improv situation

So it is noticeable that my blogging frequency has taken a nose-dive in the past two months. I refuse to say that my life has become busier. Even more, I dismiss any usage of aphoristic cliche as my excuse, like, I've just had my plate full. I was never meant to finish everything on it anyway, at least not by myself.

What I will say is this. My life is now something completely different. When I got married, this was the case. (To my single brothers: married life is not single life + a roommate who happens to be a girl.) It wasn't that my plate got piled on with more of the same; it was instead a whole new etiquette, a whole new menu, and the table was certainly larger.

But now, not only am I married (and happily so for 1 year and five months), I am now a foster parent to three teenaged children. Just to tell you about them would require another whole season of blogging. Maybe I will just do that. So the table has become quite a bit bigger and more multicultural. Now we have Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese being spoken in the house.

And all of this just happened so quickly. Which reminds me of what a professor mine told me when I broke the news to him. He said that Christians need to know how to improvise. We know the script (the Word), and we've done some rehearsing, but when something unexpected happens, how do we respond?

Who knows. Maybe when you're done reading this post, something or someone may come your way, your chance to entertain angels/angles.

yaking about yakima fruit market

I meant to compose this when the Yakima Fruit Market (YFM) in Bothell was still open. It is closed from November to March because the weather is too frigid to sell produce outside.

But let me minute-rave about YFM.

Just as you round the Bothell-Everett Highway on the north end of Lake Washington, almost out of nowhere, Yakima Fruit Market appears like an oasis. It is difficult to find good parking because it's right next to the road, but any space will do. There are two parts to the market: an uncovered portion and a covered portion. The uncovered space usually displays the market's seasonal items, including locally grown prize pumpkins, Washington Christmas trees, Easter decorations, and the like. It is an airy foyer to the main goods of the place. The products advertise themselves.

Then you venture into the covered part of YFM where there are rows and rows of local apples, berries, garlic, squash, fennel, leeks, etc. The whole panoply of produce is on the display, of course, in local quantities and without much of the wax that is used in grocery stores. Candy logs, honey sticks, and the usual dried fruit and canned goods are located further back. And the entire place has the faint sweet smell of a waking orchard. These are free range fruits and vegetables, uncaged and vegetarian-fed.

But what I appreciate most about the market is the people who work there. I cannot remember their names, but their presence is a familiar and comforting one. They have the presence of nurses in a, well, nursery ward: incredibly knowledgeable about each of their patients, busy, but never too busy to stop and tell you a good story or joke. I remember this one young lady with strong arms, tattoos fading, who shared that her favorite apple variety was Jonagold. It was she who informed me that Jonagolds have the color and tartness of a Jonathan apple and the starchiness and sweetness of a Golden Delicious. Hence, Jonagold! I didn't even know Jonathan apples existed. (And where, then, are the David apples? They need to make a cameo appearance...) She knew what she was talking about, and by her frame, I could tell that she probably had picked many of these apples herself.

YFM is one reason why I love local. They're so connected to what they do, from starch to finish. They have a rootedness, and they give life to those who come. When you buy from YFM, you're not just bringing home delicious produce at decent prices. You've entered a context. You know what has come before. You know where you are. You know where it's going. You bring home more of what it is: home.

what is a church for?

I'm no Wendell Berry or Alice Waters, but I sometimes wish I could be the Korean American male version of some hybrid of both. I think it is time that we stop seeing the church as a place to go and more of a mode of being. In short, I want a real local church.

There is enough distancing and disintegration in our lives. The weekdays from the weekend. The friends from the co-workers. The inner from the outer life. Not that boundaries aren't important, but what is it that holds a life together?

If church is the vessel through which people meet God, grasp the gospel, find fellowship, team up together, what are we saying when we say, "I go to church"? Is there a point where you don't? I mean, in its essence? What has happened, I believe and lament, is that our churches have become too disconnected from our neighborhoods and our communities. My fellow pastor-friend Ben Park said something to the effect, "we must guard against our churches becoming country clubs." Church is not a country club. It is neither a kind of separatist country that secludes itself until the End, nor is it a club used to beat moral sense into society. My church shall not be an escape pod from planet Earth.

Nor shall I countenance a church that sanctimoniously sanctions the status quo. (Ooh. A church in tension: intention?)

But I will be a part of a church that serves, lives, and dies for the people around it, the locals, the natives. I will be a part of a church that has real good news, and it will be right under our noses.

When there is no vision, the people perish. But when there is a vision, the people parish.

songs sung when you can't sing

singe the wick

of my candlestick

when there is no more tallow

sneak in the oil

your secret toil

when I feel shallow

shear these limbs

for your whims

or let me lie fallow

sore throat

The cold rain of Seattle

Lack of sleep due to trip to Portland

+ General sense of fatigue this past month

______________________________________

An unexpected reminder of my frailty,

which, when I subtract my strengths anyway,

there is still a kind of bonus that doesn't add up.

Even on this side of equilibrium,

I am being given the gift of myself,

a dissolution of the divisions of my life.

I am bread and fish broken, but

in order to be fruitful and multiply.

As I sip on this derivative of ginseng

to ease my throat, being full of phlegm,

I wonder at how sickness sometimes sucks

dry my moistened ambition and makes

me more integral, whole, and greater than

by being less than all this.

the art of justice

I recently ate at a buffet in Lynnwood and had to roll myself out of the double doors. Thinking back on it, I had to blame, if not myself, then the food. The food was just so good-looking and tasty.

Which got me thinking about basic necessities.

If someone who was poor was given everything he needed in order to survive--that is, food and shelter, even some company--but it did not include something called beauty, would his existence truly be human? If his food came to him in some paper bag, all mashed up into one blob of grub, yes, we could still say that he is being sustained, but would that be justice? We could give him a roof over his head and clothe him in the most holey of holeys, but would he have any standing among us?

In other words, justice and mercy cannot just mean the meanest of a livelihood, the bare scraps to scrape through the day. Justice is wedded to dignity and beauty--the opportunity to share. I think it unconscionable to practice the art of justice without the luscious brushstrokes of jubilee. Justice without beauty is like painting the rainbow with only black and white.

beet poetry

There is no doubt of the connection

between food and poetry.

A well-cooked meal is a muse--

paeans on paella, scones of scorn,

the turn of verse as marinated

steaks sear with grill lines,

the iamb from shaking sea salt on lamb.

Good food renders us speechless and,

in that moment, the ingredients for poetry.

The poet, like the chef, wakes up in the morning

and goes to the market, finding choice

and fresh edibles, before the others get to them.

We could live off of intravenous

glucose pumped into our stomachs,

pre-digested concepts that pass for food,

sustenance that does merely that: sustain.

We could shuffle off our mortal coils

without ever having crispy onion rings

or kielbasa covered in sauerkraut.

We could manage with newspaper

fat, tablets of tabloids, three-second

sound bites, snippets that impress upon us

less speech rather than leaving us speechless,

the instantly accessible loaf of banality.

We could,

but we find room, always room,

for that everyday indulgence,

for that which is utterly beautiful,

for that which sings

like bread still quivering from the oven.

Once you have tasted gourmet,

there's only one way.

Once a verse touches your language,

salts your understanding, brightens your eyes

like honey does after a fast,

you know what hunger and poverty is.

O how much flavor, breadth, and depth we lack!

How little we feast and how much we snack!

O beet poet, standing on stage

reading your recipe for life,

peppered with reality, looking at us

with your glazed glare,

stop starving art with your open mic-

rowaved slam.

getting my leaven's worth

Just had to put up some photos of my bread-baking craze of late:

Special thanks to jamie for her recipe on how to make delicious artisan bread in less than 5 minutes a day. truly, your leaven's worth.

Man does not live on bread alone. It needs oil and salt.

our church home: a genius?

I've just finished skimming through Deymaz's book, Building a Healthy Multi-Ethnic Church, and what I found was disappointing. Not that Deymaz's book isn't a well thought out book, but I couldn't find any resources for how to take a homogenous non-White church (e.g. a Korean-American church) into the multi-cultural river. It makes sense that Deymaz is writing for the majority culture, but it did strike me as ironic that the practical application of the book was geared totally towards White churches that are seeking to become multi-cultural. Ironic because it doesn't really seem like a multi-cultural approach.

What I am struggling with is the tension between ethnic-specific ministry and multi-cultural ministry. I see the need for both. (Throw in multi-socio-economic factors, and you get a picture of what my ideal church looks like.)

Is this a question about being relevant? Am I unsatisfied with ethnic-specific churches because they don't accurately reflect their surrounding communities (in cities that I live in, like Shoreline, WA)? Or is it about being prophetic, staying true to the vision we see in the book of Acts and Revelation?

To be quite honest, one of the reasons why I desperately desire a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-socio-economic church is because of evangelism. I remember when I was back in youth group. Zealous as I was, I wanted to invite a few of my high school friends out to church. They were and still are good friends of mine. But they aren't Asian. And while they respectfully and graciously made their visits to my church, there was no place for someone like them. It had made my heart heavy to realize that as much as I could pray for them, I did not have a church that I would even feel comfortable welcoming them into and having them call it home.

Yes, there are many Asian Americans that still need reaching out to, still need to be welcomed to the church. And there are many that have left the church as well. But perhaps if those Asian Americans saw a church that practiced reconciliation and that more accurately reflected the communities they live and work in, maybe there would be more that would come.

Everyday I meet people in coffeeshops, at the grocery store, in and around my neighborhood, who have a relationship with me but don't have a relationship with Jesus. And I want to invite them to church, but feel somewhat hindered by the fact that my congregation is entirely Asian American. In other words, our homogeneity, while a strength in building a church home, seems to be a detriment to being gracious hosts. Our homogeneity affects our hospitality. It also affects our theology. (A tangent that deserves another post: what happens to your spirituality if your communities on Monday-Saturday look different from your Sunday morning community?) And this should not be.

What, then, is our way forward? One church, homogeneous? Help.

I need plastic surgery

The Asian concept of saving-face is a kind of face-lift.

And like face-lifts, there is a specific aspect to saving-face that has always struck me as odd. It is in the realm of gifts. I didn't know what all the hubbub was about. When somebody brought over a gift, there was always an outcry, something like "oh, you really didn't have to do that!" And there was the initial refusal, the vigorous thrusting of the gift back into the hands of the giver, and only when the giver nearly appeared insulted, was the gift reluctantly received.

A gift tiff, if you will.

It took me several years (and I am still learning how) to say the words "thank you" whenever anyone gave me a gift, even a compliment. I began to wonder if I was never taught this elegant solution for fear it might seem like I wouldn't take the gift seriously enough. Of course, all the noise drew more attention to the recipient than the gift, or the giver for that matter! Or if it was because we didn't want to feel indebted to the giver because of the gift. Gifts always came with strings attached.

(Ironically, "gift" in German means "poison.")

But I am wondering, and I think C. S. Lewis would agree (cf. "Weight of Glory"), if wanting to appear self-less is not the point. Being grateful is beautiful, because it shows a receptive heart.

My heart is still a shy host, unsure if gifts require something of me. I am conditioned to think that I must at least play puppet to the strings of the gift. So when something is given to me, I hide my blush, and vigorously prove that I should never receive such a gift, if only to show that I do not go down without a fronted fight. If only to show that even in receiving, I can still hold up my nose job of pride.

re:metamorphosis

If you have ever read anything by Kafka, you'll understand why his surname has been adjectivized: kafkaesque, as in something senseless, complex, and menacing. Like his story "Metamorphosis," where, if you recall, a man wakes up one morning to find himself turned into a cockroach the size of a divan.

When I read it back in high school, I didn't understand it one bit. But after having just read the first several parts of Lewis' Miracles, some light has been shed upon the story. Lewis contends that what makes Reason so distinctive in human beings is that it is separate from Nature. Many believe that Reason is natural, that is, the result of an evolutionary process of natural selection. Reason remained in the gene pool because it was useful and helped certain creatures survive better than others. But we have a problem when we claim Reason to be the descendant of Nature. For if this is so, then how can we at all distinguish between them? To say that your reasoning or mine is nothing but the effect of natural causes is to say that we have no 'Reason' at all, but that we are doing just what we have been naturally programmed to do.

I am not trying to lay out the entire treatise here, but I am trying to explain how fascinating Kafka's story is with regards to Reason and Nature. What makes Kafka's "Metamorphosis" so, um, kafkaesque is how a rational, sensible man devolves into an unintelligible and gross carapace with legs. It is a story of a man turning into an animal, while retaining the reason and psychology of a man. And for that matter, it is a horrific story.

He wakes up one morning to find himself metamorphosed into a giant cockroach. If he hadn't had his reasoning powers, he would have never known he had turned into a cockroach. He would just be a cockroach. End of narrative. But he can describe his feelings. He is aware of himself. He has thoughts. But he's just in a body that doesn't quite suit him or the others around him. And his ability to communicate is severely degenerated. He's a rational being in a seemingly irrational body.

But that picture is a picture of humanity, no? Why should it horrify us to find Reason hidden within an animal? Isn't that the picture the evolutionists give us? And who is to say that cockroaches do not have rational powers? After all, they have survived far longer than we have, according to biologists.

All this has been intriguing to me, because what people have considered kafkaesque is actually quite natural according to science and anthropology, except, of course, that it is a caricature of natural. Shocking what you find when you look at a mirror, yes? Furthermore, it is intriguing to me because what Kafka and others have suggested is that when Reason exists within a human body, when a human exercises reason, it is so refreshingly right. It is as if Reason has always existed in humanity, which is indeed what I believe.

Imagine Kafka's reversal: a cockroach becoming a man. Whereas, in the original, there involved a great loss--namely, that of the human body-- this fiction would involve an incredible gain: that of reason, among many other things. The body and the mind fit. Mens sana in corpore sano.

There are days when I wake up and find myself but a little better than a cockroach. David Cockroach Ro. I can't seem to communicate. I dislike the way I look. I get apples thrown at me, and I feel like rot and scum. And the question that buggers me is this: is everything I do simply the product of my natural self? Have I no control whatsoever?

But the fact that I have even written thus, the fact that I know that I am a man stuck inside a cockroach and not just a cockroach with no sense or sensibility at all, is hopeful. For even to long for something like true humanity, a resurrected humanity if you will, is to show that Reason exists outside of Nature. Not everything is fated by my biology or physiology or even my sociology.

Reason, I am finding, is reason enough to hope that there is something more than just Nature.

Towards a Blogging Ministerium

What if I could get a bunch of pastors together to blog for a particular generation of blog-readers? Why pastors? One, we need each other. The pastoral outfit is not a solo mission. There is so much that bearing the cross and the cloth demands that one person is not meant to handle it. A crass way of putting it would be that if you think you are able to take it on all by yourself, either your cross is too small or your ego is too big. Maybe that's saying the same thing.

Two, sometimes the most effective rhetoric is not soliloquy or one-man-versus-the-world (ala Athanasius) sort of speaking, but rather dialogue. Or a concert of voices. For example, take the way we study the Bible. Fruitful study comes not only when I have my own interpretations and thoughts, but when I also check them--converse--with commentators and scholars who have studied the same passage with more rigor. We stand, if not on the shoulders of giants, at least shoulder-to-shoulder with fellow stone-slingers against them.

Lastly, and on a personal note, I need motivation to write. The idea of blogging on my own seems daunting, like trying to write a novel. Too many days separate my last blog entry from my current one. Too many thoughts spoil my literary kitchen. Too many distractions exist in an already technolopolized world (to borrow from Postman). Writing, nowadays, has the invitation to being utterly exposed on the Internet. You were taught not to spew out just mere rambling (this is the traditional view of writing), but yet that sort of rambling is what has made blogging so accessible and popular (the contemporary view of writing). For someone with traditionalist leanings like me, blogging and Internet publishing has that kind of paradoxical hindrance. People might actually like your unfiltered thoughts. They might actually connect with you and write a response. And so the blogosphere turns.

On the whole, we need to write. And I need to write. So, help us write together in the midst of generational turmoil, neuroses, and angst. And writing our wrongs, we may just right them, Lord-willing.

Initial Observations

Funny. I don't feel like a lumberjack, but that's okay. They used to call them loggers. And if you have the tendency to spew, then, blumberjack, it is apropos that we call you 'blogger.'

And that is what I am now: a blogger in this blogosphere. All sorts of studies could be done on me, and could be neatly labeled under the category 'blogology.'

Just what sort of word is 'blog'? Originally from web-log, I suppose, the initial, communal prefix has been excised to create it; although it could also be said that 'we blog.' And that is what we bloggers do: blog. For a bit, I shall compose some neo-blogisms.

I'd like to say that I go blogging once every morning, when the air is crisp and I have just stretched my fingers and straightened my back and tied my laces. Just a brisk blog, nothing more. Afterwards, I have my coffee.

Or perhaps I go check out the next city blog, which is ten blogs away, swinging on my world wide webs from post to post.

Maybe I accidentally drip some blog onto my shirt after taking a bite of my egg-blog sandwich. Its golden, congealed yolk makes for some amusement at the neighborhood blog party.

Once, I got blogged out of my house. The firemen were not happy when they had to knock the door down for me. I had gone blogging without my keys. Silly me.

Blog! That tastes horrible! Get me some water.

At any rate, I b-log to you, and you b-log to me. That's how this sort of thing works. We b-log to each other.

Blog. Blog. Blog. Captain's Blog, Stardate 03112011:

Hello fellow bloggers. I am living da vida roca. Ricky Martin, watch out.