Keynote

My speech to the 2009 graduating class of the Department of Asian American Studies at UCSB:

It’s indeed a joy and honor to have the privilege of offering these short remarks to you. I must admit that it’s also a bit strange: many of you sitting here this evening once sat in my classrooms: on those days, I’d see you in all sorts of clothing and in different states of consciousness, depending on the time of the day, the place in the quarter, the book we were reading at that moment, and whatever you did the night before. Don’t worry: what happens in Isla Vista stays in Isla Vista. But today you’re all dressed up, looking like you’re ready to go somewhere important!
And of course you are going somewhere important, which I want to talk about in a moment. But I also want to pause here and tell you something else that’s strange about this evening, and that is that I see you in a completely new light because I can now see the community of family and friends that brought you here years ago and now are here today to see you off as you go somewhere important. Now keep in mind that when I say strange, that doesn’t mean “bad”; on the contrary, this strangeness that I feel standing in front of you as you sit next to your community is a strange, wondrous, wonderful thing. It’s strange and wonderful because I see you in new light, to see you ever more complexly than the relationship that you and I and the rest of the faculty and staff of this department of you during our all too brief time together.
Now don’t get me wrong: the relationships that we developed with you, between students and teachers and staff, the friendships and solidarities you established with one another, are also wondrous things. You have brought us memories that will stay with us, and we hope that we helped you develop memories that you can take with you. A case in point: ever notice that on the first day of class NO ONE says anything at the start? I do. Each and every time I step into a class on the first day of the quarter, a room full of people is so silent that you can practically hear the snails in the earth crawling. But then something happens over the ten weeks together. Somehow, something magical, mysterious, emerges in that mixture of reading, thinking, arguing, discussing, lecturing, and suddenly it’s not just the professor talking to the students and the students responding to her questions. No, instead, by the end of the quarter, when I walk into that very same room, you all are chatting away with each other, gossiping, asking if you finished the reading, complaining about me, all sorts of chatter. And the noise, to me, on those last days of the quarter, sounds like music. Because once again, even though we don’t know whether that silent class on the first day will ever break through, will stop being a scattering of wary individuals trying to get through the long quarter, and somehow, somewhere, sometime, starts becoming a community.
And isn’t this what you have learned throughout our time together in our classes? That relentless and powerful idea that gave birth to Asian American Studies: that we are so much more than a collection of individuals with certain facial features or last names that sound strange to others, a smattering of isolated identities that seek to find their way in a sea of U.S. culture, but that we share a story, a history, which tells the story of how people began to see in one another something that might be called community. And I shouldn’t have to say this but I will: this community doesn’t mean that you have to be Asian American to be part of this community becoming. No, because what you have learned in your classes: of the Exclusion Act, of the internment, of war and the search for peace in this land, the stories of racism, sexism, and poverty, and the dignity of those willing to stand up against this forces of dehumanization, of the poems that carried Asian Americans along their struggle, and the fun they had doing it, in cartoons and movies, of those who came before us—including those folks sitting there in this room today—if you receive these stories into yourself, you don’t have to be Asian American to be able to say: these are my stories too. And because these are now my stories too, I can now go to somewhere important and make that place better.
Martin Luther King called this the “inescapable network of mutuality.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu didn’t coin this term, but he popularized this idea of the inescapable relationship with one another in the Bantu word “ubuntu.” Ubuntu: I am a person, I am only a person through other persons. I need other persons to become a person myself. In a commencement speech that he delivered in the United States, Archbishop Tutu developed this idea of ubuntu as not only a concept, but as a life practice. He said to graduates at Morehouse College: “We don’t come fully formed into the world. We learn how to think, how to walk, how to speak, how to behave, indeed how to be human from other human beings. We need other human beings in order to be human. We are made for togetherness, we are made for family for fellowship, to exist in a tender network of interdependence. . . . This is how you have ubuntu—you care, you are hospitable, you’re gentle, you’re compassionate and concerned.” And how does one demonstrate ubuntu in one’s life? Tutu sends the well dressed graduates with this charge: “Go forth to make the world a better place for you can make a difference. The task is daunting, of course, but it is our necessary struggle.” In Tutu’s eyes, these graduates had somewhere important to go.
We are made for togetherness. Now I’m not saying that we should idealize or romanticize this idea of community, of ubuntu. I’ll bet whatever money I have in my pocket that at some point during your time here at UCSB the people with whom you related, those in your classrooms, in your dorm hall, in your house, in your club, at one point drove you crazy. I would imagine that at some point in your life you had issues with members of your family, your loved ones, your boyfriend or girlfriend that made you think, if just for a moment, “It would be so much easier if I could be alone.” You read the stories of Asian Americans struggling under the weight of oppression, and you wonder: wouldn’t it be great if these people could find a way out of their deathly relationship with those who oppress them? But freedom defined in terms of radical individualism isn’t true freedom, but rather isolation and alienation. True freedom is only possible when you work towards the goal of not only making yourself and others free, but in making those relationships free.
Keep this in mind: free relationships are the true marks of freedom. Because otherwise, the life practice of ubuntu can easily turn into the destructive ethic of sacrifice, where you feel so obligated to community that you give up your innate and developed gifts and talents that the world so needs. I say this with special but not exclusive regard to the women in this room, because for so long it is the women of a community who have traded in ubuntu for sacrifice. But I hope that what Asian American Studies has tried to help you discover is that sacrifice is not the answer to life-sustaining community. Rather, it is in the working through, the realization, of what you have learned from your various communities, of how you have become human, that now propels you to be a sign, a symbol to others, to help others learn how they also might become truly human.
Graduates of 2009, in these last few years, we the faculty and staff of Asian American Studies have called you students, but tonight we call you by a different name: sisters and brothers. Sisters and brothers, you are all dressed up, looking like you’re supposed to go somewhere important, and you do. You’re all dressed up looking like you’re supposed to do important things, and you do. We have spent four years trying to change you to become better, smarter person, and somewhere during that time we discovered that the converse was also true: you also changed us. To the parents, friends and family of our new sisters and brothers: we send them back to you changed people, and we invite you to discover the wonder and joy of how these loved ones have become more fully human, and how they might change you. Be patient with them, listen to them, and be open to the new journey you take together, in a changed, dynamic network of mutuality. Sisters and brothers, graduates of 2009, we in Asian American Studies now send you forth to live ubuntu, to discover beyond our wildest imaginations what is calling you to even greater forms of humanity, and what you can bring to bring true freedom and humanity to others. You all are dressed up, ready to go somewhere and do something important. The world is waiting. For now, on behalf of our department, I wish you many many congratulations. Be well, be at peace, and Godspeed. Thank you.

 

Storytelling

People’s ways of telling their stories are more narratively innovative than what we literature scholars have been trained to notice.

 

Thought piece as I reflect on my first day of seeing patients

At the same time that I watch my young daughter’s world unfold and expand, I bear witness to others’ worlds contract and colllapse. It is both overwhelming and an honor to stand near both, and to recognize that I see myself in both.

 

Observation

A person’s story, if told authentically, is always moving.

 

The Wounded Healer

From Henri Nouwen in 1971:

The painful irony is that the minister, who wants to touch the center of men’s lives, finds himself on the periphery, often pleading in vain for admission. He never seems to be where the action is, where the plans are made and the strategies discussed. He always seems to arrive at the wrong places at the wrong times with the wrong people, outside the wall of the city when the feast is over, with a few crying women. . . .

The wound of our loneliness is indeed deep. Maybe we had forgotten it, since there were so many distractions. But our failure to change the world with our good intentions and sincere actions and our undesired displacement to the edges of life have made us aware that the wound is still there.

So we see how loneliness is the minister’s wound not only because he shares in the human condition, but also because of the unique predicament of his profession. It is this wound which he is called to bind with more care and attention then others usually do. For a deep understanding of his own pain makes it possible for him to convert his weakness into strength and to offer his own experience as a source of healing to those who are often lost in the darkness of their own misunderstood sufferings. This is a very hard call, because for a minister who is committed to forming a community of faith, loneliness is a very painful wound which is easily subject to denial and neglect. But once the pain is accepted and understood, a denial is longer necessary, and ministry can become a healing service.

 

CPE: Day One

First day of CPE was more or less orientation, making sure I got all my requisite shots/TB tests in order, finding my way through a hospital, which always feels byzantine.

I return in two days for some more processing. I may hit my floor/unit later that afternoon. In the spirit of full disclosure, I can say without overstating the case that I’m scared shitless. I don’t think anything I’ve learned in my last 38 years will have prepared me for this experience. On the other hand, if CPE does what CPE is supposed to do, I’m fairly confident that little will ruffle me after I’ve gone through this experience. We’ll have to see — I have only 392 more hours to go!

 

One of the best summations of the covenant I’ve read in a long time

From Shalom Auslander’s Foreskin’s Lament:

Thousands of years ago, a terrified, half-mad old man genitally mutilated his son, hoping it would buy him some points with the Being he hoped was running the show. Over the years, equally terrified men wrote blessings and composed prayers and devised rituals and ordained that an empty seat be left for Elijah. Six thousand years later, a father will not look his grandson in the face, and a mother and sister will defend such behavior, because the child wasn’t mutilated in precisely the right fashion.

Come see what your sons are doing in the world.

 

Taking a sabbath from the Sabbath

While I won’t claim it a universal experience, I can imagine that many many people experience at some point a sense of dread when Sunday arrives. And I’m not talking only about clergy folk! If church is an integral part of one’s vocational journey, then it can be as taxing as the career for which one is paid. So what is to be done when church fatigue creeps in and shadows your experience of church, and perhaps even the Church? Barring taking a leave from church (which may not be a bad idea as a Lenten exercise!) for a period of time, what else might one do to rejuvenate one’s passion for ministry?

Next time, maybe we’ll visit church fatigue’s cousin, seminary blues.

 

Should I give up my blog for Lent?

In its latest push to purge its rolls of what it considers false adherents, the Catholic church is now updating its understanding of what Lenten sacrifice might entail in the twenty-first century. Here’s a bit from a recent article:

Roman Catholic bishops in Italy are urging the faithful to go on a high-tech fast for Lent, switching off modern appliances from cars to iPods and abstaining from surfing the Web or text messaging until Easter.

The suggestion goes far beyond no-meat Fridays, giving a modern twist to traditional forms of abstinence in the five-week period Christians set aside for fasting and prayer ahead of Easter.

The whole article is here.

One wonders, or at least I do, if there is any connection between this latest move by the Church, this previous one, and this rather interesting (and from one perspective) disturbing trend. I understand why there are such calls for abstinence from gadgetry. Somehow, though, I think that there’s something a bit misguided in the target. For some reason, Henry Adams’s “Dynamo and the Virgin” comes to mind.

 

In the spirit of Lent, I am doing some reflecting and reminiscing. I’ll let you be the judge of their profundities. Here’s one from my childhood in New York: