Yesterday, we feasted.

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As the Lunar New Year coincides with Gramma's birthday this year, the celebration would have been a much-anticipated feast.

Just a foretaste of our Banquet to come, at which we'll feast with laughter, though all hunger has been banished––sated forever.

Yesterday, we feasted.
Tomorrow, we'll feast again.

Happy birthday, Gram. Love and miss you so very much. It's any Asian Grandma's job to preside over the kitchen for the big events––you're gone now, but I'm learning to run with your torch, your love of lavish feasting, for any/all Family, with delicious and serious fooding. Yesterday in your honor, I threw a dinner party for 7 kids and 14 adults. We made 220 of 4 types of dumplings, 2 types of Asian greens, 2 types of 湯圓, 壽桃... We had peanut candy, tangerines, and red envelopes. I'm so glad you shared all those things with me.

Our 春聯 were 仁愛，喜樂，和平，忍耐，恩慈，良善，信實，溫柔，節制 because these are the fruits of Springtime, the gifts of Easter's renewal, the marks of the true flourishing we desire.

So much of me is made of what I learned from you, you'll be with me like a handprint on my heart.



Gram passed away Aug 2014 but is fondly remembered with gratitude and joy.

I wonder what banquet lies before her now.

Happy Birthday, 阿嬤!

Happy New Year.

Impress on me the weight of Glory to anchor me.

I know you feel hollow and disembodied like you're floating through your days,

while the mundane present seems so irrelevant compared to the sharp gaping wound,

but you must keep insisting on staying in it.

Give it more space, attention, and import than you give the weighty darkness.

Flip the switch on real and non-real.

Felt reality isn't true reality all the time, nor is it the whole truth of present reality.

We know this constrastly (and sometimes in opposition) as we attend to, make space for, and live by the largely unfelt, invisible reality of Abba's reign.

Insist on that; let it become greater, weightier, despite felt experience.

Oh for that day when that which is felt and that which is true are in perfect, lovely harmony. Every lack will be met. "Hollow" will be crowded out of our experience and vocabulary; emptiness will be no more, when we are filled with his fullness.



Grateful to live with my soul sister, a therapist-to-be who lost precious sleep to sit in the puddle with me.

The Rabbit in the Moon

Grandpa loooved rabbits. It was his zodiac year.

Not the actual animal species, I don't think, but as an icon. His sandals and cell phone charm, for example, sported the Playboy Bunny... (as it was fobby Taiwan, he did not know anything about the Hugh Hefner enterprise behind the symbol).

One year during 中秋節 (mid-Autumn Festival) he taught me to search for the 兔寶寶（bunny rabbit) in the moon. We gazed and gazed at the full and happy moon, from my second-floor window in Warrenville. I just don't see it, Grandpa! But I see you! Like trying to read an ultrasound, or unlearning the viewing of the world through the photo-real lens to reach back into a pre-TV imagination that saw stories connecting the scattered stars... I could not eke out a rabbit in the moon, but was happy to just have Ah-Gong instead, a rabbit in my room.

Grandpa and Grandma had brought from Taiwan more battery-operated lanterns for us than we had hands to carry. They also brought mortars and pestles, wooden and marble, in all different sizes. They explained something about the rabbit in the moon pounding something––rice, maybe? I tried it, and it was harder than churning butter, and far less rewarding. What was the point? I didn't get it, and thought a mortar and pestle were not my toys of choice most days except as percussion instruments, but I did once grind up some chalk in one to make an art project with water and black construction paper. I didn't understand most of what they were trying to impart, I mean, the Autumn moon was lovely, and so was being family with Grandma and Grandpa, and so were lanterns and pomelos and pumpkins and dumplings and taro and duck. The mochi, I loved, but mooncake was sick nasty (aside from the salty egg yolk, round like the moon).

Back then I didn't get it but now I recognize and value: They were giving us tradition. They were giving us stories. Culture. Language. They gave us Taiwan, Japan, their world(s), their time(s),  their war, themselves.

And I am so grateful.

***

When our family of six traveled by sedan, I would sit in the backseat on Grandma's lap, with Joshua and Grandpa. Look at the moon, Grandpa would say. There was an eyebrow phase, a watermelon rind phase. It's following us! And I would wonder how does it do that...? A pearl in the sky could stalk us all the way home (except for the occasional disappearance behind a tree or building). Obviously, the rabbit inside is running very fast!

My top teeth hang over the bottom row in this problematic overbite that makes it difficult to eat anything off a bone with civility. When my new front teeth came in, they were humongous (baby teeth had been tiny) and didn't grind down... Grandpa liked my bucktoothed smile, when I was still self-conscious about it. Like a bunny! An Easter bunny, my brother would tease.  Grandpa would try to coax my toothy smiles––don't hide those pretty bunny teeth! then pretend to be blinded by two full moons at my grin. To this day, my front teeth are rounded and humongous, :B is an apt emoticon. Thank you for not settling for lippy smiles and polite giggles, Grandpa.

In Christ, this tragic world is an uproarious comedy, and the smiles Grandpa taught me were in their way a passport to the party and the pleasures. Laughter: A gift of sanity! Celebrating the wonderful. Puncturing the true. Illuminating the beautiful.

***

I set aside an hour and a half today, the mid-Autumn Festival, to write a eulogy for Grandpa, whose cremation and memorial is not until October.

In fits and starts and scribbles, I did manage to get out some words. But didn't get very far. There is so much to say. so. much. I think about John, his highly visual imagination, his word pictures, how he recorded in canonized, forever-words: He did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.

And that makes perfect sense to me in this moment.

Jesus must have loved John, so, so much.  so. much. He must have entered John's world, gotten down to John's level, crawled with him, slowed down, dumbed down for him, told repetitive stories, drawn diagrams, taught him how to walk, fall, get back up, bike, fall, get back up, how to love, fall, get back up... sleep, wake, cry, hope, wait, work, live, laugh, rejoice. Jesus must have done so much, together, and been so much, with. There is just so much to say about someone who appears into your world, then stays, just to know you and love you and be with you. One day we'll reach a throne room that I like to think will surround us with these very infinite bookshelves filled with all his doings. We'll know, fully, not secondhandedly from the mansion's massive library (the books will be there just for pure pleasure). Not even like a mirror. We will know. And feel fully known. We will catch up on all the years, every moment that we mourned or missed.

***

How can I winnow all memory of 阿公 into a publicly digestible, concise platter? I couldn't keep up with my pen. There is so freaking much to say, so many flavors, I don't know how to serve it up in good form. But this at least I've decided:

Going forward, I set apart every Autumn Moon Festival to honor their memory, love their nations. I'll celebrate the harvest. I'll insist on joy. I'll look for the rabbit in the moon. I'll try to love their daughter well and pray for their sons.

Maybe it'll be like today––and include friend, family, and feast. Some good ol' Old Speckled Hen EPA, trespassing (under the fence) at a forest preserve nearby for a spontaneous midnight moonchase hike to the top (thanks for comin' with, Jessica!).

It is squash/pepper/tomato time!

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

For even as He crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.

But if in your fear you would seek only
love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing floor,
Into the seasonless world where you
shall laugh, but not all of your laughter,
and weep, but not all of your tears.

// K. Gibran

June is bustin' out all over!

Without the wait, and without the emptiness, and without the browning and drying and blowing away, the cold, the frozen pots, the bareness, the shriveled herb leaves, the sticks of fig and rose, without the white pillows of snow, the spare horizon, spring would be nothing . . . We need sleep. We need to be empty. It is the only possible preparation for the excess to come.

// Marie Viljoen

Friends have been seeking an explanation for my infatuation with farms. I could give heady socially motivated or theologically grounded ideas about dominion, community cultivation, nutritional security and sustainability etc.

But at the visceral level... of why I actually can't (or at least don't) resist its draw. I think I just need the joy and life that seasonality (and living by it) brings. The hope of the first egg, the feast of the last pig. The ebb and flow of sabbaths and solstices.

sprequinox: sorrow and love mingling ahead these dark days

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
 Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
 Memory and desire, stirring
 Dull roots with spring rain.
 Winter kept us warm, covering
 Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
 A little life with dried tubers.
 Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
 With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
 And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
 And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

// from T.S. Eliot, "The Wasteland"

 heavy eyelids, heavy heart. heavy news, heavy knowing.
how do you hold it all in Your heart??
 reacquainting with Your HURRICANE face.

after grandpa's three days... and his hospitalization since...
how could you let him go hungry? how could you let her go ill?
now he wastes away...

oh, he was not supposed to go this way.

Lord oh Lord have mercy on us.

This Very Present Darkness

These days, I have said to friends, depression is knocking at my door, and I am fearful, though I have been told I need not, and must not, be dismayed.

It crouches at my door. I must not be mastered by it.

Some days I am inexplicably (with reference to my current circumstances) sad and disembodied. This gloomy cloud follows me.

These days, I miss her. She understood. But I don't just miss her understanding; I don't just miss being understood. I miss her. I feel her absence without jumping to fill it for someone else for the first time since that initial sorrow. I think of how a year ago around now, we were planning for our weekend in Princeton.

Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it (Hebrews 2:1). Do not neglect your great salvation, Esther. You have a Savior!

So having put on the full armor, is our only marching order to stand firm? Will Papa really fight on our behalves?

Arm ourselves for the darkness at hand, we must.

Because the fog--It obscures the truth that He already has championed us. And He's irrevocably won.

I pray that mercy would root my heart and mind deeply in the gospel. And that the light of this victory would resight my blind fumbling aim and distorted vision.

I must see You, Jesus. Please open my eyes and fix them on You or I shall certainly get lost in the ambiguities.

A deep fog stalks me. But another cloud goes before. By day. By night (Exodus 13:21). It shepherds me along the Way.

Even those sheep who stray into rabbit trails are not lost to You.

Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand.

You guide me with your counsel, and afterward...

You will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but You?

And there is nothing on earth that I desire--besides You.

My flesh and my heart do fail.

But God is the strength of my heart and my portion. Forever.

Commune

This bed is my resting place for the next months in a 1925 Victorian-style house in upstate New York. I wear the floppy flower hat when we work on the organic biodynamic CSA farm and in the community gardens.

Living in intentional interfaith community, and sharing a 2.5 bathroom house with 18 other bodies, is quite a joyful task and learning experience. The biggest challenge for me as far as dialogue with Muslims, Jews, and Christians of other stripes and scales goes, is in reconciling our similarities, not in living with our differences. I am confronted again and again about how much my "faith" is merely about feeling good about being good, and feeling bad about being bad, and how much I still practice vague spirituality, legalistic morality, general psychology, and wider mysticism, rather than hope in Christ alone.

Everything else is common ground: religious goodness. And I must say, most of my new friends do it better, dress and pray and eat and hope and work and sing, with more piety and skill and religiosity than I. There must be more. Kun said, these are realizations you can't make unless you interact a lot with people of other faith, and that every religion has good principles to live by, and that it is good for me to be put into that context.

Put into that context? How is it that we are not already in this context all the time? We have managed to withdraw, somehow, from this pluralistic world. I suspect that as Christians, we should encounter this conflict far more often than we actually do, and that it would drive us to Jesus Christ each time confessing "I need Thee every hour!" As it is, our cloisters blind us to how un-distinct and ironically un-set-apart we are, how much we are not in the world.

Father, save Your church from mere moralistic therapeutic deism, give us Jesus, fill our discernment with You, and send us out in Jesus' sweet saving name.

Volleyball

The year I learned to love team sports, was the year that I began letting go of all that my parents had never done for me, and all that they'd done to me. For example, they didn't let me play even when I made the cuts in high school. And I got to let go of my bitter what if they had?s.

So props to the bros who first believed and took a chance on my noobness. A first taste of playing like a team and playing to win. And later, a stark glimpse of what it costs to not trust and cover each other and play as one.

Growing up means mom and dad can't be excuses anymore, for me not going for it or anything. Walking on to the team that season and having to earn my place--it was the year I began unlearning Mom's insistence that raw talent was all that mattered. Sugar and gold and clay alike need grueling. Working my way off the bench into the starting lineup, earning that white jersey, man, I had the time of my life! It was a godsend, a healthy distraction, the blessing of busyness, to keep me forward facing and forward moving the two seasons. I believe in team sports! ... Bullieve? :)

So CUNY's athletic program, like its academic program, is a total joke. So we were a ridiculously large, ragtag rookie team. But in Division III we played--with Heart. The mental toughness you had to muster in order to be in that gym, for those hours--such a gift. A safe space. A sweet mercy for that autumn. If I flaked or was late to stay in bed and cry, they ran suicides.

No, you man up. You never turn your back on your teammates. And if they turn, you don't let their jealous hate sabotage you.  The ones who execute, not the ones who try, are gonna be the ones in the game. If coach and captain say you stay, stay your ground. See what a long way you have to go, and know that learning this, too, is progress. Persevere.

Jen & Me-Oak; awesome coaches

Know irrelevant voices from the voices you should listen to. Leaders are those who went before you, who brought you on seeing who they could make you, who you would become. Trust them. Do the discipline of forsaking entanglements for now to fight, and play, and practice. Worries will wait. The coach who dug down deep to draw out diligence and competition. The value of now. This point. This play. Grace for yourself and for your family; it is, after all, a game moved along by mistakes. Don't think yourself above errors.

You never rise to the occasion, you only fall back on your training. So bring yourself, your whole self, your mind your strength your game, to the table. Every time. Be all there.

My cute lil Pokemon

There is more, much more, that volleyball tangibly taught me. But asked why I give my Saturdays now, I say, you only can give what you've first received.

The rain, it's here.

A child's anticipation.

tell me, if love and patient joy are the only weapons against darkness and long despair:
what is patient joy? long-suffering joy?
is hope its fuel?

:') watched this 10x this morning teehee

hope is the tree that bears the fruit of Joy, Steph said.
patient Joy... it grasps onto hope and True Promises.

so we work and watch and wait.
with hope in our hearts.
anticipation in our pee-bags.

for this season to change.

in the meantime there are yellow boots, pendulum swings, morning chocolates, and many sunrises to help you stay a child at play. to help you be certain. it won't be long.

Will you let a thorn in your flesh prick your heart?

Psalm 73:21

When my soul was embittered,

when I was pricked in heart,

I was brutish and ignorant;

I was like a beast toward You.

2 Corinthians 12:7

So to keep me from becoming conceited...

a thorn was given me in the flesh

...to keep me from becoming conceited.

How will I choose to see the hard providences in life, you know, those gifts I would rather return? Asaph in Psalm 73 and Paul in 2 Corinthians 12 lay out some options. As always these include the cynic's way and the scenic route. A nice wordplay from the musical The Fantasticks with Chris, Eugene, Iris the other night.

Embittered and conceited?

The weight of sin is blinding, it defaults to seeing by the eyes of flesh and blood, which can never see or inherit the Kingdom of God... To do so would be like allowing optical illusions to override what's really going on... Do you think that trapeze artist can actually fly? Are this life, this world, and their seasons permanent? Is that levitating magician really slicing up his assistant? Do the wicked really prosper scot-free? Foolish.

Or content for the sake of Christ?

With true vision learn to sing Asaph's song, "Truly God is good..." and with pure hearts, see the Father and the perfection of His gifts.

be Thou my vision Jesus...
one day nothing will distort Your image
and i'll see You face to face--
a truly beautiful and utterly beautifying sight.
one day there will be no other light but You, O bright Heaven's Sun,
and everything will be in its real form, whole and pure and true--
including my still deceitful heart that offers only half of itself in worship.
even today help me to see You in part,
and see everything by the light of Your presence.
let earthy gold grow dim, give me faith to live by,
give me Yourself; i can't trust my eyes.

You are autumn.

still I notice You when change begins
and I am braced for colder winds
i will offer thanks for what has been and whats to come

// nichole nordeman