Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Christmas Reflection: A Spark

The world said goodbye to a great man this week. To be honest it probably held on to him a bit too long, his body exhausted as his lungs held on by a thread these past few years. But...it's hard to let the good ones go. 

Alex Mitchell. My piano teacher through high school. 16 was in many ways the hardest year of my life (another story for another day), but weekly piano lessons with Mr. Mitchell were one of the very few things I enjoyed. I don't actually remember much of that year, a hazy blur of doctors appointments and sleeping, but so many moments with Alex are etched into my memory. At the time and still clear as photographs today, sparks of hope and wonder.

He said if you can play Bach (and Chopin), you can play anything. So straight from the piano-for-beginners-adult-series to Bach's little preludes and fugues I went. Sitting just to my right grasping a sharpened yellow pencil, the sweet tinge of peppermint on his breath failing to hide the familiar musk of tobacco on his clothes ("Don't EVER smoke. Nasty habit") he said Bach isn't about seeing how fast and impressively you can play; Bach is a tapestry. It may seem like a mess. But as you fully appreciate each line, bringing out each unique color and carefully weave them together, the product is not the jumbled mess the back may have appeared to be, but a beautiful tapestry. Not unlike quite a lot of life if you think about it...

I was about to walk out out the door after one lesson when he stopped me with a string of very proper, inspiring sounding words in Latin. But wait, didn't that one word mean... after letting me wrestle with his "riddle" for a moment his eyes sparkled and he grinned, "roughly translated, 'don't let the bastards get you down'". In the moments between figuring fingerings and phrasing he had a knack for knowing when I needed a word of encouragement, a life lesson, or a laugh.

This Christmas I remember again to wait on and for Immanuel, God With Us; a season set apart to remember hope, wonder, light shining in the darkness. Christ of course is all those things for us, but in His ridiculous generosity He gave us more than his more-than-enough self. He gave us Mr. Mitchells. He who put on human flesh calls us to put on...Himself. For our own good, and for each other.

Who has God used to shine light on your darkness? Who might you be a spark of hope, wonder, and light to today? 

Friday, July 8, 2016

Color

Sometimes on my morning commute I play the color game with the unsuspecting hundreds and hundreds of people I pass: spot a person wearing a color besides black, white, grey, or blue. 15 minutes in this morning all I got was 1 green skirt, 1 red-striped pair of capris, and 1 purple shirt. Come on, Tokyo; you can do better than that! ;)

But seriously, I'm a foreigner who sticks out like a bright-pink-minority-of-a-thumb and I've never felt safer in my life.

Meanwhile in America...well, on a good day race is something that is defended; each person given rights and respect regardless of race (or gender, religion, financial status...). But this week hasn't been a "good day". This week every day I see the next headline my heart is wrenched open with sadness and anger: "really America? What part of 'don't shoot each other to bits' is so hard?!"

But it is hard; it's complicated. It's culture and sometimes cross-cultural communication, and laws, and policies, and perceptions, and little every-day actions and comments made without a conscious thought...

But I long for my nieces and nephews to grow up in a world where color is something that isn't judged, but isn't "defended" either. That isn't protested, but isn't the elephant in the room either. I long for them to grow up in a world where color is enjoyed and celebrated.

And in the meantime... this is emotional. I don't want to have a calm and collected debate about right now. I want to be angry about the injustice, on all sides. And pray for mercy for the country that raised me, that my passport says is "home". And I want to do something to make it better.

I'm reminded that maybe the arts were created for moments like these. Maybe music can't fix all the mess and violence and tension and hurt about race. But maybe it can bring us together for just a moment, remind us who we are, give us a glimmer of hope for the day when there will be perfect peace; and help us to simply... grieve together.    ( ↓"Mercy" by Max Richter)


Saturday, June 25, 2016

Contagious Beauty

Outlines of leaves delicately carved into the wood bar. Our host recalls the titles of 1960s jazz tunes gently swirling in the air like the steam from our mugs of green tea. Little pieces of artwork appear on our plates one piece at a time: vibrant orange, rich yellow, smooth white; a hint of citrus bringing out the almost sweet flavor of cooked eel; crisp shiso with pickled radish... The flavors, textures, and colors compliment each other perfectly, like a polyphonic violin partita dancing in my mouth. Sushi.

We grin and leave the chopsticks on their holders, copying our host in old-school "real" Japanese manners: this is finger food! He is quick to smile, eager to explain, generous in sharing this country that has been his home for over 70 years with these two young foreigners who have barely skimmed the surface of culture, language, and food. We chat across the bar with the chef as he shows us the different kinds of fish they have tonight, and by the end of the evening the 2 businessmen beside us join in the pleasant small talk.

Up the narrow stairwell and down the back alleyways the train station is still bustling with people,  a whole other world oblivious to the refuge of quiet beauty just around the corner. Filing into the train car, eyes glued to phones, faces masking everything except a bit of tiredness after a long day's work. Across from me a baby twists away from her mom to beam at the businessmen standing above her, a contagious smile that spreads down the line of middle-aged business men before I realize I'm grinning as well.

Maybe it's cheesy, but moments like these are part of why I'm thrilled to call this city home. An appreciation for stepping away for a moment, and cherishing something beautiful. A reminder that beauty, and appreciating beauty, are wonderfully contagious. A hope that maybe through a bite of food, a quiet moment away, a smile, we can each share a contagious fascination with the One who is most beautiful of all.

Sunday, May 22, 2016

Remembering Kumamoto

My favorite language mistake so far is thinking the word "takidashi" meant “cookout/BBQ/party”. Turns out the correct translation is more like “soup kitchen”. Oops! As you know, last month I got to join a small team playing concerts in evacuation shelters in Kumamoto after the big quakes. It was a quick and busy trip that’s still hard to put into words. I wrote this journal entry right after with no intentions to share it with the world, but, as it's the best I have to try to communicate the experience, here it goes:

“I'm still picking white paper fragments off my shirt.

I pulled the load of clothes out of the wash, no longer smelling of smoke from outdoor grills, no more stains of mud from unloading supplies at the evacuation center on that rainy morning. Clean. New. Fresh. And covered in tiny bits of clean white paper. Not a smudge of ink. Not a trace of the hastily written note "ăȘりた... (Narita)" and a phone number. I wrack my brain for a memory of those 10 digits, but they're gone. My mind is as bright a white slate as the paper bits that fall off my jeans and float to the ground like Sakura petals. A reminder of our fleeting moment of friendship and connection. 

Our team of 5 walked into the hallway of the elementary school-turned-evacuation-center, arms loaded with thin insulated mats. They would at least be more comfortable then the single layer of cardboard or tarp currently serving as beds on hard floors of 2nd grade classrooms. She was right at the top of the stairs, almost as if she had been waiting just for us. She sighed in grateful relief when she saw what we carried. Actually she had been about to leave, but quickly guided me through the maze of staircases and hallways to point out the areas of greatest need. 

She told me her house is OK, so she's not staying here- just volunteering as she can. Her neighbor's house is marked with a bright red "don't enter- dangerous" sign, and she wears a hard hat if she goes outside, afraid one of the aftershocks will send debris or chunks of wall raining down. Her family is all fine. She tells me her daughter lives in Tokyo, and her grandson has started university. Out of the worry and hurry comes a smile, unique to proud grandparents everywhere.

We stop to chat with 2 young girls, sitting on a table with legs swinging, and I hope that in their memory this will be a fun camp-out, where school was cancelled and they got to have sleepovers with friends for 2 whole weeks. They eagerly chime in as Narita tells me what a wonderful music teacher this school has, who serenades the students with music during lunch time. "Music is wonderful, isn't it?" Actually, it so happens our team is musicians, and under the mats our van is packed with a violin, keyboard, and portable pipe organ (that's right!). Maybe we could play a concert during lunch time here?

She arranged it with the shelter leader, and an hour later the gym was a concert hall, the pop-tents prime box seats, and I silently prayed over the room as rhythms and melodies of Bach and Vivaldi gushed to fill the empty hall, fill in the unspoken fears of "where will we go next", fill in the cracks of stress on worried faces.

After talking with our precious audience for an hour I looked for another glimpse of Narita-san, who herself put into words my feeling that we were somehow instantly old friends. We exchanged phone numbers, and I told her to call me if she ever came up to Tokyo.


I wonder if she will. I wonder if my phone number is still there in her folder. I pray that even if our relationship is as over and gone as Sakura season, maybe it made as much an impact on her as it had on me. Maybe like the cherry blossoms our encounter will be all the more precious for its brevity. Maybe she'll think back and remember those Christians who floated by with a glimmer of Christ's light and love flowing from black and white keys and vibrating bow strings.”

Friday, April 15, 2016

And So It Begins!

After a few days of placement tests and a week and a half of classes, we had our ć…„ć­ŠćŒ today (school entrance ceremony - uber Japanese thing where they say welcome and é ‘ćŒ”ă‚ŠăŸă—ă‚‡ă†!a lot. And of course sing a song. And take pictures.), so I am officially in language school now. Here it goes!

One of the 50ish kanji I've learned this week is è§Ł - "kai". It's a character packed full of meaning, from "unbind" to "cancel" to "solve", and combined with other characters makes the words "understanding", "solution", and "release/set free".

Dissecting the parts of a kanji character is key if I want to have any hope of actually remembering them the next day. This one is 角 (corner/edge) 戀 (sword/knife) 牛 (cow). Totally random, right?

But it so happens, our church devotional book this past week is starting through Leviticus, with several detailed chapters on sacrifices. How they were to lay hands on the head of the bull and kill it, putting the blood on the horns of the altar. Pretty powerful imagery. The edge of a knife, the corners of the altar, a corner, a turning point, for both the sacrifice and the sinner.

And what's the point of it all? Forgiveness. Guilt atoned for, canceled, unbound from sin, a solution to the problem of our ridiculous uncleanness so we can be at peace and stand in God's presence.  Set free.

I can't help but be thankful for Christ, who sacrificed Himself so we could be free. He whose cleanness and beauty goes far beyond my imagination, who reminds me of Himself even in Japanese study.

1 kanji down... 2,000 to go?!?!  ;)

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Full!


Full. Full of information and names and faces from my first 2 weeks back in Tokyo, full of details of moving, full of cardboard boxes, full of gratefulness for how God provides (through support and prayers from the US; through freely given furniture and appliances, help moving, and conversations over meals here in Japan), full brain of practicing getting back into Japanese language mode, full of time with people I love and haven't seen in ages and newer friends I'm just getting to know...!

It is a joyful and thankful full, but one that has left my brainwaves a bit overloaded with processing ;) 
So in lieu of a longer post of coherent thoughts, here's my prayer for myself, and maybe someday the prayer of some of the thousands of people I pass by every day...
"My heart is filled with thankfulness
To Him who walks beside;
Who floods my weaknesses with strength
And causes fears to fly;
Whose every promise is enough
For every step I take,
Sustaining me with arms of love
And crowning me with grace."
(~Getty&Townend)

And in case this "full" post feels a bit empty to you... pictures!!
Middle-school (?) graduation party singing a cappella in the park,
surrounded by Moms in kimono video-taping
The elementary school in my neighborhood - how awesome is that?
Ginza (shopping district) on a rainy day. The streets
are relatively empty - inside the stores was packed!



Shinagawa Station on an empty Sunday morning (on weekdays, this walkway is a shoulder-to-shoulder sea of black suits)
View from my new apartment:
not too shabby! (*^_^*)




Monday, February 8, 2016

Hungry

I don’t have kids, but I’ve been around babies enough to notice a bit of an amusing pattern. Have you spent time with many hungry infants? Often, it starts with them just being kind of fussy. Once you try a couple things, you slide the baby onto your hip and grab a bottle from the fridge to warm up. And the baby sees it. Up until this moment, mildly fussy. Once the bottle (or other milk source…) is in sight? Eyes lock on and…freak out!!

Strictly logically speaking, you would think it would be the other way around: freak out when hungry, but once you see the goodness, calmly and joyful anticipate it being shoved in your face. Nope. The desire for sustenance is frantic. It’s like babies have this idea that we are cruel (or stupid?) beings that will come so close, then not follow through to provide for their needs.

So as I snuggle this little one today, I wonder if maybe we haven’t grown out of the habit as much as we would like to think. I mean, hopefully not with our lunch, but do we do the same thing with God? I’ve finally reached 91~92% of the support needed to return to Japan, but with a deadline to get back to Japan and “home”-sick heart, it’s so easy and so tempting to freak out.

What are you hungry for today? What obstacle is in your way? And maybe most important of all, who do you trust?



“…But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious…”

Friday, January 8, 2016

New!


  


These pictures are from a fantastic children's book given to me by a good friend in Japan. It depicts a year of important traditions, manners, and holidays starting with 3 of the most important: hospitality, cleaning, and New Year's! While we do celebrate the new year in the US as well, in Japan there are different traditions, food, and religious roots. Even on a seemingly "international" holiday like this, in a different cultural context everything is new! I admit in some situations new is stressful, can leave you feeling a little overloaded or even helpless; but many times newness is fascinating, calls back the joyful inquisitiveness of childhood, or brings to light a difference that makes me reaffirm what I believe (E.g. is this an American, Japanese, human, or Christian thing?). There is so much to learn from "new"!
All of which to say... whether 2016 is looking excitingly (or overwhelmingly) new, or like more of the everyday routine, may you be filled with joy and hope at the newness of each day. And most of all, may looking to Christ fill you with wonder as His steadfast love and mercy is new every morning!  



Happy New Year!