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!
A couple weeks ago my husband and I were discussing the financial challenges of churches all over the country given this economic depression. A friend of mine, however, a week before, had pointed out that during troubling times, people flock to the churches for support and inspiration, so the perspective of hardship all depends on whether you’re counting people, money, even faith.
The Hispanic Mission where I serve as a Pastoral Assistant has a Benevolence Fund, and once a month there is a benevolence offering to replenish the fund that periodically gets distributed to families that find themselves encountering great hardship or great need over the year. What is amazing about the giving of a community in which many are struggling is that on the first Sunday of the month, Benevolence Sunday, the offerings are almost always substantially abundant. People seem to understand that if they do not give, the fund cannot replenish itself, and that they are just as likely to be the person in need as their neighbor, so they give with generosity.
My husband and I discussed how during a time of economic downturn the Church is actually blessed with this incredible opportunity–to become just the institution it was always instructed to be, one which sustains the community, and grows people together by sharing resources and sharing faith. Where do most people go when they experience economic hardship? Perhaps they turn to their relatives, to the government, or to second or third jobs, but what if they felt there was a community that would stand behind them not just financially, but spiritually?
What I think is most empowering about this model for the Church is that in my experience, when the church shares its sometimes limited resources with its people who need it most, that gift is returned six or sevenfold. While with such a model, we have to be careful not to encourage people to simply give to themselves, but in a time where our country is in such great need, and its people are struggling to get by, if this concept of benevolence increases the concept of community, of love, mutuality, and vulnerability, I think this giving is certainly doing the work of the gospel. With such a vision, a community in need might be able to use a benevolence fund for mission in the months where hardship has not landed on its members, and as such the greater community might be strengthened. I’d like to know your thoughts, but for me, I feel as though I have reencountered the gospel of possibility, the beauty of the community of the Christian Church.
I had an opportunity to hang out with two strong, beautiful women who are very good friends this evening, and the conversation ranged from politics, to boys, to stem cell research!, and onto spiritual direction. Turns out one of my friends and I have been incredibly blessed by our experiences with spiritual directors (as has my husband), and I wanted to share. I started meeting with a spiritual director in my final year of seminary, when I was thinking through my future goals and direction, because my future husband had had such a profound experience of learning about himself and his relationship with God through talking through his experiences with a spiritual director in seminary as well. The meetings usually consist of a person reflecting on his or her life with a trained spiritual director listening as a guide for where God may be speaking or moving or leading he or she in his or her life.
I met again for the first time since last year around this time with my spiritual director, and the experience was one of great clarity and discernment. We so infrequently stop to think about the direction our lives are headed from God’s perspective, and I mentioned to my friends this evening that spiritual direction is an experience of having a trusted advisor see and advice you based on who you are as a sacred being. I find the experience revelatory, refreshing, and rejuvenating, yielding new perspectives on my life and on my life as a spiritual being.
I promise not to report on my health status at all times (after all, what could make for a more boring blog?), but suffice it to say, this weekend did not bring much more healthiness to our little family. With my husband and I both feeling sick last night, the last thing I wanted to do was go into the Writing Center to work an extra March shift.
This is my third year working at the Princeton University Writing Center, and I worked at the one at my college for three years as well, but last night reminded me that given the right student, it never really gets old.
I’m not one who feels gifted as a teacher, but tutoring writing can be wonderfully collaborative. That’s what I love about it- the ability to talk through ideas together, to think together, and even write together. When I’m lucky, I get the sense that I have truly been helpful to someone else, whether just by calming his or her nerves or allowing she or he to think differently about a topic, perhaps find some much-needed confidence and inspiration. Last night was one of those nights, and despite my coughing fits, it was greatly rejuvenating.
Just thought I’d share… Now, what is rejuvenating to you?
Okay, so our front porch looks nothing like this, but the point is, that we have one. And that is where I got to sit today for about thirty minutes in the almost 60 degree weather to do some reading for class, albeit on a Friday afternoon, followed by some devotions. And that got me to thinking, that one of the few perks of being sick this week, is this command from on high, to slow way down and appreciate the budding tulips my husband has planted, the beautiful weather, and the opportunity to get some studying done on a Friday afternoon even if it is at the mercy of being sick. It is also encouraging to see signs of spring, making me feel like I can’t be sick too much longer, and I suppose I can’t stay away from blogging much longer either. It’s good to be back.
