South East Asia Immersion Course

In January 2007, I will be joining a group of seminarians at the Pacific School of Religion on their Intersession trip to Southeast Asia. We will begin our trip on January 6th and return to the U.S. on January 21st. The itinerary of the trip will take us from San Francisco to Hong Kong, to Singapore, to Kuala Lumpur, then to Saigon.

From the Course Description:
While Vietnam and Malaysia are both post-colonial Southeast Asian nations with a long history of colonial domination, they have very distinctive socio-cultural, political, and religious realities. This travel seminar seeks to introduce participants to the religious landscapes in these two distinctive contexts. Attention will also be given to the study of theology in Malaysia and Vietnam. There will also be short visits to theological institutions & sight-seeing opportunities in Hong Kong and Singapore. The seminar counts as a contextual learning course for PSR M.Div. students by providing experiences for cross-cultural and multi-relgious encounters and exchanges, as well as immersion in the cultures and everyday life of peoples and local communities in the regions which we will be visiting.

The trip will be an opportunity to visit the religious sites of these various locations to understand the cultural contexts of theology, religion, politics, economics, etc. in these places.

My particular interest in this trip includes the opportunity to research about places of religious significance being used/advertised as tourism sites. What are some of these sites? Where are they located? What similarities and differences can we note between these sites? Why are they of interest? Who visits them? What are the demographics of the groups that often frequent these sites? How do we define "religious sites"? Who advertises these sites? How do they manipulate the PR of these locations? What makes them so appealing? Who makes them so appealing? Why are they so appealing? What makes the difference between the interest of the locals and that of the tourists?

Death by flowering...

From the Gallery of China: Chinese painting mounted on silk brocade. Artist: Yi Zhong

The amazing thing about bamboos is that they are relentless. They grow indiscriminately. They are resistant to everything. Bamboos look lithe and graceful when moved by the wind. Bamboo groves can be overwhelming b/c of their rapid growth rate. They can stand up to 0 degrees and will withstand even frost. The running bamboos have a growth cycle that begins in March or April - which is the reason for Japan's spring season being called bamboo autumn.

The truly amazing thing about bamboos, which also happens to lend the tropical tree image a tinge of sadness, is that bamboos flower once every 100 years or so, and when they do flower they will die... Some plant growers try to stop bamboos from flowering -- thereby staving off its dying -- by adding fertilizer. While I don't know the details of the process, I just feel terribly sad. For the bamboo, flowering isn't a part of its life-giving process. It doesn't represent new life. For the bamboo, the flower isn't just a small symbol of grace and beauty, b/c the onset of such beauty heralds the death of the plant...

27.2, 28, 29.9 ...?

A friend recently told me about a website where you are able to get excellent info on wellness and health issues. It is also where you can take the free Real Age test, whereby you answer loads of questions about your eating habits, excercise habits (or lack thereof), your physical weight, height, etc., to determine whether you are biologically younger, older, or the same as your birthday age.

So I go to the website, hi ha hi hung, tuong rang minh se lam ta khon, se duoc it nhat 1 hoac 2 tuoi tre hon la tuoi thiet. Little did I know! Sau khi tra loi all those questions, that ra, minh gia hon 3 tuoi lan! Ay yay yay... tiec thay, tiec thay. Xau ho ghe vay do, ba con co bac oi!

How could I have possibly known? 3 years! I feel prematurely aged... like cheese getting moldy before its time, like black grapes losing their sweetness b/c they were left out too long under the sun.

Why, you ask, am I biologically older than my birthday age? Probably b/c I sit too often in front of my laptop instead of getting my necessary 30-minutes of physical activitiy each day. That's why. My fingers get more exercise than that any other part of my body, and my buttocks are flat as banh xeo -- and less appealing, let me tell you.

Though I'm not really that old when you count the years in the greater scheme of things, I still feel slightly rusted, used, like heavy cream that's been sitting around for too long. My knees are creaking, and my joins ached. My eyes are shot -- I'm practically blind and will probably have to sit in one place if anyone ever, ever accidentally washes my contact lenses down the drain (which, of course, my dear sister has done before. Needless to say, there was much screaming and tearing of hair... not mine, either).

I feel like I never had the party but have already went over the hill! RealAge.com, drats, drats, drats!

(Photo taken at the DE YOUNG Fine Arts Museum San Francisco)

Basic necessities

I was flipping through to find the news channel, and happened to hear a guest on today's Oprah show mention in passing something about the basic necessities of life being a cellphone, a car, a driver's license...

So, I must apologize. Actually, millions of us living on planet earth must apologize. We must re-examine our definitions of basic necessities. Apparently, a cellphone is more important than food and water and shelter. Apparently, if those millions of folks in Africa had a cell phone, they wouldn't have to walk all over the lands (b/c, of course, they don't have the other basic need: car). If they had a cell phone, they could just call for an ambulance when they feel nauseous and faint and are dying of hunger. It would be much simpler to just get into "the zone" or get into the "network" or get into the "fave fives."

And, silly me for thinking that we have major problems with world hunger, global poverty, AIDS, and global warming, just to name a few. Silly me for thinking that our basic necessities are not warm clothing, food, water, a roof over their heads. Silly.

HR: Hybrid Methodist

Over dinner tonight, a colleague of my sister's (and shall we say it -- also a good friend) joked that we might be aptly labeled hybrid methodists in recognition of our hybridized theological backgrounds. No, we're not talking about half gasoline and half electric personalities, although we do have rather electric ones - zzzap!

Let's add it up:
1. Born into 3rd generation of Christian evangelicals - in Vietnam, a country whose history is riddled, formed in substantive part, even, by histories of colonialization by the Chinese, French, Japanese, then U.S.
2. Raised in a southern Baptist church in suburban America -- way, way down in southern Calfornia, a small city comprised of predominantly white, middle-class Ameria
3. Matured in a UMC Asian American satellite congregation -- partly consisting of immigrant Viet Americans trying to establish a new life in a foreign country, and partly of diasporic Vietnamese Americans whose families have been in the US for longer than they were alive
4. Working in Episcopal seminary, OR teaching in a UCC school of religion -- both being institutions of theological education situated along the more progressive/liberal sides of their denomations (both in the Episcopal and in the UCC churches)

There you have it... most of this is lost in the daily negotiations, but some of these crop up now and then in our conversations. We betray our hybridity in multiple ways, and gleefully claim a sort of pleasure (or at least I do, most of the time) in the mixed up, triangulated, multi-cultural, theologically diverse pluralism of my background and identity.

Then there are days where it's downright impossible to claim "I'm a complex individual" without feeling a touch defensive that many Americans (of whatever background) can't seem to "get" what it means to not change my name to something more "English."

I'm a complicated individual, folks. Complicated, indeed.