White Bathrobe

I just experienced my first bath in over four months. I am wearing a white bathrobe, lying in a white bed, leaning on a white pillow almost as long as me, on the 12^th floor of a Swiss hotel overlooking the Arabian Gulf in Doha, Qatar. The Middle East. Me. Here. Now. And a bowl of fruit in the living room. The living room.

I love how God knows my heart. I love the knowledge that He is delighting in me, delighting in this haven. I am safe here. I am happy here. I know this little chunk of life is good and pure and true and holy and right, and therefore I know it is from God. He gives the best Christmas presents.

Of course, typically I am a mud girl. I wear t-shirts and sweat, and let my hair create itself, and transform dish-washing basins into little heated baths for my feet. I like clipping my nails and hammocks and ice cream cups and paper plates and adventure. This morning I used the tiny spoon, apparently intended for coffee swirling, in my cereal bowl. Small utensils make food last longer, make me eat slower, taste more deeply.

But after four months of being “out there,” it nice to be in here.

I am with Gifford and Craig, and we are living relationship in this place. This small community (including my good friend Tom Shifley, wish so much you were here) has given me a deeper understanding of what I think Jesus meant by relationship. Of course, somehow I have also experienced some of the lowest lows with these three men, and our friendships are messy and gender barriers exist and we live in Germany and China and Qatar and California, but primarily I have experienced some of my highest highs with them. They name my identity in Christ, allow me to shed my skin of fake and pursue the Alex God has created me to be. They make me want to live a more epic life. I want to sky dive with them over sand dunes, and swim in the ocean at midnight and explore abandoned buildings and read C.S. Lewis and light heart lamps in dark places.

I am fully present when I am with them, because there is no place I would rather be.

Each moment is a Heaven. There is no obligation to do, instead there is complete contentment in being human beings together. I know when I am with them that my worth is not defined by my level of productivity or the numbers on my scale or the things I can do for them. Yesterday I sat reading next to Gifford as he played video games. We did not talk. We didn’t need to. We just felt and tasted life together.

When I am with them, I believe the things God says about me are true.

And I sit here on this white bed with this white pillow in my white robe and I love how God knows my heart. He knows that I am a mud girl. He has to cover me in earthiness for me to understand. I learn through metaphor, and things with shape and texture, and seeing Truth in a tangible situation. Gifford and Craig and Tom are incredible creations, and they envelop my heart with happiness, but they are not the final place of rest and joy for my spirit.

Jesus is.

And He uses my relationship with them to give me a physical representation of His love.

Gah. God is so cool.

The Snippet Stories

Once upon a time there lived a girl who loved to think. One day, she sat and thought about everything she wanted to do in her life, like getting married and owning a cupcake shop and traveling to Italy and reading Shakespeare and buying a painting. She sat there thinking and dreaming and planning and thinking, until, one day, she died. The End.

One day, the little boy had to sneeze.

And out came a spaceship.

The little girl who wrote poems on her shoelaces and the little boy who sketched comic strips on napkins grew up and ran away together.

I run a psychology clinic for monsters and villains.

Bigfoot came in today, told me he never knew his dad.

My heart fell in love with the moon.

I tried to distract her.

Honestly, I did—I tried everything:

Pizza, Chinese chess, bubble wrap.

But she gently shook her head

And pointed at the window.

So I tied my heart to a string

And called her “balloon.”

One day, the country ran out of donut holes.

Cities were ransacked, the economy plummeted, schools closed, once-happy marriages became unsatisfying.

Then, the people elected a new president who promised a better life.

And everyone became happy again.

“I love you,” said the boy to the girl.

“I’d rather date an old boot,” said the girl.

“Oh,” said the boy, and walked away.

Today I opened my utensil drawer and pulled out a fork.

Yesterday I took a rolling pin to my power outlet and called it freedom.

Today my toaster wouldn’t turn on.

A woman in a German hospital made international headlines last Tuesday by laying an egg.

In a statement to the press, she said that she “always knew the father was a goose.”

The woman currently spends her days at the hospital, playing gin rummy and waiting for the egg to hatch.

“If you don’t eat it, I’ll kill the man,” whispered the serpent.

“No! Please, I’ll do it!” said Eve.

She took a bite.

One day I stole Santa’s wallet. He had a business card in there, and some paper clips.

“I have something to say,” said the old man at the nursing home.

“You’re dribbling food again, I’ll get you some napkins,” said the nurse, and hurried away.

Two teenage lollipops tried to kiss and got stuck together.

One day all the spiders in the world turned into chocolate candies. I found two in my bed.

“What sort of condiments do you prefer?” said the reporter to the cannibal.

“Oh you know, nothing too special. Relish, mustard, sometimes mayonnaise,” said the cannibal.

“I can’t believe I’m asking you this, you being a perfect stranger and all,” said the gnat to the elephant. “But how much do you weigh?”

The most amazing, unlikely things in the world happen the day the pig decides to fly. One by one, he passes overhead. One by one, he sees them all.

Sadly, none of his friends believe his stories.

The Cyclops felt very insecure when the optometrist told her she had vision problems.

“Don’t worry, contact lenses will be half as expensive for you,” said the optometrist in an attempt to cheer her up.

The little boy asked his mother for a glass of milk.

“You can have some, as soon as you brush your teeth, sweep the patio, change your sister’s diaper, clean out the garbage disposal, fold your bed, put your laundry in the hamper, finish your math homework, call your grandma…”

(The little boy walks away)

“You know, you could just tell him we ran out of milk,” said the boy’s father to the boy’s mother.

“You know I hate confrontation,” said the boy’s mother.

“I’m going to cut my ear off and send it to my girlfriend,” young Vincent said to his mom one day.

“Good for you, son,” said his mom, her eyes glued to the TV.

One day, the businessman had had enough. So, he quit his job and became a trapeze artist.

The choir suite in the Boston School for Mimes was always very quiet.

An atheist and his apprentice were walking through the park, talking.

“Teacher, how do I prove to the people that the Nurkle-Headed Ant Dragon doesn’t exist?”

“Silly child, you don’t go around saying things that don’t exist don’t exist. Their absence speaks for themselves.

On the day of her wedding, the bride decided she didn’t love her groom. She married him anyway.

When looking through the perspective of an adhesive, you come to see that the world, in fact, is the sticky thing.

A long time ago, the Mirror decided to become a monster. It kills with only a glance.

The only way for the stick to feel like a chameleon was to lay down in some poop.

A Post-It Note

Dear friends,

I was having some morning thoughts today, and I thought I’d share them with you.

As we all know, life can often be full of…well…crap. Darkness. Suffering. We see it every day. It’s in our hearts, it’s in the Jia. This week especially I’ve been thinking about Light and Darkness, pondering it really (I had some a long train ride by myself yesterday. Gah) and I discovered an interesting trend in our reactions to Darkness.

We tend to join it.

Think about it. I know SO MANY people who get overwhelmed with pain like an avalanche, and they curse the unfairness of God and life and decide joy and hope aren’t worth it anymore, and they join the Darkness. It’s pretty easy to do, actually. Honestly, this morning I was thinking about it myself. AND THEN I realized

            We

                      Don’t

                                   Have

                                                To.

We don’t have to join the darkness. In fact, why should we? Joining the darkness will not end suffering. It will only expand it. This is one of the devil’s sly tricks, I think. He breeds darkness under our own choice, because it is easier to join the darkness than to join the light. But joining the side of death, and darkness, and suffering does nothing good. In fact, I FIRMLY believe that light wins in the end, so joining the side of the darkness in essence seals your own destruction.

So friends. This morning I was wrestling with which side to yield to. But by the grace of God, I've decided something. I’m not giving up. Ever.

I choose Light.

I love you all so much, and am so thankful for you.

Train

“Let me tell you what He has done for me, He has done for you, He has done for us. Come and listen, come and listen to what He’s done.” – David Crowder

I am on a train. I am on a train, traveling at 307 km an hour. Naked trees and green fields wipe past the window, cold beneath a rabbit fur sky, and a woman in a blue suit is walking up and down the aisles selling popcorn and shouting in Chinese. It is here, I think—on this train—that I can see my life as it has wiped past with these trees and fields. Somehow the forward motion of the train reminds me of these past few months, always moving, always going, even when things are uncertain or unclear. Stable in its motion, strong enough to keep moving though I stop and think about things the window has already seen.

             To be honest, I knew China would change me. I knew it and welcomed it, but I didn’t know how or when or what or why. I came here a little girl studying the art of imagination, unable to imagine anything. My future was hidden the moment I stepped on the plane to come here. And yet, time has passed, just as it passes now, and finally I know the path that has brought me from that little girl to who I am now. A girl on a train, thinking about words.

            My life is made up of words. I taste them, I drink them, I run my fingers over them, and they hug me and define me. I see them wherever I go. On this train, for instance, I see words. Blue squares of carpet. Red suitcase. A bag of orange peels. Toilet paper sagging with wet. The words define the essence. In the same way, I have been sipping on three words that define the essence of my semester abroad.

            Bread. Marathon. Lightbearer.

BREAD

On this path and through these words I have discovered the daily Provision of God. Jesus is “the Bread of Life.” He taught His disciples to commune with the Father, praying “give us this day our daily bread.” In the Old Testament, God sent His people manna from Heaven. Consistently. Perfectly. Morning by morning. Provision. The Chinese, they get it. Bread is a staple food in every region: Nan, mian bao, steamed buns, sacks and sacks at every meal, bread necessary for survival. Before China, I ignored God’s provision in the present. I would daydream about some perfect future just around the corner, a future created from a different, better substance than that of the Now. I’m not sure why. I think perhaps it was because I was too comfortable in my current existence. I wasn’t living a life that required God, and I wasn’t accepting or noticing the manna at my feet.  I didn’t realize I was starving. And then I came to China. The foreign environment, the strangers surrounding me, the lack of chocolate milk—these things snagged my mind sleeves and pulled me out of the future and into Shanghai.  Suddenly I no longer felt comfortable. I did not know, nor did I feel known by the students in the Jia. I couldn’t see the sky, I couldn’t read Chinese menus, I couldn’t share my heart with anyone, so I averted my eyes.

And saw the manna.

And I understood: God has a beautiful life for us here, now, and He gives us the opportunity to join that beautiful life of relationship and redemption every morning for Breakfast. Honestly, God has been so good to me. He has been a shield for my heart and a Provider for my needs and desires. He has made me uncomfortable, and out of that discomfort I have discovered the best Bread I’ve ever tasted.

Marathon

Marathon training has become my microcosm, my world in miniature. God knows my love for story, and for metaphors, and for character development, and He has combined all three to give me a living, physical representation of His work in my spirit. I am running the race, pursuing the prize, discovering the true power of throwing off everything that hinders, and the sin that so easily entangles, perseverance in my soles. I run through the streets of Shanghai, experiencing my own small cartography lessons. I explore. I discover. I engage in myself, in Christ, in China. I chose to run this marathon in Shanghai because I desired to remain physically fit, to ensure thinking and alone time, and to understand my surroundings. I see strange things on runs. Chinese people clap, clap, clapping in rhythm to nothing and no one. A beggar playing his erhu in the subway. Women in white tights and fur boots. Chinese yoyos. Sculpture parks. Running Gu fills my pockets with flavors such as mandarin orange, mint chocolate, blackberry (my entire life I’ve underestimated the decadence of mint chocolate). As my runs grow longer and farther, I rely on the energy the Gu provides to propel me home. Each packet is a small, sticky sweet dollop of encouragement that reminds me of the finish line. Running is hard, and I am weary, and life is hard, and I am weary. But God is my daily Bread, my Provider, and through this semester He has filled me with little encouragements, little sticky sweet reminders that He is good, He is in control, He loves me, and He is here. He gave me Shanghai Community Fellowship, a beautiful church that strengthens and fortifies me on the weekends, provides Leadership Retreats and Celebration Dinners. He allowed me to meet a woman in a bathroom who has become both a mentor and a friend in times of desperation. He has stimulated blessed conversation after GirlTalk, our Tuesday discussion group on relationships. He has cleared away the clouds and provided blue skies on days when the clouds were in my heart. He has given me this train, leading me to Beijing and a weekend of rest and reflection. God has been good to me, and His daily Gu is oh so sweet.

LIGHTBEARER

The Daoist concept of Yin and Yang is not merely a concept in China. It is a winged creature, with blood and skin and sinew and a heart thumping, breathing on my neck’s nape in the subway and in the streets. I see the Light and Darkness everywhere; I see the duality in everything. In Tibet, gargantuan Buddhas crafted from gold and silver sit on thrones overlooking beggars with thin robes.  In Shanghai, employers encourage women to pursue education and then hire their secretaries and flight attendants for the folds of their eyelids.  Road laws are nonexistent, but Coldstone Creamery employees won’t substitute chocolate for dark chocolate when concocting Chocolate Devotion. Jing’An Temple is a shopping mall. Sidewalks are slippery with spit and airplanes serve Haagen Dazs instead of peanuts. China has no official religion and yet, the underground church is flourishing, and God is moving, and people are loving. I was lost on a run once, and a Chinese man gave me enough money to take a taxi home. Street sweepers smile at me while running, and salesclerks tell me I look piao liang when shopping for headbands. Light abounds in the darkness here, and in this duality I have become obsessed and mystified by the Light. I want to pursue Christ, and know Him, and dwell with Him, and spread His warmth candle by candle or bonfire by bonfire. And God is faithful.  He has given me a word to savor in light of my desires, a word that brings purpose to my life: Lightbearer. And I think He is calling me to this word, to be a Lightbearer in this Jia, to be all in, bearing the burden of His awesome Torch with strength and courage. To be brave, and solid, and positive when life is hard. To abide in the Light, as He is in the Light. I cannot do this alone, I cannot produce my own light.  But, by God’s grace, I can be captivated by His light, and tell others about it, that they might be captivated alongside me.

A Final Word

         Now the train is slowing and my first semester in China is drawing to an end.  And yet, as I zip up my jacket, stuff my books back in my bag, rummage for my train ticket in the pocket of my blue jeans, I know somehow the journey is only beginning. I have tasted my first pomegranate, and seen my first shooting star, and ridden my first camel. But there is so much more to taste and see and do. This place has changed me, yes, but there is more change to come. More words, more trains, more China. I welcome the challenge, knowing that God is good, God is in control, God loves me, and God is here. I look into the Light of the sun, and step out into the chill Beijing air.

"And You, Comrade"

            I knew so little before I visited the Propaganda Art Museum. As I traveled through the periods of art plastered on the walls, however, I was able to taste even a spoonful of Mao’s reign in China. After gleaning so much information about Mao and his laws, he does not seem real to me. How could he be real? He seems like a villain in a storybook. He has all the necessary quirks—a red sun, symbolizing his power and presence throughout the country, a Big Brother-esque array of posters and coins depicting his watchful gaze, a little red book of his personal quotes. He said, “Knowledge is power,” and burnt books and halted education. He commanded the death of birds. He encouraged people to give constructive criticism of the government, and then targeted the individuals who did. He was an intriguing villain, a character that should have been confined to the pages of 1984 by George Orwell. And yet, he truly existed. The posters on the walls of the Propaganda Art Museum testify as much.

            The art is full of symbolism, and children. Children everywhere, laughing beautifully under the red sun of Mao Zedong. Children with guns. Advocating the end of U.S. Imperialism, though they couldn’t have known, really, even the definition of the word “imperialism.” The posters depict Chinese enemies as subhuman: small, greenish gray monsters of shame and mockery. No logical minded Chinese citizen could possibly choose the side of such abominable beings! Even the colors were chosen specifically to invoke emotion against enemies. As the periods progressed, for instance, the colors grew more bold and angry. Splashes of red and black dominate the works during the Cultural Revolution. It is obvious that the artists reached deeply within and produced these works of passion and hate, although—to be honest—I wonder at the true direction of that passion and hate.

            The owner of the art museum said he created the museum for the future. He created the museum so that the future generations could know his story, and China’s story. He said others with the same story have refused to tell it out of fear or weariness. According to him, though, the story must be told. It has to be told, so that the future can see and know the past, and learn from the past, so that artwork like this can remain a relict, and characters like Mao Zedong can remain villains trapped in the texts of history books and fairytales. The story must be told.

Three Death Threats, a Camel, Some Oreos, and a Forrest Gump Reference

My weekend adventure to one of the westernmost cities in China began Friday when it appeared we had no food except Oreos and peanuts, and no shelter whatsoever, and it seemed no other living soul existed at Heavenly Lake except for our small group of four. And we were in the middle of a blizzard.

Thankfully, though our group consisted of not one boy scout, we had watched Man Vs. Wild enough to know that we could die out here. With this conclusion in mind, we checked the status of our sleeping bags and noticed that each one provided warmth only in weather amenable to camping, hiking, backpacking, and other activities typically experienced in more logical seasons.       

This discovery naturally made us quite hungry. We ate an Oreo for dinner, put pants on our heads and socks on our hands for warmth, and then ate another Oreo for dessert.

Just when it seemed likely that we would run out of Oreos before morning (Death Threat Number One), we encountered a beacon of hope in the form of a Chinese man.

“Shui jiao zai nar?” we finally whimpered at him, a broken phrase roughly translated to mean “Sleep is where?”

Lo and behold, there appeared a second person out of the snow—a Kazak Chinese man named Matt who wore jeans. He rescued us, took us in, presented us with a humble and beautiful yurt (a cupcake-shaped, hut-esque structure padded with rugs in the walls and the ceiling and, in our particular case, ornamented with a bowl of fossilized chocolate balls in the corner), and three plates of rice and carrots.

A little past midnight, Matt woke us in his long johns and asked for our passports. Apparently, the police were on the lookout for three suspicious waiguo ren and needed confirmation that our group was not, in fact, suspicious. We reluctantly handed our little blue books over to him, not knowing whether or not we would see them again. Terribly concerned as I was, I fell asleep within a few minutes and found my passport on the table the next morning.

I woke early and saw my first shooting star. It was beautiful, as if God took a glow stick across the sky, and followed by a black, white, and silver sunrise that illuminated Heavenly Lake as deep bruised blue.

We ate peanuts for breakfast and headed out to discover that, once again, China time is not U.S. time. Our driver was 45 minutes late, and as we were driving down this snow-capped mountain near the border of Tajikistan, the song Hey Juliet came on the radio. Oh, beautiful day.

From Urumqi we flew to Kashgar, and in the course of our plane ride the terrain changed from blue and brown mountains to elephant skin tundra. Kashgar, called Kashi by the locals, is a wonderfully Muslim city dominated by Chinese Kyrgyzstanis, Pakistanis, and Tajikistanis, and, over this weekend, four Americanistanis. The city is also known for its pomegranates. I had my first one this weekend, and it was swell. I have decided that someday I will have a husband who will peel pomegranates for me.

Immediately we met our first English-speaking guide, Allabardi (which means “God gave it”), who had a cold, and departed for a new lake of yurts and camel riding.

We never made it.

First we journeyed to a market and ate gumdrop oranges, crunchy apples, skewered mutton, and pizza-shaped nan. Then, we drove for three hours to a snow-drenched mountain pass, where the road was made of ice and the sun had disappeared, and stopped.

Death Threat Number Two:

From around the corner ahead, an 18-wheeler driving down the mountain lost control on the ice and began to slide toward our van. Gradually, the truck picked up speed and turned perpendicular to us, effectively blocking any chance of escape. Our driver gurgled and shrieked simultaneously, and rammed into reverse. We proceeded to play an eerie game of tag as the truck slid toward us and as we backed into the black night, down a mountain road made of ice. There was nowhere else to run. Suddenly, the caboose of the truck smacked a rock jutting out of the mountainside with enough force to realign the truck with the road, and it slid parallel to us without harm.

Death Threat Number Three:

Then, we realized we were stuck. Allabardi called us forth to push the van, so we dutifully jumped into the ice and blizzard like tourists, filming the events on camera and playfully skating along the road.

       Immediately, Dujon slipped, hard, and landed on his forehead. He got up and was quiet, and almost certainly concussed. The rest of us kept interviewing each other, oblivious, and as the camera rolled our van lost traction, with us behind it, and began careening toward us. Everyone dove left and right, and I had no choice but to scramble up the rocks, higher than the van, so that when it hit the mountain I would not become an Alex sandwich with mountain and van bread. 

       Well, I survived, because I am writing about it, so no need to fret. And, luckily, we caught the whole thing on film.

       Anyway, we eventually succeeded in turning the van around and essentially tiptoed down the mountain. We distracted ourselves from the black ravine to the right and the road, which lacked guardrails, by asking Dujon whether he had any fun date ideas and other such questions to keep him conscious.

       The rest of the trip proceeded casually, and there were no more death threats. Dijon healed. We saw an animal market, and a bazaar, and a mosque. I got to ride a camel—that incredible, ginormous creature, so strangely shaped, and strong, and warm, and surprisingly comfortable between those two humps. Allabardi kept going on and on about how the best traditional food of Kasghar was “pluff.” I got so excited for this mysterious food that sounded like marshmallow ice cream, until the truth came out of the toothpaste and we discovered that the famous dish of Kashi is, in fact, rice pilaf. And then, on the plane home, two little girls from Kashgar named Mary and Dai Wen came and spoke mandarin with Calvin and me for thirty minutes. We talked about gum and kangaroos and tongues, and they made faces at Calvin and giggled and played “made you look” by squeezing our noses.

       And that’s all I have to say about that.

Tibet.

The problem is not lack of material. The problem is too much material. If you were to say to me, “Alex, write about Tibet,” my hand would never uncramp, my words would never stop flowing. It would be more appropriate for you to say, “Alex, write about a curtain.” And so I sit here writing in futility, writing about what I cannot write about.

Tibet is a place that God created to silence poets. It cannot be experienced in any other way but presence. The region is brimming with yak butter candles, and green Buddhas painted on rocks, and street vendors yelling "Looky looky, cheapy cheapy!”, and the odor of incense in the streets, and jade green lakes hidden beneath glaciers, and mountains dappled with prayer flags, and color every which way, and a sort of quiet that clogs your ears even in the midst of noise, and sunrises like pink flashlights in the snow.

Every morning we bundled in scarves and gloves, following our Tibetan guide Panang like a queue of ducklings through Buddhist temples and monasteries. Between sites we would engage in a game of Ninja, to the enjoyment of the Tibetan spectators, and then we would laugh as boys in our group tried to race both each other and altitude sickness. They would boldly sprint a few yards, then double over and gasp for breath, only to return to us red-faced and sheepish.

It snowed in flurries the first night we arrived, resulting in a curious conversation between summer and winter. The flowers were still in bloom, and the morning after our arrival each sported a fresh white hat of snow. The air was crisp and cool, yet the sun hugged us with her warmth as the sky blued.

In the mornings, our group bonded over waffles and yak yogurt and under constellations still clearly visible at 7 o’clock a.m. In the evenings, we played card games and ate Nepalese food and Dico’s, the Tibetan version of KFC, discussing marriage and the definition of success and the meaning of life, and finally we each snuggled up to watch the odd selection of English movies playing on HBO.

A journey to the “hospital” in the small mountain village of Shigatse was necessary for one of our group members during the middle of the night. The hospital, a one-roomed, trash-infested place, was described by our director as another Nativity scene, a place amongst the animals with baby Jesus lying on the floor. But instead of animals, there was trash, and instead of baby Jesus, there was a Tibetan family of woolly farmers crowding around the only other bed in the room. However, the most hauntingly funny part of the story for me, an anesthesiologist’s kid, was that my friend’s IV cost 13 kuai. Which is equivalent to a grand total of $2.00.

Tibet is an intriguing place, overflowing with a beautifully pious people entrenched in Buddhism. It is also a sad place, as the majority of the Tibetans are crying for freedom from China. On November 3^rd, while we were in Lhasa, a monk set himself on fire to protest the Chinese occupation of Tibet.  However, the situation remains shrouded in silence.  The coupling of two words, “Free Tibet,” feels dangerous even to write in this blog. You do not speak those two words in China. And so, the silence continues, broken only by the sounds of the prayer flags flapping on the mountainside. 

A Letter, In Which a Vial of Dirt is Enclosed

Dear friend,

       The difference between a vision and a daydream is the audacity to act. I have lived my life as a dreamer until this point, and now I think God is calling me to anchor myself in His daily provision in a world of dirt and blood and cake and water. I am discovering several truths in light of this calling.

As a race, humans tend to float along in the pursuit of some heroic and inspired future, rather than opening our eyes to the present reality and creating action in that reality. We forget that the future is the same substance of life that we are currently experiencing, coming towards us at the rate of 60 minutes per hour, and consequently we spend much of our present daydreaming about a future where life is just that much better, abandoning the opportunities available in “the Now” to atrophy. To supplement these ideas, my mind has been sipping on three words like brainwave tea—practicality, reality, specificity—earthy words that can, by the power of God, transform our daily lives by removing our heads from the clouds and plopping our hands in soil that is wet and alive. The decision to implement these words and their consequences into our lives, in the hope of living with vision and action instead of daydreams and passivity, involves certain steps.

       Firstly, we must invite the Perspective Room into our homes. The Perspective Room is a place that I have created inside my head, a lounge of sorts, with couches and green walls. It is a place completely separated from my immediate physical surroundings, a place not tethered to the desires of my flesh, or to the injustice and noise of the world. I retreat to this room because, in this room, I am the self that God created me to be—swayed not by hunger or disease or exhaustion or temptations or self-doubt or hatred or other worldly influences—but only driven by His guidance and love that provide perspective on all matters. In this room, there are no shadows. Problems that seem so important in the world are bathed in light in the Perspective Room, and therefore can be confronted with wisdom and logic. With the perspective obtained in this room, we are able to see the injustices and pain in this life, separate them from our own identity, and act accordingly.

       Secondly, we must admit this existence of injustice and pain in the world to ourselves and to each other.  We are given a choice: to become angry, overwhelmed, and despairing about these broken things, or to identify, confront, and pursue resolution of them. It is of no good purpose to be smothered in anxiety and outrage over these injustices. It is, however, of good purpose to direct the passion that results from knowing “things are not as they should be” toward discovering creative and specific solutions to injustices for the purpose of restoration. Otherwise, we allow the emotions to crush our spirits, and the injustice wins by default.

       Thirdly, once we become aware of pains and injustices in the world and admit their existence, it is necessary for us to be humbly honest about our personal specific struggles. We were not created as people who isolate ourselves by hiding problems in the dark to grow and fester in our imaginations. Instead, we were created to be practical people who call things out as they are. Specifically, we must release our pride and admit the problems that we personally battle, remembering that the problems are not of us, but rather another substance that has already been conquered by Christ. We must admit to ourselves and each other that we all deal with problems, and that we do not want the problems, especially because the problems often cause us to act or be in such a way that we do not want. Once we accept that we have problems and do not want them, we can together seek resolutions to these problems in pursuit of the abundant, better life God has made available to us. For example, we must confront the touch-me-not subjects of masturbation and pornography and homosexuality and anorexia and suicide and depression and addiction and so many others when raising children, equipping future generations with knowledge instead of fuzzy and vague references to unspoken, but frequently faced, struggles.

Essentially, the time has come for us to live as creatures of the light instead of cave dwellers in the dark who are superstitious, afraid of their own lives, afraid of failure, afraid of injustice. To choose fear is to choose darkness, death, and lies, for fear creates monsters of things which are, in reality, only pale and sickly embryos that burn and die in sunlight. Instead of fear, then, we choose light. Instead of daydreams, we choose vision. Instead of clouds, we choose earth—firm, green, and pulsing with life.

       Affectionately Yours,

              Alex

The Ramblings of an Old Chinese Woman

The other day I ran for two hours, and this is what I saw:

I saw twelve weddings and twelve cream cheese dresses and twelve happy grooms. I saw a man in a car taking my picture. I saw a protest of Chinese students with signs and shouts. I saw the police yelling and forcing them back, back from the streets. I saw my first golden retriever in Asia. I saw Nanjing Road flooded by tourists during Golden Week, and I thought of osmosis as I ran toward the areas with more space. I saw a building within a building, shaped like an upside-down kidney bean and suspended in the air.

There are many things you may see if you run for two hours in China.

* 

Once I passed through People’s Park and into a confluence of older men and women, each holding an umbrella and a sign and apparently in the midst of some great happening. I discovered soon after that these were mothers and fathers of single sons and daughters, gathering together in the Chinese version of matchmaking. The umbrellas provided shade, the signs provided the name, age, and career of thousands of children – all of whom, apparently, were busy working and had no time to come on their own accord. “Only in China,” my Chinese friend explained, beaming. Just then, a woman handed me a card for a dating service web site. I pocketed it, knowing I would check it later, especially since the title simply read “date me” (so much more direct than “eharmony”). This China grows more mysterious and interesting every moment.

*

The ancient Chinese word for beautiful, mei li, depicted a quiet,                gentle, submissive woman with tiny feet. Now, however, a new word is emerging in Mandarin vernacular: piao liang, which literally translates as “flow bright.” Piao liang is a vibrant and active beauty, alive and colorful and used for the modern Chinese woman. It is, in essence, a way of being. A verb. I want to be piao liang, and so I flow bright.

*

Today is my birthday. I am twenty years old.

Last night, my friends and I watched Ip Man II, and dearest Craig made me a goopy and beautiful pink velvet cake, swathed in chocolate bar and Oreo gobs, and then we gussied up in little black dresses (well, not Craig) and experienced an underground club in the shape of an airplane. The servers were stewardesses. Some of my friends ordered vodka and orange juice with the intention of mixing the two, but I managed to snag the orange juice before it was contaminated and drink in my new age with several glasses.

I left early, just after midnight, and slept well and deeply so I could enjoy today without any sort of sleep deprivation. I woke and ran, and talked to God, and ate peanut buttered toast and granola, and went to a children’s story reading in Mandarin, and went to brunch on a patio surrounded by trees and filled my stomach with mozzarella and basil omelet and bruschetta, and then I studied and went to Shanghai Community Fellowship Church, where I worshiped God and made a new friend, then returned home and strummed a few songs on my guitar. My girl friends and I went to house church at 8:08 p.m., and then I had a long and lovely conversation with Maria, my housemother. I received perfume that smells like rain from Craig, with a commission to be fragrant for Christ, Shel Silverstein children’s books in mandarin from Jason, Christine, and Nadine, mascara from Molly, dark chocolate cookies and Heinz ketchup from Melissa, and a blissful autumn day from my Daddy in Heaven.

Mmmm, mmm.

Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!

Weird Mountains

Dr. Seuss must’ve visited Yangshuo. The mountains there are strange, disconnected—plopped as an afterthought atop a plain of rice patties and marshes. One looks like a rumpled Sorting Hat, another, a Diglett. There are Bird Beaks and Mashed Potatoes and Totems and Marshmallows and Others that surely inspired The Lorax.

I visited this lovely, mystifying area, located in the Southern province of Guangxi, during Chinese National Holiday. The National Holiday celebrates the inauguration of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949, a monumental event only overshadowed by the installation of the world’s first automatic streetlights in Connecticut, the testing of the Soviet Union’s first atomic bomb, and the birth of Meryl Streep. The Holiday ushers in one of China’s two Golden Weeks—seven days of vacation, frolic, and paid holidays for employees.

I traveled with a group of eight others, a tiny pocket of familiar faces amongst China’s 1.3 billion people, all of whom seemed to take the 20-hour train ride from Shanghai to Guilin, a city near Yangshuo, for their Holiday. We were fortunate to ride in the hard-sleeper car on the train, an area smushed with three-tiered bunk beds, squashed pillows, and squatty potties. One group of Pepperdine students last year had, apparently, failed to purchase hard-sleeper tickets and were forced into a car with standing room only for a 30-hour train ride. To me, this is bu hao (not good) and our group made sure we did not repeat the experience.

The ride itself passed without much event, although I was mocked for ordering two bowls of mifan (white rice) in the dining car without a main dish of pork or chicken or fish head. Apparently, ordering only rice in China is like ordering only butter in the United States. You get strange looks.

Other than that, and the fact that the bathroom walls were splattered with an unidentifiable liquid, it was as if we were on a Chinese-muggle version of the Hogwarts Express. Every thirty minutes or so, a fruit trolley would pass by, and we bought grapes, and apples, and jujubes, and we wished they were chocolate frogs stuffed with Mao Zedong and Confucius cards.

The morning after we arrived in Yangshuo, we woke at dawn and sunrise-hiked to the top of a Diglett, where the men of the group proceeded to take “epic” photographs, otherwise known as Johnny Bravo posing. After admiring God’s creativity, we then experienced a three-hour kayaking adventure, followed by a scenic, four-hour bike journey that ended in a tour of the Buddha Water Cave, where a man bathing in mud yelled “white people!” at us.

The next day, tianqi xiayu le (it rained). It rained, and we hiked, and gulped clean air, and ate banana pancakes and drank hot chocolate, and my heart and mind and body and spirit were replenished and refreshed, and I remembered what it felt like to be fully alive and fully awake and fully present, three “fullys” that I had not yet experienced in China. But now I remember, and now I am awake. Let the morning bring signs of God’s love.

Homework: Another Excuse To Blog

Alexis Allison

Humanities 295

Jade Buddha Temple Reflection

October 4, 2011

When They Ask Me to Describe It, This Is What They Get

            The word “it” is an abstract concept, a pronoun describing an object, event, location, person, idea—something indefinable when left alone, a one-size-fits-all mask capable of covering any noun that exists. It can refer to a peppermint, a dog, a raincloud. It can be an animal, a vegetable, a mineral, a sandwich. It can be a feeling, a stubbed toe, a patch of corduroy: It hurts. It’s green. It may very well rain.

            Naturally, then, when asked to describe it, I could write for an eternity of hand cramps and still never come close to finishing it. For now, I will choose to describe one specific it, and hopefully capture even a snippet of it.

It is the Jade Buddha Temple.

It is swarming with incense and ash and rain. I see a woman in the haze, across the courtyard, and follow her with my eyes. She kneels before a Buddha with an angry face and prays. She stands and walks down a line of statues, balancing before each one a coin, so that eventually every Buddha possesses a little upright offering. I wonder what she is thinking.

The monks are wearing mustard robes with Nike socks. I see the Swish when they walk. Through the courtyard, surrounded by Spanish-speaking tourists and worshippers of the Jade Buddha.

In the center, another woman is pressing a coin into the side of a giant urn with her right pointer finger, pressing and holding. She puts the coin in her purse, pulls out another one and repeats. Others around her move as if she does not exist, grabbing handfuls of coins out of their pockets and throwing them into the urn. If they miss, they do not pick the coins up again. The floor is strewn with coins that missed.

The temple is old. It is old, and yet, it is new. Each room is musty and red and green, with ancient carvings and ornate designs and golden Buddhas. The rooms have air conditioning, too. And everyone is coming and going, going and coming, and I wonder what each one is thinking and feeling. Their faces reveal nothing.

And here I am, amidst it all. The incense smells like honey and urine and burns my throat. I am not a tourist, nor am I a worshipper. I am an observer, and I feel nothing other than a quiet curiosity about these people who live both in the past and in the future, these people who worship a god made of jade.  I wonder what they would say about my church – a group of broken people in a high school auditorium, with a band, a cup of wine, a loaf of bread, and a God who lives but can’t be seen.

I’m sure it would be hard for them to describe, too.

The Economic Lessons of Peanut Butter

Consider the following situation:

You, your parents, your spouse, and your child are having a lovely picnic outing on a boat in the middle of the ocean. Suddenly, the boat begins to capsize, and you realize that you must rid the boat of extra weight in order to survive. Therefore you must choose whether or not to toss your parents (as a unit), your spouse, or your child overboard to save yourself and the rest of the family. Self-sacrifice is not an option. Also, you are too far from shore to swim in. And there are hungry sharks surrounding the boat. And the boat. Is. Sinking. Now.

Whom do you choose?

My classmates and I were confronted with this scenario as soon as we entered our first humanities class on Tuesday. I despise questions like this, because they make me feel like a terrible person, and they ignore physical properties, like the fact that a child weighs significantly less than adult parents, and honestly the question itself is rather irrelevant because I don’t own a boat. And I get seasick.

But, after much mumble-grumble and ho-humming, I chose my parents. Eighty percent of the class, in fact, chose their parents. Despite the fact that I am a terrible person, I must say I am a logical one. I cannot imagine throwing my child overboard, so he/she is completely safe. In addition, I am in a covenant relationship with my spouse, and I have become one with him, and I have left my father and mother for him. Furthermore, I could not remove my child’s father from his or her life. And, to conclude, mother and father have had beautiful, purposeful, long lives of pursuing Christ. And they would never ask me, my husband, or their grandchild to die in their place.

After the question had concluded with “parents” as the top choice, we were all feeling bad about ourselves. And then the instructor got to the point. As Americans, our natural conclusion is to choose our parents. However, if the same question is asked in a predominantly Asian culture, the majority of the answers will be “child” first, “spouse” second, and “parents” last. Apparently, it is completely out of the question to throw the parents overboard, just as it is completely out of the question to throw the child overboard in our society.

The wisdom of the older generations is more valuable than youth or marriage covenants, and parents expect their children to care for them as they age. It is perfectly common for parents to move in with their children after their children obtain an independent residence. Nursing homes and assisted living areas are essentially nonexistent, and rather offensive. The Chinese revere their parents, just as they revere their ancestors.

This exercise, although morbid, provided another dimension to my international experience. Chinese culture is a deep well, and I want to explore it and taste it.

Here are some other things I’ve noticed…

1. The One Child Policy in China basically states that every family in China is only allowed to have one child (obviously...) due to population control. If a mother has a second child, the family has to pay a $50,000 fine to the government. Otherwise, almost everyone gets an abortion. My heart hurts just thinking about it. There are, however, a few loopholes to the law. For instance, if the 2nd child is born in Hong Kong or anywhere outside of China and then brought back in to China, the fine is cancelled. Also, some wealthy families choose to just pay the fine up front so they can have another child. Or, families with a 2nd child don't register the child, so he or she is not a citizen...which means he or she can't go to school or possess any citizen privileges. Oh, but if one single child marries another single child, then they can have two children (so the One Child Policy almost rotates generations, in a way). And the adoption process is incredibly restricted. For example, a person can only adopt a child if he or she is married and over 40 years old and has no other children.

And so there is this whole generation of single children, and they all have SO much pressure to live up to their parents' expectations, and if the child is a girl, and if she gets married, she has to take care of both her parents AND her husband's parents, as well as her child and her traditional house-keeping chores. Women in the work force must fight both the system and sleep-deprivation to be successful.

2. Chinese meals are round-table affairs, with one menu per table – a tradition that creates much angst in our group of 30 students. This single menu custom stems not from the lack of menus available, but rather from the Chinese tradition of community (as opposed to the U.S. inclination toward individualism). Typically, one person orders food for the whole table (thus the single menu) and the dishes are shared collectively. There is no private property, or dish, in these restaurants. 

3. The effects of Communism pervade even the smallest details. The most relevant to my current situation is that, so far, I have only discovered one brand of peanut butter here, and it is not Jif. Little lessons like these help me understand the Chinese government so much better: Communism = Lack of competition = No Jif. What a deprived people who know not what they lack in peanut butter selection!

A Homework Essay Disguised As A Blog

Alexis Allison

Humanities 295

First Impression Paper

September 27, 2011

            The opportunity to live in China elicits several desires within me. I would like to understand street signs. I would like to ride an elephant. I would like to incorporate Asian dresses into my wardrobe. All of these are good and true and noble endeavors, but for now I am going to focus on two specific goals and one general goal that can encourage me to be fully present and active in Shanghai. Primarily, I would like to meet with a native Chinese speaker at least twice a month to practice mandarin conversation. This relationship would give me a truer glimpse into “real” China, as well as into the lives of the people who live here. Secondly, I am interested in investigating Chinese current events. I have insufficient (as in, zero) knowledge on the happenings in Chinese politics, the media, and both foreign and domestic affairs, and I am not satisfied with this lack of information. And finally, I want to plug myself into Shanghai Community Fellowship Church, with special emphasis on the foreign students ministry. I want to know the stories of the international young adults, and I want to be a part of their community of Christ-followers already active in Shanghai.

            The opportunity to live in China has also resulted in fresh discovery and observation of the world. Milk is not necessarily refrigerated here. Waiters and waitresses do not receive tips. Girls wear white hose with white shoes, as opposed to black hose with black shoes. Whitening, instead of tanning, salons abound. Copyright laws and traffic laws and hole punches are nonexistent. The sky seems farther away here.  Girls hold hands with girls and boys hold hands with boys, though not in a romantic way. Everyone seems to mind his or her own business in public, and faces on the street are often expressionless. The Chinese barely open their mouths when they speak. Starbucks has an overwhelmingly Western smell.

            I love it all.

            There may be times in the near future when I experience minor panic attacks due to “culture shock” that will leave me ashamed of my behavior. I am certain that, on a day when I’m not particularly chipper, I will want to throw my chopsticks at an unsuspecting Shanghainese man and demand a fork on pain of death. Or I will desperately need to see the sunrise, or the stars, or the skyline, or the sky, for that matter, and I will seriously consider hopping the next boat to America so I can do so.

            And then I will take a deep breath, calm down, and keep loving it all.

            I am finally navigating a culture unlike my own, a culture with green tea Oreos and rich family loyalties, in a city where universities have 30 floors and hotels have 47. For the first time, I am able to understand the world as a globe, rather than as a snippet of the Americas. I see the unbelievable wealth and comfort available in the United States now, and I marvel at the development of my native country, a country that seems like a toddler in comparison to this ancient place called China. A toddler with an incredibly high standard of living.

            China is old and deep, and I am fascinated by its long memory, and its expansion into the future. It is a mysterious country, both limiting and liberating, and I am gulping it in as if it were a cup of hot chocolate. I look forward to the adventures ahead with relish, and a little anxiety, and certainty that I will never be the same again. 

Teaspoon of China

Let me spoon feed China to you.

Shanghai itself is massive, 8 times the size of NYC, and full of technicolor lights and vibrant skyscrapers with experimental architecture. It basically feels like I'm inside a video game, or at least a ridiculous amount of candy stores. Elderly people swarm the local parks early in the morning to do Tai Chi. Telephone numbers have 8 digits. The sidewalks have dimpled strips in them so that blind people can feel where they are going (which is an extremely considerate touch, in my opinion). There is a store here that copies and binds books for such a low price (as in, I took some textbooks today to have copies made...something that is definitely illegal due to copyright laws in the U.S....so I am trying to understand and discern the relationship between legality and morality, and what is right and wrong for myself in a country where basically anything goes). I also encountered a store called the Scent Library, a perfumery, which sells aromas such as Play Doh, Dirt, Grass, Pink Lemonade, Paperback, Rain, Baby Powder, Earl Grey Tea, Smelly Boys, etc. What a beautiful concept. 

Most of the desserts are made with mango or black sesame or green tea or red bean (seriously, red BEAN), with very little chocolate involved, and very little good taste involved too, haha. The other day I found a Dairy Queen, so immediately I purchased an Oreo blizzard…I’m not sure I’ve tasted anything so satisfying and magical. Oh, and in case you were wondering, Chinese blizzards don’t fall out of the cups when turned upside down, either.

On the subject of food, I have experienced a vast array of—shall we say—interesting concepts. The Chinese have mastered economic cooking – they allow nothing to go to waste! There are jellyfish dumplings, and fish head soup (a delicacy), and fried chicken feet, and chicken gut soup, and chicken blood soup, and chicken necks, and chicken cartilage, and chicken heads, and sliced mutton, and lotus petals, and smushed crab, and frog legs, and tarantula legs, and mooncakes with egg yolk, and green tea Oreos, and mango shaved ice. The beverages match the city – colorful and exotic and strange. I drank fruit tea the other day, an orange concoction brimming with apples, giant purple grapes, kiwis, and oranges. Presentation is key. Apparently, the Chinese are very adept at deception, and can therefore make food appear devastatingly delicious when it is, in fact, not. For instance, a seemingly chocolate and caramel scone at a bakery down the street turned out to be a pork roll. Ahaha…I still laugh out loud at that story. And then, a friend of mine ordered some sort of apple berry tea, which arrived in a mammoth flagon of a cup, only to discover that over half of the cup was hollow and contained only a portion of the drink it appeared to contain.

In non-food related news…

Several nights ago I went with a group of my fellow students to a giant shopping/night life street, where we found a "guide" to take us to the underground "fake" markets in China. This basically consisted of darting through dark alleys, behind shaggy curtains and into bright white rooms FILLED with Louis Vuitton, Coach, Rayband, Rolex, Lacoste, Nike, etc. products. Purses! Watches! Sunglasses! Shoes! All fake, all incredibly expensive looking.

And. We bargained.

My friend Molly bought a gold Rolex watch that would cost about $8000 in the U.S. for THIRTY dollars.

Ha.

We also haggled a Louis Vuitton bag from 32,000 yuan (Chinese currency) to 340 yuan. Good deal.

I tell you this because it was rather interesting, and partly hilarious, and just a good slice of China, though I actually care NOTHING about all of those brands and wouldn't buy their products (real or fake) if they were for 0 dollars. Haha.

Well. That is enough for now:) More updates will follow on various aspects of my new life here…stories, happenings, heart issues, thoughts, etc. Read on to find out!