All New.

China!

2010-06-30T16:16:00.000-07:00

The cable car up to the top of Yellow Mountain

It was ALL stairs, upstairs, downstairs, for six hours!!

Can you see the face in the rocks?

Bugs like Edwin :D

The place where we ate lunch!

The World Expo at Shanghai

More than 200 countries represented.

The China building

Serbia

The Netherlands

Angola

Mexico

Inside the Mexico pavilion

Inside the Israel pavilion

The Pearl Tower at Shanghai

At the Peking Duck restaurant!

The best meal I have EVER had in my life!!!

Duck hearts

Beijing at night in the rain.

The Forbidden City

The pots there are all so happy!

Bears at the Great Wall can do tricks :D

The roller coaster up to the Great Wall

The Great Wall of China

Singapore

2010-06-26T18:10:00.000-07:00

Hello! One of the reasons I haven't blogged for more than a month :( is because Edwin and his parents and I went on a trip to Singapore and China!! Here are some pictures from Edwin's hometown.

Edwin's relatives had a SUPER cute dog named Russel! He barks really loud every time you try to leave the house, and jumps up and bats your leg to show you how angry he is that you are abandoning him!

In Singapore, you are not allowed to pee in the elevators.

Me and the literacy dinosaur at the Singapore Public Library

An art exhibit of postmodern cartoons

Casino/Resort/A Second Noah's Arc

A Singaporean mall from the outside

Edwin and I ready to go on the Luge!!

The Merlion

Edwin's cousins! They were so nice to us, they showed us around everywhere!!

On a huge ferris wheel

A reservoir/place for people to come and fly kites!

The family. But not all of it, not even close, haha! Edwin's parents have 9 or 10 siblings each.

Pictures from China coming later!

Easter Eggs Part III

2010-05-18T01:00:00.000-07:00

I missed writing about Luke last week, so this post is from John.

My favorite find in all the Gospels was another one presented by Rick James and it comes from the story of the adulterous woman in John 8. There has been debate whether that story was actually written by the apostle John; some early manuscripts do not include it. And before I was always indifferent to whether it was the genuine article, but knowing this about the story makes me really hope it was written by him.

While the Pharisees come and present the woman caught in adultery before Jesus, it says twice in the account that Jesus writes with his finger in the dirt. And many people speculate about what he might have written. But if the writing were important, John would have given it to us. What is actually important in that phrase is the mention of Jesus' finger, because it is a reference to the book of Exodus: "When God had finished speaking with Moses upon Mount Sinai, He gave him the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written by the finger of God" (Ex. 31:18).

The Pharisees bring the woman to Jesus to put Him in a predicament: excuse the woman and He is breaking the Law of Moses that says adultery is punishable by death. Condemn the woman and they can find a reason to get Him in trouble. And there is some suspense in the story about what Jesus will decide. How will He get out of this one? But in the middle of the suspense comes John's reference to Exodus, which brings out the delightful irony of the situation: the Pharisees are trying to catch Jesus in a loophole of the Law, when He Himself is its author.

Knowing this reference makes the ending of the story even more poignant. While Moses' Law condemns the woman to death because of her adultery, Jesus, the originator of that Law, says to her, and to us, "Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more."

Easter Eggs Part II

2010-05-06T23:21:00.000-07:00

In Mark, whenever I read the passage when Jesus was asleep in the boat and then calms the storm when the disciples get scared, I always thought that was a regular nature miracle. And yes, control over the weather is definitely miraculous, but after all, Moses parted the Red Sea and Joshua parted the Jordan River and stopped the sun in the sky, so nature miracles aren't entirely proof of actual God-hood. The very interesting thing, though, is what I learned from the lecture by Rick James about the reason why Jesus happened to be asleep at that time, besides the fact that he was human and tired. In Isaiah chapter 51, it says this:

"Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord;
Awake as in the days of old, the generations of long ago...
Was it not You who dried up the sea,
The waters of the great deep;
Who made the depths of the sea a pathway
For the redeemed to cross over?" (vv. 9-10)

As the prophet cried out to God to wake and assert His control over the ocean, so the disciples cried out to Jesus. And I love God's response:

"Rouse yourself! Rouse yourself! Arise, O Jerusalem" (v. 17)

You can see in the Isaiah passage and in Mark the same pattern: we cry out to God for help because we know He has the power over our circumstances, and God turns it back to us, trying to help us to realize that what we thought was an external problem was actually an internal one, a matter of our own hearts.

Easter Eggs Part I

2010-04-27T19:00:00.000-07:00

If you've ever watched a director's commentary of a Pixar movie, they will point out to you the places where the filmmakers referenced other Pixar movies by sticking in objects in the backgrounds of scenes called "Easter Eggs." There are some fans who go through and play the movie in slow motion so that they can catch every one of these, even though the reward is nothing more than the satisfaction of collecting a relatively meaningless piece of trivia, because these allusions to other movies do nothing to further the plot of the one you are actually watching. A speaker named Rick James came to the Campus Crusade meeting at Cal the other day, and he illuminated for us some of the Easter Eggs hidden in the Gospels. Except these Easter Eggs, references either to the Old Testament or to a previous passage in the Gospel, are much more satisfying to discover, because, unlike the Pixar references, the claims the Gospel writers make through these allusions is the claim that is central to the entire Bible: Jesus is not just another man, but He is the Son of God.

I was so proud of myself this week reading Matthew, because I found one on my own! As soon as I heard Rick James's message, I started looking up words in my Bible's concordance at the back to see if I would be led to an Old Testament description of the Messiah. And one phrase that struck me as a potential Easter Egg was this description of Jesus right before he begins giving the Sermon on the Mount: "When Jesus saw the crowds, He went up on the mountain; and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him. He opened His mouth and began to teach them, saying..." (Matthew 5:1-2). In this description, it is totally unnecessary to say that Jesus opened His mouth; if He says anything, of course his mouth would be open. That led me to believe that the phrase "opened His mouth" has some kind of other significance. I looked up the word "mouth" in the concordance, but I did not find anything helpful (my Bible's concordance is very incomplete). However, then my eyes glanced back only one chapter and I found the treasure. When Satan tempts Jesus in the wilderness by telling him to turn stones into bread, Jesus replies, "Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." (Matthew 4:4). Man lives on the words that come out of God's mouth. In chapter 5, by highlighting Jesus' mouth, Matthew is trying to say, "Look! Here are words coming out of God's mouth right now! Listen to them, because they are what will give you life."

Worlds Apart

2010-04-22T14:39:00.001-07:00

I found this picture on the Photo of the Day blog, as part of a series of underwater landscapes. This one in particular struck me because it splits the frame almost in half between the aquatic realm and a glimpse of the terrestrial one above. Is this not how we live our lives? We see the eternal realm as if through a filmy, light-distorting surface. At rare moments, we stick our heads through, but we quickly find our anatomy was not made to exist in undiluted air, and we are forced back into a fluid normality, where we sit and look and long for the time when we will be given lungs instead of gills. If The Little Mermaid were less about an angsty teenage girl rebelling against her father, it would be a perfect parable for the life of a follower of Jesus.

He is Risen!

2010-04-04T18:44:00.000-07:00

He is risen indeed.

This week has been an exciting one for me. Last Sunday, pastor Peter gave a sermon on The One Thing. And he said how The One Thing in life is very simple: share the Gospel. Doing this is so important, because it's the only reason Jesus left us on the earth. And that means, in a very real sense, sharing the Gospel is who we are. In the same way that an Olympic caliber figure skater is him- or her-self when he or she is competing or practicing in the rink, we are who we are when we are sharing the Gospel.

After I heard that sermon, my reaction was: I want to know who I am. It is so easy to forget, and it makes sense that God has given us this way to remember. So, on Wednesday, I went with Campus Crusade at Berkeley to Bear Share, which is something they do every week. They go to campus at 1:00 and go around the main plaza of the school initiating conversations with students. I went with a friend from Bible study, and we got to talk to a freshman girl who turned out to already be a Christian, but she was struggling this year with doubts, because Berkeley does nothing if not barrage the faith of anyone who comes there, and she had not found the time to get involved with a Christian community on campus. But in the end, she said, "Maybe the fact that you guys came and talked to me is a sign that I should make God more of a priority." It was so great, I felt encouraged because of that for the entire week!

Then, on Saturday, I was meeting with my friend Catherine at Starbucks, whom I've been discipling, and we were talking about God. And randomly, two other girls from the youth group came in and ordered drinks. They hadn't been coming to church for a couple months now, but they sat down with us, and I was able to share Peter's sermon with them about The One Thing. In the middle of talking with them, the barista at the counter said, "That was really well said." Apparently my voice kind of carries when I'm talking. Which is embarrassing, but embarrassing for a good cause!

Anyway, I felt this entire week that I am a part of God's work in the world, and it's all culminated with Easter, which is the magical day when God suspended the rules of nature: "When an innocent victim dies in a traitor's place, the table will crack and death itself will work backwards!"

Psalm of the Kitchen

2010-04-02T16:06:00.000-07:00

Let the window open wide to welcome
The sun and the love of God that
Penetrates every shadow.
Let the floor bear up our feet as they dance.
Let the earthy onion, with all its tears and ours,
Praise the Lord!

Praise rises mingling the sharpness of the garlic
With the keenness of the knives that cut it.
Praise flows shushing out of our
Very own fountain that never runs dry
Except when they're fixing the plumbing.
Praise riots out in the cackles of hot oil.
Even the tone-deaf kettle sings
And its notes are found acceptable.

All you objects in the kitchen,
Let your voices, colors, and smells
Cry out in all their magical ordinariness
So that we might join you in the chorus:
Praise the Lord!

An Easter Poem

2010-03-28T23:04:00.000-07:00

So this past month, I've been reading each Gospel all in one sitting. That's the main reason I haven't been posting as consistently...on Fridays, I barely have time to skim through the book, let alone think and write about what I'm reading. I will not do this again, because taking so much of the Bible all at once makes it into a burden. Starting now, I'm going back to reading small portions every day.

Happy Palm Sunday. Here is a poem to think about in preparation for Easter:

"The Opening," by Elizabeth Rooney

Now is the shining fabric of our day
Torn open, flung apart, rent wide by love.
Never again the tight, enclosing sky,
The blue bowl or the star-illumined tent.
We are laid open to infinity,
For Easter love has burst His tomb and ours.
Now nothing shelters us from God's desire--
Not flesh, not sky, not stars, not even sin.
Now glory waits so He can enter in.
Now does the dance begin.

Jesus

2010-03-20T09:24:00.000-07:00

I was fairly distracted reading Luke today. I can't say I paid much attention most of the time. I was mostly thinking that the Gospels are not very suited for reading all at once, because they jump around so often from episode to episode that it's hard to catch any kind of flow in the story. however, this makes them ideal as material for Bible studies and sermons, because they are naturally divided into chunks. How thoughtful of the writers to make them that way. Anyway, what I did do is finally underline a couple verses that I've been caught by every time I read this book:

At that very time Jesus rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit and said, "I praise You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight." (10:21)

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not have it!" (13:34)

I love these verses, because they are places where Jesus expresses emotion. And in the poetry of the language, you can see the depth of his human and divine feeling for, in the first verse, the glory and mystery of God's ways and, in the second, the helpless situation of the human race. These are like intimate glimpses into Jesus' mind, and what could be more beautiful?

Back on Track

2010-03-12T18:55:00.001-08:00

While reading Mark today, I realized that, as part of my Gospel-reading New Year's Resolution, these weekly blog posts have actually ended up distracting me from my original purpose. The reason I wanted to read a Gospel each week is to continually confront myself over the course of the year with the person of Jesus. However, when I'm trying to figure out something to write about for my weekly post, it's really easy to fall back on the way I used to relate to God and think I have to learn something new. It's funny, for me, the fastest way for me to get tired of reading the Bible is to think I have to learn something new every time I read it. In the future, I will try to keep these posts less focused on the text and more focused on the meeting point between Jesus and my life.

Earlier, I was thinking about reading the Bible (while I was still in the feeling stale stage) and comparing it to, of all things, C. S. Lewis. I am now reading another one of his works of literary criticism, and he amazes me in the way that, even in a thoroughly academic book, he always finds a way to thrust spiritual realities in through the barrier of the world so that they touch our lives. For a while when I was reading him, I was feeling guilty that I don't get the same kind of epiphany from the Bible that C. S. Lewis gives me. And I think the difference is, C. S. Lewis brings spiritual truth into parts of my mind that it has never gone before. My mental world is still divided into many compartments, and some are used to thinking from an eternal perspective. I use the spiritual compartments when I read the Bible, so that's why it often feels like I'm not learning anything--that part of my mind has already been exposed to the kingdom of heaven. However, C. S. Lewis brings God into the academic world. Not explicitly, but in a way that is unmistakable to the believing Christian. And it is a great thing, because each time, it is though a part of me has a brand new encounter with the divine. The Bible can have the same effect; I just have to allow it to penetrate the parts of my mind I'm not used to exposing.

Blogging

2010-03-09T21:54:00.000-08:00

I thought it would be a lot easier than it has been keeping up with my posting while I've been reading the Bible. Last week I read Matthew and thought about some things, but I didn't have time to make them into a coherent post that fits my word limit. Oh well. One of the parts of my resolution was not to feel guilty about failing, haha.

This week I picked up C. S. Lewis's Preface to Paradise Lost. I've been feeling more and more malnourished in my English classes this semester, and it is really difficult to put a finger on why I seem to disagree with my professors on almost every level, even about technical points of the text that seem fairly obvious. But then Lewis came in and, with a kind of clarity I had almost given up hope of ever finding again outside the Bible, named what was happening inside my mind:

"Dr. Leavis does not differ from me about the properties of Milton's epic verse. He describes them very accurately...It is not that he and I see different things when we look at Paradise Lost. He sees and hates the very same that I see and love. Hence the disagreement between us tends to escape from the realm of literary criticism. We differ not about the nature of Milton's poetry, but about the nature of man, or even the nature of joy itself."

It seems to me that the study of literature, and probably that of philosophy as well, is uniquely frustrating, because in it, personal, private beliefs that do not factor into other disciplines at all apparently color every interpretation of even the tiniest phrase. If I do not agree with my professor about something as seemingly irrelevant as the internal coherency of the Bible, I become an outsider in a conversation about Milton's sonnets.

I was starting to think I have just lost interest in the discipline in general, but then I found what C. S. Lewis wrote about Mr. John Milton and reading it was a delight! In large part because C. S. Lewis retains the old-fashioned belief that the poet's purpose is to teach as well as to create "art." Nowadays, people try to use poetry to do all kinds of crazy things: purify language and society, experiment with syntax and its effects on human experience, make sentences that are like cats, and capture the historical moment of our civilization. If that's what poetry does, then I don't like it very much. I can believe in a poetry that exists in order to help people experience how good things, like the sun, really are good and bad things, like self-love, even though they might feel good at first, actually lead to death. But that function is apparently too simple for the current complexity of the information age.

Poem

2010-02-25T23:09:00.001-08:00

This week I'm reading the book of John. I'm on schedule, but I don't have time to write about anything. However, I did write a story-poem (or a poem-story) today. I've just started writing these short prose pieces that I like to think of as poems, because no one writes stories that are this short. The form was mostly inspired by Jesus' parables, but the key difference, as I discovered when talking about them with Edwin, is that where Jesus wants to either confuse people or teach them a specific lesson about the kingdom of heaven, I want to communicate, not a lesson, but instead a motion of the spirit, like submission or redemption or love. I intend to keep trying until I get it right...but here's the one I just wrote. Can you tell what the motion is supposed to be?

There once was a little clover growing in the tall grass. It was beautiful, each leaf formed in perfect proportion. The birds and butterflies flew around the field and perched on trees and flowers, but the little clover was left unseen. Then, one day, a man came and stopped. He dug a hole, transplanted the clover into a tiny pot, and brought it back to his house. Then, he invited all his friends to come over and admire it.

Luke

2010-02-19T12:05:00.001-08:00

The book of Luke is confusing. With Matthew, Mark, and John, it is easier for me to get an approximation of what they are trying to do: Matthew focuses on Jesus' teachings as a way of describing the counterintuitive nature of the Kingdom of God. Mark, as it was the first Gospel written down, focuses on a minimalist narrative, interspersing teaching with healings and miracles as evidence that Jesus not only taught about the Kingdom, He also ushered it into existence. John, written much later than the other three, includes radically different information, and is centered around seven signs of Jesus' divine nature as well as a series of individual encounters he has with people as if to record personal testimonies that He is indeed the son of God.

Luke, however, is strange. It starts off by claiming to be a historical account of Jesus' ministry: "It seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order" (1:3). And at first it proceeds that way. Luke starts off earlier than the other Gospels do, recording not only the conception and birth of Jesus but also those of John the Baptist. However, when Luke gets to the middle, where Jesus' ministry mostly consisted of going around to different places and telling parables, our narrator seems to drop the sense of chronology he has so far been giving us. The parables of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and the Rich Man and Lazarus seem to be inserted into a vague "sometime" in Jesus' ministry. Then, when He enters Jerusalem for the last time on a donkey, Luke goes back to a strict "consecutive" account of the Passion and resurrection.

I have not done any additional research into the date of composition, but it seems to me that the only explanation for Luke's departure from a chronological narrative is that he was writing this Gospel with his predecessors' works sitting in front of him (or at least in the front of his mind). And when he got to the middle, he saw what they included and thought to himself, "Oh, but this is such a good story, how could they have left it out?" And so he ended up putting in a few extra things without bothering too much about explaining exactly when they happened. I am glad he did, even if it seems to confuse his overall project. However, while this might explain the mechanics of his Gospel, I still haven't got a handle on the overarching theme he is trying to communicate about Jesus. More on that the next time through, I hope.

T. S. Eliot

2010-02-10T21:02:00.000-08:00

I read this for my modern poetry class and had to post it, it's so beautiful. T. S. Eliot wrote The Waste Land in the middle of a failing marriage and in that first poem depicted the hopeless alienation of the modern state of existence. Afterwards, he became a Christian and wrote The Four Quartets about how it is possible for humanity to become purified so that we can reach the timelessness of eternity. Read this section with Christian theology in mind.

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre--
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.

--The Four Quartets, "Little Gidding" Part IV

Get Up and Walk

2010-02-09T23:44:00.000-08:00

Mark 2:1-13

I first heard the story of the paralytic when I was very young, and ever since then, it has seemed like a no-brainer: The paralytic is lowered through the roof; Jesus forgives his sins; the Pharisees mentally challenge His authority; Jesus heals the man physically to prove His divine power. However, in the context of the Kingdom of Heaven, this apparently straightforward healing takes on new overtones. As mentioned below, the Gospel of Matthew contains mostly Jesus' descriptions of God's Kingdom. Those descriptions are otherworldly enough, but how do we know they are true? How do we know that God actually operates under a system where our sins are forgiven at the drop of a hat? We know because the Gospel of Mark records instances in which Jesus ushers the Kingdom into the physical realm. He says to the paralytic, "Your sins are forgiven"; but He also says, "Get up and walk." The healings recorded in this Gospel and the others are not only examples of Jesus' compassion for the sick, they moreover become incarnations of the Kingdom. Jesus is not just a human teacher: as in the beginning when He created the universe through the power of His word, so now in the Gospels, His words both describe an eternal realm that exists parallel to our own and also thrust that realm into the fabric of our everyday lives. If Jesus did not heal, we would be as Moses, able to glimpse but not enter the Promised Land.

The Kingdom of Heaven

2010-02-05T22:55:00.000-08:00

This time through Matthew, I thought about the Kingdom of Heaven. Through Jesus' words, starting from the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew deconstructs our most basic assumptions about how to live, instincts like, "it is better to be happy than to mourn," or, "if someone attacks me, I should defend myself." He overturns our systems of value in episodes like the one where Jesus tells the rich young ruler to sell all his possessions: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven." Nietsche, Sartre, and Camus thought they were doing groundbreaking work with their existential crises; actually they were two thousand years behind the times.

The Kingdom of Heaven is not like the kingdom of this world. It is alien to us, and that is the beautiful thing about the message we find in the Gospels. I started going to a small group at Campus Crusade at Berkeley, and last Tuesday we discussed arguments for the existence of God. Afterwards, I was thinking about why I believe God exists, and one of the main reasons is the foreignness of the content in the Bible, mostly in Jesus' teachings. No human being, using only his or her imagination, would be able to create a world that runs so counter to our natural instincts. The kingdom of heaven is greater than I can understand, and that is why I am glad to believe in it.

John 3:16

2010-01-25T09:50:00.000-08:00

Even though this verse is the most quoted one in the Bible, it is wonderful to read in context, because it comes in the middle of a strange, abstract, nightly conversation between Jesus and a leader of the world's most technical religion. Nicodemus starts with a roundabout statement-question. He is too polite to say to Jesus, "Look, are you from God, or what?" so he forms a declarative sentence: "No one can do these things unless God is with him." Jesus, characteristically, does not answer his question but instead leads the discussion into a series of bizarre metaphors about wombs and wind and serpents in the desert. His language has the esoteric flavor of a cult. But then, like the lightning that will pierce the sky at His Second Coming, Jesus flashes the truth into the room, a truth that shatters the religious rituals of Judaism, a truth that is radical enough to die for and practical enough to live your life by every day: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish but will have everlasting life."

This statement is unlikely to the point of ridicule, which is why no religion has ever thought to make such a claim. Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism all have us making sacrifices for Allah or Krishna or to make our way along the Nine-fold Path. Who would have thought there might be a God who would sacrifice for us?

Eternity

2010-01-17T23:46:00.000-08:00

While I was reading the first four chapters of Luke yesterday, I was reminded of how the Bible is different from every other book in existence. I did not think much about what I was reading, but the whole time my eyes moved over the pages, i felt comforted by nothing else than the fact that these were God's words. I did not make any new observations about the stories of Zechariah, Mary, Simeon, and Anna; I did not connect this account of Jesus' birth to the one in Matthew. But I felt the peace of God.

I am teaching a series this month to the youth group at church called Seeing More, and it is about being able to perceive eternity in our everyday lives. The Bible is what connects us to eternity, and it does so using the thoughts in our conscious minds, but it also uses the subconscious to remind our spirits that they were made for something bigger than this. I know it's only been two weeks of the new year and the busy-ness of school has not yet thrown itself upon me; but right now I not only feel confident about keeping my resolution all year, I see it as one of the most exciting things about this year. I can't wait to see what happens.

Mark

2010-01-15T15:34:00.000-08:00

In Matthew, Jesus' teaching is about the present. The Sermon on the Mount takes up two and a half chapters with information about how the Kingdom of Heaven operates, and Jesus' parables and exhortations throughout the book are about spreading the kingdom further. Mark seems to be more concerned with the future, because of the way he uses a series of episodes of healing and journeying, without many words from Jesus, to build up to Chapter 13, in which He spends thirty-two verses talking to the disciples about the end times. At the beginning of the chapter, Jesus shows His disciples the magnificence of the Jewish temple and claims that in the future, not one stone will be left upon another. The disciples' first instinct is to ask when this destruction will take place, and they specifically ask for a sign, a sign of the end times. In answer to their question, Mark gives us Jesus' longest passage of straight speaking in the entire book. And the point of what He says is this: there will be no sign. It is up to us to always be ready: "What I say to you I say to all, 'Be on the alert!'"

These two Gospels complement each other well, because we need to be reminded to live with both an awareness of God's kingdom as it exists on earth and with the constant expectation that one day He will come again to make everything new.

Anni-VER-sa-RY

2010-01-12T19:27:00.000-08:00

On January 3, Edwin and I spent our first Anniversary at the Monterey Bay Aquarium! It's been a whole year. Thanks for sticking with us, those of you who are still reading, and for anyone new, welcome and here's to many more anniversaries.

Edwin had to get up sooo early that morning: 10:30!!

I LOVE SEAHORSES!!!

It's a couple! ^_^

Tiny seahorse

Doesn't this look like Edwin and daughter?!?! One day...

I discovered I also like cuttlefish. They are surprisingly cute.

Delicious clams and linguine at Luigie Linguine's

Matthew

2010-01-06T12:49:00.000-08:00

by Elanor

Today in church, we tend to emphasize God's inclusivity: He loves the entire world, "I will go down any path to find you." These things are true. However, as I read the book of Matthew, the attitude that jumps out at me is one of selection. Jesus' parables--the four soils, the tares and the wheat--emphasize that, while some people will become His disciples, many will not. I used to think of this issue of the wide and narrow gates as motivation for me to share the Gospel more or better, or to love people in a different way. I would often look with regret on relationships, thinking that if only I had done something different, perhaps that person would be closer to God than they are. Jesus did not think that way. Rather than try to coddle His followers for fear of losing them, rather than allowing each one to go "at his own pace," Jesus would purposely try to get rid of the unmotivated: He told confusing stories; He assigned people difficult tasks; He asked for total devotion above all else. He was not afraid to let people go if they were not driven to come to Him out of their own conviction.

I've always seen my job as being that of persuading people to follow Jesus. Jesus did not try to persuade; that is the job of the Holy Spirit. Instead, He confronted people with the truth and allowed them to choose.

The New Year's Resolution

2010-01-01T12:26:00.000-08:00

by Elanor

As far as I can remember, I have never made a New Year's Resolution before, mostly because I am too afraid of failure to willingly set myself up for it. But this year, while I was driving home from a party on New Year's Eve, I thought of something I would like to do this year.

In 2009, I learned that Jesus is the dividing point of the world. Where some people, intentionally or not, want to mush Christianity together with a general theory of tolerance towards all people and all religions, Jesus comes with a sword and cuts through to mark a distinct boundary between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world. If you ever want to find out for sure where someone stands, get them to tell you what they believe about Jesus, and you will know.

Since He is the difference, He is what changes everything, I want my spiritual focus this year to be on Jesus, and Jesus specifically. I intend to read one of the Gospels every week and share 200 to 250 words about something I learn from them. When Jesus was on earth, His disciples followed Him around for three years, so maybe I will somehow find the discipline (disciple-ness) to follow Him for one.

Merry Christmas!!

2009-12-25T18:10:00.000-08:00

“At this point everything becomes clear or unclear, bright or dark. For here we are standing at the centre. And however high and mysterious and difficult everything we want to know might seem to us, yet we may also say that this is just where everything becomes quite simple, quite straightforward, quite childlike. Right here in this centre, in which as a Professor of Systematic Theology I must call to you, ‘Look! This is the point now! Either knowledge, or the greatest folly!’—here I am in front of you, like a teacher in Sunday school facing his kiddies, who has something to say which a mere four-year-old can really understand. ‘The world was lost, but Christ was born, rejoice, O Christendom!’… ‘God became man for thy good, O man. ‘Tis God’s own Child that binds Himself to thine own blood.’”

- Karl Barth (via More Than 95 Theses)

Perishable

2009-12-02T19:07:00.001-08:00

by Elanor

When my husband and I moved into our apartment,
I found in his old room a string of rose-lights,
pink buds, green leaves, all wispy-veined,
that we hung up around the kitchen window.
Their vine was an electrical cord that plugged
into the wall and made the flowers glow red
and made the place look like a ten-year-old girl’s bedroom.
They lasted, evergreen-and-pink, for four seasons.
This morning I found a few fragments of fake leaf,
brown and brittle, on the kitchen table.
They reminded me of the bulldozers on our street last week
ripping up pockmarked pavement to put in new
smooth black stuff that steamed in piles
before it was steamrollered level,
and of Roman roads that lasted a long time but not forever.
Then I thought of how indignant I was to learn that
when you buy yourself a house, expect
to have work done on it every ten years or so—
retiling, recarpeting, reroofing.
When I buy something, especially at so great a price,
I don’t want to have to pay for it again.

Christmas Art

2009-12-01T23:05:00.000-08:00

I just discovered a Christian artist the other day named Daniel Bonnell. His work is incredible. Take a look here.

Seeing Shepherds

Another poem about poetry...

2009-11-17T20:09:00.000-08:00

This poem is about itself
and how it cannot speak.
It might as well be Danish or
a dialect of ancient Greek.

Its words lift off like air balloons,
each basket all aflame
with revelation's flickering tongues
contained within each lettered frame.

Before these baubles reach the heart
they mean to kindle, each
one's lines snap, baskets drop,
the motive force behind their speech

is lost. The poet even now
while writing feels despair
deflate her. "Mediocre," hiss
infernal whispers in the air,

"expendable, inferior,"
and with a downward gust,
they snuff out truth flames fluttering
until there's nothing left but dust.

I wrote a poem.

2009-11-13T22:51:00.000-08:00

I haven't written one since I started dating Edwin, which is more than a year. Therefore, the poem is about trying to write poetry and not being able to, and the process of self-doubt, etc.

I am going to write a poem.
Idon'thavethewisdomforitIdon't
thinkit'sgoingtobeanygoodandwhoamI
tobewritingthisanywaywhoamIanyway,
the words clunk at my feet.
Where is the wind to carry them
heartwards where they might be lodged
like guests or bent nails in a fencepost
to mark that I have made a difference like
the sunset, for now the sky is velvet
where it was fire and there is no going back?

I am a carbon-based organism, nucleotides dancing.
I am a soul blown through with Trinity.
I am a daughter, sister, wife, warming
house, husband, and children someday. I am
a teacher to open ears and tongues. I am a member
of this glorious squalor of a species that
in less than half a century birthed and killed
its Creator. I am, and I have the right to write a poem.

Yes, I have the right, as I stretch out my fist
to seize it like a Berkeley protester. Shall I
clasp it to my chest and say "Mine, mine, no
one shall take it from me!" as they do? I become
a shallow ditch in Palestine, where many years
ago a frightened man buried his gift. Take the earth
of my hole, mold it into a jar of clay that I might not
fester but break, spilling sweet myrrh at your feet.

Broken Open Jar

2009-10-29T01:00:00.000-07:00

For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body.

So, it's been almost 5 weeks? More than? I haven't had a chance to blog about surviving vs. living (see previous blog). In this case, it has nothing to do with not thinking a lot about it. For some reason, tonight, God has really put this passage on my heart.

I got this image on Sunday of a broken open jar. The jar was made of some kind of ceramic and seemed very fragile. It wasn't shattered to tiny pieces, but was broken beyond real repair--maybe three big pieces and several small ones. Each piece lay outwards from the center, as if the jar broke from the inside out. Hovering slightly above the center of this broken open jar was a light shining brightly. Intensely. The whole sight was... beautiful.

That image was an answer from God. He was pointing me to what it means to live... what life is really about. That image led me to this passage. I had already been thinking a lot about how Paul talks about "to lose your life is to gain" and how Jesus repeatedly talked about the paradoxical idea of "to gain your life, you must lose it."

Living, and not just surviving, then is ironically about dying. This isn't revolutionary. I've known it for a long time. The question is what does this mean--what does this feel like.

Tonight, I had a very real experience of this so-called 'life'. I was verbally abused, disrespected, and, in some sense, persecuted because of certain moral beliefs in doing what's right--in choosing the moral path. At that moment, I had a chance to lash out, or to talk back. I could have brought up powerful counter arguments and proven my point. I could have been petty and just left or even struck back in a powerful way. But instead, I took it. I remained silent. I accepted the beating out of love for those who were abusing me.

It was one of the worst experiences in my life. Afterward, I was so distraught. I couldn't speak to anyone . There were no words to express what I was feeling; I think I was dumbstruck to really understand what I felt my heart go through. All I could do was busy myself, stop listening to the words of others, and try to move on. To be honest, everything in me just wanted to run--to run far far away from all those who had hurt me.

I guess that's why I'm here, writing. I suppose God really knows how to get me to reflect (I've been putting it off for way too long). This is... life? Is this what it feels like to be given over to death for Jesus' sake?

God, I cry out to you. I hope that your life was revealed in that instance. I hope that your love was displayed. They don't get it, Lord. I know they don't. Help me continue to trust in you--to trust that this life that you have given me, this life of being a broken open jar, is indeed... beautiful.

The Father

2009-10-27T19:55:00.000-07:00

by Elanor

Dang it, I can't manage posting more often than once a month!! It's so strange how fast the weeks go by.

Monday nights I'm helping to lead a women's Bible study on Knowing the Heart of the Father, by David Eckman. In this study, we're discussing how family upbringing, specifically the relational patterns that are formed between us and our parents within our first decade, create misconceptions of God's character that are hugely difficult to overcome later in life. No father is perfect except the one in Heaven--and, more importantly, we as children are self-centered and immature--so no matter how affirming and loving our earthly fathers are, we are going to emerge from our childhoods scarred to various degrees with the belief that we are unlovable.

I say this to preface a revelation I had last night as Edwin and I were driving home from Bible study. Edwin led the men's group discussing the same topic, and he did an exercise with them: 1) List characteristics that describe parent-child relationships (loving, domineering, reward-punishment, etc). 2) Name all the roles of God that you can think of (The Teacher, The Punisher, The Father, etc). 3) Which role best describes who God is to you?--not the way you know He should be, but the way in which you actually relate to Him.

We talked about the guys' different responses to these questions. My attention was not fully on the discussion, since I was a little bit distraught because of a conversation I had had with my own father after the women's group was over. My dad had been critiquing one of the Joint's logistical policies, and although he was doing so in a completely respectful way, I resisted--I always resist when he critiques. In the car with Edwin, I tried to examine my instinctual, illogical reaction--but the only way I could do so was by indulging it. I said, "I don't like it when my dad critiques everything." And then I made the connection: because of my dad's tendency to analyze the world, I see God as The Corrector. To me, God sees things that are wrong and shows how they should be right.

There are MANY good things about growing up with this being my instinctual view of God. It means I believe God is good, God is always right, God knows what is best for me, God is interested enough in me to teach me when I am doing something wrong, God will take the time to show me how to do the right thing. I am intensely grateful to have an earthly father who has made it easier for me to know all these things about God, because knowing them has enabled me to live my life by faith.

And I was intensely glad to realize how my view of God falls short of the Father He wants to be to me. If I see God as The Corrector, I expect Him to always be critiquing things. And, the funny thing is, even though my dad never critiqued me when I was growing up, I think the fact that he critiqued so many things made me afraid he would critique me, too. It is this fear that I carried over to my view of God: I subconsciously act as though God, The Corrector, is constantly critiquing me. And so in my mind, I constantly critique myself. I am always looking for perfection, and I always see its lack.

My challenge in knowing the heart of my Father is to realize that He does not critique me. He looks at me and sees, not a wrong answer that needs to be made right, but a radiant daughter that He would give His life to claim as His own.

I experienced the love of the Father today in the way that it should be. After class, I met Winnie at a Boba cafe. We had an incredible conversation about class, church, and God. I got to know her so much better in only an hour and a half. The best part of this conversation was that I felt we spoke to one another as equals. She was not meeting with me in order to minister to me, nor was I to her--because we both knew the other one did not NEED our help. We both have our own individual communities and support systems; we both are growing in our relationships with God; this one conversation over Boba was not going to be the difference between life and death. We met together because we like each other. We enjoy spending time together. God wants to spend time with me like that. I keep going to Him with an agenda: "God, teach me this, help me with that, correct my life here and here and here!" And that is good, and some of my most cherished memories of God are when He has corrected me in some way or another. But God wants to spend time with me because He likes me. He wants to take walks down Telegraph Avenue. He wants to grab coffee in the morning before class. He wants to sit on the couch with me and not even need to say anything. He wants to be with me because I am His daughter.

Visions

2009-09-27T21:21:00.000-07:00

by Elanor

I want to share a new vision for myself and blogging, and that is, to share new visions. I just realized half an hour ago that the thing I like best about Christian writers is when they present a picture of the world that I would be incapable of seeing on my own. Those new pictures place in me a longing for the perfection of the future, but they also remind me of the pictures I have been given. So what I intend to do with this blog is to share the visions God has given me—not of how-the-world-should-be-but-isn’t; visions of how the world can be: Earth’s crammed with Heaven / and every common bush afire with God (Elizabeth Barrett Browning).

I want to start writing poetry again. I haven’t for the longest time, because I got to the point where I was sick of how the whole process was so self-conscious. I had confused artifice with being artificial. I had to get away from doing it so I could breathe for a while without looking to see if there was a poem in the way my lungs expand and contract. Today I’ve been looking back at some of the things I’ve written, and I like them more than I expected to. I want to participate in creating beauty again.

It will take me a while, though, to get back into the habit of word-art. So for now I’ll just share something I found in my computer archives that made me really happy:

Well, little knot, I’m going to have you undone one way or another. Stop coming between me and my family. I don’t know how you got there. I do remember sitting in the car on the way home from school, maybe even as far back as elementary school. Daddy asked me how my day was, and there you were, tight in the middle of my chest, and you wouldn’t let me answer him. You change all my words, and make them come out like they’re trying to cut to pieces any person they might run into. You keep me lonely, and keep the people around me lonely, too. I’m not going to stand for it. You’re on your way out, just wait.

Sincerely,
Elanor

I wrote this last May, when I was thinking about how over the years of my childhood, I have built up bad habits in the way I relate to my family, habits that are now very difficult to break, even though I am now married. But the start of a new family makes it all the more important that I be aware of the habits of relation that I am forming with Edwin and with our future children, so that I do not allow these knots to get tied up inside of me.

I want to live.

2009-09-26T23:09:00.000-07:00

Captain McCrea: Out there is our home. Home, Auto. And it's in trouble. I can't just sit here and-and-do nothing. That's all I've ever done! That's all anyone on this blasted ship has ever done. Nothing!

Auto: On the Axiom, you will survive.

Captain McCrea: I don't want to survive. I want to live.

Taken from Wall-E, emphasis mine.

I was watching Wall-E this morning (while playing WoW... yeah I know, I multitask wayyyy too much), and when this scene popped up, I couldn't help but look up and actually watch it. Quick synopsis for those of you who don't remember (or haven't seen it) **SPOILERS AHEAD**: Eve comes back from Earth having found proof that life is once again inhabitable. Although the Captain wants to head back home, Auto, the pilot's automated co-captain, was given secret orders to never return to Earth again. This results in, what becomes, the primary conflict in the movie.

This got me thinking: Am I just desiring to survive or desiring to actually live?

I must admit, lately, I have become pretty accustomed and happy with just surviving. My days have become super packed, routine, yet well-rounded. I have time to work, time to go to class, time to teach, time to spend with Elanor, time to pray, time to play.... Despite this enjoyable and relatively balanced lifestyle, I still find myself wanting more. It's pretty easy, I imagine, to slip into just being satisfied with all these things. I'm financially secure. I have an incredible job ripe with possibilities. I have an amazingly supportive and loving wife. I have awesome friends and a great church community. Yet, despite all these things, something in me still knows that all I'm doing is surviving.

At first, I thought that this must have to do with simply never having enough time. I miss those days when I had lots of free space to just take walks, to play until I'd much rather do work, to hang out with friends late into the night, to not have to keep thinking about the next thing I have to do. But when I thought about it further, I realized that even during those times, I still felt like I was just surviving. I suppose at first, I would feel more alive, but eventually I would reach a point where I felt the same trudging along.

It's kind of interesting. The world tells us that the more we do, the more successful we are, the more lives we improve, and the more progress we create, the more meaningful our lives will be. As beautiful and as poignant as Captain McCrea's words are, doing something instead of nothing won't truly lead him to life. He'll still be surviving... just distracted enough by the newness of it all that he won't mind the surviving.

Ironically, and unfortunately, the church (read: big-R Religious institution) tells us that the better people we are, the more we love, the more people we help, and the more people we bring to knowing Christ results in true living and not just surviving. Maybe there is a grain of truth amidst these ideas (I haven't ruled it out... yet), but everything inside of me says that if there is some truth, it truly is only a grain.

I am going to spend some time thinking and praying more about these things in the backdrop of my current busy lifestyle. I'll do some reading, some posting, some reflecting (probably over the course of the next few weeks or even months), and I trust that God will reveal more and more about what it means to live and not just survive. I have some ideas about what this kind of living could be related to: the spiritual realm (commonly understood as spiritual warfare), Christ living in us, abiding in His love, storing up treasures in heaven, afterlife... but, as you can tell, these ideas are a mess at the moment, and sadly (as well as ironically), I don't have the time or space (read: determination or focus) to delve in confidently and deeply.

But today is a first step. I didn't even realize that I was just wanting to survive.

Like, Captain McCrea, I want to live.

South Africa in Pictures

2009-07-13T17:51:00.001-07:00

View from the air:

We flew Mango airlines from Johannesburg to Bloemfontein. Coolest plane I've ever seen!

This is the incredible door at Uncle Leo and Auntie Raymon's house, where we stayed the week of kid's camp.

Their CUTE dog, Lucky.

Naomie, Leehon, and Leewin wandering through the South African wilderness.

Kid's Camp!!! The theme was Camp E.D.G.E--Experience and Discover God Everywhere

Camping equipment

The Game Reserve (you can see all the wild animals in this mountain range here)

Singing time

Leslie carrying Benny

He'd be a natural as a dad ^_^ The adorable baby is named Tsen-Tsen. He wandered around Kids Camp all week long, exploring and checking things out on his own.

We played basketball one afternoon. It was the most chaotic, crazy jungle basketball ever.

Get the ball Leslie!

Howard's sweet jump shot--airball every time! XD

Youth Camp!! We stayed in these cute round cabins with room for only two people, each.

The camp had a small lake.

Tea time, with chocolate biscuits!

Photo Scavenger Hunt during group games--A picture of someone doing a hand stand right next to a pool of water. Hmm...I don't see any water.

Thabo, his cool sunglasses, and his muddy shoe.

Wednesday, we went on a hike!

Among crazy Australian stick-dropping trees

Shade and sunlight

I found a walking stick.

Edwin and our guide.

Ideas by Howard, Naomi, and Daniel. Bringing light to the chord sheets during worship.

After camp was over, we spent a day in Durban at the beach.

And Edwin was terrified and astonished by a stuffed worm.

The End!

The Supper of the Lamb

2009-06-24T07:54:00.000-07:00

by Elanor

(finally, as promised)

This post is about depression. Having recently emerged from several months of it, I would like to say some things about what it is like.

Whether or not I can blame my depression on the birth control pills does not matter. When I was depressed, I couldn’t see what was around me. I looked around my apartment, along the roads through Berkeley, and at my husband, and I couldn’t find anything worthwhile. I’ve heard depression described as a fog coming down over your vision; I would describe it more like a decaying of my spirit. I saw the same bright sunlight reflecting shapes and colors back at me that everyone else sees, but I attached no joy to the sight, I did not care to see it.

This post is also about the opposite of depression.

The Supper of the Lamb is a cookbook filled with the spirit of life. It is not, as most culinary books are, a recipe book. Those useful tools help pass on the knowledge of experienced, creative chefs to puling amateurs by recording the ingredients and process of preparing certain dishes. The Supper of the Lamb, by contrast, is a cookbook: it is a book about cooking. And, more than that, I believe it is incomparable evidence that the Bible is relevant to our everyday lives. It is proof that Christianity involves more than giving assent to some abstract propositions, but rather is a transformation of the mind and heart that works itself out in even the simplest aspects of going about our daily business.

The Christian spirit of the book expresses itself in its delight in things. Six whole pages of the book are devoted to describing an onion. This was not a description of the uses of the onion, nor did it cover its cultivation or anatomy. It was the author’s attempt to guide the reader in meeting an onion face to face. It helped me encounter the spirit of an onion.

Why on earth would it matter to encounter the spirit of an onion, you might ask. And the only answer that can be given is: because it is an onion, and nothing else. The Supper of the Lamb helps its readers to understand how God the Father was moved to create the world. It gives us a glimpse of His immense delight and imagination, because it opens our eyes to the individual objects of His creativity. Why did God make an onion different from a shallot? Why are there yellow onions and red onions, pearl onions and green onions—which are different from leeks? Because God was overjoyed at each thing in its own right. God looked at His array of onion species, He observed each one carefully, pointed His infinite divine finger at it, and proclaimed, “This is good!”

When I was depressed, all objects, events, and people in the world blurred together into a drab greyness. The Supper of the Lamb called attention to individual objects in all of their splendid individuality. The opposite of depression, therefore, is delight. It is the enjoyment of particular things—the ecstasy of particulars—that God has made. The Supper of the Lamb delights its way through the cooking of a meal from start to finish. It speaks of everything involved, the cookware, the place settings, the wine, and the cuts of lamb, with an intimacy borne of a long and affectionate relationship—thus teaching me how to look at the items in my own kitchen, and from there, objects outside my house, and from there, the people that God has given me to treasure.

If I go through each day seeing every knife in my kitchen as being its own unique self, if I can encounter the herbs in the pantry with my mind open to learning who they are instead of trying to find the one listed in the recipe book, I am relating to creation as God meant me to when He first presented it to Adam in the garden. And if, miracle of miracles, God bestows on me the blessing of seeing the spectacular individuality of each person I encounter, then I will be on my way to knowing what real love is like, I will begin to glimpse why in some cases it might make sense to send your only Son, so that this one single person, gloriously different from every other person ever created, should not perish but should have everlasting life.

South Africa

2009-05-27T21:13:00.001-07:00

Apparently, Edwin and I cannot find the time to update this blog more than once a month. The length of time between posts necessitates that they be weighted more on the side of daily life updates and less on the side of theological reflection than I am used to.

This post is unfortunately not about The Supper of the Lamb, although I am still firmly resolved to write about that outstanding book when I can muster up the energy. It is about our upcoming trip to South Africa.

On June 23, Edwin and I leave for Johannesburg. We are going to spend one week doing Vacation Bible School with a mass of Chinese elementary school kids; then we move onwards and upwards to running a youth camp for a smaller mass of Chinese high school kids the second week.

This past Sunday, we met with Simon and Naomi, the other members of our team, to plan the youth camp. The four of us are in charge of all the events during that week: six messages, three workshops, morning devotions, afternoon games, and sharing around the campfire on the last day. Perhaps because there were only four of us, the meeting did not waste anyone’s time. Even though we came to the table with only a vague idea of the general theme of the camp, we managed to plan the topics of each message and divvy them up for individual preparation. It was not until the end of the meeting that I realized how surprising it was that we all seemed to have the same vision for where the South Africa youth were at and for what we wanted to share with them about the Good News of Jesus.

The theme of the youth camp is “The Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me,” inspired by the song “The World Will Never Take,” by whatever Christian band that is. Our six messages to convey the theme that having a relationship with God is the best thing that can possibly happen to anyone are as follows:

Tuesday morning: The difference between the world’s best and God’s best.
Tuesday night: Sin.
Wednesday morning: God’s radical, mysterious, and creative love.
Wednesday night: Carrying the cross.
Thursday morning: Service and community.
Thursday night: Recap and campfire.

In the past years, many of the kids to come to the youth camp have been either young in their faith or non-Christians. We hope, during this camp, to create for them a picture of lives that are completely different than the ones they are now living, in order to convince them that having God enter into their lives in a lasting and permanent way is the best thing that can ever happen to them.

We would greatly appreciate your prayers for our trip. If you would like to receive prayer requests and more frequent updates, please email us at eledlin@gmail.com

All the best,
Elanor

All New.

2009-04-22T18:59:00.000-07:00

Since I'm supposed to be preparing a lesson for youth group on Friday on the topic of Friendship, I thought it would be a good time to finally update the blog.

I've done a lot of things since I wrote last. I have NOT written the essay I'm supposed to write on Atlas Shrugged, because I've developed such a strong disappointment for the book that I firmly refuse to look at it again until I know for sure that I am going to college. I am eagerly awaiting April 30, when I will finally know whether or not I have joined this year's swelled ranks of disappointed Berkeley applicants.

I HAVE successfully kept the two of us fed over the three to four days a week we live at our apartment in Berkeley.

I have NOT spent a single cent of our money on clothing since the wedding. (Although I did use a Kohl's gift certificate to buy a pair of work pants and a pair of walking shoes).

I HAVE gone to the gym more than 10 times in the last three weeks. (This entails a 40 minute walk each way).

I have NOT lost any weight.

I HAVE gone through a difficult run of hormonal mood swings, ranging from slightly bored to more than a little depressed. But I am convinced that this is normal for newlywed unemployed women taking birth control pills. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that in public or not...

The good news is: I am still married to the best man in the world, and I am NO LONGER unemployed. I started working for Lindamood Bell again, the tutoring company I was at last summer. And I like it.

However, while the depression has left me for now, I am determined to keep the truth I learned in the meantime. Which brings me to the title of this post and this blog: All New.

Edwin and I started this blog in the space of fifteen minutes as a way to communicate wedding information to our guests. We didn't think much of the title, all that it meant was this was a new blog, and we were starting a new life together. We stuck the "all" at the beginning to be reminiscent of the verse Jesus makes all things new, and because it sounded cool. This thought process took probably thirty seconds. Then we moved on to fill in the next box on the web page.

Little did I know at the time how relevant the word "all" would be to me as we embarked upon the adventure of married life. I knew that some things would be new: my location, my occupation, my last name, and the boy in the bed (who, thank goodness, does not snore!!). Not to mention all of the amazing cookware ^_^. But I didn't think it would ALL be new. In fact, for some things, I was pretty sure they would stay the same. Silly of me.

The most important new thing is my relationship with God. Before Edwin and I started dating, God and I were solid. We had spent the last three years getting to know one another intimately, and I was sure nothing could happen to what I had with Him. But I underestimated what it means to know God. Since I have been married, the way I relate to God has changed a lot. It has been very confusing. For months, I thought I couldn't hear or feel Him at all. But that story is a whole post to itself. It is enough to say, this is the beginning of a kind of knowing that I never imagined.

Proceeding down the line of things that are important to me, the next new thing is my self. Whenever I feel unhappy (as tends to be the case when I am depressed), I philosophize. I make a desperate grasp back at the beginning of time, and try to understand my current situation in light of the fundamental principles of the universe. This is rarely helpful. But I found it interesting to observe the kinds of questions I was asking myself: Why am I here? What do I want to do with my life? What is my purpose?

I think, somewhere deep down, my subconscious had always assumed that as soon as I got married, all of those questions would be answered. Marriage, after all, is the place where love is grown, and love IS the fundamental principle of the universe. Thus, if I live my life accordingly, I should be set, and my questions should be answered. Luckily, I still abound with questions, even though I am happily married. Life would be so boring otherwise.

So I did not find all the answers. But I did find out that, as is the case with my relationship with God, my understanding of who I am as a person is becoming something new. Rather, I am becoming a new person, and my understanding of who I am is consequently changing as I do. I don’t know why I am so surprised that this happened. It actually happens every time I go to a new place. But I experience the change more drastically in marriage, because Edwin is around all the time. The things I once used to identify myself—English literature, for example, and C. S. Lewis—I don’t have as much time for those things if Edwin doesn’t like them. He is not forbidding me to have my own interests, and I still do have them. But more and more, I find myself gravitating towards the things we share, so that we can experience them together. And it is good.

Coming soon: (so as to hold myself accountable for writing it) a Book Review on The Supper of the Lamb. Aka: Elanor gushes unabashedly about the wonders of this unbelievable cookbook/essay on love/“romp through the human condition,” as one review calls it, and does all she can to persuade you to read it.

Atlas Shrugged

2009-03-14T14:58:00.001-07:00

by Ayn Rand, critiqued by Elanor

I am disappointed. I read the first 500 pages of this 1,167 page book. I took my time, I didn't skim a single word. Ayn Rand's writing is good enough to bear close reading, for the first half of the book. The problem was, the story should have ended at page 501. I did not need another 600 pages pounding the same single idea into my head. Her claim might have been interesting at first, as was the alternate timeline in which the world had been overrun by socialism, but as the plot progressed, her characters became flatter instead of gaining more depth.

Then around page 550 came a six-page-long encomium (poem in praise of an abstract quality) on, of all things, money. To Ayn Rand, money is the representation of the human spirit; it is that which gives mankind the dignity that separates us from beasts. I could not take her seriously after that.

My attention was temporarily recaptured, later, when Rand began to spatter her characters' dialogue with specifically Christian terminology in order to present these values as misguided and, in their most extreme forms, evil. In Rand's world, charity is the worst sin, selfishness the highest virtue. The savior of humanity lives by these words: "I swear--by my life and my love of it--that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."

I do not believe Rand is entirely wrong. She has only misunderstood the concept of charity. She sees it as "alms;" she believes the weak attempt to leech love off of the strong by imposing upon them a sense of guilt at the suffering around them. She spends way too many pages explaining this belief. In some ways, she is right, and in those ways, her massive novel is only an interminable expansion on C. S. Lewis's short sentences in The Great Divorce, something to the effect of: "misery cannot be allowed to blackmail joy."

However, Rand's perspective falls short of the truth of human nature because she is completely individualistic. If the highest virtue is for each person to live solely for his own sake, then the only relationships between individuals can be those of trade--which she fully admits and recommends. She says love should not be "given" to another person for nothing; she implies it is shameful to love a human being for nothing but "himself;" rather, it is good and right to exchange virtue for love as if paying for an order of steel railroad tracks.

Atlas Shrugged lacks depth because it does not take into account the nature of relationships between human beings. The highest state of existence is not one man standing alone at the top of the world looking back on what he has achieved; it is instead the man who gives up the world for the sake of another human being.

I came to the book expecting to find truth; I did not.

Addicted.

2009-03-11T00:04:00.000-07:00

by Elanor, without regret

Starring Nathan Fillion, Firefly

The Guild
Written by and Starring Felicia Day, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

hmm. the embed thing sort of worked. the guild website doesn't have an embed option though, or not one that i could find.

Obituary

2009-03-10T13:28:00.000-07:00

by Elanor, with regret

If you look down at the previous post, you can find above the label "Elanor's pet #2" a picture of a lovely, glowing ranunculus. After a long and courageous struggle, this flower sadly passed away on Sunday, March 8, and has now moved on to a better existence (or not, depending on your theology).

The plant was purchased in the Garden section at the Target located next to Berkeley. Who could know that, for a pittance of $5, a blooming being could bring so much joy to one apartment? Its owner brought it home, transplanted it into a more permanent pot, and proceeded to welcome it into the Lin residence.

Its life was not without struggle. The tap water at the above mentioned residence apparently did not agree with the brave plant's constitution. If you look more closely at the picture, you will observe a slight yellowing of the outer leaves. This greatly distressed the owner, but there was nothing to be done except continue watering and hope the plant's spirit would win out.

The first weekend, the Lins had to leave the plant in the apartment for three days while they attended to their episcopal and social commitments in San Jose. Even though they made sure to water the plant within 30 seconds of departing, upon their return the top soil was completely dry, and there were even more yellow leaves.

Seeing that the plant was not yet robust enough to fend for itself without supervision, the next weekend, the owners brought it along to San Jose. The car ride filled the plant with joy and terror. The sunlight streaming through the windshield sent it into glowing rapture, but along with this intoxication came the rattle and jolt of a car driving down ill-paved roads. The pot shook and the plant's leaves were jostled until it couldn't tell its roots from its petals.

Once in Cupertino, the plant's owner was getting desperate. The plant was still yellowing, and its petals were beginning to droop. She decided to try moving the plant to a bigger pot, to allow its roots more space. She obtained a new pot from the back yard, cleaned it, and transferred the plant yet again, hoping beyond hope that this new change would spark some health back into the fading flower.

It might have worked. We shall never know. On Sunday morning, since they were on their way back to Berkeley, the Lins brought the plant with them to church. It was cool in the early morning. The plant remained in the front seat during Sunday school at South Valley. At 10:45, the Lins made their way to Cupertino to attend the Joint's Sunday service. When they disembarked from their vehicle at 11:15, the sun was still hidden behind grey clouds, so they again left the plant in the car during their religious function. Never again. At 12:30, they exited the building to a parking lot filled with warm, spring sunlight, suspecting nothing. When they reached the car, they saw. The plant was dead. Its petals were wrinkled and brown, its stems fallen over, its leaves entirely yellow and drooping. After all the love poured onto it, the plant had been killed by a moment of thoughtless neglect.

It was a brave plant, and we do honor to its memory. We shall tell its story to our future household greenery, how its strength and joy brought light to our lives, for a little while.

1951 Chestnut St. Apt. 108

2009-03-01T21:10:00.000-08:00

Bed

Bookshelf

Couch! And wall hanging from Hawaii, and fluffy white rug

Entertainment

Elanor's pet #1

Kitchen

Kitchen table, window

Elanor's pet #2

Walk-in closet

Mirror

Things I Probably Won’t Ever Have the Chance to Teach at Youth Group

2009-03-01T01:13:00.000-08:00

Part II: The Bible

by Elanor

When I was growing up, they taught us in Sunday School that if you are a Christian, you should be reading the Bible. Note the use of the ongoing present tense: not “should read,” but “should be reading.” I was twenty years old before I was able to rid myself of the guilt incurred by this simple injunction, because, stated in that way, my Sunday School teacher should be able to check in at any point in time and find me reading my Bible. And since God can and does “check in” on me at all times, I felt almost a constant sense of neglecting something I was supposed to be doing. I would think of the Bible and drop my eyes to the floor. I would hastily attempt to distract myself from the thought of the chapters I hadn’t read that day, of the verses I was not in the process of memorizing. It took over a year of decidedly refusing to read the Bible on my own before I could beat the guilt out of my subconscious. I had to experience firsthand that I can be a Christian, God does teach me things, God even uses me to influence other people’s lives, when I don’t read the Bible.

My feelings of guilt are one symptom of a shortsighted understanding of the Bible. I saw it as nothing more than a means to my own personal righteousness. Other symptoms might be the tendencies to use the Bible as a self-help book or a moral law. These misguided views of the Bible are sometimes exacerbated by our tendency at church to try and draw an application from a few verses at a time, or from a single chapter of one book, without ever placing the short passages in the context of the entire narrative.

Here, I want to draw back from a close study of individual passages. I want to discuss what the Bible is, why it was given to us, and why, at the risk of incurring guilt in the heart of other poor hapless children, Christians should read (but not “be reading”) the Bible.

The Bible is the story of human salvation. That is its scope. There are many people who read it looking for information on the metaphysical composition of angelic beings or a decisive conclusion to the creationist-evolutionist debate. These are the kinds of students who, during a class lecture on the quadratic formula, ask the teacher who invented algebra in the first place. The question might be fascinating, but it is detrimental to the rest of the class: if the teacher spends her limited time teaching about Arabian mathematics, none of the students will learn how to solve quadratic equations, and none of them will pass the test at the end of the week.

In this way, although it also happens to be the greatest work of literature the world has ever seen, the Bible is an eminently practical book. It tells us what we need to know and then advises us to stop asking irrelevant questions until we can first demonstrate a working knowledge of the foundational material. Seen in this light, it is also quite inflexible. We ask it at what point during the pregnancy does the fetus become a human soul, and it answers Jesus—which is completely useless from our perspective; from the Bible’s, it’s the only useful answer there is.

I seem to have answered two questions in one: the Bible is the story of human salvation, and it was given to us so that we might be saved. In accordance with God’s customary elegance, the story of salvation is also the means to salvation in that it is a way for us to encounter the Person of salvation: Jesus.

My third question also seems to be mixed into the first two: we as Christians should read the Bible because it is one way for us to encounter Jesus. Because of the nature of the book, and because of the Holy Spirit inside of us, it is possible for us to have such an encounter by reading only a single verse. And that is very good. But we were not given only one verse. We were given an epic history spanning at least six thousand years. Why should that be?

I believe there is a second reason why we should read the Bible: because it is the story of human salvation. It is our story—ours, as humanity. In the entirety of the tale, we learn where we come from, which in turn enables us to understand where we are now. We are even told where we are going. From paradise lost to Solomon’s temple to year 0 on the calendar to the heavenly Jerusalem: this is who we are.

Why not read history books instead? Don’t they perform the same function of placing our lives in the context of the human story? For Christians they are not enough, because we understand ourselves in the present as being in contact with God. We believe He can and does interact with us and with the world. History books are so far silent on the matter of divine intervention, so until they address the matter, we look to the Bible, not only as the story of humanity being saved, but also as the account of its Savior stepping into the created world and transforming it.

So I amend my initial description. The Bible is the story of God’s people, how they fell into slavery, how their Father did not leave them alone but came to rescue them, how He Himself died in the attempt. But, just when we think all is lost, He rises again, and the family reunites for a wedding feast in a glorious city by the crystal sea.

It is wrong to guilt one another into reading the Bible. We can read it as the Psalmist did: songs of delight in the house of our sojourning, sweeter than honey, more precious than fine gold.

Wedding Pictures

2009-02-27T10:27:00.001-08:00

I hope you've all gone to see David's gorgeous pictures on flickr here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10511435@N05/sets/72157614448853870/show/

But if you haven't, here are a few of my absolute favorites.

Things I Probably Won’t Ever Have the Chance to Teach at Youth Group

2009-02-25T01:52:00.000-08:00

Part I: CAREer

by Elanor

A couple weeks ago, Mr. Fu, one of the youth counselors, gave a message on finding your career from God’s point of view. He gave a great presentation of the reality of things: of how you don’t have to be so stressed out over finding the “right” career, because, unlike the educational system likes to brainwash students into believing, if you realize you’re doing the wrong thing, you can go do something else. It just takes trust in God’s provision and the willingness to admit you were wrong.

But the best part of his presentation was inadvertent. During his introductory game, Mr. Fu put the word career on the overhead as I have reproduced it in the title. Seeing the mixture of capital and lowercase letters made me immediately think of a brilliantly cheesy lesson about finding your career that no one would ever be able to forget:

Don’t try to find a career. Become a CAREer.

After everyone is done groaning and rolling their eyes (me absolutely included if I were a member of the audience), I would hopefully be able to explain the transformative nature of this idea.

God is passionate about people. He cares about knowing them, about making them the best they can be, and about bringing them into a relationship with Him so that they can become the best they can be. When we go out and try to find a career, we use these questions to figure out what we should do: What do I like doing? What am I good at? What will give me financial security? Where can I make a name for myself?

All of these questions focus the issue on the action I will be performing as my job: building circuit boards, conveying information to high school students, screwing toothpaste caps on toothpaste tubes. The people involved in your occupation are seen only as part of the job atmosphere.

But what if, instead of finding a career I can live with, I try to use my life to become something: I try to become someone who cares. The focus of my job entirely changes. The people become central, instead of the action. In the past six months, I’ve met a couple young women who decided to become nurses, and I think they exemplify this new focus extremely well. The action of changing bandages and cleaning bedpans is not at all appealing—it is basically janitorial work. But they do their jobs in order to care for the people who are sick and need their help.

This is not to say we should all become nurses or teachers. I believe that, no matter what occupation we decide to pursue, there is a chance for us to focus, not on the action of our jobs, but the people we interact with. God wants to change us so that we care about the same things as He does, about the eternal things. My daily exchanges with cashiers, flight attendants, and random people on the street are more eternally significant than performing at my job: my job lasts only as long as I live; the irritable lady in the airport checking in my luggage is everlasting.

Learning vs. Grading

2009-02-24T11:58:00.000-08:00

As a first-time graduate student instructor (GSI), I have to take a seminar course on teaching pedagogy. Today's topic of discussion was grading.

I had some serious thoughts about the stuff brought up in class...
1) Asset vs. Holistic Approach to Grades
2) Grade Fixation
3) Idealism vs. Pragmatism

Asset vs. Holistic
This refers to how people conceptualize their grades in their minds. An asset based view is one that believes you earn your grades; in other words, the grade you "get" is earned through the quality of work that you put forth. The holistic view, however, takes the approach that you start off at 100% and work your way down from there. If I haven't revealed it already, I believe in the former and am pretty opposed to the latter.

There's a great article in the NY Times about how today's students are expecting that as long as they do the work, they should get an A, instead of the grade evaluating the actual quality of their work. This is totally ridiculous. I can honestly say that I have never complained about a grade or asked a professor/teacher to move up my grade because I thought I worked hard and deserved it. Now this is of course different from asking why I received a particular grade and understanding how I can improve.

Grade Fixation
This somewhat leads into another discussion about grade fixation. The majority of the students today (me included) are completely fixated on the grades that they receive in class. This has lots to do with the system of education and academia we live in. An A means you can get into a top 20 school, a B means top 100, and a C means local colleges and things not on any list (besides maybe a list of the top party schools in America). It's sad that the education system (as with most things in the human world) is based completely on hierarchy. Students are under so much pressure from parents, worldly fears, and social norms that the grade means everything and education (read: learning) means nothing.

I would have never categorized myself as one who is grade fixated. After all, I never asked to bump up any of my grades, and even committed myself to not doing so when I was dissatisfied with the grade, believing that the class was about more than that. But it was not until I entered a phd program that I realized how subtly grade fixation can creep in. In my sociology phd program, grades mean nothing. One of my professors went so far as to say that in the decades of his academic career, he literally had to show his phd program gpa once. Furthermore, my dean of graduate studies states openly that grading is a formality, and you're essentially assured some kind of A unless you really just don't try at all.

With the pressures of grades completely alleviated in my current situation, I suddenly become far more aware of how everyone (absolutely everyone) is somewhat/somehow grade fixated. We simply can't help it. Just by the very existence of an evaluation (especially in the form of a hierarchial, standardized, and comparison-based system), we are distracted and concerned about it. Learning may not take a fully backseat role to the grade, but certainly we can't ignore the elephant in the room.

And studying with an elephant in the room, is probably not the best learning environment.

Idealism vs. Pragmatism
So if the system is such that grade fixation is rather inevitable (and as much as I hate that word, see Dublin in '92, I would certainly describe the current state of the educational system as deterministically fostering grade fixation), what do we do?

In my pedagogy seminar, the professor discussed how grading everything can often encourage and increase grade fixation and although we should keep a record of the things that will eventually receive a grade (e.g. how often someone participates for a discussion section grade), we should not necessarily divulge this information to the students.

The problem is, this view point goes against what I have so far been doing in my discussion classes. I have pretty much graded everything in the class and have revealed the grades to my students. I have even give out participation grades (with numbers out of 10) to let my students know how they are doing so far. I think my line of logic was that when I was a student, I loved having a clear picture of what grade to expect in my classes and hated getting the "surprise" grade where at the end of the semester, I could get anywhere between a C and an A+! In other words, I liked knowing where I stood.

And herein lies the conflict between idealism and pragmatism. I can empathize with the students. I completely understand their grade fixation. But now, looking back, I can see how grades don't at all (despite popular belief) encourage actual learning. Case in point: my learning habits in graduate school really aren't any different/worse despite not having any grades to worry about.

So the idealistic side of me says that I can attempt to shoo the elephant out of the room by posting grades less and at least try to keep my students focused on learning as opposed to grading. But my pragmatic side says 1) my students are going to be grade fixated regardless, 2) being transparent about their grades enables (some of) them to concentrate more on the material, and 3) I empathize with my students and hate those classes where the grade is always a mystery.

The more I think about it, however, the more I realize that reason 1 doesn't justify encouraging grade fixation. It does, however, mean I shouldn't just completely ignore the elephant in the room. Reason 2 is probably describing a tiny minority of students, and reason 3 is primarily emotive and can be avoided any way through a balance of grading some and not grading others.

So for now, I've decided to stop grading absolutely everything. My students already have an idea of what it takes to do well in the class. They should know my expectations for all their assignments and I'll still be available to talk to them about their grades in office hours. We'll see how the rest of the semester goes...

2009-02-12T14:59:00.000-08:00

Lord, let me see the beauty in burnt eggs

broken dishes and unmopped floors

teach me to take pride in B papers

stammered speeches and flubbed arpeggios

when I miss my exit

when my poetry sounds square when nothing

but disapproval meets my eyes

remind me that Perfection

lies at the heart of things,

and let me then rejoice for I am Yours.

- Elanor

Sin and Love

2009-02-09T11:40:00.000-08:00

by Elanor

I've been listening to some old hymns redone by Jars of Clay and one in particular struck me as being a perfect encapsulation of the message of the Old Testament. Speaking of Jesus' death it says,

O Love of God, O Sin of man,
In this dread act your strength is tried,
And victory remains with love:
Jesus our Lord is crucified.

As I've been reading through Genesis again, the thing that keeps jumping out at me is the interplay between God and humanity. The pattern goes like this: man sins, God blesses man, man sins, God shows mercy, man sins, God relentlessly keeps on loving and pursuing man.

This pattern helps make so much sense of a lot of the moral ambiguity that I used to believe was in the Bible. I remember at Ravencrest having a debate during class over whether or not God approved of what Jacob did when he deceived his father and stole his older brother's blessing. We know from elsewhere in the Bible that God does not approve of lying. In fact, He counts lying as a sin. But are there extenuating circumstances?

Directly after the account of Jacob lying to his father, he is sent from his home and God appears to him in a dream. Not only does Jacob remain unreprimanded for his deception, God says this: "I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants. Your descendants will also be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and in you and in your descendants shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you" (Gen. 28:13-15).

I have heard it said that God overlooked Jacob's lie because Jacob wanted to be part of God's plan, whereas Esau didn't really care. (A similar thing is said of Rahab, who lies to protect the Israelite spies in Jericho: she did it for God, so that made it ok.) But what if God does not "overlook" the lie in that He says it's not morally wrong this time, what if God deliberately reacts to Jacob's overt sin, not with judgment, but with blessing?

I said in the previous post that God’s covenant with Noah after the flood was the first of a long series of incidences where God counters man’s evil with mercy. That is the pattern that I see throughout the book of Genesis, and throughout the entire Old Testament. I suppose that is the pattern I will be tracing with these posts. My dad wrote recently on his xanga that we are all part of an unseen battle between good and evil; I want to say that it is a battle between God’s love and our sin.

Usually in a battle, you have two opposing sides using the same kind of weaponry: swords, cannons, nuclear bombs, etc. The thing about this battle is that the two sides have completely opposite modes of assault: sin breaks relationships and drives people apart, whereas love creates relationships and brings people together. Throughout all of history, people have been trying, unknowingly perhaps, to push God away. They want nothing to do with Him, they want to govern their own lives without His interference. They ignore His laws, tear down His temples, and spit in His face so that perhaps He might eventually leave Him alone. But God was not to be deterred; He pursued even to the point of death, and, dying, won: even death could not separate Him from the ones He loves.

When I was in Sunday School, we were taught to see the Bible as a morality lesson, full of godly men whom we were supposed to emulate in obedience and piety. As I read the Bible now, I see that it does not talk about godly men. It tells stories of sinners, and the only godly one is God Himself, as he “turns the other cheek” over and over again, trying to win the battle against humanity so that He can win us back to Himself.

Purpose

2009-02-01T22:01:00.000-08:00

By Edwin

I have been thinking lately a lot about purpose. Not only has it been the subject of the last two weeks of sermons, but also because I'm hitting an important stage in my "career path".

This semester, I'm taking three sociology classes, one teaching pedagogy seminar, GSIing (teaching) a world history course, and planning on finishing my MA (masters) thesis. It's... well, a lot to tackle in one semester. So whenever I find myself more or less moving from one thing to the next (being uber busy), I do a quick check to see if my priorities are in line and to make sure that everything I'm doing has meaning. After all, if time becomes a scarce resource, I better be using it efficiently =P.

But this time around, reflecting on purpose in the things I'm doing has been rather complicated. I think one of the main complications I am running into is that being a graduate student is like dating: you're not just friends, and you're not married yet either; you're "in process." Graduate students aren't really just students, but we're not employed to be students either. It's a weird medium that is truly throwing me off here.

As a student, I know that the purpose of my classes is to prepare me for the future. But a PhD program isn't really quite like a regular student program. For starters, I'm expected to be trained to become a professor/academic. This means the system tends to push you towards a specific career goal, which entails lots of publishing, reading, and networking for the sake of your future job. Also, the classes are structured so that you hold yourself responsible for completing the readings, assignments, and essays; you pretty much can't get lower than an A- in any class unless you really just don't try. So you truly make the program whatever you want it to be. You can take lots of classes, or the bare minimum. You can work a lot as a graduate student assistant, as a researcher, as a teacher, or not at all. You can aim to publish a lot, or literally not at all. But despite all this supposed freedom, the system, and all the people in it, are moving in one direction: to train you to become a stellar, publishing, research-based professor.

As an employee, I know that the purpose of my work is to provide for my family and to fulfill my calling/passion (to "rule" over my work and reflect God in what He has entrusted me with). Although this is definitely true in my GSIing (teaching), it gets complicated if applied to my status as a graduate student (which I am arguably being paid to be through fellowship money from the university). My "job" is to learn, and because the system is geared for a particular type of training, my "work" then is to become what the system wants to make of me... and that certainly doesn't sit well with me.

Although I haven't quite decided yet whether or not I'll finish my program and whether or not I want to be a full-fledged academic professor, I have decided that I'm not interested in knowledge for knowledge sake. A big part of academia is building upon previous knowledge, theories, and findings. In my time here at Berkeley, I've realized that the simple progression of knowledge is of absolutely no interest to me.

Instead, I am here because I want to make a difference in the lives of real people. For me, that is what it's always been about from the beginning, and this past week, I was reminded of that. Whether it is through teaching college students, mentoring youth, publishing important action-changing findings, or writing my thoughts out for others to read, it has always been about learning what I can do to help others... learning what I can do to love others.

Through talking with Elanor and a few others, it's slowly becoming clear that I shouldn't just follow the ways of the system, even if I am sort of paid to be a student, that doesn't mean that I work for the system and that certainly doesn't mean that I should become a product of it either. Instead, as I spend the next year or so tracing out my career path, I'll focus not on being a student or an employee, but just being a person, or more specifically, a follower of Christ. And as a follower, I know exactly what my purpose is...

Beginnings II

2009-01-30T01:44:00.000-08:00

by Elanor

Genesis 8:18-9:17

The royalty of man established in Genesis 1 was before the fall. Chapter 3 tells of Adam and Eve’s innocent mistake that culminates over the next few chapters in their oldest son killing his younger brother. You can imagine the first man and woman burying Abel and thinking back to the choice that brought them to this unthinkable position.

Genesis 6:5 says, “Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.” This time, God looks on His creation and sees that it is not good.

When you make a mistake in cooking, like I did the other day trying to make egg noodles, and you realize that what you have in the pot is inedible, you throw it away and start over. This is what God did. He washed away all the iniquity on the planet. The surface of the earth was covered by water for 180 days, and when it subsided, it was clean.

Then God was free to repopulate the planet anew with beings who would follow Him, who were not so evil that happiness was impossible.

Except, either God is like me in that He is too stubborn to admit that He has made a mistake, or He knows something we don’t. He rebooted His creation, but saved some of the corrupted file on a memory stick and reinstalled it after his system was clean. Not only that, He promises He will never restart again.

Genesis 8:21 (after Noah comes out of the ark): “The Lord said to Himself, ‘I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done.” Even though man is evil, God will never again destroy Him.

Following this admission of man’s helplessly sinful state, God does something even more surprising: He renews man’s authority over the new earth.

“And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky; with everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they are given. Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant’ ” (Gen. 9:1-3).

God is, if anything, giving man more power over the earth than He did in the first place. Now the animals are ours, not only to rule, but to eat as well.

God continues, “ ‘Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man’ ” (Gen. 9:6). This phrase refers back to Genesis Chapter 1, when man was the crowning glory of creation. God remembers the first magnificence even now, after it has been marred seemingly beyond all repair, and He is willing to honor the people who have become evil.

This new covenant, the first between God and fallen man, is more incredible than the first gesture of giving Adam paradise to rule. The prince has turned out to be spoiled, eager to exploit his kingdom in every way so that his wants can be fulfilled. But the King does not disown him; He acknowledges kinship even with this shameful child, and renews His promise to make the prince a king over his own kingdom.

“God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all successive generations; I set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth. It shall come about, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud, and I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh’ ” (Gen. 9:12-15). The heavenly hunter hangs up his bow as a sign of good will, so that he can no longer shoot arrows down on those who have disobeyed him.

This is the first of the Bible's long series of incidences where man's evil is countered by God's mercy.

Beginnings

2009-01-28T20:19:00.000-08:00

by Elanor

Peter says your view of God changes when you get married. I find this to be true, and the change has affected every aspect of my relationship with God. When I was at Wheaton shortly after starting to date Edwin, I saw evidence of the change in that there was another person who joined God in the background of my mind in everything I did. When I came back to San Jose and started spending all my time with Edwin, the change was even more apparent because I found I did not know how to relate to God anymore. I didn’t talk to Him in the same way I used to. I would try to ask Him questions as I usually do, but I found my questions almost always redirected towards Edwin, who would answer them with wisdom and understanding. It was strange.

I think a large part of the strangeness came from being in between singlehood and marriage. I didn’t particularly like the in between part: both Edwin and I wanted to be married right away so that the whole awkwardness of boundaries would be over. Now that I am married, I think my relationship with God is becoming clearer.

Everyone has been asking me how it feels to be married. In many ways, it feels exactly the same as being single. But in this way, it feels completely different: I see myself having to learn everything over again in terms of how to relate to God. It is as though the ties I had with Him have been all knotted together, and I have to untangle them to put them back in their proper places. But I know that, after I have gone and done over again the work I have been doing for the past three years, I will have covered twice the distance as I did the first time.

I started reading through the Bible in order to help relearn things I once thought I knew, so I thought I would share about what it says to me.

Genesis 1

I would quote the whole chapter, but it would be too long. To get the whole effect, though, read verses 9 through 26 and see how God furnishes a world to make it paradise and then creates a king to rule it.

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth…” Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you.” (Gen. 1:26, 29)

I have heard of no other religion which teaches the earth has been given to the human race as a king gives to his son a portion of his kingdom to rule over. C. S. Lewis had it right when he made four ordinary children kings and queens over all of Narnia. For you can see how each person spends his or her life trying to attain mastery over a certain part of this kingdom: as we go and find jobs, as we search for what we’re meant to do in life, we are finding the land where we are to rule. A housewife is the empress of her kitchen, because she knows where each spatula and pan belongs. She fights disorder with cleanliness so that her kingdom can produce food.

An electrician might not have read much literature and he might not know a thing about biology, but when he is called in to fix a circuit board, his feelings of inadequacy are replaced by confidence, because this is where his expertise lies, this is what he knows and rules over.

You can see where things have gone wrong by looking at how people treat one another. We have mistaken the gift of the planet for the gift of all the people on the planet. Too often, the search for mastery consists of trying to subdue other people to our rule. We must learn from St. Francis of Assissi, who “treated the whole mob of men as a mob of kings” (G. K. Chesterton). We must submit to one another in love as we are learning to master the earth.

This is not to say we can do whatever we want to the planet, either. Bad kings exploit their kingdoms to line their palaces with gold. Good kings are no less in charge of their kingdoms, but they rule them for the purpose of bringing out the best in their lands. We should be good kings, not because we are stewards who are afraid of punishment when the Master returns, but because it makes us happy to see our kingdoms prosper. God has given us a gift: He’s not going to ask for it back.

Hawaii Honeymoon!!!

2009-01-17T13:15:00.001-08:00

Neighborhood Flora and Fauna

Sights of Oahu

Diamond Head Crater from the ground

At the top!

Ocean

Rainbow and Japanese Child

Byodo-In Buddhist Temple,

which looks

much cooler

in pictures

than it actually is

The Native Population

Drummer from the beautiful island of Tonga

Spear dancer from the beautiful island of Fiji

Tree climber from the beautiful island of Samoa

Hip shakers from the beautiful island of Tahiti

Canoe Guide from the beautiful island of Taiwan

Tacky souvenirs

The Food

Coconut shrimp

Ground-roasted luau pig

Buffet meal at the luau,

where we did get lei'd...

Waiola's shaved ice! Azuki beans with mochi

Bubbie's mochi ice cream

Bubbie's dessert menu. Jack and Dave, ask Edwin for the address.

Functioning prostate.

And the grand finale of the trip:
Sushi Sasamune "Trust me!"

Tuna

These are highlights of the twelve or so rounds the chef chose to serve us.

Lobster tail

Proper sushi etiquette: one piece per bite, please.

Scallop and the best salmon we have ever tasted.

Fully seasoned. No soy sauce, please.

Fresh oyster

The lady at the table next to us was reprimanded by the waiter

Blue shrimp and Jackfish

for biting a piece of sushi in half.

The bill was as incredible as the meal.

The Happy Couple

The hottie

Non-sightseeing activities

Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Lin

Wedding TODAY!!!

2009-01-03T00:03:00.000-08:00

We're getting married today!!!

Engagement Photos

2008-12-23T11:16:00.000-08:00

Dave Chung was nice enough to help us out with our wedding photography. He did a beautiful set of pictures of us at memorial park. These photos will be at the wedding ceremony, but you can get a sneak peak online here.

11 more days and counting :D!

Wedding!!!

2008-10-04T13:54:00.001-07:00

Date: January 3, 2009

Location: Chinese Church in Christ, South Valley

Address: 5805 Cahalan Ave., San Jose, CA 95123

Time: 2:00 PM

RSVP: We will be sending invitations, but if you already know whether or not you're planning to come, it would help us if you comment on this post with your RSVP. Thanks!

Wedding Registry: Target and Macy's

When using the registry in-store, please tell the cashier your purchase is for a wedding registry, then they will mark it off, in order to avoid duplicates.