Some RBO youth take off at the start line.

One thing I like about volunteering with RBO is the chance to meet up with kids from all different parts of Oakland. This year I was paired up with S, a kid from the Fruitvale district attending a local charter school just a few blocks from me.

S is a soft kid, a quiet kid. He isn’t quick to volunteer himself, so our runs consist of me talking a lot, or asking him questions, and him politely answering them.

Our worlds are different — I grew up in wealthy Saratoga, where our biggest concerns were about our GPAs, studying for the SATs, or when we’d inherit our parents’ cars. S grew up in the hood, where everybody around him is gang-affiliated. Every Saturday morning at seven he jumps on two buses and comes out to our workouts on the south end of the lake by himself.

His best friend is Z, a slender Mexican-American kid like S, who became fast friends at their current school. Z has already developed the qualities of a young ringleader — brash, handsome, funny, a friend of trouble, and still hesitant and vulnerable behind his persona in a way that thirteen-year olds are.

Our workouts together would consist of the two friends running together, and Z volunteering uninvited facts about his friend: “Did you know that S is the handsomest guy at school. He’s a player.”

S: (chuckles to himself)

Z: “Him and me stopped being friends because he was seeing this girl, and I told him that she was trouble but he wouldn’t listen to me.”

Me: “Oh yeah? What’s she like?”

We talk about her at length.

Me: “So what’s the deal with you guys now? You’re still friends right?”

Z: “Yeah, I went away and wrote him a letter and said I still wanted to be friends.”

Two weeks later S reports back to me: I’ve broken up with that girl, Z was right.

And then he tells me he’s dating someone else now, her friend. I laugh.

—

What’s it like when everyone around you is living a grit-filled life? When cop cars and sirens and gunshots are your common reality?

“Me and my sister are close” S says, “but she protects me” — her sister was jumped into a gang two years ago (I am surprised to learn she is only 14).

They are close, but so far apart. S has resolved to keep his head up and out of gangs, but his sister is deep in gang life. They’re close, they fight, yet they love each other. He tells a story of nearly getting jumped himself, but for the protests of his sister, was let go.

“How do you stay out of the gang scene?” I ask him.

He shrugs. “They kind of know you’re so-and-so’s sister, and won’t bother you.”

—

On one of our runs, Z and S were running together when S blurts out, “Z once made me swallow a staple”.

“What? How did that happen?” I ask.

“He dared me.”

Z’s eyes twinkle.

“It got stuck in my throat and I got scared and I had to go to the hospital”, S says.

“The worst part was at the hospital, when I had to talk to his mom.” Z shudders. “She’s hella scary.”

S just laughs.

—

On our Oakland Half Marathon run this year, S and I were running past the West Oakland entrance to the Port, and I was talking to him about all the things we could see if we went over the bridge — Middle Harbor Shoreline Park, the Crucible, Brown Sugar Kitchen. “Have you seen those things before?” I ask. He responds no.

A half mile passes in silence, and then he volunteers, “There’s so many things I haven’t seen… it’s tough to see past all the violence.”

We run a bit more in silence.

—

S and I run a steady, paced half marathon together, and you can see his spirits rise as he pushes through his pain to get across the finish line, tired and happy. Z is somewhere behind us, having cramped up but he finishes too. And I’m overcome with pride for S and what he’s fighting for in his life.

Tired and happy.

I pick up the receiver to a sonic wave of grief. They shot my baby, he wails, they took my girl.

You loved her a lot, I offer, the words stumbling out of my mouth.

I loved her like my own.

Her daddy passed away in November. Harry. He helped me move into my apartment, put in the down payment… now he’s gone.

Wailing, the sobs come in waves. Bubbling, snorting, sniffling. Mike is a mess.

Listen.

I took Jubrille shopping just last week to get boots. Right out here — that Skechers on Bancroft? Giovana didn’t like this one pair that Jubrille really liked oh God oh god oh gawd oh god

Silence from time to time… hello? Silence. Hello?

I’m still here.

She was the last of 2012… I wish I was the last of 2012. I’m done, Drew, I’m done. It hurts so bad. Why’d they take my baby?

How’s Belinda?

The sobbing continues. She’s… bad, Drew. Belinda’s doing bad. You gotta call her man.

Jabrille, Gabriel, Jabrille, Gabriel — like the angel. Here’s her picture.

Mike shows a video to me from his phone, taking his time to swipe through about twenty different pictures. There the image is, her room, shadowy in the afternoon, the sun filtering through dark curtains. Graduation photos, bags from various stores taped to the walls — FOOT LOCKER, FOREVER 21, H&M. There is the sound of Mike choking back tears. There is a man in the room too, his arms slouched over his knees, giving Mike & camera a long look.

Be strong Mike for my mom and my sister. Pull yourself together. You can’t cry.

Giovana is shut off. Won’t talk. Can’t blame her. Her dad just passed too. And now her sister…

At the farewell funeral I met Giovana, who looked a lot skinnier and wider-eyed than I had imagined her being. She was only a year older than her sister, and walked shyly around the mourners, talking in side glances with her high school friends who looked pained and out of place. Some of them were smiling — whether it was the incongruity of it all, or using humor to mask deep sadness, I didn’t know.

The candlelight vigil was last week, but oh man. It’s gonna rain, Mike says, I gotta get there and get the teddy bears in her room.

I’m feeling out of place. The Kingpin owner comes over to our table. Mike says: you hear the news. They took my daughter. Shot over New Years. The shop owner comes over and clutches Mike’s phone loosely. Yeah. He looks concerned, then hands the phone back to Mike.

Everywhere I go I see girls that look like Jabrille. I stop and look at them. The other week we came out here and she bought boots at Skechers here. Right here in Berkeley.

Belinda says now you gotta help me raise the girls. So I say to Giovana: first thing is you can’t go outside. Don’t hang out with your hoochie mama friends. And she didn’t say nothing.

Over our table now Mike slides over to me an open newspaper, the SF Chronicle, opened to an article about Malala, Pakistani girl who got shot by the Taliban. Read this? he asks. So sad.

You gotta be strong, Mike. Wait till this all blows over. I gotta be strong. I gotta be strong for Belinda.

Jubrille’s viewing was the first viewing I’ve ever been at, and she looked… unnatural. Plastic. There used to be a soul in there. Mike would stand over the casket and kissed her on the forehead. Justin and I stood awkwardly and waited in line and paid our respects and then, feeling a bit of displacement, we sat down in the pews and let Mike sit behind us and rattle on about his plans for the obituary. The entire scene felt unreal. Children running around, crawling under the pews, laughing. Belinda, who I finally met, was nicely put together, chatting it up with loved ones. I’d overdressed; I had thought to dress up, but felt self-conscious in my tie and nice shoes. Walking back to the van Justin remarked to me and nobody in particular, is it not crazy that this kind of thing happens in Oakland twice a week?

Ran into Mike on a rainy day in Berkeley. We finally got a photo together.

Years have passed since I’ve last written about Mike. I see him every once in awhile in Berkeley, still. I think about him from time to time — wonder how he’s doing. I catch him out the corner of my eye the week before I leave for vacation, hanging around at Gypsy’s. “Mike!” I call back to him, and he turns around with a big grin on his face. The sidewalks are soaked.

“It’s my birthday tomorrow” he tells me, and I remember how close to Christmas it is.

We swap phone numbers. He’s in possession of an Android phone now. “How does this thing work?” he asks and laughs to himself. He’s showing me photos of himself, now taking classes at a culinary school in SF. Something about that seems incongruous to me and I chuckle inside… but Mike, well I believe he has the gumption and work ethic to pull it off. I tell him I owe him a birthday lunch, and we part ways.

–

Flash forward a couple of weeks, and it’s the first Tuesday of the new year. I’ve left on a run and Mike’s left me a voice mail while on my run. I listen to it on the way back, and his voice is hollow, blue, grief-stricken. “Drew,” chokes the voice on the other end, “they shot my baby girl.”

Damn.

I look up the news article. Jubrille was 15 years old, wanted to be a teacher, and was on her way to the mall with her sister and another friend. The shooter was another teen.

OAKLAND — A pile of flowers, candles, teddy bears and farewell notes grew by the hour Monday afternoon on a quiet street in East Oakland, but they were little comfort to Mike Harris.

Harris, whose longtime family friend Jubrille Jordan, 15, was fatally shot at the site Sunday afternoon, was awash in tears as he surveyed the makeshift memorial.

“She was my sweetheart. They killed my sweetheart,” said Harris, a neatly dressed man in his 50s, as he wiped his eyes. “What happened? I don’t know, I don’t know.”

Jubrille was Oakland’s 12th child killed in 2012, and its 131st homicide victim in one of the city’s deadliest years in recent memory.

–San Francisco Chronicle, “15-year old girl gunned down in Oakland”

She was also Oakland’s final homicide of 2012. Mike picks up, and I barely make out his words through the sobs.

Last night I spent a good amount of time looking back at my journal and saw a few threads that ran through last year:

If 2011 was a year of risk-taking, then 2012, I’ve summed up, was a building year, a year to build a rhythm and establish a flow. It was a full year at Blurb, commuting back and forth from SF. Keeping up the same routine at Regen. Stephen Ministry on Mondays, Circuit training Tuesdays, Wednesday mornings with Jeff, home group on Thursdays, Saturday morning runs, Sundays with Betty. Routine and rhythm. It can be good for you.

Knowing who I am, building a flow can be something to settle into but the risk is that I can get too comfortable.  But I found myself up against the reality that your ideals often have a hard time matching up to your reality. So on a serious note, last year was also the first year that I felt like I was just… coasting. And it felt horrible, the thought and feeling that the kind of life I should have been living should be filled with more risk, more Jesus + his presence. I’m learning that I can oftentimes fall into routine and forget myself and why I’m here.

There was a season — I remember it well — last year when I sat down and wrote down everything I was feeling — frustration with my life, honest doubts about my purpose and my faith and a slew of questions for God or Jesus or whoever it was that was overseeing my life. Life in Christ is filled with joy, right? Then why wasn’t I feeling it? I was tempted to give it all up again.

The intersection of your faith and your daily life can disconnect sometimes, and things had derailed for a long time before I noticed it. The cynicism was subtle, but would crawl into things and inner dialogues. It would rebel against pat answers I saw people giving around me, or the cultural disconnects I’d see between the church and Real Life, and a broken world.

The burnout was palpable, but here’s the thing: it was something that I didn’t do anything about. I kept up the same routines, held the same smiles and had the same answers. But inside there was a gnawing question that reappears from time to time: what is real about my life? Where was that sense that the world is on the brink of something glorious that I felt so often when I was younger–when things had a surety about them, and answers were more black and white, and joy was real because you were laughing, too? What about the intersection of dirt & the divine, miracles I used to see, or evidence of the supernatural? Where does that stuff just go when you’ve lived without them for so long?

Talking to Jeff, I was reminded that the times I felt alive in Christ were the times I was taking risks. So a lot of last year was about asking myself — where am I going? Where are places I can grow and risks that I can take? And there were a few themes: living in Oakland, identifying with the broken, friendships and brothers, youth & community, silence & solitude.

To be honest, a lot of that has not materialized, and a lot of that were gushy ideas lacking structure and thought and a strong heart.

God, I want that for this year. I want more faith, more experiences of your grace. I want courage to fight for people I love and defend the things I believe in (and vice versa). I want to run toward conflict instead of away from it. I want a stronger, more compassionate heart, and I want to run with people that show that too. But I mainly want to sense your nearness and know you with the familiarity of a son.

I was frustrated with my plantar fasciitis, but that gave me an opportunity to go into the swim and the bike and there were a lot of good memories doing long bike rides: Mt. Diablo + Mt. Tam with Bruce and friends. I also learned to swim in open water! Did my first Olympic tri, with a crazy current. Got a few friends to do a Tri for Fun. Come October, the PF began clearing out and I started hitting the trails again :)

2013 will be the year I attempt my first 50mi race, and I’m really looking forward to the training runs on the trails. I think I’ll end up doing a half-Ironman in there somewhere. And perhaps another attempt at Boston in the fall. Nate’s going to be training for Western States, and I figure if I run with that guy enough I should be in good shape…

2012 was the year I started getting serious about photography! I’m finding that I’m learning a lot more about the craft. Figuring out the technical details is important, but more than that, it’s about working with subjects, making them feel at ease. It’s about finding light and keeping your eyes open always and going with your gut. It’s about taking risks and trying new poses and settings. Wedding-wise, it’s about planning, preparation and being on your toes. I have a lot to learn still, and I’m excited about 2013’s new assignments.

Wejoinin was kind of on the back burner but Hsiu-Fan and I are nearing the completion of a Rails 3 upgrade. More on that soon on my technical blog.

I took trips to Portland, LA, and even South Carolina.

I went to more than a few weddings and saw quite a few friends get hitched. Congratulations!

And… I started dating again. The feeling’s a little surreal, but I like her a lot :)

Breathe out, Immanuel. With us. With breath, with us.

But its counterpart is written from a part of me that is uncomfortable with my comfort — feeling sometimes an almost-arrogance at how much I’ve gotten things figured out or how much I’ve learned or where I am in life. I think a part of myself senses a puffed-upness in my soul, or is wary of a front that I put up from time to time. It’s a false self, tied up in schedules and enamored by Having It Together.

It’s hard to put my finger on it, but it comes and goes with a sort of numbness to the Gospel that creeps up, accompanied with various flavors of cynicism. Thinking to myself that the times I felt God’s presence the most were the times when I was humbled the most and almost wanting to crawl back to that place again, if only to sense the closeness of my father.

Bankrupt… maybe that’s a word I’m looking for. When I was humbled and begging for God’s presence in my life. And now that I’m in a place of plenty, there’s that sense that I’m looking into mirrors and still missing the real thing. Jesus, be near to me now. I want to know your voice. I want to know simple things to be important things, like iron friendships and unyielding brotherhood, like being a part of your movement, like seeing redemption and miracles and Grace rock people for good, like humble love that is beyond reproach or ridicule.

In the recent theme of grace, maybe one of the reasons I really like country songs and the myths they tell is because you can feel the grit in the stories. Country protagonists live out their flaws fully (for better or worse) but there’s always that redemptive thread.

Or maybe I just want to drive a pickup truck.

Onward:

A question worth exploring is: how does my identity as an Asian-American man affect my perception of grace (and my fascination with southern white culture)? Is it self-aware irony, a hipster thing? Does it say something about the dominant culture I live in? Does it reflect on my own view of Asian masculinity (or lack thereof)?

Topics for future discussion, but honestly, I do really just want a pickup truck.

I’m sitting at Coffee Society here back home,  journaling and feeling generally overwhelmed by God’s goodness. I’m not sure when I felt it, but it might have been yesterday’s slow, rambling run through the foothills from pre-dawn dusk to midmorning cool, or experiencing the long-anticipated togetherness of a Thanksgiving meal. Or maybe it was just hanging with Annie over lunch and being able to feel like a big brother again, or that my dad just dropped a new iPhone in my lap… just like that. I’m seeing movement in my life, and things feel like they’re coming together. I just had the thought… I can’t deserve much of this. Things shouldn’t be this good.

I’ve been realizing lately there’s this dichotomy in how I see myself — on one hand, I have a very outside-in view of myself, painfully aware of others’ perceptions of myself and always trying hard to do things that create a polished image (see: Enneagram 3, of which I’m becoming increasingly convinced of). I can experience myself as a high-performer, a compassionate human, and generally rad dude.

Then there’s the other part of myself that’s pretty painfully aware of my flaws and shortcomings. It knows my hiding places and how often I can retreat to them… the places in myself that I experience fears and insecurities.

The achiever in me lives in fear of failure, the sense that things can’t always be this good and I can’t enjoy good things because I’m bound to eff things up, or the sneaking suspicion that something catastrophic is around the corner. The hidden places in me are always wary of being exposed, or worried that I won’t live up to expectations (whose?).

The longer I live the more I’m realizing that these two parts of myself are redeemed by the Gospel. In the Gospel I can acknowledge my imposter and broken self. In the Gospel I begin with the fact that I deserved no good gifts, but then I am given something truly Good. It grounds me and humbles me, and most of all it allows me to yield and experience gifts for what they are… and allow myself to savor the significance of this delight: that I’m simply his son, and he’s a good Father to me.

confess it’s taken me years to learn to love you and I realize it’s because I’m still guarded when I’m around you. It’s taken time to understand why the bus lady sings bluesfully to herself at the stop. She does not want your change, but she wants you to recognize her and see her, approach her and hold her. You too have a dual personality, you like your sister are hot and cold. Your people struggle up against each other and quarrel, I remember how Pancho would come back to our steps every night after we told him to leave–no disrespect, he insisted–but we’d start up all over on the same note. You’re my partna right? Right, I’d say, knowing it to be the feeblest lie, and wondering if he was being facetious or if I was the most cynical man on earth. You’re my partna. Push and pull, push and pull. Oakland, I realize I still don’t

get you but I can’t let that get me down, because I still sense the electric buzz in your veins, and I have that freeze frame photo of the shimmer during that swim. I still have the sensation of lingering night warmth from the soil after a hot day and the small-sensation I get standing under the expanse of your patchquilt sky.