Justice Conference 2013: Pre-Trip

Hey there all you avid readers. I'm attending this, the Justice Conference, for the 2nd time in my life, staring tomorrow. I leave for the city of Brotherly Love at the wonderfully dismal hour of 5:00 a.m.

I am extremely excited and prayerful about what I will learn and what will be ignited in my heart. As always, my trusted side-kick, Ben Chen, will be going too.

In short, I will attempt to keep up with things here on my forlorn little blog: what I'm hearing, what I'm seeing, what I'm learning. More to come, when I'm not falling asleep on the keys.

Breath and Gasoline: Human Trafficking, Doubt and the Reasons for it All

Breath and Gasoline:

Human Trafficking, Doubt and the Reasons for it All

By: Ryan Glenn

It was an unspectacular Friday evening when I knew we’d be doing a night drive. Unspectacular in the sense that it was neither hot nor cold, rainy nor calm – it was an inauspicious day that had become a similarly inauspicious evening; and yet, it was a night when somewhere, some girls were being bought and sold by some men in some dark corner of my city – of our world. For me it was nothing but a Friday-night-drinks-with-a-friend sort of evening but for someone else it was another faceless darkness, another numbing and brutal invasion of womanhood and innocence.

I knew this was happening and yet I could not see it. I knew this and yet I could not find it. I sensed the air around me as if I could feel a tear or a ripple in it, as if I could sense any horror in the quivering of the wind, any cry for help or silent plea to the God of Mercy. I could hear nothing and the wind only carried its usual silent self onward.

*          *          *          *          *

This issue is a thorn in my side. It is a shocking pain and it grieves my heart. It shakes my faith and buckles my knees. And still, it’s one among many:

I know that this isn’t the only bad thing happening in our world. I know other bad things happen and that they happen all the time. I know that there is a numberless cacophony of deaths and murders, wrongs and injustices wreaking their havoc in the broken hearts of Men and in the lives of their victims every day and every night. I know this. I stay up nights. I can’t breath sometimes – I know this.

I also know who my God has said He is – that He is Good. That He is Just. That He is Merciful. That His ways are above my ways and that in His redemptive plan He hears every cry and knows every tear and sees, as we cannot, how exactly His Son the Christ will one day actually and really make all things new, including this. I admit, though – this is a hard place for my faith to grow. I find myself echoing the Apostle Thomas frequently; “Lord, help my unbelief.” And He graciously does so.

I also know that God loves everyone, including the girls who are sold and the men who buy and the men who sell. Though we love to love victims and we love to hate victimizers (years of hoping the bad guy will get it in the end have made that our common thought currency), God sees all sides of this issue and judges all parties rightly as equally broken and in need of a saving grace freely offered – a fact I have to remind myself again and again, especially when I feel like grabbing a baseball bat and meting out some ‘justice’ of my own to a man who would even think of touching a young girl.

Thank God our God is not like me. Thank God that He wants everyone to know Him. It takes only a short glimpse at our own gracelessness to realize how unutterably amazing His gracefulness is.   

*          *          *          *          *

It is heavy with these thoughts that I stand on this Friday night, sensing the air. Almost time to drive.

We’ve planned to do our drive on a Friday night because for many reasons it is an active night for this sort of commerce. When we finally meet in a dark apartment parking lot, each of us comes out of the shadows and into the light with relative severity. We pray briefly and get going.

Two friends who have worked with a wonderfully brazen woman from a local trafficking organization are along with two others. We have a plan to drive to a short list of suspected trafficking spots, picked out by this bold friend who is “in the business”. On it are inauspicious places like salons and shoe stores – retail fronts set back in forgotten industrial parks in the shadow of major freeways. Glamorless and forgotten places – perfect for such illicit activity; by day, respectable and plain and by night something entirely different. Evil is far less obvious and far more congenial looking than we give it credit for. Our job is to visit the locales, scope out the after-hours activity and pray for them. Along the way we find ourselves also led to places not on our list – a shady strip joint here or an all-night video store with a particularly active clientele parked out front there. The good thing about prayer is that you can’t be wrong about a place – everyone needs Jesus equally as much. Everyone needs saving grace. Everyone.   

So, as an outpouring of this grace, we gather in my car in the late hours to beseech our Good God to act and to save and to rescue on our behalf. We pray for hearts to be broken and lives to be changed, chains to be shattered and pleasure to turn to ashes. We pray for demand to cease and for a city to be outraged for the sake of its daughters and we pray for a society to learn that there is no true and lasting satisfaction outside of knowing Rightly its Creator. Big prayers in a small car, spoken to foggy windows beneath red blinking lights.

Our last stop is a small sign in the back of a plain business park built in the mid-80s behind a busy Hispanic nightclub. An unclear flyer found online told us to expect something nearby.

So we sneak into the back of the pay-only parking lot for free, somehow undetected as we drive by a clamor of bouncers and valets, and we find the surest spot for what we’re looking for. Slotted next to 5 or 6 silent storefronts, it’s a terrifyingly open door well past midnight, unattended and unadorned. In the dim light a couch and potted plant are visible, sitting in front of a cheap floor lamp, a ticket-booth tinted window and a locked interior door with a small, lit doorbell. It’s so plain it’s almost sickening. No one is around. We wait. We pray. Two men go in. More waiting and no men come out. This place is clearly in business. We feel powerless – who is inside? How many girls? How young? Do we call the cops – or if we do will it be too late by the time the authorities make it around to investigate? We know they rotate girls frequently to keep customers interested. And as soon as the heat comes this place will dry up and move on, like they all do. There are more questions and we cannot answer any of them. Another sleazy flyer found online later tells us slightly more about the discreet Asian massage parlor we’d found – it’s new in town, but we can still only guess what’s next for it; as if we want to.

But in that parking lot our prayers have a visible target and the reality hits home. Behind those sun-faded tinted windows we know that the girls we pray for have faces and names and families. We know that shame and lust and hurt are lurking so thickly through those rooms and that a culture of sexual lies leaves men more empty and more dead with every visit. We can see it and feel it.       

And there we are, huddled in a car in prayer because at the time it’s all we can do. We’re not here to play Christian hero, and besides, it’s God who does praise worthy things with us, anyway – not the other way around. We’re simply responding out of love and duty to this enormous wound in our world. Love does in spite of itself for the object of its affection, and in this case our Love for God and for a broken world sent us to our knees for a few hours on this night in Dallas, Texas.

*          *          *          *          *

But can I be honest? About this whole thing?

It almost felt hopeless and dumb – spitting into the wind or taking one stone away from the Himalayas. What can we do, anyway? How can we stop such a thing as this and move these mountains even a millimeter? Can God really break hearts and grieve a city? Can He really move in a society? Are we being audacious to ask for such things?

The answer is yes but it’s not an easy one.

But what did we even do? Objectively – not figuratively?

Did we rescue anyone? Did we blow the whistle on a trade being made in some dank alleyway at the last second? Did we bring the light of the Gospel into a strip club’s back room or the all-night massage parlor’s foyer, guns blazing and Holy Spirit speaking?

No.

And the cynical would think then that we had actually done nothing at all, that our prayers went about as far as the glass in my car windows, that bringing religion into this whole mess is a pointless enterprise, that men have always bought sex and women always sold it, that it’s merely a detestable fact that children get sucked into it. Why waste the breath and the gasoline - and if we really cared that much we’d just roll up our sleeves and do some saving ourselves.

And anyway, they might ask, why don’t we just save something more easy to find, like dolphins or trees or puppies?  

Cynicism is a palpable force in our world and if it wasn’t for faith it would mow down my spirit like a scythe. But above the clamor of lies and snares and more powerful than the spiritual darkness that holds sway over this stronghold of lust is a God who has defeated sin and freed us from all bondage to it.

So, was it worth it?

Absolutely.

We were indeed audacious in our prayers, but then was it not Jesus who promised His presence?

“For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them”

Matthew 18:20.

And then there’s this audacious promise in 1 John 5:

"This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us - whatever we ask - we know that we have what we asked of him." (v. 14-15)

And this God we approach with such boldness is the God that delivered a captive nation and shook the prison doors loose and promised to save billions in all nations through a man named Abram. This is our God who can do all things and it is with full assurance and hope we pray for Him to do in His power what we cannot.

And we didn’t do it just once and we’ll do it again, too. We’ll keep praying and trusting that God can move this mountain and that He is, through people like us and people like you, at work. One day doors will be kicked down and rescues made. One day light will shine into ever darker corners. One day…we pray and we labor.

“For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”

Romans 8:19-21 

The Moment This Didn't Become a Pity Party

The moment I realized that I'm not that guy, that I'm not a cultural rebel or a critically-acclaimed anything or even a person that knows what the hell he's going to do next year or even tomorrow. That silence does terrify me and that the flimsy whims I build of straw always fall down.

That I can sing but that I am afraid to share it - I don't like the way my mouth looks. That when I want to break and shatter and take on weight I am treated lightly - I don't like the way my name sounds. That try as I might I am myself through and through - I don't like the way that that isn't enough.

I am enough. Because He is enough. I don't like the way that that sounds trite; but i like the way that that is true.

People, People, People

It's been a long time. No one is reading this.

This is beginning to remind me of having a Xanga back in the high school days.

But today was an exceptionally beautiful morning. If you've never understood the concept of chiaroscuro then the sunrise this morning would have defined it for you. I walked out onto my stoop to a sky-full of row upon row of painfully light-etched clouds floating aft of a warm bursting of young light from a sun faintly warming the unseasonal and delicious coolness of the dawn.

It was so beautiful I was almost angry. Angry that so many wouldn't notice it. Angry that something God has made so wonderful would just roll on and fade away and millions would and will always give it nary a glance, nor Him nary a thought. Some were starving and too hungry to look up and some were in too much pain. Some were too alone and some were too stoned. Some were already at work and some were sleepily getting off of it. Someone somewhere was dying on a bed with a feeble view, peering through aluminum blinds at the new day and cursing their failing body for keeping them inside an air-conditioned coffin.

But I had the privilege of standing there with the lavender and the bouganvillas straining upward toward the sky, blindly hungry for sunlight. Some don't think so simply of blessing: if it doesn't glitter or shine, if it isn't rare and coveted, if it isn't a false hope or a golden calf, it is not worth noticing, not worth having. What audacity we have to say He's done nothing for us when we walk blithely past such grace every day.

Lite-Brite Day, a poem

It’s a lite-brite day, with the sky a steely grey,

The breeze is a wet kiss that quickly dries away,

And you want to walk faster just so you can see more of it,

Taste the old plaster and the metal and the charge of it,

Floating in tiny sparks that land on your tongue in it:

And everything that is good is good. And you see a friend and you wave through the window and you sigh heavy and full and you walk forward and you rest in your heart and you know that God is Good.

And the wails aren’t anywhere but the news, the deaths are everywhere but here-

The Life is continually short, and the Breath comes for all in unequal strides-

The Life is continually short, and the Breath staggers in the chest across the finish-

The Life is terribly long, and the Breath sustains and sings within-

The Song doesn’t stop until one. Final. Beat.

Song of Songs, Day of Days, Lord of Lords, Breath of Breaths.

My Review of Terrasoles Baja Flip-Flops - Men's - 2009 Closeout

Originally submitted at REI

The Terrasoles Baja flip-flops are the perfect choice for warm-weather outings.

Terrasoles Baja Flip-Flops - Men's - 2009 Closeout

Broke after a few semi-glorious weeks

By Ryknoe from Dallas, TX on 3/8/2011

 

2out of 5

Sizing: Feels half size too small

Width: Feels true to width

Pros: Great with Jeans, Lightweight, Stylish

Cons: One twisty step-SNAP, Strap Chafes, Wears Out Easily

Best Uses: Casual Wear, Beach, Work

Describe Yourself: Casual, Alternative

These are great for nice, low-stress walking only. If you trust them to any slope or mis-step down off a curb (like I did) they're likely to break.

But 10 points for grooviness. And the stitching at the big toe is cool, as is the brown/green color combo. Tis pity they broke.

(legalese)

Organic Thoughts

The icebergs bloomed white and furiously craggy on top of their cold sea, jostling into one another and relinquishing great powdery sheets of white with every collision. Every movement underneath them was tectonic in magnitude and shook both the white formations and their ocean, roiling the liquid and sending the whole floating structures asunder. And then came the heat of the microwave for 45 long seconds, which, aggravating the water molecules in the coffee such that they became pleasantly heated, caused the icebergs of powdered creamer to finally surrender to the drink and melt away.

I thought, pouring the creamer, that it was unnerving how a substance we trust to simulate a fresh, dairy liquid in hot beverages reacted so frightfully different in a cold, stale beverage. Instead of dissolving to taste like milk, the creamer clumped into great arctic structures, bubbling and unnaturally staying quite the opposite of liquid. No amount of stirring would make it dissolve, I noted; only the application of heat to the liquid underneath the powder would cause the creamer to become rightfully assimilated.

This behavior caused me to put into question the trustworthiness of all simulations of real things. In our age of organic, free-range, all-natural hyper-frenzy rivaling the high-fructose-corn-syrup, prepackaged-and-unnatural mass-produced-camp, it gets a little tiring if you are the slightest bit complacent about both. I guess that’s me. While I cut high-fructose corn syrup out of my diet, sometimes, given no other choice, I’ll still eat it. Also, while I enjoy the benefits of organic, pesticide-free or otherwise natural food, I don’t enjoy the ghastly cost most stores foist upon the trendy products bearing that green sticker. As usual, there’s no happy medium for producers. Because that’s what it comes down to: producing in order to sell.

Why did crappy food take over anyway? People wanted it. Lots of it. Producers had to keep up with soaring demand, and, thanks to the newest technology of the day, preservatives and high-fructose corn-syrup, they found a way. Plastic wrappings, Styrofoam boxes, and any other cheap means of covering the food was also included. Mass production was the way of the future! The way of progress! The way of America!

But then people (thankfully) woke up and said, what is this filth we’re eating? It’s nothing but sugar, and bad sugar, at that! It’s all sugar. And fat. And starch. Maybe some fortified vitamins thrown in for fun, but mostly those three things. And those three things, if you haven’t noticed, don’t treat the body with much respect. Well, fast forward to today and here you have the newest craze: health, of all things! Of all the things to be trendy, it’s being healthy!

Think about it objectively if you can ignore the cries of beeves from the slaughter-houses: being healthy is popular, just like smoking was popular in the 60s or buying war bonds was popular in the 40s or just plain staying alive was popular in the 1600s (and through most of history). It’s the fad of an age. Maybe, in 25 years, we’ll all go back to eating crappy food-because it’s trendy. Ho-hos, tacos, twinkies, and deep-fried hamburgers. With artificial hearts, who has to worry about cardiovascular health anymore?

I think, at least for now, though, I’ll train myself to live without powdered creamer. No more coffee icebergs for me. I’m one step closer to trendy and two steps farther from the past. Now if only I could quit eating prepackaged cake icing by the spoonful…