Interview

"sure, sure," PAUSE, "oh, Yeah" PAUSE, "I do have regrets,"

I can remember just months ago talking with only a handful of high school students asking them if they had any regrets, they said," no, Don't have regrets because every decision I have made has made me who I am," I was feeling clever and did not know what came over me, so I replied,"What if you don't like who you are?"

"sure, sure," PAUSE, "oh, Yeah" PAUSE, "I do have regrets,"

Now even more months forward I try to sum up my experience, but I wish that LA could sum up its experience with me. Yeah, sure, when I drove into LA it was my dream, it was what I had always wanted to do. Honestly, coming here had nothing to do with LA, it had everything to do with me. So I wonder, after ten weeks of having me here, does LA have any regrets.

I can imagine LA saying something like this:

"I wish we could have gotten to know each other much sooner. I wish you would have cared for me. I wish you didn't talk bad about me. I wish you saw me as a whole, as a thriving body of 12 million. I wish you would have seen me as Allan, as Dan, as Jose, as Ruhan, as Musako, as Ivan, as me, as every small part, significant. I wish you saw in my broken pieces potential friends. If I were a pool I wish you would have made your mark in me, a splash, But, even much more important, a splash in Allen's, Dan's, Jose's, Ruhan, and Musako's and Ivan's lives.

SPLASH

The city of Angels would continue:

"I could tell in the beginning, you weren't about me at all, that hurt, because you were here for me. But" PAUSE, "you transformed before my eyes." PAUSE, "and we saw each other, you began to dream of me as a city of light because you dreamed of pieces of my city as light." LA might end by saying, "we sure have changed, at least slightly since we met, perhaps more is going on here than you and me, I'm really glad you noticed it wasn't about you."

I would respond to LA, "I know." naturally since I am the one who made up LA's dialogue.

But there is so much dialogue that i did not make up that I will hold forever as life changing, changing in the sense that I am different, not in the sense that I am completely different. Conversations on the roof of the building, in the car, on the grass in Pasadena, in the office (though I did not know the office well). Dialogue on the APX lawn at USC, and at the white tables at URM.

"there is so much that I would change about BLANK" as I utter this phrase I know it reveals how I have been changed much. When I was living the things I would now change, I didn't think they should be changed. But they should, now I know, now they are SPACE changed.

God has been talking with me. I can recall a person asking Clive Staples Lewis, "why do you pray?" Lewis answered, "I pray not because I think it changes God but because it changes me."

OH how I will run, Yes Run!
Run for a prize, Yes the Prize!
PAUSE
For someone else, Yes I will Run!
For a City, for a nation, for a person, for humanity, I will not run for me!
Yes,
PAUSE
Christ runs through me.
Like the nervous system that controls the muscles, the motion, the feeling of the bottom of my feet against my soft shoes, like the heart that pounds out of my chest, and the lungs that cling to air, and the brain that rocks. Christ will run through me.
OH how He will run, Yes Run!
Run for a prize, Yes the Prize!
PAUSE
For someone else, Yes I will Run!
For a city, for a nation, for a person, for humanity. He will run for me!
It will be fast, it will hurt, it will be dangerous.
PAUSE
Oh Yeah
PAUSE
I do have regrets.
Yet
He has made me who I am
He has changed me through you, LA.

It isn't about SLASH for me, it is about SLASH for you.

The Finding Romance

As a five foot chubby adolescent I used to play in the courtyard below the building we lived in, it was one of eight fourteen story apartment buildings that all shared this small courtyard. In the middle of my playing my mom would shout my name from our balcony and I would come running to the door, my mom would “buzz” me in and I would run up the stairs to our apartment and my mom would carefully instruct me on the items we needed at the store and then hand me a 500 escudo note, about 2 US dollars. She would tell me that it is urgent and diner depends on it. Now on a mission, I would confidently stroll down the cobblestone walkway knowing that I was about to save diner, and nothing is more important than saving diner. Tonight, my cobblestone journey had purpose

When I reached the store I remembered that I was in search of oregano, which is a valiant spice, in many ways perfect and good. I would begin to go up and down the aisles, searching, scanning, on a mission. Then time would fly by and I still hadn’t found it. I would begin to feel awkward, walking through the store so long without finding anything. I would begin to fake shop, picking items up, looking at the ingredients. As my search continued I began to carry items that I had looked at, as if it was something I had come here to buy. But it wasn’t what I came for, I came for oregano. But then, suddenly the clouds of grocery stores opened and on the fourth shelf on the sixth aisle, next to the basil I saw the oregano. I carefully composed myself, dumped my decoys, knelt down picked up the spice, raised it high into the air in jubilation, then looked closely at my surroundings, I never wanted to forget where I had found the oregano. My heart skipped a beat, I had saved diner, and in all honesty, there is nothing like finding what you are looking for.

Our history is filled with great romance, Romeo and Juliet, Pride and Prejudice, You’ve got mail, Sleepless in Seattle, 10 things I hate about you, Casablanca, Hitch.

Single people, including guys, think about their one-day mate. They think about how soon that will be, they think about what they will be like, and “their story.” Because you want to have something good to say when people ask, “how did you two meet?” We want our story to be filled with suspense, humor, unbelievable circumstance and coincidence, we want drama that ends in a climactic embrace on a rainy day or spring evening. As guys, we want to propose in the coolest way possible, and girls want us to propose in the sweetest way possible. For us the finding of our mate is romance.

The finding is a huge industry. There are big bucks in helping strangers find each other and even bigger bucks from writing about it. People are searching so intensely for “him” or “her” that our lives are defined by the search. So much so that the quest and the finding is the most important part, it is the excitement of love. Finding, or falling in love, is in essence the purpose; we just want to find it. But what happens next? The after finding? Is the finding the end? It is in the movies, the final kiss is the climax, and the shots of the wedding during the credits is the resolution. Is finding what you have been searching for the Climax? Or is there life after finding? With Christians it seems we are satisfied for the sum of our faith to be found in the quest for finding God the very first time, for our “salvation” experience and journey to be the climax of our lives, followed by shots of happiness as our story is resolved. But I would say that finding, is much more like the inciting incident and the drama that follows is a life lived having found what you are looking for and the journey that takes place being found. The only thing that compares to finding what you are looking for is experiencing what you are looking for.