Making Conversation

February 1, 2008 //

Because of my increasing introversion and shyness (and general mental sluggishness) I often find it difficult to make conversation with other people — strangers, in particular. According to this article, How To Be A Great Conversationalist, I’m on the right track because at least I’m not an interrogator or a braggart. Sometimes I worry about wasting someone else’s time with small talk. Other times I just don’t get the words out.

For example, here was a conversation I had awhile back at my daughter’s preschool. I was taking my daughter out of the car in the parking lot and we were just heading over to her classroom. Another parent was driving by, stopped and said out the window:

Person: Go Blue!
Me: ?
Person: I saw your Michigan plates the other day — we’re from Michigan too! (smiling)
Me: Oh. That’s nice! (grin)

In my mind, I was thinking, “Both my brother and sister are Wolverines! Hail to the Victors!” and I was all set to make the Michigan map on my right hand and ask where they were from. But, somehow, the words just floated away. I find this happening with greater frequency.

Should I worry, or should I just Wiki it?

Categories asian american, communication, community, just grinning

ABC, Easy As 1-2-3

January 31, 2008 //

While I know very little about the graphic novel world (Didn’t we used to call them comics? I kid, I kid… please direct all angry fanboy mail to my publicist), I was very excited to read about American Born Chinese.

In ABC, the first graphic novel to be nominated for a National Book Award, Gene Luen Yang tells the story of three different characters: a Chinese American boy, the Monkey King and “Chinkie” – not the Bay Area ska-punk sensation The Chinkees, but a character amalgamated from exaggerated Chinese and Asian stereotypes. It is truly disturbing to hear that some people have actually told Yang they think that the Chinkie character is “cute.”

NPR has put together a great audio slide show of selected panels from ABC, in which he talks about his background as an author and the social/historical setting of this book. Watching the slideshow of panels from ABC and hearing Yang’s narration transported me back to my days of growing up in a predominantly white school. In particular, his words about struggling with his shame over his parents’ culture struck a familiar chord with me. I’m not sure what it is, but graphic novels such as Persepolis or Maus are able to evoke emotions in a way that other media cannot.

While this book deals specifically with the Asian American experience, there is something universal in the themes of dealing with shame and discovering identity, as Yang expresses at the conclusion of his narration. You can find a longer interview with Gene Luen Yang on the Bryant Park Project here (click on the “listen now” link near the top of the page).

** Edit: Looks like NPR is on a roll here — Terry Gross interviewed Adrian Tomine on Fresh Air today about his graphic novel, Shortcomings, a story about race, identity and love. Check out the interview with Tomine here. A New York Times review from November 2007 says:

Unlike the more playful graphic novelists who influenced him, Daniel Clowes (“Ghost World,” “David Boring”) and the Hernandez brothers (“Love and Rockets”), Tomine isn’t given to flights of surrealism, rude jests or grotesque images. He is a mild observer, an invisible reporter, a scientist of the heart. His drawing style is plain and exact. The dialogue appearing inside his cartoon balloons is pitch-perfect and succinct. He’s daring in his restraint.

Categories art, asian american, books, communication, design, family, race, second-generation

They’re All Our Daughters

January 28, 2008 //

I still haven’t gotten my mind wrapped around all of things God was doing at the Passion::Los Angeles regional event from this past weekend. Perhaps I will be able to unpack some of these things soon but the thought of how closely worship and justice are knit together absolutely gripped my heart.

Although I am doing one thing he specifically requested we not do after hearing him speak in saying this, Francis Chan is everything you’d want a speaker to be — dynamic, funny, engaging. I mentioned to our youth group students this morning at church that if God zaps certain people with lightning bolts of communication ability, Francis Chan is definitely one of them. While I certainly appreciate his giftedness, it is the heart of God that comes through so passionately when I have heard him speak.

During one of his messages, he shared about an artist he knows from Thailand who had been teaching children. As she spent time with them, she discovered that child after child had been forced into prostitution. So she did what she knew was right. This artist would enter these brothels, find these children — each beloved, made in the image of God — and literally steal them away from this life of degradation and exploitation. Quickly, she was receiving imminent, credible death threats, so she took all of her children to safety. Today, she awakes every morning to a houseful of rescue, 120 children.

Francis went on to say that he loves college students because they will do crazy things. For example, if he told this gathering of over 3000 college students that he had chartered six planes to go to Thailand so that we could run into these dark places and rescue as many kids as we could, he knew that they would be filled. If those hypothetical planes had been waiting on the tarmac at LAX, even though my college days are distant memory, I would have left that night to go.

Even as I sit here and type these words, my heart rages against the sin, decay and brokenness of our world. How do we live in a world in which evil men and women would abuse children in such unspeakable ways? When Francis brought his oldest daughter out on the stage as he was speaking on this, I could not help but hold my own daughter close to my heart. If it were our daughters out there, we wouldn’t be sitting comfortably in our churches, critiquing the songs — Well, David Crowder shouldn’t have used that Guitar Hero Flying V during Neverending. I would have used the Gibson SG, and on and on — we would move heaven and earth and until they were safe.

They’re all our daughters. Each one of these children upon whom the worst depravity of humanity has been unleashed bears the indelible imprint of our Creator and is unimaginably loved by Him. I love my daughter more and more each year. Becoming a dad is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I would do anything for her, and it is overwhelming to imagine what God’s heart must feel like when He sees what is happening to His children around the world.

My heart felt like it was being crushed in a vice grip when Francis spoke of Jesus’ words in Matthew 25 — they’re all our daughters, they are all created and loved by God and, in some barely comprehensible way, they are all Jesus. Who else could be more aptly described as the least of these? It is unbearable to imagine Jesus — Jesus — hungry, naked, thirsty, imprisoned, voiceless, oppressed and yet, when we choose to bring light into dark places, to come against such horror with redemption and rescue, to allow our worship to overflow into righteousness and justice, we have done it for Him.

To learn more or to find ways to get involved, here some organizations committed to bringing about justice in our broken world:

Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream! – Amos 5:23-24

Categories college, communication, faith, family, hope, justice, prayer

No, But I Play One On TV

January 25, 2008 //

This morning I went to drop off our daughter at her preschool. As I was searching the courtyard for the coffee, an elderly woman approached me. She asked something, but I was so intent on my coffee hunt that I did not hear her the first time. Then she asked again, a little bit louder: “Excuse me. Are you a custodian?”

I mean, I know I end up doing a lot of mopping, moving and other miscellaneous custodial work around the church, but is it that obvious, even to the casual observer? Quickly, she realized that I wasn’t and she smiled again and said, “Oh, you’re a parent!”

Maybe it was the gloves I’ve been wearing lately. Because our church is extremely cold during the week (well, cold if you’re a completely Southern California acclimatized person like me — did I really grow up in Michigan?), and because my hands are cold most of the time anyways, I went out to the local drugstore and picked up a pair of two dollar magic gloves. The magic quickly wore off, however, when I realized that I couldn’t type with those gloves on. So I did what any reasonable person would do and I cut off the fingertips. While these aren’t Grizzly Paw weightlifting gloves, Patrick Swayze Roadhouse-style motorcycle gloves, or awesome 80s flashbacks, my low budget fix keeps me warm as I type away (and mop the hallways and move tables, etc.).

Actually, my goal is to be like John Bender, Judd Nelson’s erstwhile criminal of The Breakfast Club. Such a range of emotion — subtle rebellion sowing, righteous defiance, earring-switching sensitivity, Friday casual, straight up kicking it, victorious anti-hero. — and all of this based on the gloves. Not even Principal Vernon, with his confusing I love rock-n-roll but the next time I have to come in here I’m cracking skulls hand gestures could stop this force of nature.

Yes, that is what I’ll keep telling myself. It was the gloves.

Categories church, family, just grinning

From Monuments To Movements

January 24, 2008 //

Ten years ago, I was looking for some Bible study material at a Christian bookstore on the East Coast when I came across a cassette tape (!) for “Passion ’98: Live Worship from the 268 Generation.” Although I had no idea what a 268 Generation was, I liked the design on the cover so I picked it up that day. Like many others, my first connection with the Passion movement was through their music.

My wife and I, along with two friends, road tripped it over 20 hours from New Jersey out to Tennessee for the first OneDay event in 2000 (if you watch closely, you can spot us on the DVD). Since then, we have been to several Passion events — Thirsty, campus tours, various concerts & conferences, etc. We are bringing a group of college students from our church out to Los Angeles on Friday and Saturday for the Passion ’08 west coast regional event.

I really admire Louie Giglio, the founder and catalyst behind Passion. For being an extremely influential person, Louie is down-to-earth and very approachable. Once, when my wife and I were down in Atlanta as part of the ramp-up to OneDay ’03, Louie asked if we needed a ride back from dinner and we had a nice, albeit brief, conversation together in his car. Almost two years later, towards the end of ’04, we were in Manhattan for the last of the Passion events being held around the city and we saw Louie briefly before the event began. He actually remembered us, and greeted us warmly. I don’t mean to imply that I am “friends” with Louie at all; rather, I think these little stories show the heart and humility behind the Passion movement.

Louie often shares that there is no new theme for the Passion events — it’s always the same: the glory of God. While I love the music of Passion, it is the message that resonates deeply with me: that there is no higher calling, no bigger story, no more worthy cause than to live completely for God’s glory.

I don’t believe that events should be the primary catalyst for growing as followers of Christ. More and more, I am convinced that it is the living out of what we believe in the everyday and in between that causes our love for God and others to deepen. That being said, part of what draws me to Passion is that they’re not just about the events (which, by the way, are always creative and inspiring). In Louie’s own words:

Jesus is a movement. He’s not into monuments, systems or external structures. He is a river of life. “And everywhere the river flows, everything lives.” Movements are fluid. Movements move. Movements are not always predictable.

Join with us in praying that God would raise up a collegiate generation — a movement — who lives for something more than wealth, power or fame, whose life and breath would be spent to proclaim the beauty, wonder and glory of our God everyday.

Categories church, college, community, design, faith, ministry, music, worship