Chinese New Year of the Monkey... and the beginning of Lent!

Happy New Year of the Monkey, everybody! One of the great advantages of life in China -- a ten day break for Chinese New Year! However, as everyone knows, when you're in the education "business" your work is never done, so Wayne was still working on the big questions: seminary education for Hong Kong and China and Southeast Asia... what's a seminary for? How can we be God's agents for the world? How can we best live together with all the challenges and opportunities of being an intercultural community of Hong Kong, Chinese, Southeast Asian (Myanmar, Cambodian, Laos, Indonesian), European and American students and faculty?

It's been COLD here in Hong Kong this spring. 55 F. may not seem
much to you hearty Midwesterners, but when it's a damp cold
and there's no central heating system anywhere, it's bone-chilling.
Good thing you can see in this picture, we have a small layer of winter fat to help insulate us...

Luckily all that hard thinking about the future of seminary education in Asia didn't keep us away from a couple of gorgeous walks in the Hong Kong hills, and a couple wonderful New Years meals with students and other faculty.

The last two weeks I (Christa) have been slaving away on an academic paper on diakonia (for my D.Min. degree... I hope to graduate by the end of 2016!) and also getting ready for a two week trip to Myanmar, where I'll be interviewing applicants to our seminary, conducting a women's bible study workshop and taking what for me is an extremely exotic trip out to a remote spot in the eastern part of the country where our school has an alumnus who is the head of a small Baptist seminary there. Should be fascinating! He said this will be the first time an outside non-Burmese has come to their place to speak (hard to believe there are still such places left in the world) and he expects about a thousand people to show up (????) but maybe he got his 100's and his 1000's mixed up (!!!)  

This will leave Wayne with nearly two weeks "on his own" but I suspect he will get in a coupla more hikes, and find other things to do in my absence.

A nap in the mountains of Hong Kong - ahhhhhh!

Peace and spiritual deepening to all of you during this Lenten season.

"Should thy mercy send me   

Sorrow, toil and woe,

Or should pain attend me   

On my path below,

Grant that I may never

Fail thy hand to see;

Grant that I may ever

Cast my care on thee."

("In the Hour of Trial", verse 3)

Juxtapositions: Ash Wednesday and Chinese New Year of the Goat

This year Ash Wednesday and Chinese New Year Eve came on the same day. Chinese New Year celebrations are so important, even the Roman Catholic cardinal in Hong Kong gave his flock an official "dispensation" from Ash Wednesday fasting.

At the Lutheran Theological Seminary (Hong Kong) we had the imposition of ashes in the morning followed by Chinese New Year feasting in the evening.

On the first Day of the Chinese New Year (it's the Year of the Goat) we combined traditions by going on a 14 mile wilderness hike (walking with Jesus), scaling the steep climbs of the Hong Kong hills (almost like mountain goats). LTS students from Myanmar are much better climbers than their international professors from the flatlands of the Midwest (USA) and the Netherlands!

Our hearty friends and colleagues from the Netherlands.

Happy we can still climb mountains together!

Definitely the last hike for this particular pair of shoes!!!

"These hills remind us of home" Seemed to me
they weren't even breathing hard.

We did it! Here's to a great start to the Chinese New Year of the Goat...
and the Holy Season of Lent...

18The high mountains belong to the wild goats...

24How many are your works, LORD! In wisdom you made them all; 

the earth is full of your creatures...

30When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth.

- from Psalm 104

Dancing a Prayer of Sadness

We received word of a terrible, tragic  death of the 24 year old friend of one of our sons.
Our world will not be the same.
This is the kid who lived down the street. Who slept over at our house in a pile of boys in the basement. Who had a world class science project. Who got up in the dark winter mornings to get to 6 a.m. team wrestling practices at the school. An athlete and a scholar.

Whose Mom & Dad took him to church, showed up at every school event, whose Mom & Dad loved him madly. Who was our son's good friend, and fun. A law school student.

Who was a Christian. Who, yes, messed with drugs and alcohol, which everyone expected was a passing thing. Maybe it was or wasn't, but somehow this bright young man lost sight of all light, and got desperate. And took his own life.

Our son called us, facetime, across the continents and ocean. This is when it's hard to be so far away. There are times when to see your kid on a little phone screen is not enough.

In Christian tradition, it's Lent, and at the LTS chapel we entered into the season of dust and ashes with (of all things) dancing.

Southeast Asian dancing is expressive, from the arch of the foot to the plane of the outstretched hand.
Just so, our spirits try to express sadness, and anger, and confession, and more sadness, in prayer.

It is for just a death like this,  that we Christians insistently cling to hope beyond all hope: That there will, in fact, be full redemption, a rising up, of this particular and beloved life, the good friend of our son.

In Romans 8:26, St. Paul writes:  the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.

Fantastic Creatures of Hong Kong

 Winter's cold has been lasting unusually long here in Hong Kong. Temps in the 40's and 50's F can be very chilly in unheated apartments, offices and classrooms

The season of Lent continues, with contemplation, prayer, and attempts to be of service in this world, especially for and with the poor and the poor in spirit.

But sometimes you just have to get out! One of the unique and beautiful things about the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Hong Kong is the international Christian community life - pictured are students from Myanmar, USA, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Laos! Once a month the seminary "family groups" go on outings, and Friday was the day!

First order of business -- It's Dr. Wayne's family group, so that means a stop at an Indian buffet!

Yum! This is Trang, one of our two Vietnamese students this year (she's married to the only other Vietnamese student!). She's the mom of the little boy who had the honor of being LTS's youngest student ever... sitting in theology classes with his coloring books and pillow until his parents were able to get him situated in a local pre-school. Some of you will remember from earlier blog posts that it took us over 6 months and a five inch stack of paperwork to get this young family their student visas for Hong Kong.  But God is good! They've finally arrived!!!

The second part of our "family day" outing was a trip to the Hong Kong Art Museum... Fantastic Creatures!  [and so we are!]

There were a lot of dragons, dark and dastardly!

But we had no fear!

 At that time God will unsheathe his sword, 

his merciless, massive, mighty sword.
He'll punish the serpent Leviathan as it flees,
   the serpent Leviathan thrashing in flight.
He'll kill that old dragon
   that lives in the sea. 

 -- The Prophet Isaiah 27:1 (The Message version)

The Lenten Discipline of Language Study

My Lenten discipline this year is another Cantonese course.

How's it going, you may ask?

Well, see those guys on bike in the picture?  Can you tell what kind of a road they are on?  Just after I snapped this picture, the guy in the back landed on his butt in the shrubbery.  I didn't have the moxy to take his picture then.

But that's how my Cantonese is progressing. 

One humiliation after another.

So in addition to my still new job as Coordinator of International Student Affairs and Mekong Mission Assistant Coordinator (that mouthful wonderfully depicts both the fascinating range and woefully wide disarray of tasks which I am still sorting out) I am also hauling my derriere over to the Tai Wai subway station, changing trains twice, fighting the rush hour hordes to get to my two hour intensive Cantonese class on Wednesday and Friday nights.

It's not called an intensive class, but for me it is.  Very.

I sit through two alternately agonizing and comical hours of attempting to get my mouth, my memory and my mind's eye to work together to string together a comprehensible sentence in Cantonese, while a dozen other students, mostly a couple of decades younger than I, look on in either deep sympathy or undepleted boredom (I can't always tell which).

I am that person I do not, ever, want to be.  The worst in the class.

Afterwards, I take the three train lines back to Tai Wai walk the 15 minutes back to our home, and lie awake for a couple of hours, unwanted fragments of Cantonese crowding my head.

Researching the meaning of Lenten disciplines, I found this quote:
 "A discipline won’t bring you closer to God. Only God can bring you closer to Himself. What the discipline is meant to do is to help you get yourself, your ego, out of the way so you are open to His grace." (James Kushiner)

Each Wednesday and Friday night Cantonese class I am reminded how damned full of myself I really am. How much pride I take in my word choice, nuance, powers of communication, knowledge. Maybe, little by little, there is some important emptying going on with me this Lent.

So, today, as I was walking down the hill from the seminary, I had a two and a half minute conversation with our street cleaner.  In Cantonese.  And she seemed pleased to listen to me sputter out my responses.  I've been smiling ever since.

The guy on the bike in the picture? He fell, but he got up and rode on.

How is your Lenten discipline going?

"Let this same mind be in you that you have in Christ Jesus, who... emptied himself...  in human form, he humbled himself..."       Philippians 2:5-8

Ash Wednesday Walk

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⁴ “Show me, LORD, my life’s end
   and the number of my days;
   let me know how fleeting my life is.
⁵ You have made my days a mere handbreadth;
   the span of my years is as nothing before you.
Everyone is but a breath,
   even those who seem secure.

--Psalm 39

March in Hong Kong

rare black shirted spoonfed male

We visited the Hong Kong Wetland Park last week, which is situated across from a gazillion high rises and adjacent to a huge, little used parking lot.

It does, however, have some real live migrating birds, including some very rare blackfaced spoonbills, which I may or may not have actually seen.

I have yet to find the name of these fairyland flowers, so if anyone knows, please clue me in.

These waters will soon be aglow with lilies, but they have a certain Lenten beauty in this season, too.

Not spoonbills :)

This fish seemed to enjoy swimming sideways.  really, he's alive, or was when I took the photo. 

A wedding party makes good use of the scenic backdrop.

red crabs and these weird little legged fish which we had also seen in Malaysia.  They crawl around and attack each other in the mud.  good fun to watch.

Back at the seminary, just in case you think we don't do any work around here :)    Wayne confers with  students.  He is teaching Marriage and Family Counseling along with Christian Counseling and Discernment, both deeply appreciated courses in this intercultural context.

Lent 2011

Lent is a time for contemplation.

This Lent we had a chance to welcome good friends from Bethesda Lutheran Church, Ames Iowa

Ah, the color of Lent is purple.  And, did you know that the word Lent means spring? Spring has sprung in Hong Kong with an abundance of azaleas which love the thin sandy soil of the mountains.

Lenten window.

Lenten altar flowers.

Liturgical arts at its best, these plants evoke the disciplines of Lent and Jesus' walk to the cross.

One of my favorite preachers. (okay, I'm biased.  This is my husband.)

New life arising!

Old friends.  Without too much of an emphasis on the "old" part.

Oh yes, and Lent means it's 29 years since we each said, "I will."  And we still do, too :)

Ash Wednesday and Ambitions

I'm one of those strange people who sometimes likes flowers best when the petals start to fall.

The cross of ashes I received on my forehead at this morning's chapel service reminds me that all things are destined to crumble and fade away. 

Buds unfurl, petals drop, and is there a Mind of God who remembers the moments, shakes them up, and saves them?

More than a mere "Mind of God" we Christians believe there is a Man of God who does this,  Jesus of Nazareth, in whose footsteps we travel a 40 day Lenten path, strewn with temptations, dropped petals, and huge ambitions to make a better world.

At the church I serve as a sacramental pastor, the evangelist (and day to day, week to week leader of the little parish) resigned his position and just had his last Sunday at the church.  I was invited to a scrumptious dim sum luncheon in his honor, so here's a picture of me with our kind Lutheran School principal, Principal Li, and this very devoted church worker, who will be taking some time off and then maybe pursuing some more academic studies.   I can only believe that all of his hard work with this parish will be redeemed, even though the fruits aren't readily apparent yet.

Tomorrow, church members and I are launching an 8 week pilot project at the Lutheran School, an after school Truth English Bible Club for Grade 3 kids.

First Bible story on the agenda: Jesus' Entrance into Jerusalem.  We will:

• learn the story 
• learn the English words: donkey, king, palm branches, coats
• sing "We are Marching in the Light of God" and wave palm branches (probably bamboo branches, which are free since they grow in our yard)", 
• make a palm branch craft out of green paper
• recite half of a Bible verse:

"Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!"  -- Mark 11:9b  (NIRV)

Afterward, a yummy snack, prepared by a church member.

I am more than a bit nervous about this launch.  It's something new!  Did I tell you that I still don't speak much (ok, hardly any) Chinese??  And they don't speak much English!

May our ambitions be redeemed. May the children be blessed.  May our church blossom. May we learn to walk, these 40 days, with Jesus.