A couple of weeks ago, I received a hand-written letter from my 96-year old grandfather in Taiwan. His handwriting was shaky, as is my Chinese reading comprehension, but I was able to make out that the Christmas card I sent was one of the first he received this year, and that he went into some detail about his foot infection. At the end of the letter, he wrote "Now I really hope that you..." I couldn't make out what it was that he'd hoped that I'd do, but I knew it was important because he emphasized it with red lines. I scanned the letter and emailed it to my brother for a better translation. My brother confirmed the parts about the foot infection. My brother also explained that my grandfather's hope was that I would have babies; not entirely surprising given his previous advice.
I thought about writing back. My Chinese writing skills are virtually non-existent, and the words I could manage without a script -- "happy birthday," "happy new year" -- did not fit the occasion. I thought about writing back in English. I thought about copying Psalms from my Chinese Bible just to have something to send in reply. I felt frustrated that I could not communicate with my grandfather, who I know to be smart and opinionated and to have lived through some very interesting times. I felt embarrassed that I had so willingly and carelessly permitted the atrophy of my first language. For all that I thought to do, I couldn't decide, and so I did nothing.
Sunday morning, I received an email from my brother. Grandfather had passed away. I went to condole with my parents; I showed them Grandfather's letter. They poured over the words, caressed the page indented by Grandfather's handwriting.
I wish I could properly eulogize him, but I leave that to people who knew him better. I'm sure there's so much more to him than I could even imagine, but for now, it is enough to know that he received my Christmas card, that he had a foot infection, that he wished for me a family of my own.
Thank you for the letter, Grandfather; rest in peace.
26 January 2010
06 January 2010
going native
Someone recently used the phrase "go native" to describe the plot of the movie Avatar.
"Going native" is a phrase most commonly used to describe the following situation: a white person goes to a "primitive" location to scout out the "natives" and, rather than dutifully report back or disabuse the locals of their barbaric ways, the scout joins them - he learns their language, he adopts their practices, he discovers wisdom in their ways, he comes to love and live with them as one of their own.
I cannot adequately articulate my long-standing contempt for this phrase. I've always found it judgmental and presumptuous. It invariably implies inferiority of the "native" culture, so much so that the outsider's decision to join the native culture is equated with loss of sanity and abandonment of sense. The phrase is never used to describe the process by which immigrants adapt to a dominant culture. For example, if a Chinese immigrant moves to California, learns to speak English, abides by laws and societal norms and calls herself American, nobody would describe this experience as "going native," even if she adopts questionable norms such as living beyond her means or being excessively promiscuous. Rather, this would be characterized - nay, lauded - as assimilation. "Going native" is reserved for adaptation to cultures deemed inferior, underdeveloped, contemptible. Use "going native" near me and I'm likely to go ape-$@%# on you.
Then I went to Urbana 09, where the central theme was the idea that God, through Jesus Christ, "dwelt among us." That though he was God, he joined the human race, lived as the first-born of an unwed mother, as a refugee from a family of little means. He went through infancy dependent on the care of others, experienced puberty and young adulthood. He learned to read and write, he submitted to his parents, he worked. He talked our talk and walked our walk. Even as a man, he did not pull rank. Instead, he broke bread with tax collectors and prostitutes, reached out to Samaritans, touched and engaged with lepers. All that he did he could have done from a distance, but he chose not to.
This incarnation -- the very highest into the very lowest -- boggles my mind. And I would happily relegate it to an impossible standard but for friends and others who have followed Jesus' footsteps into some of direst regions of human need in the world. Rather than live in gated compounds, they make their homes in the slums, learning from and embracing cultures and lifestyles dismissed or forgotten by others. They don't see inferiority or superiority, only children of God equally loved by Him no matter what circumstances might suggest.
Call that what you will - love, assimilation, even the phrase that gets under my skin. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
"Going native" is a phrase most commonly used to describe the following situation: a white person goes to a "primitive" location to scout out the "natives" and, rather than dutifully report back or disabuse the locals of their barbaric ways, the scout joins them - he learns their language, he adopts their practices, he discovers wisdom in their ways, he comes to love and live with them as one of their own.
I cannot adequately articulate my long-standing contempt for this phrase. I've always found it judgmental and presumptuous. It invariably implies inferiority of the "native" culture, so much so that the outsider's decision to join the native culture is equated with loss of sanity and abandonment of sense. The phrase is never used to describe the process by which immigrants adapt to a dominant culture. For example, if a Chinese immigrant moves to California, learns to speak English, abides by laws and societal norms and calls herself American, nobody would describe this experience as "going native," even if she adopts questionable norms such as living beyond her means or being excessively promiscuous. Rather, this would be characterized - nay, lauded - as assimilation. "Going native" is reserved for adaptation to cultures deemed inferior, underdeveloped, contemptible. Use "going native" near me and I'm likely to go ape-$@%# on you.
Then I went to Urbana 09, where the central theme was the idea that God, through Jesus Christ, "dwelt among us." That though he was God, he joined the human race, lived as the first-born of an unwed mother, as a refugee from a family of little means. He went through infancy dependent on the care of others, experienced puberty and young adulthood. He learned to read and write, he submitted to his parents, he worked. He talked our talk and walked our walk. Even as a man, he did not pull rank. Instead, he broke bread with tax collectors and prostitutes, reached out to Samaritans, touched and engaged with lepers. All that he did he could have done from a distance, but he chose not to.
This incarnation -- the very highest into the very lowest -- boggles my mind. And I would happily relegate it to an impossible standard but for friends and others who have followed Jesus' footsteps into some of direst regions of human need in the world. Rather than live in gated compounds, they make their homes in the slums, learning from and embracing cultures and lifestyles dismissed or forgotten by others. They don't see inferiority or superiority, only children of God equally loved by Him no matter what circumstances might suggest.
Call that what you will - love, assimilation, even the phrase that gets under my skin. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
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