One of my early cases involved a Hmong gang.  They had a big brother little brother mentoring program where a senior gang member would be assigned from another region to teach skills to their mentees.  In this case, check forging as well as some weapons training.  Can you imagine your church or work implementing all this?  Most of my jobs I was given the employee handbook, some type of work related manual or guide and pretty much left alone to figure it out.  And boy did I have a lot of fun doing so – making up stuff as I went along – you really don’t want to know exactly where and how but let’s say that I left a couple of handprints in concrete like a school kid.

In any case, the senior gang member was teaching how to forge work checks from what I believe was KFC but stupidly keeping some of the proceeds for himself rather than letting it go to the full pot.  And so his students, like a certain wayward Jedi knight have to kill their master.

And so they do.

After they all take a car ride together, they distract him as he exits and then shoot him.  I remember this case clearly because there was video of him dying on the operating table – it was necessary for evidentiary purposes, dying declaration if I remember anything from law school.  He was a big guy too – in the 300 lb range.

I have often thought about this case because it highlighted the fear and fragility of life, essentially in the last moments.  I won’t write more about the details because they are not easy to describe.  Still much easier than the more subtle and insidious forms of misbehavior all around.  I was very young when I had the case – just turned 25.  After seeing this, I longed for the girl I lit the candles for.  

But she wasn’t there.  

Just the Mississippi River and the Minnesota night to turn to.

I still lit a candle for her that evening.

Of all the places I’ve gone to, I hated prison and jails the most.  More so than the drug neighborhoods and other assorted crappy places I’ve gone to, including some jobs.  I didn’t like the overall environment, clanging doors, looks of inmates, tight security, and all that.  Like all the crap I put up with in this joyful disappointing existence, I just gritted my teeth and did it, breathing relief thereafter.

But this one is about preparation.

One of the most famous characters in my faith is Joseph.  Technicolor dream coat, dreams, sent to the pit, sold into slavery, false accusations, and being sent to prison unjustly.

But prison is where he needed to be for his destiny.  Like Don Corleone, it takes an act of injustice to launch you into what has been ordained.

I heard somewhere and with good reasoning that the prison he got sent to was for political prisoners.  And that’s how he learned the skills to eventually rule over Egypt.  But I think it’s also more than that – the dangers and challenges of prison life for him ready for the cutthroats, backstabbers, underminers, and other goodies of political life.  Just because he ended up with a high position after his release did not exempt him from these realities.

Most of my career involved some type of political work.  It was brutal and petty.  At some point, I realized that the worst enemies weren’t the criminals out on the street but the ones inside the building.  This has been true also of schools and churches.  Power tends to corrupt and all that.  I want to be done with all that and plant some vegetables but I also see how many of my life experiences got me ready to not only survive these environments but also throw my middle finger at some of these perps as well.

One of the phrases that has resonated in recent years is that nothing is wasted.  It came suddenly to me after an interesting series of events and it rang true without really much thought.  The more I recollected and wrote, I started to see how skills and experienced I picked up at different points played a role later down the road.  My ambassador mentor told me that I’d be surprised to see what I would find useful from a prior life.

And she was correct.

In NYC, not only did I use a ton of my educational and professional skills but something that will sound funny but makes sense if one knew the quality and character of many of the people I was with.

Volunteering at the church nursery.

My daughter observed that many villains in movies and shows like to explain exactly how their plots work.  She said how stupid this was. You can tell she’s my daughter.

I have long reflected on the baptism scene in the first Godfather movie.  Michael wipes out all his enemies and settles all debts in a stunning move.  It is brilliant.

It took years to put the plan in motion.  And it started with his dad forswearing vengeance and promising it would not be him who would break the peace.  

The Corleones lull everyone else into a false sense of security by feigning weaknesses. And then scheduling the killing stroke on the baptism day of Michael’s nephew.

Perfect.

Who would plan such a thing on such a holy day?  Game of Thrones borrowed their Red Wedding scene from this for sure.

But this is also how God works.

His plans have been set into motion since the start of time.  Everything has been accounted for and the moves vary – simple to complex, one step to layered.

That is part of the magic.

Ive started teaching my kids various things.  From hockey, music, Tasers, stop and frisk, etc.

And how to plan a baptism.

The best years of my life.  A city where I had yearned to live in since my first year in the US.  My parents took us to Boston and surrounding areas.  And yes, Harvard to inspire me to attend one day (not a snowballs’s chance).  After several near misses (for law school and post-law school employment), I finally get the opportunity to live there due to a doctoral program.  By the grace of God, a last minute snag gets resolved and off I go.

Driving up the New Jersey Turnpike in an oversized truck with baby turtles (the surviving one is now 17) on the hood, narrowly avoiding overloading a small bridge, crashing the gate of the dropoff point.  Moving into an apartment on top of a Greek pizza shop.  Riding the T for the first time as a resident, crossing the Longfellow Bridge over the Charles.  Walking the Freedom Trail every time family and friends visited.

Those falls where the leaves were so beautiful that I thought my heart would break every time I saw them.

The brutal winters where I learned to never complain about the Maryland ones ever again.

And Fenway.  The first time entering the holy sanctuary.

Magical.  Just magical.

A period of my life where there was great hope and possibility.  Learned, read, taught, lived in Europe, met amazing mentors, Red Sox Nation, Patriots Way, Celtics Ubuntu, etc.  Every Boston team won a championship during my eight years there.  Close to mountains, beaches, forests.  A big small town where the girl was born.

Love that dirty water.

Home.

I’ve had my guitar for 26 years.  Steel string, solid top, deep red.  With my basketball and Bible, I took it everywhere.  All that you can’t leave behind.

Never figured how to play solos that well, but focused on rhythm, jazz, and a style like U2’s Edge.  My favorite songs to play were With or Without You (my favorite all time song), Stay, Yellow Ledbetter, Plush, Gallows Pole, Over the Hills and Far Away.  

And of course, Stairway to Heaven.  I would play different segments specifically for each of my children.  For my daughter, my all time favorite part “And as we wind on down the road…” and for my son “If there’s a Bubu in your hedgerow don’t be alarmed now…”

And Amazing Grace.

One time, I led worship for the entire church (a rare time when all the congregations were gathered).  With just the sole acoustic guitar ringing out in the auditorium, you felt for a moment that all would be well.

“Through many dangers, toils, and snares

I have already come… and Grace will lead me home.”

I’m really proud of my resume.  Not just because of what I had to do to earn it or the modest accomplishments it records.  Rather, more that it reflects what I believed in and who I strove to be.  Out of my peer group (give or take a few years), I’ve probably made the least amount of money and accumulated the fewest assets.  Instead, I got paid in laughter and joy.  Lots of experience, knowledge, and if I may say so with humility, a little perspective and wisdom.

One of the people who targeted me in NYC was an ass-kisser (the real term I use is a bit more profane), a backstabber, a liar, a manipulator, and a coward (he was so scared one time to even make a call to his superiors to postpone a meeting).  He even betrayed his own boss for what amounted to a hill of beans.  He focused on getting better sounding titles even when the squad was being reduced in size.  We had a nickname for him at the NYPD – silver tongue, black heart.  He gave my epileptic colleague literal fits.  So stupid, he boasted about having spies in the office.  A real spymaster does not do that.  George Smiley, he was not.  He lied about being a prosecutor (his law firm loaned him out while getting paid his six figure salary).

And he is now a Chief Judge of some agency or another, friends with Mayor Eric Adams, honored, etc.  I even think he won some “Man of the Year” award from his bar association.  His daughter who is my daughter’s age goes to a 45K private school in the city.

Yet, I woke up one morning and asked myself, would I trade places with him?  A quick and resounding no. 

Not worth it.  Don’t want it, don’t need it.  I may have been many things, good and bad, but I wasn’t that.  At the very least, coward isn’t and will not be anywhere near my name.

Who we are is what remains after all the trinkets are stripped away.

As to the daughter (and son), what father can tell them my stories?  Not too many, I venture.

And that school is certainly not teaching what I’ve picked up on this journey.

I’m not much of an outdoor person – no fishing, limited hiking, etc.  Living in Minnesota, I went to the Mall of America quite a bit.  Pretty fun actually.  A fun fact – during the winter, the mall has to pump in cold air from the outside to counter the body heat generated by the people inside.

I hurt my foot playing ball that summer.  You don’t know pain until you’ve injured your heel.  While it did prevent me from being scolded by church leaders for fouling hard, I had to walk around with a walking stick most of the time.

So I drove.  One of the most beautiful drives in the country, around Lake Superior after Duluth and beyond to the Canadian border.  Steel blue waters to the east, evergreen forests to the west.

I would play a combination of John Denver and Tupac Shakur on these drives. My roommate at the time would scoff.  I’m sorry – what is it with Asian Christians at times?  Get out of your bubble.

Tupac’s song “Only God Can Judge Me” stood out.  I used to dismiss it as bravado or defiance, but now it makes more sense.  Sometimes when I describe what I’ve experienced, I get utterly inappropriate replies.  One time even, when I tried to describe my casework to a pastor, he just turns his back and walks away.  I think that was actually the last time I bothered trying to tell anyone about my work.

Only God can judge me is spot on.  No human words can adequately describe the joy, pain, sins, contributions, games people played.  Much less weigh them all out.

I’ll be going to Minnesota in the spring to attend my mentor’s wife’s memorial service.  

I think I’ll make that drive again.  With Messrs. Denver and Shakur.

I’ve never told anyone the full extent of what I handled.  Only a student, who fought in Afghanistan, has ever directly asked me.  I didn’t even tell my criminal law students even if it would illustrate concepts.  I used Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, my pet turtles more in scenarios.  I’ve never pinpointed the reason and I’m not going to think too hard on it.

In Philadelphia, my office was spotless.  I had few case files lying around.  Some people thought I was barely working.  The opposite was true.  I was brutally efficient, completing double the cases of others, at least in my peer group (no slouches there in terms of law schools – Harvard, Emory, UVA, Villanova, Temple).  My office was clean because I sent the files back to storage.  All while starting and leading an Asian immigrant outreach program.

Few noticed.  My supervisors only realized this my last month when I stopped working.  I let the boxes stack up and refused reassigned cases.  I enjoyed my daily pretzel (Philly ones are the best).  I played hooky with a colleague to watch Revenge of the Sith.  A little balance in the universe isn’t the worst thing.

I’ve very selectively told some friends the most heinous ones.  They are nightmares.  If you think evil is a joke, it isn’t.

One of the cases that I will write about was as a student attorney.  I wrote significant portions of the brief (we lost).  Some knuckleheads decide to form a protection racket.  In order to drum up business, they decide to cause havoc in the neighborhood.  They shoot a 15 year old boy riding his bicycle with a hollow point bullet.  With a gun that cost $50.  Hollow points explode and disintegrate on impact.  The bullet shatters his internal organs and he bleeds out not far from his parents’ house.  The killers almost get away with it.  Unsolved for weeks, they brag at a party and that’s how they got caught.

I told no one except for an ER physician at church and the girl I lit the candles for.  That kid would have been 40 today.

I was a sensitive, shy, quiet child who cried a lot.  I hated going to preschool.  This fear of school never really went away until college.  My parents worked, so my aunt would drop and see me off at the bus stop.  I don’t recall exactly when this happened, but it was somewhere around the US equivalent of kindergarten or first grade.

On the bus, a bigger kid would often intimidate me and take my lunch money.  This went on for weeks.  One day, I gathered enough courage to yell at him at the bus stop when my aunt was present.  He didn’t bother me that day.

This didn’t last.  A few days later, he resumes his previous behavior.

This time though, I decided to go down swinging.  A quick prayer to God and I told him the Malaysian K-1st grade equivalent to go f___ himself. 

He hits me in the face.  It stings.  I hit him in the stomach.  He hits me again.  I now go all in, all out and pummel his stomach over and over again.

At the end, he is crumpled in a heap at the back of the bus.  When we arrive at school, he complains to the bus driver about me.  The bus driver just tells him that he deserved what he got.

And a good day was had by all.  Almost all.

I used to tell people that my Maine Coon cat taught me more about God’s love than most pastors.  They would laugh, but hear me out.  Nidas (short for Leonidas) was selfish, greedy, vicious, mean, destructive.  He peed everywhere.  He is the worst financial decision I’ve ever made.  To this day, I still have his scratch marks on my arms.  He attacked my mom after he realized she didn’t have her protection stick.  He also scratched my newborn baby daughter.

But I loved him. 

He was like a son to me before my human one arrived.  Living out Road to Perdition, we took road trips together up and down the East Coast.  He slept at my feet for a good portion of his life.

When he was dying, I bawled at the vet’s office.  It was the first time I had cried in eight years.

I loved him so much.

And the part about God?  I’ve thought many times that I’m like Nidas to Him.  With so many sins and flaws.  Yet loved.

Nidas was my cat.  And I loved him.