Joy to the World – Including Taipei

This has been the hardest Christmas season of my life.

That’s not saying very much – most of my Christmases have been anything but hard. I love everything to do with Christmas – the music, the decorations, the Christmas tree, the food, buying wrapping and getting presents, etc.

But what I’ve always loved most is being able to spend extra time with my family , both because I had a break from school, and because when I was a child my family always traveled to visit family members I rarely saw. Which brings me to the reason this has been a hard Christmas.

Last summer, I moved to Taipei, where I will be working for at least two years. I enjoy my job and have many wonderful friends here. And yet … I find it hard to be completely happy because I still miss my family and friends from home. A lot.

When the Christmas season first started, it felt like I had an open wound. Anything that had to do with Christmas felt like someone had just touched that wound, sending a spasm of pain and loneliness through my heart. One day, I felt slightly depressed all day because someone had sung “I’ll be Home for Christmas” in chapel that morning. (I still think it was a weird choice because it talks about both being home and snow. Most of our coworkers are from Taipei, so they would not have snow, even though they will be home for Christmas. Those of us whose homes would have snow, wouldn’t be home for Christmas, except for two foreigners who took vacation. So the song really only applied to the two out of the 250 or so people in the room. But I digress.)

This Christmas season has included lots of good things too. I’ve grown less and less homesick as it has progressed. I’ve really enjoyed several parties with friends here, as well as an amazing Christmas performance put on by my coworkers. My roommates and I put up a Christmas tree, and I love seeing it every time I go into the living room. I went to a church service on Christmas Eve where we went onto the roof of the church and sang carols by candlelight. Spending Christmas in Taipei has been a great experience overall, so I don’t want it to sound like I’m always miserable here.

Nevertheless, the moments of homesickness have made me realize that, for all my talk about how I know that Christmas is about Jesus’s birth, in practice much of my love for Christmas comes from things other than the point of the season.

This isn’t to say that parties, food, music and family are bad – far from it. These are good gifts that God has given us, and we should receive and enjoy them with thanksgiving. But as I wrote in my Thanksgiving post, being grateful includes recognizing these blessings as grace – things we don’t deserve and wouldn’t normally get, not things that we are entitled to.

For me, that means enjoying Christmas even without my family and the other things that I don’t have here. Because as important and wonderful as family and all the trappings are, they are not something I’m entitled to, and they’re not what Christmas is about.

Christmas is about God becoming human and experiencing everything we experience. That includes the joys of delicious meals and time spent with family and friends, but also the sorrows of loneliness and poverty. This Christmas, I am taking comfort in the fact that God Himself knows what it is like, not only to move to a new country, but to do even more. He moved to a whole new planet, a whole new way of existing (as a physical, mortal human being). The Son of God, Who is so close to His Father that they are a single being, lived as a human, communicating with God only through prayer and the occasional message that God sent to him. And the purpose for which He came was to eventually be completely abandoned by the Father as he hung dying on a cross for us! As His follower, I enjoy the blessings of a new family with God as my father and the promise of perfect peace and eternal life. And this is true no matter where in the world I am.

So this Christmas, I am choosing to rejoice. I am basking in His incomprehensible love that gave up everything for me. May this love surround you and fill you with true joy this Christmas and throughout the year.

Christmas Mystery

We have now reached the last week of Advent, which also means that I am posting the last of my Christmas hymns. For most of my hymns, I use all or part of the first line as a title. But this one is instead entitled “Christmas Mystery,” a title which more or less summarizes what I love about Christmas.

 When I was 10, my father volunteered to preach at a church we had been going to for about four months. It was near Christmas time, so he was preaching on the Incarnation. One part of his sermon particularly stood out to me. He listed a series of paradoxes about what happened when Jesus was born: “The One who had no beginning is born, the Almighty becomes weak, the unchangeable God changes, the One who has everything gets something he didn’t have before – a human nature.” I was blown away by the amazingness of Christmas, and by how much of a mystery it is. For years, that awe remained with me, mostly unconsciously, until I began writing hymns. This hymn tries, as best I can, to capture the beauty of Jesus, especially in the miracle of His birth.

Christmas Mystery

He who forged Earth’s iron core

And scattered stars to distant skies

Came shattered beauty to restore

And answer lost ones’ mournful cries.

A God who stands among the weak

To lift each burden that they face

To lift away their bondage bleak

And give them strength in holy grace.

The star of hope for all the years

Though spoken of through ages past

Lies born in dust and blood and tears

Without His glorious trumpets’ blast

Yet in His tiny hand He holds

The power that built the mountains high

His glory shatters earthly molds

As angels’ voices split the sky

The angel heralds call out clear

To tell us of the infant King

Who comes to crush the power of fear

And let the notes of justice ring

Yet first He comes to serve and die

Not yet to take His rightful place

That those who chose to crucify

Their king might still receive his grace.

He calls us now with signs and stars

To find the child born a king

To give him all that once was ours

And songs of love and praise to sing

So as we journey through the night

And seek our true Desire’s star

We find that Jesus, through His might

Has sought us from our exile far.

The Voice that Called

I posted this poem on Christmas day last year, but since I only have four Christmas/Advent hymns, I’m posting this again. Plus, more people are reading the blog now than last year at this time.

The Voice that Called

The voice that called to unformed light, commanding it to be,

The wisdom that for ages planned creation’s destiny,

The might that holds the earth in place, suspended in the sky,

How can they be the essence of this helpless infant’s cry?

The hand that molded every star and guides it on its way

Clings, helpless, to his mother at the start of newborn day.

This ordinary moment all of history transforms,

Molds terror into beauty, and brings peace to all life’s storms.

For in the darkened void of sin, the shadowed land of death,

To You, who into us breathed life, we cry with every breath.

For even in Time’s darkest hour, when life seems ruled by wrong,

The light of life, the word of hope, has given us a song.

The child who chose his birth into a world of toil and pain,

Who gave up heavenly garlands for this body’s choking chain,

Lies crying in a manger as the answer to our cries,

As angels sing the infant’s might and fill the star-flecked skies.

I really love talking about the theology of Christmas. The idea of the all-powerful God becoming a human, with all the weakness and suffering that entails, is amazing to me. The main theme of this poem is Jesus was God, and therefore all-powerful, but was also human, and therefore as helpless as any other newborn baby. One common feature in most of my hymns is paradox – I love writing about things about God that don’t seem to fit together but are true. I think the Incarnation, which we celebrate at Christmas, is one of the greatest paradoxes.

Whenever I read the third verse, I remember the experience of writing it. The words came more and more quickly, in an almost frenzied rush, and to me it still reads that way. I think that’s because my emotions played a larger role in writing that verse. I’ve struggled with depression for several years, so the experience of crying out desperately to God is quite familiar to me. The first line also alludes to Isaiah 9:2 “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”

I think the last verse speaks for itself, marveling in Christ’s love that chose to deal with all the struggles of a human life. It points out that God chose to answer our struggles by sharing in them, and returns to the paradox of Christ’s power and weakness (the infant’s might).

Child of Heaven

Many churches celebrate the season of Advent during the four Sundays before Christmas. It is a time when we remember the people who waited for Jesus’ first coming, preparing our hearts to celebrate Christmas. As I mentioned last week, it is also a time when we look forward to the day when Christ will return.

Advent was a big deal in my family. In early December, my mom would fill the house with Christmas decorations – garlands around the windows, a snow village on the mantle, and of course a manger scene. I loved decorating the house. I loved choosing an advent calendar from the pile we had at home and opening the doors one at a time to see Bible verses relating to the Christmas story. But my strongest Advent memory is of the advent calendar that we would light before dinner once a week. (That is, in theory. We didn’t always do it as consistently as we’d wanted to.)

The Advent wreath had four candles – one for each week before Christmas. Each one had a different symbolic meaning, and a story associated with it. This hymn has one verse inspired by each week of Advent. I go into more detail about each verse below.

Child of Heaven

Tune: Finlandia

Children of Earth await the child of Heaven

Throughout a thousand thousand empty years.

The mountains’ weight is piled on their shoulders.

The ocean’s waves are salted with their tears,

But in the dark, a single candle shining,

Proclaims, “God comes to banish all your fears.”

The child of Heaven without an earthly father

Within a virgin’s womb enfolded sleeps.

While fragile flesh enfolds eternal spirit,

His loving mother patient vigil keeps.

May we as well, courageously submitting,

Yield ourselves to the father’s love so deep.

Now as we hear the child of Heaven approaching

We leap for joy to honor Earth’s true king.

A barren woman pregnant with His herald,

From frozen ground, hope’s tender bud shall spring

He lifts the poor while casting down the mighty

Ashamed no more, His humble servants sing.

On Earth’s bare planes, a voice of heavenly power

Tells poor and powerless shepherds not to fear.

Their awestruck eyes behold bright hosts in glory,

While songs of worship echo in each ear.

At peace, Creation joins the holy chorus;

To make Earth whole, the child of Heaven is here.

The first candle represented hope. On the first Sunday of Advent, we spoke about the prophets and others who waited for thousands of years for God to send the promised Messiah. I tend to associate this week with the hymn “O Come O Come Emmanuel.” So during the first stanza, I tried to evoke the sadness and darkness of the world we find ourselves in, in which God’s promise, like a single candle, provides us with the hope we need to go on.

The second week, we talked about love and the Annunciation. The two are connected because of the love that Mary, like most mothers, had for her child. But I also wanted to point out that the greatest love shown in this story is God the Father’s love in sending Jesus in the first place.

The third week was one of my favorites as a child, because it was the only time when my name was mentioned in our Sunday School lesson. That week, we talked about Mary going to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who had been barren but was now pregnant with John the Baptist. When Mary greeted Elizabeth, John leapt for joy in her womb, which is why the third week is about joy. Following this incident, Mary sang the Magnificat, a song about how God has lifted up the humble and cast down the proud.

The last week celebrates the angels telling the shepherds that the baby Jesus had been born. The theme for that week is peace, because they sang, “Peace on Earth, good will to men.” The last line plays on the Hebrew concept of shalom. Usually translated as “peace,” shalom is actually a state of wholeness and flourishing. As I point out in the last line, Jesus came to give that kind of wholeness to the whole world.

Borne of Wings of Stormy Grandeur

This year, for each Sunday of Advent, I will post a hymn I have written that relates to Advent or Christmas. Here is the first one.

Advent is the season in which we await Christmas, the celebration of God stepping into this world in the person of Jesus Christ. But at one time, Advent was also the season when we remember to wait for Jesus’s Second Coming, the time when He will return, not as a baby but as a king and judge the world. One hymn that exemplifies this is “Lo He Comes,” a hymn that served as one of my main sources of inspiration for this one.

My other inspiration came from a former hurricane that made its way to my home in Connecticut one autumn. Although the winds were no longer strong enough even to qualify it as a tropical storm, they were far stronger than most of the winds we get in Connecticut. It was the evening of a football game. As I practiced my routine with the marching band before, I felt a rush of excitement as the cool wind whipped past my face and as I watched a pile of dry brown leaves swirling between the band members, carried by a whirlwind.

Borne on Wings of Stormy Grandeur

Borne on wings of stormy grandeur

Now the Lord Most High descends

Suns dissolve before His splendor

Every mighty mountain bends.

Every tower built against him

Crashes to the foaming sea.

None now doubt that He is holy

Or deny his majesty.

Those who rose against their sovereign

Now before his armies flee,

Recognize their guilt and treason

When pure holiness they see.

Yet He runs to those who trusted

Holds them in a king’s embrace.

He who wields the sword of justice

Reaches out the hand of grace.

How is it that the eternal,

Infinite and great I Am

Could be bound within a body,

Gentle sacrificial Lamb?

Can infinity and weakness

In one soul be intertwined?

Why would He who spins the planets

Reach to touch my shadowed mind?

To the void His voice cried out once;

Every word He spoke came true.

Still His word, though now incarnate,

Sounds forth, making things anew.

He from Heaven to Earth descended

Us from Earth to Heaven to raise;

By His brokenness He mended

Souls who now adore and praise.

Happy Feel Grace Day

I hear all the English teachers I have had screaming as they read the title, “No! After only five months she has succumbed to the Chinglish that permeates her new home. How can this be?”

It is true that “Feel Grace Day” is not an English term. It is a character-by-character translation of the Chinese term for “Thanksgiving.” But I think it highlights an important truth about the nature of thankfulness.

In Chinese, most words are two syllables long, and each syllable has its own meaning. Native speakers are not always consciously aware of the meaning of each syllable, just like most English speakers don’t think of “hospital” as being related to “hospitality.”

The word for thanksgiving in Chinese is “gan’en,” and the holiday is “gan’en jie.” “Jie” means “holiday,” “gan” means “feel,” and “en” is grace.

I don’t think all Chinese terms make much sense when translated (for example, their word for “turkey” means “fire chicken”). But I think this one has a deep lesson.

I’m a little obsessed with the idea of grace. What it means is an undeserved gift. Something that we had no reason or right to expect, but that we receive anyway. Grace is central to the Christian message, because the whole point of Christianity is that we receive salvation because of what God has done for us, not what we do for God. But grace includes many other things that we experience in our lives.

What thanksgiving really is, is feeling grace. It’s knowing that we have received many things in our lives that we did nothing to deserve. As Americans, we tend to think in terms of our rights, but many things we need are not our right; they are things that no one was obligated to give us but that we have received anyway. God was not obligated to provide us with healthy bodies, sound minds, opportunities for education, loving families, comfortable lifestyles, oxygen or any of the things we take for granted. If you have received any of those things, that is grace, and it is something to be thankful for. Even things we earn are only possible because of things like talent and health which enable us to earn them.  

So, with all my heart I wish you a happy “feel grace day.” May you enjoy what you have today and every day, and realize that every person on earth has received far more than we have earned.

In the Beginning Was the Dao pt. 4: Creation

This is part 4 of a series comparing and contrasting Daoism and Christianity.  For part 3, click here.

One major similarity between Zhuangzi’s Dao and Christianity’s God is that both are believed to be the creator and sustainer of the universe. 

Zhuangzi explains creation by saying, “The bright and shining is born out of deep darkness; the ordered is born out of formlessness; pure spirit is born out of the Way. The body is born originally from this purity.”  In other words, the Way is the ultimate origin first of spirit and then of physical things.  The Way also causes the physical things to continue and flourish: “But what the ten thousand things all look to for sustenance, what never fails them - is this not the real Way?”  Although the Way is beyond creatures’ comprehension, it is their “source” and “root” that “shepherd[s]” them in accordance with their natures.  Zhuangzi sees the Way in the nature of creatures: “Heaven cannot help but be high, earth cannot help but be broad, the sun and moon cannot help but revolve, the ten thousand things cannot help but flourish. Is this not the Way?”  Since these beings originated in the Dao, Zhuangzi sees understanding the nature of things as one key to understanding the Dao.

Similarly, Christians see God as the source and sustainer of everything.  The Bible begins with the statement, “In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth” (Genesis 1:1).  Like the Dao, God wants his creations to flourish; when they are first created, he blesses them, telling them to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:22).  This blessing means more than that God wishes his creations well.  The Bible describes creation as happening in response to God’s commands, which means that God’s words have the power to shape reality.  Thus, when God tells creation to be fruitful, he causes it to do so.  The Bible portrays God as acting continually to enable creation to endure; “he upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3).  Thus, Christianity and Daoism both consider something outside the universe to be its source and sustainer.