Dear Eugene

Dear Eugene, Last week I've gotten an advice from a dear friend, the best I had received so far this year and probably will stay this way. "Speak for yourself, Alex," he said. Strange enough I was reading Frederick Buechner and he told me the same.  Though he meant it a bit differently I suppose, that in speaking for myself  I am speaking about God, for God. Prophet.  Priest.  King.  If it be His will. I think I won't be speaking for a while.  I just don't know how to. If it be your will That I speak no more And my voice be still As it was before I will speak no more I shall abide until I am spoken for If it be your will Yours, Alex

Dear Eugene, I saw the Monster.  The loneliest, out of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. He (or was it a she?) circled me and the sheepish dog I was walking.  I asked him to leave.  I asked with a very loud voice.  He answered with his steady pace, no faster than before my request. No slower. Matter-of-fact steady. I first saw his silhouette walked out of a gully of the shadow of death, poised, nonchalant.  Ready to do what he was determined to do.  Ready to give a reason to what needs no explanation. "Where is your leash?" I asked. "I have no master," he said. No mother. No family. If there's a Creator, I've lost sight of him. Or he did me. Just let me be. I again asked him to leave.  I hated that he could hear the terror in my voice.  By now I've picked up my sheep.  Very wet feet.  He whispered to me that he wanted to meet the Monster up close, get to know him better, know him as a person, break down barrier, host...

Dear Eugene, I think I am changing. I guess a person changes all the time, slowly and gradually.  But this is not that kind. This is about leaving things behind for good, crossing over to the other side, saying goodbye. I am searching for a new way to speak.  My old way of speaking can no longer account for the new me.  Not too long ago I said to myself, There are twenty million ways to say the same thing; why not try them all in your life time?  Now I am looking for the twenty million and one way, and I have not found it yet. I wrote and threw, wrote and threw, wrote and threw.  Lately I wrote a lot to you and threw away just as much.  I am not happy with my sentences any more.  I can't find the right prepositions, how one thing relates to another.  I've tried them all: in, at, of, etc. but none of them is good enough.  None of them can fully account for what I am seeing, even if only through a glass darkly. I volunteer as a lit...

Dear Eugene, But in a morning such as this Is neither life nor death to see, Only that state which some call bliss, Grey hopeless immortality. What is there to speak about in a morning such as this, when, as it always is,  the victim is also the victimizer , the oppressed the oppressor, when with god and god's people on his side one boasted about the size of his nuclear button , when one plunge of a bus took with it four dozen made in God's image , when killing happened at your backyard ? What word would suffice to speak about anything in a morning such as this? Well, I wrote a lot to you since Dec 28.  But I scrapped them all.  Too wordy.  Too many words but not nearly enough.  I need to find a new way to speak in this new year. David speaks in poetry. Yours, Alex

Dear Eugene, This morning I emailed my two teenage kids: "Let me invite you to spend some time this weekend to read this short story while you are praying for God's guidance about the burden of a vision I have shared with you just now, and see if you can find Jesus between the lines: 'Dimension' by Alice Munro ." I must've read this story more than ten times.  Yesterday morning I read the news and this morning I spend two hours to meditate on the story again.  Still hits me like nothing else. Praying for a new dimension breaking in. Yours, Alex

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, When you hear a prophecy so all-embracing that you don't want to add to or subtract from it a word lest you diminish its far-reaching vision, you have no choice but to present it whole to the world. This morning I am contemplating on a passage from Rowan Williams' little book "Christ on Trial: How the Gospel Unsettles Our Judgement."  He was talking specifically about the Church, but also spoke what this father finds no word to speak about his own family and his relation to it. “I long for the Church to be more truly itself, and for me this involves changing its stance on war, sex, investment and many other difficult matters.  I believe in all conscience that my questions and my disagreements are all of God.  Yet I must also learn to live in and attend to the reality of the Church as it is, to do the prosaic things that can be and must be done now and to work at my relations now with the people who will not listen to me or those like me—because what...

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...