To Whisper Loud Enough to be Heard

Stuff

2010-05-17T06:21:00.001-07:00

What is it with Americans and stuff?

Does capitalism bring out the worst in us?

Would socialism make us be better people,

Renounce all our greed, and care for those weaker?

What if the problem's much smaller in size,

Not the invisible hand, but mine?

Metamorphosis

2010-04-06T09:07:00.001-07:00

Perform for us, the world it cries

An audience with ever-watchful eye

Make us laugh, cause us to think

The spectators yearn, they plead, they breathe

Like a single organ, a pair of lungs

Respiring together in unison

The wrinkled performer behind the mic

I’ve lost that way, that soul, that might

The money’s spent, the piggy bank broke

Not a coin is left in the pockets of my coat

Those nerves have deadened

That fire waned

No longer want to stand up on that stage

Inciting some lips to smirk, the others to praise

All I want is a wink of sleep

Of respite from the work it takes to please

To lie there next to my dear friend

Rub my old bones against his

Transcend the mouth, the teeth, the tongue

The tools of language I never mastered well

Intuit instead the rhythm of the heart,

Merge together, and expire in the dark

The House Call

2010-02-28T01:23:00.000-08:00

The light barely seeped past the windowpane, so weak were the rays after pushing through countless elemental barriers: clouds, rain, fog. It traveled just far enough to make visible the limp and lifeless form draped over the back of that old wooden chair in my living room. I stood in the corner opposite, hands crossed over my stomach. “This looks serious,” I thought, affecting agony in the tone of my inner voice, which clanged and clattered against the interior wall of my hollow body, creating an unsettling echo.

For some unknown length of time, I’ve been rushing past it. Its lethargic shape now gathering traces of dark grey dust in its creases. Every day it has become a little more deflated and, I am realizing just now, smaller as well. It used to be as tall as I, but now it’s barely larger than a paper bag. I have kept telling myself that I will get around to it as I hurry out the door for another grueling day, but no appropriate solution had of yet struck me.

On this particular morning, I found I had been staring at it for an unusually long time and for some unknown reason, perhaps it was the dreariness of the day wholly permeating the empty room inside, I could take it no more. I determined to try to find a remedy for this mere remnant of a substance.

As if solution followed need, it suddenly dawned on me that my physician made house calls, and before I knew it I was fumbling around for his card. After having just finally located his number, somewhere in my peripheral vision I noticed a subtle movement from the back of that old chair. Perhaps a wind had blown in the atmosphere outside, perhaps that invisible force set off a chain reaction of events, as wind sent clouds gently shifting, allowing that tiny shard of light to charge into my living room, which in turn fell onto the nearly deceased, arousing it ever so slightly towards the warmth, a movement that subsequently sent a shadow cascading across its folds, which then caught my eye as I was rummaging around for the doctor's business card. Who can say precisely what it was I saw?

Dialing the number, I realized that with each movement I took I seemed to become further enveloped in a sense of urgency. I heard my voice gaining momentum until it finally culminated in a desperate pleading over the telephone, as I tried to explain the condition of this poor soul hanging morbidly listless over the back of my living room chair, “This is an emergency. Please, come quickly. I am beside myself!” The doctor, much calmer than I, asked if now was a good time and within thirty minutes, his knock rattled my front door. As I rushed to answer it, I nearly tripped over the edge of the form in my chair.

When we walked into my living room, that figure which had been a mere pitiful scrap of a thing had markedly invigorated, as if someone had blown into it, like a balloon, with air. The doctor nodded a greeting to the patient before groping around in his bag, his arm nearly disappearing in that enigmatically deep cavern, before pulling out his stethoscope. At first I questioned his judgment. What on earth he would hear in that corpse? This was useless, a lost cause. But to my utter amazement and joy I saw what he most certainly had seen, a rhythmic movement that could only be attributable to respiration. I nearly hopped in place as I realized that things were looking up, and more so with every passing moment.

By the time the doctor rose to leave, he didn't even leave his patient a prescription. The prognosis was good, a full recovery.

Both of us walked him to the door. The doctor tipped his head again, signaling his departing salutation, as he stepped out underneath a cloudless sky. We closed the door behind him and returned to a brightly lit living room and an empty chair.

Permanence

2009-11-27T06:42:00.000-08:00

Throughout each day, I pass through countless curtains of time

Behind each, a new theater on whose stage I see moments from my past acted out before me

Each in vivid detail

As I watch, I re-live what I thought had long been lost

This mysterious camera I lug around absently on my shoulders

Constantly throws images up to the forefront of my mind

Memories I could not recall if I had tried

I’m beginning to realize that every moment matters

Because once created, it becomes permanent

I carry with me through each new decade every scrap of the past

The load ever growing

Now in my middle age, burgeoning

As if I were the mother of the angels

Drawing all the countless stars under my wings

Subtle Activity Just Beneath the Surface

2009-08-14T05:57:00.000-07:00

For all silently hidden housewives, book learners, farmers

Interconnecting every age and stratum

Adolescents and elderly, pilgrims and stationary, elite and destitute

For all loiterers in life's foyer

Who invest in days unseen

Hands cupped over ears

Poised for the moment when the drought of silence is broken, as predicted by the trembling and strange lexicon of the prophets

For vibrations not yet rustling eardrums

Though haunted by mirages and their subsequent disillusion

Band together--shall we?--in the fellowship of behind-the-scenes inhabiters

Of those who, expending all muscle fibers, brain cells, passions

Wait

The Chronophage

2009-06-12T02:35:00.000-07:00

The chronophage swallows time, terrifying his appetite

My past, like Jonah, is consumed

But not dead

It sits in the belly of another being

Alive in a parallel place

And I am filled with dread

At the way life slips overboard, past my grip

Into a void which I can only visit through my imagination

So in the abstract I become a traveler

Crisscrossing through the vast seas of hours

Forwards, backwards, then circling the present

A chaos of invisible strings mapping my movement

Until I am all tangled up

A hostage of the interstices

In my stillness, I hear a patterned rhythm

Coming from some form of the living

Pounding on what sounds like a huge, hollow drum

Sending messages in S.O.S.

About the collapsibility

Of our purportedly fixed three dimensions

Genealogy of the Artist

2009-05-01T07:14:00.000-07:00

A disclaimer to my readers: Because I am computer illiterate, I don't know how to fix this--in a Word document, this makes the pattern of a tree. In these too skinny margins, though, some of my branches are bent. Oh well!

Artists

In our family tree

We find a multitude

Of characters, a motley crew

I search to see if I share resemblance

To any of whom I count among the giants

If I can spot underneath the microscope’s lens

That the chains of my DNA strands bind me to them

I clearly identify on my face the nose of that surrealist

Bretón, who sniffed something more behind the curtain

Of realism’s staged reality, its mundane props, and its structure

I recognize, from an angle, the sagging shoulders and, perhaps, big head

Of those romantic prophets and seers, who carried the burden of difference

Am I of the same breed of people, the many revolutionaries in these branches

Who believe the artist responsible for both speaking truth and acting upon it

I sing to hear if my voice resembles Dylan’s, if I can speak for my generation

Under my eyes, I wear the dark circles that brand insomniacs, like Okri

Who resists the somnolent hours, standing guard, and listening

As did Rilke’s, my ears hear the befriending of lofty Night

For the most part, though, I see myself in the masses

Of unidentified artists, who namelessly

Continue to create

Day after day

Despite

Fame

Often

Lacking

Vision,

Words,

Images,

Muses

Yet Not

Quitting

I am all

Of these

As I look

In the mirror

This is what it means

I see, to be born an artist

Miyazaki and Me

2009-03-29T03:37:00.000-07:00

A note: This is a new poem which I plan to submit to a women's poetry competition next month. I'd really appreciate any constructive criticism- likes, dislikes, areas needing clarity, etc. Thanks!

- Kim

As the wheels on the bus lurched noisily forward

The stranger sharing my seat and I exchanged awkward greetings

Our hellos contrasting sharply in their dissimilarity

I expected nothing but a mundane journey home

But as the bus gathered momentum, so did our conversation

Blowing flimsy, external difference out the window like litter

Left fluttering in the void between here and nowhere

Those around us may have wondered

What in the world we had in common

She, the granddaughter of Japanese rice farmers

I, of Texas cattle ranchers

Yet quickly we arrived at the plenitude that would bind us

Both of us this year had slipped suddenly into decade number three

Each distinctly unsettled at the way twenty-nine so suddenly becomes thirty

At the chasm that can separate one day from the next

At the way life metamorphoses over night

While we are yet not ready

She, upset to be still unwed

I, still to be childless

Lost were both of us in the labyrinth of family and career

Alone each seems such a perfect objective

Yet combined, irreconcilable

She tells me that she represents a multitude of her countrywomen

Back home in Japan, new families have been added to endangered species list

Inducing stern statesmen into sorcery

The government is waving bills in front of bellies as if feminine bodies will round by magic

Sha-zam!

I shared with her my search for a nesting spot on the rockface of career climbing

Where I can hatch my unborn children

My imagination already crowded with their presence

Statistics give me five more years before my body decides for me

Each birthday I mourn the clock’s tick-tock-ticking

Clearly, we had turned the corner of casual politeness

Things were now too personal not to press forward

So with an hour to go

We scooted closer

And began engaging in that transcendent language of storytelling

Holding the present up to the past like glass prisms in the sun beaming through bus windows

Refracting on the seats our dancing rainbows

We crisscrossed through dizzying years and distant generations

Until arriving, finally, at the crossroads of the present

Where it is our turn to make choices about our families’ futures

The continuation of traditions, memories, facial features

But before we arrived at any solutions, the bus slowed at my stop

Where we actually hugged goodbye

Stuffing pockets with scraps of paper

Marked with bumpily written contact details

I felt the loss of parting with someone kindred
This was such an unexpected sisterhood

Discovered in a single afternoon with the woman who was

Only an hour-and-a-half ago

Merely the stranger sharing my seat

Miyazaki, with beautiful round face and almond eyes

And me, with skin milk-white and eyes blue, just like my mother’s

When Silence becomes Torture

2009-03-21T07:43:00.000-07:00

He'd been wounded by words

Not their utterance

But their absence

If the Word becoming flesh is salvation

Than their delayed embodiment is hell

And the father who refuses to incarnate love in language

Some kind of tormentor

Of the boy who wanted nothing more than his approval

Memories of silence torture adult-child

Long after father has grayed, lost ability to walk, stopped breathing

Death eternally forestalls those words from coming

Compounding pain upon pain

Corrie ten Boom’s words ring like that bell which must stop ringing

He listens to the deafening gong

Identifies his own paternal shortcomings

Discerns mercy that’s divinely been offered him

And in the quiet left by his father’s failed lips

He moves his own

In what at first feels more difficult than Atlas’s burden

Filling with the power of his own voice the silence

I forgive

Ben Okri on the Role of Writers in Creating Beauty and Documenting Truth

2009-03-21T04:58:00.000-07:00

"Writers have one great responsibility: to write beautifully, which is to say to write well. Within this responsibility is that of being truthful. To charm, to amuse, to enchant, to take us out of ourselves, these are all part of beauty. But there is a parallel responsibility: and that is to sing a little about the realitites of the age, to leave some sort of magical record of what they saw and dreamt while they were alive (because they can't really do it the same way when dead), and to bear witness in their unique manner to the beauties, the ordinariness, and the horrors of their times."

From A Way of Being Free, pg. 60

Daisies like Diamonds

2009-02-07T02:01:00.000-08:00

The other day I was skyping with my Dad. (It’s funny how we make verbs out of new technology, isn’t it. The infinitive “to Skype” becomes “skyping.” We are in another linguistic age. Each of us an etymologist!) Because my dad is an especially amazing dad, he was helping me through my chronic homesickness. Listing a host of reasons I had to look on the bright side, he mentioned that I was blessed to be over here, getting to miss the recession that seems to be becoming ever less of an invisible enemy economists and newscasters whisper of and ever more the solid reality of lost jobs, foreclosed homes, and psychological distress. I am willing to bet that most of you are either being directly affected by the economy or know people who are. It’s not that my dad meant that the recession isn’t in Britain, but that my life here is fairly unaltered by it. I’m a student on a scholarship. My husband is a supervisor at Starbucks. For now, we’re relatively unscathed, as are most of the people in our circle of life—students. So in a selfish way, yes, I am very happy to be facing the loss of neither house nor paycheck.

For those of you who don’t know my dad, he is “Joe, the plumber.” Well, he’s not literally Joe, but he embodies what Joe represents, a small business owner. In point of fact, my dad is a homebuilder, and being such his industry is receiving some of the brunt of this recession. Because of who my dad is, or what he does for a living, it is actually impossible for me to feel untouched by this financial crisis. In some ways, I think I worry more about it, because I’m distanced from him. What I haven’t mentioned is that my brother and my sister work in my dad’s little office. When my dad considers the grim possibilities of the future without some kind of breakthrough, he has to also face the fact that he would have to un-employ two of his children. There’s some added pressure!

As you can imagine, I have been praying for my dad, for my siblings’ families, and for several others I know who are really feeling this thing a lot lately. One particular passage has been crowding my spiritual horizon today, Romans 8:28-39. I won’t quote it at length here, but I will cite a portion:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? […] No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:35b-39)

I have wrestled with this passage for a long time. To my very privileged American sensibility, I was struck when I first saw in this text that “hardship,” “hunger," and “persecution” were not in opposition to God’s love for us. In other words, if we undergo this kind of suffering, it does not mean that God does not love us. Suffering and God's love are not antithetical! (A Christian in a developing or closed country might teach me a thing or two on this.) In fact, Paul says that in the midst of "all these things”—the “trouble,” “hardship,” “persecution,” and the rest—which beat us down in so many ways, that we are still “more than conquerors through him who loved us.” During the tribulations, we have already triumphed. How does this make sense? Because Paul is distinguishing between two different arenas, the physical and spiritual. When circumstances are wrecking our material world, our battle in the spirtual realm has already been won, that is our redemption to God through Christ. And the spiritual reality of our salvation dwarfs in value the hardships of earth.

The division between earthly and eternal is something C.S. Lewis pondered much, as is evident from his masterful The Great Divorce. In this short work, a man goes to heaven, and here the things he sees are so real that they take on a weight and density that actually injure his more feeble, less real human body. The grass hurts his feet. Pulling a flower damages his hand:

[…] I bent down and tried to pluck a daisy which was growing at my feet. The stalk wouldn’t break. I tried to twist it, but it wouldn’t twist. I tugged till the sweat stood out on my forehead and I had lost most of the skin off my hands. The little flower was hard, not like wood or even like iron, but like a diamond. (19)

What a perfect comparison to the spiritual reality. Diamonds are one of the hardest substances. They are also one of the most beautiful and rare. And this spiritual reality is more enduring, abiding--more real--than the earthly. It is eternal, while the history of earth will pass.

Today I pray that, like Lewis’s protagonist, we would all get a better picture of the profound reality of the eternal, specifically, of our eternal heritage in Christ, which thieves cannot steal and moths cannot destroy. I believe if the Holy Spirit can help us get a grasp of the density of the eternal reality that the stress of this financial difficulty will wound us less.

Now, because I am distanced from the direct effects of the economic crisis, I want to thread with caution these words with which I aim to encourage. This is one of the proverbial moments of “easier said than done.” Nevertheless, I pray that you and I will, like Paul, be “convinced” that economic “famine” does not change God's love for us, a love shown best in this:

Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? (Rom. 8:34b-35a)

The Birds and I

2009-02-06T03:53:00.000-08:00

On the limbs the birds perched, as still as the tree itself
Their voices were quiet, unused for the moment
In their sleek, feathered bodies

This was the cause of my weeping
For the sense of solidarity I felt instantly with those creatures in that moment
For the gift of analogy they gave to me
The ability to put into form what has been formless in me
The plaguing feeling that I, too, am perched on a limb
Which dangles over the earth
Silent

Of course, singing is occasional
And it is silence that connects moments of joy, lament, and other times worth naming
Worth singing about

The anonymity of silence wounds my illusions of self-grandeur
Twisted together with the dreams of my youth

It purifies me
Nurtures humility
Feeds dependence
And for these reasons
I hear my vocal chords vibrating together again
Generating song
And to top it all
My new friends have joined in

Back to the Grind

2009-01-17T07:45:00.000-08:00

The Mound was merciless.

As Chad and I cycled up that long, inevitable hill towards our respective places of work on the first day back to our daily routine in Edinburgh, the Mound punished our legs, our lungs, our brows. It seemed spiteful because we had neglected its rigorousness for three weeks for the bliss of American Christmas, for that most magical of places, home.

The price was worth it.

As I suffered, recollected visions of sugarplums and wassail, family and pajamas overpowered the shock pulsing through my lazy legs. I stood up on my pedals and kept going. Those visions pushed me further than the mound—they motivated me through the first few days of being back in my foreign, temporary home, where mixed feelings ever envelop me. Where I am tossed between thoughts such as “four days ago I was at mom and dad’s” and “God, I want to do more here than count down the time left.”

I want to bloom where I’ve been planted.

We’re settling back in. And I am reminded how routine is both comforting and dangerous. It is a potentially powerful component of productivity. It is also the lullaby of mediocrity.

But we cannot afford normal.

In "Art as Technique" Viktor Shklovsky described how when things and people become too familiar to us, they tend to recede into invisibility. It is as if, he described, they are demoted in our minds to mathematic variables, a negative condition he termed the “algebrization” of things.

For him, art was the answer.

I agree that art can be a powerful tool in “defamiliarizing” the overly familiar. However, I also believe there is a larger issue looming: Why should I become aware? Aware of what? Nevertheless, this point about habit making even very important things and people become invisible to us is what I am getting at.

Prayer, rub my eyes—get the sleep out.

Last night my friend Rebecca told me about the mother of her son’s best friend, a single mom of two young boys, both of whom have muscular dystrophy. The doctors say that neither will see past his twentieth birthday. Last summer the eldest became wheelchair bound. Nightly, the mother must wake up to turn him over in his bed. Since this story was passed on to me, throughout the morning it has acted like a melancholy, and sobering, refrain in my thoughts. It compelled me to plead with God, that this woman and her boys would come to know the hope of Christ and His eternal salvation. That they would know, too, his comfort here on earth: “Remember your promise, Lord. You are close to the broken-hearted.” I prayed for us, too, for Christ’s Church—

That, wide-eyed, we would spread everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of Him.

Reflections on My Computer Crash

2008-11-28T03:42:00.000-08:00

Computers are like untrustworthy lovers.

At first, your computer will be there for you whenever you turn to it. It will spend all hours of the day with you. You will see the world through its eyes. Life is easy and accessible in these early days.

Then, it will become a little cranky. "It's just not wearing its best face for me because we are so comfortable with each other now," you will tell yourself. Watch out. This is a lie.

Before you know it, your computer will mercilessly abandon you. You will come home to it one day and it just simply won't be there anymore. No contact details left. Gone. Without a trace.

But this is not all, because computers are malicious. It will take with it everything you cherish, your most valued possessions: all your family photos, crucial documents, everything you've saved.

I write this in the wake of my grief, after having recently been thus abandoned. Take it from me: Never trust a computer.

Thanks-Giving

2008-11-27T12:14:00.000-08:00

As this is such an appropriate time to reflect on the things we are grateful for, allow me to kick-off the thanks-giving. (Sorry, I get to beat all of you in America to this with a six hour head start!).

Call it minor, but today I am so grateful for the canned pumpkin from the States I had stashed away in my pantry for a year! I was able to make pumpkin pie because of it. When you are far from home, sometimes it is really is the little things... A can of pumpkin, which I probably paid sixty-four cents for, can make the difference between a blue, homesick Grumblegiving and a happy, nostalgic Thanksgiving.

Trying to do Thanksgiving in a country that neither celebrates it nor carries the staple items needed for a Thanksgiving feast is a somewhat dislocating experience! At least, it reminds me that I am dislocated- not home. It is so funny the way Americans network here for those rarities like corn bread for stuffing, Turkey bags, those crunchy little fried onion things for green bean casserole, and, as you know by now, canned pumpkin! A black market Walmart would make a killing here. I have found one store in Edinburgh that sells some of the American basics. I blew a gasket the first time I went in to Lupe Pintos and saw Nabisco graham crackers, white marshmallows, Jiffy cornbread mix, corn tortillas, and, yes, canned pumpkin! I happily paid four pounds (then equivalent to eight dollars!) for a jar of chipotle salsa; though, I have to admit I was pretty annoyed when I saw on the back that it was made in Houston, Texas. (I'm hearing that old Pace Picante Sauce commercial in my head right now: "Made in New York city!") I paid eight dollars for a jar of salsa from Texas that probably costs one-fifty there!

Chad and I will be celebrating with another American family, the Thornberrys. I hope you share the day with some people you love as well.

I'll let you know how my pumpkin pie tastes!

Take a moment to share with us a few things you are thankful for. Your comments will post here for the readers to see.

A Few More Anecdotes on the Gales

2008-11-10T02:24:00.000-08:00

Well, as you may have realized already, the poem below is about our bike trip to the office this morning in the infamous Scottish gales. For those of you who go to the Oaks, picture the Red Oak winds on crack. It's insanity. I posted that little video to the left to show you what some high force gales look like.

Chad thought I should tell you a few funny stories about our experiences in the gales to give you a feel for what these winds are like. I have several:

1. Last winter, Chad thought it'd be fun to go on a long ride to the ocean on the outskirts of Edinburgh. On this bike trip, we had the pleasure of riding through almost every miserable British weather condition imaginable: rain, sleet, snow, and gale winds. I was ticked, to say it politely. When we finally did get to the ocean, the winds were blowing so hard that we literally could not pedal ourselves into it any further. We were stuck. I imagined that movie from the 90s (?) about the storm chasers. We turned around to escape this torment and ride back home, but when we did so, we found we did not even have to pedal! The wind pushed us along. That is the only pleasant thing I can say about the journey that day.

2. A couple weeks ago, riding to the office again, I turned down a street in the city center where tall buildings line each side of the road, a situation that creates a wind tunnel. Thank God there was no oncoming traffic because I was forced into the oncoming lane! I could hardly get off my bike.

3. Chad's boss told him a story about a girl he saw get blown over on her bike by the gales. She actually chipped her tooth on the car she fell into. Steam is coming off my head just thinking about how I would feel it that happened to me!

Grrr... I'm getting angry writing on this topic! Let's stick to the amnesiac romanticization of the gales in my poem!

Cycling to Work, November 1o

2008-11-10T01:44:00.001-08:00

She fought the gales
Riding valiantly on her metallic steed
Shield slung across her back
She did not hide her face
She pressed in
With courage
Towards her destination
The wind like the arms of a giant
Pushing her backwards, sideways
But she had to go forward
Until she arrived, safely
Where she would spend the day
Using the best of reason
In an effort to conquer riddles of intellect
Knowing full well that none of us will ever conquer the seasons

The wind humbles us
I ponder this with reverence
While outside the fortress of my window
I listen to nature's defiance
Against humanity's Napoleonic complex

Al Anon

2008-11-06T02:23:00.000-08:00

Left standing drenched and helpless again

In the wake of your violent, unpredictable waves

Slapping vengefully against the shore
The borderland where I can approach you, but go no further

Yesterday, I was sailing upon the water’s smooth surface
But today the sky is stormy, grey, silent
Except for the sound of your waves, beating down on top of each other
As if you were in a war against yourself
As if you hope to destroy yourself

I know not how to love you,
How to trust you,
Or even how to know you
You bear extremes within your nature
That have no regard for those who share this planet with you
I’m beginning to grow numb after so many cold, wet nights of being submerged in the tidal waves of your outbursts
I wonder at the invisible sources that agitate the dark expanse below your surface
The forces that conjure up the unforgiving fierceness of your rage

Long ago, Jesus spoke and the ocean storms subsided
I pray today that miracle will be repeated

International Adoption

2008-11-04T04:05:00.000-08:00

In the past week, I've inadvertently stumbled upon two separate sources which have reminded me why I want so badly to adopt a child from another (low-income) country. Why am I telling you this? Maybe to simply share with you what drives me (and Chad) to do this; though, I must admit, before I knew the facts or started researching into this the desire was there. I can only explain it as something it seems God wants Chad and me to do.

Consider the following facts:
"The average under-5 mortality rate (possibly the best indicator of overall child welfare) in the low-income countries is 20 times what it is in the high-income countries. It is not uncommon in the poor countries to find rates of under-5 malnutrition of 30 per cent to 40 per cent--though it can be as high as 84 per cent (in Bangladesh) or 63 per cent (in India), which together account for about one in six of the world's population" (Charles R. Beitz, "Social and Cosmopolitan Liberalism," International Affairs 75.3 (1999): 515-29.)

Secondly, I share with you a short video of the adoption story of University of Georgia football coach March Richt and his family. http://theologica.blogspot.com/2008/10/mark-richt-family-and-adoption.html

I look forward, with you, until the time comes.

Fall happenings

2008-10-27T07:01:00.000-07:00

Hello, all! I have not written in some time and thought I'd update you just a little on what's going on in my (cold and already-winter) world of Edinburgh.

A little update from the academic front:
1. I have just declined a position as an English tutor next semester. This was a very difficult decision, which I was advised a great deal on by my current two supervisors as well as my mentor from the States, Wendy. Here, the post-grad students conduct tutorials; they are not "TA's," or teacher's assistants, as they are back home. The position earns a nominal amount of pay and is sought after more for the teaching experience it furnishes one's CV with. For several reasons, including the poor translation of tutor back home, I have declined because I must stay focused on my own research. If I take a fourth year to finish, I will cost me over 9,000 pounds. That's right. A lot of money no matter what the exchange rate is doing by then!

2. I got an office of my own on campus, finally! Well, it's not my own, my own. I will share it with another PhD student, an American girl whom I adore, and who is also a Christian doing an English degree. Obviously, we have a lot in common, and she is a sight for sore eyes in ways I cannot articulate briefly.

3. Chad is hacking away - - maybe I should say crafting away, hacking sounds so clumsy and messy! - - at a paper summarizing the debate about evolution in scientific theory. Next, he is excited to start a paper on what he hopes will become his MA thesis, the life of the mind in the charismatic church. He is happy with his progress and looking forward to graduating next winter!

On a more personal level:
1. We are counting down the weeks until we get to come home for Christmas break! Let me be honest: I've been counting down the days since September!

2. We went to our first ceilidh Friday night (ceilidh is a Scottish dance). It was so much fun, we ourselves even joined in the dancing, a rare sight! I have a short video of one of the dances on my Facebook page if you want to see it for yourself!

Until we speak again, happy trick-or-treating. And happy voting. May the best team win...

All our love,
Kim & Chad

John Stuart Mill

2008-09-23T05:06:00.000-07:00

I am reading Kwame Anthony Appiah's Ethics of Identity. Appiah is a philosopher here exploring the relationship between individuality and ethics. Particularly, he has evoked the topic of "ethical flourishing," defining that as, in my paraphrase, living the best life one can lead.

His whole first chapter is on John Stuart Mill. There's a quote of of Mill's which I must duplicate here. This was written in a letter to his friend, David Barclay:

"'There is only one plain rule of life eternally binding...try thyself unweariedly till thou findest the highest thing thou art capable of doing, faculties and outward circumstances being both duly considered, and then DO IT.'"

How can I expound on this without taking away from it? I believe it stands on its own...

Hopeful

2008-09-23T05:02:00.000-07:00

September marks our one-year anniversary in Edinburgh—one-year away from home, one-year into my PhD, and, for Chad, one-year sabbatical (of sorts) from vocational ministry. The actual date when we arrived in Scotland last year was September fifth. Why is this coming nearer to October? Since the beginning of this month, I have been wracking my brain in reflection, only to find that sometimes brains don’t work like mirrors, or photographs, or whatever functional image reflection is intended to suggest! Sometimes they're too submerged in the soil of the present moment, like a seed or like youthfulness. I’ve been pondering and praying about what I’ve learned this past year, how I’ve changed, and what lies ahead in our time here. I intended to produce something firm—like a list—but, alas, at this stage, that proved an impossible task. I’m too embedded in the present-ness of this all to see clearly enough. Some argue that memory is always unreliably faulty. I would say that it is often far more helpful for perspective than the now.

Take heart, though. All is not lost! For there are yet things to be said in this commemorative month. For one, I am hopeful. While hope may not be one of the nine fruits of the Spirit, its sweetness in my life now is only attributable to the fruit of God’s continued nurturing of me through his Spirit and my loved ones. Last year was dominated by homesickness for me. What is homesickness but a sense of loss? A sense of being separated. Of being in a place that doesn’t fit quite right, like borrowing shoes that are too big, and so one is constantly reminded that they are not yours. This is a feeling far from hope. Of course, there were moments when hope came bursting through the slate gray that characterizes Britain's sky…most of the year (just read the recent articles on the Vitamin D deficiency in people here due to lack of sunshine! http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article4753513.ece). You all will remember the, how can I describe it but an altar-building, moment when I came home from Christmas, contemplating throwing in the towel, only to find a letter at my flat awarding me a scholarship which covered the rest of my tuition? That generated some hope.

Skype, that many-splendored thing, gave me moments of peace, if not hope, in the midst of my separation-anxiety. In contrast, my precious grandmother, “Namaw,” has described to me the years they spent in Germany when my Grandfather was in the Navy and my dad and aunt were in their early teens. I imagine the distance from home and family was more severely experienced without today’s instantaneous and affordable access to those back home through email and Skype. Though I’ve realized that any kind of writing to people back home temporarily collapses distance – words taking on the power to defy space – because when I write to someone, when my thoughts are completely focused on him or her, I feel like we are together. I imagine my grandmother wrote many letters on her typewriter.

I have more hope in the goodness of people because of a person. I've learned my husband has a heart of gold. Of course, I already knew this, but I know it now in a more profound and further experienced way since being here. You all know that in some ways, being here is a sacrifice for him. I need only mention the word Starbucks! Yes, he loves this city. Who wouldn’t? Yes, he loves being in this culture, which has offered both of us such a different perspective. (This is a highly educated, actively secularized, densely international place.) He loves being around so many students at work, where he gets to exercise all of this philosophy and theology, apologetics, he is learning in his schooling. Being out of vocational ministry also affects one’s personal relationship with Jesus. Let’s describe it as analogous to going camping- getting back to our roots. It’s been good for him and us in numerous ways. Still, he works at Starbucks full-time. Not something he had aspired to as a young lad (thought I'd throw in some Scottish for ya'll Texans). But he has never—not once—complained about it, something I don't think he could say of me if the tables were turned. I would have been complaining, clamorously. Instead, he is my biggest supporter every time we have our routine conversation (always evoked by me) on the topic "what-the-heck-am-I-doing-here-and-why-didn't-I-choose-a-career-that-required-less-school?!@#$." He believes in this more than I do sometimes…and in those moments it keeps me going.

Okay, enough of the mushy stuff already! Looking forward, I am on track to finish in another two years, September 2010. This is very good. Most students take four years, but it is supposed to take three. I only have funding for three. Furthermore, I am making new friends: Ashli, Kirralee, Beth, Kristen. Names attached to featureless faces for you, but know that they are the features of life for me! Also, Chad has recently been moved up to supervisor at the Bucks and has been doing some webpage upkeep for a company that pays him 25 pounds/hour. While work is scarce for the latter, it still pays well, and Chad is learning new skills.

In closing, you may be wondering about how Chad’s family fared during Hurricane Ike. None of their homes were water damaged. There were smaller issues. But all are well. Most are home.