soulscape

Actually…I’ve been blogging for more than three years. But this current blog, and all of its postings, go back about three years to late October 2004. That was about a month after I moved back up to Los Angeles (spent two years in San Diego) to return to UCLA. This is just as well, because I would hate to have to go back and read pre-2004 stuff. I vaguely remember how troubled and immature I was in the “old days”.

But I just finished skimming through all those posts of the last three years. I did it, because my friend Mike told me he just went through and read some of my stuff. I figured I might as well go through and check that I didn’t write anything too crazy. But what a ride — all the memories of the last three years. I am not a prolific blogger, but I blogged just enough to give a hazy picture of what I had been up to since I moved back here.

Blogging or journaling may not be easy to keep up, I know I’m not very good at it, but it is nice to be able to go back and see how things were. It has been a roller-coasting ride, from going back to school and getting my degree, co-leading the dance ministry at Mosaic, all those trips, rehearsals and rehearsals and rehearsals galore, and to think so much stuff was left out.

I confess I do tend to keep quiet about certain topics.

But lately, I do notice a lot of my posts were getting longer and more private, talking about family history and that kind of thing. One thing that is lacking is any mention of a love life. Well, that’s because,…er…there has been no love life for a long time. In fact, once 2008 arrives, I will have been single for just about five years. WOW. Half a decade of single-hood. That sounds depressing. Boy, I just took the wind out of my sails. OK, this post ends now.

I “interviewed” my mother about her father, my maternal grandfather, earlier this week. I was hesitant to do this assignment (for my creative writing class at Pasadena City College). I don’t know why now. I didn’t want to sit down and engage my mother about it. Although having done that a bit in the past, I should have known that it was going to be an eye-opening experience. I am so closed off from my family, and hence so closed off from my family’s history.

I asked mother about her father, and at first the information came slowly. She didn’t have a lot to say about him. He was in business. Or rather, he was a business owner. The whole story I got from her is typed out in a separate document. I noted that as I concluded the interview and said I probably had enough information for this assignment, she asked, “You don’t need any information about mother?” Apparently, she was closer to her mother than her father.

Having received all this information about her side of the family, I’m filled with emotion right now. It’s inside, right at my heart. I don’t know what it is. I think part of it is a sadness at knowing more about some of the tragedy of my mom’s life. Her brothers and sisters are spread across the world. The time of her marriage to dad, and even my birth, were times of strife, with the Communists taking over South Vietnam. She went from a state of relative wealth in Vietnam to poverty here in the US. But perhaps more traumatic for her, moving from a place where family surrounded her to being here in the US, relatively “alone” with dad, and us. At this moment, I realize that this is very cathartic for me. I hope to ask my dad about his family next. The assignment says, “You may find that the story you are seeking has always been at your fingertips.”

It feels so true.

I am getting a sense lately that I am less interested now in fantasy and science fiction, and more interested in matters of the heart. My heart, and the hearts of my potential readers. If I have been given the ability to tap into both with my writing, I should explore that. So does this mean I am more concerned now with touching the heart than with touching the mind?

A Poem Written Later

I have come to the edge of the river of history
To hear my mother’s voice tell me about things previously unknown
To me
I had come on a fact-finding mission
A sterile documentation of things pertaining to fathers and mothers,
And brothers and sisters
And nephews and cousins
And, in extension, me
I have come to the edge of the river of history
The water refreshed me on a hot day
My mother’s voice, initially hesitant
But eventually nostalgic
Came from the waters
My mother’s voice informed me about things previously unknown
Until now
I only came to take notes
To gather information
But I left with the story of my mother’s family
The story of fathers and mothers
And brothers and sisters
And nephews and cousins
And me
My mother’s father, his name was Tu
Came from turbulent times in China
In the 1920’s
To find relative success in Vietnam
He bought a hand rice grinder
Which turned rice into powder into cash
He found a wife, her name was Nguyet
Eight children they reared
Four men and four women, my mother being the youngest
A strict disciplinarian grandfather Tu was
He who punished the daughters for staying out late
He who forbid the Vietnamese language to be spoken in the house
You must speak your native tongue, Chinese
He who disallowed growing your hair long, like the Vietnamese do
While others gambled and partied at the New Year
The sons and daughters hid when grandfather Tu came home
So work they did
A wholesale rice store they built
Also a general store
Shoes, toothpaste, fishing nets they sold
The children married
But from the North came a threat
Communists pushed to take over
Eventually, they did
The day I was born
Soldiers took over our family home
Staying for three days
My mother in the hospital
Cried so much her eyes are bad to this day
When the Communists said that the Chinese can leave the country
We left
Grandfather Tu had died of stomach cancer
My mother and her seven siblings were scattered across the globe
Canada, Belgium, Germany, China, Holland, the United States
Our ship out of Vietnam was boarded and robbed by pirates
We are lucky to be alive

I was born in the middle of strife, separation and pain
I was brought into the new world with nothing
The river of history told me so
In my mother’s voice I heard
The facts and informative statements
Which I stored in the proper sectors of my brain
But a funny thing happened at the river’s edge
I cried
And cried and cried and cried
Because this was the story of fathers and mothers
And brothers and sisters
And nephews and cousins
And me
Of our lives, and struggles, and hopes, and fears
And of my mother crying on the day I was born
Until her eyes became bad
My mother cried on the day I was born
In fear and anguish
Her family held hostage
In their very home
I lay in bed and the river of history poured out of my eyes
It came washing over my heart
And I felt the burden of a family’s history
That has led from China to Vietnam to the United States
And here I am
A lazy American
A selfish man
An inadequate son
Unlike the other sons of history
Who ground rice by hand
Who toiled and built
Who fought wars
Who hoped and dreamed before me
And here I am
Crying on the river’s edge
So lonely in this moment
And yet in such good company

Can I just say that I’m quite impressed with myself? As I talked about in my last posting, it seemed for a while there that I had lost my ability to finish a book. And yet, here I am, having just finished another book in the month of July. By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Cried went down first in June, but that was just a teensy book.

Then on July 1st, I started Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth book in the seven-volume series. It was finished by the July 5th and then the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was finished by the 7th. I ordered the last book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but would have to wait for it to be delivered on the 21st, which was the release date. (And yes, I admit it! I considered going to one of the midnight bookstore parties to get a copy faster, but it was a good deal cheaper online).

On the 21st, which was this past Saturday, I had a wedding and another party to attend all day, so I didn’t get home until around midnight. I had to get up at 5:45am the next morning, but still, I stayed up just a bit longer and read the first two chapters of the book.

On Sunday, I danced at Mosaic’s morning gathering on the Westside, and snuck about three more chapters in during the actual gathering, after we danced (heehee). Then I was sidetracked again, as I went to the reunion party for the South Africa trip I went to in late May/early June. It just so happened that some friends wanted to go see the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix MOVIE that evening, so I went. More on that in a bit.

By the time I got home, it was once again around midnight. I started reading again, but only got a few chapters along. I was just too tired, having averaged around 4-5 hours of sleep the previous two nights. Of course, Monday meant I had work. After work, I started on the book again and plowed through a good section. I tended to some other things I needed to get through that night, and so it was around 11pm by the time I settled down once again with the book. I had probably read about 300 pages of the approximately 780 page book. The next few hours flew by, as the pacing of the book picked up, and then it was suddenly almost 2 in the morning! I made a decision — I was going to finish the book.

I did indeed finish it, at around 5:40am this morning.

Don’t worry, no spoilers here, I wouldn’t want to ruin anything for anyone. I will just say that I enjoyed the last three books of the series immensely, and especially books six and seven. Book seven was packed with action, it almost seemed like it had as much action (and violence) as the first six books combined. It was also different from all the other books in that most of it took place outside of Hogwarts, the “wizarding school” that is the main setting for the other six books. So lots of action, and also lots of backstory on a couple of the characters.

And once again, perhaps even more so than in the other books, everything got tied up neatly at the end, but this time, there is no next book.

As for the movie that also came out this month — I was pleasantly surprised. Perhaps the most well-rounded movie out of the five that have come out. I knew the director, David Yates, had already been asked to come back to do the sixth movie, so I figured he had done a decent job. I hope he continues his great work because the sixth and seventh movies SHOULD be the best movies in the series.

OK so my short daily journaling experiment got sidetracked. That’s mostly because I WENT TO THE NAPA VALLEY this past weekend. Don’t want to get too into it at the moment, but let’s just say it involved a 10-person limousine, four beautiful wineries, a luscious sip of golden 1992 Nightengale dessert wine, great food with a great view, and a bonkers GPS system.

In short, it was just the rest and relaxation I needed after some very hectic months. Looking ahead to the next month and a half, I have trips to South Africa (Johannesburg & Cape Town), Chicago, and Montreal looming.

Life is good. (Except for my fantasy baseball team).

Date: Thu, 5/3/07
Time: 9:16pm
Where: At home

Mood: Mellow, but alert
Energy: Fair, stable

Notes:

I was pretty even-keel today. Productive enough at work, but still not really feeling like socializing, talking to people. It was the last day of Mosaic’s conference, so everyone else was still out in the auditorium. A few people filtered in and out of the office, but I was pretty much left alone.

Yesterday I wondered why I was so tired when I had a full 8 hours of sleep, but I realized today that the previous night, I only had about five hours of sleep. I had woken up before 7am that day to dance that morning at the conference. Then that night, we had a Crave Show. So yeah, I was just exhausted I guess. Today, I came out with almost nine hours of sleep, so I felt fine, but still wanted to be left alone.

On a separate note, a group of us are going up to Napa Valley tomorrow for some rest and relaxation. Probably just what the doctor ordered.

Date: Wed, 5/2/07
Time: 5:36pm
Where: At my office desk

Mood: Pretty out of it, mellow, fairly anti-social
Energy: Low, not physically tired really, but mentally spent
Notes:

I’ve got that warm, feverish feeling around my face (no it usually doesn’t
indicate a fever), but I get this feeling on days like this or when I’m
upset or angry. What is it?

Anyway, the energy level thing is probably directly related to doing the
CRAVE Show again last night. It’s been a long two days since we had the
rehearsal Monday night, then Origins started Tuesday, leading into the CRAVE
Show Tuesday night. And of course, my mood is usually this way when energy
level is low. Let’s see how I feel the next few days. If I manage to keep
this up.

I don’t journal enough nowadays…or well, I never really journaled enough.
Once a year maybe. Once every six months? I’m not really good at doing
anything consistently.

Can I do it for a week? The reason why I bring it up is because I noticed I
am really tired today. Then I noticed that every once in a while, I have
days like this where I feel completely useless. I probably feel this way a
lot less than I used to, but it still happens pretty often. Then there are
days I feel energized and ready to work.

So I wondered to myself today, is there a pattern here? Maybe this is kind
of a cyclical thing, like one day low, one day medium, one day high, then it
starts over again. (Although I expect I am tired today because we performed
the CRAVE Show last night, maybe more on that later).

So that led to me thinking: maybe I should record my mood and energy level
each day, to see if there is a pattern. I also read today that Ronald
Reagan used to journal daily at the end of his workday. So there, a couple
of things came together and voila, I’m writing this post about journaling.
Maybe I’ll start now.

I’m at a point in my life where I think I’m finally beginning to feel comfortable in my own skin about being a Christian, a follower of Jesus. As my own hazy memory would have it, I probably became a believer, at least in my own mind, around the age of 18 or 19, while a freshman at UCLA.

in the approximately 12 years since, I’ve definitely have gone through long periods where I didn’t act like a believer. And, now I realize there have always been things that caused rifts in my identity as a person and as a believer.

To not get into them too much, these things include the fact that I am probably the first and only Christian in my family, to the best of my knowledge. To this day, my parents pray to our ancestors, and have Buddha and other idols around. It’s the Chinese way. Beyond that, there’s the fact that I went to a university, and was a Sociology major. I didn’t realize at the time that I was receiving what many considered a liberal education, coming to grips with how society worked, from a liberal point of view. I was frustrated when I realized that many Christians today believe that the political party to have allegiance to is the Republican Party.

I was liberal in other regards and did things that I knew was not in line with the teachings of the Church. (Now I know I was just being a regular ol’ sinner, the kind of person Jesus wants to reach out to.) And of course, I took science courses at UCLA also. So in recent years, when the Christian movement to push “Intelligent Design” in schools instead of evolution started, I had to shake my head. Whenever I read about a Christian trying to criticize evolution, I pitied them for sounding as misinformed as they did. I realized that I was ruined, because I’ve heard the arguments for evolution, and I knew they were strong. I’ve been taught the science behind it. So here was another rift between my Christian identity, and who I was as a student, not just of the education system, but of life.

So, it was refreshing to come across an article on CNN.com today, written by a scientist. A scientist who is a believer also. Really it shouldn’t be so rare, and I guess it’s not as rare as you may first guess. As Dr. Francis Collins states in his article, scientists get an indepth look into the workings of the universe, a universe so majestic and unfathomable as to point to the fingerprints of a Creator.

It’s also refreshing, though, because he defends science too, and says things that I was beginning to think you shouldn’t say as a Christian. I know I haven’t said these things, because I’ve gotten into arguments with other believers before about other issues, and I just didn’t have the heart anymore to get into intense debates where you are basically pitting rational arguments against emotional ones. But Dr. Collins starts to reconcile the heart and the mind in his article.

Use the link or see it below. But first, I’m also putting here a video “bumper” from Mosaic’s recent Soul Cravings series. It amuses me greatly, and also has a small connection to what this post is about.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/03/collins.commentary/index.html

Collins: Why this scientist believes in God
POSTED: 4:23 p.m. EDT, April 4, 2007

By Dr. Francis Collins
Special to CNN

Editor’s note: Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., is the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. His most recent book is “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.”

ROCKVILLE, Maryland (CNN) — I am a scientist and a believer, and I find no conflict between those world views.

As the director of the Human Genome Project, I have led a consortium of scientists to read out the 3.1 billion letters of the human genome, our own DNA instruction book. As a believer, I see DNA, the information molecule of all living things, as God’s language, and the elegance and complexity of our own bodies and the rest of nature as a reflection of God’s plan.

I did not always embrace these perspectives. As a graduate student in physical chemistry in the 1970s, I was an atheist, finding no reason to postulate the existence of any truths outside of mathematics, physics and chemistry. But then I went to medical school, and encountered life and death issues at the bedsides of my patients. Challenged by one of those patients, who asked “What do you believe, doctor?”, I began searching for answers.

I had to admit that the science I loved so much was powerless to answer questions such as “What is the meaning of life?” “Why am I here?” “Why does mathematics work, anyway?” “If the universe had a beginning, who created it?” “Why are the physical constants in the universe so finely tuned to allow the possibility of complex life forms?” “Why do humans have a moral sense?” “What happens after we die?” (Watch Francis Collins discuss how he came to believe in God )

I had always assumed that faith was based on purely emotional and irrational arguments, and was astounded to discover, initially in the writings of the Oxford scholar C.S. Lewis and subsequently from many other sources, that one could build a very strong case for the plausibility of the existence of God on purely rational grounds. My earlier atheist’s assertion that “I know there is no God” emerged as the least defensible. As the British writer G.K. Chesterton famously remarked, “Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it is the assertion of a universal negative.”

But reason alone cannot prove the existence of God. Faith is reason plus revelation, and the revelation part requires one to think with the spirit as well as with the mind. You have to hear the music, not just read the notes on the page. Ultimately, a leap of faith is required.

For me, that leap came in my 27th year, after a search to learn more about God’s character led me to the person of Jesus Christ. Here was a person with remarkably strong historical evidence of his life, who made astounding statements about loving your neighbor, and whose claims about being God’s son seemed to demand a decision about whether he was deluded or the real thing. After resisting for nearly two years, I found it impossible to go on living in such a state of uncertainty, and I became a follower of Jesus.

So, some have asked, doesn’t your brain explode? Can you both pursue an understanding of how life works using the tools of genetics and molecular biology, and worship a creator God? Aren’t evolution and faith in God incompatible? Can a scientist believe in miracles like the resurrection?

Actually, I find no conflict here, and neither apparently do the 40 percent of working scientists who claim to be believers. Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.

But why couldn’t this be God’s plan for creation? True, this is incompatible with an ultra-literal interpretation of Genesis, but long before Darwin, there were many thoughtful interpreters like St. Augustine, who found it impossible to be exactly sure what the meaning of that amazing creation story was supposed to be. So attaching oneself to such literal interpretations in the face of compelling scientific evidence pointing to the ancient age of Earth and the relatedness of living things by evolution seems neither wise nor necessary for the believer.

I have found there is a wonderful harmony in the complementary truths of science and faith. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. God can be found in the cathedral or in the laboratory. By investigating God’s majestic and awesome creation, science can actually be a means of worship.

Take a look at the following:

OK, so I took an online Myers-Briggs assessment today at blogthings.com. Fine fine, it’s just an online non-professional test, but it’s something. If you don’t know, Myers-Briggs assesses your personality into different types. There’s four areas it looks at:

(I) Introvert vs. (E) Extrovert
(N) Intuitive vs. (S) Sensing
(T) Thinking vs. (F) Feeling
(P) Perceiving vs. (J) Judging

I’ve always scored INTP. The “T” there referring to Thinking, as in, I make my decisions based on logic, rationale, what makes sense. Today, taking this amateurish online version, I got INFP, with the “F” referring to Feeling, as in I make my decisions based on feelings, emotions, and what feels right.

I have been going to a Christian counselor for a few months now, and I’ve been suspecting that it has been affecting me, opening up some closed “channels” to my heart. And yes, I’m a guy that has the nickname “Robot” from some of my friends.

I guess I’m getting “soft.”

I remember veeery little from when I was young. Almost nothing from when I was younger than five. I can’t really say I remember much from between five and ten, neither. I know, as I’m saying this it sounds pretty strange — one friend says I have repressed memories.

Regardless, I got a little peek into the past tonight. For whatever reason, I don’t ask my parents much about when I was young, but today, they were talking about some incidents from when I was two or three years old.

My mom helps take care of a couple of babies, both only around one to one and half years old. Apparently, the younger one is starting to stress my mom out a little bit by upending small furniture and items and doing other things.

She was talking to my dad about this, and it got them to start talking about ME when I was really young.

When I was around two or three, and my family and I were all still living in Vietnam, my parents owned a sort of general store or bakery. Well, about four or five buildings down the street was a theater, where music concerts and other plays or performances occurred. I guess I was usually at the store with my parents as they managed it. However, whenever some sort of performance played at the theater, they would have to keep a careful eye on me, because I guess I would always leave the store on my own, walk down the street, and go into the theater.

Of course, because I was only two or three, the ticket counterperson wouldn’t see me and I would go inside and watch the show. It sounded like this happened often, and my dad would always have to run into the theater and look all around until he found me.

Also, my mom says that they had a cabinet and shelf where they kept the stereo. Apparently, I often pulled out the drawers at the bottom. I would pull the bottom out the furthest, then the next, and so on, until I had created steps for myself to climb up. I would sit up there and turn on the stereo so I could listen to music.

Wow. I don’t remember any of this at all, but so many years later, I’m dancing, choreographing, and enjoying putting together dance performances. I used to say that I never had an idea about what I wanted to do when “I grew up,” unlike many other kids. But perhaps I had a clue from the very beginning, when I was two or three, and for whatever reason, I just forgot about it.

And then, amazing, God still brought me back to the things that I was so passionate about even as a toddler. All the while, I was simply along the ride, unaware of what was going on. The simplicity but complexity of it all stuns me.