photo: dinner at Ramsi's.  Joe is the tall, smiley one in dark blue.

Most people are shorter than me.  But Joe Johnson is not.  He's 6'5''.  He teaches at University of Missouri at Columbia.  Among other awards, he was a runner up for the Aperture Foundation Prize in 2008.  He was an apprenticing assistant for Abelardo Morrell for 3 years (one of my favorite art photographers).  He grew up in Kansas and went to school in San Francisco and New York.  He's been published in a bunch of places and has had fancy exhibits.  In short, he has the whole list of accomplishments I myself dreamed of having while I was studying photography at UofL.

I could have mentioned any of that this past Friday night when I introduced him before his artist talk, but I didn't.  Instead, without thinking really at all, I just stepped up to the mic and blurted out what was essentially a disclaimer about his words being only his own, and not necessarily reflecting the views of the venue or the church.  I had the thought to give that sort of disclaimer earlier in the week only because he was going to be talking about megachurches and if his opinions about megachurches came out I didn't want people to think that those were shared opinions with Sojourn.  Fair enough, but it's not cool to just give a disclaimer and not share a single fact about how awesome Joe's work is, or how swell of a guy he is, or anything.  Anything.

It wouldn't have been extra terrible except that somewhere in the process of giving this stupid introduction, I must have stepped on the power cord for the projector so that the projector needed to be plugged in and restarted, making an awkward introduction more awkward.  In the end though, Joe got up there and gave the best artist talk I think the 930 has ever had.

As soon as my little fiasco occurred, I was embarassed, but that night and the next morning my bafoonery was ringing in my head.  I'm such a moron.  I'm such a moron.  Why do I get to be the director of this awesome arts ministry if I can't even introduce an artist without disgracing him and unplugging his powerpoint?  These are the thoughts I was having.

Now, it's Tuesday and I'm not waking up with those thoughts ringing in my head.  The thought process that stopped the 'voices' went something like this:

Why do I cringe so bad at my own faultiness?  Do I really think I've ever deserved my position at the 930 and Sojourn?  No, of course not.  If I got everything right all the time, where would God's grace be found?  It's grace that anybody would let me get in front of a microphone.  It's grace that I've got the 'job' that I've got.  It's grace that I get to meet artists that are like heros to me.  It's grace that Joe didn't hold such a bad introduction against me.  It's grace that secures a future for me, not my own accomplishments. God's grace is sufficient and maybe it will grow me to not screw up in the same way next time.

My mom told me that she had the first photograph I ever took.  As the story goes, I wasn't supposed to be messing with the poloroid camera, but I left some proof that  I had been playing with it.  I had pointed it right at me and pressed the button.  I'm guessing this was age 3.

picture: me with Aaron Weiss - Thanks to Drew Layman for the awesome poloroid.

I spent a good chunk of last Friday and Saturday hanging around Aaron Weiss, frontman for the post-punk band mewithoutYou.  Artistically, he's a hero of mine, and I was curious to see what he was like in person.  I'm still trying to make sense of it all.  He performed a very entertaining solo concert and lead an interesting writing class, but there were a lot of other moments that gave cause for pause as well.  He stopped and said a prayer before he entered my house.  He, though being a rock star, washed the dishes (using very little water), and without making it a big deal.  And he refused most of the money we tried to pay him for coming from Philadelphia to participate in Cultivate Beauty, insisting that we could probably do better things with the money than he could.  He truly marches to the tune of a different drummer.

He talked to throngs of needy teenagers for hours on end.  One at a time they'd come up and tell him all their problems - some crying their eyes out, and some trying to resolve all their mental issues right then and there.  He just patiently listened to each person, giving each person a hug and remembering their name.  He called everyone brother or sister.

I'm still wondering what makes him so approachable.  He's ruthlessly honest and bold, though also with a tinge of insecurity and oddity.  His mannerisms and scattered way of communicating can come across as weird, and I think that's why he's so admired by young, insecure people of artistic temperment like me.  The church is so full of people who only do their best to speak in three point sermons everywhere they go.  Those of us who know we can never speak in three-point sermons just don't have many living examples of Christians letting all their eccentricities out and speaking in simple blessings, strange parables and true paradoxes, but Aaron does just that, and it makes him attractive to those of us who just can't help but let our eccentricities out.  Brother, sister, it's okay.  It's alright.  We inside ourselves are many but God, our God, is one.

When I told people in Louisville that I was coming out to Tacoma, more than once I got in response the mysterious phrase, “oh, the aroma of Tacoma.”  Apparently, there’s a paper factory around here that gives the city a stinky reputation.  I haven’t smelled it yet.

In other smell-related thoughts, Les and Alison Groce taught Mickie and I in our pre-marital counseling to always be aware of the ‘aroma’ of our home.  That’s become a helpful indicator of how things are going for us.  For example, it stinks when we can’t seem to treat each other well and we can say the ‘aroma’ of our home is sweet when we’re being sweet with eachother.

So far this week, I’ve found the aroma of Tacoma to be quite nice.  I’m here along with four other Sojourn couples to learn from Soma Communities leaders.  They’re teaching us how they understand (1) the message of the gospel, (2) identities in the gospel, and (3) rhythms or practices because of the gospel.  The people here really have a loving vision for what it means to be a gospel-centered people on mission.

The best part has been spending two days mostly just hearing the story of the Bible being told in story form.  Seeing the redemptive arc of all history was really amazing – CREATION, FALL, REDEMPTION, COMPLETION.  God’s story is so genius.  All of the connections.  All of the richness.

The little white area that looks like a cloud is actually Mount Rainier.