I Make Asian-Americans Cry

I used to write on Asian American identity a lot (refer to one of my old blogs, for example). However, with my move to North County, it’s taken a backseat. I have just been absent from the arena of Asian-American Christianity in North County SD. Not to say that I haven’t had to think about my own ethnic identity and its interplay with faith. In fact, I’ve told people that I feel more Chinese than I ever had since I started working with students that are not Chinese. I’ve seen the strengths and baggage of my culture more explicitly than ever. I just haven’t written it… because perhaps I haven’t had to talk to my students about their ethnic identity as much. On the most part, they are much higher identity than your average Asian-American Christian (it still bothers me a lot how much Asian-American Christians hate their own culture), so I don’t really have to talk about ethnicity as much during my time on campus. Thus, I haven’t really written much about it, seeing that I usually rant on blogs about things that I encounter in life… and lecturing Asian-American Christians on their identity is just something I haven’t had the arena to do so.

I’ve been fine with this, but I had a coworker and friend (alan) encourage me that I should keep myself practiced in talking about Asian-Americans and Christianity.

It was an interesting conversation. I had been telling Alan during one of our spiritual formation retreats that although I felt the most Chinese serving those who were not Chinese, I simultaneously now feel disconnected with other Asian-Americans when I hang out with them.

Yeah. My own people have become a… “them”. I should be feeling comfort with such familiarity! Why do I feel such a huge anxiety every time I’m with large groups of Asian-Americans now?

Well it’s quite simple. I offend or make them cry now.

Yeah, that’s quite the thing to say. But really. Ever since I’ve been on staff at MiraCosta, during my rare opportunities to communicate with Asian-Americans, I’ve made 2 girls cry and pissed off at least one guy (the rest of them are probably stewing it inside afraid to tell me). It’s been a highly disturbing self-observation.

I have noticed that my communication style has changed since working with a Latina team leader and ministering to Latinos, Whites and African-Americans. My Asian-American strength of indirect communication has been a strength in my context… but then at the same time, I’ve learned that indirect communication is good for making friends, but is limited in the context of leadership in a multicultural context. It is good for earning trust, but when leading cross-culturally, we need some good ol’ directness.

I’ve realized that Asian-Americans generally (not all) are great at earning trust, but fall short when it comes to using that trust cross culturally. We don’t tell people when we’re offended. We don’t tell people when we’re in love with them. We don’t tell people when they’ve taken the last piece of chicken that we actually wanted. But in the process, we become such “nice” people. Everyone loves us, but we are just a stewing cauldron of silence and face. A true leader should be able to gain trust like an Asian American, but shouldn’t be afraid to challenge at the expense of losing face.

So I realize that was bashing Asian-Americans more than you may be used to. But that’s exactly what’s happened to me. I’ve realized that I need to be able to say these things directly, and not dance around them. There are things in our culture which are strengths. But there are some things that we can’t just accept. Being indirect only helps to a certain extent when your student is doing drugs- at some point you have to just say it’s wrong and that he/she needs to stop.

Of course, the direct challenges and engagement need to be built on a strong foundation of trust. But it’s so saddening to see how many Asian-Americans have been building a foundation of trust and have not built anything on top of it. Instead of challenge, we let bitterness and resentment eat away at the trust we build with people until we become direct too late in an explosion of pent up anger and frustration.

So suffice to say that I’ve become a little more direct. Not that much actually- it’s actually still one of my growth edges. I still find myself keeping resentment, not being direct, and hiding emotions a little too much. I find myself afraid to tell people that I think they are wrong. And I know there’s much more to grow in being graceful with my directness when it finally comes out. But I do know that I don’t have to stay in that indirectness.

I don’t lose my Asian-American identity from being direct. It feels weird saying that, but I think that’s been something on my mind- that working on communicating more direct is not killing my identity. At the same time, I don’t think that indirect communication is necessarily a cultural curse. When used in the right contexts, it is an extremely powerful asset to leadership. I have had so many students approach me because they knew I was not there to just lecture them, but would actually listen to them. This in turn makes them want to listen to me. The question though, for Asian-Americans, though is… when we finally get listened to, will we actually have something to say?

Our indirectness is our strength and weakness. It comes from our history as immigrants and model minorities who are expected to (over)achieve the majority culture’s standards of success. We defer away from ourselves in favor of the standards of others. It can be humility and tact to a certain point… until it crosses that fine line and becomes self-hatred and lying.

When we talk about cultural identity formation in the light of Christ, there seem to be two major extremes- cultural suicide and cultural idolatry. We either think our culture is completely not of Christ and try to destroy every ounce of it (and in the process we embrace a white Jesus… heh. that’s another post) or we embrace our identity so much that it actually becomes the way we define God… which, if you didn’t know, is somewhat heresy. Pursuing cultural identity healthily comes when we follow what theologians call the “unidirectional anological predicate.” This means that instead of letting the world around us referentially define who God is to us, we allow God to become the reference and allow Him to be the definer of the world around us. It’s like calling a square a rectangle, but being careful not to call all rectangles squares.

That’s all to say… while our culture is not our God, God does have something to say about our culture. And not all of our culture is in conformity to God’s heart, but there’s plenty in there that He’s created that gives Him joy. When we engage our culture with God, we have to be ready for Him to affirm what is of Him… and also to transform what has been bent out of shape. But I believe it’s just bent out of shape… although the depravity of our culture is pervasive, the pervasiveness of the Father’s love overshadows the depravity. The quest of Christian cultural identity formation is not the decimation or idolatry of our culture, but the discovery of the Creator’s loving breath into our human social constructs that we call… culture. In the mean time, we must simultaneously engage the cross-cultural calling of Christianity and in the process find the loving breath of the Creator in those cultures as well.

Wow. I’ve blogged longer than I intended. It was supposed to be short, and then I’d give ideas for future blogposts. well… i better put those ideas down.

• Immigrant culture vs. “mother” culture (ABC vs. OBC)
• Asian American Worship
• The simultaneous fear and embrace of cross-cultural relations in A.A.’s
• Missional Identity Formation- The merging of Cultural identity formation and Multiculturalism
• The Asian-American Call to Social Justice
• Cultural Curses and Cultural Blessings
• So just how do we keep those Asian American Christians that disappear from churches?
• Asian Americans: More than missionaries to themselves
• Asian American Community College Students- The silent majority

Hopefully this will all be good for me. And please give me feedback.

Being part of a failed movement.

Lately, I’ve been realizing I might actually be a quality leader of sorts. The reality of being a team leader is becoming more… real. I spent a week alone, made decisions on my own, and started to dream about what I wanted to see happen. I did an activity where students had to learn how to do Godly affirmation to one another (and then do it for their non-christian friends). This conveniently had time where they got to affirm me. One of the students said something really sweet that I want to keep- he said that I was like a light in the darkness, and that any time I talk to him, no matter what state he’s in, he always feels better. I’ll take that. Then I got an email earlier this week telling me that I had been invited for a big position for the Urbana conference. That also helped my self esteem. The more I go through this year, the more I’m realizing that God is preparing me for more and more leadership.

At the same time, in these past 2 or 3 weeks, I’ve been coming to a ridiculous realization that I hate failure. I fear it. It is one of my biggest fears. It is the fear that all will fall apart when I fail. I’ve been facing a lot of things that signify my failure, or at least my lack of perfection. I led 2 horrible bible studies this week. I would have puked at the horrible exegesis if I were one of the participants. Heck. I wish there were more participants. At every bible study, I had perhaps two other students sit out there with me on the tarp (forgetting that it’s midterms week). On Wednesday, I had perhaps 3 students (from ~20 last year) signed up to go to Catalina and 0 dollars in scholarship. I felt like a failure in my recruiting abilities (forgetting the fact that we are in fact in a recession when people can’t pay 225 bucks to go to a camp). Then there’s the other part of me that doesn’t even want to go to Catalina from remembering the supposed failures I had last year teaching Mark. Let’s not forget that I have a fuller class that I haven’t had time to do at all and all the work is due on the 20th. I feel failure creeping up to me with the possibility that I could do mediocre in this class. And then there’s my room, which I have failed to clean for the last 3 weeks. And then, just as I was getting over it all, while I’m finally cleaning my room, I find that something very important that my sister let me borrow has disappeared. I don’t know if it’s misplaced, or if it has been stolen. I feel the weight of failure pressing me down.

I realize that I equate the successes of the Kingdom of God with my own success. I wonder how much God laughs at that assumption. But I really have the audacity to think that.

Last year, after messing up a session at Catalina (students, you probably didn’t know, but I accidentally ended early on one part, leaving my other staff worker with an extra passage to teach that she didn’t prepare), I was apologizing profusely to my co-teacher. Then our leader turned to me and just straight up said, “Stop apologizing. It’s done. Guilt doesn’t make sense right now. God meant for you to end early there. God meant for you to mess up. And He’s going to use it.” That moment has been haunting me for the past year. I’ve been avoiding returning to that moment, because part of me secretly still feels guilty for my “failure”.

Two weeks ago, I had a dream that I was driving in my car. All of a sudden I started feeling water dripping in my eyes. I kept wiping the water away, until I realized that my sunroof had cracked, and I was driving in a wild storm. My team leader interpreted it for me (she took a dream interpretation class at one of those crazy charismatic churches… I’m pretty crazy, but… yeah. That’s crazy.). She said that God was purifying my ministry. She said she was excited. I kind of felt excited, but in the back of my head I was thinking “excited? What is she smoking? Purification is never an exciting thing!”

And… God has been purifying me since. Purifying my motives for leadership. He’s weeding out my desire for success and my tendency to equate it to the success of the Kingdom of God. I’ve been realizing that as I step into higher leadership, I can’t be consumed with my performance and continue to blow up the effects of my failures. Yes, I have to still pursue excellence. But I’m not perfect. God is. And there’s the miracle. Out of the beautiful mess of our failures, God somehow breathes in the success of His Kingdom. We can’t achieve that success. God has mercy on our inability and allows us to witness His success despite and even through our failures.

I sometimes forget that Christianity started out as a failed local movement with its leader brutally nailed to a cross. And out of the ashes of failure, came the resurrection of the Kingdom that was surely of God, which transformed cowardly fishermen into the rock and foundation of a worldwide movement. Right now, I feel like that scared fisherman, wondering why I even joined this movement; wondering if my convictions were misplaced if all I see around me is failure. But perhaps I’m in this place of fear because I have not really realized that after the ultimate failure that I have witnessed, there is resurrection.

These past few weeks, I’ve had to convince myself to get out of bed and face the day, leaving the failures behind me. And you know what? His Kingdom still advances each of those days. My last Bible study, I felt the conviction return to me and had everyone including myself in a quiet awe of the power of the scripture. God has been merciful, and I now have 9 or 10 students going to Catalina with enough scholarships to cover their lack. As I was preparing for Mark next week at Catalina, I felt a strange excitement for what God was going to do with my students, no matter how sucky I performed. I finally got around to cleaning my room. And I have enough money to replace what was lost.

And no, my failures are not fully undone. But I feel the tendrils of fear and guilt slowly release as I realize that His Kingdom is not dependent on my success. I realize the depth of the statement that is thrown around in evangelical circles- His grace covers us. And wow. His grace does cover me overwhelmingly, and will continue to cover me no matter how successful or how much of a failure I am.

an endless cycle of beginnings and endings.

I have been trying this past 6 months or so to make North County my home. It’s been an interesting experience. I’ve had to mourn and cut myself off from things, people and places that have made me comfortable. But I have found that as I’ve come up here, there have been new experiences and joys that have made the pain of leaving worth the reward of entering.

However, I’ve encountered a new phenomenon lately. I’ve watched my new “home” begin to change. It is an obvious but strange occurence that change happens… in the places you’ve left and the places you’ve entered.  This strangeness slapped me in the face today, when I found out that the Smart & Final down the street that I go to for party supplies told me today that they are closing. My Myers-Briggs NF started to kick in and there was this strange heavy sentimentality that overwhelmed me. And I’ve had to say goodbye to many more things than stores. Closed doors. Relationships. Friends. Familiarity. “Home”. There were times in my life where I felt like I couldn’t stop mourning- I would finally finish mourning the loss of something, and then another thing would disappear from my life and the cycle just kept going.

But perhaps my experience of mourning so much (I’m not sure if it’s from an unhealthy disposition towards holding onto things too much or if i’ve really just been in a position to have to say goodbye to that many things) fits so much with community colleges. We watch people leave all the time. I watch my leaders leave so quickly- some to transfer, some back home, some back home to God. The student body seems so transitional, and I find myself really resenting it sometimes. It is easy to be in a constant state of mourning because of all the people I’ve seen who come and go. I can never hold very tight to things, and it often frustrates me. MiraCosta seems to be in an endless state of flux, constantly having to say goodbye to each new thing I’ve encountered, surrendered to the reality that I can’t keep things how I want them to be forever.

I’ve found, though, that the mourning is only one side to reality. As constant as the reality of mourning and the leaving is, the reality of the birth and new beginnings are just as constant. In fact, more constant. Hardly a dualism between death and regeneration, I’m starting to see that the movement of healing, redemption, hope and birth might just have the ability to completely overwhelm our experience of death and mourning.

As quickly as I see people leave, new people come. As quickly as God takes away, he gives again, better.  At least that’s what I have to have faith for. Sometimes, in our present and past realities of brokenness, it is hard to see the present and future healing and redemption. But it is faith in that present and future reality of wholeness where we will no longer have to say goodbye that continues to drive me forward. These days, I find that I am no longer surrounded by death, but by the Kingdom of God ready to be birthed everywhere I look. I am challenged to see hope and life behind every disappointment and death.

The Smart & Final is leaving but in its place is a Henry’s, one of my favorite grocery stores. I can’t dwell on losing my discount bulk supplier, when what I get in exchange is a store with fresh produce, organic stuff and tons of more awesomeness.

Concerning age

Coming home always puts certain things in perspective, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

I was standing in line with my dad at Starbucks today. Behind us were a group of people from the class below me from my high school. I remembered them and the classes i had with them, but I did not remember their names, so I stood silent and listened as they carried along their conversation. “Well, I was just talking to Chris, and he says ‘STAY IN SCHOOL’. I think it’s stupid. He’s hiding. I mean, look, I work at Google now, you work with finance now… why do we need grad school for anything?” Then a haughty laugh. Man. I forgot how it was to be from Lynbrook Highschool, where success was already guaranteed to you just for going to the high school. I glanced back, and saw them dressed as if they were in their thirties already. I looked at myself. In a sweater jacket, a funny shirt, jeans and flip flops. All of a sudden, I just felt immature and silly. I just did not want to even try to start conversation to relearn their names anymore. I felt a strange shame, in that I was still a little kid, and not doing adult things. It’s strange to explain to these people who have grown up in the silicon valley with success as their destiny why I have chosen my path. And doing student ministry often feels as if I’m just doing some youthful splurge because I am trying to run away from adulthood. In reality, yes, there is much to be proud of my job. But when standing next to these people with their 100 grand jobs who expected me to do the same is just strange and jarring.

But simultaneously, in these last few weeks, this old feeling has started to overwhelm me, strangely dissonant with the feelings of immaturity I feel around these old high school friends. I have prayed with friends with diseases that shouldn’t be plaguing them at this age and don’t cure. I have had to sit with my grandma as she shows me her sugar level logs, stained with blood from the pricks in her finger and stomach she has to do everyday. I have had to speak at a memorial for a student who just recently passed away. I just recently had to sit bedside with a friend just a year older than I, who had just gone through his first batch of chemo treatments for cancer. I have been telling people that I have been feeling strangely old.

I was at a prayer meeting with the Mandarin congregation at my church up in San Jose. I told the two older ladies in my group that, “我觉得神要我的心长大很快。“ (I feel God wants my heart to grow very fast). I am growing up. But not in the way they predistined me to grow up during my time at Lynbrook where they laughed at me for not applying to any Ivy League schools and scratched their heads when I told them I was choosing to go to UCSD over UCLA. Age and maturity does not come with a big salary, big title or the fulfillment of a destiny of entitlement. Instead of entitlement, the maturity comes with a call to always find joy in the times of grief. To be inspired by my friend’s enduring faith that God will heal her even though we’ve prayed for it every week. To see the smile in my grandma’s face to see me with her poor vision and that her grandson has visited her. To see the joy that overrides grief at my student’s memorial as there was more laughter than tears when people saw the loving and cheerful impact he made at MiraCosta. To say goodbye to my friend who just finished with chemo in higher spirits than when we first got there. The grief is overwhelming. But the joy I see in the midst of all of this is inexplicable and unstoppable.

As I am in this airport pondering the “Kingdom that is here, but not yet”, I realizing that the “age and maturity” dictated by my Silicon Valley upbringing can just ring so hollow at times. Underneath this muddy and young exterior of jeans, a funny t-shirt, a sweater jacket and flip flops, perhaps there are diamonds of maturity being formed.

I have been realizing that as we grow up, God does not toy with us and manipulate us into His plan at our expense… but He brings us into something so undeniably and ravishly beautiful, that the pull of the grief, pain and shame of our path is but miniscule compared to the compelling gravity of His love and joy that endlessly pursues us. The joy and redemption is worth something, the scars are there, but the life we receive renders them as just marks of God’s grace.

The road is more painful and doesn’t feel as glorious, but it is irresistably filled with more of the grace of maturity than I could have ever deserved.

Unfair

I went to a black gospel church today with one of my students (which was really awesome. It struck some chords that have not been struck for a while… but that’s for another entry). A conversation really caught me off guard. I told a guy I was living in Carlsbad. He laughed and told me he got close, but “they” won’t let him live there. I laughed, telling him how guilty I felt (which is usually my comedy line when I tell people where I live). We both agreed I should count my blessings, with plenty of laughter in between.

What’s funny is that as I was driving back home, and crossed highway 78 from Oceanside to Carlsbad, I really did feel guilty. It didn’t feel like a joke tonight. It might actually be reality.

But I remembered what the guy said to me- “count your blessings”.

Just be thankful, and live fully, love fully. Sometimes, though, it’s so hard to live in such a broken yet beautiful world. My dad used to tell me I had to just accept that the world isn’t fair (“The world isn’t fair, Daniel”, as i wondered why my sister got the cooler toy (ha don’t worry, i have no bitterness, charissa)). But sometimes I wonder if it was meant and created to be unfair…

How do I love people on both sides of the unfairness? How do I remain in between and retain my sanity? My identity must rest in God, He is the only one who can empower me to love the rich and the poor at the same time in a community where the rich and the poor live so near one another (almost literally like “across the train tracks…” except it’s a freeway). I feel like I have a rich mask and then a poor mask, depending on which part of the Tricity area I’m in (and it’s ironic my mom came from a rich family and my dad came from a poor family). But God rips apart the masks and reveals that my identity (and the members of this community’s identities) is not rested upon social standing, but upon his passionate and unrelenting love for all of them- rich or poor.

The sunset over the ocean that I can see from our giant windows… is so beautiful, but so broken, because only the priveleged can view it from where I live. I know I must not be swallowed by guilt, but the question still haunts me… Is this sunset worth it? How can I share it?

Little things…

A lot of little things have been happening to me.

Like a lot of ants (perhaps thousands) making trails all over my room to reach one poor dead spider corpse i found under my bed.

Isn’t that a little bit of overkill???? Couldn’t they just send one little trail? Why several ant highways?? My room stank of ant death for the whole day. Heckuva way to start a morning…

But i promise many other occurrences have transpired this past week. last night it suddenly dawned on me that things could just be falling apart.

Took me about 12 hours before I could snap out of it and realized it was just an overhyped lie. Waking up to a room of ants didn’t help. But I realize that God is still working.

Better yet, as I find myself in places of success, God is showing me how insecure and weak I am without Him. I preached yesterday that satan tries to convince us that a) God doesn’t have a plan, b) even if he did have a plan, he can’t really bring it to completion c) Plus God doesn’t love you enough to do anything about it.
Jesus engages Satan and says a) God’s promise is enough b) God  is able to do all things c) God relentlessly loves us.

It is ironic that these 12 hours of *blah* occurred right after I taught this all to a group of beaming students. I feel so insecure because I haven’t let my own sermon transform me. And God was reminding me what it feels like in the desert, and how enticing the world’s view of success is. I cannot be defined by my success, or lack of it, in my ministry. Instead, I must let myself be defined by God’s love, and for my success to be defined by that same love. It was a 12 hour desert (thankfully… i’ve been in much longer ones), and perhaps a 12 hour crossroads to really think about how I wanted to view my own success.

Would I let my success define me? Or would I let my success be defined by God’s unrelenting love for me?

Fresh breaths of air… and some sushi I treated myself to… and something clicked and I remembered. I am loved, and I don’t have to perform in anyway to earn it. It’s a good feeling.

And I must remember… they’re just ants anyways. Sure… a thousand of them… but they’re still small . As organized as they are, they are no match for my can of extremely toxic and unhealthy can of Raid.

throwing around scripture

I have always had this dream of getting so heated up during a sermon that i’d throw a bible off the podium. Yes, it’s ridiculous, but it was the goal of my preaching. In my head, it would shock the congregation into weeping confession and passionate action. Yeah i know. Ridiculously conceited.  It was the goal… but I always stopped myself. It just seemed to gratuitous, and I felt if I needed to throw the Bible, it had better be important.

Today I threw a bible while preaching today. I blame it on not having enough coffee to maintain self-control. I just got a little… heated. And before you know it, a black, leather bound book was leaving my hands at speeds probably near 45 miles per hour. And then it hit somebody. Good thing it was a high schooler. And for some reason, it didn’t have the rush I imagined it would have. However, I believe the high schooler the bible hit had quite a rush .

haha. I’ll have to work on my throwing bible move. And think of a better move than throwing a bible for dramatic effect. I wonder what my next gratuitous preaching move will be. Perhaps it will involve a hammer, a bucket and a glass of water (If you’re from my SYS 1 class from NISET, you’ll know what i mean by that). Upon reflecting on that moment, I have been thinking about over-using illustrations or over-stimulating people in a sermon. I’d rather God hit somebody, not my Bible. But deep inside, I enjoyed catching that attention. God was perhaps shaking his head in amusement at my horrible attempt at imitating his wrath… with a book thrown at a high schooler. Hopefully Jesus will forgive me for my meddlings.

In more serious matters, I spoke at a chinese church today (Lord’s Grace Church San Diego). This was the first time I had the oppurtunity to publicly articulate the journey God has been taking me on to a Chinese audience. It was really good to publicly talk about it in front of an audience. Not only was it a good time of preaching, it was a good oppurtunity to think about where God has taken me this past year… and perhaps my life.

When I think about how God took me from wanting be a missionary at 5… and then my ethnic journey of me dreaming of being a missionary in any place of the world but China–> God humbling me on a missions trip to actually care about Chinese people as my own people–>wanting to see chinese people transform the world (back to jerusalem, baby!)–>realizing that meant I had to change it right here at my front doorstep, and it’d be a shame if i could not love my neighbor if I wanted to see entire nations transformed.

Strange windy path that somehow makes sense. It felt good to put it out there. It’s sometimes hard to explain it, because I just haven’t had the chance to. It’s worse when somebody is expecting an answer on why I’m at MiraCosta in perhaps 3 minutes, when I really need 35 minutes to explain it. And it has nothing to do with my long-windedness. It’s just that I really did not make a rash decision. It was an elaborate, methodological, strategic and heartfelt journey that God has taken me on and is still taking me on.

I feel like i’ve gone so far. And just like my silly throwing of bibles, I’m realizing my original goals were just too far, because God can achieve them in an instant. What i thought were goals were just trailhead markers for a trail towards an ominous but beautiful mountain. It’s time to tighten those laces, check my Northface camel back (how i wish I actually had a northface backpack) for water and start walking forward. Because that little ridge was just a precursor for something far greater and more glorious.

Asian America, Where are you?

more quotes

I’ve been reading a lot, so forgive me for all the quotes. They just keep coming.

I’ve been revisiting Henri Nouwen’s Compassion again. This book has destroyed me over and over again. Every 5 pages, I need to put the book down and fight the urge to publicly weep in the coffee shop. What’s crazy is that all the systematic theology I’ve been taking has made these words deeper and more powerful instead of more distant and abstract. Last night, Barth was talking about God’s simultaneous love and freedom- His nature of constantly giving love, and His all powerful freedom in that love. All of a sudden, the compassion revealed to us in Jesus makes sense to me in new powerful ways. meh. anyways, just needed to write down some of these quotes before I forget them.

—-

Through compassion our humanity grows into its fullness.

—-

When Jesus was moved to compassion, the source of all life trembled, the ground of all love burst open, and the abyss of God’s immense, inexhaustible and unfathomable tenderness revealed itself.

—–

In our modern society with its increasing mobility and pluriformity, we have become the subjects and often the victims of so many displacements that it is very hard to keep a sense of rootedness, and we are constantly tempted to become bitter and resentful. Our first and often most difficult task, therefore, is to allow these actual displacements to become places where we can hear God’s call. It often seems easier to initiate a displacement that we ourselves can control than freely to accept and affirm a displacement that is totally out of our hands…

Henri Nouwen, Compassion

Weddings, funerals and birthdays

This past weekend, I have been in the celebratory cheeriness of a wedding, the somber remembrance of a funeral and a birthday celebration of the ongoing journey of life.

It’s strange to say, but it’s in these moments, rhythms and seasons that I feel closest to God. It is in the summits of celebration and the depths of mourning that the presence of God is exposed the most. These moments aren’t just boring ritual anymore. They point to a richness. There is a richness in the rhythms of life that are undeniably from God.

If only my heart was always aware of that richness…

And then I realize my personal context. In this next year, I may very well be entering into a season of desert. It hasn’t occurred to me until the last few weeks that I am scared to the bone. I am afraid. I am afraid of not being able to find roommates. I am afraid of living alone. I am afraid of going to a new church. I am afraid of being forgotten. I am afraid I am in the wrong place. Everyone looks at me skeptically. They know the prospects in North County may very well kill me. They keep reminding me of this, as if I myself do not know this prospect of social death to the very core of who I am. It is hard to hide it, but right behind this thinly veiled attempt at faith, I am scared.

Will that fear blind me from seeing the richness of God’s presence? Or will it drive me to search for it even harder? Could it really be that God’s call for me to be in North County is not a call of obligation, but really an invitation to know Him? Is it really true that the price to pay for knowing Him is to join Him in His death? And that I could actually join in His sufferings joyfully?

She did. She suffered in ways I cannot fathom, but somehow was joyful, and somehow managed to bless so many people that they kept streaming up to the microphone, refusing to let the emcee close up the sermon(, with jars and jars of garlic. Who ever knew garlic could be so significant?). She knew her life was not her own, but was poured out as an offering to all those around her. (you know a stranger was a good person when you wish you had met her just from watching your friends mourn her absence)

I want to be that. It’s what my students deserve. It’s what North County deserves. I don’t know if my soul will survive this forced (temporary, for sure, and perhaps slightly illusional) solitude and displacement. It feels like death to me. But perhaps it should be that my soul will perish if it is not constantly brought into those very places of displacement and desert, where I am reminded that true life comes from above. It comes from above, and plentifully, to the point where I no longer have to hold onto it with a scarcity mentality and can give it away freely.

This question of survival keeps echoing in my head. Will you come out alive after these next few years, Daniel? Everyone asks me that. I ask myself that. I ask myself if it is worth it.

It is. Only one year of this half-way life of working in North county, but not living there has been worth it already. Seeing followers realize they are leaders. Seeing hearts transformed. Hearing somebody say “we’re not a club, we’re a movement”. Being challenged to pray by the very people I should be challenging to pray. Being called out. Raising up evangelists. Speaking truth. Making some students stop saying “I’m sorry”. Making other students begin to say “I’m sorry”. Witnessing a community partner with God to bring our friends to Christ. Letting God change me.

If I come out alive or dead (in a very shallow and hollow use of that word), I think the risk of not just working, but living here will be worth it. If I learned so much living half-way, how much more would I gain if I fully lived in North County?

love. death. life. The wedding, funeral and birthday seem to all be blurring into this beautiful, rich and redeemed picture of God’s grace. May my eyes be ever open so that I may never lose sight of that picture.