Perhaps it is an age old truth that the longer you do something, the more you realize you have to learn. I was shocked to hear myself at a recent church meeting say something like, “And I’m going on my third my year working here with these two congregations.” I feel blessed, and as my last post indicated, very much challenged in my ministry to these two churches.
The other evening I had a really revelatory conversation with a colleague at the church about a class that I am teaching in both congregations on Presbyterian Beliefs. There is so much to teach, but more importantly, there is so much for me to learn. Even though I knew the same activities in the English-speaking church wouldn’t be appropriate for the Spanish-speaking culture church and vice versa, I didn’t know which activities to choose and why. It is humbling to consider that these students at the church are accompanying me through a process where I don’t know all the answers.
It can be kind of excruciating, this inkling that you’re not quite getting the information through to the people right in front of you, because you’re constantly learning how to teach to the audience that’s in front of you, but then with the words of my colleague for encouragement, I also found a way to rejoice in this experience. What a blessing to see the diversity of God represented in my midst, and to see the multiple interpretations of the gospel through different cultural contexts. Too often we rest in the complacency and comfort of our own interpretations of scripture and theology, and we don’t get out to see that in the real world, faith really takes faith!
I believe I’m blessed to do ministry in a cross-cultural setting, even if God is only revealing this mystery to me step by step.
It already seems a long time ago, but on Labor Day weekend our Pastoral Team from United Presbyterian Church and Iglesia Nuevas Fronteras in Plainfield, New Jersey had the opportunity to travel up to a Presbyterian Retreat Center in Holmes, NY and spend a Saturday praying, preparing, and getting to know one another. I had the pleasure of leading the closing Bible Study on Saturday night after a very full day.
I shared with the group the very familiar passage of the Beatitudes in a reflective, lectio exercise. Drawing upon Kathleen Long Bostrom’s devotional, Finding Calm in the Chaos, I reminded the group of the blessings amidst the challenges of this first sermon that Christ gives.
Though the beatitudes repeatedly bless its hearers and those who identify as meek, poor in spirit, those who mourn, etc., with the confirmation of blessings from God, we are all inherit the challenge of not only ushering in the kingdom of heaven, but enacting it and bearing those blessings and good news to others.
We took the moment to recognize which beatitude we identified with that evening, and where and what challenges and blessings God might be calling us to simultaneously, in our ministry together this year.
Fast forward one month, and just last night as our pastor and I drove home from church, we continued to reflect on the deep need for pastoral care in our community. In essence, just when I felt our churches were bubbling over with opportunity and growth, my eyes have been opened to the new challenges that come in the midst of the blessings God has provided. It is tempting to look to all we have done and worked for and ask God to make things just a bit easier, but our God is not that kind of God. Our God is one who thankfully possesses the power to bless and to challenge simultaneously.
The challenge in front of us in ministry currently is to bless God for all that God has done in our midst, and at the same time, ask God for support to go forward toward growing our church in ways we currently don’t have the imagination and the vision to see.
Have you ever been in this position? In what great blessings in your life have you inherited great challenges from God?
I jokingly posted on facebook this Thursday that I think it was my 23rd first day of school; while some people where congratulating me on that accomplishment (which made me laugh, since I’m not sure it’s an accomplishment), I had a great first day, and I am feeling really inspired as I enter my second year in Ph.D. program in Anthropology at Princeton. I recently posted about the great trip my husband and I took to China this summer, and since we returned I have been continuing my quest to learn more about Chinese culture, language, and specifically, a growing presence of foster care in the country.
Over the month of August, I worked with a local tutor in Princeton, trying to finish up my study of the Chinese 2 book. I took the placement test last Wednesday, and am pleased to announce that all my hard work in China paid off this summer, and I will be skipping from Chinese 1 into Chinese 3 this fall. It is not only a proud moment for me that makes me feel like I am making progress in my language, but it is also a good confirmation that I need to trust in myself and my ability to see my goals through–the professors constantly told me last year that unless I participated in their summer program there was no way I would be able to test into Chinese 3. As it turns out, I feel my research and language-study trip in China was a wonderful combination that I couldn’t have gotten in their program, and has served me well language-wise!
A couple nights ago, my husband and I were at a local university party, and ran into a Ph.D. student from Nanning, the very city we hope to return to in China! She was just as surprised, given the small size of the city and that it is relatively unknown to foreigners. We had a wonderful conversation–her parents are university professors, which could be a great connection for Evan and I as he wants to teach English, and I need official support for me research.
Finally, I am reminded of just how tenuous the situation is for children in China, and how poignant my study of foster care continues to be. I feel great pressure and responsibility regarding the way I portray this topic through others through my study and my writing; recently China has been in the news regarding adoption (not for good reasons), and you can read more here. But I also feel great excitement and inspiration. I continue to feel that I am blessed to be on a new adventure, and I know this year will be a great part of preparing and planning for it.
Well, as usual plans changed. We couldn’t access our blog from China, so for those of you who were able to find us on facebook, you got to experience our mountains and valleys through photos and updates, and for those of you here, I will be trying to fill you in over the next month or so.
For now, I just have a few thoughts. We returned from China about a week and a half ago, and now I realize that I neglected to post on this blog all the fears and worries I had before we left. Tonight, I sat down to think about our trip, and those anxieties, and I was simply astonished at God’s provision for us. I am chiding myself for having such little faith that God’s provision leaves me in astonishment, but then, I suppose, awe in the face of God is not such a bad place to be. I planned this trip the best I could, but there is no accounting for the relationships we formed, the love we experienced, the diversity of culture and country we caught a glimpse of…there were rough moments where not only my commitment to my academic project, but even my faith, was tested. However, there have been several time spans in my life where I look back and I see God’s careful hand guiding me through, and this trip to China, praise God, was certainly one of them.
It was official–yesterday after a mad dash to see some dear friends get married in Washington DC, we were just one week away from our trip to China! And on Monday, Memorial Day, we celebrated our one year anniversary together, and are especially blessed when we consider this time last year we were making our way halfway across the world, to our honeymoon destination, Spain. Evan and I are overwhelmed when we consider these blessings despite the difficulties of this year.
And now, we have a list almost a mile long of to-dos before the trip, for which we feel our previous work with YouthWorks has amply prepared us! For those of you who want to follow our trip in time or on a map; we start at the bottom of your China map in the south in Nanning, from June 2-June 18; from June 18-June 30 we’re in the southeastern city of Guangzhou, and from June 30-July 21 we will be in Beijing and a city an hour outside of Beijing called Langfang. Our trip is a mix of learning and visiting orphanages, getting to know people and culture, observing the East-West adoption culture of Guangzhou, and of course, practicing our Chinese. We hope to take lots of photos, and I’ll post when I can. Thank you to all of you who continue to support us, for now: Zai jian and Jingzhu!
I have found myself saying a strange phrase lately, and it goes something like this: “often, we get in our own way.” Last fall, our Writing Center Director presented us with a chapter called “Perfectionism,” from Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, subtitled Some Instructions on Writing and Life. I encourage you to go the chapter and read it, because it made me laugh and cringe simultaneously. I cringe, because I, like many of you, “get in my own way,” guilty of perfectionism.
Anne Lamott points out in her ironic, gentle tone that, “Perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-tone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.”
Lamott has some funny thoughts on God (more like Mr. Rogers, not so much like Bob Dole!), but the gist is that God is a God of grace, and that God is compassionate with us as we should be with ourselves. It seems women especially need to practice this compassion with ourselves and with one another. A favorite professor of mine just posted on her blog about the much-needed failures in life and the even deeper truth that we need not be afraid to fail, for “successful women are those who have not let their failures define them.” Can you imagine if all the powerful women in our lives “got in their own way” so much that they were afraid to fail, hence afraid to live, afraid to dream, afraid to love?
Okay, now I’m waxing poetic, but you get it, right? Perfectionism is us at our worst; showing ourselves grace, that’s God at God’s best.
It seems only natural that at the end of a school year I start to reflect on that year, but rarely do I do that spiritually. When I do, however, these two buzz words appear not to chart my growth as a person, but present all the challenges in the world.
As my spiritual director reminds me, “Control is an illusion.” When I reflect on my activities this year, my unrest about the future, I realize that in the moments I tried to control things, muscle through life to its conclusions, no peace, no solitude, certainly, no certainty came. But at the moments where I’ve been able to focus on my ministry, my work in the present and trust God in the moment, possibilities have arisen for the future in a comforting, exciting way.
This weekend at church a friend of mine preached a sermon and reminded us about the difficulty of forgiveness, the particular difficulty with accepting God’s forgiveness because that act makes us instrumental in God’s plan to impart forgiveness to other. In a magazine the other night, I stumbled upon the suggestion that forgiveness is not as much for the person to be forgiven as for the transformation of the forgiver. And it seems true, it seems another aspect of relinquishing control to admit that the world, others do not need our forgiveness as desperately as we often do. Practicing forgiveness rather than offering forgiveness seems to be a true challenge in relinquishing control.
Many of you who keep track of the Christian liturgical calendar know that we are close to Easter, hence, in the season of Lent. I had the opportunity to preach at my church this Sunday on a penitential psalm and the gospel lesson about the practice of reflecting on our sins during lent. Reading through Psalm 51, I felt as if God handed me an alternative perspective on sin and lent. The psalmist reflects heavily on his sin, but he doesn’t dwell on his sin; his sin is what positively brings him nearer to God as he asks God to fill him with God’s holy spirit. He asks in the midst of great sin for great things from God, specifically to experience the joy and goodness of salvation. I asked myself and the congregation, how often during our reflection on our own sin, do we truly have the type of faith in God’s steadfast and unconditional love that asks for such great blessings?
It is empowering to remember that forgiveness has absolutely nothing to do with us and everything to do with God, that in this way the season of lent is way less about sin and much more about God’s grace.
The psalmist reminds us that life itself is about glorifying God, about knowing God more, about experiencing the joy of our salvation. What a great reminder in the midst of doom and gloom- is it really that difficult to rejoice in God despite our sins? What a great gift we have been given that our lives are about joy, rather than death, grace rather than sin. I hope this encourages you today as you go about your day and rest in the season of lent, never forgetting Christ’s sacrifice, relying on your sin to fill you with more of God.
My in-laws were in town this weekend and due to my persistent study schedule I wasn’t able to make it into NYC with them for the day to tour the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) and the Natural History Museum. But the first time I did make it to the MoMA was over 5 years ago while I was living in DC and took a weekend trip to New York. And when I made it to the fifth floor and saw Matisse and Picasso in person, I cried! It was kind of an out-of-body experience, like I didn’t know I was crying until I was crying, but it was overwhelming to see those works of art in person when I’d only ever seen illustrations in a book as a kid. My in-laws didn’t have a reaction anything like mine, but that just goes to show you the effervescent quality of art.
Today as I was reading this book for one of my Anthro classes on Cinema and Modernity, I stumbled upon a quote about art from Victor Shklovsky’s mainfesto “Art as Technique.” I just thought I’d share it to make us all think a little harder about what art is all about:
“Habitualization devours works, clothes, furniture, one’s wife, and the fear of war…And art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known.”
And that, for some reason, really spoke to me.
So this photo was originally taken to convince people about the air pollution over China (Zhong.guo is the pinyin rendering of China in Chinese), but I placed it here because I think it really represents the range of feelings I’m experiencing as I’m planning this trip of a lifetime. While it’s a great blessing to be beginning my predissertation research in China this summer, China, like this picture, is so big and so hazy in my mind. Shifting through endless email contacts, people I don’t even know, to try to coordinate this venture, to try to stimulate relationships that will be anthropologically fruitful is frustrating and exhausting.
But last night, as my husband and I discussed this awesome opportunity, I got back in touch with what really matters to me: “I just want to get to know people, and to serve, and to form relationships.” And when I let go of the intimidation factor, I’m able to recall that that is what anthropology is all about, and that is what I love about it. Anthropology should allow me to be me, and allow another person to be he or she, and in that it is certainly a great ministry of acceptance. This whole effort of planning the trip continues to challenge my faith, as well. One moment I get down, thinking I’ve hit a dead end, and the next morning another email from a complete stranger pops in my inbox full of a passion to introduce me to China. When I actually allow myself to relax, to trust God that it will all come together, I experience the grace of this opportunity. I never thought I would be puttering through a year of Chinese at this point in my life, poised to test drive my third language halfway around the world. What plans God still gracefully has for me of so little faith!
