Gentrification

Gentrification is a hot topic in the city, and it has come to affect my world.

First, my brother has said that since he knows that housing is out of reach, he's looking for jobs out of state. It hurts me to hear it, but, I understand his reasoning. When he moves, my mom, if she wants to say in LA, will have to find subsidized housing so she can live on her retirement income. There is a three year waiting list for subsidized retirement housing in LA County.

Second, the best gay club in Orange County, the Boom Boom Room, is being forced to shut down. The new owners of the building, who paid $11M for the Boom and the hotel next door, can't gain back their investment on the lease money from the Boom. They're going to have to put in something more swanky. The Boom is a victim of the changing demographics of Laguna Beach. It used to be a town for artists and gays, but, now it is mostly a town for the rich.

Third, my neighbor across the street, a pony-tailed Mexican divorcee named Jesus, has just sold his house to (what appears to be) a white lesbian couple. I'm not sure how I feel about there being white people across the street. I've only just gotton used to the idea of their being other white people in my neighborhood, when I used to be the token white man in South Central. Now there are white people across the street! There goes the neighborhood.

Lastly, there is the movie Quinceanera, which documents the much more severe cultural changes going on in Echo Park neighborhood of LA. The movie is pretty good. I caught it at the Arclight on Friday.

I really tried to buy in Echo Park two years ago, but at the time the $400k asking prices were too much of a stretch. DQNews now puts the median price of a home in the 90026 at $606k. Phew.

I can't feel too badly about the cultural shifts occurring in my neighborhood, since most people are homeowners. The old residents are cashing out and buying new houses out of state or in the IE. White people are replacing them because they themselves are priced out of the beach cities, the Valley, and Pasadena. Where it becomes a tragedy is for the renters. Rents track home prices, and so the working class suffers without the option to cash out.

Plus, my old neighborhood, Midway City, which used to be a white working class neighborhood, is now a middle class Vietnamese neighborhood. Working-class white homeowners have been pushed out of Orange County alltogether, and now only exist in towns like desert towns like Lancaster and Highland.

Everything is Great

YellowCard's new CD "Lights and Sounds". Great.

Dashboard Confessional's new CD "Dusk and Summer". Great.

Talledega Nights. Laugh-out-loud funny.

My cup of morning coffee: Great.

I must not be in a very critical mood lately.

Hamartiology

As a standard disclaimer, I'm still gay, I'm not much of a Christian, and I do not have much in the way of faith.

But I started thinking a little bit about sin this week after I did something unquestionably wrong. I can't discuss the details, because doing so would cause more harm. The surprising thing about the event was that it was something I'd never before done, and something I never imagined I was capable of doing.

It got me thinking about how some temptations hold great power over me (sloth) while others mean nothing to me (anger, gluttony), and how for others the relative strengths of these temptations differ greatly.

I think for many of us, we can categorize our failings into those laws which we commonly break (a "three F's" sin: fuck up, forgiven, forgotton) and those that we seldom or never break.

The depth of our struggle with a certain type of behavior is often correlated with with the amount of empathy felt for those with similar struggles. If I spend way too much time watching p0rn, just as an example, I can empathize with those with similar difficulties. I would be more likely to categorize as minor infractions those things with which I have struggled. Those sins I have never committed become categorized as major or mortal sins.

It is important to recognize the logical flaws in this inherent tendency. It is the individual, not God, that is doing the categorization. It is the individual, not God, determining how God should react and behave.

The church, as a collection of usually similar individuals, makes similar collective decisions. They are there to embrace those that have failed, to lead them back to the Christ, but, only if the individuals in the church can understand and empathize with the sins committed by those that have lost their way. For "mortal" sins, there can be no empathy, and thus no incentive to minister.

A raw diamond can be polished, but, a lump of coal is just a lump of coal.

This categorization and empathy effect can cause tunnel vision when looking at behavior.

An example...

There is much discussion about how gay marriage denigrates marriage. This seems to garner special attention because same-sex sex is something most people cannot imagine themselves doing. Its very alienness makes it seem more transgressive. Marriages today, however, usually struggle with more common problems: extra-marital sex, financial imprudence, workaholism, gluttony. To focus on the rare without focussing on the common can only lead to rare successes with common failures.

Interestingly, the idea of original sin, that we all suffer because of the sins committed by Adam and Eve, ends up creating a more democratic theology than the tabula rasa idea, where we are born sinless, but inevitably fail. The idea of original sin reinforces our understanding that all people need equal amounts of Christ.

Most American Christians, despite the doctrines of their various faith traditions, act as if they believe in the tabula rasa idea, and its correllary: bad people need more Christ than good people.

And yet, because of the implicit divisions of sin into minor and major, understandable and incomprehensible, the American Christian is less likely to minister to those whom he or she believes is in greater need of Christ.

Whatever.

San Dimas High School Football rules!!!!