But what is, “Normal?”

In Alabama, there’s actually a place called, “Normal.” In Normal, there is a historically black college called Alabama A&M.

In high school, some friends and I visited the school. It was our senior year. We had a few “college,” days (days where you could cut school to visit local colleges) and we thought that it would be fun to go to A&M for half a day and grab lunch together afterwards.

Normal is normal in the sense that its school is like so many other public education institutions in Alabama. The outside seemed pretty amazing (to be honest, we weren’t expecting much). The inside of the school was literally falling Apart.

But that’s not really Normalcy.
Things aren’t really meant to fall apart.

My city is similar. The other day, the rain washed the streets of her accumulated filth. Grime, salt, trash, and decay cover her during most of the winter. When it rains like it did the other night, there’s a freshness to the pavement and a reminder of how things are supposed to be.

While the outside streets speak of the beauty of ingenuity and industrialism, they don’t speak to the reality of the people who walk them.

It’s a funny thing to think about. When friends visit (and friends, trust me, I mean no harm in this or disregard for our love of your company) I think that it’s hard for them to see the reality of what these streets hold. What we and many of our friends come from in terms of context is prime American suburbia. I think we even still see our home as an adventure rather than a place to live – a place to be, to engage, to hurt with, and to be angry about and for. When friends come, they see it much the same way – a fun place, exciting, cool, or scary.

But it’s not normal.

It doesn’t often compel us to worship.

It doesn’t often compel us to bow a knee to the most High Who has created the drug dealer, dentist, priest, or prostitute in His image. More often, it causes us to ask, “What are you doing? Can you hear us? Can you hear them?”

When God puts you anywhere, He intends to elicit some sort of action from you. That action at its very core is to Worship Him – that’s the normalcy of the life that He has drawn us (meaning me and my wife) in to.

More often though, I’d rather keep things just like Normal though – a quirky place to visit with friends just to have a day off from life, but not a place I’d like to learn, to grow, to minister, or to change.

Thoughtless...

Tonight is one of those rarities where I just can't sleep.

We had dinner with a great many new friends in our new city from the church we've been a part of since we've been here [today = 5 months...I think]. In part, this was a celebration of the fruitfulness of a couple, and the fruitfulness of God's people. This couple had basically invited everyone who had brought them dinner after their giving birth of a new son. Needless to say, there were quite a few people there [hospitality is not patently Southern].

Fruitfulness is a wonderful thing. It is also a wonderfully scary thing. I imagine, however, when our first child comes along there will be a mix of emotion much to what I'm feeling tonight. I imagine that our child [our = me and La] will be a lot like I am; that literally scares me on more levels than you know [and I am not "just saying" this...] Part of what scares me is remembering how I reacted when taken to a grave site growing up.

That is, with indifference.

It was not with a flagrant disregard or in abject disrespect - it's just that I didn't know the person in the grave. I couldn't relate to who they were. I didn't have late night conversations with them, I never sat back and drank sweet tea on a hot Southern summer's afternoon with them, I never shot pool with them, nor did I play Scrabble on the living room floor with them.

But I did with my dad.

And so I think about taking my children to his grave in Huntsville, AL and how they'll react. What will they be thinking? I doubt that they'll have much of a thought of what life would have been with him - I never did [in regard to visiting the graves of people I never knew]. I don't ever think of life with my mom's parents, right [I had never met either of them before they passed]? Thinking about it the other way around - he'll never get to hold them in his lap and tell them about how goofy I was when I was their age. He'll never get cherish them, to see them grow, to see them change, or to be loved by them.

A lot of what I hoped for when he was still alive was that when I had a family, that he would get to see a different kind of faith being lived out than what he was accustomed to [being generally skeptical of "Chrsitians" altogether]. I literally used to dream about what it would be like to pray with my children in his house - how something like that might grip his heart [as none of our conversations re: Christ ever seemed to].

And now, all of that is...impossible.
And now, I rarely even pray with my own wife except for meals.

That aside, when I am in Huntsville, I rarely visit his grave. Being at his grave once was enough. His bones are there, his casket, a concrete vault, a suit [he only wore it twice in public that I know of - my wedding and his own funeral - he said it was what he'd be buried in], and a headstone paid in part by the US Government [your tax dollars at work in memory of a Vietnam Vet] are all there.

There are no memories there.

It is an unfamiliar place...a literally lifeless place. It was a place that he'd only been to once and was never able to leave. It was the last place I saw his body, but not the last place that I saw him. And if I were to ever take my children there, they might remark about the trees, the landscaped lawns, the pond down the hill, but not about how life was with him; they'll never know that life or his.

Tonight is one of those rarities where I can't sleep - even after being surrounded by new friends, after enjoying good food and drink... even in bed with my own wife... as the loneliness of death is weighing upon my own heart.

I was...um...tagged?

So Katie tagged me and now I'm doing this little tag type game. To be honest, I secretly hoped someone would tag me as it would be easier to keep up with my migratory patterns.

Seriously though, I look forward to this.

As I understand it, the object is to describe myself using the letters of my name. I wanted to use my middle [since it has more letters] but La advised against it. So, what I've decided to do is to enact some Bushtitude [the aptitude of making up words - i.e. Bushtitude in honor of the 43rd president of these United States].

My name is as follows -

G E N E [I've actually had arguments with people, usually older ladies, who swear that my name is Eugene; it is, in fact, simply Gene - like Gene Autry or Gene Wilder, etc].

Googloid - [word origin = Google: to google, meaning to search, to inquire, to find + oid; suffix meaning resembling, similar to, like]. I use Google a lot; so much so, that sometimes I think I'm actually beginning to resemble the online search behemoth. Sometimes, I'll even pull out a vanity search [you're lying if you say that you don't, unless this is the first time you've used the web - if so, my bad].

Erroneous - [this word is not, of course, made up]. You may want to check out Merriam-Webster's definition on this - I contain error. Pretty self explanatory, but the more that age adds to me, the more I can see how wayward my mind and heart are. The "archaic" definition seems to apply to me as well - I love to lose myself in a place, or multiple places. I'm also prone to wander.

Night Owlistic - Not to be confused with Nighthawks [although I'm putting the pic up here]. This is a point where La and I can tend to butt heads [only sometimes though]. I am definitely a late nighter, and I usually require a few hours less sleep than she. So, when we go out, it's usually best to be in by 10, otherwise La's going to sleep in, but I'm still ready to be out. The converse of this is my uncanny ability to sleep anywhere. This ability has cost me dearly at times, unfortunately...

Ex-Alabamian - I don't say this as a cut, but as a matter of fact. I am now a resident of PA. I am a registered voter here [fyi: as an independent]. My vehicle is registered here. Most of my belongings are here. What comes as a shocker to most [maybe due to my asianicity? Maybe due to my lack of a thick southern drawl?] is the fact that I grew up in the cotton state. I grew up near a military base in Huntsville that afforded a diversity that isn't necessarily found state wide [I had many friends from mixed Asian American families, some Germans, Hispanics, etc.], but it is part of who I am in a historical sense.

Whew...now that I've done this, I'm glad it was over. Although it was something I've wanted, it's been the proverbial monkey on my back for the past couple of weeks - I haven't blogged anything because I've been wondering "How does this letter best describe me?"

Being the case, I don't know if I'll tag anyone else. I will however hold out an open hand slap - if you're reading this and want to be tagged, then consider yourself as such. Leave a comment that you've written about yourself and I'll post a link from my blog to yours!

Glad to be home...

The trip to Alabama has been a walk back into a past that I certainly don't miss. So, when I get back to Philly, I'll say "I'm glad to be home."

I came to a retreat for my mom's church to lead the youth group. I don't honestly know if I'll write about that here, but I will say that it went better than I thought it would. Her church flew me down to teach the youth over the past couple of days - sometimes it felt more like baby sitting, but for the most part they were super.

I don't know if we generally associate "memory lane," with the negative - right? We have a fond nostalgia thinking of main streets where window shopping was fun, where there wasn't the graffiti of our lives spray painted on the walls of our minds, where there wasn't the blood of a thousand murders on the streets of our hearts. My mom told me about a falling out she's had with a "friend." Essentially, she wouldn't testify at this person's divorce hearing (she wanted my mom to testify about an event that she never saw, but was told about by this same person - that's called hearsay if you're wondering, and is generally not admissible as real evidence).

This person came back and quoted a scripture to my mother and actually said something along the lines of "On the outside you act like an angel, but on the inside you're full of the devil. One day you'll need a thousand witnesses and you won't have any."

I reminded my mother that her standing before God was in Christ, and that this person has a really screwy view of what Christianity is. My mother knows this.

The fact of the matter is that this person wanted money. She screwed over her husband. She stole everything out of his home and sold it before the court had her move out. She even had balotas to tell my mom that she needed her there to get more money out of the divorce settlement.

After the dust cleared, she then said that she wanted the money back from my mother that she gave to me at my college graduation and my wedding.

I don't miss the divisive back biting. I don't miss the politicalization of the "church," here. I don't miss that thinly veiled spiritualism that people trump up through spending time at church on Sundays. I don't miss this "Christian," culture of destruction, of abuse, of misusing and misquoting scripture for the sake of personal gain. I don't miss this cultural implosion brought about by isolationism.

It's not as if this junk doesn't happen everywhere else, it just hurts when it comes from someone who has said that they've been your friend for the past 20+ years. It hurts when it comes from the people who claim that Jesus died for them. I don't think I should expect perfection from anyone...just a little sanctified living at the least.

Sometimes people ask me if I plan on coming back to Huntsville to live.

What can you say when you'd rather go home to a place where the individual murder count has just hit the 200 mark, where the streets are littered with trash, where the parking is hard and the people are too?

"Anything can happen." Um. Yeah.

5 more hours, and I'll be glad to be home.