Dear Eugene

Dear Eugene, How are you this morning?  I wonder if are ever agitated over nothing, like, even now? You know how sometimes the heart is like a beast that refuses to stay down.  And what's the rumpus?  Nothing, just a little tweety bird that I can't stand to see it stand on a branch that does not even have my name on it.   If the tweety bird would just go away, then world peace can be restored... One doesn't need to know the reasonableness of God's existence or his attributes or even his actions before acknowledging it really isn't reasonable to let a little trouble cloud up our whole being and assume someone or something is to blame for the restlessness and Why not God?  Like sure he can do something about the world, and why not this , this very little tweety that I so detest for no strong reason?   It doesn't take too much to please me, really... "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."  The

Dear Eugene, Last night before Small Group I and my wife strolled around the church neighborhood.  The spring flowers are fragrant, houses pretty, people behind every door often broken.  This is our Father's world. Standing under the shadow of a crabapple tree I pulled out my phone. "Do you really need another picture of this?" my wife asked, genuinely curious. "This one is different." I didn't mean the tree in and of itself is more special than any other of the same species.  It was how the soft evening glow of spring sun casting its serendipitous gleam to bring out the nuance in fifty shades of pink. (My wife made an overstatement.  I've just counted; only fourteen pictures of trees and flowers I have taken this spring, everyone special in its own way.) Two days ago my son complained how the weather forecast has not been accurate in the past recent days. "Have you been looking at only one picture or one number that claims to repres

Dear Eugene, What is a father?  What is a leader?  What is a man? Just because I am doing all the things that people expect me to do, it does not make me any of these by default.  There is always a vocation to ascend to. Thinking and doing, knowing and living, they can't do without one another.  I am trying to put things in very simple terms here, but the reality is far from being simple.  Volumes can be written, and in fact were written, about the great gulf between what we claim to believe and how we actually live.  Ephesians would be one. Walker Percy also asked the same question, in form of the many subtitles he gave to his book "Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book": or The Strange Case of the Self, your Self, the Ghost which Haunts the Cosmos or How you can survive in the Cosmos about which you know more and more while knowing less and less about yourself, this despite 10,000 self-help books, 100,000 psychotherapists, and 100 million fundamentalis

Dear Eugene, I still remember in the hot-headed naiveté of my youth, once I was asked to speak in front of the entire congregation of my church to "encourage" Sunday School attendance. Then I was a (grossly unqualified) Sunday School teacher who had much self-righteous energy to spare. I ended up turning the "public announcement" into forcing everyone down a guilt-trip that ultimately achieved the double-whammy to further alienate those who found no value in going to Sunday School and also solidify the Pharisaic sentiment of others who were glad to have an angry, ignorant youth for their gramophone. That was embarrassing, one of the biggest regrets of my life. My heart sinks every time I recall it.  How I wish to erase those ten minutes from my life! One person, in private, raised concern over my antic; but still, by and large he agreed with my sentiment. I knew nothing about the way of the Gospel then, and this dear brother knew nothing either. He was very

Dear Eugene, Robert Pirsig passed away yesterday, you must have heard.  I suppose this is what is occupying your mind this morning? You liked his " Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance " quite a bit, I recall.  You are the only pastor I know who would recommend a "secular" book such as this.  Thank you.  You don't want us to "take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world," as Pirsig puts it. Of course the "faithfuls" would decry: That sounds a lot like a different kind of religion.  Something Oriental, maybe.  Humanist philosophy, maybe?  Jesus is the truth and what else do you need to know or ask about the world?  The Bible says it; I believe it; that settles it! If only we do really believe  it (whatever the "it" refers to), we wouldn't have sounded so glib, false, and scornful.  We often act like we are "saved" by knowing the right doctr

Dear Eugene, Today I saw something so beautiful that I was in a way reinvigorated and another haunted by it even now. It was Youth Ministry Sunday at my church.  My kids are both in the band, and thus we arrived really early for practice.  One of the vocalists girl arrived late, not terribly, but she felt bad enough that the "I'm sorry" came out of her lips was baptized with tears. What a beautiful sight to behold!  “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them! For the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."  How true!  How true! The girl is not a "child" anymore, more like in her late teens.  Cynics and marketers take advantage of youth's being impressionable; Jesus loves them for their being impassioned. If being an adult means I would never feel sorry for something as small as being late, or apologize without meaning it, then let me never grow up!  We adults might have our "atonement theology" all worked out in

Dear Eugene, “It is not easy to convey a sense of wonder, let alone resurrection wonder, to another. It’s the very nature of wonder to catch us off guard, to circumvent expectations and assumptions. Wonder can’t be packaged, and it can’t be worked up. It requires some sense of being there and some sense of engagement.” You said that. I think the key word is engagement.  I am still learning, and often failing, in engaging people to see the wonders for themselves. This past Easter I had experienced much success in engaging people to wonder about Christ's resurrection.  And just as much failure. It must be wonder-full to cross the Red Sea, to experience the trippiest miracle of all, surrounded by a 3-D mega-Imax aquarium, feeling the water-conditioned coolness of an undersea chamber ( Honey, can you get my jacket? ), songs of freedom and triumph lingering in the air.  But what if the slave wants to remain a slave?  That he genuinely and thoroughly enjoys life in Egypt, growi

Dear Eugene, Who can look at--even touch--Christ's resurrected body without asking this question: What could God possibly mean by... this ? We tend to think we have all the theology worked out and, for that, totally figured out what God has in mind. Well, for one, we have never worked out the theology; someone else did the hard work for us, after years and years of blood sweat and tears, certainly not merely in words and creeds, but much more importantly in living out the implications of God's revelation, which is often gradual and protracted.  It is pure arrogance to think we are the ones to discover the earth is a sphere, denying we are born ignorant if not for the first picture book on science read to us as kid. And who can "work out" all the theology anyway?  Who can "figure out" God entirely? When the Israelite were walking on the muddy bottom of Red Sea, they must have asked the same question: What could God possibly  mean  by... this ?  To

Dear Eugene, I wonder when people first saw Jesus' resurrected body in the flesh, what kind of new possibility did they see in... this ? I am not just talking about the emotion they had had, as unbearably, earth-shakingly fierce as it must have been.  A hundred questions must have also violently bounced around in the little confine of their intellect, crashing into each others' course, breaking out new paths and energy hitherto seemed impossible, even nonexistent. A person's entire being must have felt like about to burst open, not able to contain this "new thing" the Father is doing--in his world, right here and now , through his Son.  The disciple looked around and there was the same chair on the ground and the same blue sky up above, but nothing is as it was before.   Everything has changed.  And the new possibilities !!!  Imagine the new possibilities!!! Like, if today all of a sudden wings are growing out of my back and before I was done thinking t

Hi Eugene, I walked up the mountain yesterday after church, on the day of our Lord's rising.  Knowing you, I am sure you must have done the same. O gather up the brokenness And bring it to me now The fragrance of those promises You never dared to vow The splinters that you carry The cross you left behind Come healing of the body Come healing of the mind And let the heavens hear it The penitential hymn Come healing of the spirit Come healing of the limb This Cohen song played as I ascended.  It was the first moment in a long time that I was allowed to feel the world's pain. During the morning's church service, when every single song is about "personal salvation," I felt like by "atonement" we meant For God so hated the world that he killed his only son. Like how a Dylan song goes, "Nobody feels any pain..." Behold the gates of mercy In arbitrary space And none of us deserving The cruelty or the grace O solitude of

Dear Eugene, The world is supposed to be a different place since 6 pm last night. Or is it? Gospel is good news, not good advice, good alternative, or even good-to-know.  Something had happened, whether we like it or not, one way or another we will need to see ourselves and the world in different light. Or do we? Say, if my house is burning, everyone in it are bound to be affected.  A news would have been announced: "Fire!!! Get out now!!!"  One might not welcome the news, or might even resist believing it; but when the smoke gets in your eyes, you are bound to respond, regardless of your opinion or preference on the matter. That seemed to be the case with Peter the coward. Last night beside the fire he was looking from afar, half fearing if he was next in line to face the same merciless, humiliating treatment, half wishing if his teacher might just have another bunny in his hat, a "miraculous" act of vindication that would turn their losing into winn

Dear Eugene, After all these years I still shudder. I shudder at the thought of the kind of pompous soapbox orator I was on track to become if not for your kicking the soapbox from underneath me.  You are a gentle, most patient pastor, but you kick hard.  You have Jesus strength. I was interested in theology from very early on, gobbling up stuffs from all over the buffet table, not wanting to miss a thing, on a mission, with no time to waste.  I didn't notice signs of indigestion, even though what came out of me looked disgusting and certain stank to high heaven--in more senses than one. No one can claim to be on The Way that is Jesus without doing things, living life, in the Jesus way; you taught me.  You didn't say it in only so many words but in thousands more and a hundred different ways.  That's when I first knew what a true pastor, a true shepherd is.  I was very disillusioned about the whole church thing then. “ I want to develop discernments that say an u

Dear Eugene, Yesterday after work I climbed up my garden shack to fix its leaky roof.  As expected there was an entire ecosystem going on there, colonies of moss that really were quite a sight to behold, if only I had time to take in the meaning before displacing the decades-old civilization. I was racing against the sun, which, according to the weatherman, is not going to show itself again until resurrection time. I've never given so much of myself while kneeling down. It's different from garden work.  Maybe it's the broken asphalt shingles pressing against my knee caps; maybe it's the weird angles at which I wielded my tools; maybe it's the latent anxiety that I might drop from a height that could leave me worse than dead.  By the end of the night I was prostrating along the roof edge to finish the work, couldn't kneel any more.  That posture of worship gave me much comfort; for a while I could actually feel the spring breeze that has been there all al

Dear Eugene, I was sorting my garbage this morning and my neighbor walked by with her dog and said Hi. We'd usually greet each others over a longer distance just to avoid a barking contest between our dogs.  As it happened that I was sans dog today she was able to squeeze in more than a How are you. "How does your son enjoy high-school?" I said He loves it, dressing himself up everyday.   Like an addiction I didn't say. She replied as she had before, not to my response but to complete her point, "It's very different; isn't it?" She meant high-school.  (Or teenage?  Or the world according to my son?  Or my perception of my son's perception of himself or the world?) Yesterday in California a man killed his estranged wife inside an elementary school classroom, right in front of a group of special needs children.  Then right there he killed himself too.  Two students were injured, and one later died.  The police said the man walked int

Dear Eugene, The day Trump got elected I started my new volunteer position. I've been asking God for an opportunity outside of church, something that would really challenge me, make me suffer, but it was not until Trump happened that God granted me my wish. In a bad-news world, go tell the Good-News, that's what He said. Even then God is gentle with me.  So far there is no suffering to speak of.  He knows I am weak. In my conversations with people I am working with, again the question of theodicy came up, which of course is all bound up with the question of hypocrisy in the Christian church. I've come to realize if there is a word that I can speak about God and evil and suffering, it is a Word called Jesus Christ, and this Word will need to speak through my flesh.  A Word that is a person cannot be spoken outside of relationships, but the conundrum is of course it is in our failure to relate to each others that we suffer the most, that God is disgraced, disfigur

Dear Eugene, I am a father who could never stop talking and hates himself for it.  My kids know my passive-aggressive silence is usually short-lived, an aberration that does not even try to disguise as a remotely possible paradigm shift. One day this all shall cease, I told them, meaning my death.  I wonder if they know there are more than one ways for me to shut up.  The other would be when I cease to love.  One is often tempted to make such care-less mistake.  I wonder if they know how big and often a temptation this is to me. I wrestled my son a few days ago, quite literally.  A tussle became a scuffle and ended with a wrestle.  The urge came out of nowhere for me and probably for him and before we knew it we were hitting the ground.  Quick and dirty as it was, Bellow's "Henderson the Rain King" flashed over the celestial of my confusion, Costello's "I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down" rang between my ears. Then the strangest thing happened, as

Dear Eugene, I can't quite get this song out of my head. Not that I like it; quite the contrary.  It is as banal as a Costco line-up, but in the same way it speaks about our time. The words go like this: "I am unwritten, can't read my mind, I'm undefined I'm just beginning, the pen's in my hand, ending unplanned Staring at the blank page before you  Open up the dirty window  Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find  Reaching for something in the distance  So close you can almost taste it  Release your inhibitions" This piece of elevator music forces itself into my ears everyday.  It played by itself in my head even as I was looking at the news and pictures of chemical attack in Northwest Syria.  The juxtaposing of sight and sound creates an obscene movie. There you see a character losing 22 family members in this chemical attack, including his wife and nine-month-old twin babies, but the movie director told him to speak

Dear Eugene, In my Small Group, I often asked my friends, my flock to imagine: If an alien from outer-space is to descend upon us and take a seat in our circle, what would our uninitiated visitor come to know about our Father by the end of our hour-long conversation with each others, His children? Today I asked myself, What if someone is to eavesdrop on the conversations I have with myself?  What if a fly-on-the-wall camera were to capture the most mundane details of my daily living, would the viewers see a heralding of the Gospel, the Good News, or would they see me as part of the bad, sad news so pervasive in this world?  Would they catch a glimpse of, Yes, God's Kingdom did indeed start to break in , or would they say my life as the usual Hell on earth ? It is spring time, a time for many to, again, "get away."  How we've come to call our traveling vacation "getaway" gives away much of how we see our lives.  What would the world see in how we pleasu

Dear Eugene, I can't recall exactly what you've said--it might not even be a sentence or a piece or even a single book of yours that I've read--but I do remember one day waking up to the rude realization that I've never learned how to read, decades since I've become a serious reader. Even now sometimes I would regress to being a hunter-gatherer of fragmented information by skimming through a book, skipping pages to glean what I think is useful to me at the very short-sighted moment, a "desecration" (that's what you called it) exacerbated by the convenience of italicized nuggets authors would sprinkle on the pages to speak to my very sickness.  I even turned the blessing of my new e-reader into pogo-stick of a curse, hopping between books, being everywhere but going nowhere. Restless. I have my excuses: life is too short for long books; I can do many things at the same time and do them all well; I just couldn't get into the topic/characters/

Dear Eugene, “Life is too busy and complicated for me to hear the cry of every person in my community. As a matter of fact, I struggle to find time to even hear the cries of my own family. If I had to listen to the cry of everyone in New York City, you may as well ask me to listen to the sound of every blade of grass growing and to the heartbeat of every squirrel. The noise would be deafening on the other side of silence.” One time a councilman, agonizing over the pervasive pain in the city, painted the above picture that is all too real. Today a mom told me she needs to distract herself from the unbearable burden that is her daughter, and I echoed her cry with a confession of my own, that sometimes I felt like I could stay in my cave of silence for the next ten years and might actually try it.  I also confessed I have a huge stockpile of intellectual arsenal to justify my anger and frustration and thus shutting-off, and I could probably get away with still appearing upright in f