A friend of mine has a brilliant comic strip blog called allergic to umbrellas. About a month ago, he said his blog was going to host a Guest Artist Week and he asked some of his artist friends to contribute work for this. I felt honored to be invited to contribute because he's a sharp guy with good taste (and I'm not just saying that because he asked me to contribute).
Anyway, it's been over a month now and I'm not sure what happened so I figured I'd just post the story on my blog.
And so I present...
The Lepidopterist
What else could he have done? With all the traffic on the street, Gavin wasn't even going the speed limit of 25. He saw the basketball enter the street from the sidewalk, out from an alleyway, and before he could make the connection between ball and boy, the child single-mindedly appeared in the street after the ball. The child didn't even have time to turn and see his SUV before it muscled over him - beating him down like a playground bully. There was only the slightest squeal of tires but it was too late even before his foot bore down on the brake pedal.
Screams and yelling, hands waving and finger pointing followed. There were stares - gazes angry, disbelieving, shocked, and scared. All this energy trained on him, his SUV, and the child, unconscious, trembling in acute shock.
Gavin was a lepidopterist - a scientist who specializes in the study of butterflies, moths and similar insects. He was on his way to a lecture and presentation at a private elementary school. In the back of his SUV was a box containing a dozen monarch butterflies - Danaus plexippus.
These butterflies lay their eggs on the milkweed plant. They feed on this plant and their bodies glean and store bitter chemicals known as cardenolides from its sap. Any given bird will only attempt to eat a monarch caterpillar or butterfly once because even if it can get past the bitter, pungent taste, the endless vomiting that follows will drive home the point that this insect, defenseless as it appears, is not to be reckoned with.
As the din of the crowd grew, Gavin was stunned. What's the protocol in a case like this? As a man of science, he knew that there were ways that things were done - procedures that both maintained order and ensured repeatable, verifiable experimental results - without which science could not go forward. This kind of deterministic certainty crept into every area of his life and while it made for a quiet, peaceful life, it also induced a kind of paralysis in unfamiliar situations, and certainly, this was one of them.
Questions, questions, questions. "Should I back up? What if the child is behind the front wheels? Should I get out? What will this do to my insurance? Can I be held at fault? What about the lecture at the school? Who are all these people? What will I say? Why now? Why me? Why do things always go so wrong? Oh my God, did I just kill a child?"
The questions continue to rattle through his mind and he lets them bounce off of one another. As if by instinct alone, he leaves the engine running, opens the door, gets out of the SUV, and braces himself before bending down to see what he's done. There are already a couple of bystanders looking underneath the chassis. They are calling out to the kid and he takes this to be a good sign until he sees the pool of blood darkening the asphalt.
One of the wonders of the monarch butterfly is its migration pattern. In the fall, these tiny insects make their way from Canada and the northern most of the United States down to the slopes of Sierra Madre Del Sur in southern Mexico - a journey of over three thousand miles. What makes this journey even more miraculous is the fact that the butterflies who migrate north are not the same ones that migrated south the year before. In fact, the entire round trip can encompass up to seven generations, most of whom mate and die along the northern leg of the journey. As the end of summer approaches, a special generation of butterfly is born - one whose life-span is up to eight times longer than that of their grandparents. This is the generation that makes the long haul down south to escape the bitter winter cold.
Of course the big mystery is how this last generation knows the way back to the homeland of their great-great-great-great-grandparents - a place they've never seen before. Gavin likes to believe that butterflies pass the secrets of this journey on to their offspring through song. He imagines the butterflies singing to one another about an odyssey of epic proportions as they fly ever northward. And he pictures the southbound flyers marveling at the way the song that they've had ingrained into them through repetition guides them on their way back to the mountains of Mexico.
Peering under the vehicle, Gavin can see that the boy is still alive but in very bad shape. He has no medical training but he can see signs of trauma everywhere along the boy's misshapen body. Another man runs up to the scene and introduces himself as a doctor - an oncologist, but a doctor nevertheless. He accesses the scene and barks an order to Gavin telling him to back his car up slowly.
He nods and gets back into his SUV. He puts it in reverse and backs right into the car behind him - a subcompact hatchback. Its hood buckles as crumple points in the front end give way. Gavin guns his engine and manhandles the little car back against its will. The woman behind the wheel doesn't sound her horn but she doesn't lay off of her brakes either. Satisfied that he's made enough room for the doctor and child, he parks his SUV halfway on top of the lady's hood.
He's done all that he can. There's nothing left to do but to let the life of this accident play itself out. It's all out of his hands. He shuts off the engine and watches the drama unfold in front of him through the window. Fire trucks, ambulance, police, first responders. Questionings, reports, no accusations, thankfully, but the guilt comes anyway. His cell phone rings. It's the school asking him where he is.
The details of butterfly migration are a mystery. The metamorphosis from larval form (caterpillar) into pupa and finally into butterfly is nothing short of a miracle. Once encased in its chrysalis, a radical, comprehensive transformation takes place. It begins with a process called histolysis which breaks down much of the caterpillar's tissue into a kind of gelatinous soup. Not everything is destroyed. Spared are the internal organs as well as a special set of cells called histoblasts. These cells are instrumental in building new body parts - legs, compound eyes, antenna, and proboscis, to name just a few - through a process called histogenesis. The wings actually begin developing from the first larval stages. Much of the wings' formation occurs within the caterpillar's body, but during metamorphosis, they grow exponentially and adhere themselves to the outer cuticle.
Once this transformation is complete, the (now) butterfly breaks through the chrysalis and emerges wet with crumpled wings. It clings to what's left of the chrysalis as it pumps hemolymph (insect blood) through its body, basically inflating its wings. After about an hour (depending on surrounding temperature and humidity), the wings harden into a rigid structure that enables flight. The horny butterfly takes to the air, eager to migrate and to mate.
Two weeks later, Gavin pays a visit to the boy's house bearing one small gift. His bruises have faded and broken bones are mending behind plaster casts. No hard feelings between any of the parties involved. Gavin sets a small cage on the boy's bureau. He points out the tiny green chrysalis attached to a twig and tells him that if he listens quietly and closely enough, he just might hear traces of the song of migration - a tune three thousand miles long.
(as always, you can see my other short stories at The LoneTomato Sauce)
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Saturday, August 19, 2006
219. movie recomendation: Little Miss Sunshine
Hard to believe it's been over one month since I've posted anything. I started a couple entries but never got around to finishing them, let alone posting them.
But I'm back.
At least for this entry...we'll see what happens henceforth.
"So where've you been?"
Well, I suppose I could say it was this or it was that but truth be told, I just didn't feel I had all that much to say. No, that's not the complete truth. The gritty truth of the matter is that I was lazy and unmotivated (not necessarily in that order).
And here's the strange thing. After a couple weeks or so, it got to the point where I felt like I had to have some kind of grand revelation in order to start posting again. See, before I stopped, one of the reasons I was posting so much was because of momentum. What I mean is, posting on a regular basis became something I felt like I need to keep up with just for the fact that I'd been doing it so consistently. On top of that, I knew people were reading and so I didn't want to let them down and so I kept posting even when I didn't feel like it.
And then when I stopped posting, it was like the opposite. I didn't post because I wasn't posting and it felt strange to just start up again without some kind of big epiphany.
But maybe all it took was a movie so amazingly great that I had to write about it.
And so here I am, writing and posting again.
"So what's the movie already!"
Okay, it's this little independent film called Little Miss Sunshine directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (who, judging by what's written about them in the Internet Movie Database, were both music video directors before this film). The film's cast includes the always brilliant Greg Kinnear, Alan Arkin, Toni Collette, and Steve Carell.
But the true star of the movie is the writing and the story and all the unexpected moments of tenderness amid chaos. It's basically a road trip movie about a highly dysfunctional family trying to get from New Mexico to California so that their daughter/sister/neice/granddaughter can make it to a beauty pageant. And I know that sounds like a pretty drab pitch, but the genius is in the details - how the characters crash in to one another and the surprising sparks of tenderness and grace that come out of their conflicts.
I used to be a BIG movie guy. There was one year where I averaged at least one movie per week for about a year and a half. But for the past few years, I'm on a roll if I see one movie per month (and that includes both rentals and at the theater). Two reasons for the decline. First, one of the two main art-house theaters morphed into a $1 movie joint and second, I've just found that the general quality of recent movies (even promising art-house/independent flicks) ranges from mediocre and predictable to downright waste of time.
On the one hand, you have big, blockbuster movie franchises that either use flashy special effects to distract you from noticing all the holes in the plot or try to wow you with the over-used M. Night Shyamalan-style surprise/twist ending. And then on the other hand you have your artsy fartsy indie films that condescendingly mock middle-class suburbia (yeah, I'm talking to you Mr. Dynamite) or paint such a dark, bleak, cynical portrait of life that you want to slit your wrists during the end credits (see my review of the Woodie Allen film, Match Point in blog 158).
Is it just me, or does it seem like movies these days are just trying too hard?
Little Miss Sunshine has renewed my faith in movies. It's tough and tender and strangely believable considering how odd it's cast of characters are - a Proust scholar who tried to kill himself, a teenager who has taken on a self-imposed vow of silence after reading Nietzsche, a horny geriatric who snorts heroin, a failed motivational speaker, the mother who tries to keep this family together, and a little girl trying to get to her beauty pageant. It sounds like a cheap gimmick (put random characters in a VW bus and watch what happens) but what's great about the movie is how the core humanity of the characters bleeds through their angular exteriors.
And maybe the most amazing feat of the film is the way it ends happily, but in a way that's both unexpected and utterly satisfying. We live in such a cynical, skeptical society that happy endings that don't feel fake or cheap or kitschy are nearly impossible to pull off, but Little Miss Sunshine does just that.
Definitely one of my two favorite movies of 2006 so far (the other one being Inside Man - see blog 186).
But I'm back.
At least for this entry...we'll see what happens henceforth.
"So where've you been?"
Well, I suppose I could say it was this or it was that but truth be told, I just didn't feel I had all that much to say. No, that's not the complete truth. The gritty truth of the matter is that I was lazy and unmotivated (not necessarily in that order).
And here's the strange thing. After a couple weeks or so, it got to the point where I felt like I had to have some kind of grand revelation in order to start posting again. See, before I stopped, one of the reasons I was posting so much was because of momentum. What I mean is, posting on a regular basis became something I felt like I need to keep up with just for the fact that I'd been doing it so consistently. On top of that, I knew people were reading and so I didn't want to let them down and so I kept posting even when I didn't feel like it.
And then when I stopped posting, it was like the opposite. I didn't post because I wasn't posting and it felt strange to just start up again without some kind of big epiphany.
But maybe all it took was a movie so amazingly great that I had to write about it.
And so here I am, writing and posting again.
"So what's the movie already!"
Okay, it's this little independent film called Little Miss Sunshine directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (who, judging by what's written about them in the Internet Movie Database, were both music video directors before this film). The film's cast includes the always brilliant Greg Kinnear, Alan Arkin, Toni Collette, and Steve Carell.
But the true star of the movie is the writing and the story and all the unexpected moments of tenderness amid chaos. It's basically a road trip movie about a highly dysfunctional family trying to get from New Mexico to California so that their daughter/sister/neice/granddaughter can make it to a beauty pageant. And I know that sounds like a pretty drab pitch, but the genius is in the details - how the characters crash in to one another and the surprising sparks of tenderness and grace that come out of their conflicts.
I used to be a BIG movie guy. There was one year where I averaged at least one movie per week for about a year and a half. But for the past few years, I'm on a roll if I see one movie per month (and that includes both rentals and at the theater). Two reasons for the decline. First, one of the two main art-house theaters morphed into a $1 movie joint and second, I've just found that the general quality of recent movies (even promising art-house/independent flicks) ranges from mediocre and predictable to downright waste of time.
On the one hand, you have big, blockbuster movie franchises that either use flashy special effects to distract you from noticing all the holes in the plot or try to wow you with the over-used M. Night Shyamalan-style surprise/twist ending. And then on the other hand you have your artsy fartsy indie films that condescendingly mock middle-class suburbia (yeah, I'm talking to you Mr. Dynamite) or paint such a dark, bleak, cynical portrait of life that you want to slit your wrists during the end credits (see my review of the Woodie Allen film, Match Point in blog 158).
Is it just me, or does it seem like movies these days are just trying too hard?
Little Miss Sunshine has renewed my faith in movies. It's tough and tender and strangely believable considering how odd it's cast of characters are - a Proust scholar who tried to kill himself, a teenager who has taken on a self-imposed vow of silence after reading Nietzsche, a horny geriatric who snorts heroin, a failed motivational speaker, the mother who tries to keep this family together, and a little girl trying to get to her beauty pageant. It sounds like a cheap gimmick (put random characters in a VW bus and watch what happens) but what's great about the movie is how the core humanity of the characters bleeds through their angular exteriors.
And maybe the most amazing feat of the film is the way it ends happily, but in a way that's both unexpected and utterly satisfying. We live in such a cynical, skeptical society that happy endings that don't feel fake or cheap or kitschy are nearly impossible to pull off, but Little Miss Sunshine does just that.
Definitely one of my two favorite movies of 2006 so far (the other one being Inside Man - see blog 186).
Friday, July 07, 2006
218. blog break
No, I haven't been posting much recently. But there are reasons.
I'm going to start working again on a screenplay that I had on my iBook before it got stolen back in '03. It's a really promising idea, and I really think that a screenplay (as opposed to a short story or novel) is the best vehicle to get it out because it has to do with three characters, each with different points of view and I don't want to make any one of them the main character. I want each to have strengths and weaknesses and I want to try and give them equal weight. I suppose a stageplay would work as well, but I haven't seen a lot of theater so I don't quite know how to go there. I have read a couple books about screenwriting and I've taken a couple film classes and so I'm going with a screenplay.
But that's not the only reason for the break. It also, I think, has to do with me reformulating the way I see and understand Christianity, because it's in transition and it's exciting but it's very unformed and thus hard to put into words. It's funny, there have been ideas that I've been working with inside my head and they seem promising but when I try to share them with friends, they just give me this blank stare. And I think that's because the ideas aren't fully formed yet and so they come out sideways when I try to express them and people look at me like I'm talking backwards or something.
It's almost like learning a new language. You learn a few phrases and you try them out but because you're just aping sounds that you learned, it sounds disjointed and awkward. And even after a few months of practice, the language is still cumbersome because it's not a fluid, natural part of you yet. And so even though you can hold a garbled conversation, it's still mechanical and some of the words are in the wrong place or you're using the wrong conjugation.
That's how I am right now with this new (for me) understanding of what it is to be a Christian. I've read these books (see blog 216), it's like I'm learning a new language and I don't want to converse with it until I have at least a rudimentary grasp of it. That's why blog 216 was so full of questions - because questions are all I have right now.
I'll be back soon to share what I'm wrestling with and what I'm coming to understand.
Thanks for your patience and understanding.
"Oh, come on. Throw us a bone, at least."
Okay. Here's something I'm chewing on right now.
If you believe in god, there are three basic ways that you can understand how he relates to our world.
One, god is everywhere and in all things - rocks, trees, animals, and certainly in you and I. Problem with this approach is that it offers no hope for deliverance from evil since agents of evil are part deity.
Two, god is completely separated from us - in another, inaccessible dimension if you will. The most common analogy to forwards this view goes like this: god is like a watchmaker. He made this intricate universe of ours, set it in motion and is now watching how all everything plays out. As I understand it, this is the view that many of America's forefathers held - Deism. With this in mind, one might say that America is a Deist nation rather than a Christian nation...but that's a topic for historians and religion professors to iron out. But again, the problem is that if god is inaccessible, then what good is he?
Third, you have the view of God that Jews had at the time when Jesus came on the scene, some two thousand years ago. In this view, God's realm and the world we live in overlap and in some places, they intersect. For the Jews, the Temple was a place where heaven and earth intersected (kind of like the wormhole in Star Trek's Deep Space Nine).
According to N.T. Wright, one of the things accomplished by the work of Christ is that the intersection of heaven and earth takes places not just in the temple or in churches, but within each and every follower of Christ (because your body is a temple - 1 Corinthians 6:19). And in part, that is how the kingdom of God disseminates - through the making of Christians through faith in Christ.
And again, I don't completely understand how that works or how we're supposed to use this bit of insight, but it's a lovely thought, don't you think?
"That's it?"
Well, you asked for a bone and I gave you one. You'll have to wait a bit for me to flesh it all out. (Sorry, I was watching a rerun of The Mummy on cable while eating my dinner, thus the bone and flesh imagery).
(Oh, and no matter how many times I see it, I still can't get over how much that movie sucks.)
(I need to watch less television.)
I'm going to start working again on a screenplay that I had on my iBook before it got stolen back in '03. It's a really promising idea, and I really think that a screenplay (as opposed to a short story or novel) is the best vehicle to get it out because it has to do with three characters, each with different points of view and I don't want to make any one of them the main character. I want each to have strengths and weaknesses and I want to try and give them equal weight. I suppose a stageplay would work as well, but I haven't seen a lot of theater so I don't quite know how to go there. I have read a couple books about screenwriting and I've taken a couple film classes and so I'm going with a screenplay.
But that's not the only reason for the break. It also, I think, has to do with me reformulating the way I see and understand Christianity, because it's in transition and it's exciting but it's very unformed and thus hard to put into words. It's funny, there have been ideas that I've been working with inside my head and they seem promising but when I try to share them with friends, they just give me this blank stare. And I think that's because the ideas aren't fully formed yet and so they come out sideways when I try to express them and people look at me like I'm talking backwards or something.
It's almost like learning a new language. You learn a few phrases and you try them out but because you're just aping sounds that you learned, it sounds disjointed and awkward. And even after a few months of practice, the language is still cumbersome because it's not a fluid, natural part of you yet. And so even though you can hold a garbled conversation, it's still mechanical and some of the words are in the wrong place or you're using the wrong conjugation.
That's how I am right now with this new (for me) understanding of what it is to be a Christian. I've read these books (see blog 216), it's like I'm learning a new language and I don't want to converse with it until I have at least a rudimentary grasp of it. That's why blog 216 was so full of questions - because questions are all I have right now.
I'll be back soon to share what I'm wrestling with and what I'm coming to understand.
Thanks for your patience and understanding.
"Oh, come on. Throw us a bone, at least."
Okay. Here's something I'm chewing on right now.
If you believe in god, there are three basic ways that you can understand how he relates to our world.
One, god is everywhere and in all things - rocks, trees, animals, and certainly in you and I. Problem with this approach is that it offers no hope for deliverance from evil since agents of evil are part deity.
Two, god is completely separated from us - in another, inaccessible dimension if you will. The most common analogy to forwards this view goes like this: god is like a watchmaker. He made this intricate universe of ours, set it in motion and is now watching how all everything plays out. As I understand it, this is the view that many of America's forefathers held - Deism. With this in mind, one might say that America is a Deist nation rather than a Christian nation...but that's a topic for historians and religion professors to iron out. But again, the problem is that if god is inaccessible, then what good is he?
Third, you have the view of God that Jews had at the time when Jesus came on the scene, some two thousand years ago. In this view, God's realm and the world we live in overlap and in some places, they intersect. For the Jews, the Temple was a place where heaven and earth intersected (kind of like the wormhole in Star Trek's Deep Space Nine).
According to N.T. Wright, one of the things accomplished by the work of Christ is that the intersection of heaven and earth takes places not just in the temple or in churches, but within each and every follower of Christ (because your body is a temple - 1 Corinthians 6:19). And in part, that is how the kingdom of God disseminates - through the making of Christians through faith in Christ.
And again, I don't completely understand how that works or how we're supposed to use this bit of insight, but it's a lovely thought, don't you think?
"That's it?"
Well, you asked for a bone and I gave you one. You'll have to wait a bit for me to flesh it all out. (Sorry, I was watching a rerun of The Mummy on cable while eating my dinner, thus the bone and flesh imagery).
(Oh, and no matter how many times I see it, I still can't get over how much that movie sucks.)
(I need to watch less television.)
Thursday, June 29, 2006
217. a larger circle of love (thanks K)
A friend of mine sent me a link to this article by Robert (Bob?) Fitts. And it goes right along with what I wrote in my previous blog (see blog 216), even though she told me later that she hadn't even read what I had written.
Hmm...maybe I'm on to something? Or maybe I'm just letting my ego get to me. Anyway, here are some quotes from the article:
As I thought on this problem, God gave me a brief declaration of unity and told me to say it often and teach it wherever I went in my travels. Here is the declaration He gave me:
"I belong to everything that belongs to Jesus, and everything that belongs to Jesus belongs to me. It is not, "Us and them." It is just "Us!" There is only one Body of Christ, and the problems of the church are our problems, for we are the church! The problems of the church, the whole church, are OUR problems, for WE are the church. And we can do more together than we can do alone!"
Several years before I received this declaration of unity, I had read a short little poem by Edwin Markham that says about the same thing as the declaration above:
He drew a circle that shut me out —
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
Can we embrace everything and everyone that Jesus embraces, even if they do not see things and say things like we do? He is Lord of the whole church, even a church like the one Paul planted in Corinth that was full of problems and carnal believers! We can, and by His grace, we will!
(see the rest of the article at http://www.house2house.net/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=56)
Hmm...maybe I'm on to something? Or maybe I'm just letting my ego get to me. Anyway, here are some quotes from the article:
As I thought on this problem, God gave me a brief declaration of unity and told me to say it often and teach it wherever I went in my travels. Here is the declaration He gave me:
"I belong to everything that belongs to Jesus, and everything that belongs to Jesus belongs to me. It is not, "Us and them." It is just "Us!" There is only one Body of Christ, and the problems of the church are our problems, for we are the church! The problems of the church, the whole church, are OUR problems, for WE are the church. And we can do more together than we can do alone!"
Several years before I received this declaration of unity, I had read a short little poem by Edwin Markham that says about the same thing as the declaration above:
He drew a circle that shut me out —
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
Can we embrace everything and everyone that Jesus embraces, even if they do not see things and say things like we do? He is Lord of the whole church, even a church like the one Paul planted in Corinth that was full of problems and carnal believers! We can, and by His grace, we will!
(see the rest of the article at http://www.house2house.net/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=56)
Saturday, June 24, 2006
216. you say you want a revolution?
Okay, so finally I'm getting around to blogging about the stuff I've been reading about in the books, The Secret Message of Jesus by Brian McLaren and Simply Christian by N.T. Wright. And I'm glad I read the two together because they illuminate the same subject but from slightly different perspectives and it really helped me work through the ideas they were presenting. I'm looking forward to diving right back in to the books again because I know I missed a lot the first time around.
Anyway, what follows is my take on what I got out of the books which is slightly different from what the books themselves say about Jesus and his gospel so if you think what I'm saying is crazy or wrong or unorthodox, don't hold it against the books.
The phrases, "kingdom of heaven" and "kingdom of God," are used throughout the gospels. Most of Jesus' parables reference this kingdom and it's all over his Sermon on the Mount. Indeed, in Luke 4:43 he says, "I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent."
There's not a lot of explanation as to what exactly this kingdom is - at least not an explanation of the factual sort. When describing the kingdom, Jesus says things like, "it's like yeast, like seeds, like a pearl, like a party, etc." He used metaphors and stories when talking about the kingdom, and while that can be frustrating in today's information age, I think it was deliberate.
See, I don't think a comprehensive theological understanding of heaven and salvation was what Jesus was after. When Jesus came on the scene, there were at least three major schools of thought when it came to the Jewish understanding of the scriptures - the Pharisees, the Saducees and the Esenees. Each had their own detailed way of parsing scripture, each backed up their reading with examples, and each thought the other groups were sorely misled. In other words, it's much like what happens today between various Christian denominations.
If Jesus wanted to set out a clear doctrinal position on scriptural issues, he certainly could have done so. And in a way, he did that, but in a way that the scholars of the day didn't expect or recognize or want. What I'm trying to get at is the idea that the use of metaphor and parable was the only way that Jesus could make his kingdom recognizable to us. And by keeping things open to interpretation, I think he was trying to tell us that it's not about the specifics as much as it is about the general idea.
And I think that he meant for there to be variations in the way his message is interpreted because if the world that he created is any indication, God loves variety and diversity.
And I don't want to come across as saying that you can believe whatever you want to believe. There are limits as to what one can believe about the message presented in the Bible outside of which one can no longer be called a Christian, but I think these boundaries are a great deal more expansive than we think.
Calvinism versus Armenianism, baptism by immersion versus baptism by sprinkling, the elements of the Lord's Supper as the actual body and blood of Christ through transubstantiation versus the elements as symbols representing the body and blood, once saved, always saved versus the possibility of losing one's salvation, charismatic versus conservative, Catholic versus protestant, dispensationalism versus preterism versus amillennailism, old earth creationism versus young earth creationism versus theistic evolution versus intelligent design. And on and on and on.
I just cited a bunch of debates off the top of my head and there are lots that I left out. And there are Christians who are very passionate about one side of one or more of those debates. Some of these Christians believe so passionately about their side that they claim that those who do not hold their view are not really saved or if they are saved, it's only by the skin of their teeth and by the grace of God.
Everyone seems so set on defending their little piece of the truth that they forget that there's a big, wide world outside the church that doesn't care one way or the other - they just look at us bickering Christians casting stones at one another, pulling splinters with logs sticking out of our eyes, and they wonder why anyone would want to sign on to be a part of such a group.
But.
What if.
What if we treated one another with love? What if we agreed to disagree on the specifics and got on with the business of treating a lonely, hurting world? What if we learned to see the differing ideas within Christianity the way a botanist sees a garden - as a thriving system of bio-diversity? What if the truth of the matter exists in the space between competing ideas rather than on one side or the other?
What if Jesus used metaphor and parable (as opposed to facts and definitions) as a way to encourage this variety, this diversity? What if the question, "who's right" is irrelevant? What if the real question is, "who's making the world a better place?"
What if instead of trying to figure out the right model of church, we tried to figure out the right model of society. What if instead of trying to reform and redeem culture, we put forward an entirely new vision of what culture should be. What if instead of merely feeding the homeless, we also went on to dismantle the patterns that perpetuate poverty?
What if we saw our mission as more than just saving individuals? What if we saw saving culture and nations as part of our mission (because Jesus called us to make disciples of nations, not just individuals - Matthew 28:19)? What if we stopped imitating the art the world makes ("redeeming" it by grafting on Christian messages) and started creating art that the world has to follow?
See, I think Christians have been on the defensive for far too long. I think we have settled for far too little. And I think we have focused too much on saving ourselves and not enough on saving the world. People flocked to William Wallace in the movie Braveheart because he offered them a better future for their lives as well as the lives of their children. Same with our forefathers and the American revolution. Same with Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement.
What is it that we Christians are working towards? What kind of society did Christ want to establish? These are the kind of questions that are tugging at my heart right now because I want to be part of a revolution, not a renovation.
Anyway, what follows is my take on what I got out of the books which is slightly different from what the books themselves say about Jesus and his gospel so if you think what I'm saying is crazy or wrong or unorthodox, don't hold it against the books.
The phrases, "kingdom of heaven" and "kingdom of God," are used throughout the gospels. Most of Jesus' parables reference this kingdom and it's all over his Sermon on the Mount. Indeed, in Luke 4:43 he says, "I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent."
There's not a lot of explanation as to what exactly this kingdom is - at least not an explanation of the factual sort. When describing the kingdom, Jesus says things like, "it's like yeast, like seeds, like a pearl, like a party, etc." He used metaphors and stories when talking about the kingdom, and while that can be frustrating in today's information age, I think it was deliberate.
See, I don't think a comprehensive theological understanding of heaven and salvation was what Jesus was after. When Jesus came on the scene, there were at least three major schools of thought when it came to the Jewish understanding of the scriptures - the Pharisees, the Saducees and the Esenees. Each had their own detailed way of parsing scripture, each backed up their reading with examples, and each thought the other groups were sorely misled. In other words, it's much like what happens today between various Christian denominations.
If Jesus wanted to set out a clear doctrinal position on scriptural issues, he certainly could have done so. And in a way, he did that, but in a way that the scholars of the day didn't expect or recognize or want. What I'm trying to get at is the idea that the use of metaphor and parable was the only way that Jesus could make his kingdom recognizable to us. And by keeping things open to interpretation, I think he was trying to tell us that it's not about the specifics as much as it is about the general idea.
And I think that he meant for there to be variations in the way his message is interpreted because if the world that he created is any indication, God loves variety and diversity.
And I don't want to come across as saying that you can believe whatever you want to believe. There are limits as to what one can believe about the message presented in the Bible outside of which one can no longer be called a Christian, but I think these boundaries are a great deal more expansive than we think.
Calvinism versus Armenianism, baptism by immersion versus baptism by sprinkling, the elements of the Lord's Supper as the actual body and blood of Christ through transubstantiation versus the elements as symbols representing the body and blood, once saved, always saved versus the possibility of losing one's salvation, charismatic versus conservative, Catholic versus protestant, dispensationalism versus preterism versus amillennailism, old earth creationism versus young earth creationism versus theistic evolution versus intelligent design. And on and on and on.
I just cited a bunch of debates off the top of my head and there are lots that I left out. And there are Christians who are very passionate about one side of one or more of those debates. Some of these Christians believe so passionately about their side that they claim that those who do not hold their view are not really saved or if they are saved, it's only by the skin of their teeth and by the grace of God.
Everyone seems so set on defending their little piece of the truth that they forget that there's a big, wide world outside the church that doesn't care one way or the other - they just look at us bickering Christians casting stones at one another, pulling splinters with logs sticking out of our eyes, and they wonder why anyone would want to sign on to be a part of such a group.
But.
What if.
What if we treated one another with love? What if we agreed to disagree on the specifics and got on with the business of treating a lonely, hurting world? What if we learned to see the differing ideas within Christianity the way a botanist sees a garden - as a thriving system of bio-diversity? What if the truth of the matter exists in the space between competing ideas rather than on one side or the other?
What if Jesus used metaphor and parable (as opposed to facts and definitions) as a way to encourage this variety, this diversity? What if the question, "who's right" is irrelevant? What if the real question is, "who's making the world a better place?"
What if instead of trying to figure out the right model of church, we tried to figure out the right model of society. What if instead of trying to reform and redeem culture, we put forward an entirely new vision of what culture should be. What if instead of merely feeding the homeless, we also went on to dismantle the patterns that perpetuate poverty?
What if we saw our mission as more than just saving individuals? What if we saw saving culture and nations as part of our mission (because Jesus called us to make disciples of nations, not just individuals - Matthew 28:19)? What if we stopped imitating the art the world makes ("redeeming" it by grafting on Christian messages) and started creating art that the world has to follow?
See, I think Christians have been on the defensive for far too long. I think we have settled for far too little. And I think we have focused too much on saving ourselves and not enough on saving the world. People flocked to William Wallace in the movie Braveheart because he offered them a better future for their lives as well as the lives of their children. Same with our forefathers and the American revolution. Same with Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement.
What is it that we Christians are working towards? What kind of society did Christ want to establish? These are the kind of questions that are tugging at my heart right now because I want to be part of a revolution, not a renovation.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
215. feeding the homeless (part two)
The feeding the homeless project meant a great deal to me, not just because we got to feed people, but also because it ties right in to what I've been learning in regards to what exactly it is that Christianity is supposed to be about (see blog 211). What I mean is, I've been finding that being a Christian has to do with living life now, the way it will be lived after Christ returns and makes all things right in the world because that's a big part of how God intends to usher in his kingdom - through individual and groups (large and small) of Christians who live now, today, as if his kingdom were already here.
The whole thing went pretty smoothly. We prayed, unloaded the food, set up the food tables, prayed again to bless the food and started serving heaping plates of rice, corn, macaroni salad, and some kind of amazing beef stew-type dish. And the people kept coming and we kept dishing it out, piling the food up as high as they wanted. We smiled, looked them in the eye, and told them to come back for more.
And I loved it because all we did was give. We didn't ask for any kind of song and dance from them, we didn't preach to them or ask them to listen to a sermon while they ate. We did our best to talk to them, treat them with respect and dignity, and some of us got to pray for them individually. In short, we did our best to treat them as if they were a part of our church or a part of our family.
The other thing that we offered was a simple arts and crafts project for the children staying at the shelter. We brought a huge stack of magazines, scissors, glue, and construction paper and we encouraged the kids to explore their dreams by cutting out images from the magazines that represented what they hoped for. In the corner of the shelter where we were doing this, we put up a makeshift banner that read, "What are your dreams?" And I thought that was one of the coolest things I've ever been a part of - encouraging these kids to think beyond this shelter and beyond their difficulties, giving them permission to grab images that spoke to their heart, cut them out, and paste them to paper. When a child was done with their sheet, we taped them up on the wall under the banner.
It was an encouragement to me to see a corner of the shelter decorated by the dreams of children. And I don't know if or how they were affected by it, but I like to think that maybe some of those kids will take hold of their dream and follow it until it becomes a reality. I imagine that these kids don't get to dream big dreams very often and it's my hope that our little exercise opened up their minds as to what's possible.
My mother showed me an article in the paper to day about a man who went from being a homeless single father to a multi-million dollar stock broker who routinely gives waiters and housekeepers and other service industry workers thousand dollar tips. And there are lots of other stories like this.
I don't know. Maybe I'm being entirely too optimistic about the whole thing. I mean, here I am in this house on this computer, I have a car in the garage, money in the bank, a job to go to, a healthy support network of family and friends. It's easy for me to think that our one night of food and arts and crafts made some kind of impact on those people and their children, but the reality is that most (if not all) of them are still there tonight.
But God doesn't ask us to save the world overnight. He asks us to do our part, to bring a piece of his kingdom to those who have no home and no food. Big changes only happen after small choices are made - like the choice to serve.
And I don't write all of this to brag about what a great Christian I am, to call attention to my charity.
"So why are you writing then?"
Because I feel like I caught a glimpse of heaven touching earth in that shelter. I got to see God doing his thing - bringing blessing and love and grace. And I felt encouraged and blessed, and I suppose I write about it because I want to share that experience with others.
And as I write that, I think of the blog I posted a few weeks ago (see blog 208) about how I wasn't stoked about sharing Christ with other people because I wasn't sure what Christianity was about. Yet here I am, writing about what what I saw. And I'm kind of tripping out because I feel as if I'm on the verge of having an understanding of the Gospel that I actually want to talk about and share.
It's a trippy feeling. And it feels pretty damn good.
PS. don't forget to pray for the homeless - a reminder I write for myself more than anyone else.
The whole thing went pretty smoothly. We prayed, unloaded the food, set up the food tables, prayed again to bless the food and started serving heaping plates of rice, corn, macaroni salad, and some kind of amazing beef stew-type dish. And the people kept coming and we kept dishing it out, piling the food up as high as they wanted. We smiled, looked them in the eye, and told them to come back for more.
And I loved it because all we did was give. We didn't ask for any kind of song and dance from them, we didn't preach to them or ask them to listen to a sermon while they ate. We did our best to talk to them, treat them with respect and dignity, and some of us got to pray for them individually. In short, we did our best to treat them as if they were a part of our church or a part of our family.
The other thing that we offered was a simple arts and crafts project for the children staying at the shelter. We brought a huge stack of magazines, scissors, glue, and construction paper and we encouraged the kids to explore their dreams by cutting out images from the magazines that represented what they hoped for. In the corner of the shelter where we were doing this, we put up a makeshift banner that read, "What are your dreams?" And I thought that was one of the coolest things I've ever been a part of - encouraging these kids to think beyond this shelter and beyond their difficulties, giving them permission to grab images that spoke to their heart, cut them out, and paste them to paper. When a child was done with their sheet, we taped them up on the wall under the banner.
It was an encouragement to me to see a corner of the shelter decorated by the dreams of children. And I don't know if or how they were affected by it, but I like to think that maybe some of those kids will take hold of their dream and follow it until it becomes a reality. I imagine that these kids don't get to dream big dreams very often and it's my hope that our little exercise opened up their minds as to what's possible.
My mother showed me an article in the paper to day about a man who went from being a homeless single father to a multi-million dollar stock broker who routinely gives waiters and housekeepers and other service industry workers thousand dollar tips. And there are lots of other stories like this.
I don't know. Maybe I'm being entirely too optimistic about the whole thing. I mean, here I am in this house on this computer, I have a car in the garage, money in the bank, a job to go to, a healthy support network of family and friends. It's easy for me to think that our one night of food and arts and crafts made some kind of impact on those people and their children, but the reality is that most (if not all) of them are still there tonight.
But God doesn't ask us to save the world overnight. He asks us to do our part, to bring a piece of his kingdom to those who have no home and no food. Big changes only happen after small choices are made - like the choice to serve.
And I don't write all of this to brag about what a great Christian I am, to call attention to my charity.
"So why are you writing then?"
Because I feel like I caught a glimpse of heaven touching earth in that shelter. I got to see God doing his thing - bringing blessing and love and grace. And I felt encouraged and blessed, and I suppose I write about it because I want to share that experience with others.
And as I write that, I think of the blog I posted a few weeks ago (see blog 208) about how I wasn't stoked about sharing Christ with other people because I wasn't sure what Christianity was about. Yet here I am, writing about what what I saw. And I'm kind of tripping out because I feel as if I'm on the verge of having an understanding of the Gospel that I actually want to talk about and share.
It's a trippy feeling. And it feels pretty damn good.
PS. don't forget to pray for the homeless - a reminder I write for myself more than anyone else.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
214. feeding the homeless (part one)
This Sunday, our house church joined up with a couple other house churches and we went to a shelter put together by the State and we fed the homeless. And for me, it was a heart-warming, inspirational experience for me because it really felt like we got the chance to be (in our earnest, but imperfect way) Jesus to these people. And it we didn't bring angry Jesus or judgmental Jesus or transactional (we'll feed you if you agree to try and get your life together) Jesus. We simply arrived with food and fed as many as we could and we prayed with those who wanted prayer. And we asked for nothing in return.
And I think again about the conservative ideology that I immersed myself in while I was in college in the mid-nineties. I think about how so many politicians and pundits were talking about reducing the size of entitlement programs like welfare. Basically, the reasoning went that there were millions of people sponging off the system, leeching off of welfare programs so that they wouldn't have to work, and the way to break this cycle was to reduce funding for the welfare programs that allowed these people to live lazily off of the tax-paying worker so that they'd be forced to work themselves. They basically painted all poor people as lazy individuals who would rather stand in line for a welfare check than go to work. The argument conservatives made was that if there was no check at the end of that line, that they'd be forced to get off their lazy butts and get the job that they'd been avoiding.
I had that reduced-entitlements drum beat into my head over and over again and so while I was there at the homeless shelter, it came to mind.
And I work at a staffing company (basically a temp-service) and so I get to see first-hand, the kind of spoiled, lazy, don't-want-to-lift-a-finger workers that conservatives use as examples of the need for welfare reform. Every morning we get calls from work-sites where our employees failed to show up. And we call these people and while most of them have the dignity to make up an excuse (feeble as they usually are), some come right out and say that they just didn't think they had to show up and would we please leave them alone so they can get back to sleep. And then when payday comes around, they make a big stink about how they worked a quarter hour more than what's shown on their timecard and we better get on the phone and do our job to make sure they get every penny that they have coming to them. And after we fire them for not showing up to yet another job, they march straight into the unemployment office to charge up their EBT card.
I run into these kinds of people on a weekly basis and there's a part of me that says, "yeah, why should the tax dollars that come out of the work that I do go to buy meals for people who are too lazy to even make up an excuse not to go to work?"
But.
But then there's the man I met, that night at the shelter, who has diabetes and he hurt his back in an accident that wasn't his fault and so now he can't work and so he thanks us for the food and for listening to his story. And then there are the women whose husbands left them with children to raise, to feed, to discipline, and to love. Some of them came to Hawaii from Micronesia and Guam and Saipan and so they don't have family that they call call upon to babysit. How is someone like that supposed to find the time and the energy to find, let alone keep, a job? And even if she found a job, who would watch her children?
I suppose in an ideal world. we would have a system where the sponges would get filtered out so that there would be enough support money to get those who really need help back on their feet. But we don't have that system yet and so the question is, what will we do in the mean time?
And I think of the parable of the sheep and the goats and how Jesus doesn't make a big deal of sorting between the needy who deserve help and the needy who don't.
Oops. I didn't mean for this to be such a rant. I originally wanted to talk about the good things I saw about feeding the homeless. I'll try and get to that tomorrow, but for now, to bed.
Stay tuned.
And I think again about the conservative ideology that I immersed myself in while I was in college in the mid-nineties. I think about how so many politicians and pundits were talking about reducing the size of entitlement programs like welfare. Basically, the reasoning went that there were millions of people sponging off the system, leeching off of welfare programs so that they wouldn't have to work, and the way to break this cycle was to reduce funding for the welfare programs that allowed these people to live lazily off of the tax-paying worker so that they'd be forced to work themselves. They basically painted all poor people as lazy individuals who would rather stand in line for a welfare check than go to work. The argument conservatives made was that if there was no check at the end of that line, that they'd be forced to get off their lazy butts and get the job that they'd been avoiding.
I had that reduced-entitlements drum beat into my head over and over again and so while I was there at the homeless shelter, it came to mind.
And I work at a staffing company (basically a temp-service) and so I get to see first-hand, the kind of spoiled, lazy, don't-want-to-lift-a-finger workers that conservatives use as examples of the need for welfare reform. Every morning we get calls from work-sites where our employees failed to show up. And we call these people and while most of them have the dignity to make up an excuse (feeble as they usually are), some come right out and say that they just didn't think they had to show up and would we please leave them alone so they can get back to sleep. And then when payday comes around, they make a big stink about how they worked a quarter hour more than what's shown on their timecard and we better get on the phone and do our job to make sure they get every penny that they have coming to them. And after we fire them for not showing up to yet another job, they march straight into the unemployment office to charge up their EBT card.
I run into these kinds of people on a weekly basis and there's a part of me that says, "yeah, why should the tax dollars that come out of the work that I do go to buy meals for people who are too lazy to even make up an excuse not to go to work?"
But.
But then there's the man I met, that night at the shelter, who has diabetes and he hurt his back in an accident that wasn't his fault and so now he can't work and so he thanks us for the food and for listening to his story. And then there are the women whose husbands left them with children to raise, to feed, to discipline, and to love. Some of them came to Hawaii from Micronesia and Guam and Saipan and so they don't have family that they call call upon to babysit. How is someone like that supposed to find the time and the energy to find, let alone keep, a job? And even if she found a job, who would watch her children?
I suppose in an ideal world. we would have a system where the sponges would get filtered out so that there would be enough support money to get those who really need help back on their feet. But we don't have that system yet and so the question is, what will we do in the mean time?
And I think of the parable of the sheep and the goats and how Jesus doesn't make a big deal of sorting between the needy who deserve help and the needy who don't.
Oops. I didn't mean for this to be such a rant. I originally wanted to talk about the good things I saw about feeding the homeless. I'll try and get to that tomorrow, but for now, to bed.
Stay tuned.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
213. earthling
Most of the people who read this blog (as far as I know) are people who know me personally, so most people know that in a few months I'm going to be moving to Seattle along with my band. And if you didn't know, well you certainly know now.
And I haven't written a lot about the move because even though it's a big change for me in all kinds of key areas, I'm not all that worried about it and so I'm not really thinking that much about it beyond practical items like making sure I have enough reserve cash to get me by until I get settled.
But the days are going by and the reality of the move is starting to dawn on me and I'm beginning to have thoughts on the matter. But not the thoughts you might expect.
I've started running again, and while running, I've taken to catching up on some of the podcasts that I've been downloading. This afternoon I was listening to an interview between host, Valerie Jackson, and author, Laurel Snyder. They were talking about Snyder's book, Half Life: Jew-ish Tales From Interfaith Homes, which is about the changes occurring in Jewish culture because of intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews.
It was a fascinating discussion, and I couldn't help but wonder if what's happening to the Jewish community (the mixing of once pure bloodlines and the resulting cultural conflicts and confusions) is happing to all kinds of ethnic groups (and yes, I realize that being Jewish has both an ethnic and a religious component to it but I'm just using it as a launching pad for a larger discussion). Intermarriage between people of differing racial origins, while far from ubiquitous, is not as uncommon as it used to be. And I couldn't help but project this phenomenon out into the future and I started wondering about a world where race is a non-issue because of intermarriage.
I'm sure there are some who recoil in horror at the thought of the loss of the ethnic component of cultural identity. And I'm sure there are others who see that as a beautiful thing - an explosion of diversity and a potentially utopian symphony of different cultures coming together to create something altogether new. And pushing the idea even further into the future, I wonder if there will ever be a time when the idea of racial divides will be seen as an artifact of a darker, more ignorant era of human history. If this were ever to happen, I suppose people will simply consider themselves humans or earthlings.
Think that's impossible? I think a bit of that has already happened in America. There are whites in America who don't give much thought to the different Northern European bloodlines running through their veins. If pressed, they can probably tell you about their great-great-grandparents and some of the different countries they came from and how they, in their time, tried to maintain cultural traditions which they (sometimes more, sometimes less successfully) tried to pass on to their children and their grandchildren. But there are some whites who would prefer to just refer to themselves as white instead of breaking down their specific ethnic makeup by percentages. And I'm sure if you were to trace their family tree back far enough, you'd find an ancestor who would have recoiled at the thought of their great-great-great-great-grandson disregarding the racial component of their cultural heritage, but it happened anyway.
Thinking of the future in this way raises all kinds of fascinating questions and it's not hard to imagine some scary scenarios between the here and now and the there and then.
"Hey, I thought you were going to talk about your move to Seattle."
Oh yeah. So to kind of round out this soliloquy on race, I ended my little workout routine thinking about how life might be different for me being a part of a racial minority and if/how being an Asian-American from Hawaii might give me a different perspective from an Asian-American born and raised on the mainland. Because they're not necessarily the same thing.
I remember being an English major at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and I remember how in the Asian-American writing classes that I took, they were still talking about the Asian-American writers conference that they held at UH in the 70s. And you could tell from the way the story was told that there were still unresolved issues even some twenty years later.
The conference started off as a great idea. There was a burgeoning Asian-American writing community growing in Hawaii at the time, and so people thought it would be a good idea to get some input from the more established Asian-American writers in the mainland. And so they organized this conference and held it at UH. And then the shit started to hit the fan. Basically, what happened was, the Asian-American writers from the mainland started accusing the local (based in Hawaii) writers of not being political enough and not doing enough to challenge stereotypes. The local writers countered with the argument, who are you to tell us how we should write?
See, many of the mainland Asian-American writers used their writing to give themselves a voice in a community where they were minorities. A lot of their writing had to do with identity and dismantling the stereotypes that tried to define them.
Because Asian-Americans in Hawaii make up a racial majority, they were free to just write stories about their parents or their childhood or just regular adult issues. They didn't feel the need to assert their identity because they weren't burdened by stereotypes to the same degree that the mainland writers were.
I think of that story and I wonder how being Asian-American in Seattle (or anywhere else in the mainland) will be different from being Asian-American in Hawaii. And I'm not that afraid of running into outright racism, I'm more curious to see what the differences are. And I wonder if I get the chance to hang out with some raised-in-the-mainland Asian Americans and I tell them about the Asian-American writers conference at UH, if they will have anything to say about what happened.
I don't know.
There are lots of unknowns when it comes to moving and I'm not naive enough to think that race won't be a factor at all, I'm just interested in finding out how much if an issue it will turn out to be.
"So you're moving to Seattle, and you're thinking about these abstract ideas on race?"
Heh, yeah. Welcome to my world.
And I haven't written a lot about the move because even though it's a big change for me in all kinds of key areas, I'm not all that worried about it and so I'm not really thinking that much about it beyond practical items like making sure I have enough reserve cash to get me by until I get settled.
But the days are going by and the reality of the move is starting to dawn on me and I'm beginning to have thoughts on the matter. But not the thoughts you might expect.
I've started running again, and while running, I've taken to catching up on some of the podcasts that I've been downloading. This afternoon I was listening to an interview between host, Valerie Jackson, and author, Laurel Snyder. They were talking about Snyder's book, Half Life: Jew-ish Tales From Interfaith Homes, which is about the changes occurring in Jewish culture because of intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews.
It was a fascinating discussion, and I couldn't help but wonder if what's happening to the Jewish community (the mixing of once pure bloodlines and the resulting cultural conflicts and confusions) is happing to all kinds of ethnic groups (and yes, I realize that being Jewish has both an ethnic and a religious component to it but I'm just using it as a launching pad for a larger discussion). Intermarriage between people of differing racial origins, while far from ubiquitous, is not as uncommon as it used to be. And I couldn't help but project this phenomenon out into the future and I started wondering about a world where race is a non-issue because of intermarriage.
I'm sure there are some who recoil in horror at the thought of the loss of the ethnic component of cultural identity. And I'm sure there are others who see that as a beautiful thing - an explosion of diversity and a potentially utopian symphony of different cultures coming together to create something altogether new. And pushing the idea even further into the future, I wonder if there will ever be a time when the idea of racial divides will be seen as an artifact of a darker, more ignorant era of human history. If this were ever to happen, I suppose people will simply consider themselves humans or earthlings.
Think that's impossible? I think a bit of that has already happened in America. There are whites in America who don't give much thought to the different Northern European bloodlines running through their veins. If pressed, they can probably tell you about their great-great-grandparents and some of the different countries they came from and how they, in their time, tried to maintain cultural traditions which they (sometimes more, sometimes less successfully) tried to pass on to their children and their grandchildren. But there are some whites who would prefer to just refer to themselves as white instead of breaking down their specific ethnic makeup by percentages. And I'm sure if you were to trace their family tree back far enough, you'd find an ancestor who would have recoiled at the thought of their great-great-great-great-grandson disregarding the racial component of their cultural heritage, but it happened anyway.
Thinking of the future in this way raises all kinds of fascinating questions and it's not hard to imagine some scary scenarios between the here and now and the there and then.
"Hey, I thought you were going to talk about your move to Seattle."
Oh yeah. So to kind of round out this soliloquy on race, I ended my little workout routine thinking about how life might be different for me being a part of a racial minority and if/how being an Asian-American from Hawaii might give me a different perspective from an Asian-American born and raised on the mainland. Because they're not necessarily the same thing.
I remember being an English major at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and I remember how in the Asian-American writing classes that I took, they were still talking about the Asian-American writers conference that they held at UH in the 70s. And you could tell from the way the story was told that there were still unresolved issues even some twenty years later.
The conference started off as a great idea. There was a burgeoning Asian-American writing community growing in Hawaii at the time, and so people thought it would be a good idea to get some input from the more established Asian-American writers in the mainland. And so they organized this conference and held it at UH. And then the shit started to hit the fan. Basically, what happened was, the Asian-American writers from the mainland started accusing the local (based in Hawaii) writers of not being political enough and not doing enough to challenge stereotypes. The local writers countered with the argument, who are you to tell us how we should write?
See, many of the mainland Asian-American writers used their writing to give themselves a voice in a community where they were minorities. A lot of their writing had to do with identity and dismantling the stereotypes that tried to define them.
Because Asian-Americans in Hawaii make up a racial majority, they were free to just write stories about their parents or their childhood or just regular adult issues. They didn't feel the need to assert their identity because they weren't burdened by stereotypes to the same degree that the mainland writers were.
I think of that story and I wonder how being Asian-American in Seattle (or anywhere else in the mainland) will be different from being Asian-American in Hawaii. And I'm not that afraid of running into outright racism, I'm more curious to see what the differences are. And I wonder if I get the chance to hang out with some raised-in-the-mainland Asian Americans and I tell them about the Asian-American writers conference at UH, if they will have anything to say about what happened.
I don't know.
There are lots of unknowns when it comes to moving and I'm not naive enough to think that race won't be a factor at all, I'm just interested in finding out how much if an issue it will turn out to be.
"So you're moving to Seattle, and you're thinking about these abstract ideas on race?"
Heh, yeah. Welcome to my world.
Friday, June 09, 2006
212. some thoughts on worship
A friend of mine posted a blog about worship. In it, he quotes from an article written by Chuck Colson for the magazine, Christianity Today:
"When church music directors lead congregations in singing contemporary Christian music, I often listen stoically with teeth clenched. But one Sunday morning, I cracked. We’d been led through endless repetitions of a meaningless ditty called “Draw Me Close to You,” which has zero theological content and could just as easily be sung in any nightclub. When I thought it was finally and mercifully over, the music leader beamed. “Let’s sing that again, shall we?” he asked. “No!” I shouted, loudly enough to send heads all around me spinning while my wife, Patty, cringed.I admit I prefer traditional hymns, but even so, I’m convinced that much of the music being written for the church today reflects an unfortunate trend–slipping across the line from worship to entertainment. Evangelicals are in danger of amusing ourselves to death, to borrow the title of the classic Neil Postman book."
My friend used this quote as a jumping off point to ask questions about worship, questions like:
"What is worship?
What constitutes worship music?
Is it for our refocus on God?
Is it so we feel good, so we can then feel good about God?
Should worship be only songs with Scriptural significance and reference?
Is the Bible the end all of all that we can say of and to God?"
And the questions got to me because, like Colson, I have issues with a lot of the worship songs that get sung in churches today. And so I posted this response on his blog:
I have to say I understand what Mr. Colson is feeling (or not feeling) about contemporary worship. But I'm in an even more unfortunate position than he because I don't really care for hymns either...at least not singing them (they do contain some tasy poetry - fun to read - but it's draped over boring melodies and arrangements - not fun to sing).
I wouldn't go as far as Colson does in saying that contemporary worship tends towards entertainment. I do agree with him when he describes the song as having, "zero theological content." With that statement in mind, I can see how he can make the connection between contemporary worship and entertainment.
Perhaps an example would do well here.
Think about the difference between a movie like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and any Van Damme or Stephen Segal martial arts movie. The former is widely regarded as a work of art while the movies of Van Damme or Segal are panned as shallow, meaningless products of the Hollywood production mill.
The difference between the two? CTHD explores themes like loyalty, love, discipline, sacrifice. It handles these topics with subtlety and care. The other movies use plot as a necessary inconvenience - a thread to connect fight scenes together.
Contemporary worship can be compared to the Van Damme/Segal movies in that they don't provide a lot of material for your mind to chew on. They play solely to the senses and the emotions.
Traditional worship, on the other hand, can be better compared to the films of Antonioni. Although many film critics would disagree, I find his films dry and far too cerebral. They are more of an intellectual exercise than an engaging story. Likewise, I think hymns are great to read and think about but not a lot of fun to sing.
So how do I worship?
To be honest, I'm still trying to figure that out. I'd rather take time out to see a sunset or look up at the stars than sing either hymns or contemporary worship songs.
At the house church I attend, we dont sing our worship. We have a time where we go around the room and give people a chance to share what God has done for them that week. We also encourage our members to praise God through acts of service to people in need, and people who do so share what they did during our worship time.
I like what we do, but I do think there is something about song that gets at a part of the heart that mere words can't get to and so while I like what we do at the house church, I would like something more, I'm just not sure what.
So I wrote all that and now I'm wondering if I need to put more of a priority in finding a way to worship God that makes worship more sincere and real - a worship that speaks to the heart as well as the mind.
Take a look at the kind of worship that Jesus said God wants:
"Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." (John 4:23-24, NIV)
Colson opts for "traditional hymns," for their theological content - truth. Lots of other people like contemporary worship music because it's very emotional - spirit. I'm wondering where it is that I can find worship that has both spirit and truth - worship that "the Father seeks."
This is a sad confession on my part, but worship doesn't play a huge role in my life. Certainly not in song, but that's not the only worship that I can participate in. The wonder of God's creation is all around us and although Paul cautions us against worshiping the creation rather than the creator (Romans 1:25), we would do well to remember that God's creation can point us back to him if we look carefully, attentively, diligently (Romans 1:20, my favorite verse of the Bible).
Living in Hawaii, there are times when I'm driving and I look around and think, "I can't believe I live here." It's in times like these when I can't help but lift up a little prayer to God in thanks and awe. I need to be more aware because the glory of God is all over the place, hiding in plain sight. And I need to soak up as much of this beauty that I can before I move up to Seattle with my band.
Opportunities for worship are all around me, all around us all, all the time. It's a problem of awareness, not availability.
"When church music directors lead congregations in singing contemporary Christian music, I often listen stoically with teeth clenched. But one Sunday morning, I cracked. We’d been led through endless repetitions of a meaningless ditty called “Draw Me Close to You,” which has zero theological content and could just as easily be sung in any nightclub. When I thought it was finally and mercifully over, the music leader beamed. “Let’s sing that again, shall we?” he asked. “No!” I shouted, loudly enough to send heads all around me spinning while my wife, Patty, cringed.I admit I prefer traditional hymns, but even so, I’m convinced that much of the music being written for the church today reflects an unfortunate trend–slipping across the line from worship to entertainment. Evangelicals are in danger of amusing ourselves to death, to borrow the title of the classic Neil Postman book."
My friend used this quote as a jumping off point to ask questions about worship, questions like:
"What is worship?
What constitutes worship music?
Is it for our refocus on God?
Is it so we feel good, so we can then feel good about God?
Should worship be only songs with Scriptural significance and reference?
Is the Bible the end all of all that we can say of and to God?"
And the questions got to me because, like Colson, I have issues with a lot of the worship songs that get sung in churches today. And so I posted this response on his blog:
I have to say I understand what Mr. Colson is feeling (or not feeling) about contemporary worship. But I'm in an even more unfortunate position than he because I don't really care for hymns either...at least not singing them (they do contain some tasy poetry - fun to read - but it's draped over boring melodies and arrangements - not fun to sing).
I wouldn't go as far as Colson does in saying that contemporary worship tends towards entertainment. I do agree with him when he describes the song as having, "zero theological content." With that statement in mind, I can see how he can make the connection between contemporary worship and entertainment.
Perhaps an example would do well here.
Think about the difference between a movie like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and any Van Damme or Stephen Segal martial arts movie. The former is widely regarded as a work of art while the movies of Van Damme or Segal are panned as shallow, meaningless products of the Hollywood production mill.
The difference between the two? CTHD explores themes like loyalty, love, discipline, sacrifice. It handles these topics with subtlety and care. The other movies use plot as a necessary inconvenience - a thread to connect fight scenes together.
Contemporary worship can be compared to the Van Damme/Segal movies in that they don't provide a lot of material for your mind to chew on. They play solely to the senses and the emotions.
Traditional worship, on the other hand, can be better compared to the films of Antonioni. Although many film critics would disagree, I find his films dry and far too cerebral. They are more of an intellectual exercise than an engaging story. Likewise, I think hymns are great to read and think about but not a lot of fun to sing.
So how do I worship?
To be honest, I'm still trying to figure that out. I'd rather take time out to see a sunset or look up at the stars than sing either hymns or contemporary worship songs.
At the house church I attend, we dont sing our worship. We have a time where we go around the room and give people a chance to share what God has done for them that week. We also encourage our members to praise God through acts of service to people in need, and people who do so share what they did during our worship time.
I like what we do, but I do think there is something about song that gets at a part of the heart that mere words can't get to and so while I like what we do at the house church, I would like something more, I'm just not sure what.
So I wrote all that and now I'm wondering if I need to put more of a priority in finding a way to worship God that makes worship more sincere and real - a worship that speaks to the heart as well as the mind.
Take a look at the kind of worship that Jesus said God wants:
"Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." (John 4:23-24, NIV)
Colson opts for "traditional hymns," for their theological content - truth. Lots of other people like contemporary worship music because it's very emotional - spirit. I'm wondering where it is that I can find worship that has both spirit and truth - worship that "the Father seeks."
This is a sad confession on my part, but worship doesn't play a huge role in my life. Certainly not in song, but that's not the only worship that I can participate in. The wonder of God's creation is all around us and although Paul cautions us against worshiping the creation rather than the creator (Romans 1:25), we would do well to remember that God's creation can point us back to him if we look carefully, attentively, diligently (Romans 1:20, my favorite verse of the Bible).
Living in Hawaii, there are times when I'm driving and I look around and think, "I can't believe I live here." It's in times like these when I can't help but lift up a little prayer to God in thanks and awe. I need to be more aware because the glory of God is all over the place, hiding in plain sight. And I need to soak up as much of this beauty that I can before I move up to Seattle with my band.
Opportunities for worship are all around me, all around us all, all the time. It's a problem of awareness, not availability.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
211. a whole new world
Yeah, I haven't posted anything new in a while, but it's because I feel I'm on the verge, on the cusp of a grand new vista that's only beginning to open up to me. And I want to break on through to the other side before writing a whole lot more, but here's a little preview.
Last Sunday, I attended a church service at Hope Chapel Manoa and the service centered around 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 which reads:
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.
The bit that I connected with the most is the part in v26 which reads, ". . .I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air." And I connected with that verse because that's the exact opposite of what most of my Christian life has been like. My (pathetic lack of) understanding of what Christianity was about was formed out of a shallow blend of group-think, herd mentality, peer pressure, and fear. Basically, I swallowed whatever the church put in front of me and I know that's not healthy, that we're supposed to test what pastors and teachers say against what the Bible says but they've got their degrees and their titles and their position so who was I to question them? Besides, I was afraid they'd revoke my Asian identity card if I made too many waves.
So I did what I was told and I believed what I was told.
But at some point, I just got tired of suppressing the questions that I had and I gave up on trying to fit into the mold that the church seemed to be trying to cram me into. Looking back now, most of my Christianity was just "running aimlessly" and "beating the air." I was working at something but I wasn't going anywhere, I wasn't connecting with anything.
Now? Now I don't hide my questions. I mean, most of my blogs are riddled with questions (see blog 179 and blog 201 for a couple examples).
At the top of the blog, I mentioned how I felt on the verge of some kind of understanding, and this understanding has to do with what it was that Christ came to earth to do - what he was trying to teach us about why we're here and how his church was to be an agent of light and change in a world of never-ending hurt and alienation. I'm discovering these things as I'm finally making my way to the end of two amazing books: The Secret Message of Jesus by Brian McLaren and Simply Christian by N.T. Wright. And I know I've been talking about these books for weeks, but I'm a slow reader, particularly with these books because they deserve (if not demand) a close reading.
And what I'm finding is that what Jesus wants to do in the world, and the way he wants to do it is far more amazing (shocking, in fact) than anything I have ever heard in my twenty years or so as a Christian. It's nothing short of revolutionary and it comes, not by way of force, but by love. And that sounds all hippie and soft and PC, but think about all of those Christians in the first century who were martyred by lion, by gladiator, by stoning. Think of the Christians today in the Middle East or in China who have to live with the fear of their government coming to their homes in the middle of the night and carrying them away to torture and to jail and sometimes to death. Not to be too harsh, but do you think that they would risk all of that for the kind of feel-good-Christianity that gets preached in many churches in America today?
Okay, not to disappoint, but I'm not quite there yet. I'm catching glimpses of a vision of Christianity that is worth dying for, that is worth crawling over broken glass to share, that is crazy enough to be true, and impossible enough to be possible only with God's help.
And here's the coolest part. It's not some new revelation, not some new way to read the Bible, not some radical kind of re-visioning of the Gospel. It's quite the opposite. What McLaren and Wright are trying to do is peer back through time, back to first century Israel. They try to understand the life and message of Christ through the ears and experiences of his peers, through first century Jews and Gentiles.
Think of the Sistine Chapel. Years of varnish and soot from thousands (if not millions) of candles had darkened the ceiling painted by Michelangelo. In 1981, the Vatican undertook a massive restoration project which was not completed until 1994. When it was finally unveiled, it was a shocking revelation. Dull, muted colors (see http://www.cegur.com/Michelangelo/RestorationBefore.html) exploded with life and vibrancy (see http://www.cegur.com/Michelangelo/RestorationAfter.html). The results met with nearly unanimous acclaim from critics, academics, and the general public. But there were some who mourned the loss of the old version, claiming that things like the darkening patina and the later (150 years later) additions of loincloths on some of the nude figures was actually a part of the cultural history of the work. Now I'm no art expert, but I don't think it takes a PhD in art history to appreciate the ability to see the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel as Michelangelo originally painted it.
And I wonder if a similar kind of restoration needs to take place for Christianity. Perhaps we need to strip off the crust of two thousand years of embellishment and interpretation and tradition so that we can get back to the essence of the original message. And I'm not suggesting that we jettison all those years of critical thinking regarding the Bible, because they do offer necessary, valuable insight into what it does and does not say. But I do believe that we may have tamed too much of the Gospel through study and analysis. In making it simple and convenient to share (as if the message of Christ was a Hot Pocket), we've also sucked the mystery and mission out of it.
So be patient. There'll be lots more question and commentary to come, and I'm thinking that they're going to be big questions.
Last Sunday, I attended a church service at Hope Chapel Manoa and the service centered around 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 which reads:
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.
The bit that I connected with the most is the part in v26 which reads, ". . .I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air." And I connected with that verse because that's the exact opposite of what most of my Christian life has been like. My (pathetic lack of) understanding of what Christianity was about was formed out of a shallow blend of group-think, herd mentality, peer pressure, and fear. Basically, I swallowed whatever the church put in front of me and I know that's not healthy, that we're supposed to test what pastors and teachers say against what the Bible says but they've got their degrees and their titles and their position so who was I to question them? Besides, I was afraid they'd revoke my Asian identity card if I made too many waves.
So I did what I was told and I believed what I was told.
But at some point, I just got tired of suppressing the questions that I had and I gave up on trying to fit into the mold that the church seemed to be trying to cram me into. Looking back now, most of my Christianity was just "running aimlessly" and "beating the air." I was working at something but I wasn't going anywhere, I wasn't connecting with anything.
Now? Now I don't hide my questions. I mean, most of my blogs are riddled with questions (see blog 179 and blog 201 for a couple examples).
At the top of the blog, I mentioned how I felt on the verge of some kind of understanding, and this understanding has to do with what it was that Christ came to earth to do - what he was trying to teach us about why we're here and how his church was to be an agent of light and change in a world of never-ending hurt and alienation. I'm discovering these things as I'm finally making my way to the end of two amazing books: The Secret Message of Jesus by Brian McLaren and Simply Christian by N.T. Wright. And I know I've been talking about these books for weeks, but I'm a slow reader, particularly with these books because they deserve (if not demand) a close reading.
And what I'm finding is that what Jesus wants to do in the world, and the way he wants to do it is far more amazing (shocking, in fact) than anything I have ever heard in my twenty years or so as a Christian. It's nothing short of revolutionary and it comes, not by way of force, but by love. And that sounds all hippie and soft and PC, but think about all of those Christians in the first century who were martyred by lion, by gladiator, by stoning. Think of the Christians today in the Middle East or in China who have to live with the fear of their government coming to their homes in the middle of the night and carrying them away to torture and to jail and sometimes to death. Not to be too harsh, but do you think that they would risk all of that for the kind of feel-good-Christianity that gets preached in many churches in America today?
Okay, not to disappoint, but I'm not quite there yet. I'm catching glimpses of a vision of Christianity that is worth dying for, that is worth crawling over broken glass to share, that is crazy enough to be true, and impossible enough to be possible only with God's help.
And here's the coolest part. It's not some new revelation, not some new way to read the Bible, not some radical kind of re-visioning of the Gospel. It's quite the opposite. What McLaren and Wright are trying to do is peer back through time, back to first century Israel. They try to understand the life and message of Christ through the ears and experiences of his peers, through first century Jews and Gentiles.
Think of the Sistine Chapel. Years of varnish and soot from thousands (if not millions) of candles had darkened the ceiling painted by Michelangelo. In 1981, the Vatican undertook a massive restoration project which was not completed until 1994. When it was finally unveiled, it was a shocking revelation. Dull, muted colors (see http://www.cegur.com/Michelangelo/RestorationBefore.html) exploded with life and vibrancy (see http://www.cegur.com/Michelangelo/RestorationAfter.html). The results met with nearly unanimous acclaim from critics, academics, and the general public. But there were some who mourned the loss of the old version, claiming that things like the darkening patina and the later (150 years later) additions of loincloths on some of the nude figures was actually a part of the cultural history of the work. Now I'm no art expert, but I don't think it takes a PhD in art history to appreciate the ability to see the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel as Michelangelo originally painted it.
And I wonder if a similar kind of restoration needs to take place for Christianity. Perhaps we need to strip off the crust of two thousand years of embellishment and interpretation and tradition so that we can get back to the essence of the original message. And I'm not suggesting that we jettison all those years of critical thinking regarding the Bible, because they do offer necessary, valuable insight into what it does and does not say. But I do believe that we may have tamed too much of the Gospel through study and analysis. In making it simple and convenient to share (as if the message of Christ was a Hot Pocket), we've also sucked the mystery and mission out of it.
So be patient. There'll be lots more question and commentary to come, and I'm thinking that they're going to be big questions.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
210. the umbrella is back!
One of my favorite blogs is posting again.
Single cell cartoons by one of the coolest, most enigmatic guys I've had the privilege of knowing.
http://allergic2umbrellas.blogspot.com/
Single cell cartoons by one of the coolest, most enigmatic guys I've had the privilege of knowing.
http://allergic2umbrellas.blogspot.com/
Sunday, May 28, 2006
209. I spanked the monkey...(thanks M)
Ugh, the Random Trivia section killed me!
Link: Monkey Challenge Trivia Quiz
I beat the monkey by 11 points.
Take the Monkey Challenge
Your Final Quiz Score: 28 right out of a possible 60
The Monkey's Final Score: 17 right out of 60
Well done, you have sent the monkey to his defeat. Your score is unquestionably higher, and thus the lowly monkey has been proven once again to be humankind's intellectual inferior. Good work, however your score does leave room for improvement. We should like to see the human dominate even more completely!
You scored in the 62nd percentile.
(62f quiz takers scored worse than you)
The Monkey's Final Score: 17 right out of 60
Well done, you have sent the monkey to his defeat. Your score is unquestionably higher, and thus the lowly monkey has been proven once again to be humankind's intellectual inferior. Good work, however your score does leave room for improvement. We should like to see the human dominate even more completely!
You scored in the 62nd percentile.
(62f quiz takers scored worse than you)
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Link: Monkey Challenge Trivia Quiz
I beat the monkey by 11 points.
Take the Monkey Challenge
Saturday, May 27, 2006
208. can I get a witness?
A few days ago I ended my blog entry with the admission that I don't actively share my faith as a Christian. And let me make it clear that it's not because I'm ashamed of Christ. On the contrary, I believe that he is the way, the truth, and the life. I believe he died on a cross for the sins of the world. And I believe that he rose again on the third day.
And I could go on and list other things that I believe about Christ but they are all facts about Christianity. Call me a weak Christian, call me ungrateful, call me disobedient, but I don't want to share a bunch of facts to my non-christian friends. I want to share something deeper, something more profound. I want to talk about why my life ceases to make sense apart from Christ.
But I can't.
"Why not?"
Because facts are all I have.
"That's sad."
Yes, it is.
Usually, when Christians ask about how to share Christ with others, the advice they get is to talk about what their life was like before they knew Christ and how it's changed since knowing Christ. And that's a good way to go because it's simple and practical and effective because a non-christian might want to debate facts about Christ but what can they say about what Christ has done for someone personally?
Unfortunately, that technique never helped me because I don't have much of a before-knowing-Christ to talk about. I first claimed Christianity when I was in the 2nd grade. That's the year I started attending a Christian school where once per week (or maybe it was once every two weeks) we would all attend a chapel service where we heard messages about God and the Bible and Jesus. I don't know who it was or what the rest of that particular service was about, but I remember at one of these chapel services, the speaker basically said, "if you believe in Jesus you go to heaven and if you don't then you go to hell." And I thought going to heaven sounded better than going to hell and so I prayed some kind of prayer and then I was a Christian.
I don't remember much of my elementary school days but as far as I can remember, it wasn't a bad life. I wasn't dealing with issues like being slapped around by my parents or severe emotional trauma or issues of self-doubt. Back then, a crisis consisted of not being able to find the Lego piece I needed to compete my latest intergalactic battleship. And I was eight so I wasn't really looking for meaning or purpose in life. I mean, I did consider becoming one of those Lego engineers who designed spaceships for kids with lesser imaginations than mine, but I preferred to keep my designs to myself. Accepting Christ in the second grade didn't really change much for me. There wasn't any kind of baggage that I had to be delivered from and I still found myself searching for certain Lego pieces in the bottom of my Lego bucket.
All that to say that there was never really any kind of before and after Christianity for me to draw upon to develop my testimony, and so that method of witnessing to friends kind of goes out the window.
But there's more to my problem of not wanting to share Christ with others.
See, I attended this Christian school until I graduated and in my Sophomore year I rededicated my life to Christ in a big way (see blog 199). After that I started going to church and all the other things that I thought Christians were supposed to do.
Now, I'm a good Asian kid and so I do what I'm told and I don't ask a lot of questions. But looking back now, I can see that I was merely aping Christianity - I was going through the motions without really knowing what I was doing or why. And I had questions, but I didn't ask them because I didn't know enough to even know how to phrase them and I didn't want to look stupid and I didn't want to make waves (the good Asian kid) and most of all, I tried to ignore my questions because I felt like they made me a weak or a bad Christian. There weren't any other Christians around me who were asking questions, everybody just seemed to know what to say and how to behave and so I assumed there was something wrong with my faith and the only way I knew how to hide this problem was to do more Christian stuff hoping that things would eventually make sense or that God would see how good I was and heal me of my questions.
Neither happened. I burned out on trying to please God through volunteering at church and the questions never went away.
But God is full of grace. He didn’t give me what I wanted (answers to questions) but he brought me back to himself through other means. But it wasn’t the same as it was before. Instead of quiet, self-imposed obedience, I spoke up and started voicing my discontent and my questions. It wasn’t an overnight shift, it began quietly and only among close friends but as I found that more and more people had the same questions, I became less and less inhibited about my questions to the point where I now blog about it on a regular basis.
What I’m trying to get at is the idea that my experience with Christianity hasn’t exactly been something that would encourage others to sign on if I were to tell them my story.
“So why are you still a Christian?”
Because I do believe the facts of Christianity. On top of that, it’s the only belief system that I have (see blog 155).
But behind my questions, behind my less than ideal experiences with Christianity, I know there's something beautiful and true. Because I do believe the Bible when it says that God is love and even though I'm not sure I understand what love is (see blog 205), I know it's there and that God will let me in on it one day. Or maybe I'm already smack dab in the middle of it but just don't know how to recognize it - maybe I'm missing the forrest because I'm staring at a blade of grass.
I don't know.
But here's something I do know. I'm getting closer to the understanding that I've been searching for. Brian McLaren's book, The Secret Message of Jesus (see blog 207), and NT Wright's book, Simply Christian, are opening up the life and message of Jesus in ways that make Christianity far more real to me than ever before.
And it's exciting and wonderful and I can't wait to get through these books so I can go back and read them again - they're both that good. And I can't wait to write about what I'm learning. Most of all, I can't wait to have an understanding of what it is to follow Christ - an understanding and excitement that I can share with my non-believing friends. Because that's what witnessing should be, a spontaneous desire to want to tell others the amazing, life changing news about Jesus.
And I could go on and list other things that I believe about Christ but they are all facts about Christianity. Call me a weak Christian, call me ungrateful, call me disobedient, but I don't want to share a bunch of facts to my non-christian friends. I want to share something deeper, something more profound. I want to talk about why my life ceases to make sense apart from Christ.
But I can't.
"Why not?"
Because facts are all I have.
"That's sad."
Yes, it is.
Usually, when Christians ask about how to share Christ with others, the advice they get is to talk about what their life was like before they knew Christ and how it's changed since knowing Christ. And that's a good way to go because it's simple and practical and effective because a non-christian might want to debate facts about Christ but what can they say about what Christ has done for someone personally?
Unfortunately, that technique never helped me because I don't have much of a before-knowing-Christ to talk about. I first claimed Christianity when I was in the 2nd grade. That's the year I started attending a Christian school where once per week (or maybe it was once every two weeks) we would all attend a chapel service where we heard messages about God and the Bible and Jesus. I don't know who it was or what the rest of that particular service was about, but I remember at one of these chapel services, the speaker basically said, "if you believe in Jesus you go to heaven and if you don't then you go to hell." And I thought going to heaven sounded better than going to hell and so I prayed some kind of prayer and then I was a Christian.
I don't remember much of my elementary school days but as far as I can remember, it wasn't a bad life. I wasn't dealing with issues like being slapped around by my parents or severe emotional trauma or issues of self-doubt. Back then, a crisis consisted of not being able to find the Lego piece I needed to compete my latest intergalactic battleship. And I was eight so I wasn't really looking for meaning or purpose in life. I mean, I did consider becoming one of those Lego engineers who designed spaceships for kids with lesser imaginations than mine, but I preferred to keep my designs to myself. Accepting Christ in the second grade didn't really change much for me. There wasn't any kind of baggage that I had to be delivered from and I still found myself searching for certain Lego pieces in the bottom of my Lego bucket.
All that to say that there was never really any kind of before and after Christianity for me to draw upon to develop my testimony, and so that method of witnessing to friends kind of goes out the window.
But there's more to my problem of not wanting to share Christ with others.
See, I attended this Christian school until I graduated and in my Sophomore year I rededicated my life to Christ in a big way (see blog 199). After that I started going to church and all the other things that I thought Christians were supposed to do.
Now, I'm a good Asian kid and so I do what I'm told and I don't ask a lot of questions. But looking back now, I can see that I was merely aping Christianity - I was going through the motions without really knowing what I was doing or why. And I had questions, but I didn't ask them because I didn't know enough to even know how to phrase them and I didn't want to look stupid and I didn't want to make waves (the good Asian kid) and most of all, I tried to ignore my questions because I felt like they made me a weak or a bad Christian. There weren't any other Christians around me who were asking questions, everybody just seemed to know what to say and how to behave and so I assumed there was something wrong with my faith and the only way I knew how to hide this problem was to do more Christian stuff hoping that things would eventually make sense or that God would see how good I was and heal me of my questions.
Neither happened. I burned out on trying to please God through volunteering at church and the questions never went away.
But God is full of grace. He didn’t give me what I wanted (answers to questions) but he brought me back to himself through other means. But it wasn’t the same as it was before. Instead of quiet, self-imposed obedience, I spoke up and started voicing my discontent and my questions. It wasn’t an overnight shift, it began quietly and only among close friends but as I found that more and more people had the same questions, I became less and less inhibited about my questions to the point where I now blog about it on a regular basis.
What I’m trying to get at is the idea that my experience with Christianity hasn’t exactly been something that would encourage others to sign on if I were to tell them my story.
“So why are you still a Christian?”
Because I do believe the facts of Christianity. On top of that, it’s the only belief system that I have (see blog 155).
But behind my questions, behind my less than ideal experiences with Christianity, I know there's something beautiful and true. Because I do believe the Bible when it says that God is love and even though I'm not sure I understand what love is (see blog 205), I know it's there and that God will let me in on it one day. Or maybe I'm already smack dab in the middle of it but just don't know how to recognize it - maybe I'm missing the forrest because I'm staring at a blade of grass.
I don't know.
But here's something I do know. I'm getting closer to the understanding that I've been searching for. Brian McLaren's book, The Secret Message of Jesus (see blog 207), and NT Wright's book, Simply Christian, are opening up the life and message of Jesus in ways that make Christianity far more real to me than ever before.
And it's exciting and wonderful and I can't wait to get through these books so I can go back and read them again - they're both that good. And I can't wait to write about what I'm learning. Most of all, I can't wait to have an understanding of what it is to follow Christ - an understanding and excitement that I can share with my non-believing friends. Because that's what witnessing should be, a spontaneous desire to want to tell others the amazing, life changing news about Jesus.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
207. awful title, great book
I'm reading this amazing book by Brian McLaren called, The Secret Message of Jesus. And I hate the title because it sounds mystical and Gnostic and along the lines of The Da Vinci Code, but it's not that. It's quite the opposite, in fact, because what McLaren is trying to do is to strip away all the baggage that church culture has piled on top of the message of Jesus. McLaren accomplishes this by reinvestigating the message that Jesus came to bring by going back into first century Israel and trying to understand what it was that the Jews heard when they listened to Jesus speak. For example, when they heard the phrase "the kingdom of heaven" they heard something very different from the way we hear it today.
It's a fascinating and exciting read and I can't wait to finish the book so I can go back to the beginning and read it again - it's that good. But it's also a bit frustrating because McLaren never really spells out what the "secret message of Jesus" is, at least not in so many words. But this is intentional because what I think McLaren is getting at, is that the message that Jesus came to bring is not one that simply says, "do X, Y, and Z." Rather, it is a radically new way of living that is holistic, comprehensive, and all encompassing. And I know there are some Christians who bristle at what I'm about to write, but the Gospel isn't black and white.
The elusive nature of the core message of the Gospel can be frustrating, and I wonder if this frustration comes out of our quick-fire, sound bite society. We want the gospel to fit into three or four spiritual bullet points that we can print out on tracts which we can pass on to our friends. Or perhaps the frustration comes out of the Gospel's resistance to our modernist tendency to want to break things down and define them. But just as scientists working at the bleeding edge of physics are running into the limits of observable phenomenon (at subatomic levels, the very act of measuring, recording, or observing an event can change the outcome of the experiment), maybe some theologians’ quest to deconstruct the gospel and define it’s individual parts has also reached its limits.
And I don’t mean to minimize the importance of theology and orthodoxy because theology can be compared to the grammatical rules that undergird a language. Rigorous study by gifted scholars of God's word keeps us from descending into heretical nonsense. But, on the other hand, a comprehensive understanding of the grammatical rules of Japanese won’t do you a bit of good if you’re lost in some Japanese village and need to use the bathroom. And even if you know enough of the language to function in their society, you’d still be lacking the familiarity and mastery needed to appreciate their poetry.
What I’m trying to get at is the idea that I’m tired of just knowing rules and structure (although I am glad I got some training in that area in the past). I want to get at the poetry of Christianity, to appreciate the beauty of its architecture in addition to the genius of its framing. But I’m not just trying to expand my own knowledge base for the sake of knowing more. I’m after an understanding of Christianity that’s big enough to point towards a just society, to teach us how to bring reconciliation into an increasingly fragmented world, to be about peacemaking rather than peacekeeping, to be about appreciating and preserving the beauty and the natural resources of the earth.
McLaren’s books speaks to all of these ideas with fresh, vibrant, sometimes surprising insight. And I can’t wait to get more of a handle on the ideas in the book so I can start blogging about them. More than that, I'm hoping to finally have an understanding of Christianity that I want to share with my non-christian friends.
"You mean to say that you don't witness to your friends? What, are you ashamed of the Gospel?"
No, I don't mean that at all.
"So why this reluctance to talk about Jesus?"
*sigh*
I'll get to that in another blog.
It's a fascinating and exciting read and I can't wait to finish the book so I can go back to the beginning and read it again - it's that good. But it's also a bit frustrating because McLaren never really spells out what the "secret message of Jesus" is, at least not in so many words. But this is intentional because what I think McLaren is getting at, is that the message that Jesus came to bring is not one that simply says, "do X, Y, and Z." Rather, it is a radically new way of living that is holistic, comprehensive, and all encompassing. And I know there are some Christians who bristle at what I'm about to write, but the Gospel isn't black and white.
The elusive nature of the core message of the Gospel can be frustrating, and I wonder if this frustration comes out of our quick-fire, sound bite society. We want the gospel to fit into three or four spiritual bullet points that we can print out on tracts which we can pass on to our friends. Or perhaps the frustration comes out of the Gospel's resistance to our modernist tendency to want to break things down and define them. But just as scientists working at the bleeding edge of physics are running into the limits of observable phenomenon (at subatomic levels, the very act of measuring, recording, or observing an event can change the outcome of the experiment), maybe some theologians’ quest to deconstruct the gospel and define it’s individual parts has also reached its limits.
And I don’t mean to minimize the importance of theology and orthodoxy because theology can be compared to the grammatical rules that undergird a language. Rigorous study by gifted scholars of God's word keeps us from descending into heretical nonsense. But, on the other hand, a comprehensive understanding of the grammatical rules of Japanese won’t do you a bit of good if you’re lost in some Japanese village and need to use the bathroom. And even if you know enough of the language to function in their society, you’d still be lacking the familiarity and mastery needed to appreciate their poetry.
What I’m trying to get at is the idea that I’m tired of just knowing rules and structure (although I am glad I got some training in that area in the past). I want to get at the poetry of Christianity, to appreciate the beauty of its architecture in addition to the genius of its framing. But I’m not just trying to expand my own knowledge base for the sake of knowing more. I’m after an understanding of Christianity that’s big enough to point towards a just society, to teach us how to bring reconciliation into an increasingly fragmented world, to be about peacemaking rather than peacekeeping, to be about appreciating and preserving the beauty and the natural resources of the earth.
McLaren’s books speaks to all of these ideas with fresh, vibrant, sometimes surprising insight. And I can’t wait to get more of a handle on the ideas in the book so I can start blogging about them. More than that, I'm hoping to finally have an understanding of Christianity that I want to share with my non-christian friends.
"You mean to say that you don't witness to your friends? What, are you ashamed of the Gospel?"
No, I don't mean that at all.
"So why this reluctance to talk about Jesus?"
*sigh*
I'll get to that in another blog.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
205. what is love?
Recently, I've been thinking again about love and relationship and desire and beauty. And I wonder how much (if any) of the world can be understood (as God means for us to understand it) from a life devoid of love - and by love, I mean the kind of love experienced between a man and a woman, devoted to one another through holy matrimony 'til death do them part. Because according to Jesus, the two greatest commandments of the Bible are all about love (Matthew 22:36-40).
See, I've been thinking about my relationship with God and in particular, I've been asking myself this question, "do I love God?"
But to answer that question, I have to ask, "well, what is love?"
And I don't have an answer.
And I think about never having been in a relationship with a woman, and I wonder if that hinders me from understanding the blissful, heady, messy tangle that I imagine love to be. And I think of the movie The Cooler, starring William H. Macy and how love transformed him from a man with such bad luck that he was used to break winning streaks in Vegas casinos to a man with strength and courage and an incredible streak of good luck. And I think of the movie Punch Drunk Love, starring Adam Sandler and how love turns him from a bumbling, mumbling wimp to a bumbling, mumbling stud who says to the man trying to extort money out of him, "I have a love in my life and that makes me stronger than anything you can imagine," and it does.
And yes, I know I'm talking about hollywood movies but (to reference another movie) there's a scene in some romantic comedy that I can't think of right now, but it contains a scene where a woman is confronted with the charge that her romantic notions are all based on fictionalized accounts in movies and books and she replies with something along the lines of, "well, the fact that someone wrote that means it came from somewhere." And what she was getting at was the idea that in order for these idealized romantic cliches to have weight, they must have some kind of resonance with something in the real world.
On top of that, even though I've never been in a relationship, I have been around for the fireworks that happen at the start of such relationships and so I know a bit about how love empowers me, how it makes me feel giddy and invincible, how (as Jack Nicholas put it in the movie As Good As It Gets) it "makes me want to be a better man."
Unfortunately these relationships never took off, but I got enough of a taste to know what a powerful, life-changing force love can be.
But a taste is not a meal and so even though I've parted the curtains and seen the rich banquet that love can be, I've never been given a spot at its table.
All that to say, I don't have a first-hand experience of what love is. I can barely imagine what it's like to have a woman love me in return. That sounds too impossibly, amazingly beautiful to be true, but it is true. The other night I saw an elderly couple walking out of the Honolulu Academy of Arts and they were holding hands and I couldn't help but wonder at what their life was like.
And I know there are kinds of love other than the romantic type. Parental love, for example. And yes, I know my parents love me but they show their love through material, monetary support - putting me through a private high school and through college and letting me live with them, etc.
And now that I think about it, that's the only kind of love I know how to give - I'm generous when it comes to helping my friends in need whether it be loaning them money (without expecting to be paid back, although they usually do) or by fixing their amps or helping them move. I do stuff and I give them stuff, and I suppose that's a kind of love.
But to be honest, it doesn't feel like love. I mean, I've always been a generous person, sometimes even towards people I don't like and so is my generosity towards friends love or is it just the way I'm put together or something that emerges from my upbringing?
I don't know.
And back to the relationship bit, what is it that I'm longing for? What if I had had a relationship in the past, how would that change things for me now? What if I ended up damaged and confused as a result, instead of just ignorant and confused, as I am now?
But again, I think of something I read about Thomas Merton (and I've written about this before - see blog 51 and blog 52), about how even as a trappist monk who spent years contemplating the things of God 24/7, he didn't fully come to understand love until he had been in a relationship.
I don't know.
And I suppose it doesn't matter, because I can long for and theorize and write about these ideas about love until my fingers fall off but the fact would remain that I am who I am and I've only experienced what I've lived through. Maybe I am less of a fully formed individual for never having been in a deep, committed, loving relationship. Maybe I can't really understand the power of love until I've been through the thick of it.
Oh well. That doesn't excuse me from living. Yeah, maybe I don't understand, but I do the best I can with what I have and what I know.
And maybe that's enough to get me by until love comes to town and I catch that train.
See, I've been thinking about my relationship with God and in particular, I've been asking myself this question, "do I love God?"
But to answer that question, I have to ask, "well, what is love?"
And I don't have an answer.
And I think about never having been in a relationship with a woman, and I wonder if that hinders me from understanding the blissful, heady, messy tangle that I imagine love to be. And I think of the movie The Cooler, starring William H. Macy and how love transformed him from a man with such bad luck that he was used to break winning streaks in Vegas casinos to a man with strength and courage and an incredible streak of good luck. And I think of the movie Punch Drunk Love, starring Adam Sandler and how love turns him from a bumbling, mumbling wimp to a bumbling, mumbling stud who says to the man trying to extort money out of him, "I have a love in my life and that makes me stronger than anything you can imagine," and it does.
And yes, I know I'm talking about hollywood movies but (to reference another movie) there's a scene in some romantic comedy that I can't think of right now, but it contains a scene where a woman is confronted with the charge that her romantic notions are all based on fictionalized accounts in movies and books and she replies with something along the lines of, "well, the fact that someone wrote that means it came from somewhere." And what she was getting at was the idea that in order for these idealized romantic cliches to have weight, they must have some kind of resonance with something in the real world.
On top of that, even though I've never been in a relationship, I have been around for the fireworks that happen at the start of such relationships and so I know a bit about how love empowers me, how it makes me feel giddy and invincible, how (as Jack Nicholas put it in the movie As Good As It Gets) it "makes me want to be a better man."
Unfortunately these relationships never took off, but I got enough of a taste to know what a powerful, life-changing force love can be.
But a taste is not a meal and so even though I've parted the curtains and seen the rich banquet that love can be, I've never been given a spot at its table.
All that to say, I don't have a first-hand experience of what love is. I can barely imagine what it's like to have a woman love me in return. That sounds too impossibly, amazingly beautiful to be true, but it is true. The other night I saw an elderly couple walking out of the Honolulu Academy of Arts and they were holding hands and I couldn't help but wonder at what their life was like.
And I know there are kinds of love other than the romantic type. Parental love, for example. And yes, I know my parents love me but they show their love through material, monetary support - putting me through a private high school and through college and letting me live with them, etc.
And now that I think about it, that's the only kind of love I know how to give - I'm generous when it comes to helping my friends in need whether it be loaning them money (without expecting to be paid back, although they usually do) or by fixing their amps or helping them move. I do stuff and I give them stuff, and I suppose that's a kind of love.
But to be honest, it doesn't feel like love. I mean, I've always been a generous person, sometimes even towards people I don't like and so is my generosity towards friends love or is it just the way I'm put together or something that emerges from my upbringing?
I don't know.
And back to the relationship bit, what is it that I'm longing for? What if I had had a relationship in the past, how would that change things for me now? What if I ended up damaged and confused as a result, instead of just ignorant and confused, as I am now?
But again, I think of something I read about Thomas Merton (and I've written about this before - see blog 51 and blog 52), about how even as a trappist monk who spent years contemplating the things of God 24/7, he didn't fully come to understand love until he had been in a relationship.
I don't know.
And I suppose it doesn't matter, because I can long for and theorize and write about these ideas about love until my fingers fall off but the fact would remain that I am who I am and I've only experienced what I've lived through. Maybe I am less of a fully formed individual for never having been in a deep, committed, loving relationship. Maybe I can't really understand the power of love until I've been through the thick of it.
Oh well. That doesn't excuse me from living. Yeah, maybe I don't understand, but I do the best I can with what I have and what I know.
And maybe that's enough to get me by until love comes to town and I catch that train.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
204. against a pragmatic view of the arts
pragmatic - adjective, dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations
Art, in the world but perhaps more so in the church, is often forced to justify itself. "To what ends?" the question goes. "What's it for, what will it do, what will the return on investment be?" But I think about a flower sent to a woman one loves. Maybe there are some who send that flower with those utilitarian questions answered in their minds - "to woo, to get her to love me, to get some booty." What woman wants a flower weighed down by all that baggage? And I think art that is forced to submit to utilitarian ends becomes just as crass and meaningless. But to the one who gives their love a flower out of unconditional love, that is an act of beauty. And that's the kind of patronage Christian artists need from the church. In fact, it's the kind of support that all artists need regardless of religious affiliation.
ps. sorry for the lack of blog entries recently. I have a bunch of ideas in the queue so stay tuned.
Art, in the world but perhaps more so in the church, is often forced to justify itself. "To what ends?" the question goes. "What's it for, what will it do, what will the return on investment be?" But I think about a flower sent to a woman one loves. Maybe there are some who send that flower with those utilitarian questions answered in their minds - "to woo, to get her to love me, to get some booty." What woman wants a flower weighed down by all that baggage? And I think art that is forced to submit to utilitarian ends becomes just as crass and meaningless. But to the one who gives their love a flower out of unconditional love, that is an act of beauty. And that's the kind of patronage Christian artists need from the church. In fact, it's the kind of support that all artists need regardless of religious affiliation.
ps. sorry for the lack of blog entries recently. I have a bunch of ideas in the queue so stay tuned.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
203. paying it forward (thanks Willie)
I've written before about my frustrations with being a generally generous person (see blog 123 and blog 199), but something happened two weeks ago at house church.
After the "formal" church time where we pray, praise, and then listen to a message, we have a more quiet, more private prayer time in a room apart from where everyone else is hanging out. In this prayer session, we pray for special prayer requests, for healing, for friends, and sometimes, even for fish.
Anyway, two weeks ago, during this prayer time, I can't remember how it came about but a great friend of mine, the uber-talented Willie Branlund, shared a bit of information with me that was like a kick in the head - in a good way.
(backstory)
See, Willie is a photographer and like any artist, there was a time when he suffered serious bouts of self-doubt. Because the unfortunate truth is that the career path of anyone aspiring to turn creative energies into cash is a rocky, twisty, unpredictable one. And for one as talented as Willie, there is the constant frustration of seeing others make a name and a career for themselves out of mediocrity and pandering. Compounding this are the practical pressures of trying to figure out how to find jobs that pay well enough to live.
With all the forces lined up against them, it's a wonder artists ever make it at all. Certainly, there were all too many times when Willie wanted to throw in the towel and get a "regular" job. Much of the generosity that Willie credits me with has to do with the times I made the long (for Hawaii - Makiki to Mililani) drive out to his house to convince him not to give up, to reassure him of his genius and his talent. And at times, the support went beyond the verbal and was financial, but in my mind, they are one and the same - you can't just give a hurting person money and at the same time, a person who needs to buy film for his next project can't pay for it with warm, fuzzy encouragements.
Looking back now, I have to say that my encouraging Willie to keep going with is art was, in part, as much for me as it was for him. See, I've always been interested in the arts (see blog 187 and blog 198) and at the time, Willie was the only person actually involved in making art as something more than a hobby (and who actually had the talent to take him somewhere). I encouraged (and, at times, begged) him not to give up on his art because I needed to have some kind of contact with someone who was operating in the world of art. Keeping his dream alive kept mine alive as well. Misery loves company, but so does desperation.
Thankfully, things are finally looking up for Willie. In a few weeks he flies out to Vegas where he'll be working with a graphic design firm that will be netting him quite the handsome salary.
(end backstory)
So it's after house church and we're in the back room getting ready for a prayer session, and again, I can't remember what brought it about but Willie comes out and shares with the group about how all the generosity that I poured out on him in those times of need has made him a more generous person as well. He'd say things like, "duuuude, I was triiipping ouuut 'cause before I would neeeever have. . ." and then he'd go into some example about how he responded to a family member or a friend with kindness instead of a harsh retort. And he credited me, in part, with that change.
And duuuude, I was triiipping ouuut because in the past (and I still think this way far too often) I thought that my generosity just evaporated into thin air, that it went unnoticed, that it was disposable and basically anonymous. But here was Willie, telling me that it helped bring about a change in him that, in a way, allowed my generosity to reach into places I could never go. What I mean is, my investment (even though at the time I didn't think of it as an investment, I was just helping a friend) of generosity made Willie a more generous person and in a way, when Willie shares a bit of himself with someone he might not have otherwise (without my generosity), it's like Willie extends the reach of my ability to give life and love back into the world. And I've never seen the movie Pay It Forward, but it's my understanding that this is what the movie is about - passing on generosity to one who will, in turn, pass it on to yet another person.
And I wonder if there are other Willies out there who are more generous themselves because of some token of generosity that I gave to them on some rainy afternoon. And I wonder if, in some small way, my revolution is taking hold.
But even if Willie is the only person out there who was ever changed by some small gesture of my generosity, it would be more than worth all the frustration I've ever felt.
And then some.
And then some more.
After the "formal" church time where we pray, praise, and then listen to a message, we have a more quiet, more private prayer time in a room apart from where everyone else is hanging out. In this prayer session, we pray for special prayer requests, for healing, for friends, and sometimes, even for fish.
Anyway, two weeks ago, during this prayer time, I can't remember how it came about but a great friend of mine, the uber-talented Willie Branlund, shared a bit of information with me that was like a kick in the head - in a good way.
(backstory)
See, Willie is a photographer and like any artist, there was a time when he suffered serious bouts of self-doubt. Because the unfortunate truth is that the career path of anyone aspiring to turn creative energies into cash is a rocky, twisty, unpredictable one. And for one as talented as Willie, there is the constant frustration of seeing others make a name and a career for themselves out of mediocrity and pandering. Compounding this are the practical pressures of trying to figure out how to find jobs that pay well enough to live.
With all the forces lined up against them, it's a wonder artists ever make it at all. Certainly, there were all too many times when Willie wanted to throw in the towel and get a "regular" job. Much of the generosity that Willie credits me with has to do with the times I made the long (for Hawaii - Makiki to Mililani) drive out to his house to convince him not to give up, to reassure him of his genius and his talent. And at times, the support went beyond the verbal and was financial, but in my mind, they are one and the same - you can't just give a hurting person money and at the same time, a person who needs to buy film for his next project can't pay for it with warm, fuzzy encouragements.
Looking back now, I have to say that my encouraging Willie to keep going with is art was, in part, as much for me as it was for him. See, I've always been interested in the arts (see blog 187 and blog 198) and at the time, Willie was the only person actually involved in making art as something more than a hobby (and who actually had the talent to take him somewhere). I encouraged (and, at times, begged) him not to give up on his art because I needed to have some kind of contact with someone who was operating in the world of art. Keeping his dream alive kept mine alive as well. Misery loves company, but so does desperation.
Thankfully, things are finally looking up for Willie. In a few weeks he flies out to Vegas where he'll be working with a graphic design firm that will be netting him quite the handsome salary.
(end backstory)
So it's after house church and we're in the back room getting ready for a prayer session, and again, I can't remember what brought it about but Willie comes out and shares with the group about how all the generosity that I poured out on him in those times of need has made him a more generous person as well. He'd say things like, "duuuude, I was triiipping ouuut 'cause before I would neeeever have. . ." and then he'd go into some example about how he responded to a family member or a friend with kindness instead of a harsh retort. And he credited me, in part, with that change.
And duuuude, I was triiipping ouuut because in the past (and I still think this way far too often) I thought that my generosity just evaporated into thin air, that it went unnoticed, that it was disposable and basically anonymous. But here was Willie, telling me that it helped bring about a change in him that, in a way, allowed my generosity to reach into places I could never go. What I mean is, my investment (even though at the time I didn't think of it as an investment, I was just helping a friend) of generosity made Willie a more generous person and in a way, when Willie shares a bit of himself with someone he might not have otherwise (without my generosity), it's like Willie extends the reach of my ability to give life and love back into the world. And I've never seen the movie Pay It Forward, but it's my understanding that this is what the movie is about - passing on generosity to one who will, in turn, pass it on to yet another person.
And I wonder if there are other Willies out there who are more generous themselves because of some token of generosity that I gave to them on some rainy afternoon. And I wonder if, in some small way, my revolution is taking hold.
But even if Willie is the only person out there who was ever changed by some small gesture of my generosity, it would be more than worth all the frustration I've ever felt.
And then some.
And then some more.
202. heart vs mind
I'm hanging out with a friend who's about to get her PhD in Psychology. And I haven't seen her in a while (other than the time I bumped into her two weeks ago which is kind of how we ended up hanging that night) and I'm having a blast asking her all kinds of questions about psychology and culture and church and Christianity. And then I share with her, something that I've always been curious about - brilliant people falling in love. And I used the movie, A Beautiful Mind, as an example. I shared with her how I've always found it fascinating that someone as brilliant as John Nash would fall in love.
I suppose the fascination came from an image that I had of geniuses that painted them as passionless analytical minds, wrestling with arcane, intractable problems. For some reason, the thought that such a mind would subject itself to the wild passions of love seemed incongruous to me. And my friend called me out on that issue by asking me something along the lines of, "why do you think brilliant people are immune to love?"
And I was stumped.
Looking back now, I suppose that it was kind of silly to impose that disconnect between the mind and the heart. See, I think I was unknowingly buying into a kind of dualism where intellect and emotion were at odds with one another and so, in my mind, someone with a gigantic brain would have little to do with emotions and the same would be true the other way around.
But I think I know how I ended up with this misshapen idea. Okay, think about a time when you fell in love, and I mean fell HARD? You basically became a blathering idiot - reason and rationale evaporated and you were left wandering in a turbulent wasteland where wonder and desire clashed and warred (or maybe that's just my experience with love). It seems like the antithesis of reason.
And on the flip side, I think of people who work in think tanks, people who spend their time in front of dusty chalkboards white from ideas tasted then jettisoned, rubbed out into the ether of eraser dust. To me, these people love number and data and algorithm - the solidity and certainty of formula, of theorem and postulate. I thought they would have no patience for the messy uncertainty of love.
But now I think of Spock and Data from Star Trek. Spock tried to rid himself of emotion through discipline and logic but there were times when he let his love for his fellow crew influence him in ways that betrayed his logical paradigm (and I'm no Trekkie so don't ask me for examples). On the other hand, Data was, by definition, a product of logic circuits (a computer), but he was always fascinated by human emotion and tried to emulate it through behavioral study.
I wonder now how (cow brown) these characters both reinforce and undercut the disconnect between intellect and emotion. How one tries to suppress his emotions through discipline and how the other is created without emotions but yearns for them.
And I'm not sure how yet, but I think this misunderstanding (that the heart and the mind are at odds) has something to do with the chaos and injustice of the world today. I mean this whole postmodern unrest has its roots in a distrust of the heady, mechanical cosmology of modernism. But we don't need to discard the mind in order to embrace the heart, we need to find a way to let the two work in concert.
But I'm not sure how, but it sure is fun to think about...more blogs on this to come, I'm sure.
I suppose the fascination came from an image that I had of geniuses that painted them as passionless analytical minds, wrestling with arcane, intractable problems. For some reason, the thought that such a mind would subject itself to the wild passions of love seemed incongruous to me. And my friend called me out on that issue by asking me something along the lines of, "why do you think brilliant people are immune to love?"
And I was stumped.
Looking back now, I suppose that it was kind of silly to impose that disconnect between the mind and the heart. See, I think I was unknowingly buying into a kind of dualism where intellect and emotion were at odds with one another and so, in my mind, someone with a gigantic brain would have little to do with emotions and the same would be true the other way around.
But I think I know how I ended up with this misshapen idea. Okay, think about a time when you fell in love, and I mean fell HARD? You basically became a blathering idiot - reason and rationale evaporated and you were left wandering in a turbulent wasteland where wonder and desire clashed and warred (or maybe that's just my experience with love). It seems like the antithesis of reason.
And on the flip side, I think of people who work in think tanks, people who spend their time in front of dusty chalkboards white from ideas tasted then jettisoned, rubbed out into the ether of eraser dust. To me, these people love number and data and algorithm - the solidity and certainty of formula, of theorem and postulate. I thought they would have no patience for the messy uncertainty of love.
But now I think of Spock and Data from Star Trek. Spock tried to rid himself of emotion through discipline and logic but there were times when he let his love for his fellow crew influence him in ways that betrayed his logical paradigm (and I'm no Trekkie so don't ask me for examples). On the other hand, Data was, by definition, a product of logic circuits (a computer), but he was always fascinated by human emotion and tried to emulate it through behavioral study.
I wonder now how (cow brown) these characters both reinforce and undercut the disconnect between intellect and emotion. How one tries to suppress his emotions through discipline and how the other is created without emotions but yearns for them.
And I'm not sure how yet, but I think this misunderstanding (that the heart and the mind are at odds) has something to do with the chaos and injustice of the world today. I mean this whole postmodern unrest has its roots in a distrust of the heady, mechanical cosmology of modernism. But we don't need to discard the mind in order to embrace the heart, we need to find a way to let the two work in concert.
But I'm not sure how, but it sure is fun to think about...more blogs on this to come, I'm sure.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
201. questions/thoughts on prayer
Out of all the mysteries of the Christian faith, one of the top questions has got to be, "how does prayer work?"
I mean think of it from a purely empirical standpoint. The idea of speaking requests into the air, hoping that an omnipotent spiritual being will hear you and then rearrange the universe to grant your request sounds pretty hopeless if not downright arrogant. And on the flip side, the idea that a supreme, omniscient deity would command us to ask (through prayer) for what he already knows we want, sounds like a cruel power trip.
And in the end, no one can know whether a particular prayer will or won't be answered.
A woman (let's call her W) who's been coming to our house church for about a month now, asked the members to pray for her fish who was dying. Now W has issues with God due to traumatic, painful events in her past. As a house church, we rallied around Operation Heal-fish, seeing it as a potential opportunity to see the power of God at work and to allow an opportunity for God to show W that he really does care for her needs. And we went at it, praying for her fish, praying that when W went home she would find it doing backflips a la Flipper.
But the fish died.
And I wonder if we did the best thing in this case. I mean, even W asked that we pray for a quick and peaceful death instead of healing because she believed that the fish was done for. But we didn't want to waffle. We prayed for all or nothing, and the fish died. Would it have been better for us to have prayed for a quick and painless death instead of complete healing? Should we have prayed for both? And the thought of praying for both was suggested but rejected as a sign of wavering in our faith.
Were we putting God to the test? Well, speaking for myself (and I'm sure the others who prayed felt the same), I only wanted to see God demonstrate his love for W by performing the simple act of healing a tiny, little, innocent fish. It wasn't as much about the fish as it was about W, because we all love W and we wanted her to see that God cared about her fish and by extension, cared about her as well.
And maybe some people reading this are thinking, God's got better things to do than heal fish. And maybe that's true, but how many people around the world are, right now, sitting in some hospital waiting room, praying for the life of their spouse, their parent, their son or their daughter. Surely those lives are more important that that of W's fish, but some of those prayers will be answered and some will not.
And I think about the morning of September 11th 2001. I think about people who were running late on their way to work at the Pentagon or the Twin Towers. I'm sure there were some who were praying for an opening in traffic so that their boss wouldn't fire them. And some of those prayers were answered and those people died. And some prayers weren't answered and those people lived. And what does that say about how prayer works?
I don't know.
All I know is that God asks us to pray. Jesus prayed and as one who aspires to follow the example of Christ, I should pray. And I try to. But it's not easy. I've never been one of those Christians for whom prayer is a vital, vibrant part of their lives. But I try.
Maybe it's intellectually dishonest of me to pray with all of these unresolved questions muddying up the waters. I'm sure there are non-christians who will point to this blog and say, "see how irrational Christians are? This guy knows that prayer doesn't work but he prays anyway." And I'm sad to say that I don't have an adequate rebuttal. But I try to pray anyway.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
No, I can't explain it, but I do my best to pray. And I'll admit that I don't spend a lot of time on my knees in prayer and so who am I to ask these questions. Maybe it's like that scene from Karate Kid where Mr. Miyagi is teaching Daniel san karate by having him paint fences and wash cars and sand floors. Daniel doesn't understand what's going on and just when he's about to give up, Mr. Miyagi shows him that there was a purpose behind the chores - that what seemed irrational and meaningless (and even selfish on Mr. Miyagi's part from Daniel's perspective) was actually the very training that he thought he was still waiting for.
But even Mr. Miyagi knew when to let Daniel in on the secret.
I think of the one prayer of my life, the one prayer that I've prayed for more than any other, the one prayer that was never answered. My prayer for companionship, for a girlfriend, for a wife. God himself said that it's not good for man to be alone, and for the longest time, I couldn't have agreed with him more. But I don't care so much about finding a spouse anymore. And I don't know if it's because God has given me a sense of peace regarding my singleness or if it's because my heart just plain gave up waiting and shut down the dream machine. And I'm wondering if it's the latter.
See, I've been meaning to write on the topic of prayer all week, but I didn't get to it until tonight because I was working on a different entry that I was hoping to post before getting to this one. If you've read any of my short stories you know that most of them are about love. Well I've been trying to finish up another little story bit but I just can't get it to work because I'm finding that it's just about impossible for me to get into the heads of my characters. And so the story falls flat. In fact, there's no story there at all because nothing happens, because my heart isn't in it, because I don't care about finding love anymore and so my characters don't care either and so they don't reveal their inner-selves to me and so the story stinks.
W's fish. My prayer for love. Victims of 9/11. How does prayer work?
I don't know.
But I do my best to pray anyway.
But it's not easy.
But I try.
But I fail.
But I try.
And if prayer works for you then pray for me because I don't understand.
But I'm trying.
In the end, I do try to pray despite the fact that I have no idea how it works.
"But why?"
Because it's all I can do. Because God wants me to. Because prayer is at the center of every Christian who ever made a difference in this world. And maybe they didn't understand prayer either.
I mean think of it from a purely empirical standpoint. The idea of speaking requests into the air, hoping that an omnipotent spiritual being will hear you and then rearrange the universe to grant your request sounds pretty hopeless if not downright arrogant. And on the flip side, the idea that a supreme, omniscient deity would command us to ask (through prayer) for what he already knows we want, sounds like a cruel power trip.
And in the end, no one can know whether a particular prayer will or won't be answered.
A woman (let's call her W) who's been coming to our house church for about a month now, asked the members to pray for her fish who was dying. Now W has issues with God due to traumatic, painful events in her past. As a house church, we rallied around Operation Heal-fish, seeing it as a potential opportunity to see the power of God at work and to allow an opportunity for God to show W that he really does care for her needs. And we went at it, praying for her fish, praying that when W went home she would find it doing backflips a la Flipper.
But the fish died.
And I wonder if we did the best thing in this case. I mean, even W asked that we pray for a quick and peaceful death instead of healing because she believed that the fish was done for. But we didn't want to waffle. We prayed for all or nothing, and the fish died. Would it have been better for us to have prayed for a quick and painless death instead of complete healing? Should we have prayed for both? And the thought of praying for both was suggested but rejected as a sign of wavering in our faith.
Were we putting God to the test? Well, speaking for myself (and I'm sure the others who prayed felt the same), I only wanted to see God demonstrate his love for W by performing the simple act of healing a tiny, little, innocent fish. It wasn't as much about the fish as it was about W, because we all love W and we wanted her to see that God cared about her fish and by extension, cared about her as well.
And maybe some people reading this are thinking, God's got better things to do than heal fish. And maybe that's true, but how many people around the world are, right now, sitting in some hospital waiting room, praying for the life of their spouse, their parent, their son or their daughter. Surely those lives are more important that that of W's fish, but some of those prayers will be answered and some will not.
And I think about the morning of September 11th 2001. I think about people who were running late on their way to work at the Pentagon or the Twin Towers. I'm sure there were some who were praying for an opening in traffic so that their boss wouldn't fire them. And some of those prayers were answered and those people died. And some prayers weren't answered and those people lived. And what does that say about how prayer works?
I don't know.
All I know is that God asks us to pray. Jesus prayed and as one who aspires to follow the example of Christ, I should pray. And I try to. But it's not easy. I've never been one of those Christians for whom prayer is a vital, vibrant part of their lives. But I try.
Maybe it's intellectually dishonest of me to pray with all of these unresolved questions muddying up the waters. I'm sure there are non-christians who will point to this blog and say, "see how irrational Christians are? This guy knows that prayer doesn't work but he prays anyway." And I'm sad to say that I don't have an adequate rebuttal. But I try to pray anyway.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
No, I can't explain it, but I do my best to pray. And I'll admit that I don't spend a lot of time on my knees in prayer and so who am I to ask these questions. Maybe it's like that scene from Karate Kid where Mr. Miyagi is teaching Daniel san karate by having him paint fences and wash cars and sand floors. Daniel doesn't understand what's going on and just when he's about to give up, Mr. Miyagi shows him that there was a purpose behind the chores - that what seemed irrational and meaningless (and even selfish on Mr. Miyagi's part from Daniel's perspective) was actually the very training that he thought he was still waiting for.
But even Mr. Miyagi knew when to let Daniel in on the secret.
I think of the one prayer of my life, the one prayer that I've prayed for more than any other, the one prayer that was never answered. My prayer for companionship, for a girlfriend, for a wife. God himself said that it's not good for man to be alone, and for the longest time, I couldn't have agreed with him more. But I don't care so much about finding a spouse anymore. And I don't know if it's because God has given me a sense of peace regarding my singleness or if it's because my heart just plain gave up waiting and shut down the dream machine. And I'm wondering if it's the latter.
See, I've been meaning to write on the topic of prayer all week, but I didn't get to it until tonight because I was working on a different entry that I was hoping to post before getting to this one. If you've read any of my short stories you know that most of them are about love. Well I've been trying to finish up another little story bit but I just can't get it to work because I'm finding that it's just about impossible for me to get into the heads of my characters. And so the story falls flat. In fact, there's no story there at all because nothing happens, because my heart isn't in it, because I don't care about finding love anymore and so my characters don't care either and so they don't reveal their inner-selves to me and so the story stinks.
W's fish. My prayer for love. Victims of 9/11. How does prayer work?
I don't know.
But I do my best to pray anyway.
But it's not easy.
But I try.
But I fail.
But I try.
And if prayer works for you then pray for me because I don't understand.
But I'm trying.
In the end, I do try to pray despite the fact that I have no idea how it works.
"But why?"
Because it's all I can do. Because God wants me to. Because prayer is at the center of every Christian who ever made a difference in this world. And maybe they didn't understand prayer either.
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