A Writer's Prayer

God give us wisdom to pursue your dreams first, to take your trips, and write your words. We trust

your high, unfathomable ways.

We depend on them and know that you are not only greater than our hearts, but that you search our hearts and test our thoughts. You see our ambitions and you burn up those which are unworthy of the life to which we've been called. We can do nothing but thank you

fervently, inadequately, constantly

for your providence. All things never new under the sun come from you.  Give us only the strength and wisdom to seek your way, your righteousness, and your Word through equal parts diligence and creativity. We choose to do your work with our writing and accept the paradox that our choice means both everything and nothing at all

for you alone O Lord

have the power we will always seek. We seek the power to change, the power to enlighten, to surprise, and to make new. We seek what you provide. We ask for your grace. We boldly ask for what you promise and what we do not understand or deserve.

We ask for the words.

Finally, a blog post has been born. I have been entranced by the writing on this new Calvin blog and sort of stymied by ogling others' talents. But today's post reminded me to get cracking. A small push in the right direction.

Reverse Culture Baffle

Finally—finally!—after two years in Korea of watching buses and taxis swerve from lane to lane to sidewalk to two wheels and back unscathed—finally, in my last hours in the country, my bus got hit by a taxi. Feeling accomplished, I started my journey back to Amurica. Appropriately, given the bus-taxi augury, the trip was not the smoothest I’ve ever experienced: a five-hour delay to start things off catatonically, fourteen hours in my least favorite airport (Shanghai Pudong), and ten hours of a little Chinese boy screaming and kicking my seat on our way over the Pacific. But I finally—finally—arrived, albeit bleary-eyed and greasy-haired, in Chicago.

Once at baggage claim, I began looking for a likely someone from whom I could borrow a cell phone to warn my parents of my arrival in the country. I once used about six different Thai people’s phones on a bus from Bangkok to Chiang Mai trying to call a missionary’s number. I spoke not a bit of Thai, no one else spoke English, and the missionary had accidentally given me the wrong number. Calling my parents here in the States, I figured, would be no problem.

The rest is on this blog that I'm guest-blogging for once a month.

Bait. and. Switch.

The CBE Scroll

Huge fan of this blog, the CBE (Christians for Biblical Equality) Scroll. Good writers writing with good Biblical basis and a broad variety of interests and origins of thought. It's in conjunction with CBE International and both have some interesting stuff. Thought I'd throw this out on the blog today because a post I found on their site today was particularly interesting/relevant for me.

Here are the relevant quotes I found interesting, but I encourage you to read the whole article here:

"Being feminine isn’t something I must endeavor to do; it is something that I inherently am. I do not need to live up to anyone’s definition of feminine; by virtue of being a female, I define feminine. I. Define. Feminine. Not the other way around."

"When we teach women that there is only one way to be a godly woman, we rob the women who do not fit that stereotype of living their calling to their fullest potential and being the best and most effective version of themselves."

Nothing earth-shattering or super controversial (I hope), but a good reminder for all and encouraging for me personally.

This short post entitled "Punch in the Nose" was also pretty good.

A Blog about Home

American music on the radio. Open country roads. Drive thru ice cream. Making the waitress laugh. A new smartphone (magic for muggles). Reciting memory chapters with my mother. Listening to Cabin Pressure, a BBC radio show about a one-airplane airline. Listening to NPR—I missed Robert Seagull. Introducing my father to The Newsroom. English. English. So much beautiful English all the time. Emails back to Korea. Sun in the morning. Talking for hours with Lainy about everything. Trees outside my window. Shoe shopping--Payless rocks. Grass to roll in. My beagle to hug. My beagle to laugh at when the fireworks go off. Long drives. My sister’s cookies. Wimbledon on the telly. A new(ish) car with stick shift and purple exterior, freshly detailed. Church that feels like home, equal parts childhood and maturity in one. Hugs.

It's been nearly a week. I figured by now I'd have something more than fragments to offer the world, but in times of transition, I'm stubbornly slow.

Also, I wanted my blogosphere to know that I’m guest-blogging for another blog starting this month. Every month on the 11th I’ll be posting for Calvin Writers Online. I apologize in advance for probably skimping slightly on my own blog each month, but seriously encourage you all to check this group blog out. The other writers are crazy talented, engaging, and funny. The last two posts have been particularly engaging for me - one about hitchhiking America, and the other about summer friendships.

A Mt. Fuji favorite

An Apology, a Qualifier, and a Suggestion Walk Out of a Church and into a Bar

I’ve gotten a few upset comments from my past blog, so I’d like to apologize for part of my last post. The offending paragraph was this one:

Only five hours ago I stood in front of my church—shaking—and censured them for ignoring the young, single women of the congregation, for relegating them to the corner of the church reserved for gifts like childcare and the chat-happy welcoming committee away from corner with sermons, decisions, depth.

I am so sorry. I did not mean to insinuate that services such as day-care, worship team, or the welcoming committee are not important, God-honoring parts of a church. As a worship team member, someone who was once a child and someone who has chosen churches based on the welcome, I would have to be an imbecile not to recognize the importance of such positions.  My church in Korea, on the other hand, by virtue of amount of service time allotted to such gifts, personnel requirements for the positions, and comments from leaders in the church (taking care of children requires little skill; music ministry is unimportant), I would argue that our church “relegates” because they consider these positions less important than those of pastors (who are heavily vetted and paid).

Our churches—not just mine in Korea—value preaching above other ministries. Perhaps you agree. Preaching is important—growing Christians need a steady diet of informed, Biblical-based food. I would argue that in many churches, the best way to feed the modern-day congregation is not to talk at them, but to lead them in acts of worship.

Yes, listening to a sermon can be an act of worship. So can singing. So can playing an imaginary  game with children. So can cooking. So can drawing and clapping and eating and almost every –ing imaginable (including soccering). Why do we place so much emphasis on listening to one (usually male) person talk about what he has learned that week through solemn study?

I’m not advocating the abolition of sermons. I actually love sermons. I listen to sermon podcasts because I’m a dork and really, truly, honestly, enjoy sitting for about an hour taking notes and thinking, interacting mentally and digesting someone else’s thoughts. That’s my jam.

But I’m a weirdo. That’s odd. The problem is, most pastors are also the kind of people that get jazzed up about sitting around thought-sharing and as a result our churches have become these well-ordered shows in which you sing a song, read a verse, sit down and listen because that’s what the introverts like to do. And then once the service is over the extroverts take back over during cookie and coffee time.

However,

People learn best through action. I can talk you through playing a C-scale on the violin all I want, but if I send you out of a violin lesson without having practiced it with you, you have almost no hope of coming back with it not sucking.

Large groups are not conducive to interaction with ideas, a text, or a speaker. In fact, usually the more people there are, the quieter everyone else gets. As a teacher, nothing is more frustrating than a silent class. Even a class shouting, “I get it” (the school equivalent of “preach it!”) is better than silence. Better, is

It’s harder to fall asleep if you’re actively doing something. Please, for the love of all those people who don’t learn anything passively and are sick of being lectured by people who don’t know them—let’s mix it up every once in a while.

Show how valuable children’s ministry is by doing it as a congregation. Take one sermon time and have every single member of the congregation worship God by loving on the kids somehow. Those people who are scared of kids (ME) will have their more experienced buddies as a buffer and maybe you can recruit more people—maybe even men to provide strong father figures for kiddos struggling?—for that ministry. You’re definitely affirming the kiddos.

Make the congregation produce and create music, not just mimic it. Split up into small groups and do a round! Learn a clapping routine and then perform if for the rest of the congregation! Be creative! Could you combine a sermon with baking bread or planting something or building something as a church? Use your biblical metaphors!

Of course these are types of worship that can happen outside of Sunday mornings, too. But why not during Sunday mornings? At least once in a while. In big churches, it encourages community and active learning and application of the Bible. In small churches it does that plus the added benefit of giving overworked preachers a rest. I know that sort of talking, interactive stuff is supposed to happen during Wednesday night Bible studies, arguably the people who most need an interactive sermon are traditionally not going to the Bible studies.

If we really believe the other ministries of the church are important the way preaching is important (or more? “as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds…”), and if we believe members of the congregation with gifts other than teaching are important—then, without the abandonment of Biblically-based teaching, our service and services will show it.

Shakespeare and wine in the park: worship.

Watching other people cook: possibly not worship. But I set the table! Or I would have if we had a table. I set the floor!

WorshipBBQ

WorshipS'mores.

Ice cream time is quality time with siblings and God.

Soccer was made by God; go watch some. Or play it. Or learn what offsides is, Americans.

Wine Tasting Worship Time!

Church-wide Ping Pong tourney? Play round-robin during service?

On Leaving

Thank goodness essays are strict little things with rules and parameters—otherwise I’d be lost here, on the floor of the airport Starbucks smelling the shoes of the non-patrons who stole my spot at a corner table next to the electric socket while I paid for my right to sit here with Tazo Brambleberry herbal infusion. I’m a little lost because while part of my mind is consumed with the need for throwing them dirty looks, most of the rest of me is grappling with the enormity Leaving.

Leaving is tricky. Goodbyes are tricky. They’re not always sad things, nor happy things, nor complicated things, nor simple. They’re not always emotional. They’re not always for always. Sometimes they’re unsaid. Sometimes sung. Sometimes they take months, and sometimes they are only three quick hugs before you jump on your bus which will soon run into a taxi because Korean road rules (i.e. looking when you’re driving) are . . . flexible.

Sometimes you share a bucket of ice cream and sometimes you share how disappointed you are. Only five hours ago I stood in front of my church—shaking—and censured them for ignoring the young, single women of the congregation, for relegating them to the corner of the church reserved for gifts like childcare and the chat-happy welcoming committee away from corner with sermons, decisions, depth. Some goodbyes hurt. Other goodbyes are arguments, stories, gifts.

Saying goodbye to my apartment was harder than I thought it would be—Stockholm Syndrom, perhaps—as is leaving behind a city I’ve spent two years loving and hating. How do you say goodbye to the snoozing ahjusshi stretched out on the bank’s front steps, the Engrish on the sign above him, the gaggle of teenagers nearby hitting each other, the vomit-inducing cuteness of their cell phone cases and the couples t-shirts they’re wearing? Pictures assuage the bizarre surge of affection, but they can’t capture the smell of old people on the subway, the taste of hoddeok, the banal glory of Korean high-rises.

But with every Leaving comes an Arriving. I’m excited to arrive at a Taco Bell sometime in the near future, to arrive at a plate full of my dad’s pancakes. When I arrive at an American-sized house, with American excess of space, American stars at night, American people with their refreshing blunt humor—I anticipate great rejoicing on my part.

There truly is “a time for all things, a season for every activity under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 3 and its list of opposites—keep, throw away; scatter stones, gather them; weep, laugh—is never more obvious than in a traveler’s life. “God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity into the hearts of humankind, yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

So I call it beauty, this whirlwind of opposites and the unexpected. It is beautiful because it is time. Change excites me and upsets my stomach, but it is appropriate. My two years in Korea were informative, frustrating, and valuable, and (for good or ill) they are over. Just like an essay has structure (whether or not I’m skilled enough at adhere to it), so does life. Conclusions confound me nearly as much as goodbyes, but they are timely, necessary things. And abrupt.

I upgraded from the smelly-foot floor to one of the comfiest seats in the café while writing this. My Brambleberry herbal infusion is insisting I find the nearest lavatory and my type-A personality has finally moved on from worrying about my seat- and socket-stealing comrades in the corner to getting my sleepy self through security. I cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end, but I can at least get my laptop into a plastic tray, yawn my way through a couple lines, and get on a plane. Because it is time, I can leave. Also, because I'm sick of airports.

Moses was a great student this semester. 

A last heoddeok!

Isaiah made the journey in style.

The Busan bus system said goodbye by getting crashed into by a taxi. I'd been waiting two years for that to happen. So pleased.

Goodbye Yeongdo!

El's Story

Here's a story me and El wrote. El is one of my favorite students, a quiet pixie in the front row, eager to please and with an imagination that kills me. I wrote the first half of the story and she finished it for me (because I can never solve the messes I create in fiction). I then gave the story to Grace and asked her to draw the illustrations. The result:

Once upon a time there was a fairy named Lucy. Lucy was quiet, the way fairies were supposed to be and Lucy was sweet, the way fairies were supposed to be, but Lucy was BIG. And fairies aren’t supposed to be big. She towered over her classmates and even her parents didn’t know what to do about it. She was too big even to hug.

The other students at school were afraid of her. At recess she couldn’t play with the other fairies because the swings couldn’t hold her and her feet touched the ground on the monkey bars. Every recess she would sit on the ground under a big tree and watch the others have fun. Even Daffiya, the fairy girl with one broken wing wouldn’t talk to her. Even Teran the fairy boy who never smiled—and fairies are always supposed to smile—wouldn’t sit near her.

In class she had to sit at a special desk in the back of the room because she was too big for the normal fairy desks. She sat by herself in the back—forgotten by the teacher—and wondered if there was a fairy magic that could make her the way all fairies were supposed to be.

That day when Lucy got home from school she looked over the garden wall—Lucy was too big for fairy fences—and saw her mother crying.

“Mother, why are you crying?” Lucy asked.

“I am all right,” her mother lied, because fairies are supposed to be happy. “Let’s pick some flowers together.”

The next day at school Lucy was sitting under the tree and she decided to look up. There in the leaves was one-winged Daffidiya.

“Why are you in the tree?” Lucy asked.

“I’m playing,” Daffiya lied, because fairies are always supposed to have fun even when they’re lonely.

When she got back to her classroom, she looked out the window. Because she was so big, Lucy could look all the way down to the ground where she saw Teran’s father slap him. When Teran sat in his seat in front of Lucy, he wore a red mark and a frown.

“Are you okay?” Lucy asked.

“I’m fine,” Teran lied. And then, because fairies are supposed to smile, he smiled. It looked like it hurt.

Lucy sat by herself and wondered. In the back of the class, bigger than everyone, she wondered if there was a fairy magic that could make everyone be the way fairies were supposed to be. She stopped listening to the teacher and instead she thought and she thought. She thought about her mother crying and Daffiya hiding in the tree and Teran’s lying-smile. She thought about being too big and about the way fairies were supposed to be.

There had to be a magic to fix this.

So Lucy packed a bag and went to see the queen of the fairies, who lived on top of the mountain over the city. She was very small and she smiled and laughed all the time. People said she was the perfect fairy and so she had been queen of all the fairies for as long as anyone could remember. Her throne room was perfect, trees and flowers all around and a beautiful pond of sparkling water at the feet of her fairy throne.

“Who are you?” the queen asked when Lucy arrived.

“I’m Lucy. I need some fairy magic for my friends and my mother.”

“Fairy magic?” The queen laughed and dipped her feet into the pond. “There is no such thing!”

But Lucy was bigger than other fairies so she could see the bottom of the pond where the famous four metal fairy pendants rested.

“Then what are those?” Lucy asked, pointing.

“They mean nothing!” the fairy queen lied. But Lucy had seen her mother lie and Daffiya lie and Teran lie. She knew what a lie looked like.

Lucy took a big, brave step forward and reached all the way to the bottom of the pond and pulled out the four metal fairy pendants. Each one shone brighter than ever. The fairy queen started to cry.

“You’re the fairy queen!” Lucy said. “You aren’t supposed to cry. Fairies are happy.”

“It was only a spell,” the fairy queen admitted. “Before I was queen, there weren’t any rules like that. Fairies were free people and they cried whenever they wanted to. But they always came crying to me and I just couldn’t handle it! So I made the spell and put all the fairy magic into the pendants. Anyone who wanted to be a real fairy and have fairy magic wasn’t allowed to cry. They had to smile and have fun, so that I could have fun too.”

“But that’s a terrible, selfish spell! Those are just rules and they don’t make any sense!” Lucy objected.   

And she held the pendants high above her head—and that was very high because Lucy was very big—and she threw them to the ground, dashing them into thousands and thousands of pieces. Thousands of tears scattered over the floor. The fairy queen began to cry.

“Now what will I do?” she sobbed. “All the people will come to me with their problems. I don’t want to listen to all those peoples’ tears—I just want to be happy! I can’t be the fairy queen anymore.”

“No,” Lucy agreed. “You can’t.”

And that is how Lucy, who was quiet the way fairies were supposed to be and sweet the way fairies were supposed to be, became the biggest fairy queen ever to rule over the fairies. She listened to her subjects and she let them cry. She hugged them and taught them how to use their tears. Lucy was queen of the fairies for many, many years and was well-loved by all of her people.

Ryan Giggs, Guest-Blogger

It's finals week and the week before I leave for Japan and the week before I give a presentation at a conference . . . so, no blogpost from me. Luckily, we have Ryan Giggs (a.k.a Jungeun Park), former Manchester United footballer guest-blogging this week. On his midterm, Giggs wrote the only paragraph to make me laugh out loud:

"My mother is king of the home. She always shout father, brother and me. She said that wake up sloths who is our nickname until we wake up. And she always cook for us. If she don't give some food, we can't eat food, because we are sloths. So, I don't against my king because I'm always hungry!"

jk. I just don't have a picture of the real Giggs. THAT must be remedied!

Redeeming Proverbs 31

A year ago I was pretty fussed about I Timothy 2:11-15, five little verses that seem so out of place, ambiguous, hurtful and contradictory to Jesus’ words and actions in the gospels. I wish I’d turned around and read Proverbs 31 which describes a “wife of noble character.” I didn’t because who wants to read a list of crappy jobs a woman is supposed to do in order to please her husband and be a good girl? I’m not even married! Even worse, that “proverb” is little more than an impossible list of qualifications, yet another set of expectations I as a woman will fail to fulfill.

That famous verse, Prov. 31:30, makes me sick. charm is deceptive, ladies, and beauty is fleeting--but a woman who fears the lord is to be praised. Yet another man-made snide criticism of women disguised as a sickly sweet suggestion--stop obsessing over clothing and all your other trivial nonsense, women, and read your Bible!--is hardly appreciated. 

Luckily I did read my Bible and realized I’d had Proverbs 31 wrong the whole time, and so have a lot of other people. Let’s start at the end, with not a sickly sweet suggestion, but a command - and not a command to women. In fact, the entire passage is addressed to men, not women. Verse 31:

Give her the reward she has earned,

and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.

The city gate, we read earlier, is where her husband works, the place for the leaders of the land. There is no word on what he does exactly at the city gates--it’s not important. The wife is the breadwinner of this household, the economic powerhouse and commander of a host of servants and enterprises. She’s making, buying and selling all kinds of cloth; she evaluates farmland, buys it with her own money, and starts a vineyard; she trades, she weaves, she imports, she provides. She’s strong, she’s smart, and she’s dignified.

It’s hard for me to read something like this without analyzing it for power plays between genders. I want to argue that she obviously leads men (a household includes men and women of course), operates economically above men’s level (she’s in control when trading with merchants), and is generally a lot more useful than her husband. Her husband is respected at the city gates, but in the poem, his position is regarded as little more than a feather on his wife’s cap. It is she, the author (oft-debated, as usual) says, who deserves praise. Give it to her.

It’s horrifying that people have assumed this text to be advice to women. It is written to men, specifically men who have been blessed with a position of power. It is an ode to women and their hard work in every avenue of life. It’s not a road map for today’s women to read and wonder--am I working hard enough? Is it bad that I sometimes “eat the bread of idleness” and watch Game of Thrones instead of washing my dishes? Should I be getting less sleep so I can learn how to sew? No. Women, this is a description of your life, a wondering look at the many directions in which your concerns are spread and the awe-inspiring way you can hold them all together. It is a reminder that your many tasks (maybe not trading and sewing and ordering about a household; you have your own tasks) have dignity and that your strength is not only noted, but marveled at by men. This is recognition.

But primarily, this proverb is a call to men to recognize women. Proverbs 31 paints a picture of a man getting credit and respect in his job. Does he need more acclamation? Perhaps. We don’t know; Proverbs 31 is not about him. What is obvious is that this hard-working woman deserves public praise and her work--both her domestic pursuits and international trading ventures--has earned her a reward. Maybe she’s not one of the city’s elders (maybe she’s qualified except for her gender, or maybe she wasn’t interested in the position anyway; doesn’t matter); her work is laudable.

It is not a coincidence that the two verses preceding this ode to hard-working women command a king to “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves . . . [and] speak up and judge fairly.”

Her work has earned her a reward. Give it to her.

Lastly: to redeem that nasty little verse 30 people take as a sweet suggestion that women fear the Lord rather than obsess about clothes and trivial details. This wife of noble character is dressed in the best clothing, in the most beautiful color. Her household, also, is well dressed and everything in this poem suggests that her impressive ability to note “trivial” details is one of the many reasons she has been successful.

Rock on, women. You’re not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but damn, you do good work. Keep it up.

Men, go read Proverbs 31 and marvel.

Khmer women: trading.

My big sis being bad-ass on the cello.

Japanese merchant.

Rosa on the far left, commander of the household.

The Korean ahjumma is to be both feared and praised.

Snippets from the Classroom

In less than two weeks (jeepers) I'll be giving a short presentation at a Christian teacher's conference in Pohang, S.K. My goal is to present a coherent lesson plan on the subject of beauty that is both educational in an EFL sense and thought-provoking in a philosophical sense for Korean learners of English. Above were the documents I did to fuel a discussion for my juniors on the subject. They performed marvelously and seemed very engaged.

In part 1 they had to describe their celebrity (each group had a different one) and then write the physical descriptors on the board.

While i snickered.

Then I had the other groups guess whether each celebrity described was Korean or not, male or female, and we discussed how they knew. Part 2 they all had to design their own fictitious culture and prescribe it's standard's of beauty based on what made their culture different from others (no-eyes culture, polka-dot culture, underwater culture, and - my favorite - Androgynean culture).

Part 3 we looked at a few different Bible verses and tried to uncover what Christian culture says (or ought to say) about beauty.

In other news, my Avatar class was pretty baller. Their final exam is next Thursday where the entire class (of roughly 50 students) will perform the first two episodes in their entirety. I'm really hoping they dress up and that someone brings a polarbear dog.

One of their recent assignments including a short sketch:

Not everyone's an artist!

But Grace is. I want her to illustrate my life.

Points off for not following directions. Bonus points for drawing Bolin so well.

Everyone loves Meelo to distraction.

With my freshmen we did a movie trivia game, competing against the other freshmen class. (We lost, but my kids fought hard.) They had to watch 5 movies and answer a bunch of questions. As a sort-of reward/end of the year party type thing we had breakfast instead of class one morning. Their idea of breakfast, turns out, is choco pies and chips. Even I was a little grossed out.

And I'll let you ponder this last one on your own: