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| The Last Words of a Dying Man1. Words – If you speak too many words, useless words will come out. Use your two ears to listen, and think three times before speaking. 2. Books – Devote 1% of your income to buying books. While clothes become old and get thrown away, books are worth keeping regardless of how much time passes by. 3. Street Peddlers – Do not seek a bargain from street peddlers. Though money cultivates dependence, if you pay him as much as he requests, you will be giving that peddler the gift of hope and health. 4. TV – Do not waste too much of your time watching television. While one loses self-control through drunkenness and one’s reason through drugs, watching too much television will paralyze and dull your mind. 5. Smile – Practice making smiling a part of your life. It is the cure to all diseases. It gives youth to the old and a child-likeness to youth. 6. Anger – A person’s anger will always make them lose in an argument. A person’s anger will murder them as well as the other person. Because no one will come near you, your anger will leave you stranded in depression and loneliness. 7. Prayer – Prayer can melt steel. It is like a single beam of light in a dark cave 1000 years long. Two hands folded in prayer are stronger than one clenched fist. It helps you find yourself and see the solution to your future. 8. Others – Never turn your back on others. Others are a mirror image of yourself. If you turn away from them or do not smile at them, there is something inside of you that must be reexamined. 9. Love – Love that is expressed with one’s head and mouth have no fragrance. True love consists of understanding, forbearance, tolerance, adaptability, and humility. “It took 70 years for the love from my head to reach my heart.” 10. Stop – Evaluate your life in solitude once in a while. Look into the eyes of your heart…the heart of your heart. See yourself as your life’s protagonist and investigate who you are, where you’re coming from, and where you’re going. Doing this will release you from the fear of death and create room for true life. -- the late senior cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and former Archbishop of Seoul, Su-Hwan Kim | | |
| "In my parents' generation, rebellion was pop culture. It's not anymore. You can see it in something as simple as where their music was at and where ours is now. If you look at our Billboard Top 100, a lot of those songs on there are from Christian country artists. A lot of rappers, too, are very Christian. The fact that [religion] is even still talked about is kind of wild to me. I think my generation understands it, but they are too selfish to let it matter." - Shia LaBeouf, comparing this generation to the last
This quote stopped me in my tracks. I cannot help but think that Shia has actually caught onto something pretty relevant and truthful to the contemporary condition. Essentially, what he seems to be saying is that, to some degree, our generation has accepted that there is Something or Someone beyond this world that points to value or meaning. Rebellion was more of a customary trend in the previous generation, because it was important for them to define the individual...not to generalize or anything, of course. Today, however, we've calmed down some; perhaps we're more boring for that reason, but nonetheless, we get that it's not just about the individual, as our aims to be "green" would like to suggest, but like Shia said, there is a selfishness, this stubbornness that coincides with our desire for comfort, that obstructs our trajectory toward applying our understanding of "religion." It's a very Zizekian idea - to know exactly what it is we do, i.e. choose to be complacent, and continue to do it anyway. Consequently, what gets elucidated in all of this is the undeniable fact that believing is not the same as following.
This might sound strange, but I recently had moments where I actually wondered if my belief system reflected Judaism more than Christianity. What I mean by that is, I think much of the way I've been living suggests that I'm still waiting for a Messiah, rather than taking in that He's already come and has transformed life as we know it. I'm still waiting to be reassured that everything will ultimately be okay. My absolute obsession with wanting clarity for my future's path is ultimately this thirst to know that my life will not end up in ruins or be labelled as expendable, unnecessary, useless...the like. And now that I think about it, the cries I have let out on behalf of brokenness, mine and others', point to a deep-seated anger and frustration, a hesitation to believe that healing will ever come...that atrocities as public as international affairs, as intimate as one's soul, will never have its meeting with Redemption.
So much of me has been demanding His Kingdom come already, and I wonder if I've just completely neglected to see that it already has, marking its entrance on a cross. So if the cross indicates the arrival of the Kingdom and all that it stands for, then His promises of favor...freedom for captives...adoption for the fatherless...are then already fulfilled.
Perhaps then, this means that I don't have to wait for the day when I'll "feel" healed, or wait for the day when the broken will be saved. Instead, maybe this means that I am healed and that they are saved - it's just a matter of giving Him the benefit of the doubt, trusting that He has beautifully satisfied the core of our human longing, and then...proving Shia wrong by finally letting our "religion" matter to the point of selflessness.
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven" then means...those who do not have it all together are fortunate, because Jesus makes available to you the hope and healing of Heaven.
So I'm not saying there shouldn't be a posture of waiting or seeking, but Victory implies a consciousness that the war has already been won; meaning, there is validity in Him constantly saying, "Don't worry," or "Don't be afraid," because when it comes down to it, there's nothing to be worried about or afraid of.
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| I was watching Almost Famous the other night. Not that that would surprise any of you, but what I mean to say is...I think you can tell when a story is rich and actually has something to say when you can learn something new from it every time you encounter it. I'd always thought I was William Miller because he's this uncool, endearing writer, but for the first time, I think I might actually be Penny Lane. When Penny barely exhales in tears, "Why doesn't he love me?", I couldn't help but resonate with how we believe our home, our sense of completion and belonging, ought to come from the one(s) we choose to love. Yet, it's funny how life works...this battle to make those we love to love us back, only to miss the fact that we are actually loved by those to whom we gave the least consideration. I know none of you can relate, but I know at least for me, I go through this a lot with God - this whole...wanting to make the world love you, only to find that it uses you to further love itself, and then when God says He loves you, you want to dismiss that, because that feels lame and unoriginal since He loves everyone anyway...
I've been thinking a lot about this relationship I'm part of, and the more I think about it, the more it's becoming clear to me that I've been drawn to two out of His three facets - the Counselor and the Friend who is great with people / who I want to be just like. A lot of the things we talk about are things like how we feel about ourselves, each other, the world, and why we are the way we are. These have always been good sessions, and the revelations are definitely...revelatory, that I'm not questioning. But, I wonder if I've been missing the bigger picture, that maybe He's got more to say to me than just stuff about me and my life...and that maybe this relationship has no other objective...than the very relationship itself.
I realize this sounds ludicrous, but I guess the price I've paid for over-thinking this is this drowning question of what defines a relationship - proximity? consistency? common interest? mutual initiative? vulnerability? See, it's just that...lately, that Third Facet known as Father has been raising His hand in the back corner of my mind. He's been trying to remind me about our relational dynamic, calling Himself "shepherd" and calling me "His own...treasured possession." When He puts it that way, it gets me thinking that using these "therapy sessions with my Counselor/Friend" just to ask my Penny Lane type questions skews the opportunity to cultivate a true relationship.
As someone who's been trying to learn to find flaws within logical reasoning [if you understood what I was referring to, I'm sorry], I came to realize that I've had flawed reasoning about all this for some time. I'd always resented God, because I felt that if He could loves others, too, then He must love me less. Just because He can love more than one person does not mean His love for me is lessened. I may not know much, but maybe a relationship can start by trusting that.
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| A memory:
Personally speaking, it's very hard for me to share nature with others. For instance, I can't begin to articulate how deeply touched I was by meeting Bryce Canyon face to face. My cousin who went on the trip with me kept exclaiming how cool the sights were, and when she inquired after my silence after noticing that I hadn't said anything for a while, I made my attempt to explain to her in my broken Korean that "when I see something 'cool' like this, I can't talk. I just feel it inside." Not too far away were other members of our group - I kid you not, seventeen elderly men and women from the Korean countryside, with the heaviest country accent and most blatant country proclivities I'd ever witnessed...personally speaking. I didn't know how to feel when other tourists, who obviously lived in the States, stared in horror as these men would spit, smoke, and yell at their wives to "hurry and get in the picture." But despite these bitingly uncomfortable moments, Bryce was grand enough to steal a few of their breaths away, sprinkling a few moments of silence in an otherwise chaotic tourist scene.
A thought:
Have you noticed how when people come in contact with the ocean, mountains, sky, or small children...they stop acting like their normal selves? The tilted head of a child, looking up at you makes even the most austere adult melt, at least for a moment. Throw a street kid in the expanse of land and sky, and you see his social labels, self-chosen or not, washed away. That day at Bryce Canyon, I saw loud, bickering Korean grandmothers in loud, glossy pink sweats [with matching visors and handkerchiefs around their necks]...given back a moment of innocence in the crystal breeze that makes you hold yourself tighter...in the dancing colors of the canyons that make you want to cry for that unnamable thing, simultaneously lost and found in that moment. Perhaps in this way, creation possesses life's meaning.
A confession:
My experiences with things I love, I feel, are too fragile to share. In that way, shamefully, sharing is my weakness. I tend to hoard any love I end up receiving. Whatever kinds of love is allotted to me, I do not take them lightly and archive them in my heart, moment by moment, one after another.
A gnawing struggle:
If He talks about how we shouldn't worry about food or clothes - these things that we need for survival or well-being, how does this message sound to a family living in a Kenyan drought...or orphans in an IDP camp in Darfur...? If birds, which are allegedly worth less than we are, are taken care of, taken care of! ...and are provided with food...or, if lilies of the fields are dressed more abundantly than Solomon could have ever clothed himself with in all his wealth, then what about these people? Where is their food? Their clothes? Where is their "being taken care of"?
Even yesterday, my new internship put real Sudanese faces to the media's patchy, runny ink [not enough ink, perhaps?]. An impromptu trip to the theater, and I find The Soloist's music coming in second to the images that made me remember my own firsthand experiences at Skid Row. I return home to a CNN special on the thirty-six children gunned down in Chicago just within this school year alone. The night progresses and I uncover one heartbreaking news after another. Pack these weights on and the stack becomes too heavy for one mind to carry and simultaneously succumb to sleep.
A crux:
I am reminded of a story about an orphan who was rescued from an abusive family. When he was lovingly welcomed into a sound, nurturing home, the child began hoarding food, hiding it around his strange, new room. The new parents' heart broke when they saw how their adopted child, whom they truly loved, was too broken to yet let in their love.
I remember when I first heard that story, it haunted me, and even still, I find myself unnerved and undone by it. He asks me to trust Him, to love Him by feeding His sheep, to take risks and let others in. Yet in so many ways, I find myself acting like that child - suspicious of Love, in case it might just be "love," hesitant to embrace being embraced, all while hoarding morsels of affirmation or moments of safety and beauty from wherever I possibly can.
So my question as of late:
By what means can I help make anything whole in this world if I myself am so far from wholeness?
One shade from the multifaceted answer to that question:
A woman in Baghdad watched as policemen lit her car on fire, occupied by her husband and son. When she testified in court, this is her response: "These people took away everything that I love most...so I have a lot of love to give." That woman had those policemen sent to her house so that she could care for them and love on them from there on out.
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| "It's as if I've forgotten how to talk......even to You. This is one of my more comfortable venues so I figured we can hang out here.
...I guess there's been a lot on my mind, and even while the whole point of this is to tell You about these things, silence just feels easier; it's a feeling that also seems to apply everywhere else, unfortunately. The fact is...my skin may be thin, but there's a stubborn barrier between my inner life and my outer one. Silence seems like a comfortable stalemate between me and myself, to call a ceasefire on what would otherwise end with my war-ravaged mind as a casualty.
You know I don't even have the words, so do I even have to tell You when my cheeks are practically bleeding red...when my eyes might as well burn holes into the floor...when my fingernails are digging four little curves into my palm, making white-knuckled fists, grabbing and holding on tight to its own void?
Are You not blatantly aware of my naive heart, drenched in its indelible dreams? Have you not taken a stroll with me through the lengths of my imaginations to places like Potential and Ideal? Haven't You felt the inexplicable, excited tremors within my core with me? ...then what is there left for me to inform You about?"
To which He replied, "Silence is merely performative of what your chaotic soul is protesting. Don't resort to that, not with Me. Spell it out, start from the middle, take whatever time you need. I am with you...even when the words don't come out right. Empty out those stifled exhales and keep going after; don't give up on yourself. When we got Married, I told you that we were going to be walking through a lot of things together. This is what I'm here for."
It was then that He patted my clenched fists, loosened my fingers, and filled my grip of emptiness with His hands...with Himself.
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