Archives for category: family

Thanksgiving, Detroit Style

November 20, 2007 //

We’re back in Michigan this week, to celebrate Thanksgiving with my folks. It’s been awhile since they’ve seen their one and only granddaughter, and they are loving it. We are catching up on some much-needed rest this week (after all, there’s not really much to do around here other than rest).

As all Michiganders know, Thanksgiving means family, turkey and a Lions football game. My Michigan sports fanhood has been put to the test over the last couple of years. It’s great and all that the Red Wings and Pistons have compiled impressive regular season stats, but when it comes to the post-season, both teams find new ways each season to crush our collective hopes & dreams. Don’t even get me started on U of M. After tanking it early and then mounting a faux-comeback this season, at least they had the decency to put themselves out of contention before bowl season. Usually, they string us along until some New Year’s Day bowl game and then flop.

…which brings us to Thanksgiving. Usually reliable in their wretchedness, the Lions started the first half of this season with a roar. But, after back-to-back losses to the Cardinals (ugh) and the Giants (double ugh) it looks like the typical cycle of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance has begun all over again. With the resurgent 9-1 Packers’ defense offering bounties on the most-sacked QB in the league (and the Goo Goo Dolls playing the halftime show), things are not looking good for the Lions.

In case all of this bad news has cast a pall over your Thanksgiving weekend, I offer to you this video of Frank Caliendo. I’m no fan of Mad TV, of which Caliendo is an alum, but this series of sports impressions is amazing stuff. It’s not just that he mimics the voices of such notable announcers as John Madden, Jim Rome, Bill Walton and Charles Barkley with such accuracy, but he captures the eccentricity and quirks of each personality. Seriously, his riff on Detlef Schrmpf is worth the price of admission alone.

Categories family, hooray!, just grinning

Two Kinds of Hatred

November 14, 2007 //

Does My Lunch Tell My Story?

Recently, I’ve spent more time than usual considering Asian American identity. The great comments on my recent post about the upcoming San Diego Asian American leadership gathering and its ethos and my daughter’s time in her predominantly white preschool have propelled much of this thinking.

Kathy, over at More Than Serving Tea, shares a great family story about her kids bringing Rice & Seaweed in the Thermos to school for lunch and the stress & worry that created for her. My daughter usually eats lunch at home, but she recently began to attend a “lunch bunch” program at her church. It crushed me to hear her say that she didn’t want to bring chicken and rice to school because she didn’t want the other kids to think she wasn’t “English.” It reminded me of my utter dismay at having my Caucasian friends discover the crazy varieties of kimchi my mom had bottled up around the house.

In Between Two Worlds

We have always done our best to help our daughter understand that she is Asian and American, and that is exactly how God created her to be. We have tried to foster in her heart a confidence in God and in her God-given identity. Since she’s growing up as an American girl, we work hard to show her the benefits of being Asian as well — that it is part of what makes her unique and fun, and that she doesn’t have to blend in with the crowd. Both my wife and I struggled with our sense of belonging and worth during our formative years and we want our daughter to enjoy being herself. We want to walk beside her, lead her, and listen to what’s happening in her heart — in ways that our parents, though they wanted to, could not have.

Two Kinds of Hatred

From what I’ve seen and experienced, the Asian American struggle with identity often breaks down into two kinds of hatred: hatred of Asian culture, and hatred of self. While these two struggles certainly interact and feed into one another, I believe we can approach them in slightly different ways.

Elderj wrote a great piece about Self Hatred & the Gospel in which he identifies the self-hatred that lies just beneath the surface of the critiques Korean Americans have against their churches and their culture. Although I always enforced the “take off your shoes before entering my house” rule among my non-Asian friends growing up (oh, the controversy!), I often struggled with the mysterious rules & regulations of my Asian heritage. So what if I was the oldest son of the oldest son in his family? Why did my parents think my friends were rude for not identifying themselves on the phone before asking for me? Even for my AA friends who grew up with more detailed explanations of their Asian heritage and among more Asian people, there was still a profound disconnect — even disdain — for many of their Asian customs & practices.

On a deeper level, I knew many AA friends who simply hated who they were. In what would have been humorous in another context, I learned the word “loathe” in fifth grade when an older friend explained how he “loathed” being Korean — I was confused, because it sounded like he “loved” being Korean, when I knew full well that he felt quite the opposite. He explained to me that it was more than hatred, but that he was disgusted with his Korean-ness. Whether it is the overt acts of racism against them or the undercurrent of being a permanent outsider, many Asian Americans turn their hurt, sorrow and frustration against themselves.

The Image of God

Dealing with the hatred of Asian culture is a relatively straightforward proposition. It might be as simple as pointing out the many positive aspects of our cultures — the awesome eats, greater sense of connectedness, commitment to family, sweet Samsung flat screen TVs (you know, the really important stuff). This struggle might create the opportunity to talk about what it means to be unique, to see how different cultures shape and inform who we are (for better and for worse) — hopefully, to live in the best of both worlds.

The hatred of self is a much deeper issue. Ultimately, I believe this is a profoundly theological question — not just one of sin and death and salvation, but of redemption. Our churches do a pretty good job of driving home the point that we are wretched sinners, desperately in need of mercy — worms incapable of any good thing. I’m being hyperbolic, but not by much. Just last week, a recent college grad at our church shared about how his “discipleship” program in college consisted mostly of his “discipler” condemning and guilt-tripping him. It’s not too hard to convince people who already hate themselves that they are awful, disgusting sinners.

Please hear me: we are all guilty. Sin has left the world, and our souls, utterly broken. But Jesus tells a story of rescue and redemption. Perhaps in our desperation for orthodoxy, we neglect to tell the story of the imago dei — that we are all made in the image of God. That this imago dei story was first and that Christ’s victory over sin and death creates the possibility of restoration. Perhaps a more robust theology will allow us to see that God purposefully and joyfully created us as Asian Americans. Instead of holding up “whiteness” as the standard and ultimate goal, perhaps theology can actually be useful to help us break free from this captivity.

I love that, when Jesus finally greets us on that day, He doesn’t demand that we give up our heritage. In fact, the scenes of worship and adoration in Revelation become even more glorious when we begin to hear the distinct languages and see the unique faces of all of those gathered around the Lamb.

Categories asian american, church, community, faith, family, health, ministry, race, reconciliation

A Glorious Noise

November 5, 2007 //

Last Friday, our family went to see Architecture in Helsinki perform live at the House of Blues here in San Diego. The House of Blues has a “pass the line” policy, where concertgoers can be the first in line if they dine at the HoB restaurant. Because we wanted to make sure to get seats in the balcony, we ended up having dinner there before the show (which, it turns out, was pretty good). After dinner, we jumped the line and sat front row, center in the balcony.

Unfortunately, the first two acts were a serious letdown. Panther, which is essentially just one person, a delay pedal and a bunch of blips & bloops, was kind of fun for the first two songs. I think his music is more interesting in recorded form, as seen in this video clip for You Don’t Want Yr Nails Done. At least he brought along a live drummer. Glass Candy, on the other hand, was just a boy cranking out pseudo Kool & The Gang riffs on a half-size synth and a girl aerobacising and vocalizing in between the overly plentiful stage banter.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not opposed to indie kids discovering the dance floor. I mean, look at Matt and Kim. Some criticize them for being too precious, but it’s hard to deny their enthusiasm and joy. Check out their video for Yea Yeah and see if it doesn’t brighten up your day:

Our family loves all manner of live music, but even our daughter turned to me at one point during the Glass Candy set, frowned and shrugged. All I could do was shrug back. Things turned around quickly, however, as soon as Architecture in Helsinki took the stage.

From the get-go, they brought a level of raucous joy and excellent musicianship that basically turned a bunch of motionless indie kids into Dance Party USA. Listeners are helpless to do anything except smile and dance. Our little one was a total trooper, staying awake as late as she could. She stayed long enough to hear her favorite song, Like It Or Not (or, as she calls it, “The Trumpet Song”) — a hopped-up conga-line singalong extravaganza, before we had to call it a night.

Just to pick up a thought I had started before, I really, really wish I could experience this kind of joy and freedom in our church music. Seriously, when was the last time a worship band caused you to spontaneously smile and start dancing? Architecture in Helsinki definitely has that DIY, everyone’s invited kind of indie vibe, but they are not sloppy in their execution — for being basically an ensemble band, they are extremely tight. And, because they are so good at what they do, they are free to enjoy the music and draw others into it. A nice template for our worship bands, no?

These days, it seems like a band’s image is as important as the music they create. So, it is refreshing to see a bunch of normal looking people, not particularly dressed up get up onstage and rock the set. It worries me when, on all of my worship discs, every person has radiant skin, straight teeth and perfect hair — I’m not trying to take away anything from these artists, but simply hoping that our communities are open to all kinds of people, onstage or otherwise.

As the psalmist says, “Sing the glory of his name; make his praise glorious.”

Categories church, communication, community, emerging church, faith, family, hooray!, indie, music, reviews, worship

Up Close After The Firestorm

October 26, 2007 //

As Eugene Cho wrote recently in southern california is burning, it can be hard to actually enter into another person’s experience. Even for us, right in the midst of the firestorm and its aftermath here in SD, there can be a strange disconnect. Like others around the nation, we’ve been watching the firestorm from the television. As Shane Hipps comments, “The screen always wins.” I mean, we are here and it wasn’t even a week ago that we were grabbing only the essentials as we evacuated through the smoke and sirens early in the morning and yet watching the constant news feed has a strange, dulling effect. The sense of being “informed” creates a false sense of understanding, which can easily create a barrier to actually engaging the reality of individual people’s lives.

Sometimes it takes just being there to feel and understand it. During our return back to San Diego, we drove past the Camp Pendleton fires which created a menacing black cloud through which we had to drive. This junky cell phone photo (which, not to worry, were taken by my wife from the passenger seat!) shows how powerful one small brush fire can be — the hills and valleys in the immediate vicinity were, at the time, pretty well ablaze, so you can imagine what the larger scene looked like:

* * * * *

However, more than just driving by, what brought home the impact of these fires for me was helping a church family try to deal with the aftermath. This particular family lives in one of the hard-hit neighborhoods and were just able to re-enter today. After much worrying and wondering, they were relieved to find their home in good condition. Their neighbor five houses, down, however, was not so fortunate:

I have heard about the random nature of fires — one house will be perfectly fine, the next completely leveled. But it is an altogether different experience to see it with my own eyes. We spent most of the afternoon trying to clean up the ash and soot that covered most of everything and to try to make their place livable again.

On Monday, while were still greeting evacuees at our church, a stranger wandered into our education building. After talking for a bit, finding out some of his story and giving him some bus fare, he said (regarding the wildfires), “You know, people call these kinds of things ‘acts of God.'” I told him I didn’t think that was an accurate description of what was happening. As much as we’re all grateful that God has spared our homes, can we really say that we out-prayed or received more favor from God than those who lost their homes? I don’t think this is a straightforward one-to-one proposition — otherwise, we’d all end up losing our places, wouldn’t we?

* * * * *

After cleaning the front of the house and the garage, we moved to the backyard — which, if we didn’t realize it before, definitely put into perspective how close they came to losing their house. One family member saw the garden hose in the back and didn’t remember leaving it out, and then we saw this burnt out palm tree, not even ten feet from the house:

We could only guess that either a firefighter or neighbor who stayed behind saw the burning palm tree and doused the flames with the garden hose. Just beyond the white fence is the ravine through which the fire cut a brutal path — embers kicked up from the Santa Ana winds must have caught the house five doors down.

However, the street just across the gulch was hit much harder. I passed house after house that looked as if some angry, mythic giant had just stomped on them; but there was the same randomness — one house was hit, the next three were fine, and then two in a row were gone. News crews were out in full force (I saw at least three), chronicling the heartbreak of families trying to salvage whatever they could.

* * * * *

My daughter attends the preschool of a church in this community in which 57 families lost their homes. Tonight, they hosted a gathering of worship, prayer and sharing. It did our hearts good to stand with others in our community who have lost it all and yet can say, “We are survivors; God is with us” as we did as a modified benediction today. Reading Scripture together, seeking God and interceding on behalf of others, sitting together in silence. The old hymn, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” came together with a new resonance tonight.

We realized tonight that, in our longing for connection, community is not going to come to us — we have to pursue it, build it wherever we are. If you are in the San Diego area, there are plenty of people in need. Some need help sifting through the rubble, some might need special expertise navigating the maze of FEMA and insurance, and some might just need you to listen to their stories and weep with them. Let’s be the body of Christ to a hurting world. Or, as Donald Miller writes, followers of Christ are called to live “as if something was broken in the world and we were supposed to hold our palms against the wound.”

Categories church, community, environment, faith, family, health, ministry, outreach, prayer

Home And The Things That Count

October 25, 2007 //

After an arduous and extremely surreal couple of days on the run, we are finally back home.

Apart from the ash covering the stairs and landing in front of our place, things are looking pretty normal around here. However, that sigh of relief that I breathed upon seeing our apartment complex still standing was followed quickly by a prayer for the thousands who have now found themselves homeless. Or, perhaps even worse, still do not know the status of their place — as is the case with one of our church families.

* * * * *

Today, we awoke at my father-in-law’s place before six in the morning to the sound of sirens wailing in the near distance. After making sure things were settled down at church on Monday, we drove straight up to Orange County to my father-in-law’s place because they were uncomfortably close to the Santiago Fire (apparently — inexplicably — the result of arson). We wanted to makes sure we were there to help them evacuate, if necessary. After all, our church community has one another, but we are the only family around to help my father-in-law.

It was the sound of police sirens that first alerted us to the evacuation up in Rancho Bernardo, so when we heard them in OC my heart was pounding as I raced to the computer to find out what was happening. Unfortunately, they are still using a dial-up connection to the internet. I was not aware that people still used dial-up. This was, perhaps, a divine test of my patience, as pages that take more than five seconds or so to load usually drive me nuts. After what seemed like an eternity, I was finally able to locate the number to the local sheriff and to the Santiago Fire hotline. I received assurances from both that the danger was not imminent, and there were no evacuations for this community. This, despite the fact that we could see the flames from the second-floor balcony and ash was beginning to fall like snow.

We spent the remainder of the morning calling every church family we could, making sure everyone was alright. Throughout the morning, we kept receiving the good report that many were able to repopulate their homes. We also kept in contact with the local sheriff’s department and fire hotline to make sure there were no local evacuations. After receiving assurances that things were stabilizing around OC, we made the trek down the 5 freeway back to San Diego. We passed through the area of the Camp Pendleton fires, which had caused intermittent closings of the 5 throughout the morning. Though this fire was “small” in comparison to some of the beasts that have been raging across Southern California, there is something extremely emotional about seeing a wildfire up close. I’m just glad that our daughter was sleeping as we passed through the hellish, billowing smoke that blackened the afternoon sky.

* * * * *

Something cynical inside me wants to rebel against the constant media barrage and emotional manipulation — the Kenny G tracks playing over photo montages of people weeping in front of their burning homes, the breathless “on the scene” reporters, the grandstanding talking heads using the crisis to yammer on about their pet political stance.

Firefighters battling Southern California blazes, from SignOnSanDiego.com And yet, there is no denying some of what has unfortunately almost become cliche during these kinds of tragedies. There can be no doubt about the heroism of the hundreds of firefighters who have fought these blazes day and night. With hardly enough time to rest for a moment, these brave men & women have put their lives on the line to save lives and homes. One family lost their home, but firefighters found a safe moment to dash into the home and grab some photos before all was lost. As one firefighter said during an interview, “Every home is our home.”

I don’t mean to sound gratuitous in saying this (I never use this as sermon material), but I am reminded of 9/11. We were on the ragged edge of disaster there as well — living just across the bridge to the city in Palisades Park. We have heard it so many times, but when everyone else was running away from the burning towers hundreds of firefighters were running toward them. And we have seen the same selfless heroism on display this week.

In fact, the reason we felt secure in leaving my father-in-law in Orange County was because of the incredible work of the understaffed firefighters to make a stand against the Santiago Fire. Almost on sheer will it seems, they have beaten back the beast.

* * * * *

The crazed dash to evacuate our place really put things into perspective for us in terms of what is really important. I was really pleased to receive my Junky Car Club membership in the mail a couple of weeks ago, but I wasn’t quite ready to live out their motto, “Learning to live with less so that we can give more” by losing everything we own to the firestorm. However, amidst the sirens and smoke, ash and adrenaline as we evacuated the blaze, what really mattered was getting our family out of there.

I am so thankful for my wife and daughter. My wife was the first one to bring panicked church members together to pray — and not only for the winds to cease and the fire to fall back, but for our community to seek God’s heart. During the non-stop news reports, our four-year old daughter kept asking if our place burned down. We tried explaining that we hoped things were fine, but even if we lost our place that God would still take care of us. Finally, we realized she was concerned that her dolls would be hurt and that she was not there to help them escape. Today, we heard a story on the radio about a man who bought out the local big box retailer for children’s backpacks. Our daughter asked us why he did that, and we explained that there were lots of kids at the stadium who lost all of their stuff in the fires. Her eyes lit up and she said earnestly, “I have toys at home. I can share with them!”

* * * * *

There is an uneasy calm as things get back to “normal” around here. Will tomorrow bring another phone call about a friend who lost a home? When can we stop wearing masks outside? Can the talking heads and pundits wait until at least next week before launching their politicized tirades against whomever?

I am worn out. And, even in saying that, I feel guilty because I know there are many others just down the street who do not have luxury of typing those words in the comfort of their home. All I can do is join the psalmist and pray:

The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer;
my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge,
my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

Thank you for your prayer, concern and offers of shelter and help — you have been God’s tangible grace to our family. May God continue to have mercy on all of us here.

Categories community, faith, family, health, prayer