Great Shakes!

At the Everyone Everywhere Mission Conference we attended in June in preparation for being missionaries, we received one piece of advice over and over: be flexible, don't have many expectations, they won't be met.

This advice is well and good, but we still left for Taiwan with two secret goals: to experience an earthquake and a typhoon. This might seem strange to those of you who have been through these things before, but we're from Colorado. Nothing dramatic happens out there! Of course, we didn't want anything too scary, no lost lives or anything. Just something to shake us up.

Yesterday at 3:43pm one of our goals was fulfilled!!! About 75 miles ESE of Taipei, there was a 5.3 magnitude earthquake. According to the USGS, this magnitude of earthquake is enough to cause significant damage and really shake things up. Thank God we were pretty far away. We were on the fourth floor of the Cathedral's education building when we felt the building "rolling." It only lasted about 5 seconds, but immediately we looked at each other with amazement that we had survived our first earthquake. The map here shows the location of the earthquake. If you would like more info, or perhaps are curious about the recent earthquakes in Utah, Southern Missouri, and Colorado(!) I highly recommend this link: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter


In other news, last Sunday was the kick-off of the Teenage Fellowship (Youth Group) at the Cathedral. Elizabeth had about 37 activities planned, just in case. Somehow, out of the 37 possible activities, we ended up playing "the knot game." I guess this is part of an universal language. . .

The Teenage Fellowship promises to be a great time! There are some great kids who come, including a couple of pairs of siblings (who love each other very much), the Dean's daughter, and two piano prodigies. Amazingly, they look and act








a lot like middle school students. Elizabeth is starting into a unit on worship next week, beginning with the basics of order of service and liturgy.

Elizabeth also began working at the Good Shepherd kindergarten on Monday! In Taiwan, kindergarten means 3, 4, and 5 year olds. The 3 year olds spent the whole time crying because this is their second week away from their parents. Next week Elizabeth is going to introduce "Heads, shoulders, knees, and toes." It should be a great follow up to "Silly Willy" which introduced important concepts such as feet, hands, head, hat, gloves, and shoes. This kindergarten stuff is deep.

Finally, we had an interesting Chinese lesson this week. We are being tutored twice a week by the Dean of the cathedral who is generously offering us his time and Chinese expertise. Yesterday Seth asked about how to say Church and Episcopal Church. This is the explanation that followed:
The Chinese characters for "Episcopal Church" look like this: 教 and it is pronounced: sheng gong jiao. The best part is, the direct Mandarin to English translation is "Holy Catholic Church." The middle character also means "public" or "universal." It is seen on many signs like "public park" or "public restroom." In a series of strange events, the Roman Catholic Church in Taiwan is known as something like "Christian God Church." As told by Rev. Lin, this is because the Roman Catholics, during the early stages of missionary work in Taiwan, translated the word "God" differently than the protestant churches. Therefore, the Roman Catholic church is known by it's translation of the word "God." If you think it is weird when people separately refer to "Christians" and "Catholics" in the US, it actually makes sense here. According to Rev. Lin, the average Taiwanese person, unfamiliar with Christianity, sees that the Roman Catholics and Protestants have different words for God, meaning they must be different religions. Of course, many years have passed since the original translations, and both churches now use the same translation for God. But the Episcopal church still holds onto the title "Holy Catholic Church" because, well, "it says so in the creed." Sounds good to me.

Finally, we get to see some pretty interesting examples of culture clash. We took this picture walking by the National Opera House last week. The steps of the opera house are popular for various community groups to practice dancing, tai chi, martial arts, etc. On this particular day there was a group of older people doing tai chi (on the left) and a group of teenagers practicing a hip-hop routine (on the right). The slow and methodical movements of the tai chi group were in stark contrast to the MTV influenced hip-hop group. And as far as we could tell, they didn't seem to be bothering each other.

May God bless you richly this week.

Love,

Elizabeth and Seth

Choosing Life

"I am offering you life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life, then, so that you and your descendants may live." (Deuteronomy 30:19)

This is the core of the matter. I just didn't think it would pop up so early in the year.

Henri Nouwen writes that we often choose death instead of life in our many daily encounters, decisions, and trials. Nouwen says choosing life "requires an immense inner discipline. It requires a great attentiveness to the death-forces within us and a great commitment to let the forces of life come to dominate our thoughts and feelings." In our Canterbury theological reflection group, I think we would pause at this point and ask for images. What images or pieces of tradition or experience would you offer in response to this thought?

One image/experience comes immediately to mind, but takes a bit of explanation. When I was growing up, my siblings and I diligently followed the "Adventures in Odyssey" radio show. This radio show is produced by Focus on the Family and is a great medium for learning moral lessons, Bible stories, and just plain fun radio drama. My image is from one episode of the show where a girl is struggling with the phrase "count it all joy" found in James 1:2. She doesn't understand how she can "spin" her struggles at school, arguments with her parents, and trouble with friends into happiness. I think this is the problem. Many times, we assume that choosing life or counting it joy will bring a feeling of happiness. Instead, we are asked to look for a fulfillment that isn’t immediate. In choosing life, we might in fact be denying brief feelings of happiness for the more virtuous and ultimately more joyous path of justice, reconciliation, and forgiveness.
In an ongoing project to read "serious theology" in preparation for seminary, I am reading Karl Barth's "God Here and Now." Barth frames the dilemma of choosing life as the "decision of faith." We make a choice, a transition to faith. In this decision of faith, we decide between life in the Word (Jesus Christ) and death in the world. And when we make the decision of choosing life, we are letting Jesus "be for us what we are not and cannot be for ourselves: our truth, our goodness, our righteousness, our salvation."



I would like to apply the idea of choosing life to my experiences this week in Taiwan. First of all, choosing life is something that begins within. It is also something that is very difficult. Shane Claiborne, one of the founders of the Simple Way community and author of "The Irresistible Revolution" talks in his book about their rule for opening the door to their community: only open the door if you are able to do small things with great love.

After spending most of the first few weeks establishing a routine for daily prayer, finding places to eat, etc. we were approached with a new challenge of “doing small things with great love.” For an introvert and private person, one of my least favorite ways to choose life is by allowing my sacred routines and privacy be disrupted. But as is the case many times, choosing life and following Jesus is not always the easiest or happiest thing. . .

Many of you might know Nick Ford from his time at St. Aidan’s. We actually only met him once before leaving for Taiwan. Nick has lived in China for the past year, teaching English at a university. When we met Nick at St. Aidan’s he was planning to move to Taiwan for the foreseeable future. There were only two major roadblocks, no place to live and no job. So even five weeks ago I could hear God presenting a decision, do I choose life and welcome the stranger or do I choose death (and security, comfort, all good feeling things) and knowingly deny someone in need.

Fortunately, I can report that we chose to invite Nick to stay with us at our apartment for a while until he finds a place to stay and a job. And as small things done with great love, we were greatly rewarded. We spent the past weekend with Nick, exploring more of Taipei, taking great pictures, and learning more about his experiences in China. We were able to invite him to St. John’s Cathedral and even introduce him to the Dean of the cathedral and the Bishop who has passed on his resume to contacts around Taiwan.

I know for many people this reaction to provide hospitality would be second nature. For me, hospitality is something to work at. By working at hospitality, I mean repeatedly praying and searching my heart for ways in which I am called to choose life by welcoming the stranger into my home, my consciousness, and my prayers. And I pray that I may choose life by drawing from the strength of my decision of faith. I rely on Jesus to be the source of my hospitality, kindness, love, and welcoming.

This might be the end of this post, but certainly isn’t the end of this thought. . . if you have experiences or thoughts you would like to share, please comment or email me.
Blessings,
Seth

Past the Tracks

I have been reading The Story of Edgar Sawtelle this past week. Apparently this book has become quite the sensation, particularly in Colorado since the author is from Colorado. Anyway, the book is about a boy and his dogs. Supposedly it is a reworking of Hamlet. Which makes the book a little disappointing, I mean, we all know how that one ends. Talk about a downer.

The story has all of the predictable elements, a boy and his special bond with his dog Almondine, conflict between his Dad and Uncle, coming of age pains, running away from home, etc. I guess this is just a way of saying that if an extremely popular book can fall into cliches, then it isn't a surprise that this blog post is going to fall into cliches. . . just to give you fair warning.

Since we arrived, I have been thinking a lot about what it means to be on the outside of things. The most tangible manifestation of this is where we live in Taipei. We don't actually live in the city. We live south of the city in the great mass of suburbia called Taipei County. The most common reaction when we tell people we live about a 15 minute bus ride past Nanshijiao station is "where??" They haven't heard of Nanshijiao, much less the An he Borough, which is our neighborhood.

I kind of wish I could say that everything changes past the end of the tracks. I mean, if this was the land of cliches, I could easily tell you stories of backwater people, how the law doesn't reach us out here in the wilds, etc. But really, the only differences seem to be the lack of foreigners and the disturbingly common green flourescent-lit cigarette stores. These stores are everywhere. Women in short skirts sit at them all day selling cigarettes and betel nuts to the men passing by.

Our neighborhood also has a lot of car repair garages. Literally, the entire main street outside of our apartment is lined with them. If you go farther down the street you will reach a night market. In a universe I hope to never understand, Taiwan is famous for its fabulous night markets! Imagine a crowded flea market. Neon lights, discount clothing shops, little food stands, everything for a price. Every night of the week. People travel half way around the world for this experience.

Let me just say, I might have been doing a bit too much thinking this past week. . . I don't really have a whole lot else to do. So thinking about the end of the tracks has led me to thinking about anomie. Anomie is a fancy sociology word for what happens when people get overwhelmed by their insignificance. They are sucked up into the masses and lose a sense of lawfulness, membership in society, basically the swirl of activity makes them lose their moral compass and desire to make anything good out of the situation. I imagine anomie to be a little like getting on an amusement park ride, one that spins, and never really being able to regain focus. The individual maintains its composure, but everything else loses resolution.

Now, before you go thinking that I have entered into this state, I would like to point out a couple pinpoints of light. Or really, big red neon lights that appear at night in Taiwan. All of the churches in Taiwan have decorated their crosses with red neon lights that turn on after dark. So in the midst of the swirling, consumerist jumble of night market lights and cigarette shops, these red neon crosses stand out as something to focus on.

Another pinpoint of light - our prayer room. We have committed ourselves to praying each night for a myriad of things, in silence, through song, through words, through reading. All of our prayers are written on our floor in neon sticky notes. Another bright thing to focus our eyes on.

I'm not ready to make any big conclusions. Maybe the people in An he Borough don't feel anything close to anomie. But I just pray that when being beyond the tracks becomes a burden rather than an adventure, that I may be comforted by the red neon lights and the sticky notes and the gift of having a focus.

In Christ,

Seth

The Context

This week we would like to develop a little context for our mission. As many of you know, the way the Episcopal Church arranges missionary work is through invitation. The Bishop of a diocese (Taiwan) calls The Episcopal Church Center in New York and says something like "I would love to have two recent college graduates from the University of Colorado come to Taipei to begin a campus ministry." The Episcopal Church then finds the absolute best candidates and sends us on our way.

What happens when the best candidates arrive is they adapt to the "actual context," the reality of the situation on the ground. The reality of our situation is that we are working closely with the Dean of St. John's Cathedral, Rev. Samuel Y.C. Lin. He is the friendly smiling man in picture #1. The cathedral (picture #2) is responsible for hosting us and providing a home base for our new campus ministry. In support of this new venture, they provided a large office (picture #3) and a whole lot of freedom in planning.


Rev. Samuel has about 12 years of campus ministry experience as the chaplain at St. John's University, an Episcopal college in Northern Taiwan. He is acting as our mentor and guide for when we have important questions like "where can I find tape to post a sign on the wall?"

Over the coming weeks we will be planning our strategy for meeting other chaplains, students, and parishioners at St. John's who will be our support team for the start-up of this ministry. The second major part of the context is National Taiwan University (NTU). NTU is actually very similar to CU Boulder. There are about 35,000 students spread across undergraduate colleges, graduate schools, and a medical campus. NTU is Taiwan's largest public university and is reserved for the best and brightest. All university admissions in Taiwan are done by standardized college entrance exams. There is no need for involvement in service work, sports, extracurriculars. What matter is you study hard and long.

NTU is located in an upscale neighborhood of Taipei city. There is a large park nearby that is surrounded by the largest churches in Taipei. This area also features tons of restaurants and nightlife for the college crowd (picture #4).

There are a few other universities in the area, most notably National Taiwan Normal University and National Taipei School of Education. So once school starts in September, the area around the cathedral will be swarming with college students. It sounds like a great atmosphere in which to begin a campus ministry.

The bonus picture is of Royal Palm Boulevard, the main drag at NTU. The building at the end of the road is the main library. As you can see, we basically live in Southern California. Plus humidity. Lots and lots of humidity.

We must leave you here and continue entering into our context. Our next step is registering for Chinese classes at the Normal University. Yikes! Please keep us in your prayers.


Until next week,

Elizabeth and Seth