By Lynne Baab —
Perhaps you’ve met someone of Chinese descent or someone from China. If so, you’ll know that Chinese New Year is a really big cultural celebration, sort of like Christmas, Thanksgiving and New Years rolled into one big, long holiday with lots of food and family time. The date changes each year based on the lunar calendar, and this year Chinese New Year is February 16.
A friend of mine who lived in China told me that the holiday lasts two weeks, with the first four to five days being an intense time of visiting with family and friends. Traditionally, the preparation for the holiday included cleaning the house and replacing the food for the kitchen gods at the family altar.
I learned about Chinese New Year in New Zealand – where I was migrant – from Malaysian students of Chinese descent – whose ancestors were migrants from China to Malaysia and who were themselves migrants from Malaysia to New Zealand.
Christian ministry in the 21st century has some new aspects, as a big rise in world-wide migration is changing the demographics of our communities and our congregations. In 2017, to love our neighbor must include paying attention to the culture of origin of the people we want to extend care to. When we make friends with people from China or of Chinese descent, that means learning about Chinese New Year and what it means to them.
I want to compare and contrast two ways of attempting to show love to people who come from different countries or ethnicities. One way is to work on being “color blind,” where we focus on what we have in common and do our best to ignore differences in skin color or other differences that come from our ethnic backgrounds.
Paula Harris, a speaker and writer, was raised as a missionary kid, and her parents encouraged her to be color blind, which she views as a loving approach. In Being White: Finding our Place in a Multiethnic World, she describes how she became aware of the significance of ethnicity and what it means to people who live as minorities or migrants.
Harris came to understand that being color blind is good, but inadequate. She and her co-writer, Doug Schaupp, give six reasons why developing an appreciation for ethnicity reflects God’s values. Harris and Schaupp write that colorblindness
- ignores the heart language of our ethnic minority friends;
- misses kingdom riches God intended for our blessing;
- misses who people really are at their core;
- assumes everyone is “white like me”;
- makes us vulnerable to stumbling into an Acts 6 rift; and
- numbs our hearts to the suffering of our friends. [1]
This year I invite you to have a conversation with any people from China or of Chinese descent that you know. Ask them about Chinese New Year. What do they like best? What did it mean to them as a child? What are their plans for this year? What did they do last year?
If your friends are Christian, ask some additional questions about where they see God’s grace and joy in the festivities. Perhaps the fresh start implied in Chinese New Year makes them think of the fresh start we have in Christ. You could ask about this.
Around the world, the number of people who do not live in their country of birth has increased to a sum larger than the population of Brazil. In addition, many people are second or third generation immigrants, who have retained holidays and practices rooted in the country of their ancestry. In many countries, indigenous people have cultural traditions, as do many African American people in the United States.
We can try to ignore cultural differences, or we can work on learning about them, affirming them and appreciating what they mean to people we care about. I’m trying to do more of the latter as a spiritual practice that I hope reflects the love of God.
[1] Paula Harris and Doug Schaupp, Being White: Finding Our Place in a Multiethnic World (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004), 93. In the original, each bullet point has a paragraph of text with it.
Sorry to be posting this late, but please enjoy this post about National Inventors Day that was on February 11th from our wonderful friend Rowan Wyatt —
An ape sits, gazing at a pile of dried, desiccated bones. He stares at them with a sense of detachment until something triggers in his mind. He remembers the monolith he had seen the night before, and in his head, the spark the monolith had planted ignites, firing the brain into action. The look he gives the bones are different from before, gone is the disinterest and detachment. He picks one up and realises he can use it.
Used as a weapon to bash his foe, the ape tosses the bone into the air, where, with clever and ingenious use of film editing, the falling bone jumps to a drifting satellite, orbiting the earth with grace and logic.
This is the opening scene to one of my favourite movies 2001: A Space Odyssey and on National Inventors’ Day it seemed apt to look at this famous film scene where the span of invention is shown from the Dawn of Man to our current age of technology.
We have come a long way. From tools of stone and flint, to bronze and iron, to steel and wheels and not just practical tools to be used in hand but for the mind too, with the discovery of mathematics and science, philosophy and theology. We have gone from walking and running, to taming and riding animals, to crude wheeled chariots, to cars and aeroplanes, to the pinnacle of technology the two spaces, Outer and Inner space, the realms of space exploration and invasive surgical procedure into the brain.
What a clever collection of atoms and soul we are. Thanks be to God for giving us brains that can develop, learn, comprehend and expand. Like the fictional monolith in 2001, God touched us, like Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and our brains sparked into life. We have him to thank for our development and our inventiveness. We have left the darkness of primitive existence, entering into a world that, ideally, is civilised and educated. If only that could be so all the time.
National Inventors’ Day was devised and first celebrated in 1983 in order to recognise the contribution Inventors have made to our lives. Every inventor from the humblest garden-shed tinkerer to the PhD scientist has been a part of this contribution and so are honoured the same on the day of recognition, and rightly so. As they are, so should we honour God and give him thanks that he gave us the capacity and intellect to invent and develop. At this time, we in the UK don’t recognise this day, but we should.
Of course, inventions can be devised and developed not to benefit man but to kill and destroy, poison, cripple and disfigure. With invention comes the responsibility that it should be for the good and benefit of mankind. Sadly, our technological progress has gone hand in hand with death and pollution, which the world is beginning to pay a price for.
Going back to that scene in 2001, the transition cut from bone to satellite. It looks idyllic, the white space craft floating in a black sea to the wonderful music of Strauss, but something few people know is that the satellite is a weapons platform, its missiles aimed directly back at the planet from where it was created. The Earth is on the brink of catastrophic nuclear war. This is never made clear in the movie, but that is the background to what is happening on screen and the reason the second monolith is found on the moon, it is there to teach. We have reached that stage in our world where humanity is in that frame of cinema, we have no monolith to say stop, but we have God.
God has seen us create wonderful things to benefit each other, he has given some of us the gift of that higher, reasoning intellect that can see further than most of us can, so they can develop things, for good, for health and conveyance. God has also seen us develop horror and destruction, we have used our free will to become more like Cain, willing to strike our brother down, using what we have developed to do it, coming up with more and more obscene ways to kill, and patted ourselves on the back while doing it, ignoring the responsibilities free-will gives us.
Let’s honour at this time the rising tide of inventors, most of whom are working for good, for the peaceful aims we all desire, to help the planet recover, to aid health and growth, agriculture and medicines. Let’s lift them up to God and pray for their endeavours, that they may be blessed and beneficial, that our leaders will remove their dark glasses and agendas and see the world. Let’s pray for science and faith to reconcile and work together for the good of mankind.
Lent is a time of anticipation, expectation, and waiting. We begin on Ash Wednesday. And we wait, and wait, and wait for the Resurrection celebration on Easter Sunday. Hopefully we keep ourselves occupied during this time of reflection and contemplation. But as for me, waiting is difficult. How do I occupy the time while I am waiting. This question is even more important for me during the period of Lent.
So what does a child and a bus have to do with Lent? It was, and still remains a lesson in waiting and redeeming the time in anticipation of an expected event.
Here is how the story transpired.
My wife and I were out riding in the car running errands. You know, those everyday errands that one fits into one’s already tight schedule. We were not on a very tight schedule that day but we did have to be back home by a certain time. The reason for this deadline has slipped from my memory. I suspect and hope you will see why I cannot remember after reading this story.
I turned the corner onto a street on our way to our first destination, the U.S. Post Office. And there in front of us was a stopped school bus with the doors open, the stop sign out, and the red lights flashing. I stopped the car of course and we remained stopped behind the bus. It was in the afternoon so I assumed the bus was ‘dropping off’.
We sat in the car and waited. We continued to wait. There was no sign of a child stepping off the bus. There was no adult standing at the curb. There was no activity whatsoever other than the flashing red lights on the bus.
Seconds passed. Minutes passed. I turned to my wife and said that the ‘former me’ would say at this point, “Can’t the child just get off the bus so we can get moving?” But the ‘new me’ should say, “Perhaps there is a problem. We should give the child and bus driver some consideration.”
Just as I finished that second statement an elderly man trotted out from the front door of the house and up onto the bus. After a few moments the same elderly man stepped off the bus carrying in one arm a girl wearing full leg braces and in the other arm her walker.
He then helped the girl into the back seat of a car parked in the driveway and buckled her in. The doors of the bus closed. The stop sign retracted. The lights on the bus stopped blinking. The bus began to move.
The bus moved. I pressed on the accelerator and our car began to move.
More importantly, I was moved. The answer to the question, “Can’t the child just get off the bus?” is no. The child simply could not get off the bus. I am grateful for this everyday event providing me with many lessons. Those moments of waiting provided lessons in love, patience, blessings, caring, expectations, contemplation, and many more. As someone once said, “Life can only be lived in the present moment.”
Maybe God has a special Lenten devotional written just for me in the ordinary everyday moments of life. I just need to be present to take part.
When Easter seems so far away and I am struggling with the sacrifices or ministries I have promised to keep during Lent, I remember the bus. The child will get off of the bus. Lent will pass. The bus will move. Easter will arrive. Every moment during Lent is to be cherished. Each moment is to be lived. And so to paraphrase the earlier quote, “Lent can only be lived in the present moment”.
When I am frustrated by traffic, schedule, people, delays or whatever might draw me away from being present I hope I remember “No, the child cannot get off the bus.”
Br. Terrence Declan currently consists of being a professed brother with The Anamchara 
Fellowship. The Anamchara Fellowship is a Celtic Dispersed Monastic Fellowship approved by the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church. He is the the curator for the Fellowship’s website: www.anamcharafellowship.org. Brother Terrence is also the Prior of the St. Patrick Priory for the Fellowship located in Coral Springs, FL. As a professed member of Ananchara Fellowship, he treasures Celtic writings and Celtic spirituality.
By Emily Huff —
“Whether we feel ready or not, this day (Ash Wednesday) marks the beginning of the Church’s observance of the Lenten season—six weeks that are set apart for the purpose of drawing closer to God and seeking him with greater intensity. Unfortunately, the Lenten season often gets reduced to the question, ‘What are you giving up for Lent?’ This is a fine question, but it can only take us so far. The real question of the Lenten season is, ‘How will I repent and return to God with all my heart?’ ” -Ruth Haley Barton
It’s hard to believe that Ash Wednesday is today. Over the weekend, we pulled out some of the things we’ve used over the years to mark this time of Lent. The tradition described below is one way we’ve tried to engage with the question posed above of how we will repent and return to God in this season.
Crown of Thorns (beginning our 9th year of this tradition)
In 2010, we began to put into practice a very meaningful Lenten tradition called the “crown of thorns” that was shared with us from our friends Heather and Jennifer. The crown of thorns is made out of a florist foam ring covered in purple ribbon. I have also made these crowns with simple grapevine wreaths from an arts and craft store with purple ribbons strung through them.
Heather explained the idea on her blog a few years ago: “Throughout the season, we will focus on confession and repentance – learning to say we are sorry to God and to one another. Each time we say “sorry” we will stick a toothpick in the crown, and by the time we reach Good Friday, we’ll have a “crown of thorns” to represent the crown that Christ wore when He was crucified. It is a symbol to remind us that it is because of our brokenness that Jesus came to reconcile us to God and to one another – remembering that He said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. Therefore, I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.” On the Saturday between Friday and Easter Sunday, when Jesus was in the tomb, I will shroud the crown with a black cloth and then on Easter morning, we will wake to a crown of flowers and lovely greenery. (The resurrection!) All those thorns transformed into vibrant life by His Power.”
The first time we did this nine years ago, my daughter Anna (age 6 at the time) and my son Taylor (age 4 then) did not have any “I’m sorry’s” to say when we offered an invitation, but then about half way through dinner, Anna said, “Taylor, I’m sorry that I did not share my Polly Pockets with you,” and then she put a toothpick in. And Taylor said (without any prompting from us): “Anna, I’m sorry that I was mean to you after school today,” and he also put a toothpick in the crown. Then Taylor went around and gave hugs to us all at the table.
We make the sign of the cross after we put our toothpicks in the wreath: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” I love the sign of the cross as it reminds me that we belong to God. We are crossing ourselves to remember that we are signed by the Author, that we are His workmanship and that we are treasured as His very own.
Over the past few years as we have embraced this tradition, it has been amazing to watch the kids take time to reflect and to admit wrong. This helps us come to God’s grace in the midst of our brokenness.
Lent gives us an opportunity to grow and to stretch, and we hope that this will continue to be a way to turn and step closer to God’s gift of love for us. A number of years ago, our pastor preached about how our disciplines are to draw us closer to God’s love and that we ought to embrace whatever discipline we might take on during this season as a child running to a candy store. I am looking forward to this Lenten routine again this year as a way to embrace this discipline of confession as a family.
As my friend Heather commented, “May we experience the peace of not being pierced anymore by our own toothpicks and the joy of seeing them transformed into beautiful life.”
Help us, Lord, to RUN to you- and in our running,
find that you have been running toward us all along.
When Heather put out her crown of thorns one year, her family read 1 Corinthians 13 together as a way to talk about the crown of thorns:
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails. 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8
After reading this passage, she framed sin simply as a failure to grow in love. This totally resonates with me. I’ve heard this in other contexts before, but it sheds new light on this passage to be using it with our Lenten crown of thorns practice. 1 Corinthians 13 can serve as a mirror that shows me the places that I am in need of mercy and grace. So many of the challenges in life are really all about learning to love well, and Lent is a time that exposes me and gently reminds me that I have much to learn to grow in love—
May this tradition of having a crown of thorns during Lent be one that ushers us all into God’s love more fully and may we know that we can wear forgiveness like a crown because of His amazing grace.
By Emily Huff:
Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. Candy hearts, red roses and glittery cards fill the stores. However, the image I’d like to share today is not a typical Valentine’s picture. It’s a picture from my favorite children’s bible called The Jesus Storybook Bible:
This came alive to me in a new way through the eyes of my daughter when she was only five years old. On our very last day of an incredible trip to Kenya in 2008, we were on a mountain known as “Prayer Mountain” overlooking the surrounding villages. She was looking through the Jesus Storybook Bible that she had heard me read countless times when she zeroed in on this picture. She told me that she felt she was the little girl who was running toward God the Father in the picture. Not only was this a defining moment in her own faith, but it became a specific marker for the direction I want my focus to be: to turn toward God rather than to be overwhelmed with disappointment, shame or regret.
When I catch myself using a sharp tone of voice or reacting with judgment and anger, this picture has become embedded in my heart reminding me that I have another path I can choose. Rather than responding out of my own pain or failure, I am learning to pray and ask God to bend my heart to help me turn toward God and toward others. This picture captures the way I want to live, no matter what the circumstances are.
Bestselling Brene Brown argues that “love is beautiful when it’s professed, but it’s only meaningful when it’s practiced.” May I keep learning to run from my defensiveness and toward my Father!
So, this Valentine’s Day, our prayer can be for God to give us the grace to run to Him knowing that He is already running to us to fill us with His mercy. And with that love, let us love one another so that those to whom love is a stranger may find in us a generous friend.
by Christine Sine
Today’s prayer is adapted from one I wrote a couple of years ago, but I find myself returning to it again this year as I prepare my heart for the coming season.
On Saturday, at our pre-Lent retreat, we started by burning the crosses from last year’s Palm Sunday; the traditional way that Ash Wednesday ashes are made. However, I have also written another centering prayer that I find helps me focus as I begin my devotional time each morning. I am easily distracted, especially early in the morning and prayers like this really help me to shut out those distractions. This prayer is meant to be said slowly with a couple of deep breaths being taken between each line.
I sit in the presence of eternal love.
I breathe in the rhythm of eternal breath.
I delight in the joy of eternal presence.
My soul is at rest.
My spirit has found peace.
God is in me.
God is around me.
Behind, before, on left and on right.
God is with me,
Wherever I go.
by Christine Sine
Over the weekend I created a Lenten garden. It has been a wonderful way to prepare myself for Ash Wednesday and the whole season of Lent. I know it will provide a wonderful tool for centering myself each morning as I begin my day with God.
I began a couple of weeks ago thinking about my chosen Lenten theme For Love Of The World God Did Foolish Things, which as I constantly remind you is based on the fact that Ash Wednesday is Valentine’s day and Easter Sunday is April Fools Day. I spent quite a bit of time thinking about this seemingly crazy convergence and envisioning how I could portray this in a garden. I used sand for the base to remind myself that the season of Lent commemorates Jesus time spent in the desert before he began his ministry. I am very aware however that deserts are not barren places, they are full of life. That is why I chose to decorate the sand with succulents, plants that would typically be seen in desert places.
In the centre are a circle of heart shaped rocks that I purchased specifically for my garden. The circle is broken by the three crosses at the top, symbolizing God’s most loving and seemingly foolish act of all, the crucifixion. That the Holy and Eternal One would allow a beloved Son to die in this way seems crazy. Undoubtedly: God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. (1 Corinthians 1:27) The Cross was both the most loving and the most powerful thing that our Creator could ever have done.
I have also reconfigured my sacred space for the season.
Lenten sacred space
And finally ss we look ahead towards Lent there are two questions I find myself grappling with that I would also like to challenge you to consider:
For love of God what is one thing you would like to give up during Lent?
For love of the world what is one thing you would like to give up for this season?
When I asked participants this at my retreat day on Saturday, people commented that it is easier to think of what they want to give up for God than to think of what they are willing to give up for the good of the world. Yet there is so much that we need to think about giving up. Perhaps there are privileges of wealth and education we need to give up. Or prejudice against those of other faiths, sexual orientations, or ethnic groups. Or you might consider giving up your car or the heat in your house. Whatever you choose it might make you look foolish in the eyes of your friends or the world but if it makes God’s world a better place it is worth it.
Ruth and Greg Valerio are giving up plastic for Lent. I plan to give up being judgmental. Prayerfully consider: For love of God what will you give up to make the world a better place this year? And please do let us know.
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