First, forgive me of any over-simplifications that follow. I’m blogging, not writing a doctoral dissertation (some may disagree), so I’m trying to get to my point as quickly as possible …

As I understand it, humanity was born in the middle of the world, what we now call the middle-east should probably in all fairness just be called the middle. Eden, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Babylon, Jerusalem, those that live there are correct, that region is the navel of the world. From there civilization spread, east and west, across the globe. I am a part of the history of western culture, and if you think it through, I am a long, long, way from home. So far from home that if you go any farther west from where I live you’ll find yourself in the east. In that sense, the western coast of North America is the far western edge of the western world. Until we colonize another planet, it ends here.

Picture a journey. The long trek that western culture has made in the last twenty-five hundred years. First through continental Europe, to Britain, then to the Americas. From the New England colonies west to the Mississippi, and then the great trek through the wild west to the Gold Coast.

Now picture western culture with a pocket full of coins, each one representing a piece of its rich cultural tradition. But the pocket has a hole, and as it journeys west, one by one, the coins drop out. The farther the journey, the fewer traditions remain.

I love history, and last week I stood in London watching a new office building being constructed less than a stone’s throw from St. James park. I felt a twinge of pain knowing that some two hundred (or more) year old buildings gave their lives for this tower. There’s little room to build new things in ancient places like Britain without somehow tearing down history, and history is so very, very important.

Not so in California. My house stands in the one of the oldest neighborhoods in the Conejo Valley. It was built in 1960, in California terms, virtually a historic landmark. Of course there are older structures in California, but don’t waste your time looking for many neighborhoods celebrating their bicentennial. Apart from the Spanish missions from which many of our cities are named, they just aren’t there. Yes, compared to the rest of the western world, sunny suburban California is a cultural desert. I have regularly and derisively used words like antiseptic, sterile, void, black-hole, to describe what is not here …

… and therein lies the answer.

If you were a scientist, an inventor, a futurist, a creator looking to create something new, looking for a “space” and a “laboratory” to conduct your experiments in, then words like sterile, antiseptic, and void would not be offensive but rather very, very, appealing. Add to that the fact that somehow Los Angeles, for all that it is not (and if you know the history of the movie industry, because of all that it was not) has become the media nerve center of the western world.

And so, for me, here is a sliver of an answer as to what God might be doing with me here in the desert. Perhaps it’s not a punishment after all. Perhaps I’ve not been exiled to the wastelands but rather assigned to the lab. A place where I can be a part of building something new without expending too much effort tearing down what was.

Perhaps, and if that is truly the case, then I am truly thankful and excited about what gets cooked up next. If a VOX HotSpot can succeed in its mission to Thousand Oaks, then perhaps we can export it via the connectedness of Los Angeles to the rest of the western world. And with it, the hope of connecting people to people, and people to God.

So, here at the halfway point of my journey (I turned 40 today), hope survives. I heard 40 is the new 25. Feels like it to me.

Thanks for listening.