reminder

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i would like to quickly remind myself that jesus associates with the most unlovable people, with the most socially ostracized, with those treated with disdain, dismissal, violence. and in no way shape or form are these people easy to love after they have been force fed this disdain, dismissal, and violence. these people are sick with pain; the toxin of self-rejection and self-hatred runs through their veins. what comes out is an expression of what is within. do not romanticize what it means to love the unlovable. do not pat yourself on the back for loving half-assed or for loving the loveable. and carve the memory of your most unlovely state into the caverns of your blood-paid heart. God loved you when you were yet his enemy.

sidenotes;
lol?

anchor: chastised by the gospel

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Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? Romans 2:4

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. Romans 12:3

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. Philippians 2:3-4

And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” Hebrews 12:5-6

Search me, God, and know my heart;

    test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me,

    and lead me in the way everlasting. Psalm 139:23-24

i act the pharisee, the older brother; teach me lord to celebrate as i ought, as you have commanded and pleaded me to do so. impress upon me the weight of my sin -- greater than any other's -- so that i may wash my scales off in the still, scalding waters of your grace, so that i may enter the courts of your house with praise. do not leave me to my ways. fence me in and lead me in the way everlasting.  i have not clawed myself out of my eternal punishment to a pedestal from which i can condemn others. i have no rights. i have nothing but you. i am a slave to christ, redeemed and purchased by him.

sidenotes;
hm
three more weeks of crazy just three

anchor: God's ministry

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i am reflecting upon my work on campus and in class in many layers - today we we talked about the difference between scholar activism and scholar advocacy. we talked about the interconnectedness of scholarship (theory) and activism/advocacy (praxis) -- that the two are heavily interdependent. using a middle passage analogy, we mentioned how activism allows one to break the chains, but theory directs attention to how to steer the ship. who is steering it? where is it going? we mentioned how advocacy says "i have the answer" and attempts to change people's minds, but activism says "i don't have the answer" and engages self transformation and societal transformation. i imagine advocacy as a middle ground between personal theory formation (first part of activism) and collective application/response (second part of activism).

in this sense, i am engaging in all three levels.

the level most salient in my heart at the moment is the personal level and the subsequent desire to share this with my peers. i am acutely aware in this season of the journey God is taking me on to delineate what it entails to be a practicing Christian in this realm. in his essay "Moving from Solitude to Community to Ministry," henri nouwen brings us through a similar three tiered, interconnected process. as disciples, we are called to discipline ourselves into solitude with God to submit ourselves into a space where we allow God to do root-digging, identity work in us. this is where we develop our attentiveness to the voice which says "beloved." it is in this place of solitude that we are naturally led to community where we actively practice forgiveness of fellow "beloveds" to whom we allow the freedom to not be God - to make mistakes and to hurt us and to hurt. in community we inhale Christ's compassion as it becomes our lifeblood. the exhale of this is ministry; nouwen argues that ministry is not "something that you do (although it calls you to do many things). Ministry is something that you have to trust." we have to trust that because we are sons and daughters of God, and because he promises that whoever believes in him will do Jesus' work & more, we have the healing power of Jesus within us to heal those we come into contact with.

i find that in my interactions and conversations with my classmates, i feel a gut fear regarding my life as a practicing Christian. i feel a need to legitimate the Jesus within my heart. to perform for my classmates an intact argument for Jesus. the moment i realized this fear, i had to sit back and reorient myself into a posture of rest and trust instead of strivings and fear. i can trust that God has placed me in Ethnic Studies, that God has given me these opportunities to engage with this world, that God lives within me and will work powerfully not by my power but through my weakness and obedience, by his power.

God, here am i! send me.

[nouwen's article]

sidenotes;

meep

peace like a river

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there is sometimes a claustrophobic bubble of tense smallness in my chest; i am particularly aware of its presence when the pace of the last few years of my life leaves me little room to sit back and pause to catch my breath. in that awful smallness i am aware of how fragile and fleeting the present is. i am also aware of how fixed the past is and how intenable and inscrutable the future is as it stalwartly frustrates all my feverish attempts to pry security to cling onto. my small hands cannot reach back and fiddle with the past; my small hands are too small to carry the weight of the present; my small hands cannot reach into the dark of the future to get any answers.

it is in this visceral "fear of smallness" and lack of control and direction that i find that i must direct my thoughts to the only Person worthy of my attention, energy, and hope. in this buzzing fear i am also aware of a God who holds my whole life in his hands: his presence was threaded through the fabric of my past, is a working force in my present regardless of the level of my awareness, and is promised reassurance for all of my future. i don't have to change the past because he has written it that way; i don't have to carry the present because he holds it for me, and i don't have to foresee the future because he will orchestrate it. as i meditate upon his worthiness of my trust, my emotions will align with the steadying nature of this truth. this, i suppose, is what it means to have peace like a river. give me battered and bruised and ugly knees as i use the transformative power of conversation with my Father to turn that claustrophobic bubble into a house of refuge and sanctuary. it is his presence in this bubble that transforms it. with him as the object of my faith i may content myself with being small in this moving river because he is my peace. whom shall i fear?

sidenotes;

this weekend was a place of reassurance and refuge and rest. praise bubbles up from the depths of my heart when i think about the way i am able to encounter God through the people who share the same King in their hearts.

also i am very loved :) hehe

grocery grace

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earlier today i received a whopping emotional punch in the gut. i felt (feel) like a contradictory bundle of pain, of encouragement; of fear and peace. these things reside within me and shamelessly insist on occupying space i didn't know i had. it was cold, the sun had set, my phone batteries were dying like my insides were after that conversation. and my eyes were puffy in the bus window reflection. i saw high school acquaintances at the grocery store. today god sent me an answered prayer in a stranger and a sister in christ when i looked into the eyes of the ralph's cash register as she smiled and said, "we serve an amazing God." -- to which i promptly began bawling in the middle of the grocery store, no shame. she rounded the counter without a word and gave me a huge hug. "God loves you so much. you are his beloved daughter." and in that moment the very real God of the universe reminded me in the arms of a petite, middle aged cashier that he sees it all.

sidenotes;

i cried a lot today

now i'm dehydrated

today i know God's love for me is real because e, gryoo, char, lgnuyen, e2, j, & the cashier.

anchor: unity in Christ

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So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. Galatians 3:26-29

my thoughts initially began with a visceral disgust of academic, ethnographic research. i was thinking about the ways that there is something inherently violent in a research that presumes a detached (and therefore self-justified) privilege to submerge into a "culture," a "people group," and emerge with some transcendent insight. packaged, diluted, re-presented, commoditized, dehumanized, essentialized, consumed. ethnographic research, if conducted insensitively, can therefore be in many levels, an act of violation: violating someone's trust to excavate knowledge and then present it to the curious world in return for academic rewards and recognition. is it worth it? i concluded stalwartly in my heart: i will never deign to presumptuously claim an understanding of someone's lived experience in its entirety. i will be their friend, not their researcher.

maybe it was the spirit's promptings, idk. but i felt a gentle whisper against the disgust and anger fueling my conclusion. i began to think about the way i am sometimes driven by fear in my ethnic studies classes; studying alongside people of vastly different experiences and backgrounds. i fear their furrowed eyebrows, i fear their critical eye; who are you, a relatively privileged asian american christian from irvine, to say/know/attempt to understand anything about my lived experience? says the fear.

so i began to unpack this fear and reinforce the only thing that gives me worth in this life: my king and savior, Jesus Christ, came to this broken world to radically embody God's counterintuitive love by fully emerging in the human experience and dying a sinner's execution and atoning for the eternal consequences of sin. in his subsequent resurrection, we find the established hope of new spiritual life, following in the example Jesus paved, carved in the ugly scars that interrupt the skin of his hands and feet. through him, our horizontal relationships, once marked by difference and misunderstanding and hatred, can be reconciled in him. social differences -- race, class, gender, sexuality -- may not necessarily become invalidated and unimportant in him: but they now become not sources of strife but possibilities for reconciliation and a depth of understanding that supersedes all ethnic studies attempts.

i can submit to him and be used of him to help usher in God's kingdom of redemption and reconciliation. i don't have to bring anyone to God; i will bring God to them. i can fearlessly engage my friends with the depth of a gospel that says before him, race, class, gender, sexuality do nothing to further or damage our standing - a gospel that says yes, we are utterly wretched but are also utterly loved and Christ is the proof. a gospel that says: no, i may not be able to understand your lived experience, nor will i presume that i will ever be able to - but in Jesus' human condition we just might find someone who understands by his lived experience what it's like to be marginalized, demeaned, betrayed, and hated. a gospel that says we can love Jesus alongside each other, and in doing so we will have something that we can both equally understand, that we can both dig deep into our identities. let Jesus be our binding force and we can replace fluffy words like "in solidarity," and "ally" with "brother" and "sister," "son" and "daughter," and "inheritor," "partaker" and "participator" in the Kingdom.

sidenotes;
what does it mean for Jesus to be my anchor in every area. this is what it means
the only truth i know is what God has to say about himself, about humanity, about this world. to whatever degree ethnic studies is able to accurately analyze this world, i will become the best ethnic studies scholar i can be so i can engage with this community at their very academic and passionate level. i am so affectionate of this community aaah

i want to read the thoughts of these brilliant thinkers and as i do so, cling to my anchors and roots:
audre lorde
judith butler
bell hooks
toni morrison
anaiis nin

hannah arendt

anchor: a gracious God

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It was a long time, twenty years in all, that the ark remained at Kiriath Jearim, and all the people of Israel mourned and sought after the Lord. And Samuel said to the whole house of Israel, "If you are returning to the Lord with all your hearts, then rid yourselves of the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths and commit yourselves to the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hands of the Philistines." So the Israelites put away their Baals and Ashtoreths, and served the Lord only. And Samuel said, "Gather all Israel to Mizpah, and I will pray to the LORD for you." So they gathered together at Mizpah, drew water, and poured it out before the LORD. And they fasted that day, and said there, "We have sinned against the LORD."

When the Philistines heard that Israel had assembled at Mizpah, the rulers of the Philistines came up to attack them. And when the Israelites heard of it, they were afraid because of the Philistines...that day the Lord thundered with loud thunder against the Philistines. 1 Samuel 7:2-7, 10b

d. Drew water, and poured it out before the LORD: In this context a ceremonial pouring of water demonstrated the soul poured out before the LORD. It was an expression of emptiness and need.

i. The Chaldean translation of this passage gives this sense well: "They poured out their hearts like water in penance before the Lord." "They seemed to say in effect, We could wish to shed as many tears for our sins as there are drops of water in this bucket; but because we cannot do this, behold, we do what we can." (Trapp)

ii. They expressed the same heart as Lamentations 2:19: Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the watches; pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord.

e. And they fasted that day, and said there, "We have sinned against the LORD." Israel also expressed their sorrow over their sin by fasting (a message that nothing else really mattered except getting right with God) and by confession (a straightforward claim of guilt and responsibility).

i. 1 John 1:5-10 makes it clear that confession is vital to maintain relationship with God. As God convicts us of sin or sins that hinder fellowship with Him, we must confess it and receive forgiveness and cleansing for our relationship with God to continue without hindrance.

i. Our feelings of confidence can deceive us. In 1 Samuel 4:5 Israel was completely confident against the Philistines but their confidence was false and they were soon defeated. Here, Israel is fearful and sure of defeat and they have no confidence at all. They seemed to have more faith when they trusted in the ark than when they are humble and repentant before the LORD. But small faith in the true and living God is more powerful than strong faith in a lie. source

pondering growth

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tonight i am pondering the mystery of growth. sometimes it is dynamic, sometimes it's static. sometimes it is best facilitated in a collective environment, other times in an individual context. it forces us into realms of discomfort and fear (like vulnerability, alienation, loneliness, friendships) and necessitates purification by fire. its relative process has a distinct spatiotemporal correlation as well as an interpersonal correlation. it can be sought to differing extents and received with differing intensities and resisted with differing motivations. it is visible most clearly in hindsight and remains stalwartly silent about the steps ahead or the goal we are heading towards. it leads no room for pride and keeps a friendly proximity to failure.

sidenotes;

i saw none of my life coming and as it unfolds in front of me i am open handed and doe eyed and maybe trembling but definitely held, seen, heard, helped by my King!