. WHO PUTS A PICTURE IN A SNOW GLOBE? HONESTLY
And then this becomes the comeback of the year:
Quick Burglary Update
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December 24th, 2008 – Received my Laney acoustic amp back, as well as an amp I don’t recognize…
My 7 Year-Old Student
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He has been learning to write e-mails for almost half a year now… his parents gave him a Gmail account and I make sure to CC him whenever I have to talk about my schedule with his parents or something, so he feels included. Occasionally he will write me himself.
I sent my Christmas recording out a few days ago, and, I suppose today, this was what he wrote in response.
To: Warren Lain
Subject: The music you play is aswom
S**** P******* sent Wed, Dec 24, 2008 at 7:13 AM
I really like your music.S****
Dude you hear that? It’s aswom. Hahahahahaahah
Burglary Update: Reconciliation
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So, as you probably know, this twisted story of burglary has taken some interesting turns here and there. Allow me to construct a timeline:
2007, February 9-11th: Burglary takes place sometime while all housemates are away, three of which are on the Haven snow trip.
2007, February 12th: Immediate filing of police report, including a list of items stolen. For me, it is mostly music gear.
2008, March 27th: The same day as my first coffee-shop performance of my new music, I am alerted to the fact that some of my gear is up for auction on eBay. The seller turns out to be my neighbor from across the street.
2008, May 2nd: The detective promises a warrant will come, and soon. After numerous e-mails, calls, voicemail messages, and personal visits to the Campbell Police Department, I hear about little to no progress for months.
2008, September 3rd: Feeling like I am prompted by God to reconcile with my neighbor during the week I’m preparing to give my first sermon, I write a note to this same neighbor, telling him I’d like to have lunch sometime (a way for me to move towards forgiveness/letting it go). We begin to develop rapport.
2008, November 7th: Finally, the investigation moves forward… A cop shows up at my door saying the police will return a bunch of my stuff.
Since November 7th, my neighbor hid from me and all the other neighbors. He would only come out at night, and avoided all kinds of contact. The little rapport we had developed had all but faded away. Until today!
I heard him revving one of his many cars at a loud level, and was going out anyway to grab lunch and run some errands. There he was… bent over his engine block, tweaking, revving, completely unaware that I was standing only about 20 feet away. I thought about it for a moment. Should I ignore him, and play into the fact that he is avoiding me? We would never have to speak again, and I would never have to look him in the face again. The pain, the suffering, the confusion, once so fresh, had become duller. These things didn’t destroy me this time. I prayed for about a second. Then I approached him, and called out his name.
He was visibly embarassed and ashamed. I asked him if he had a minute to talk, and what his side of all of this was. He confessed to stealing everything with someone else involved, and yet he said he took full blame. He said he had some more of my things, and also confessed to selling certain items on eBay for nearly nothing. He asked if I had heard anything about a court date. He said he wondered many times to himself whether or not he should come up to my door to tell me he was sorry and that he wanted to return some of the other things the cops didn’t take. He said he knew that I knew it was him a long time ago, even before the note I wrote him in September. I told him that for all the trouble he caused, all the hurt, I forgave him. He then proceeded to tell me how depressed he had been since the cops searched his place, and how much he dreaded next year, and how paying restitution was the only thing on his mind. I told him he needed to do what was right, and his life was not over, and that it is now out of our hands. He said he might have to do jail time, which would delay paying me back even longer, and he said he had tried to find work (he was laid off earlier in the year), and had no luck. I told him that we needed to trust that the judge would make a fair decision about restitution and how it would be worked out. I told him his life was not over, and that he should look at it as a new starting point. I told him perhaps there was a reason that I was his neighbor these past two years, and not someone else… that perhaps others would not be so kind. And lastly, I told him, as far as it depended on me, he didn’t need to go sneaking around at night, avoiding me anymore. I told him he was free to knock on my door anytime, and that when he had my other things, that I’d be glad to have them back.
Perhaps you are reading this and wonder whether or not this was the right thing to do. I wonder myself sometimes. But I think God has used it, and will use it more.
Summation and My Challenge
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I was thankful for many things these past few weeks. To not mention them here would be a great oversight.
I am thankful that so many people came to the show. The fact that we sold out the Hotel Utah opened up doors to Red Devil Lounge, Cafe du Nord, and Bottom of the Hill.
I am thankful that I am part of BAAYF… a good ministry staffed by good men and women who are true servants. They inspire me. But not only them, but the awesome youth who consider themselves a part of BAAYF.
I am thankful for a cool new housemate, Aarash (everyone just calls him “Q”). He’s a good guy, easy-going, and brought a hell of a lot of freaking entertainment possibilities into the house (brought a Nintendo (8-bit!), a Wii, a PS3, a new Samsung LCD, and switched us from cable to DirecTV without expecting me or Junshien to pay, because we never really wanted to opt for it).
I am thankful for a whole houseful of guys that are respectful and amicable.
I am thankful for moments that, even when I’m feeling quite out of it, friends remind me how much they enjoy my company/are happy to see me around (lately Elton, Sergio).
I am thankful for my mom, who has worked so hard the past few years. She wants to help me buy a house.
I am thankful for my bandmates… guys who are willing to step up and contribute to a vision that is not necessarily their own yet. Shows commitment and heart, that they believe in what we’re doing.
I am thankful for… challenging times. Without them, I doubt that the future version of me would have much self-respect or sincere faith.
Currently, I carry around this dull pain that suggests that something is not right inside me. I feel quite prodigal. I know in my heart I am rebelling against God, that I am often times so impatient, frustrated, and fed up with people or situations that I just want to quit and do something else. And then come feelings of loneliness, because you don’t know why you are going through these emotions if everyone else seems to have it together, so you go through the motions and hope God uses your perfect church attendance record, or perfect tithing record, or perfect service record… Then you get judgmental and put all the blame on other people and situations again. What a vicious cycle. This dull pain whispers to me–that I just need to fall in love with the God who has stopped at nothing to send a message–the most important message. To borrow a line from Blood Diamond, “I am your father, who loves you. And you will come home with me and be my son again.” A big overhaul of my picture of God is due. I don’t need a God who is all about stone tablets and rules. I need a picture of the real God.
And yet it’s so difficult to grasp… God being wholly good. How God could possibly bear the sight of my marred soul, my broken humanity? To break down the wall, to dig through the trash to redeem what was lost… how big is this heart? This seems impossible, and God must want something from me. Surely everyone else on earth does. And God, surely this is why He made up these rules to live by and stone tablets to believe in. He must want to restrict me, and put chains on my soul in a whole new way, and hold me to standards of perfection and give me boundaries I don’t understand. And although I don’t want to go back to the guilt/frustration/guilt cycle, my soul feels that God’s proposition must be evil.
Yet the Bible insists that for all these precepts and teachings to follow, the God who instituted the Law that eventually found its satisfaction in Jesus’ sacrifice, is really, wholly good. Boundaries, and the highest standard of love and obedience are somehow supposed to set me free. How paradoxical… that slavery to righteousness is freedom? How bold this assertion… and to the cynic I have occasionally become, how offensive and absurd it is to offer the notion that God is good. I have a decent amount of experience that cries out to me exactly the opposite. “NO, God is NOT GOOD, He has an agenda that squeezes your life out, and you will ultimately be tossed to the dogs if you don’t figure out a way to live life on your own. He lets good people die (physically, but emotionally as well), and lets bad people succeed. Is this the kind of God you want to give your life to?” Yet the Bible insists, as it has for 2000 years, that God has enacted a massive plan to reconcile us to Himself, to save us from the world we’ve ruined. The Bible insists that God is not like we say He is. The Bible insists that we have got to get the wrong picture of God out of our minds, and let Jesus become the real picture.
Jesus, the real picture. Jesus, the real definition of God. This is who I need. No one else will do. I guess this is the point of my challenge. And this is the last thing I am thankful for, that Jesus is not easy to believe in. Any other way would make it cheap.
Hotel Utah Success, Now What?
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Got an offer from Cafe Du Nord, that’s what. We’ll see… tough to draw twice the size for a second show… and they are only offering us Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday.
Either way, we should be working hard on a real demo. Then blogs and labels, here we come!
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