commemorating a father

another death.  two of the best men i've known have now passed away unexpectedly within 7 months of each other.

.....blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.....

i first met jeff in the middle of nowhere, back when i taught english in a mountainside farm town of 30,000 people in one of the poorest counties in china.  i mentioned in a blog post on Feb 20, 2005 that two travelling worship bands were planning to play a concert at our school.  one of their leaders happened to be a lively, wisecracking japanese-american who made it a point to strike up a conversation with every person who crossed his path, language barriers be damned.

five years, a wife, and a couple intercontinental moves later, my friend mentioned a pastor in north taipei whose calling was to disciple and mentor men.  his name popped up in a couple other places and a short while later i received a distinct impression from the Lord, telling me to meet this man, that he would play a significant role in my life.

i walked into oasis church in 天母 one sunday in the fall of 2010 and found myself staring at the lively japanese-american who was cracking jokes to the congregation as he preached his sermon.  after the service i walked up to him and he stared back at me.  what...you...baojing?!

he introduced me to his amazing wife, i introduced him to mine, and they unofficially adopted us into their family.  from that point on, taiwan became home.  over the next few years, jeff and his wife poured into us like nothing we'd ever experienced before.

.....Your love, Lord, reaches to the heavens, Your faithfulness to the skies.
Your righteousness is like the highest mountains, Your justice like the great deep.....

this has been a dark year.  i don't understand why good men are dying early deaths and why pain seems to be increasing.  i don't understand it, i don't like it, and...somehow it has only strengthened my conviction in the goodness of God.

a couple months ago i wrote the following email to friends who suffered a late term miscarriage:

i can't imagine the depths that must creep up on you when you let your guard down or even just pause a moment to reflect.  i can't imagine the intensity of the wrestling that may be going on inside your hearts and your spirits.  but i know our God is big enough to take all of your pain, all your grief, all your blackness, and give you all of Himself in return.  clinging to faith in the face of tragedy may seem like a mindless cop out to some, but i think to us it's in fact the deepest expression of faith, the deepest way we can let Him into our lives.  after all, God lost a son Himself - He's not above this kind of pain.

this was part of jeff's legacy to me - while we both loved to live and explore the world, he trained me to do so while keeping the eyes of my spirit open to the greater reality around me than what could be seen by my physical eyes.  this is what he modeled everyday.  this is how he poured and poured and poured himself out EVERY SINGLE DAY and never ran dry.

we visited jeff and his wife for a few days this past may.  it was instantly our home away from home.  after we left, i sent them this message:

just wanted to say thanks again for letting us stay with you and for all the other things you've done for us.  being around your family and in your home always makes me feel...elevated, where i get the most tangible sense of God's reality being superior to the world we see around us.  even if we're just sitting around watching goofballs on tv.  thanks for being so real and so awesome.

and thank you jeff, for letting me witness how a man of purest heart walks with and sees God in his daily life.  thank you for fostering a conviction in me that God always makes good things out of bad.  thank you for pouring into me to the point where i can now give myself over to both fully grieving and fully rejoicing at your passing.

the book of hebrews says Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before him.  and so we endure our grief, fixing the eyes of our spirit on the author and perfecter of our faith, being sustained by the joy set before us of one day joining our friends and arriving at home, one more time.

commemorating a brother

one freak accident and so many lives are changed forever.  no warning blip, no whisper to say 'brace yourself - a big one's coming.'

the world has shrunk, this morning's colors seem inordinately dull, and the conflict between faith in things unseen and pain of genuine loss has never seemed greater.  faith presents ancient scriptures while pain attacks with accusations of injustice and irrational fragility.  faith counters with its chief ally hope and the irrationality of love entering into our fragility in the form of Jesus.

it hurts.  but in the end, one man's death doesn't diminish the goodness of God.  not even if that man is young and overflowing with smiles and life.  not even if that man has one of the sweetest and gentlest temperaments that could conceivably be designed.  not even if that man was the first person besides my wife and i with whom my baby daughter felt comfortable enough to fall asleep on.

farewell for now, brother.  we'll see you soon.

processing grace

when i was 10 i saw a wordless skit performed by a high school youth group that depicted man's creation, fall, and redemption.  i was struck by the beautiful idea of a God who loved us to the point of death and for the first time that i can remember, i cried as a result of something resonating in my spirit.

this idea of love captured my mind and my emotions, but it failed to capture my heart, and as a result, my life.  i understood grace but had a deeper and rawer understanding of scrutiny and consequence.  i had an adolescent boy's typical issues with self-worth, the perception of others, a desire to be accepted (often at the expense of others), which many times manifested in bad behavior, which resulted in the disappointment and rejection of others, which resulted in shame, which resulted in more bad behavior.

above this cycle, the concept of God loving us even when we behave badly - of loving us so much that all the bad behavior everyone could ever do only caused Him to reach out and give humanity the greatest hug possible through Jesus - floated in a disconnected vacuum in my outlook on life.

in the decades since then, God has continuously prodded and poked at this vacuum to let the life-revolutionizing nature of His love flood outwards and into my relationship with Him and others around me.  but it's a process, and a journey, and often a cycle, and sometimes i find myself cowering needlessly, waiting to be squished by the full weight of His disapproval.

and now, as i've become a father myself and have been thinking about how my relationship with karis will develop as she grows, i've realized that it is amazingly, suffocatingly important to me that she will always know that i love her NO MATTER WHAT, and that her unawareness of this would be more painful to me than any behavior or action she could do herself.

and so i wonder if the message of grace can be explained by what affects God's heart more - when i disobey Him, or when i fail to recognize that He loves me even after/despite/regardless of my disobedience?

tomorrow is easter and yesterday was good friday.  yesterday, after being nailed to the cross, Jesus implored God to have mercy on the people tormenting him, to 'forgive them for they know not what they do.'  yesterday, Jesus proclaimed that His heart was for God to pour out His love and mercy on us instead of letting us spiral downwards in a cycle of consequence, guilt, and shame.

tomorrow, God makes it happen.

inspired by a german dissident

well, it's been over five years.  

since the last post, i've started working full-time, gotten married, moved overseas, and become a father.  this series of life events might lead some towards greater introspection, but i seem to have gone the other way.

according to goodreads.com, since september 2010 i've read 65 books.  here's a categorization, from most to least read:

22: fantasy
13: science-fiction
12: not so literary fiction
6: literary fiction
4: kurt vonnegut
3: not so thought-provoking non-fiction
3: thought-provoking non-fiction
2: Jesus-related

i really wanted to put a sarcastic caption here.
been reading way too many cracked.com articles...

hm...a bit heavy on empty calories and light on nutritional value.  also, kurt vonnegut gets his own category just cause he's the man.  

i'm currently reading through a biography of dietrich bonhoeffer, the german theologian who was executed for his involvement in the valkyrie plot to assassinate hitler.  the biographer quotes extensively from bonhoeffer's personal letters and diary entries, and it's absolutely fascinating how rich and engaged his inner thought life was.

so, here's my new year's resolution.  actually, let's call it a declaration instead, to be more proactive and less reactive.  take a bit of thoreau (or more accurately, that kid in dead poet's society who quotes thoreau, since i barely remember walden from 10th grade english):

I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,

To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die
Discover that I had not lived

and shift the orientation from humanism to heaven with 1 Corinthians 7:

Let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him,

and to which God has called him

and determine to think more freely, reflect more intentionally, and process the world more deeply, and as daily life both settles and expands, to have it be characterized by this:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time

(after all, i couldn't really kick-start this blog again without some help from t.s...)

i just got back from a week on the east coast, to celebrate my dad's 60th birthday. it was an eventful week, i got to see 5 friends from college, all of whom i hadn't seen in 3-5 years. re-acquaintance with people and places i haven't seen in a long time always triggers some kind of emotional response in me...maybe i'll write something about that later.

it was my dad's 60th birthday, and my mom planned an elaborate surprise celebration for him at church...me and my sister's duties were to say something, perform something, and make a slide show out of something. i wasn't really feeling up to it, especially the speech part. i couldn't in good conscience say something along the lines of being grateful for the eternally solid love of a father or anything. besides being banal and overly saccharine, it would feel dishonest - me and my dad just don't have that kind of relationship. not that he hasn't provided for me or loved me in his own way, it's just that we don't know each other well enough for me to make that kind of grand claim about his place in my life.

strangely enough, my recalcitrance about the whole thing started wearing down when i began putting pictures of my dad's childhood into the slideshow the night before the celebration. it was seriously unnerving seeing pictures of my parents when they were children and young adults. it's weird thinking of them in any function other than the one they serve as my parents i suppose. it made me start thinking about what kind of life journey my dad has been on, and what role i've played in it, and how i've seen him evolve and mature over the part of his journey that has included me. so in the middle of putting the slideshow together, i paused to start typing my speech, and this is what i ended up saying in front of his congregation the next day:

*****

My dad has always been somewhat of a mystery to me. When I think about his role in my life, I think about all the things he’s done for me and our family, all the things he’s given to me and our family. Though he’s quick to smile, he’s also often introspective and difficult to read. Seems like I inherited the introspection while the smiles went to my sister.

In my life, I haven’t given enough thought to the profundity of how, out of all the possible ways in which our relationship with our Lord could be described, the most common one is a Father and His children. This is amazingly profound. This means that my relationship with this man sitting here is cut out of the same pattern as my relationship with God Himself. The way he views me is a slice of the way He views me.

Yet this is an incomplete analogy because God is unchanging, but my dad is changing…he is human, and he is changing to become more like God. I’ve seen it over the course of my life. Instead of becoming harder and more prideful, he has become gentler and more humble, and this has played out in my relationship with him.

My dad has always been somewhat of a mystery to me, but it is a changing mystery. He is a man who expresses himself through giving and service. Whatever I’ve needed, he’s provided. I realize now that these provisions have changed over the years as well, as my needs have changed, as I have changed, and as he has changed. Out of all the things he’s ever given to me, which include dolls, giant teddy bears, spending money, short grunts of encouragement, a Super Nintendo, food, clothes, rides to school, and, uh, college tuition, the thing I cherish the most is not something that I can touch or hold – it’s an email I received from him two years ago, on my 24^th birthday. This day is about him and not me, but I want to recite the email because I think it contains the subtleties of his heart, as my dad, that have taken me my entire life to begin to understand and appreciate. It reads:

Dear Pete,

Happy Birthday, Though we can not celebrate together,

May this birthday become the one that your launch own destination,

And take up the challenge of our family's future direction.

Let your ingenuity and creativity blossom,

And bear fruit in the long run.

I thank the Lord for giving you a tender heart,

And a loving spirit for others.

Continue to walk on the path of the Lord,

Which is better than any other way.

Take a good care of yourself,

That is the best gift to Mom and me.

Thanks, Dad. I read that now and then when I need a grunt of encouragement, when I need affirmation, when I just need to know that I am loved. So thanks, Dad, for your mystery, for your heart, for everything.

*****

i think i'm beginning to understand the concept of a spiritual wilderness. my roommate last year and one of our friends used to refer to it all the time, which struck me as weird and incongruent because they had two of the most mature faiths i've ever been around.

this is my definition - being driven to an increasingly deeper understanding of how meaningless life is without the sweetness of the Lord, yet being unable to taste it. desire and knowledge of Him, without the experience.

is it being driven to spiritual desperation that lets us know with certainty that we want nothing more than Him? is it a God-given thirst for Him that strips the paint off everything and transforms it all into a meaning-less wilderness? everything becomes lackluster without Him. it seems like a cruel method - making someone want something so much through withholding it.

but it's a strange kind of withholding. you can't know much you're missing, unless you know how much you're missing. you can't wail and wallow in spiritual destitution unless you know how destitute you are. and you can't know how destitute you are unless you have a reference point. and you can't know what the reference point is unless you've actually encountered it.

the silence of God - written about by people like shusaku endo, mother theresa, and king david. one has an unhappy ending, one may or may not have a happy ending, and one seems to leap straight out of the wilderness into His presence.

king david wrote psalm 13, which is broken into two tremendously dissonant sections. what happened exactly, in the unwritten space between sections?

How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever?
How long will You hide Your face from me?
How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
Consider and answer me, O Lord my God; light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
Lest my enemy say, "I have prevailed over him," lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.

But I have trusted in your steadfast love; and my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord, because He has dealt bountifully with me.

the present - the silence of God. the past - His steadfast love, His bountiful dealings. the future - our rejoicing, our song. there is no devastating logic, only devastating perseverance and faith. in the end, it seems to be the wilderness itself that gets devastated.

but for now, the sleep of death still threatens. the blessing at the end of the Jacobian night of struggle is still many layers of darkness away.

a post from a friend's xanga (as in i DIDN'T WRITE the following)...something simply, beautifully, and penetratingly expressed:

truths ive been chewing on lately...

jesus frees.

never give up loving.

people need the lord.

reader, dont ever forget your identity in christ makes you the free-est person alive(and better off dead!). there isn't a thing you can do to make youself happier, but only to embrace a simple cross with blood stained wood that sets every sin, every bondage, every hurt and sadness free. oh jesus, you make us free! so dont let darkness creep up on you like that. no, you look to jesus. you look at that cross and you kneel down. your heart cries out, jesus you're all i want. jesus you make sense. jesus, you love me.
and then you think about the ones you love. the ones who are closest to your heart--but who dont know you. and it's like no matter how much you love them, they dont understand this love. like gandhi has once said, first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight with you, and then you win. what a beautiful way to approach those whom we love. loving them into jesus. your love, jesus. it's the highest love out there.
but we need to know our emptiness to seek God. we need to ask you God to fill it. this void that we hide away from everyone else. when we meet you God, there's light just everywhere. no darkness can overcome it. those who need you most reject you in your face. when who you are, and who we are is so evident. we are weak, but you are strong. but they reject you--again and again because the idea of worshiping you for who you are is utterly unspeakable. but God, you're so patient. you're definitely more patient than i am.

God, you really love us.
because you truly make us real.

pushing off a paper and reaching into the newly constructed vault of Precious Things...a recent set of thoughts, expressed to e. maybe this will clarify the lack of april cruelty.

*****

=)

the age we live in requires us to nod in the direction of junior high and high school because it feels unreal that we're floating higher and higher but it's good, i think...it is a circle back to what first love was like, except incomparably deeper and more resonant because it breaks through scales of cynicism that have hardened over certain parts of our hearts through our experiences before we met each other...before you were dropped into my life...and emerges purer because of it, like a column of light racing towards heaven that is fully aware of the dinginess it burst out of, and made more beautiful by this consciousness. i'm going to try to write this entire email without using the backspace, to send you my unadulterated thinking, and also to save time, though i'd much rather be spending all night corresponding with you in some way, through email since you're sleeping now. though i used the backspace in the first part, in that long run on sentence...tried to paint a picture of how i look at the light that is expanding in the space between me and you, though i don't know how clear i'm being, or how much of pretentiousness i'm avoiding. but it's a beautiful thing. sometimes, usually when i go pee, i think about if i should be expressing things like this, and or even feeling things like this to express, and then i think that i'm not purposefully searching for things to express or grasping at things to say to you to try to make your heart beat faster, which i hope it does though, because i want to have that effect on you because you make mine beat faster and my breath catches in my throat when i even start thinking of you, like now. then when i flush the toilet i wonder how long it will last like this, and then i decide not to worry about it...going only au natural isn't the wisest thing, but there has to be a balance between regulation and natural progression, and we removed the emotional barrier of expression after you were here a few weeks ago. though that was a conscious choice...even so, i haven't been like this before, with anyone else, this sense of falling in love with my eyes wide open...i haven't felt like i wanted to endlessly find new ways to talk about you and think about you and the role you've come to assume in my life. i feel free, and liberated, and guilt-free, without the need to justify myself to you, or to myself, or to examine every action through every possible lens of motivation. i couldn't claim a divine green light in releasing the floodgates of connection between souls and allowing things to snowball between us like they have and gather momentum exponentially, but in this sense it is almost does feel like it's back to first love, and i feel no hesitation to be swept away in the tide that brings us closer and closer together, except now i have binoculars and can see far into the distance, both behind us and in front of us, and maybe that will help to navigate through things that come up, and we have oars of experience and learned humility and that will also help us steer into the future, and it feels almost like i've gone through the experiences that i have in order to be able to see you honestly and fully and appreciate you without reservation and think of you without placing myself at the center of my reference point...a (brief) lifetime spent learning and failing to love, so that i can show love to you, and strive to do so to greater extents when i do fail. i have to confess, i used the backspace a bunch of times in this paragraph, but it was still an unbroken chain of thought that came out, untailored and unrefined, unlike how i usually write to you in emails. i'm in a mood where everything feels like poetry, and everything is a different aspect or manifestation of our light. and this light seems to be expanding and expanding in my chest, till i'm dying of wanting to be next to you again, and breathe your oxygen into my lungs to make them function. i’m very deeply in love with you, and i miss you.

*****

April is the sweetest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

we were asked to write a short statement on post-modernism for sunday school a few weeks ago.

***

My understanding of post-modernism. I don’t really understand it that well, at least well enough to articulate, even though I have a feeling it’s something that may have greatly influenced my attitudes and mindsets, as discussed last week. I think it has something to do with relativism and the denial of absolutes, and the questioning of the inherent value of things previously assumed to be inherently valuable. It diminishes the ability to accept simplicity and purity, usually playing the role of self-congratulatory and condescending critic…the post-modern mindset is arrogant in its tendency to see through things yet contributes nothing constructive in turn. It is a way of thinking that acknowledges the failures of modern and enlightenment schools of thought in their efforts to place ultimate meaning within the grasp of man’s rational capabilities but offers no substitute solution, unlike Kierkegaard’s transference of meaning from wholly rational reason to wholly irrational faith.

To my understanding, the ultimate effect of post-modern thinking is the apathy and groundlessness of the current generation of young people.

***

i think i may be out-dated. are we in the post-post-modern era now? what the hell does that look like? how can you advance past the stage of the denial of the existence of stages?

i've decided to stop beating around the bush and allow myself to be simple and happy. hopefully. this is my, um, november resolution. let's call it a thanksgiving resolution. let go of the unholy and masturbatory pseudo-satisfaction of wallowing in the bittersweetness of life and let God make me happy. that last bit wasn't just an excuse to use the word masturbatory in a sentence. hopefully.

wow, imagine if that actually happened. i'd have to find entirely new patterns of thought to occupy my brain. have to trust that not all depth and meaning comes from dissonance, i suppose. like the man said,

We are not here to verify,
Instruct ourselves, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. We are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid.

I have a crumbly treasure to dispense

a piece to him, just for her, for you alone

a piece and a piece and a piece

from an unrecreatable shape

and in return, only this

a bit of secretivity

smiled on the way

through reserved melancholy

your han, expressing mine

your quiet promise to cleave

with darkened eyes and fuzzy dreams

to hear what my own eyes say

not so much for my treasure

that I wish would stop crumbling

this summer i'm going back to baojing for a month and a half. i'm going with a team of other grad students to do an agricultural needs assessment survey, and at night i'm going to try to do some bible studies and ministry. there are two other christians going, one of whom is going as a full-time short-term missionary. as should be expected, i feel really drawn back to the place, and i'm really looking forward to it, and...i don't know. i hope it's different. i hope i don't lapse into mere enjoyment of being back, an enjoyment of people and places. i hope things happen.

i wonder if moses ever thought about what his old friends and acquaintances in egypt would think when he returned to them to bring the message of God. would he have feared their attention, their puzzlement at his new mission? would he have welcomed it, to be able to share the transforming power of God? would he have said, this is my heritage of faith, to which i was previously and willfully blind? would he have felt guilty for his former life of immediate and undeserved privilege among them as an outsider?

no more unholy self-projections. a year in hawaii doesn't really equal 80 years in the desert.

april is the cruelest month,
breeding lilacs out of the dead land,
mixing memory and desire,
stirring dull roots with spring rain.

i don't have a firm grasp on cruelty at the moment. this year, the middle of spring isn't seeming to dredge up too many buried memories and stale desires. the roots feel watered and ready to blossom instead, as if lilacs have actually been bred out of the dead land. i suppose the presence of flowers could steal focus away from the surrounding deadness, or maybe if lilacs are coming to life, the land isn't dead anymore. it seems as if death and cruelty must come from a lifetime of unsatisifed desires and dead-ended adventures of the brain, leading to expanding iso-deso-lation. analysis...just don't think too much.


The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.

- Deuteronomy 29:29


But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.

- 1 Corinthians 2:7


The Lord is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation.

- Exodus 15: 2

some quotes from sunday school students i came across on the internet while procrastinating reading for class:

Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the Ten Amendments.

The Fifth Commandment is 'Humor thy father and mother.'

The Seventh Commandment is 'Thou shall not admit adultery.'

Moses died before he ever reached Canada.

The greatest miracle in the Bible is when Joshua told his son to stand still, and he obeyed him.

Solomon, one of David's sons, had 300 wives and 700 porcupines.

The epistles were the wives of the apostles.

Paul preached holy acrimony, which is another name for marriage.

In some religions a man can have many wives, and this is called polygamy. In our religion a man can have one wife, and this is called monotony.

[warning: not much Christmas cheer found in the following]

i just re-read the first batch of posts i wrote on this blogspot, which i started keeping about four years ago. it felt like reading somebody else's journal, i was pretty surprised at my thought processes back then, and to tell the truth, i kind of miss it. to be sure, i was caught up in some kind of self-parameterized world in which i couldn't seem to let myself be happy, but at least i wanted something better, i wanted to BE better.

this semester was a weird one. it was probably the loneliest i've ever felt in my life, which i thought at first was due to standard causes: readjusting from china, living by myself, not having the energy to make a new set of friends. as the semester went on, however, i came to realize that the real reasons were deeper, and that living in spiritual isolation for two years in china had caused my heart to harden in subtle ways and worsened certain character deficiencies that i was just beginning to notice. i didn't seem to care about the people i was just getting to know, and getting/staying in touch with old friends seemed like some kind of burden. i don't know why or when i started to feel like that, but it totally, completely, absolutely sucks. aren't people supposed to become less self-absorbed as they get older? at least a few years ago, thinking about myself seemed to lead to a healthier place.

i'm not sure where i'm trying to go here. to explain further, here's part of an email to joyce, from a couple weeks ago:

this semester feels like i've been tempted by and struggled with every kind of sin at once, with pride, lust, apathy, self-centeredness, quick-temperedness, lack of self-discipline, laziness. it's been incredibly frustrating, because at the bottom of it i really really just want this purity and simplicity that's eluding me. and then i trudge to campus with a dark and heavy and lifeless heart, unable to force smiles or cheeriness. and this leaves a bad mark on everybody i come across, christian or nonchristian.

and you know what? in some ways, this semester is probably the closest i've felt to God in several years. when i pray with the members of my bible studies, it's done in completely earnest and un-selfconscious supplication and thanksgiving. when i read the bible, sometimes the words feel so much juicier and more full of life than they have in such a long time. so why can't i have joy and peace?? why can't i keep reading, and praying, and living what i know? and how is it mentally and emotionally possible for me to share the deepest part of my spirit and soul with someone through praying together, and revert to feeling like a stranger when our eyes open?

i truly believe that God is the most amazing and the most solid foundation possible that draws together all sorts of unlikely people and makes them brothers and sisters. it's true, i believe it, and i feel it. so why then do i feel like i'm existing in isolation?

***

i can't figure out my inconsistencies. are they the exception or the rule? regardless, things just aren't adding up, and it's driving me crazy. after the few paragraphs above, i went on to ramble about 'the deepest thirsts of my soul', but i'm not so sure i can apply that label in good conscience. if wanting to connect with people and learn how to love were really the goals of my life, why do i spend so little of my time on actually trying to achieve them? if i really want to serve and reach the people of china, why am i so reluctant to use my spare time to read and learn more about them? ok that kinda came out of nowhere, but it's along the same lines.

i feel my life being sucked down into banalities and lethargy, hard-heartedness and emotionalism, and i hate it. it makes me wish that the simple command of seeking first the kingdom of God wasn't so difficult (for me) to follow.


***Postscript***

these were the first few lines of joyce's response to my email:

christians are the only people in the world who can rant like this and NOT be drunk. we're special. listen, by the time you read this it will be daylight and you'll already have shrugged this off -- nevertheless i will attempt to comfort you.

haha...yeah. it's almost 6 am, time to sleep.

going along with jesse-kristof's photojournal thing, here are some of my favorite pictures from baojing, all scenery/non-people focused.

*****

a view of baojing from the radio tower

inside a random house in town



one of the three roads leading out of town

the campus of the middle school i stayed at

Youshui River, which the school overlooked



my primary school students flying kites along the bank of the Youshui River



the mountains behind the primary school i taught at



a waterfall hidden in those mountains

view from the Baota pagoda, a few miles outside of town



coming home from the Baota

Christmas tree hunting a few miles outside of town

*****

it's about 1 in the morning and i'm lounging at the spacious desk in the corner of the cockroached basement i'm living in. the desk is lit by a 40-watt lamp and a melon-scented candle, forming a dim glow that barely collides with the glow of the other 40-watt lamp in the opposite corner of the room. my bed is a mattress on a 6 inch high frame, and sometimes when i'm not careful, i bang my head against the low beam running across the center of the basement, which causes my roommates Mouse 1 and Mouse 2 to run for cover. my laptop is propped up on Umberto Eco and John Irving to avoid overheating and shutting itself down while i'm in the middle of something important, like googling the names of my classmates.

to get to campus, i ride my friend's old 21 speed bike, which has decided to simplify and become a 6 speed bike. it's a hilly 2-mile ride and it seems to be getting harder every day, which shouldn't be happening. yesterday on my way to campus i was overtaken, not once but twice, by a midget on a bike. no midget sightings in a month of hawaii, and yesterday, two of them glided separately past me.

i read for class several hours a day, and though sometimes it gets a little dry, i enjoy it for the most part, which allows me to put off the chore of developing academic self-discipline for at least awhile. i haven't missed any classes so far and i do my best to ask non-retarded questions in all of them. it is infinitely easier to come up with a vague pseudo-intellectual bullcrappy question in a humanities class than it is in an engineering class.

waikiki beach is just down the street from my basement. i try to make it there at least once a week, though my reading rate goes down to about 6 pages of textbook per hour, and i haven't managed once to avoid scraping my knees on the rocks hidden a few yards out from shore.

tonight for dinner i had three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, half a tomato, a box of nerds, some chewy spree, a can of passion-guava-orange juice, and a handful of crackers.

this is pretty much what i imagined the life of a grad student (in hawaii) would be like. as for the other aspects of life, they vary. i would like some close friends to hang out and relax with, someone to call up and bike down to the beach with in the middle of the night, but i don't feel like paying the emotional energy cost of getting to understand someone and having them understand me.

ok, i dunno what i'm saying. i had some friends here already, people who taught with me in china, but it feels strange jumping into their previously assembled lives. i've met a lot of new people, but how am i supposed to know which ones i'll end up being good friends with? i guess that sounds cold, not wanting to spend time getting to know people who i might not end up connecting with, but that's kind of how i feel. i should be more open-minded.

i miss china, all parts of it, society, geography, ethnicity. i want to be involved in it, to be useful, from the rural to the urban, from the traditional to the popular, from the ridiculous to the sublime.

ok, i've been reading way too much prettified fancy writing. sorry for the stuffy style.

today at lunch:

dad: so after the yuan dynasty, the only people in china who grew beards were outlaws
me: like the 108 noble outlaws of the marsh?
dad: those weren't noble, they were more erotic
me: um...what?
dad: you know, like eros
me: heroes?
dad: yeah, very erotic

...

from an email i wrote to a friend late last night, when i was feeling way too sentimental and melancholy:

i can't believe i have less than 5 days left in baojing. you know, i grew up in new jersey, on the east coast, and it was really hard for me to leave it go to to college in california. all my friends, my family, everyone i grew up with was in new jersey - i didn't know anybody in california. my friends and my high school girlfriend came to my house to say goodbye the morning i left, and i cried all the way to the airport.

i lived in california for 5 years, and then i came to china. when i left california, i drove my car across the country back to the east coast with my dad. i left on a breezy sunny day in late spring; again, some friends came to my apartment to see me off. i was sad about leaving, because i loved california and berkeley and my time there, but i was excited to move on to the next stage of my life too.

i came to china and i didn't know anybody. when i got off the plane in shanghai, the lady who was supposed to pick me up wasn't there, and i didn't have her phone number. i stood in the lobby like an idiot for a long time, thinking the same thought over and over again - i don't know anybody within 10,000 miles of me right now except for my family and friends in taiwan, and i don't think they'd be able to help me here. things worked out and i ended up in baojing, and now it's two years later, and i'm about to move on, and i'm sad.

when i left new jersey, i left behind my family, and my childhood, and my childhood friends, and my favorite parks, and all the little unimportant things that left such a big impression on me for whatever reason as i grew up. when i left california, i left behind the place where i learned to be independent and to be passionate and adventurous, and all the magical places and people and experiences which combined to direct my life and shape my transition from a simple child to a resident of our strange and mystical world.

and now as i leave china, i'm leaving behind an entire country and an entire culture, and a town that's unlike any place i've ever lived, and beautiful mountains, and the friends i've made. i've come to know china during the past two years - i've traveled over it, i've read about it, i've read about its history and its modern society, and i've come to know its people, from xinjiang to beijing to baojing. how can i leave behind so much? not just memories, not just magical secret places, not just precious friends, but an entire country, an entire way of life. it seems too much to thrust into a person's heart and then take away after two short years.

i know i'll come back here in the future, but even if the same people are here and even if i live here for another two years, it will be different. this part of my life is over, this stage is done, and the best i could hope for would be Baojing Part 2.

i wonder how i've changed in the past two years, from 22 to 24. i hope i've become more communicative and intuitive and relatable. after all, the differences between chinese and americans are more than just languages, and i've met many kinds of people here in china that i've never met before. i don't know if i've become wiser. i think i've become less sure of myself, which may be a good thing, because it may make me humbler and more open-minded, and may give me a proper fear and awe of things, of life, and people, and Love, and God.

...

last week i took a solo trip up to jiuzhaigou in sichuan province, a national park with a series of crystal blue lakes hidden in alpine mountains. it was incredibly beautiful and gorgeous and i recommend going there to everybody, but it was a huge pain to get to. i had to travel a total of 6 days to get there and back, which included 49 hours on a hardseat train and 28 hours on a bus. in honor of that, here are some selected notes that i wrote down last summer, when i was on a 24 hour hardseat train to beijing. they probably won't make as much as sense unless you've ever had to switch between standing and sitting in a chair where the back angles forward instead of backwards for an entire day or you've ever traveled around by yourself.

***

It's been about 11 minutes. My ass is starting to hurt. K, someone said they can upgrade to sleeper beds around Zhengzhou. Should I try too, or suck it up for 24 hours, another stage in my personal resistance-building for potential future torture at the hands of the Communists due to my capitalist Christian Taiwanese-ness?

A.W. Tozer wrote the entire premise, outline, and presumably a good amount of the prose of The Pursuit of God on a train from Chicago to somewhere in Texas. I'll probably end up writing about squatty-potties for 20 hours. Maybe I'll try a short story. Traditionally I've been able to write more freely when I'm in a state of tension and I've been more creative when in a state of lethargic insomnia, so by those standards I should produce a freaking Pulitzer Prize-worthy novel by the time we pull into Beijing.

Times I've jokingly wished for death, to myself, in my own head, where I guess it's not so much of a joke anymore: 4 and counting. Um...5.

A haiku:

The track stretches on
I spend most of my time in
The squatty potty.

If I sit here and make one tally mark per second, I'd make roughly 90,000 tally marks by the time we get to Beijing. If 5 tally marks take up 1 cm, that's ~ 80 marks per line, which is 2160 per page, which means I'll, um, I mean, I WOULD, IN THEORY, fill up ~ 42 pages. More realistically, I'd make 2 per second, for 84 pages. Even more realistically, I wouldn't be driven to that degree of agony until about halfway through the ride, after which I'd probably black out every other 5 minutes, so I think it's safe to expect ~ 20 pages of tally marks by Beijing.

Without being pretentious, hopefully, I have to say that going to Switzerland [two weeks in June 2001] was one of the most defining times of my life. It was a perfect combination of setting and background - the chance to wander around an unfamiliar place by myself was perfect for that point in my life. I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here. I suppose I was just reminded of Switzerland because I'm writing in a journal and listening to music on a train going through mountains. I guess I could say that those 2 weeks greatly helped shape my life, but I couldn't quantify how. I've never been one to instantly change; I have a lot of life inertia, probably due to a mixture of pride, stubborness, confidence, and mental obesity. My clearest memory from Switzerland is walking through the streets of Lugano, listening to my cd player, and knowing that I loved the people in my life as deeply as I could, as I was capable of at that point, however flawed and inconsistent that may have been.

I think it's 12 hours later now, though the little shemale who's been yelling for the past hour shows no signs of letting up, so it can't be that late. I've said it before, some kids just aren't as cute as others. Why would you make your androgynous 4 year old child stand in the aisle of a train all night? This can only get worse before it gets better.

I caught myself on the verge of buying a tofu stick from the vendor's cart earlier. I actually reached out to stick my hand in the murky swamp-liquid the tofu was swimming in to test the temperature before I remembered that I want to live to see my parents again. I might give in and buy a bag of peanuts later, at the risk of annoying the 4 female Beijing Film Institute students who I've found myself in the middle of.

My butt has officially broken off from my body. I may have to resort to frontline Taiwanese Strait belligerence to get it back before this night is over.

Where have the past 12 hours gone? I can't really recall much other than what's been recounted above. Maybe my brain has been compressed into the 2nd dimension and I'm now a full 2 degrees away from the concept of time, moving on a line pushing itself horizontally through a solenoid of infant screams and dying nerve endings, like the helicopter pilot in So I Married An Axe Murderer.

I'd worry that I'll soon be guilty of infanticide but I think the girls next to me are losing patience with Androboy faster than I am. Taking that sleeper bus from Hotan to Kashgar and spending the whole night fighting off several Uygur men from trying to cuddle with me really built up my tolerance for these kinds of things.

Sometimes I can't believe it's been a year in China already, though things really seem different now than last July. Meeting Kevin, Danny, and Duncan in the lobby of our hotel in Shanghai has already been pushed into my Pantheon of Selective Highly-Lucid Memories.

The film girls have started talking to me. For some reason this makes me very nervous. Maybe because it breaks 12+ hours of happily ignoring each other. How'm I gonna handle being back in a country where everyone around me actually understands what I'm saying? I've already lost what remained of my tact after college.

I kind of think of Baojing as my residence now. It's been a long year. I'm really glad I made the friends I did, they've added to my life in their way. Why were the 1st and 2nd semester so different? I guess spring felt more like a job but fall was still an adventure, with all the foreign teachers on more or less equal footing.

It's been 20+ hours. Last night I had about a 2 hour long conversation with Rick, the English interpreter from the Dalian municipal government who was standing in the aisle next to me. We talked about all sorts of crap like movies, philosophy, science, Christianity, comic books, history, etc. Seems like a serious fellow; calls himself a pragmatist. I hope one day my Chinese will be as good as his English.

The fat kid next to me is making fat kid noises and glancing at my chocolate bar. Speaks for itself (and me).

About 1 hour left of this madness. Thank God it's sunny.

...