Dear Eugene

Dear Eugene, Poetry is....many things. A lot happens in life, most of it sad, an occasional happiness, and sometimes you have no choice but to play the clown and laugh on the outside,  even though inside we feel less than failures So writes an immigrant child in US lockup . Poetry is, like, What else is there to say but these words? My son had said to me more than once, "Do you ever stop talking?"  In a way he wasn't fair to me, for I rarely talked at home.  In another way I understand what he meant; the words were not the ones he wanted to hear, even if I was to distill them into poetry (and I often did).  His head might nod to the words and sincerely so, but his heart speaks. Genesis 1 is poetry.  We, Christians, nod to the words but in our life we say to God "Do you ever stop talking?" If we really do trust (believe, "have faith") in God and his speaking through poetry, we would know why we could respond to the immigrant child...

Dear Eugene, This morning: " The bodies of 26 teenage women and girls have been found in the Mediterranean, Italian police said. " Were they tortured, sexually abused?   Does it still matter, now that they are no more?   Who is going to make such non-matter matter again?   Who is going to speak a word for them now that they are silenced? When did it happen?   When I was holding up my pious hands singing songs in church?   When I was articulating my sound theology out of my pizza breath on Saturday night?   When I was watching some Chinese Rocky movie for the umpteenth time with my family on Sunday night, followed right after by some ultra-HD nature "documentary" that tells of the same story of survival-of-the-fittest, over-eaten, over-talked, over a hill that I knew not the purpose to climb but did it anyway? The 26 teenage girls did not survive; I did.   I guess that's the story.   I guess I should be happy I came out on the winni...

Dear Eugene, Sometimes I wish my family is very poor.  Or we are in the middle of a war.  A famine.  Slavery.  Whatever.  Just something really really bad.  Bad enough that we would beg for deliverance, cry for salvation, that we could have a true exodus experience. And I know the thought is despicably crass, because much of the world is really in such really really bad shape.   If you so want it, why don't you just go there, there, or there?  I would look at the news and say to myself.   Don't you wear your first-world guilt on sleeve like it's a virtue. But I have nowhere to go but here.  Maybe one day God will call me to somewhere else, but as of this moment, God puts me here, gives me and my family much more than we need, and we must learn how to obey Him and do His will within the very particulars of our  here and now .  Affluence makes faithlessness all the more inexcusable.  Our cross to bear. As expec...

Dear Eugene, The morning is soft and gentle.  It need not be, certainly not for Vancouver, not in September. I feel secure and easy this morning, like a rich man. A rich man who knows no God would say to himself, This is nice, how can I keep it nice longer?  Forever?  For myself, my kids, for as many generations after me as I can live to see? He forgets the others in this world.  He forgets his neighbors who do not feel secure and easy, who might never be rich like him.  He reads the newspaper and sees numbing statistic, reads his neighbors' face and sees blank paper.  He knows no one, not even himself, most of all not God.  He thinks about his next meal shortly after the last, but shall never be satisfied.  He lusts after his next weekend, his next getaway, his next moment of pleasure and relaxation, but shall forever find no rest.  Anxiety and fear shall never leave him.  He wants to kiss someone, anyone, and feels ashamed and...