An esteemed colleague of mine, Mr. David Kenneth Wheeler, has recently had a short fiction piece published in the wanderlust review.

This excites me a lot. Beyond my feelings of pure elation for him having an article published, beyond being ecstatic at the fact that I can feel his creative juices flowing a mere 1/2 kitty corner from my desk space and then watch them manifest in a soft-bound book, I adore the name The Wanderlust Review; as  someone who has battled with wanderlust his whole life, the name of the publication speaks to me.

At one point in his short story he likens his characters restlessness in certain familiar towns and regions with the empty husk of an already eaten artichoke:

… we set the spent artichoke leaves aside with the rest of the uneaten vegetable and carry on with our main course. Then, cleaning up, I take the plate- a thistle nearly winnowed to its heart, surrounded by a mess of leaves- see the teeth strokes in the sinewy flesh, and am suddenly uninspired to eat any more. It’s a waste, but it seems like the parts I shed become foreign objects to me, the detritus of experience only partially realized.

As you can see, Dave has an amazing ability to speak through his writing. I feel the narrators anxiety- the anxiety of someone who does not have a lot of ties, who does not have an overwhelming amount of responsibility, and is not in a crisis of identity, yet- at feeling like he wasn’t going anywhere, at least not anywhere good. I can feel him look at a place that had once given him such happiness, and all he can see are his footprints muddying up the sidewalks he used to love to walk.

I’m from New Jersey. I’m also from Saudi Arabia and Sammamish, WA. Although very different geographically, socially, meteorologically, they all have at least one thing in common; my footprints. And each place has been cast aside, pushed to a corner to be cleaned up later; it is such a complete renunciation that I often apologize for where I’m from. It usually goes like this:

“where are you from?”

“I was born in New Jersey.”

“…oh…”

“yeah, but… I wasn’t there for very long…”

or

“where’d you go to high school?”

“Eastlake, in Sammamish”

“…oh…”

“yeah, but… I’m actually pretty cool…”

I think I see the places I’ve been, chewed up and walked on and set aside like a husk (although the detritus of their experience are often only partially realized) to be disposed of later. I think I may be jaded, or that this place isn’t really meant to benefit me anymore. It’s not really fair, for me or that place or the people that still live there, but I do it.

But maybe that’s not the whole story.

I have a tendency to question everything (a habit that coworkers, girlfriends, bosses, and small group members have often found very annoying). I want to see the purpose, the goal, the outcomes, and I want to know that I know the truth. I didn’t realize this until recently, but I think it’s been true my entire life. I think I see the emptiness in places, the shortcomings and the lack. After I’ve intellectually explored a space I end up mourning absence more than I appreciate presence.

In New Jersey I felt the absence of people surrounding me, the scarcity of real culture and real perspective. In Saudi Arabia I felt the absence of people really accepting all people around them regardless of race, gender, class, or nationality. In Sammamish I felt the absence of goodwill, a result of the  strongest sense of entitlement that I’ve ever felt. It’s not that I have become jaded to the wonderful things of a community, it is just that I become aware of the things that are missing from it.

In getting to know a place, i peel away the layers until it’s a thistle neatly winnowed to its heart, and if I judge that heart not to be worth my time, I move on.

Bellingham has a heart to which I’ve winnowed. I love this place, because it’s about community; because it’s about making connections and accepting people regardless of beliefs, stage of life, or class. Different people, different classes, different beliefs, but we make up Bellingham and accept each other despite these differences. The INN is the same. We are a community that, at it’s heart, is always seeking to draw people in and share what it has, regardless of differences in belief and class; that’s how love (especially God’s love) works.

Here I go talking about seasons again. I guess I’m just on a season kick. I love seasons, not just the calendar seasons, but life seasons. I blogged last time about seasons bring change, and I’m still going strong in that vein. This quarter is almost over and we will be headed to our different destinations for spring break mission trips. Once we come back from the trips, we’ll have about ten or so weeks left of the internship and then on to the next thing. Oh Wow! I actually have to have an idea for what’s next? I’m getting a little anxious about what is coming next.

Bellingham is a great place and I have grown to really appreciate it as a place of refining and growing and maturing in my spiritual life. I have learned a lot about myself during my time here so far and I know that there is still a lot more to learn. I have met so many amazing people who have been blessings to me while I’ve been here. My host family, for one, has been incredible and so welcoming taking me in for the year. They are truly loving and hospitable and for that I am so grateful.

Also there is another family who has blessed me so much by their generosity as well. They have loaned me a car during my time as an intern. I am so thankful to them and it has been such a blessing to have a car and have the ability to get around more easily. God is so good and will always come through. I just have to trust and rely completely on Him. He is always there ready to help and bless when the time is right. He gets the glory always and I need to trust always and not doubt.

So, with that in mind, the anxieties that I have about the future don’t need to weigh me down and keep me bound by worry and doubt. God is in control and He will show me what’s next. I just have to trust in Him and maybe take that first initial step towards that new season. He’ll be right there next to me to help me along the way.

As it says in Proverbs 16:9:

“A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.”

Thank You Lord that You are there to direct my steps.

When pressed, I will describe myself as bookish. I’m not often pressed to describe myself in one word; more often, I self-disclose. Maybe it’s the glasses, the assorted sweaters, or the fine pallor I’ve cultivated over the years to match my ectomorphic body type (what Wii Fit likes to insinuate as sickly). But probably it’s that I’m typically reading a book or pretending to write one of my own.

As an intern, I have the privilege of leading a book group. Last quarter we read essays by biologist and writer Barbara Kingsolver. This quarter, we’re looking at short stories by Andre Dubus. I’ve taken the opportunity to step outside what small groups tend to read (standards by the likes of Donald Miller, Lauren Winner, Anne Lamott, and breakout hits like Susan Isaacs’s Angry Conversations with God), which are all delightful books by people I rank among my heroes. What I look for in a selection for book group is something that confronts traditional expectations.

Take Barbara Kingsolver, someone who I’d never actually read up until the fall. She writes from the perspective of a scientist, environmentalist, a mother, a writer, and a piecemeal faith sometimes Christian, sometimes Buddhist, and most times goddess Mother Earth. Compare her with Andre Dubus, a Catholic whose short stories often take on the horrifying reality of domestic abuse and the creative ways humans employ in hurting one another.

I like reading books that are confrontational. I like asking how faith influences the way writers write and readers read. Books that push us away from where we’re comfortable are best, I think. Books that maybe don’t affirm what we think or believe. Books that present us with difficult realities. Books like that, from Christian writers or not, can bring about plenty of good conversation. And maybe we finish it and have a better understanding of ourselves, others, and the world around us. And I could go on and on.

I haven’t decided what we’ll read next quarter. I’ve got my fingers crossed for a good graphic novel.

“What’s your favorite subject?”

“Recess”

Don’t you miss hearing that? Don’t you miss the hot smell of rubber on asphalt and the cold shiver of the very best hiding places in your schoolyard? In a culture so bent on the pursuit of leisure, so intensely interested in the promotion of well being, why have we abandoned the philosophy of recreation we grew up in? What happened to the daily break from work (usually right after lunch, but sometimes in between 4th and 5th period) to just play? In an age where people are increasingly without politics, without religion, without favorite sports teams, it seems we are also increasingly without recess.

It’s time for this to stop.

Three of the students that I work with in the recreation ministry of the INN have started up a program to combat this horrid trend. We call it college recess. Nothing more than some playground balls,hula hoops, and street chalk, it nevertheless weekly proves its effectiveness as an inoculation against the ravages of anti-fun in the average college student.

More than that, I feel like this recess provides a time to share the gospel in a way that seems somewhat overlooked these days: fun. Foursquare and tetherball and tag are wordless testimonies to the complete and all encompassing nature of God; He did in fact create fun, and he created us to enjoy fun- freeze tag is not a sin, and we don’t have to forget about God when we’re playing it.

On a campus that can often be filled with bleakness, around a fountain known for proselytizing people towards or away from every creed- often in a very impersonal way- I can’t begin to describe what it means to me that the INN (a religious organization that believes fully in the redemptive message of Jesus) can send up a group of students to campus whose only goal is to show people the fun of God.

Jesus loved the little children, and claimed that the Kingdom of heaven is for such as these. We try to love the big kids, and we’re just trying to help them feel more like children again.

When I was younger…well, to be honest, even now when I go home, I look forward to Sunday mornings. Not just as a time of rest from school and work, or because I am super stoked to sleep in, but because I knew Sunday mornings always meant one thing in the Nelson house: sourdoughs.

My family values good breakfast. Especially on Sundays. My dad mixes the batter the night before- not from a recipe card, but from the routine etched in his brain that I never thought I would have the chance to know. He asks us the seemingly simple question my brother, stepsister, and I mulled and voted over: Pancakes or Waffles? He adjusts the recipe accordingly, leaves the batter overnight to rise from the yeast, mixes in the rest of the ingredients, and fills the house with the smell of Sunday.

When I get the chance to be with my dad, I have come to expect this fantastic meal. I expect it to be a chance to savor the best pancake or waffle flavor while sitting at the table together. We usually finish most of our breakfast as Dad finishes the batter and smiles at our enjoyment.

Serving pancakes on campus on Tuesday mornings this quarter has given me a chance to see students value and expect a weekly pancake or two…or seven. Although the pancake feed started as just a one-time welcome back event, it has expanded to a weekly event. Students have started asking why we are on Vendor’s Row every week. One lady bluntly asked us this morning, “Oh, so are you recruiting?” People are starting to recognize us and become regulars.

Why are we doing this? We must have some hidden agenda, right? Isn’t that what Christian organizations giving away free things are usually about? Well, no. We are honest about our intentions. We aren’t hiding the fact that we have a Tuesday night program, we are a college ministry, and we want people to start recognizing that we are on campus.

That’s not the only reason we’re up there. We hope to provide a fun, delicious pancake breakfast for students, a chance for people to convene, take a break, and enjoy Tuesday. As I focus on flipping over four rows of four pancakes on two steaming griddles, I think of my dad. I hear students say, “I’ve been looking forward to this,” “This made my day better,” “This is really cool,” and “I’ll be back next week.” And I understand my love for Sundays at home is like their love for Tuesdays.

The fall marked my transition to wearing glasses instead of contact lenses, out of convenience and thrift. I still keep contacts around, for those times when I’d rather not risk losing, breaking, scratching, or otherwise detrimentally impacting my spectacles—like broom hockey. For those occasions, I save pairs of contacts; and, I receive compliments when I pop them in. People have commented, “Dave, you look rested, and refreshed,” in the sort of way that makes me wonder what I look like otherwise: harried? exhausted? But I learned a while ago how to take a compliment, even the vaguely and unintentionally backhanded.

Winter Quarter rushes in like a lion. After two weeks break for the holidays, it still sometimes feels like I’m catching up, catching my breath; and, we’re now—what?—five weeks into the eleven. With everything moving at such a pace as the INN does, and with the addition of mission training and fundraising each week, sometimes it can seem like there’s not much time to catch a breath. I’ve been learning to catch it on the fly.

There’s a refreshing sense of timing necessary these days. When there’s SHOP on Monday, the INN on Tuesday, Lost to catch up on Wednesday (I’m just going through my week, honestly), Mission Training on Thursday, and book group or myriad fundraisers on Friday and Saturday, moments are precious. I take time on Monday, with other INN and FPC staff, over donuts and coffee. I take time at Mission Training to just be with my team going to Bend, OR. And sound check for the music team on Tuesday night—well—sound check is something pretty special.

And though the weeks are long sometimes, the high points seem a little higher and the restful moments seem just that much more invigorating.