celebrate beauty

the house, Seattle WA
Summer 2007

the price of heroics

I’m practically delirious this morning after staying up until 3 AM last night to see the first showing of The Dark Knight. Than, unfortunately, has a penchant for midnight movie showings – getting there two hours early to be first in line and staking out his territory. Since I’m usually in bed by 10 PM, this isn’t really my scene.

The film, though, is stunning.
A dark, ambivalent, and philosophical tale, the viewers are left wondering if the price for good triumphing over evil is nothing short of truth. But I won’t give too much away. This is one film to see in the theater.

let your life speak

Who am I and how am I different from the story I tell about myself and the story I want to tell? As much as I fantasize about being an aid worker or an activist on the front lines (yes, I’m an idealist), my life has run and is still running a different course.

At age 25, my voice is still a little unclear. I catch glimpses of it between scattered notes, drawings, prayers, and articles. But I have learned that it is impossible to connect the dots or conjure it on demand. Instead, I wait.

In West Texas on a Wednesday afternoon, I wait. My view towards work has become quite cynical lately. I used to think mostly in terms of vocation, but now I think about work and wonder if I will ever discover my vocation. How will I know when I’m living out my vocation? Right now, I just sit in an office 40 hours a week feeling disconnected from the students I want to serve.

I still enjoy entering student’s lives and empowering them, but as the years go by I see student after student slip through the cracks. I see the weight of the world placed squarely on their backs. The cycle of poverty already beginning with loans and debt. Stupid stuff: racked up phone bills, credit cards. Serious stuff: dysfunctional families, mental illness, institutional racism. I realize now what I did not realize two years ago –I cannot save them. Sooner or later, I will leave them or they will leave. All I can do is be with them in this moment, and most days this doesn’t feel like enough.

It gets so old when it seems like there is no real desire institutionally to change anything and though I have words to speak, the context is lacking. I know I make a difference, but I also get the sense that I am not exercising my gifts to their fullest. What made my experience at SPU unique was that the people I had the privilege of working with and working under. I realize now that in many ways they flew in the face of institutionalism and sometimes challenged it. Yet, I was transformed by their commitment to honor the voices of others and to Spirit-led empowerment. The limited time our lives intersected continues to shape me.

I’m so thankful I was able to attend and work in such a vibrant ecumenical community committed to “engaging the culture, changing the world.” Though, I rolled my eyes at the time and did not refrain from pointing out many of SPU’s flaws and hypocrisies, this motto stays with me. By the time I left, I was frustrated and burnt out with the slow-moving process of “racial reconciliation,” the gap between ideals and on-the-ground experiences of students/staff/faculty of color and the politics However, at least there was a commitment, and thus a standard to hold the community to.

I don't know where I’m going next, but I want to be in a place that values multiple voice and diversity. Than and I just talked last night about how much we miss real debate and dialogue over issues that matter. Here there are small bands of agnostic atheists amidst a large ocean of culturally washed-out Christians and nothing really in between. I yearn for dynamic conversation and debate as well as opportunities to be creative and engaged. If I am not nourished, challenged, and sustained, I don’t think I will have much more to offer, especially to students.

So, perhaps, my career in student leadership, student programs, student organizations, student activities has run its course. I know the end is in sight, but I also wonder what the next step will be. I still wonder if graduate school is really what’s in store for me. Right now, I don’t feel a strong no, and I don’t know if I feel a strong yes. I’m open, but I’m still waiting too.

What feels more important to me about our next move is to be in diverse cross-cultural community, to be intentional about where we live and how we live, and to be in a place where my voice and gifts are nourished and valued. Living in a city would be pretty nice too.

the way to god is down

It is way too easy to be critical. These days, there are reasons to be critical of almost everything, and I find myself weary of all the –isms. I believe in a God that is bigger than discourse, bigger than constructs, and bigger than ideologies.

I do care about justice and abuse of power. I care about privilege and oppression, and I care about exploring how this is manifested in our culture and society.

But I’m pretty tired of our petty wars. I want to know one thing: Christ crucified. What does this mean for our world today? What does it mean for the refugee, the homeless, the mother stuck between welfare and a dead end job, the undocumented immigrant, the political prisoner, the tortured, and the victim of domestic violence?

I can’t get these faces out of my mind. The intellectual conversations and sermons we have so often erase them, and we remain as distant from their realities as when we began. Instead, we fight and work up rages about theologies, about ideologies, about abstractions.

Tell me: should we be fighting for a woman’s right to earn 100,000 or should we be living in solidarity with the millions of women oppressed by poverty, HIV, war, sexual assault, and the color of their skin? What would the latter look like? “Living with” and “solidarity” were not abstractions or token phrases for Jesus. Instead, every aspect of his life was lived in communion with the poor, oppressed and marginalized.

Sometimes the easiest way to answer life's unanswerable questions is to move closer to the ground.

cheers to 8 hours a day in the office!

The fruits of the feminist revolution? Sisterhood, empowerment, and eight hours a day in a cubicle.

I Choose my Choice! by Sandra Tsing Loh

This is a provocative article about privilege, feminism, and motherhood exploring how the "choices" woman assume are tied to privilege, capitalism and class.

the new yorker

My sister wanted my take on The New Yorker cover controversy. So, here is is:

I think that the cover was intended to be satire, but I agree with most people that it kind of missed the boat. Instead of subverting lies and misconception, it ended up reifying them.

I think Roland Martin had the best take on the issue. His point is that if the cover had a headline and an article attacking fear mongering, then the satire would have worked. But strangely, neither the cover's tag line or the inside stories had anything to do with the cover forcing the cover to be taken at face value.

I see what The New Yorker was intending to do -- i'm personally not offended by it -- but i'm concerned that they didn't think a bit more carefully before they put the picture on the cover. What could have been funny, cutting, controversial and started a real conversation about the way the Obamas are being demonized instead feel flat and didn't even call out the people it supposedly was trying to.

For Roland's take: http://essence.typepad.com/news/2008/07/new-yorker.html

The other question posed by anxious black woman is if we as a nation are ready and able to understand sophisticated racial humor or if most people take this humor literally and use it to prop up their biases. I think it is mostly the latter, unfortunately.

The other point explored by anxious black woman is that for satire to work it has to have a kernel of truth in it. So, what exactly is the kernel of truth? The New Yorker claims that the kernel of truth was the stupidity of those who demonize the Obamas, but like Roland says - without a tag line or a story attacking this thinking this falls short. So, then what is the kernel of truth? If you just take the image, it seems that the kernel of truth is suggesting that the Obamas might actually be what is being "parodied." I heard the editor of the NY arguing that this was basically Colbert in print, but Colbert uses his satire to hit directly at close minded conservatives so I don't follow.

Final thought: maybe as a culture, we are not as savvy as interpreting images critically as we think we are. Maybe this is one of the underlying issues of this whole controversy: we need everything spelled out to us in black and white because we have lost the ability to read and think critically.

Have we lost the ability to read and interpret satire?

Jon Stewart was pretty critical tonight about the media blowing up this issue, and Than shares his perspective.