This Beautiful Mess

August 28, 2007 //

The headline of the September 3, 2007 issue of Time magazine made me hold my breath for a moment: “The Secret Life of Mother Teresa.” In this day & age, scandal among leading figures of faith is nothing new — but Mother Teresa?

Well, as it turns out, her “secret” is that she suffered a crisis of faith. I suppose in a culture where Mother Teresa is more of a cultural archetype than an actual human being, the fact that she struggled — mightily, at times — in her faith would be a shocking “secret” worthy of an expose. I would never wish a dark night of the soul upon anyone. The pain, the emptiness, the grief — these things can almost tear a person apart. But I find myself oddly reassured that Mother Teresa was a real human being, with very real questions, doubts and struggles. It gives me hope that, by the grace of God, I can become the person God intends for me to be. As Eugene Cho writes in his post about this article:

While I have joy in my convictions as a believer of God and follower of Christ, I am not afraid to call Mystery and Doubt my friends and acquaintances. They have accompanied my journey for some time…and have actually strengthened my walk with Christ.

It is almost human nature to love the idea of a person more than the physical human being in front of us. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that is a large part of why many relationships fail — we develop this idealized version of our beloved that can only lead to disappointment and failure. I love this quote from Bonhoeffer’s Life Together:

Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community, even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest and sacrificial.

Even though I’ve been serving in a first-generation immigrant church context for awhile now, I still struggle with understanding the Asian idea of saving face. At times, it feels like we are willfully misleading people in order to maintain the dream of the community, as opposed to entering the messy reality of one another’s lives. It’s safer and simpler to keep each other at arm’s length. But what costs so little yields a similarly cheap result.

I have really struggled over the last couple of weeks because of the circumstances of a family we know. The husband and wife have been contemplating divorce — difficult in any circumstance, but made even stickier in a first-generation immigrant setting. On top of that, the husband works for their church as a member of the first-generation staff. Unfortunately, their resolution seems to be sending off the husband to another country for “mission” work. This ridicules not only the sanctity of marriage, but also the calling to cross into another culture and serve in the name of Christ. The frightening thing is that I’m sure many of us could repeat almost verbatim the same story from our own church experience — it’s not love that covers over a multitude of sins, but a holy facade.

What would happen in the Asian American church if we acknowledged, and entered into, the mess of one another’s lives? We might have to fight our inner Homer Simpson shouting “Too much infor-mation!” and deal with the awkwardness of actually getting to know each other, but isn’t it worth it? The mess could become beautiful if we lived in it together. If you need a little inspiration, or a soundtrack to your messy spirituality, listen to this track, I Live In The Mess You Are, by Zookeeper (Chris Simpson of post-rock powerhouse Mineral and shoegaze wonders The Gloria Record).

Tags first generation

Categories asian american, books, church, controversy, faith, frustration, hope, ministry

Strong Enough For A Robot, But Made For A Human

August 23, 2007 //

I had the chance to meet up with DJ Chuang yesterday. It is fun to see social networking actually build community and friendships. It was great to get to know him more and pick his brain about a number of topics. We had a nice laugh over the way bloggers might be more likely to recognize one another by their site names than by their actual names. It makes me glad that I didn’t name my site “big nerd” or “xX1004QTaZnKimchigAngstaXx” (those of you in Asian American youth ministry know what I’m talking about).

After meeting with DJ in OC, we ventured out to LA — where we met a friend at the Giant Robot store. GR is probably best known for their magazine, which has covered Asian American pop culture since 1994. Being a fan of the magazine, I was excited to visit their Los Angeles store.

Maybe I had built it up too much in my mind, but when I first entered the store I was a little bit disappointed. To me, it was a little bit too small and a little bit too crowded. We bought our daughter a little Doremon keychain and went to meet our friend at the Giant Robot restaurant, gr/eats. (which, as Jonathan Gold has written, is a great place to eat with little ones).

Being a t-shirt junkie, I went back to the GR store after dinner and — after much deliberation with my daughter — picked up this shirt (and, no, that’s not me in the photograph). It was strange, but returning for a second visit left a very different impression on me. Maybe it was the tasty french fries I had just eaten at gr/eats (shoestring potatoes, yams and bananas) but the second time, in this case, was the charm. Actually, I think it was because the store was pretty empty and I was able to interact with the people working there — we talked about different magazines, music, and they helped my daughter find just the right Uglydoll (which she has since renamed “Sleeping Beauty”).

Community is such a funny thing. We find it in the most unlikely places — even the quickly disappearing indie record store. Whether it is connecting over common interests and life pursuits, sharing a nice meal together or helping someone sift through an entirely too large pile of Uglydolls, we are made to connect with one another.

Categories art, asian american, church, community, design, hooray!, indie, just grinning, reviews, youth ministry

It’s Like Space Without The Stars

August 21, 2007 //

Over the last couple of years, I have been drawn more & more toward the modern design aesthetic. I definitely want to live in a space that is comfortable and inviting — modernity has been caricatured for being cold and outlandish (think: the oddball Schoeners sketch from Saturday Night Live featuring Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph as strange Euro ultra-mods). I think I am drawn to the simplicity, clean lines and serenity the best of modern design and architecture can evoke.

What I took away from the film Soylent Green was not the socio-political commentary about class, age or the environment — no, my takeaway was an abiding love for this chair, featured briefly in one of the apartments from the film. In fact, to this day, although its proper name is the Barcelona chair I insist on referring to it as “the Soylent Green chair.” However, being able to afford even a “cheap” knockoff is kind of a pipe dream on our limited budget, so we have been forced to find creative ways to express our design aesthetic.

Recently, we have turned our attention towards creating some interest on our wall space. Blik is a great source for vinyl wall graphics — affordable and easy to install. Back in OC, we paired the blik Fly design with an accent wall we had painted a deep shade of aqua to dramatic effect (picture this image, but in reverse). We had been considering a couple of whimsical designs for our current place: the blik Zipper (vaguely reminiscent of Michael Jackson’s Beat It jacket) and Me, Myshelf and I (fake bookshelves, complete with fake book & vase graphics). In the end, though, both designs are a little bit too smirky or hipster-ironic for our tastes.

We did, however, recently install a small DIY art project that we picked up at My Own Space in La Jolla. The seaweed-like design above is called Algue, created by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec. As highbrowfurniture describes, “Algue is interlocking plastic ‘branches’ that can be easily assembled to create web-like wall hangings, freeform sculptures, organic scrims or dramatic room dividers. You become your own designer!”

We had some good friends stay with us this past weekend, and their five-year old daughter asked my wife what was hanging on the wall. Here is an approximate recap of their conversation:

Child, pointing at the Algue hanging on the wall: Eemo (aunt), what’s that?

Adult: Well, you know when you go into the ocean, there’s seaweed. It’s supposed to look kind of like that.

Child: (Silence. Confused expression.)

Adult: It doesn’t look like that to you?

Child: (More silence. More confusion.)

Adult: Well, it’s art. It can look like whatever you want it to look like. That’s what art is — you get to decide what it means.

Child: (Further silence. Extreme confusion.)

Adult: It’s seaweed.

Child’s father, shouting from a distance: Are you trying to teach my daughter about art?!

We ended up choosing the white Algue to hang on our white walls. Reminds me of the scene in Spinal Tap, where Nigel Tufnel looks at the edited cover of their new album (which replaced the horribly offensive cover “art” with an all-black cover) and asks, “It’s like how much more black could this be? And the answer is none, none more black.”

Categories art, design, family, films, reviews

More Illinoise, Please

August 20, 2007 //

I first picked up an issue of The Believer back in the summer of 2005 — mostly because of the great compilation CD, I Am Not Going To Stab You, that came with that particular issue. I find it hard to keep up with those literary-type magazines (all those little words crammed in together, and not enough photos!) — but The Believer has once again delivered the goods with their most recent comp: Cue The Bugle Turbulent.

Of particular interest is the track delivered by Sufjan Stevens, which has become one of my new favorite things. Apparently, the compilers asked Sufjan to write a “rock” song, and so he did. In the Words of the Governor is a face melting barn burner by Sufjan’s usual gentle, symphonic standards. Reviewers have compared this song with fellow Michiganders The White Stripes and with avant-noise enthusiasts Polvo. It’s nice to hear Sufjan and company play it loose & fuzzy once in awhile — it provides a clever counterbalance for the achy acoustic plucking, sweeping strings and peppy horn arrangements we’re used to hearing from them. Listen to “In the Words of the Governor” for yourself here.

Categories hooray!, indie, music, reviews

Blessed Are The Overbearing

August 17, 2007 //

Jamie Arpin-Ricci recently wrote a great piece called, “Being Brian McLaren.” No, it’s not an emerging version of an RPG (yikes!) where you can write books or go on nationwide speaking tours — rather, Jamie speaks out about the way certain camps of Christianity have been in all-out attack mode on McLaren, and how he might feel about such things (thus, the title of Jamie’s post).

If you want to see this in action, just type “emerging church” in your favorite search engine and watch the sparks fly. Some people, in the name of upholding a certain doctrine, theology or orthodoxy, apparently feel that it is justifiable to insult, slander and generally resort to mean-spirited tactics (even name-calling). I see people drag names like Brian McLaren or Rob Bell into conversations that really have nothing to do with them on a regular basis, just to find a reason to attack them.

While I do not agree with everything they have ever written or said (does such a person exist with whom we can agree on everything, anyways?), I appreciate many of the thoughts, insights and opinions McLaren and Bell have offered to the Church. I understand that these two, in particular, are very public figures and thus open to a different kind of scrutiny than other individuals, but that hardly gives license for the kind of vitriol and nasty rhetoric some people have used against them.

I think their harshest critics operate under a set of false assumptions. The first: Jesus needs them to be His personal bodyguard to fend off the heretics and blasphemers. I don’t remember Jesus saying, “Now go into all the world, with shrill tones and snap judgments, mimicking the talking heads and pundits of 21st century American media and let loose on the people you think I don’t like.”

Please don’t misunderstand: Truth is central to our faith. However, I think we miss something crucial when we treat truth as a set of static propositions with which we can bash others who deviate from our perception of it. Truth changes us. From the beginning, God has been concerned about our hearts. As such, it doesn’t make sense to stomp around angrily all in the name of “truth.” I wonder how much we really believe if we’re not actually being changed.

The second false assumption: You can change someone’s opinions through finger-pointing and yelling. From my experience, these kinds of angry exchanges only serve to further entrench people in their established positions. Maybe it speaks to my reprobate heart, but when people come on too strong it makes me want to disagree with them, even if I actually agree with what they’re saying. It’s a lesson I’ve learned from my wife — the way in which we say something is just as important as what we say.

The Bible has a lot to say about working for peace. Jesus Himself holds peacemakers in pretty high esteem. This is not just wimpy “I’m OK, you’re OK” pop psychology where we sweep our differences under the rug. Jesus was pretty realistic about the trouble we would encounter as we live our lives — but He was also realistic about His role in helping us overcome our differences. He was clear about how we are to treat one another. I don’t see any conditional clauses — if they subscribe to every bullet point of your doctrine, if they hate all the same people you hate, etc. — just a simple command: love each other.

Categories boo!, church, controversy, emerging church