the Ideal and the Reality: oh, how we striiiive.. .

Writing...

just to write...

Christine says I should write a book. Whatever about? I haven’t yet the discipline, vision, or talent to take on a book. But smaller things are worthwhile. Personal newsletters are a beginning. Next i would like to take on a revamp of my “So What?” document for distribution with a little more academic backing. It would serve to be my first pamphlet of possible use beyond personal interest or amusement.

I’m currently reading several books at once... another display of my inability to focus. I am a child of TV, DVD, and ADD. Nonetheless, I find the cross referencing of many of these texts enjoyable. Like a fruit punch or a fine port (is that the type of wine that gets mixed?), the literary personalities, thoughts, and experiences mix together in my mind.

The single, most concentrated voice is the one that followed me back from my honeymoon in India: Mahatma Gandhi’s auto-biography, or as he likes to state: his “experiments with Truth.” Auto-biography’s are not necessarily the most accurate portrayal of a person’s life, but they are always the most intimate. To hear Gandhi tell his own story of his development in law and public advocacy is a good story to know. I’ve finished half the book already and his musings on religion, family, and diet play as dominant a role in his thinking as his career as a lawyer or community organizer in South Africa. There is still little to no mention of a desire to be modern India’s prime mover for independence. All this goes to show that great men do not always expect themselves great. At least in his own words, Gandhi simply sought integrity of life. Like MLK Jr., his first passion was for his first community of Indian expats struggling as indentured servants or small businessmen hundreds of miles away from Indian soil, in South Africa.

How Gandhi’s search for faith and his life of public service come together appear to be the tale he is aiming to weave in his writing. I suppose when they finally come together sometime in the latter half of the book, the issue of India’s breaking from the British will have become a very important matter. By the time of his famed salt walk, was it the nation of India, the plight of the poor, or the calling of God his hallmark motive? I suppose it should be all three...

In other news, Jon Meacham is lecturing me on his scholarly perspective toward the great controversial narrative that is America’s faith. As a nation, how did the founding fathers play out God and State? Surely, separation of institutions necessary and desirable, but influence? Under Meacham’s exposition, from Adams to Washington, everyone had something to contribute to the building of the nation via their faith by word or deed. What was their personal faith influenced their actions, even if those actions were always, by and large, of a secular nature: in the interests of the people of America. The God of Public Religion is alive and well today, and Obama has invoked His name in word, and recently in deed. Will his new faith-based policies and advisory board lead to a reconciliation of the bitter and wasteful culture wars?

Honestly, it’s a matter not worth delving too deeply into, not until the economy can get fixed. What’s going on with the stimulus again? Every time I glance at the Washington Post there is something about how the plan has changed, who’s willing to support it or not, and everyone’s general ignorance. This includes myself. I need to get a book on basic economics and understand what’s going on a bit more deeply.

China got started on their own big stimulus plan. If the State Media is accurate (of course it is,) it’s all going nicely and China still has confidence in its ability to bounce back. In other news, hundreds of migrant workers are laid off and going home. The rebuilding process since the quake is no longer the big news as the nation’s very economic stability is at stake. Here in Chengdu even, rebuilding and reinvestment have equal footing based on the billboards I see.

In my past months of reading, other leaders of China have had their chance to lay impressions on my thinking. A wide history of thinkers and actors from Confucius to Mao, my studies have revealed the odds and ends of faith and policy yet again. Whether it is a faith in the Way of Heaven or the Revolution of the (Peasant) Proletariat, the striving to make our realities fit our ideals remains the same. Whether it is exhibited in the life of Indian saints or American heroes, in our inner lives or public actions, the challenge to make our surroundings a model of our dreams is ever present.

And that’s where I am today. The quarter life crisis of making these ends meet. I’ve been out of college three and a half years now, twiddling away my time in China teaching, serving, and dreaming. In college I formulated some pretty idealistic values of community, reconciliation, and change that I’ve never been able to incarnate fully. In honesty, I’m disappointed in myself. I haven’t pushed my actions to meet my ideas.

I’m an externally oriented person, and I’ve let the externals of the needs set before me push me along. I do what I see around me, I don’t do what is in my heart. I’m afraid of doing that, of taking on that great challenge. If I fail at something given to me by circumstance, I don’t feel so bad. I have done my best and I will try again in another situation, another need elsewhere. But if I fail at what I desire to define myself as, than who am I? Am I not a failure in the deepest sense? No external credibility given, I’d feel small. So very small.

Such a fear, a lie, is truly paralyzing, and most certainly of the devil. I’m not the type to be particularly in touch with my own feelings anyway. If I keep bustling around whatever is set before me, I’ll inevitably lose track of any real convictions.

Will that pattern of life and living continue this next half year in Sichuan? How will it play out in August when Christine and I are back in America; I doing any number of possible things from work to seminary.

It should not, and can not if I want to live a life of integrity.

I compromise too much.

So, as far as new year’s resolutions are concerned (Chinese new year’s resolution, mind you), I need to listen to my heart and move. I’ve been dared to move.

Get on your boots! Get on your boots!

Today, this Sabbath Sunday, I began a theological document on the charismatic theology of St. Luke. Although it is heady as hell, it is also a welcome addition to my eclectic pile of texts. Why? Because in all my readings on history, faith, and governance amongst so many different people of different cultures, the role of the Holy Spirit of God (as we Christians understand it) is, supposedly, quite active in some way shape or form. As a believer, should He not be all the more active at the very center of my heart?

If Luke’s Gospel and Acts are to be taken on his own terms apart from Pauline lenses, then what I’m seeking out is that elusive, much contested, phenomenon known as the “filling of the Holy Spirit.” I’m not talkin’ bout tongues or election, but something simpler yet no less profound. I’m looking for God to bring my heart into a conviction and passion for something He wants done that I cannot help but serve, move and be about it.

Move me.