Dear Eugene

Dear Eugene, I am getting ready for Christmas. Yesterday morning I woke to the vision to bring someone home to our Father, someone I don't know yet, someone I know God has already named but waiting for my obedience to turn a page in his/her homecoming story. It's obvious my vision was brought to bear also by an act of obedience, my pastor preaching on (and living!) what he called "the happiest chapter of the Bible," Luke 15 , the Story of the Lost Sheep in particular.  Lost and found.  Lost then found. I am now living right in the very tension of the unveiling then .  It feels weird.  My heart is happy, but there is a faint pain somewhere in my guts. I can't see the person's face yet; almost, but not yet.  But the person is close and I can feel that.  I am seeing through a glass darkly but there is for sure a shape. I need to get ready, that's all I know, that's the only thing I heard, a voice that came with the vision, and the vision h...

Dear Eugene, "People are proud to be saying Merry Christmas again. I am proud to have led the charge against the assault of our cherished and beautiful phrase. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!" So said Donald Trump.  Yesterday I read in a Christian magazine quoting him, saying something along the same line, about him being the savior of Christmas, if not Jesus himself.  I am ashamed to say I used to write for this magazine. I suppose I shouldn't be writing when I feel angry.  Especially on Christmas day.  I have no right to be angry.  A Desert Father once said the only reason to get angry at a brother is to bring him closer to Jesus, and no other reason is justifiable.  I need to stop writing and start praying. Let me share with you an excerpt from Rowan Williams' masterful little book " Being Christian " on baptism.  The best way to fight against the anti-Christ is to know, to love, and be like Christ. Merry Christmas, my dear pastor.  Thank you f...

Dear Eugene, Yesterday I had a long breakfast conversation with a friend. Like many, instead of seeing the sacredness of questioning , she mistakes human's searching, a heart's yearning, for disloyalty to tradition and betrayal to her community, social expectations she has long suffered from but couldn't see a reason, wouldn't have the courage to stop their self-perpetuation. Since I shared the Gospel with her a while back, she started to ask questions.  Yesterday's breakfast was about looking for answers together.  Searching for food that satisfies. She said she couldn't accept the idea of God becoming a man, becoming the man that is Jesus.  I said I share her doubt wholeheartedly.  The day I stop to bewilder over it is the day I cease " to wonder like a little child, to find mystery in everything, every day, everywhere, to be surprised continually, to clap one's hands in glee as every brilliant hour flashes past. " Jesus' incarnati...

Dear Eugene, What does it mean to be hospitable in an inhospitable world?  This seems to be one of the many Christmas questions that haunts humanity still. I like my new kitchen, but I really would rather have my old one back.  Does wealth discredit a Christian's discipleship?  I am sure many wise people would have many wise things to say about this topic.  The reality for me, though, is simple: that my hospitality in this family sanctuary will now need to dance on the slippery veneer of vanity that is my sparkling new counter-top.  I love its singular uniqueness but am not too sure about where its grain pattern leads. Everything beautiful points towards Jesus.  It does until it doesn't. I fear I am too well-adjusted a person living too ordered a life for Christ to work through me.  I am not hospitable and am frequently afraid of its implication.  I am not saying this just to entice your consoling counter-argument and thus double down on m...

Dear Eugene, I think this is the first year that I really know what Christmas is about. I know, I know.  When you say something like this people think you are writing dialogue for a Hallmark movie (which really is a horror movie with fake tears wasted instead of strawberry jam).  But I am not granting myself a poetic licence to exploit. Let me vindicate me. I used to write a monthly column for a Chinese magazine, for years, and every December I would challenge myself to say something new about Christmas, something that would surprise even myself as  I was writing it. It is a tall call.  My self-talk, especially about my own writing, tends to be severe.  I don't know how Elvis did it with his Christmas songs, maudlin liquid fat with an air of authentic dignity, sacramental (sacred-minded) cheese-balls.  I was aiming for that every December. I think my Christmas piece did get better over the years (by the above non-standard).  Still, all thes...

Dear Eugene, I guess I get depressed quite often. I don't want to admit to it, I don't want to talk about it, not because of any stigma attached to depression, but because "depression" is not really the word to describe how I feel. There was a time in history that "depression" might have been the word, but its expansive and substantive meaning has since shriveled to a hackneyed buzzword, expropriated for our modern lexicon to print easy labels and sell wonder drugs, a bad state of being to keep under control but how far and to what possible good end we don't know.   There is a dent; it must be bad... “BLESSED ARE YOU WHO HAS given each man a shield of loneliness so that he cannot forget you. You are the truth of loneliness, and only your name addresses it. Strengthen my loneliness that I may be healed in your name, which is beyond all consolations that are uttered on this earth. Only in your name can I stand in the rush of time, only when this lo...

Dear Eugene, The morning is dark and wet.  I looked out the window and tried to see something new. I sought not merely a new perspective, new depth, new scope, new discovery, but a new creation, a renewal of the old because history matters, a new birth because the old only matters in light of the new beginning. Christmas is the beginning of a new beginning. We opened our gift, liked, even loved what we saw.  But what are we to do with it?  The baby is so weak, fragile, vulnerable; what difference would it make in the scheme of things?  Three years of ministry, sayings, doings, a match barely stays lit and you can see the end coming fast and strong; let go of it quick lest you burn yourself. His friends let go of him when he needed them the most. Gift unwrapped.  Once liked 👍, even loved, now dispensable.  Like last December's Facebook post.  Meanwhile another war broke out, another child died, another bullet flied, another stomach left emp...