Due to the restrictions that wordpress poses on a html unfamiliar person, I have started to make the transition over to tumblr.

Visit me at dhwong.tumblr.com

Before newspapers and tv, people got news slowly. Letters took weeks to arrive and there were no images. Therefore, news about wars or events could only be transmitted either through someone’s interpretation or through your own since you would be removed from the event in time and space. The time and space removal existed because it was a time when you wouldn’t always have immediate access to paper and a pen, and would therefore be unable to record the event.  Instead, most events would have to wait til you got home when you could sit down in your study to write your letter.  This process leads to time for one to process and condense the experience before recording it.  We can see this even more clearly further back say in antiquity when finding paper to write it down would be difficult if not impossible.  The lack of images also meant that a writer would have to use imagination and description to attempt to recreate the event and we know how well that usually goes (eg. the game telephone).

When newspapers and ultimately television came about, information became objective interpretive. The time to interpret was shortened and therefore, an event could be more accurately recorded. For example, television news came on in the evening and newspapers told of yesterday’s news.  Furthermore, the use of images caused a shift from the need to describe a point of view using words to presenting it in the form of a photo or video.  Multiple images also allowed for there to be an overview of the situation and therefore, a shared experience helped create a more objective perspective.  Reality would still be interpreted but since it was done by a professional group of individuals that shared an experience, it became more objective than the past.

Once the internet came about, this shorten the time between an event to recording it to nil. Twitter, facebook updates and livefeeds cause the world we perceive to be subjective experience. We no longer have anytime to process and interpret events. Everything shared with us and that we share is often while we are still experiencing it.  Take for example the use of twitter during the riots this week in San Francisco or in Haiti during the earthquake.  The sheer volume of information pushes our perception of the world over any sort of objectivity because there is no longer a group with that goal in mind.  Instead we have countless strangers who come with unknown presumptions sharing what they understand to be reality.  Reality therefore becomes subjective as the experience is shared with the world but not shared in the sense of collaboration.  Similarly, it is no longer interpretive but experiential as technology has closed the gap of time between the happening of an event and our recording of it.

I write all this not to slam contemporary movements in perception but simply to note the differences.  For the differences make all the difference when we read texts that are from different periods.  It makes all the difference also when we interact with people from the different eras.  I thought about these typologies as I was preparing for my sermon on the birth narrative of Jesus.  There must have been at least 40 years in between the time of the event to the time of the recording.  How do I understand a text like that in the light of my world?  Furthermore, how do I understand the birth of Moses which was probably recorded even later with none of the eye witnesses still alive expect for maybe Miriam?

On a final note: my promise to blog weekly still stands but I should mention that some of these posts are sensitive or unfinished so will remain secret until I deem them acceptable for public viewing.  You know, in an attempt to separate intimacy and privacy on the net.  Also I joined FourSquare in an attempt to explore our generation

The first of which are things I’ve been thinking about and interacting with others about. This first category will just be things I’m working out in written form and by no means finished products.

The second category will be things I learn in school for the simple reason that I cannot contain my excitement but also cannot simply dump all the new material on my friends. So I will post it here instead as a memento to my future-self so I can look back on snippets of my life or for you if you care to read.

I look forward to sharing with you as this year comes to an end. There will be at least one post a week. That is my promise.

Over this last week in Exegesis, I’ve had to study Greek, a language I don’t know, but suddenly I find an interlinear bible and a greek bible in my house as well as my iPad which has logos which helps me find these words.

And then Joyce’s family who went back to Hong Kong to visit their relatives because they figured they wouldn’t have a chance to anymore. And then their grandmother passes and they have a chance to see her one last time. What are the chances?

There’s that strange sense that G-d is there still doing his thing. Still making the sun come up, still causing flowers to bloom and still working in our lives.

And strangely enough, we are about to go to a camp that has been riddled with problems. And the camp’s theme is “go forth”. One that our church deeply needs as we’ve scrapped the traditional evangelistic model and perhaps even the traditional approach to church. So what’s going to happen? Is it going to fail like we can’t help but thinking it will? Or will something happen, leaving us asking the question, ‘what are the chances?’

I wrote that yesterday before I decided to walk to Larry’s house.  I didn’t get far as he wasn’t there.  But as I waited for Connie to come pick me up, I noticed how noisy our world is.  If you sit beside a road, you can hear the noise between tires and the pavement.  You can’t really see the stars either because of the streetlights.  I am not advocating an Avatar worldview here but sometimes I feel like I do that through blogs and tweets.  I make a lot of noise and add to a frantic and anxious world.  I carried a flashlight.  There is a bend towards overexposure and a lack of intimacy that is selective.  I usually lol at the moms or 40 somethings who don’t know how to use facebook like this.  Who insist on telling everything through facebook status’ and photo comments (please slow down if you are one of these) but I don’t think I would know what to do without all of these (twitter, facebook, wordpress, text messages etc.)

A few weeks ago, I left my iPhone at home and I realized the wisdom of Jeff to lent from his.  If you have a data plan, they really enslave you to efficiency and connectivity.  You can’t escape from how easy it is to take a picture and tweet it or how easy it is to reply a text.  But sometimes I think it’d be nice to be inefficient and just enjoy a rest.  Not a lazy kind of watch tv all day rest but a rest from expectations on us to endlessly create, produce and to know.

Well I think I should stop looking at iPads now.

When I read it, I was struck. Losing someone close changes everything. Bono put it “a house is not a home”. The last 3 lines hold particular weight for me.

Your tea is cold now
You drink it standing up,
And leave the house.

Throughout this year, my eating habits have been characterized by this. Cold food and no point in taking out plates and sitting down. Things have changed yet I cannot begin to express the draw that loneliness has for me. Things have gotten better but I still search for the new normal and I still eat standing up.

Nobody that matters, that is. Distant relatives of course
Die, whom one never has seen or has seen for an hour,
And they gave one candy in a pink-and-green stripéd bag, or a
jack-knife,
And went away, and cannot really be said to have lived at all.

And cats die. They lie on the floor and lash their tails,
And their reticent fur is suddenly all in motion
With fleas that one never knew were there,
Polished and brown, knowing all there is to know,
Trekking off into the living world.
You fetch a shoe-box, but it’s much too small, because she won’t
curl up now:
So you find a bigger box, and bury her in the yard, and weep.
But you do not wake up a month from then, two months
A year from then, two years, in the middle of the night
And weep, with your knuckles in your mouth, and say Oh, God!
Oh, God!
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies that matters,
—mothers and fathers don’t die.

And if you have said, “For heaven’s sake, must you always be
kissing a person?”
Or, “I do wish to gracious you’d stop tapping on the window with
your thimble!”
Tomorrow, or even the day after tomorrow if you’re busy having
fun,
Is plenty of time to say, “I’m sorry, mother.”

To be grown up is to sit at the table with people who have died,
who neither listen nor speak;
Who do not drink their tea, though they always said
Tea was such a comfort.

Run down into the cellar and bring up the last jar of raspberries;
they are not tempted.
Flatter them, ask them what was it they said exactly
That time, to the bishop, or to the overseer, or to Mrs. Mason;
They are not taken in.
Shout at them, get red in the face, rise,
Drag them up out of their chairs by their stiff shoulders and shake
them and yell at them;
They are not startled, they are not even embarrassed; they slide
back into their chairs.

Your tea is cold now.
You drink it standing up,
And leave the house.

Edna St.Vincent Millay [1937]

I would like to say they are wonderful and I am learning so much that has changed the way I see the world and Christianity, but that would only be a half truth.

The fact of the matter is that the dream is over and the nightmare has begun.

I wrote all of that over a month ago and not much has changed.  I love my studies and they have (thankfully) taught me to love God more.  Studying the New Testament has given me hope to what Christians are about and what they bring to this world.  Learning about Philosophy in CTC has given me words and concepts that I can use to wrap my head around things that are going on and Hebrew has given me a love for the Old Testament.

But it is brutal and it is hard.

I read the facebook status updates of my friends at school and it sounds like we are living in exilic times.  They are all cries for mercy from God…all from students in a place studying about the people of God and God.

But the thing I want to write here before this week is over, is what I’ve been learning about myself and my place in this world (I will mention here that I am speaking of identity not apart from God but understood in light of him).  Over the last few weeks I have crashed.  I have beaten myself up over who I am.  I hated and shamed myself for the poor student I am.  But I have been learning to accept who I am.  To accept that I have a limp and that mistakes and choices that I have made have consequences that will affect me and my studies.  And it has brought such peace to know that God accepts me for who I am.  And most of all, come Saturday when I fail Hebrew and New Testament or whatever, that God and so many people still love me.  It’s ok if things don’t work out like you want them to.  I am learning that.  I am learning to be humble and receive mercy for who I am.  I am learning that God is putting me back together and that it’s not always going to be like this.  I’m learning that it’s going to take some time.  And that’s ok.

So I sing these words as I begin 48 hours of exams.

“Pain throws your heart to the ground.  Love turns the whole thing around.  No it won’t all go the way it should but I know the heart of life is good”

And as I sing these words, I whisper; even so, come lord jesus come.

All around me in my friends I feel that deep pain and that death that floats in every interaction they have. All that anxiety to control one another. Fathers to daughters, lovers and friends. One almost looks up and says “there is no hope or goodness. There is nothing worth fighting for and it is too contaminated to be saved”

Two of my close friends are forced into breaking off their relationship because of a parents’ struggle for control and power.

I see that and I see a broken idea of family. Control, power and authority. I see such deep pain and sadness. A bitterness carried on through a generation. From death to death. And I see no end to that.

So I look to God. The triune God who endlessly pours himself out in love to the other persons of the trinity and hope for that Kingdom on this Earth. One of mutual love. Of sharing. Of selflessness. Of weakness. Of hugs. Of walks without talking. Of a shared pitcher. Of a husband tending to his dying wife. Of a father who gives his daughter away and of a daughter who visits her mom who doesn’t even remember her anymore.

This seems to trouble me the most.  How have we failed to articulate and understand the gospel in such a way that it repulses people?  It is difficult to see the drastic contrast between the shepherds reaction on Christmas day and the reaction of our friends.  Is Christianity really that repulsive?  I had always thought it was a message one could get behind.

So I begin this year troubled and with hope.  Troubled that Christianity’s good name has been spoiled and that all my friends say “no thank you” in the most gracious manner.  But hope that we can get it back.  That we can recover and dust off Christianity and show people why it really matters to them and how mind/world altering it is.