It's Pentecost Sunday, and there is a fire sweeping across America.
The Spirit is stirring in hearts that were previously dormant.
I've been on facebook a lot this week, because I think a commitment to less screen time is worth breaking when our nation is in crisis -- both sheltering in place and protesting on the streets.
I'm encouraged. Friends--white and Asian--who previously remained silent on Black Lives Matter have now become digital activists. That's (just) the first step in the right direction.
2020 has been quite the year. We were shocked when Kobe died in a crash, overwhelmed when a pandemic shut down "normal life," and forced to reconfigure what "church" looks like.
Two years ago, I took the train from Boston down to New Haven to participate in Yale Divinity School's Commencement Worship Service. It was Pentecost Sunday, and the Spirit was there.
Marquand Chapel was where I worshipped with full freedom and abandonment for 2 years of seminary. It's where "every tribe and tongue and nation" gathered to worship in "spirit and in truth." I worshipped with tears that Sunday, flowing both from the joy of worshipping at "home" again, and out of my own pain and trauma of experiencing the Wilderness and the Dark Night of the Soul in Boston, exacerbated by racism and misogyny that I experienced regularly.
In Boston, I had visited 12 churches in 2 years, finding none that truly felt like home. [SoCal has not been much better, and the best I found was a Unitarian Universalist Church and an Online Small Group to attend.] I feel at home in worship spaces when I sense the Spirit is welcome there and where language and leadership reflect kin-dom values and prophetic presence. After seminary, it has been incredibly difficult to feel like I can belong to a "church home" -- unless I am helping to lead it.
Yesterday, some of my closest friends, whom I worshipped with at YDS, helped host an online for a Virtual Vigil for George Floyd and other lives lost to racism and white supremacy. The idea came just this week, and planning occurred in just 48 hours. We had 24 hours to invite our friends to attend, and we had over 40 gathered with us on Zoom. We opened with Bishop Tengatenga, the father of our friend Cecil, calling us to worship. Ann presided over each phase of the liturgy, and our friends Dax, Cecil, Sarah, and Randy read the prayers--in their native languages, and in their respective accents. Our beloved (and the rather well-known, in some circles) Mark Miller led us in prayerful singing, while playing on his keyboard. Back in the day, we all sang in Gospel Choir with him and he pastored our souls in a way we all still remember. I played Taize songs on my violin during reflective moments--the more powerful one was a video where Cecil extinguished 46 candles, in honor of George Floyd's life. During that time, participants were invited to type a word into the "chat box" on Zoom, to express how they felt. Afterwards, Ann read aloud all the words, from all the people. When the service ended, we invited folx to say and talk, if they needed to process. One by one, the little boxes with participants' faces started to wave goodbye, and everyone took their leave in sacred silence and with faith-filled hearts. No words were necessary--and that is the power of liturgy.
Liturgy is the work of the people. I saw this last year in Hawaii, when 50,000 floated their lanterns into the Pacific Ocean, in respectful silence for the deceased. I saw this yesterday, when prayerful readings and music spoke for our collective hearts. Not much more needed to be said afterwards.
I am convinced that the Kingdom cannot happen without multi-denominational and international kin-ship. It is so much larger than "what church do you go to?"--a question I get asked all too often. I got to go to Yale on full scholarship AND make priceless, lifelong friendships. We are a group that calls ourselves the Disinherited Remnant, and more and more, I am sensing an apostolic call for us--from every corner of the earth where we now live and from all the denominations we represent--to participate in the expansion of the meanings of "parish" and "pastor". To whom much has been given, much will be required. I told Jesus a long time ago that I'd follow him wherever he led me--and I've regretted that promise several times in the last season, when I was taken to the gates of Hell, which, as promised, did not "prevail against us"--but the flames of which still left third-degree burns.
Well, a different fire burns now. It reminds me of a song we used to sing ages ago, at Harvest Rock Church, during the height of the Toronto Blessing, which was a global and interracial church movement in the 1990s:
Light the fire again
Don't let our love grow cold
I'm calling out
Light the fire again
Don't let our vision die
I'm calling out
Light the fire again
You know our hearts, my deeds
I'm calling out
Light the fire again
I need Your discipline
I'm calling out
Light the fire again
I am here to buy gold
Refined in the fire
Naked and poor
Wretched and blind I come
Clothe me in white
So I won't be ashamed
Lord, light the fire again
Sunday, May 31, 2020
Sunday, May 24, 2020
Memorial Weekend, a Year Later
One year ago, I was swimming with Sea Turtles in Hawaii, where I had traveled for the annual Memorial Day Lantern Floating. As a guest of the Shinnyo-en Foundation, representing the Orange County Interfaith Network, all expenses were paid for, and I was grateful.
Grateful because quitting a full-time, salaried position in Boston to start a Ph.D had cost me most of my savings--savings which other friends my age might have used to pay for weddings and down payments and mortgages.
Grateful because I was able to connect with the religious tradition of my deceased grandmother, whom I honored with my lantern floating, in the middle of the Pacific, halfway between the U.S. mainland and my family's Motherland of Taiwan.
Grateful because the weekend made an Asian American woman like me feel so seen--in part because Her Holiness Shinso Ito, who presided over the Lantern Floating ceremony, was an 80-something-year-old version of my embodied personhood.
Memorial Weekend, 2019, birthed something that is still growing today. It birthed the Pacific Rim iteration of my personhood and presence, which had needed time to emerge after I moved "back home" from Boston in the wake of a devastating season of loss and frustration.
I had found a certain kind of voice and leadership in New Haven, through my roles at Yale and the surrounding community. Boston tried its best to squash a lot of the qualities that felt most valuable to me--creativity, out-of-the-box thinking, and a joyful subversiveness against the Establishment.
Transitioning back to Southern California culture presented just as much of a challenge, and it was yet another season of reinventing myself and turning inwards to feel healed and grounded. Contemplative practices sustained me and ultimately restored my spirit.
It's been quite a year since the Lantern Floating in Hawaii. I completed a unit of chaplaincy training, which utterly renewed my sense of call and faith. My family experienced fracture like never before. I started preliminary research for my dissertation, and completed creative projects for school.
Oh, and I survived (and am still aiming to thrive amidst the continuation of) the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic. It's been a blessing to be an introvert during this time. It's given me time to be creative and productive in the comfort of my own privileged living space.
In the last 2 months, I was able to write and perform 1 story, create and host 2 podcasts, and coordinate and help produce 3 webinars. It's been the gift of a lifetime, honestly. I also completed a 1,000-piece puzzle, during my "screen less Sundays."
I do miss hugs and personal interactions, and I find myself dreaming of various social situations quite frequently. I have experienced anxiety and frustration, and I have wondered whether I can actually be of any use to this suffering world.
But overall, I am so grateful. So grateful for the year I've had, and the year ahead. Filled with hope, not immune to disappointment and the losses I've experienced, and still hopeful for the love that casts out fear to rule in my heart and to spill out to those I care about.
They are floating lanterns again tomorrow, virtually, and I will be participating from my computer screen. I've got my weekly catch-ups scheduled--different individual girlfriends or friend-groups that I'm still rotating through--and no Bar-B-Q to attend.
But today, I write. I spell out my gratitude and my praise, and I listen to the chirping of the birds outside, and sounds of the earth, which glorify the Creator and bring perspective to the created--that God's mercies are new every morning, and great is God's faithfulness!
Grateful because quitting a full-time, salaried position in Boston to start a Ph.D had cost me most of my savings--savings which other friends my age might have used to pay for weddings and down payments and mortgages.
Grateful because I was able to connect with the religious tradition of my deceased grandmother, whom I honored with my lantern floating, in the middle of the Pacific, halfway between the U.S. mainland and my family's Motherland of Taiwan.
Grateful because the weekend made an Asian American woman like me feel so seen--in part because Her Holiness Shinso Ito, who presided over the Lantern Floating ceremony, was an 80-something-year-old version of my embodied personhood.
Memorial Weekend, 2019, birthed something that is still growing today. It birthed the Pacific Rim iteration of my personhood and presence, which had needed time to emerge after I moved "back home" from Boston in the wake of a devastating season of loss and frustration.
I had found a certain kind of voice and leadership in New Haven, through my roles at Yale and the surrounding community. Boston tried its best to squash a lot of the qualities that felt most valuable to me--creativity, out-of-the-box thinking, and a joyful subversiveness against the Establishment.
Transitioning back to Southern California culture presented just as much of a challenge, and it was yet another season of reinventing myself and turning inwards to feel healed and grounded. Contemplative practices sustained me and ultimately restored my spirit.
It's been quite a year since the Lantern Floating in Hawaii. I completed a unit of chaplaincy training, which utterly renewed my sense of call and faith. My family experienced fracture like never before. I started preliminary research for my dissertation, and completed creative projects for school.
Oh, and I survived (and am still aiming to thrive amidst the continuation of) the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic. It's been a blessing to be an introvert during this time. It's given me time to be creative and productive in the comfort of my own privileged living space.
In the last 2 months, I was able to write and perform 1 story, create and host 2 podcasts, and coordinate and help produce 3 webinars. It's been the gift of a lifetime, honestly. I also completed a 1,000-piece puzzle, during my "screen less Sundays."
I do miss hugs and personal interactions, and I find myself dreaming of various social situations quite frequently. I have experienced anxiety and frustration, and I have wondered whether I can actually be of any use to this suffering world.
But overall, I am so grateful. So grateful for the year I've had, and the year ahead. Filled with hope, not immune to disappointment and the losses I've experienced, and still hopeful for the love that casts out fear to rule in my heart and to spill out to those I care about.
They are floating lanterns again tomorrow, virtually, and I will be participating from my computer screen. I've got my weekly catch-ups scheduled--different individual girlfriends or friend-groups that I'm still rotating through--and no Bar-B-Q to attend.
But today, I write. I spell out my gratitude and my praise, and I listen to the chirping of the birds outside, and sounds of the earth, which glorify the Creator and bring perspective to the created--that God's mercies are new every morning, and great is God's faithfulness!
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