The [Squirrel] Monster Within

I was meeting with a student on a clear Friday afternoon at Free Speech Movement Cafe on campus. We were talking about insecurity and pride, and how both these human postures communicate a similar rejection of God as Creator and Sustainer. I shared some about my temptation to tell God that he designed me poorly when I found myself not measuring up to my own standards, and the student, Rachel, was listening with rapt attention.

It was then that we saw the squirrel perched on our table, mere inches away from our coffee and food.

This is not the squirrel, but it is about as close to you as the squirrel in my story was to us. 

Too close.

With exclamations of surprise and fear, we leapt up from our table, snatching away our beverages and snacks. One crumb remained and the rotund squirrel gobbled it up greedily, showing even less of an inclination to back down. I watched it in disbelief--when did it get so bold that it would sit on a table, less than a foot away from humans, and not flinch at their words or gestures? How did this abomination come to be??

It was then that Rachel and I realized that this squirrel standoff was a perfect illustration of what we had been discussing: this moment was a story that, along with the associated feelings of terror and helplessness, would sear this conversation in both our minds for a long time to come.

This squirrel is so much like the pride within us--when we feed it a little here and a little there (musing on our accomplishments, dwelling on our failures, investing in our reputations at the cost of our souls), it soon grows bold beyond our control and begins to terrorize us. It starts looking at us with hunger, no longer satisfied with the little morsels we've been feeding it. My wake-up call came in the form of a deep depression*--I had been feeding the monster of vanity for a long time with both self-aggrandizing and self-condemning thoughts, and it eventually swallowed my identity whole. As a result, I experienced what felt like death, but was really God destroying the false beliefs I had about who I am and teaching me to compassionately interpret my emotions.

Rachel and I were a little in awe at how neatly our table-side encounter with the squirrel fit into what God was teaching us in that moment. I am grateful to serve such a creative and concrete God!

*I am continually learning to interpret my experience with depression, and I offer it as a story about my life (no one else's). Everyone's depression is different!

Love First, Ask Questions Second

God has recently been overturning a paradigm I've unconsciously held regarding my relationship with my student leaders.

Firstly, as a function of my own personality and culture of origin, I interpret leaders as those given rightful authority and responsibility to direct followers. When I was a student and staff invited me to respond in specific ways, I invariably did what they requested. And when I deviated or defaulted in any way, I was acutely aware that I had done so and anticipated "the reckoning"--the time when I'd have to account for my procrastination and inaction.

There are various unhealthy dynamics in this approach, but one positive one is that I understood the two-way commitment of my relationship with my staff workers. They were committed to oversee my ministry, help me understand what next steps to take, and hold me accountable to what God was calling me to do in obedience and trust. In order for that relationship to work, I had to hold up my end of the bargain, which was to follow their leadership by obeying, or at least by conscientiously objecting when I felt like obeying was not in my or others' best interest. But nowhere in my mind was there an option to not do something and not communicate with my staff worker about not doing it.

Then I became a staff worker, and this dynamic of one-way communication (me, initiating with my students) and unmet expectations became rather frequent.

As a relatively new staff worker, I have a tendency to overpersonalize ministry situations. This inclination usually starts me going in the wrong direction. The truth is, there are so many things competing for my students' time and attention, many of them worthy pursuits in their own right. Still more carry the brightness of urgency or the allure of prestige. And to interpret a student's non-responsiveness as a rejection of my leadership misses that reality. All of us live within social systems in which there are rewards and punishments--the very least I can do when experiencing students' flakiness is ask some good questions about what's driving them, inviting them to honestly own their priorities without shame. I don't do that very well when I'm trying to defend my own leadership.

While these realizations were stirring around in my mind, I asked God for a way out of the zero-sum mentality of "If they obey me, I'm a good leader, and if they don't, it means I suck." He invited me to think about how he leads me--with intention for my flourishing, with compassion for my struggles and with a whole lot of patience for my wrong choices. God invited me to choose into that style of leadership--self-giving rather than self-evaluative--by pursuing my students' hearts the way He pursues mine.

So then I thought long and hard about how I could show them God's love, and I decided I would buy each one of the leaders I oversee a gift that wasn't expensive but somehow drew on my knowledge of who they are and what resonates with them. For one student, I bought him three different (used) DVD's that had his name in the titles. For a female student, I bought her flowers and chocolate. Each time I spent energy, money, and time on thinking about these individuals and what makes them special, I found myself softening in my approach toward them.

I was loving these students without requiring anything of them but with the intention of showing them God's love. It was not about them liking me more or about me convincing them to undertake an action plan of some kind. It was not about me. It was about God using me to let them know how much he loves them, and in the process, he changed my heart. I was no longer so inclined to be resentful of times when I set clear expectations that students did not meet. I held them accountable to their word and asked them what happened, but it was a not punitive conversation and I didn't feel wronged by them.

God taught me to love first, so I can be in the right place to ask questions.

A New Kind of Gathering -- Encounter

So we used to refer to our weekly (or every two week) community gathering space as "large group." This title had some drawbacks:

• No clues as to what the gathering is about or who is invited
                 (Is Jesus invited? I don't know. Is he large?)
• Sociological nature of the name has generic/static connotations
                 (Does this nondescript group change or is it stuck forever in ambiguous largeness?)
• Not especially welcoming to new folks, and taken for granted by members
                  (Why do we do this again? What are we hoping for in this space?)

At the start of the semester, our fellowship (in various settings) voted on the new name, Encounter. Encounter is meant to be a place where we encounter God, and God encounters us. We've experienced the reality that encounters with God transform our thinking, feeling, and acting. We can expect God to move because he is active and engaged and because he goes out of his way to be accessible to us in our limited frailty.

As we have been exploring this new space, we've had different kinds of Encounters. Our first was a talk series on "What Comes First?"

We also have had two Prayer Encounters -- one focused on intercession, and one focused on prayer ministry.

It's still a bit experimental week-to-week, but it has definitely been a space for our community to gather around Jesus, renew our minds, receive unconditionally accepting love from God, and respond. May God continue to Encounter Cal Christian Fellowship!

Receiving Grace in the Midst of Self-Centeredness

So I thought that throwing up in front of people was the most shameful thing that would happen to me all summer. [If you haven't heard about this, read here!] Turns out it was only the most externally shameful thing that happened.

All summer long, I wrestled (and continue to wrestle) with my self-centeredness, particularly when I am experiencing a strong negative emotion such as anger, fear, or sadness. This struggle happens all the time, and those who know me well know my tendency to withdraw and focus on it by myself, but at BayUP there's not a lot of space or time to be alone, and I was not always willing/able to articulate the space I needed. Thus, I began to feel trapped and saw others (students, staff, innocent bystanders) as agents of my captivity. I resented the people around me for being too loud, or not speaking up enough, or making my life more challenging by asking questions, as though they had nothing better to do than to absorb my time and irritate me with trivialities.

Ah, yes. The noble plight of the introvert.



Even though I knew that everyone was actively processing, projecting, or fleeing from their own issues--same as me, so we're all in the same boat--it was challenging to maintain that perspective in the swirl of my own reactions and resist the tendency to blame others for how I felt when I was around them. I'd be thinking thoughts like: "Their inside jokes make me feel like an outsider; therefore, I am justified in blaming them for my sadness and assuming they don't want me around". I experienced the poison of my pride--I don't want to ask the questions that would help me to understand this person or situation better, because then I have to forfeit my right to be a victim, which is the only thing keeping my vulnerability contained. I know I have a choice to open up or shut down, and I choose the distorted sense of control I feel when I shut down.

But what happens if I choose out of this pattern? What other choices are available to me?

When I experience God as the one who draws near to me in my pain--the one who is neither indifferent nor overwhelmed, but wholly present with me--I can look without judgment on my emotions and know that my identity isn't defined by whatever I'm experiencing. That makes just enough space to take a breath, refrain from blaming everyone within my field of vision, and let truth illuminate the way forward.

For me, the way forward was acknowledging that I had let my own emotional responses cloud my ability to engage with the frequent injustices occurring in Oakland. In order to that, I had to be willing to say I had made a mistake rather than justifying my mistake by pointing to what others had done. After that, there was a time for me to apologize for the harm I had done to multiple individuals. And after that, I listened to others share about how my actions affected them and I owned the consequences.

The only one who could have convinced me to lower my shields instead of running away was Jesus. He encouraged me that the truth would set me free, and moreover he made it clear that it was what he wanted. Because I have made the choice to live under his leadership, he was giving me the opportunity to affirm that choice by obeying his voice. It wasn't magical or heroic what I did--it was simply me following through on promises I made, and that follow-through allowed me to see what God can do with submitted hearts.

He redeems the broken trust and makes the relationships even more secure, grace-filled, and loving than they were before. This reality is what gives me hope. Someone much bigger and better than me is guiding me and will not fail to turn my mistakes into blessing when I acknowledge them before him.

Pre-BayUP Prayer Update

Hello dear friends and family,

I write to you on the eve of the Bay Area Urban Project 2014! I've been in our staff orientation for the past three days, which has been full of its own God-moments and preparation for the next six weeks. Let me share a couple:

Our first day, Monday, we went on a food tour of Oakland. Unfortunately, somewhere between the Ethiopian food and the Korean seafood pancake, I picked up some kind of funky bug. By the time we got to our Vietnamese-French dinner, I was feeling queasy, and though I tried to make it to the bathroom in time, I ended up emptying the contents of my stomach on the dinner table. (I KNOW, RIGHT?? It's like the textbook example of "most embarrassing moment"!)

Why do I tell you this? Because God used it to bring us together as a staff team and to remind me that I don't have to pretend to have things under control. It was super shameful in the moment--I barely knew any of my teammates, so this was their first impression of me. And afterwards during that night, I was just super tired and not really able to meaningfully interact. But it paved the way for us as a team to be real with our tension, confusion, and inadequacy. Now we laugh about it: "That was the moment we became family--when Estelle vomited on the dinner table and all the pretense was gone."

I'm grateful for this lesson so early on in the program because I am tempted to evaluate myself by how well I perform and by how others perceive me. God, in his mercy, humbles me to realize that it's not my fake competency that he desires, but my very real, very obvious mess. It's also so helpful to be surrounded by people around whom I can drop the facade of control and just be vulnerably human.

If you are a person of prayer, please pray that the other staff and I would remain humble and centered in God's plans for the summer (not our own)!

(photo taken at dinner, minutes before my... erm ... episode)

Today, we took a prayer walk around the different work sites we'll be at this summer. I will be volunteering at College Track, an amazing organization that commits to first generation students for eight years (from the beginning of high school through their college graduation).

One of the main hopes at College Track is to produce students with GRIT-- guts, resilience, integrity and tenacity. They realize that students need more than just external resources to make it through the challenges that face them; they need internal guidance and strength, which is built through daily, mundane decisions that add up over time. This also is the process of discipleship--Jesus forming his followers into people who recognize the present moment is an opportunity to choose to say yes.

Please pray that our BayUP students are able to develop GRIT like the College Track students they will be teaching!

​

If you'd like to continue to stay updated on the adventures of our team, please visit our blog at calteambayup.wordpress.com. 

Thank you so much for your support, love and prayers! This experience would not be possible without you, and I am so grateful for your influence in my life.

Visual Journey through the year

http://prezi.com/wzzqvdfbvaes/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

I created a visual presentation of our community's journey this year on Prezi that I'd like to share with you. When I walked through this journey with our students, I paired it with the spiritual discipline of the Examen, the regular practice of which has helped many Christians recognize the presence of God in the good, difficult, and mundane events of their lives. 

Afterwards, we responded with a post-it note activity so our community could see the ebb and flow of joy and sorrow over the course of the year. Each person wrote on three post-its: green for a meaningful, life-giving event; pink for a confusing, painful situation; and blue for a gift/good thing we are grateful for. Reading over these responses, I could see that God had been gracious in the midst of trials. I also noticed that our post-its together created a kind of balance at each point in the year--not everyone individually suffered or rejoiced at the same time, but we were a body together in the midst of those unpredictable waves.

I am so thankful that God made community to encourage, challenge, and resource us for all seasons. This picture of teamwork and mutual concern invites us to experience God's intention for relationships.

Asian American Focus Group Wins Video Contest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugsw2_7ttuE

Our Asian American Focus Group was recently invited by Oakland Asian Community Center to enter a video for their context highlighting Asian Pacific Islander narratives (#APIvoices). The opportunity to participate in spaces outside of a Christian context excited us, so we decided to go for it! 

We pulled this video together (with help from a former CCF staff, Nate Lee, who lent us his spoken word piece) in a week! We actually won the Juried Award for the contest, which means that the judges (Terry Park of Hyphen Magazine, YouTube artist Jason Chu, and Angela Pang of AsianWeek Foundation) chose our video as their favorite. To see their shout-outs, and the other video that was chosen, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cjLqO9hj_o&feature=youtu.be

The entire undertaking brought our focus group closer together as well as established tighter bonds with the broader API community at Cal and in the area. We are so grateful for God's hand in all of this, knowing that the way things came together so well was a blessing.

Check out this photo we took with YouTube star AM Kidd when we attended OACC's Rhythms and Sounds show:

(it's nice that we had specially labeled chairs, too!)