A Slip Along the Path

I miss living overseas.  There was so much wonder and uncertainty in everything, and each new day felt so alive and unique.  Now, when I tell people how I miss Shanghai, I truly mean what I say.  I can remember every hardened and lined face, every place where I suffered disappointment, all the times I spent watching ships go by and hearing distant foghorns right beneath the noses of all the silently flashing buildings.  Shanghai is a strangely electric, cold, and barren city, where people at every level are embattled by instability, desperation, and insecurities.  Everyone follows a different path to arrive there, but in that place their hardships are transformed into experiences that are remarkably alike.  Those relationships forged in the darkness become even tighter, even more precious.  

During those days, my Shanghai family was a patient ear, and an immeasurable source of support to me--one that taught me exactly what I had to learn, that showed me what it means to counsel those with grief, and spoke precisely what I needed to hear in that time and place.  Because of you all, I really came to understand that my identity was comprised of greater things than my career; that all of it was for naught if I didn't place my relationship with God at the highest.  I've been fortunate to see a few people since returning to the States, but I really miss the people of Shanghai, and sometimes wonder if God will let me become an expat once more.  Perhaps one day.  Though it's been nearly two years since I left, I am still not done giving thanks for you guys.  Happy Thanksgiving!

The Enduring Exhale

The last days leading up to commencement fell away in mute panic. A pile of thin letters sat untouched on my desk while I rifled through the motions to reenter school. And all I could think about on that heavy day, while sitting in the second row and staring at the backs of the heads of provosts and deans, was how nice it would be to get my own poofy pillow hat. By the next day, when most had long gone, I returned to campus and retraced my steps, slowly surveying the buildings and recalling the memories I held within each one. The deep calm that descended upon the grounds was unlike anything I had ever felt during the term. It was as if the campus was blanketed in the heavy calm of summer and was slumbering in its warmth. The folding chairs had all been cleared away, and the podium lay half-disassembled in the stifling grass. While birds pitched their songs from one bough to another, the sun fell slowly through the trees and scattered, becoming gleaming cutouts strewn across an earthen sky. All who had given so much life and meaning to this place were conspicuously absent. A custodian appeared here and there, ushered along by some nameless duty. Very soon, the school would shake off its slumber and open its doors for the summer session. Not long after, it would receive a new matriculating class, which would in no time at all be ushered out that same set of doors, as fresh as it was when it had arrived. I could still see the footprints of chattering families and nervous graduates in the grass. And it was as if the campus had admitted us into the world without so much as a blink of an eye. A city of blinking lights and windswept streets that had simply sighed and shut its eyes. To them, we were just one more class passing through. It was as if we were all gone forever on that day, swept away in a remorseless wind.

The Calling

"Real spiritual and relational change requires a commitment to move far beyond the certainty of false intimacy toward unsettling and sometimes shattering levels of disappointment that we reach when we really love others. Only then will trusting God become more than a sermonic platitude. Only then will it become the rock on which we stand."

"As God begins working in your life, you can begin to love others as God created you to do. Move toward others courageously. Don't deny the pain of disappointments in relationships. Face them squarely. Allow yourself to hunger for deeper relationships, and as you draw closer to God be assured that He will draw closer to you. He will give you hope." - Harry Schaumburg

Offering and Wages Payable

Something from the book of Kings caught my interest last night: under Joash and Jehoiada, the priests assigned to collect money to meet the expenses of repairing the temple "did not require an accounting from those to whom they gave the money to pay the workers, because they acted with complete honesty" (2 Ki 12:15). I have no good reason why I like this verse other than its reference to our meticulous accountant friends. They get their very own line! I've frequently pondered the very real temptation to use church funding for private purposes, and how those lawyers and accountants who are often responsible for our church finances deal with it. There is also a convergence, or collision of sorts, of covenant theology, political economy, and taxation of public goods taking place on all sides in the Old Testament. More on OT administration of government another time.

Though the Sentence is Hasty, Feeble, and Inexpressive

A young writer, confident that he can muster his experiences with his pen and bend its undercurrents to serve the senses, will often quickly realize that his story is both relentless and unbreakable; all he can do then is tighten his grip and let it take him where it will. Over the past twelve months, I have frequently felt as if I were that man, fighting to remain afloat atop a tirelessly expanding mountain of pages.

I look at my final undergraduate year from a distance now and breathe a little more deeply, as if I were rowing away from the groaning pull of a ship disappearing beneath the waves. But at the time, nearly everyday I felt too empty for any creative industry, too tired for others, and too beleaguered to throw a contemplative look over my shoulder. I have never found a period in my life to be more impossibly difficult to translate into words. Some things from that year revisit me now: boarding myself up in the imperturbable silence of dusty old libraries, the smell of rich coffee constantly on my clothes, and staggering around on days leading up to tests, permanently dazed from hours of solitary study. I either genuinely can't tell, or just don't like to admit as much, but I have found that when the pimples come out--always in the same place between my eyebrows--there is no surer way of telling that I'm stressed. I remember hearing nothing but deafening silence from employers, and resigning myself to keep on going to the next application, and the one after that. Some things I cannot forget, like the way my roommate half-jokingly likened our relationship to "preparation for marriage," and all the things that my professors did for me. I remember staking out and pouncing on empty tables at coffee shops, late night walks back from the library, the howl of the train that runs through campus, and the company of a friend. And yet, try as I might, I still cannot grasp the fullness of all the joys and trials that the Lord has put me through.

Why is it that every couple of weeks, when I take my life out and contemplate it--asking where I have just come from and where I am going--I'm shattered all over again, robbed of all speech and sensibility? Perhaps the writer is weak, or perhaps the strength of the story is, in the end, a testament to its true author, and what you actually put down on paper is merely a pittance. When nearly everything I know is just an unfinished footnote within soteriology, the most beautiful story ever written, it quickly becomes clear that there isn't a sound mind, sentence, or anecdote out there that could contain it. After all, what other story ends with so certain a promise while fraught with equal mystery on the path to get there? You and I are part of a deeply redemptive narrative drawn up before time with the same hands that crowned the stars and raised the firmament. I can only reckon that it's alright to be completely lost for words.

The Lost and the Song

Realizing that you've lost something can happen in one of two ways: in a single, terrible instant, or with slow, dawning comprehension. Last week, it was the latter. As I left Tuesday night prayer, I grasped my right pocket. And then the left. And then I seized all of my pockets. Empty. My keys and my Navy lanyard were gone. For my friends, the remainder of the trip was much like conversing with an agitated mother. No conversation swayed me from anxiously clucking about where my keys were, whether they were safe, and who would listen now when I tell them that I used to be a Navy vet. But that wasn't what unsettled me most.

All that time, my keys had been sitting expectantly on the gym floor, right where I left them. As I galloped home, unleashing the "hallelujah" chorus into the night sky, I was struck sidelong by how small the joy of my salvation seemed in comparison to this unfeigned, boundless euphoria. Job once lamented his overwhelming awareness of God's unbearable gaze: What is man that You magnify him and that You are concerned about him, that You examine him every morning and try him every moment? Will You never turn Your gaze from me...? I felt afflicted with the opposite. I thought about how every morning I awoke feeling lost and frustrated, wondering where God and all the fanfare that used to accompany Him had gone. Somewhere along the way, I had become so dully attuned to His grace that I had lost much more than my keys.

But within a span of a hundred yards, my heart had turned again. By the time I triumphantly sprinted up the stairs and fit my key in the lock, my roommate jumping up from the sofa in anticipation, I was convinced that more than one thing had been found that night. God rescue not only my keys, but also my soul from despair. What better a way to assure me that He was near, and had never left, than to choose the most unassuming of ways to declare His adamant presence in all of my affairs? Could an event of such laughable simplicity really have such cosmic consequences? How foolish and silly it all seemed! Many things, such as our relationships, ailments, and careers we offer up in desperate prayer, but others we either deem manageable, or have difficulty seeing any room for God's involvement. As a result, we live tunelessly for entire intervals in which He seems both absent and irrelevant.

We will never cease to be fixated by the infinite ascent and descent of questions and answers that run along the very foundations of creation. One moment, He might move mightily like a rushing squall, altering history and shifting whole landscapes, and in the next, work with the careful precision of a watchmaker, multiplying the tiniest of moments into praise and wonderment. He makes our paths straight, and yet ambushes us with side-journeys to remind us that He loves us, and that we should trust Him daily. To those who might try to walk life in a straight line, beware of an unpredictable God who works all things great and small for the good of our salvation. A trip, a stumble off the path, a lost set of keys, and you may unexpectedly find yourself face to face with the same sovereign and majestic God that Moses did while tending to Jethro's flock in the parched and unpredictable wild.

Eucharistia

I arrived in an unfamiliar Edison, New Jersey last night, knowing that I would have to improvise yet another lonely Thanksgiving with just me and my Dad. A lot of you know and love my Mom, who is one of the loudest, givingest, funnest, emotional, and overbearing women for miles around, wherever she may happen to be. But my Dad, whom I am visiting this weekend, has always walked in relative obscurity. I can recall, even as he sleeps in the other room, his dark complexion, him walking around in an undershirt and slightly in need of a shower, just altogether not being very hip, and always a bit off to the side, seemingly stolid and impenetrable. At times, he'll catch me off guard when he's in one of his not very well-placed humorous moods, and jive at me with sarcasm so dry that it could shrivel a cactus. Even then, I have trouble seeing him beyond a man who at heart is always ready to lapse back into sobering shoptalk, or to try to court me with advice.

But as I sit here in the semi-dark, his robust and plodding snores filling the other room, I think about a day in his life, about all I've observed in the short time I've been here, and I'm overcome with emotion. He wakes up in this uncomfortable apartment and goes to work; when he gets off work, he tells me, he goes to the local library to browse through the Chinese newspapers, and at night he goes home. He knows some people in the area, but none of them are close. Once a week, presumably, he makes a pilgrimage with his dirty clothes in little plastic grocery bags to a coin laundry. Once a month, he goes next door to pay the Chinese family from whom he rents the small, sectioned-off portion of the house. All of this, far from any social circles that he probably wouldn't feel comfortable joining anyway, for a distant family that doesn't always remember to be grateful, and doesn't always remember to call. By nature, he's a workaholic, not a social animal. Throw him into the work environment, and he'll make do, but take him out and he'll be as without a purpose as a fish outside of water. I always ask him questions like who he misses the most, or who he considers to be his best friends. Calmly, he'll reply that he doesn't really know, and then chuckle expectantly at himself and his pitiful answer.

The apartment, where he lives, has every bit the look of a spare, little-touched room. It's one of those from which you come and go only to sleep and occasionally eat. Furniture is sparse, and everything, from the kitchen to the mattress he sleeps on, has the forlorn look of being overlooked by a man who's only living upon necessity. My first reaction is, how could anyone live like this? But in the back of my mind, I know that that's just who he is. He's always struggled to interact with people and just have fun. He's been poor before. My life isn't hard. I've never had it hard.

He asks me in the car if I think he should resign next month. Everything in the back of my mind screams for him to do it, to go back to his wife and home, to live in the comfort he deserves. But I answer his question with a question. "What does he think he should do? How does he like his work? Does he miss home?" We end up talking about the economy again, and somewhere, ten minutes later, we end up back at the solemn conclusion that it's tough times, and the subtle moral undertones of hard work are screaming in my ear. With him, there's always a lesson. After twenty-one years, I can appreciate that.

I'm not writing this on Turkey Day to say that I love my parents because of all they've provided for me. I don't want to love them only for what they do for me. Honestly, I started this post hours ago, and I'm more confused than ever. There's really nothing I can do to merit their love, and thoughts like that make me squirm. Sometimes, as much as I try to be independent, and to free myself from the knowledge that I owe so much to them, I can only end up concluding that that's just how love works. Sometimes love is inexplicable and undeserved, and sometimes it comes in such unquantifiable amounts that you just have to accept that it can't ever be repaid. And that's the way we have to love our parents, even it t hat's not the way they already love us. Even when memories wear on hard, differences seem irreconcilable, relationships are stripped to the very last thread, and there's nothing left to love, we need to remember that Christ paid it all. It's easier to love someone who already loves you back, is it not? Is that to say, we should only venture to give our hearts and our time to those who give to us in return? Hopefully, the answer in your mind rings a loud "no."

That's what I pray every day that Christ will teach me. I pray that He'll break my sinful heart down one flinty rock at a time, taking every harsh word and thought out of my mouth and heart, giving me every extra edge of patience that I need, and helping me to love and sacrifice. I write this tonight, knowing that many of you understand and share my struggles to varying degrees. Maybe, for some of you who are still young, you'll learn something--or not. Your parents love you. They really, really love you. Or they might not at all. Maybe they're not accustomed to telling you so, or maybe they might just be human, like yourself. Even if they don't, I plead with you to have grace upon their past wrongs. Have grace, forgive, and ask for forgiveness in return. I plead with you to remind me as well, so that we can pray and grow together, for this is just the part of the sin that our particular generation and culture will carry, perhaps until we die. Not many things bother me in this world as much as the tortuous, strained, awkward relationships between Asian parents and their children. I look back on the long and storied struggle between my parents and I, and thank God for His healing. I also remember the first time I dropped and "I love you" on my parents. Something as trivial as that was awkward as hell, but it was a start. Now my Dad includes in every little email or text, "love, Dad." God's brought us so far. For you guys out there, take the initiative and go give your parents a suffocating bearhug or something. For you girls, well, you can try that too, but I have a feeling that you have a better system for this sort of thing.

Anyway, I'm not quite full of Thanksgiving mirth and content, having snacked on mixed peanuts and bread for most of the afternoon, and slipped out to dinner at a forlorn little Chinese restaurant, but I am thankful. I love you, Mom and Dad, and I thank God for you.

Hollow Men

I was absentmindedly browsing petfinder.com yesterday, and that's when I sat up and swore that, girlfriend or not, by the time I graduate, I'm going to get a little dog. More than feeling lonely, and more than wanting a raggedy but cute heap around so it can chew and poop on all my belongings, I want to be there to raise and take care of the little guy. And it hits me that what I really long for is something or someone to commit to and to be able to say that I do have a heart, a couple of things that I've found significantly wanting for much of my sad life. I'm ashamed of how frequently unloving I am--another child of the dead and anesthetized human condition--and I hesitate to even think of whether I'll ever allow myself to get close to someone, let alone have the joy of having a loving, working relationship drowning height-deep in friendship and the person of Christ. Sometimes, when I'm being especially foolish, I talk my head and heart into thinking that I could handle a relationship, especially if it threw itself in my way (lazy). But it's in that very moment that I especially know that I am not ready. And so I continue to hope and trust and know that there's much work to be done within me. I'm curious, though, about what kind of dog you guys think fits me best.

Now in a spot of really sad news, this morning, without using what few brains God gave me, I lose my "Kobe 4 MVP" pen in a brief but shocking struggle to the vacuum cleaner. I got it a couple seasons ago, and I really didn't think that my vacuum still had so much oomph in it. Cruelly betrayed by another household appliance. I'll miss you, you venerable and truthy writing stick.

I. Question Marks

Green ink, real coffee, and handsome scarves, these are the options of the deviceless. It's most apparent in the mornings, when soft bodies grope and peer in the dark, prying the deepest cracks and hunting for color. There is a pall over all living things--wives and children, the elderly and the eldest, and strong and weak men alike--and it does not pass. And every night, humanity yawns as it turns over, wondering why. The flat and sapless bend the low places and touch the high reaches, but sweep away nothing but dust. Restless we are, and ever weary from surveying the stars. You can sleep for years in this bed and not get a single night of respite.

The body politic stews in the corruption of regicide, and vagabond prodigal children stalk the night upon what was never home in the first place. Bare and bitter houses line the hilltops standing against the dark sky, and we go from one to the next in aimless misdirection. We wander our midnight haunts, we ponder our empty jaunts, and hurtle through the twilight without knowing that some fluttering kiss is waiting to land itself upon our cheeks, welcoming and leading us back in. There is a heavy robe out there ready to throw itself upon the unexpecting; a great ring and sandals for your unshod feet. But on this side of the veil, they oft appear as a ghostly mob, unwelcome and fearsome.

Something is missing from your life and mine, brother, like why the birds sing and why do bubbles go up? Deep puddles and monochrome borders and shading--you and I could both do without these, we really could. Somewhere our fathers threw the dice and they fell wrong. And now we pay usury from the depths of our souls. With every shuddering reach and every pull of the drawstrings, we draw up less and less, scraping at the bottom. We race, not dwell, and begin until we end.

Things are cheap, one-time use. Man, if I clasped hands with you and, still enjoined, threw you away, what would you say? So, brother, if you look in upon me on a winter day, I'll look back, but don't expect me to see you. Heartless handshakes and best friends forever last but for a little while. We cling fast to one another, because we feel for something real. As for the little things we do, like warm our hands with our breath, or stoop for a hint of color or tell-tale speck of reasoned hope--how do we even begin fighting to live when Solomon found no life smoldering under the sun?

Pause and listen. Love will find its way into the lexicon, earning a flaming chapter in the night. And that chapter will not end, for it will burn a bright trail across the paper and leap off the pages into life: an unstoppable answer that was, is, and always will be for a generation of tattered poor who beg and beg for the truth.

Weirdness Always Begins at Home

My mom wants to practice her typing, so I signed her up on a website for free online typing lessons. But since she's so paranoid about giving away information over the internet, I let her be and had her come up with her own personal info. Apparently, her login name is now "Booga Rijawa" from India, and she's not making much progress because she keeps dying with laughter at the info she came up with. Every lesson there's something like, "Welcome, Booga!!!" and "Booga, please type more carefully," and "Booga, you have made 53 errors." I actually have a feeling that her typing is getting worse with each try. Other than that, she apparently really likes John Legend now. At least that solves some of our music conflict in the car.