School Safety

A year after the infamous brawls at South Philadelphia High School, yet again we are reading of Asian schoolkids being bullied and injured here in Philadelphia. I am tracking this subject with great and varied interest. I wonder what this will do to the reputation of Philadelphia in the national media. I follow the responses of leaders from different sides to see how they are reacting and what messages they are putting out. I think as a Christian about what positives and negatives this results in as it relates to working towards racial reconciliation.

And, as a parent of an Asian kid in the public school system, I think about the safety, well-being, and psyche of my precious little girl. For all of Jada’s spunk and allure, she is a sensitive and vulnerable creature. Her speech delays sometimes cause her to withdraw and to not quite follow normal social cues. She may struggle to fit in, seen as Asian by most but not completely accepted by other Asians for not speaking an Asian language or for not having immigrant parents or for being adopted. Young and naïve as she is, it may not register at first that someone is actively trying to be mean to her, trying to embarrass her, trying to hurt her.

We all have to deal with teasing, with issues of self-esteem, with wondering where we fit in. I’m not asking for a utopia, a cocoon, a life of ease. But I think it’s fair to say that when I entrust my kids to an educational institution during the school day, at the least I can expect that institution to see to it that my kids are safe, and that every reasonable action is taken if that safety is jeopardized. Whether we are Asian or not, these recent incidents should unsettle us, and cause us to ask the hard questions and demand some satisfying answers.

Lazy Linking, 25th in an Occasional Series

Things I liked lately on the Internets:

* A thoughtful story about a thoughtful group of people (including a dear brother of mine, from whom I found out about the story) trying to be good urban Christians in inner city Oakland.

* The Democrat justifies public spending increases for growth reasons, while the Republican justifies public spending decreases for equity reasons; how's that for an inverted debate?

* The 30th Street Station area, which is a lot sleepier than it should be given it is the third busiest Amtrak station in the US (trailing only New York and DC), is about to get a lot more activated by (wait for it) the Internal Revenue Service.

* So wait, subway cars generate electricity when they brake? And they brake at stops? And we need electricity at stops? Well, let's capture that electricity and reuse it, then. That's what my colleague at SEPTA said he was working on this summer, and sure enough the pilot project was just announced earlier this month.

Like Father, Like Children

Now that our new school commuting patterns are somewhat established, I thought it would be fun to document what they mean for the kids in terms of fresh air and exercise. And, to see whether there is any validity to the generational cry of “when I was your age we walked eight miles uphill both ways,” I’ve added in what my commute was like when I was in school.

Lee
K-2 - walk 0.5 mi each way = 1.0 mi per day
3-5 - carpool
6-8 - walk or bike 1.2 mi each way = 2.4 mi per day
9-12 - walk 0.6 mi each way = 1.2 mi per day

Jada
Walk 0.2 mi out, 0.3 mi in = 0.5 mi per day

Aaron (if by bike)
Walk 0.2 mi, get biked 1.6 mi (out); get biked 1.6 mi, walk 0.3 mi (in) = 0.5 mi per day

Aaron (if by bus)
Walk 0.2 mi, walk 0.2 mi, walk 0.1 mi, walk 0.2 mi (out); get carried 0.9 mi, walk 0.1 mi (in) = 0.8 mi per day

(Speaking of comparing childhoods, my parents used to take my sister and I to the local community college every Sunday morning to run laps on the track. You better believe that the day is coming soon when I will be regularly schlepping Aaron and Jada to Franklin Field on the Penn campus and telling them to run around the football field.)

How Have You Changed (And What Changed You)

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of catching up with a dear friend of mine from my college days, who had a meaningful impact on my Christian faith and leadership perspective. He lives and works overseas but was in the US on furlough, and we were able to have lunch together. He asked me a simple but profound question, which has caused me to accelerate some thoughts I’ve been mulling over for the past few weeks, which was: “How have you changed since I last hung out with you in college 15 years ago?”

A couple of years ago, I posted my “ten purposes in life,” and I have been meaning to update that list and cross-reference it with formative experiences in my life that helped identify and mature those purposes. My friend’s good question has propelled that exercise forward, resulting in today’s post.

Below is my original list of ten purposes, plus some additions in parentheses; those next to original list items are simply a restatement of an existing purpose, and those at the bottom represent ones that were not previously on the list. Below that is a mapping of that list of now 15 purposes against some key life events, in chronological order, so you can see where those purposes came from and how they evolved over time.

Time does not permit me this morning to elaborate more than what is below, which may make it kind of cryptic to read for anyone but me. Also, I could just as easily partake of this exercise as it relates to influential people or personal crises; actually both are probably juicier, but for now I’m sticking with these life experiences. Hopefully at some point I’ll follow through on this post to say more, but for now I just wanted to get these thoughts down.

I’ll close by noting something that I mentioned in my lunch conversation with my old friend. When I was 20, I recall having a little bit of a prayer retreat, and saying to myself and to God that, while it was very likely that I would be a markedly different person at 30, I would still be praying to the same God. When I reached 30, I thought the same thought about 40. Indeed, over time, we may change, in good and bad ways, but He is the same, and there is something very profound to me about that.

Like the aging athlete whose body is not as dynamic but who can draw from a longer career’s worth of repetitions and thus prolong his or her effectiveness at the most elite levels, so do I feel less radical but more wise when compared to my collegiate self. As the years pile on, and who knows how many more I have, that is my comfort as a believer and an influencer: the body may decay, but with more reps come the ability to make a positive contribution to my generation.

I’m sure I have forgotten many lessons along the way, but heck if I won’t try my darnedst to hold fast to the ones I do remember. It is for this reason that I think about things like life purposes and formative experiences, and encourage you to do the same.

15 Life Purposes
A. Be fully allocated
B. Blaze a new trail
C. Broadcast good news (Always seek to influence)
D. Champion and shepherd others along
E. Cross-pollinate between religious and secular
F. Give God room to come through (Go radically out of your comfort zone)
G. Learn, savor, and live God's word
H. Love the unlovely with Jesus (Continue to love through the messiness of life)
I. See mistakes, delays, and losses as opportunities (Look for beauty amidst brokenness)
J. Synthesize, document, and disseminate life lessons (Fit experiences into the bigger narrative)
K. (Be where people are and do what they do)
L. (Find rejuvenation from community)
M. (Say what needs to be said no matter how jarring it may sound)
N. (Engage in the city and in city systems and city folks)
O. (Tend to your roots)

Formative life experiences
• 1991 – volunteer as a PennPal to an inner city kid in West Philadelphia (FHKN)
• 1991-1995 – attend the Wharton School of Business (EJ)
• 1991-1996 – do campus ministry with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship on the Penn campus (ABCDFGHIKLO)
• 1992 – turn the “Love Boat” cultural study tour in Taiwan into an evangelical project (ABCDFGHKLM)
• 1992 – volunteer at City Team Ministries in downtown San Jose (CFHKN)
• 1994 – do Christian missions work in Russia, Albania, Hungary, and Romania (BCFHIK)
• 1995-2005 – work at The Enterprise Center to accelerate minority entrepreneurship (ABDEFHIJKMN)
• 1996 – lead a team of Penn students on a service project to Whosoever Gospel Mission in North Philadelphia (BCDEFGHIKN)
• 1996-1998 – volunteer with the youth group at Woodland Presbyterian Church in West Philadelphia (ACDFGHKN)
• 1998-present – serve as an elder at Woodland Presbyterian Church in West Philadelphia (CDFGHIKLNO)
• 2000-present – get married and walk with my wife through many trials and tribulations (DFHIKMO)
• 2002-2003 take a one-year sabbatical from my job (JO)
• 2002-2003 attend Leadership Inc classes (EFIJN)
• 2003, 2007 – campaign for David Oh for City Council at Large (EN)
• 2003-present – publish the “Musings of an Urban Christian” blog (ABCEIJMNO)
• 2004-2006 – attend the Fels Institute of Government (EJN)
• 2005-present – be a dad to two kids (ADFGHIJKMO)
• 2006-present – work at Econsult as an economic consultant (EJMN)

Stories Telling

Of the hundreds of books I've read in my adult life, I estimate that less than one percent were fiction. And, with the exception of Lorene Cary's "The Price of Child," Steve Lopez's "Third and Indiana," and Mitch Albom's "The Five People You Meet in Heaven," those few fiction books that I have read have been forgettable.

Add to that the fact that I watch zero TV and movies, and I am completely devoid of any supply of fictional stories. Which I think, for the purposes of being an ambassador of the Christian faith, is a bad thing. For one, I am out of touch with what others are consuming and talking about. For another, and on a related note, I am missing out on potentially compelling narratives that can serve as entry points for discussing the tenets of the Christian faith in fresh, contemporary, and understandable terms. But even the most secular of products likely contains a whiff of substance to it, from which something of the redemption story can be appended to great effect.

Alas, I fear this is just one area I am going to have to accept will not change in the near future. I have neither the time nor the interest in enlarging my consumption patterns to make up for my current deficit. Regular readers will see that my writing is largely devoid of that fresher element as a result, to which I apologize. But I welcome comments pointing me in the direction of interesting fictional stories; I admit I am unlikely to glom on to your favorite show/movie/book, but I am eager to hear what you think about it and learn from that.

A Light Bulb Went On

The light bulb on our front porch light has been burned out for forever. It's a special type, which means expensive and not easy to find. Which means I have dragged my feet for a long, long time. With another light right inside our front door, I reasoned that not having our porch light was not that big a deal.

But one day, Amy pointed out to me that the front porch light isn't really as much for us, although it's useful to us. Rather, it's for helping provide a sense of safety for our little slice of the block. And so, one night, I went out to take this in firsthand. (Since I am often in bed before it gets dark, I hadn't really had much opportunity to see this with my own eyes.)

Sure enough, with our front porch light not on, the sidewalk in front of our house looked dangerously dark. It didn't help that neither neighbor on either side of us had their light on. I could see myself feeling a little uneasy coming home late at night, or even passing by our house.

Convicted, I got online, found the bulb, and ordered it. It arrived earlier this week, and I put it in right away and turned it on. To the rest of my block, and to those who walk through it, my apologies for not doing my part all these weeks. The light bulb finally went on in my head, and now the light bulb is finally on on our front porch.

Helping Disadvantaged Groups or Just Keeping Them Permanently Disadvantaged

I won't say where I was because I don't want to get anyone or myself in trouble, but I was sorely disappointed in the tenor of conversation at a recent business gathering I attended. I went wearing my Enterprise Center Board of Directors hat, to hobnob with other minority entrepreneurship advocates, swap notes, and strategize about how to better advance the cause of ventures run by people from traditionally disadvantaged groups. Instead, I got a little bit of my bubble burst.

To me, accelerating minority entrepreneurship is a matter of regional and national competitiveness: in an increasingly globalized world, those who minimize institutional barriers that hinder entire groups of people from adding their skills and contacts into the pot will suffer. It's also a matter of equity: starting and growing a business and then cashing out for a big wad of money is the way to generate wealth in this country, and it is the wealth gap and not the income gap that is the real difference-maker when it comes to the financial plight of some minority groups.

What this means is that if you are a minority entrepreneur, your path to success comes from making your unique contribution to a complex and competitive economy, a contribution that you alone can make, which the economy is worse off for if you can't make it. And your measure of success is the ability to do that well enough and long enough that what you have created in the end is a great company that has inherent value, not as a minority-owned firm but as a successful firm; failure to do so robs you of the ability to sell your firm for the highest bid, stuck as you are to keeping it within the family or selling to another minority if the biggest part of its worth is its minority ownership status.

I hope nothing I have said above is too terribly controversial or innovative; it just is what it is, and I feel I have no special dispensation of insight on the subject. Alas, this is not what I saw at this recent convo. Everyone seemed to be relegated to figuring out how to game the set-aside rules to max out on business opportunities afforded to certain designations of disadvantaged businesses. When I proffered that it was paramount to build value outside of one's certified status, I got glares of confusion and disbelief that marked me as a maverick and my views as decidedly not welcome there.

I don't want to sound high and mighty here: I understand that entrepreneurs have businesses to run, revenue to earn, workers to pay, and I understand that advocates have budgets to protect, missions to fulfill, and performance targets to hit. But, at a big picture level, the whole thing strikes me as horribly unjust. It is as if everyone has decided that certain disadvantaged groups are good for nothing more than second-class status, left to fend for the scraps reserved for them while the rest of the economy rages on right next to them. Businesspeople themselves seemed to think there was no other playing field to play on, and so thoughts turned to how to maximize their advantage on this secondary, much smaller playing field. And advocates had no regard to this shunting of certain groups off to the side; even as they claimed to be all in for them, it was to cement their second-class status rather than to help them compete for mainstream success.

This is not the approach we advocate at The Enterprise Center, or that I bring to related studies I do at Econsult Corporation. But, sadly, it is the M.O. for many who circulate in this space. The status quo may not be fair, but if I can make a decent living off of its rules, why not do so instead of changing the very rules I've figured out how to benefit from?

Perhaps I am being naive, but I for one am not ready to give up on an economy in which everyone participates, and in which everyone wins when certain groups who need extra help to participate get that help. I am not at all ready to concede that certain groups need not apply to this economy, and can be left to compete for the scraps set off to the side, with no real prospects for success to scale given the relative tininess of opportunities that have been walled off for them. That approach does not overcome the very real disparities faced by some disadvantaged groups; rather, it institutionalizes and reinforces their permanent underclass status.

That does not sound to me at all like minority entrepreneurship advocacy. I hope that in time we will see more instances of what does pass for true advocacy. Unfortunately, I did not see much of it at the meeting I recently attended.

Oh the Places You'll Go (Without a Car) - The Two Kids, Two Schools, and Two Buses Version

And now the commuting pattern I've been bracing for all summer is upon me: two kids, two schools, and Aaron's location is not really that close to home (although in the grand scheme of things, I believe most parents would kill to have their kids' schools all within two miles of home). Because I was hauling Aaron's initial sack of school items, and to test out the timing of the buses to see if it was reasonable to ask a babysitter to do this on the few days neither Amy nor I are available, I decided to forgo the bike and try this out on foot.

The morning was pretty smooth. We walked two blocks to Jada's school, and I pointed her in the direction of the cafeteria, as we had decided this would be her first morning doing the morning thing solo without me. Aaron and I walked another two blocks to the bus stop and our bus arrived not two minutes later. I got Aaron situated and then dropped in a token and a buck to get a transfer. We rode a mile, got off, and walked one block to the next bus stop. That bus also arrived within two minutes. (Since this bus doesn't come that often, I made mental note that in the future, I have to really hoof it lest I miss it and have to wait a good 15 minutes.)

We were on the second bus only a couple of minutes; in the morning, traffic is pretty slim. From there, it was just three more blocks to Aaron's school. I made mental note that as were pulling in, another bus was heading downtown; in the future, if I ever do this and then have a meeting first thing downtown, it's the line I'd take to get there, and at this rate, I'm not going to get that one. (I find out later, as I head out of the school, that yet another bus passes by, so I guess at that hour they run relatively often.)

Since it's Aaron's first day, I take a moment to get Aaron situated, introduce myself to the teachers, and then bolt. It's a brisk ten-minute walk to my office from his school, and on a nice day, with both kids safely tucked away at their respective schools, the walk is actually a little peaceful. I get to my desk at 8:50, a good 30 to 40 minutes later than I usually do. On bike, hopefully I can be in by 8:30 or even earlier. We'll see how this morning goes in that regard.

The way home is more problematic. The walk to Aaron's school is slightly uphill, I don't trust the bus frequency on the way back so hoof it almost a mile with Aaron on my shoulders, and then the one bus that gets us back to our neighborhood crawls because of rush hour traffic. We finally get to Jada's with only ten minutes to spare, even though I left the office at 5 (I had been in the habit of leaving at 5:50 all these years).

Thankfully, reuniting with his sister cheers Aaron up a bit; after a long day, in a new setting no less, he was starting to get a little crabby. I squeeze them into a tiny shopping cart at CVS, where I've been instructed to pick up a few things on the way home. With the exception of the two of them yammering away loud enough for the entire store to hear, we are able to get in and out without much fanfare. Soon enough, we're home. My dogs are barking, my head is pounding, and I've got a stack of handouts from school to wade through. Welcome to my new normal.

Again, I will much prefer doing this all on bike. But there will be days I simply cannot. So the alternative is doable. But I'm not sure I want to make a habit of yesterday's itinerary.

Lazy Linking, 24th in an Occasional Series

What I've liked on the Internets lately:

* There is one party in China. And 70 million bloggers. I'll be interested to see who wins.

* Could painting a picture of a little girl in the middle of the street result in people becoming inured to the image of a little girl in the middle of the street?

* From Discovering Urbanism, progress on better disclosure of the transportation costs associated with different places to live. Hey, it's like 10 to 25 cents of every dollar we spend, you'd think we'd factor it in more than we do now.

* David Brooks says the Tea Party's recent successes don't imperil the Republicans for November. I say "give it time." It reminds me of how hard it was for the Confederates to hold together against the Union: if your M.O. is state's rights, how do you unite across states? Similarly, if your M.O. is that government is the enemy, what happens when you become it?

* Let's hope Edward DeMarco doesn't get quietly replaced for not toeing the party line re: Fannie and Freddie.



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Let Him Burn

I'm late to this party, but it strikes me as odd that there was a whole chorus of "I disagree, but what makes America great is their right to do it" associated with the building of the mosque near Ground Zero, but very little if any of the same sentiment regarding the pastor who wanted to burn a Koran in protest on the anniversary of 9/11. Justice Breyer, whose job it is to uphold a Constitution that guarantees freedom of expression in terms of religion, speech, and press, says Terry Jones is within his rights.

I admit I don't know all or even most of the facts, but it strikes me that a place in which you can't build a place of worship in a location that has been approved by the appropriate local authorities, and a place in which you can't perform an unpopular act for purposes of expressing what you believe, is not the America I want to believe in. And, it represents a level of government intervention and paternalism that I am not at all comfortable with. *

I realize there is more to these issues than what is immediately at hand - people making individual decisions do need to be mindful of how they fit into the broader narrative. But why isn't there more thoughtful strategery along these lines:

1) Abhorrent as these acts might seem to some, they are protected by our Constitution and our respect for local laws, so overturning them is simply off the table, end of discussion.

2) We turn our abhorrence into a "teaching moment," by saying that we lead the world in our defense of people's right to expression, even and especially expression that we do not like. (Goodness knows that the countries that have the most problems, economic and moral, are those that squelch expression that is deemed by central government as heretical or forbidden.)

3) We use these particular instances of America's intersection with Islam to further engage with both Muslims (open dialogue is needed here to admit that much of what is thought on both sides is based on ignorance, misinterpretation, and the co-opting of popular opinion by extremist opinion) and terrorists (sending a clear message that their form of rule, by fiat and fear and violence and humiliation, will not ultimately prevail and does not change our defense of our understanding of governance and freedom).

Does anyone care to opine as to why these two recent news items have garnered relatively different reactions? Is there anything else I should know about either of these cases that would cause me to change my mind? Is my simplistic interpretation of these incidents as representative of what "freedom of religion" and "freedom of speech" woefully naive and incomplete? I am open to being corrected.

* PS President Obama, I am very disappointed in your treatment of these two incidents. Perhaps my hopes were too high; I expected you to divine that this was a "moment" for lofty rhetoric in defense of American values. I imagined a special speech in prime time, in which you artfully threaded the needle between high emotion on both sides, and passionately spoke of what we believe in as a country, and what we are willing to fight for and even die for. I could have seen this delicate situation turned decisively into a high water mark for your presidency and its aims to craft a new narrative concerning America's power and influence in an increasingly muddy and complex world. Instead, all I saw from you was waffling and flip-flopping, desperately trying to say enough to appease both sides so as to not further damage your own reputation and your party's popularity. Does November cast that much of a shadow on your thoughts, that you missed the chance to do what you do so well, which is to turn crisis into an opportunity for a killer speech? Please turn this around soon or I will no longer hold out hope that you are a different kind of politician with a different form of motivation.

Dorm Food

I brought the kids to North Jersey yesterday to convene with some old college friends and hear about the college ministry of Shannon Lamb, who, along with her husband Dave, were influential older Christian leaders for many of us during our time at Penn. It's been 15+ years since I was a student, and my how times have changed in terms of what student life is like and how it looks to do on-campus ministry.

I appreciated Shannon's insight into this generation - that in the midst of a culture that presumes you will have casual sex, a packed schedule, and no really deep friendships, it is all the more important and all the more alluring to offer a worldview that upholds the sanctity of the body and of sex, that promises true and meaningful serenity, and that provides authentic relational contact. Far from being irrelevant, prudish, and backwards, real Christianity consistently offered will eventually find a willing audience that is fed up with empty non-answers.

This flock of college students is no more or less lost, no more or less noble, no more or less evil than any other; but it is different. But the thing that they truly long for, thirst for, are searching for and will find no lasting peace until they find, is the same. Thank God for faithful laborers like Shannon, who give their lives to see that more and more in our colleges are touched.

Oh the Places You'll Go (Without a Car) - The First Day of Kindergarten Version

What a week. Amy's new job means, for the first time, that she's out of the house around when the rest of us are; and, with her own doctor's appointments and physical therapy for her ankle, home way later than us. And with her taking the car, getting around with the kids becomes part of the fun of doing life in a big city. Here's how yesterday went down:

7:40a - We're out the door a tick early, as I want to drop Aaron off first so I can help Jada get acclimated to her new school. I leave the double stroller at Aaron's school and give Jada a piggyback ride to her school.

8:05a - We enter the cafeteria for breakfast and I try to talk her through this part of her new morning routine. (Just to play it safe, I'll accompany her again this morning, but let her do everything without my prompting.)

8:20a - It's time to go to the courtyard to line up. There are like 200 kids and 100 parents crammed into this space. I give my final instructions but realize they are futile in this sort of setting. For example, how is Jada supposed to interpret "go line up with your class and wait for Ms. Silver to lead you into the building" when she's never met any of her classmates and the place is crawling with kids? I decide to not play helicopter parent and let Jada fend for herself. I kiss her goodbye and leave the courtyard to take my position on the other side of the fence. I watch as she stands, a little overwhelmed, in the middle of all the hustle and bustle, clutching her lunch box and shuffling her feet nervously.

8:30a - Finally, her teacher comes out, organizes them into two lines, and they march into the building, to the applause of the gaggle of parents that are pressed up against the group snapping photos feverishly. I see the school principal, congratulate her on the successful start of yet another school year, and hand her a letter from us officially requesting an evaluation for Jada for speech therapy (per the protocol of the school district).

8:50a - I make my way to my board meeting at The Enterprise Center, sending tweets along the way to share my cherished photos with the rest of the world.

9:50a - I make my way to a quick meeting downtown at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, catching up on last week's Economist on the way.

10:30a - I make a quick detour to Chinatown to buy cookies as a thank-you gift for the staff at Aaron and Jada's old school.

11:00a - Back at the office, I work feverishly on my projects in between two scheduled meetings and countless unscheduled ones.

5:30p - As I try desperately to wrap up in time to get both kids without running late, it starts pouring. I had not anticipated this. I snatch an umbrella from a co-worker's office and head out. For good measure, I get splashed by a car as I'm waiting to cross a major intersection. Mercifully, though I am soaked sideways, the rain from above lightens a tad.

5:40p - Ushering Aaron out of his school is delayed a tad because - wait for it - he went poopie in the potty for the first time! Because I'm in such a hurry and am a little drenched, the celebration is far more anticlimactic than I envisioned. We scurry out of there and head for Jada.

5:50p - Jada awaits us in the after-school program adjacent to her school. But I have no idea what room she is in. I ask around and finally find it. She is happy to see us. Sweater, lunch box, and backpack are intact, not lost along the way. Aaron and Jada pile into the stroller and we roll out.

6:00p - We stop by CVS on the way home to pick up meds and are soon home. Amy arrives not long after to join in on the retelling of all of the events of the day. We have just enough time for dinner and baths before bedtime. Because this is what every weekday is going to be like from now until June, they especially need their sleep. And so do we.

How Are You Doing

I’m really happy that last weekend’s congregational meeting went so well, particularly our announcement that we will be kicking off a shepherding initiative this fall. We elders have been mulling over this concept all year and were excited but a little apprehensive about sharing it with the rest of the family. Where we were coming from was that we wanted our church to be a place where people can expect to be regularly checked in on by the leaders of the church, to ask a simple question, “How are you doing?”

I can speak for myself that while I try to be as social as possible at church functions, and feel I have a good vibe with everyone else that circulates there, sometimes I don’t know what all is going on for people, and sometimes all it takes is five seconds to ask, “How are you doing?” Sadly, the whole world is full of people who are hurting inside and no one has taken the time to ask them this simple question; and even more sadly, sometimes there are people who I see every Sunday morning like this, and I fail them by not giving them an opening to tell me what’s going on.

As with any new change, there is a worry that it won’t take. Would people be weirded out, based on their own or others’ experience of similar initiatives gone very bad? Would people be unwilling to accept that such a program carries with it an implicit expectation on their part, which is that we expect them to be engaged in community and to desire to grow spiritually? Would people simply be skeptical, that this was some flavor of the moment that was destined to peter out and not have a lasting difference?

I did not detect any of this at the meeting. In contrast, I detected a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of gratitude, and a lot of anticipation. People in our congregation do earnestly desire to be connected, to be cared for, and to grow; and they saw what we were trying to convey, which was that this is a way for all of that to happen. The months ahead will tell us whether this is working or not, but at the very least it is off to a good start.

Perhaps I should not have been so worried. After all, this is not some impulsive idea on our part but something we have been steeping on for almost a year now. And, if you knew the people in our congregation, you would know this is the very thing they would grab on to as positive and beneficial. Why, just that very day, I had two “how are you doing” moments myself:

1) The first was with a dear friend who has a family member who was recently diagnosed with cancer, and we shared a moment of looking into each other’s eyes, him communicating his worry and his hope for healing, and me communicating that I was listening to him and was with him in this time of uncertainty.

2) The second was with another dear friend who asked me about my wife, and when I expressed my pride and anxiety about her starting her new job in the Philadelphia prison system, he immediately grabbed me by the shoulder, took me aside to pray vigorously for me, and then gave me a great big bear hug while whispering words of assurance to me.

That, my friends, is church. It is what the world is starving for. As we go about our day-to-day – some of us richer and some poorer, some of us fit and some of us ailing, some of us happy and some of us down – we all need someone to come alongside us and ask us, “How are you doing,” and really mean it, and really want to know the true answer and have all of the time and heart in the world to accept the true answer. I am looking forward to providing that to our members, and to seeing how we all be that resource to others around us.

The Grand Narrative

Permit me a moment for blogging about blogging. With yesterday's photo bonanza, I am now over the 2,000-post mark on this blog, in its seven and a half years of existence. Add in over 1,500 posts on my Huang Kid Khronicles blog in five years, and we're talking about almost 50 posts a month. That's a lot of dreck!

Clearly, I've taken to this whole blogging thing. I think it has to do with my INTJ-ness. For those of you not familiar with the Myers-Briggs Personality Test, that would be Introverted (vs. Extroverted), iNtuition (vs. Sensing), Thinking (vs. Feeling), and Judging (vs. Perceiving). Strangely, though I'm not extreme in any of the four axes, I do feel I'm an extreme INTJ: reading profiles of the typical INTJ, I find myself nodding vigorously in agreement.

One characteristic of INTJs that particularly resonates with me is that they tend to see life as a grand narrative, and so view interactions and experiences through that overall frame of reference. On a related note, INTJs can be very detached from pain - their own and that of others - as if temporal discomfort can be easily dismissed, subsumed in pursuit of the greater cause.

Whether I am hard-wired as an INTJ and have come to integrate my faith into that perspective, or whether my evolution as a believer has made me more of an INTJ, we'll let that be a musing for another day. (My preliminary conclusion is that it's a little of both.) How it relates to blogging is that it comes naturally to me to want to document - what I've experienced, what I'm thinking, what I want - because it fits with these deeper desires for my life to mean something and to be going somewhere, for it to make sense in the context of a greater narrative.

One of the helpful pieces of Myers-Briggs is not only understanding myself better, but realizing, accepting, and embracing the fact that how I think is not necessarily at all how others do. So others will approach their lives, their faith, their highs, and their lows differently than I do. But I do think there is something of a "word" for this generation in how I and other INTJ's perceive what it means to follow Jesus.

It is easy to get lost, in our material comforts and familial responsibilities, into a life trajectory that is nothing more than the maintenance of personal aims and temporary comforts. We work our jobs, we pay our bills, we have our vacations, we follow our sports teams, and we strive for the best for our kids and our communities. If we deviate from this, it is often to deviations that are not so productive (and, sadly, not so meaningful) - the sports car, the reckless hobby, the affair.

But what if there is more to this life than the slog of straight life or the fleeting excitement of side dalliances? What if there is in fact a grand narrative out there - and, profoundly, a Great Author and Perfecter - that is bigger than we are, but that we can tap into and make a contribution to? What if that larger story is worth subsuming the totality of our lives into, even at the sacrifice of comfort and status and time and energy? And what if, no matter bleak it looks and how daunting are the odds, the final outcome is known, and it is decisively victorious and gloriously wonderful?

To me, there is no "what if." Life is this grand narrative, no doubt about it. And the way I am wired, blogging is an act that resonates with me to live in that way, to remind myself of that truth, and to call others to join in. On any given day, my posts may or may not make for good reading. But the greater narrative they seek to tap into and help describe is definitely worth a look.

Market Street, 40th to 50th: 1995-2010

Five years is a long time. Five years ago this month, I had just left my job at The Enterprise Center after 10 years of working there. I was just starting my second and final year of grad school at the Fels Institute of Government. We hadn't even met our daughter Jada at that point, but were preparing to go to China to pick her up the next month.

And five years ago this month was when I last took photos of every intersection on Market Street between 40th and 50th Streets. It's something I've done every five years since 1995, my first year of employment at The Enterprise Center, and something I suppose I will continue to do every five years so long as I have the time.

I didn't take as many photos in 1995 and 2000 - just one or two per intersection - as I have in 2005 and 2010, when I captured all four corners, as taken from the opposite corner. And I didn't do digital photos in 1995 or 2000, so I just scanned my photo album from those years. Lastly, I'm lazy, so while it would make sense to figure out how to put the same photos from different years next to each other, that would take time, and I don't have the time, so instead I'm just going to post photos up in chunks. (If I may make yet one more mea culpa, I'm a lousy photographer, so I didn't account for sun and shade and angle and perspective, I just scurried to a corner, snapped, and scurried off from there.)

Still, I hope it is evident that some blocks are the same and some have changed dramatically. Enjoy!

50th (2010)

49th (2010)

48th (2010)

50th (2005)

49th (2005)

48th (2005)

48th, 49th, 50th (2000)

48th, 49th, 50th (1995)

46th (2010)

46th, Farragut (2005)