electricity!

This last Wednesday was family night at The Boys & Girls Club. It was a chance for the parents to come visit the club to learn about new programs and suggest plans for future change. Mostly since it was the day before Thanksgiving it was a time for a free meal and family time. After everyone was finished with the first family night activity which was to make a family tree and present it to the club we were asked to all join hands in a big circle in the homework room. This kind of display being almost subconsciously habitual being a Christian I was surprised to notice the hesitation of the whole group and the weak hand grips from the two parents on each side of me. Before Auntie Telee opened us in prayer, before I could bow my head and close my eyes, with everyone still connected by sweaty palms and loose grips she said with a sturdy teacher’s tone, “now we are all going to take turns telling everyone one thing we are most thankful for”. This seemed refreshing and I immediately began thinking of the perfect statement of thankfulness. The first thing that I could think of was my family and for some reason every other alternative that popped into my mind seemed to fail in comparison. As I write this I am reminded of a game I was taught yesterday called electricity. It’s a game where you hold hands in a circle with a group and as you go around the circle you squeeze each others hands as if electricity was pumping through your hand into theirs using your body to bridge the circuit. If you start going fast enough it feels like there is some other force rather than just hands squeezing hands. It seems as if there is this artificially created energy made by accumulating squeezes in repetition. As it neared my turn to share what one thing I was most thankful for I noticed that almost all the people holding hands together in that group of children and adults, mothers and daughters, aunties and uncles, brothers and sisters and cousins, all shared how thankful they were to have such wonderful families. I wondered if it were any other occasion other than that night, family night, all together holding hands with the people they loved the most on the day before the one day America sets aside for thanks and family that their answers would be different. Regardless, it was great to see everyone all appreciating the same thing and just like in that game electricity there was an energy transferred from hands and it filled the room with a warm fuzzy feeling. There was something special about a bunch of families getting together all connected by hands that made me and almost everyone else think of family first. Maybe if we come together and be electric every day and share what we are thankful for we will create an energy that spreads wherever we go. If only everyday we are as thankful as we are on Thanksgiving maybe being thankful wouldn’t require a holiday.

big kid.

I’m sure when the Boys & Girls Club in Waianae decided to let me join as a volunteer three days a week they didn’t realize they were trusting a six foot tall, 280 pound, 21 year old child to be a responsible adult and affectively, with respect and authority, control the large group of rambunctious children who come kicking and screaming through their doors each day to finish homework, socialize, and impatiently wait for their parents to come save the day and pick them up. From day one having kids hanging on to each one of my limbs as I desperately tried to get all twenty of them to listen silently as I read to them in the Harry Potter room; the whole responsible adult who commands respect and authority was long gone.
Every Friday we fill out a weekly reflection paper where we take the time to write about our week and what we plan on accomplishing in weeks future. There is a section titled community service where we are supposed to reflect on praises and problems and how we are affectively being a witness at our designated service sites. Every week I feel like there is not much more to my responses than that I pretended to be ten years old and had the time of my life reading third grade books, having coloring contests, and making friends half my age for six hours a week. I mean the original intention of our volunteering in the community was to build relationships with hurting, broken people with the hope of bringing them close or closer to Jesus. And to be honest having coloring contests with bright eyed, joyful children all day didn’t feel like sharing the gospel to the hurting or broken.
It wasn’t until last Thursday when we went out to pass out some free meal tickets for the annual Thanksgiving dinner at the Blaisdell that I was convinced I was sharing the gospel in the most affective and maybe the only way that was possible at the Boys & Girls Club. While passing out the tickets at one of the beachside homeless communities in Waianae called sewers we ran into a soft-spoken eleven year old girl named Maya who happened to be one of my new friends at the Boys & Girls Club. When it all sunk in that this was her home where she lived with her mother, uncle, cousins, and three dogs I couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming feeling of compassion for the whole situation. Seeing Maya’s situation really put the past month of volunteering in perspective. Not all the kids, as happy as they may seem playing foosball, making paper airplanes, and testing my patience, go home to that same ecstatic happiness when they see mom or dad, auntie or uncle, walk through the double glass doors of the Boys & Girls Club to take them home. Maybe, just maybe those six hours a week, two hours a day acting like a child being the best friend I can be is exactly what these kids need the most. I can imagine Jesus, even being in his early thirties, acting like a child when he saw the smiles on the faces of children running just to touch him with their innocent hands and joyful laughs. I would imagine Jesus never had to act like the strict adult who told the children repent or else. Maybe this is what Paul meant when he claimed to be all things to all men that by all means he could save some. It would make perfect sense to drop all your big, bad, tough rules as an adult and act like a child around children to by all means, if they are anything like Maya, save some. Seeing Maya out there homeless for all reasons makes every smile, every laugh, every hug so precious knowing that sharing the gospel of Jesus at the Boys & Girls club has little to do with preaching and a whole lot to do with just being a big kid.

Comfort?

“And do not be conformed to thus world be transformed by the renewing of your mind. That you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” Romans 12:2

Comfort: California family home. hippie treefort ipod. myspace and a hot pocket with the football game on in basketball shorts, no shirt on, best friends. sufjan says all things go and music for days. long hair don’t care. best of all no problems. Hakuna matata .

My life currently has nothing to do at all, whatsoever, zip zam zilch of what I just mentioned above. I get to feed my myspace addiction once a week, but that’s only if Joey isn’t on all day. Maybe. My family consists of my six other team members and my new best friends are homeless. No TV, no football. All things don’t go and I’m Sufjan-less without my ipod. The only hot pockets are areas around Chinatown where drug dealing and prostitution are the most prevalent. Comfort?

“Blake you’ve changed so much…..”

I guess it’s pretty uncomfortable to make friends with someone who happens to be a fairly well known, almost kingpin, basically runnin’ her block, hustlin’ 24/7 type drug dealer. It can also get somewhat uncomfortable when you come to visit her one week and some other drug dealers really don’t want you around their corner and they are verbally expressing their opinion on the matter in such an angry, confrontational way, filled with recognizable expletives and others just understood by implied tones, that you feel the need to pray the last prayer you might ever speak. There I was with my new Salvation Army shirt “Doing the Most Good” with my head down in my lap praying “God I’m so sorry for everything i've ever done to disappoint you. Please forgive me. If I die right here, right now, Father, forgive me”. Well I’m alive and was probably overreacting. Regardless this is not necessarily conforming to the world’s idea of comfort and after that night I definitely had some sort of transformation. Im not as gangsta as I thought I was.

Revolution Hawaii. “A Year to Change a Lifetime”

Are you comfortable at home? Comfortable at church? Are you comfortable with you’re relationship with Jesus? Your prayer life? Purpose? Maybe comfort isn’t such a good thing.

After the situation scared me enough for me to say my final prayer, our strong, stronger than me, Hawaiian hustla with a soft side, drug dealing but beautiful in our eyes, sister in Christ, woman friend valiantly defended our honor, maybe our lives, by cursing and crushing the opposition with an authoritive and convincing speech about how, “These are my church friends. They come to see me every week. I can talk to whoever the f--- I want to”. This subsequently led to apologies not only to her but to us as well. I’m pretty convinced we were all comfortable after she stood up for us. We left with hugs, handshakes, and smiles.

After all my idea of what comfort really means is constantly changing. This change, this unconformity to what the world says, this transformation and renewal of my mind is not my idea, Paul wrote it, Jesus wants it, and I want to not only understand, but live the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God.