The Father

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.