March 21
It’s not very often when you meet someone cut from the same cloth as you.
I just onboarded my very first student from my alma mater! They went through the same teachers, care about many of the same things I do, and even went to my childhood church. We hit it off over our shared experiences getting schooled on literary analysis by our very own Hodgepodge…
…it’s too bad he’s on track to get laid off.1
Wait, WHAT?!
But I wasn’t paid to consume the hottest gossip at Oxford: I was paid to provide college counseling. So we eventually moved on to things like summer programs and passion projects.
But even after we said goodbye, I couldn’t help but linger on the Anaheim Union trustees’ shenanigans and how they endanger students and their learning. When I was in high school, it was complicity with the Confederate Lost Cause. Now, it’s sacrificing teachers for newfangled nonsense like “eKadence” and “TeachFX.”
When will this shit ever stop?
I don’t know. But I do know that whenever admin has bullshitted students, students have told them the truth.
So that night, I stayed a little extra to find the article Milly wrote about Oxford’s Latine population and send it over. It wasn’t much, but it was the least I could do to encourage the student.
March 24 (Palm Sunday)
Today was the day!
I was going to grab lunch my old friend Carolyn, and the two of us were going to jam together during worship at Church of the Redeemer. It was a homecoming of sorts - Redeemer was my college church.
Carolyn showed up 15 minutes late, but she had a good excuse: the day before, she had joined the Redeemer delegation to the Gaza ceasefire pilgrimage. From 7 AM to 4:30 PM, she had walked 22 miles up and down the Los Angeles coastline, raising awareness of the Palestinians’ displacement from Khan Yunis to Rafah.
In short, Carolyn was sore and addled, but very excited to catch up with me.
That sucked, but it was what it was. So I shrugged my shoulders, offering to buy her lunch AND boba. After all, Carolyn had done far more for Palestine than I ever had.
Anyway, the next step was to grab the cajon so that I could join Carolyn’s worship set.
As InterVarsity alumni, we had a blank cheque to borrow the cajon from our old campus ministry’s closet…but not the keys. So Carolyn used her bus pass to jiggle the lock, allowing us to grab what we needed and go. It wasn’t the most by-the-book way of doing things, but hey: Jesus stole a donkey.
Once we arrived at church, Carolyn told me that walking all day had not only taken a toll on her body, but also her mind: she had forgotten to email the worship slides to the multimedia team. In fact, she had not created them at all.
That sucked, but it was what it was. So I shrugged my shoulders, joining Carolyn in fooling around and finding out what kinds of songs were fitting for a Palm Sunday setlist.
After about an hour or so of jamming together, a man I didn’t know walked in, surprised that he wouldn’t be leading worship alone. Introducing himself as “Arthur,” he explained that he hadn’t expected Carolyn to be available that day. Apparently, this was because he had asked Carolyn if she was on spring break, and Carolyn replied that she was really enjoying it.
Note to self: if you want to ask someone something, ask them directly.
In the midst of all this chaos, we did find one God moment to celebrate: Arthur and Carolyn were planning to play the same Hosanna song in the same key. The same song wasn’t a huge coincidence (it was Palm Sunday) but the key very much was.
But that wasn’t much consolation for me: while Carolyn had planned her “worship set” with a cajon in mind, Arthur had not. And Arthur was planning to go for a mournful dirge, which does NOT go well with a cajon.
That really sucked. So instead of shrugging my shoulders and moving on, I ended up giving Arthur funny faces throughout the entire opening set. (It wasn’t my fault the dude kept tripping up every three measures!)
Once worship mercifully came to a close, I found out that worship wasn’t the only thing that didn’t happen according to plan. Phil Placenti was supposed to speak today, but he had to back out last minute because his parents needed help and he just really needed to be there for them. So Anna Parks spoke instead.
That sucked, but it was what it was. This time, I shrugged my shoulders, deciding to come along for the ride.
Anna talked about the reason why Jesus started weeping on Palm Sunday: the Jewish people thought they were working to bring shalom, but they really weren’t. It was especially heartbreaking because He knew how loving and wise and wonderful the Jewish people could be when they were living into their relationship with God. Anna stressed that this wasn’t an occasion to look down on the Jews: if they didn’t fully get it, how much more would we?
(Given the sermon’s focus on how Jesus’ sadness on Palm Sunday, Arthur had the right idea all along. I took a moment to sit with how all my griping today was so petty and selfish…)
Shalom usually happens through everyday means. How did Rosa Parks, a vulnerable elderly woman, make the decision to sit in the front of the bus? She opened up her home for weekly mentorship meetings with a group of girls, who challenged her to do more for the struggle. She probably wasn’t trying to start a revolution, but God saw her faithfulness and allowed her to be part of it.
Where does Jesus work toward shalom during Holy Week? He does this in everything He does: praising the widow for giving her penny to the Lord, flipping tables, praying in the garden of Gethsemane, and even standing trial before Pilate. Anna asked us to get in groups of 2-3 to discuss how these incidents show Jesus’ work toward shalom.
I sat next to Carolyn and her fiancee Armin, and the three of us talked about the prayer in the garden of Gethsemane. Armin brought up how Jesus told the disciples not to fall asleep even though they were sad he was going to die soon because they needed to regulate and press through the hard things. I brought up how Jesus’ willingness to resist his self-preservation instincts reminded me of those who have sacrificed for the cause of Palestine. Carolyn brought up how the angel’s visitation to give Jesus hope was a little taste of shalom on earth.
After the sermon, Carolyn led the closing song Hosanna and that was pretty fire. That was partially because I felt like I had room to play a little louder.
Ok, fine. That was definitely because I had more freedom with how loud I could play.
Despite everything, Arthur actually invited me to come again next Sunday to play for the Easter service. I thought he was just being nice until Carolyn explained that because we have so few musicians it is really nice when there is enough of us to have a full band.
Cue the “petty and selfish” introspection…
Growing up, the people around me would have been backhanded about my performance to my face (and talk shit behind my back). But here, people seemed genuinely grateful that I came to play.
I don’t think it was a “small church” thing - I’ve heard horror stories of small churches demanding way too much of their worship leaders. I don’t think it was a racial thing (although Redeemer is now mostly white, and a lot of the horror stories were from East Asian churches). I don’t think it was a “Joseph used to go here” thing - some of the churchgoers didn’t even remember my name.
I don’t know what it was, but it made me feel more grateful for my time at Redeemer.
Whenever I visit, I feel inspired towards acts of justice in a way that no church in the OC has ever done before. The sermons interpret the world in a way that is faithful to the Word, and the churchgoers show up to rallies and marches like the one yesterday. Hell, they run a community development corporation that tutors kids and fixes up potholes and tells the oil barons to get the frack off our neighborhoods!
It’s almost like I want to move back to south LA and go back to Redeemer…
But this is not an ideal world. I don’t get to run off to LA or Minneapolis or whatever and do whatever I want. I have obligations: to my students at Admission Masters, to my peers at Epic Church, to my own career journey. So I gotta continue working, continue pushing forward, continue saving up for the future (if I even have one)...
Never mind that the grind is unsustainable.
Do you have any observations or questions that you’d like to add? If so, let’s chat. Email me and we can get the conversation going.
As always: fight proud 📢, fight strong ✊, and fight on! 🗡️
Thanks be to God this is outdated…see this Voice of OC article for more info: https://voiceofoc.org/2024/05/anaheim-union-high-school-district-scraps-dozens-of-scheduled-teacher-layoffs/