Thursday, April 30
Grand Rapids, Mich.
Last week, I was in Hong Kong to celebrate my Uncle Lawrence’s 90th birthday. Thirteen of us traveled from the U.S. to mark the occasion. We brought with us so much baggage—the residue of past struggles, the debris of ongoing conflicts, barely suppressed longing as well as questions of belonging—yet we still showed up. And gathered around that banqueting table, there was also so much obvious affection.
In other words, we were—we are—just another ordinary family.
My cousin’s daughter Sharon, a gregarious medical student with a beautifully ready smile, channels some of her love for our family into endless questions about heritage and history. As the servers brought course after delicious course—stuffed morels, braised goose feet and abalone, a gorgeous grouper bathed in ginger, scallion, and soy—she asked and asked and asked. I and other relatives answered as best we could. But even as I did, I considered some of the things I left unsaid, including my own ambivalence about having left part of my heart at home in Michigan with my husband.
Tristan is also my family. I wished he could be with me. I wanted him—us—to be welcome at that table. I have prayed that circumstances and convictions might shift in my relatives.
I, I, I— This trip was about my Uncle Lawrence, was it not?
Yes, and— Simply by referring to him as my Uncle Lawrence, I’ve hinted at the complicated both/and. It was about him, but it was also about us. I am who I am and he is who he is only because we are who we are, which is to say, family.
--
Let me tell you a little bit about us.
When I was 12, my grandmother, my sister, and I boarded a plane in San Francisco to go to Hong Kong. Uncle Lawrence had invited us to stay with him and his wife for the summer. He is the one from whom I learned to love stamp collecting. He is the one who impressed upon me the importance of receiving stories from my elders. An eldest son, he is the one who instilled in me, also an eldest son, the particular responsibilities we have in the context of a Chinese family. An ordained minister, he is the one who baptized me on a hot, humid Sunday that August.
When I came out in my 20s, he made his disapproval clear, but he also reiterated his care for me. When I entered seminary, he expressed concern about the “liberal” theology at Princeton, yet he also slipped me a sizable amount of money to pay for books.
Whatever our theological differences, he still teaches me. He is long past the age when he could deservedly just do the easy thing—say, sit at home amidst his beloved books, listening to classical music. While he recently decided to stop preaching, he continues to serve a unique congregation in Hong Kong, as he has for the past 16 years. This English-speaking Baptist gathering is almost all women and almost entirely made up of Filipino domestic workers.
Last Sunday, my family worshiped with them, and afterward, at a luncheon celebrating him, we heard testimonies of his faithfulness. They spoke of how he has proclaimed good news to them, encouraged them, listened to them, reminded them that they are loved.
“The Honorable Lawrence Chu,” the icing on his birthday cake said. That seems right to me.
--
My family is obviously not the only one that finds itself divided over matters apparently too difficult, or inconvenient, or uncomfortable, to discuss. Maybe it has always been this way, but nowadays, particularly with social media, everything seems strangely and simultaneously out in the open yet unspeakable still.
We are, as I said, just another ordinary family.
I can control only my own decisions, and, let me be honest, there are times when I’ve wondered whether I’ve been too compliant, too quiescent. Is my willingness to stay in relationship—with my family, with friends of differing convictions, with a denomination that has not been clearly affirming—courage or is it actually cowardice?
I’ve occasionally been told it’s the latter. Once, I had a preaching invitation rescinded because the pastor of that (progressive) church decided that, because of my posture, I couldn’t be trusted with LGBTQ+ congregants.
This is description, not prescription. Others might make different choices, with good reason, and I don’t tell others what to do when it comes to the boundaries they set with others. But I do wonder whether we sometimes mistake discomfort for danger while also underestimating the power of our presence. I still believe what I said when it comes to my place in the order of things: I am who I am only because we are who we are, which is to say, family. And I refuse to live life by litmus test. Anyway, I can’t reconcile that way of being with my understanding of the call to love. It also occurs to me that it is precisely because of the love of my family, specifically my ever-patient and gracious Tristan, that I’m able to love my family, including those who do not affirm our marriage.
“Love bears all things,” Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians. I suspect he knew that love wasn’t some giant cosmic cushion that can absorb anything and everything. I think he understood that it has to be embodied, that it can be incredibly challenging to live out, and that it is real only when incarnated through our actions. If love bears all things, someone has to be willing to do the carrying.
I say that even as I insist on believing my uncle shoulders his burden the best way he knows how. You might ask how I know. I don’t. But I do believe. Love, after all, “does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking,” Paul wrote. “It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
What I’m Growing: I came home to a yard full of blossoming tulips.
Recently, reflecting on a hike in the UK she took with her husband in the wake of a cancer diagnosis, Nadia Bolz-Weber talked on Kate Bowler’s podcast about the importance of noticing beauty even amidst struggle and devastation. The landscapes they walked through, in the north of England, were spectacular. “It was so beautiful and I kept telling myself, This is the world. This is also the world,” she said. “Despair is not going to save us.”
What I’m Watching: Over a month ago, a humpback whale somehow made its way into the Baltic Sea, off Germany’s coast, where humpbacks are not normally found. It got stranded. Earlier this week, an audacious attempt began to try to return Timmy, as he has been named, to the open ocean. Rescuers managed to nudge Timmy onto a ginormous barge, which is now slowly making its way toward the whale-friendlier waters of the North Sea. Live tracking is available online.
What I’m Thinking About: Last year, I read Gary Shteyngart’s entertaining love letter to the capybara in The New Yorker. En route to Hong Kong, my nephew Caleb and I stopped for a few days in Tokyo, and Caleb eagerly agreed when I asked if he might like to visit a capybara cafe. So off we went to Cappiness, in Shinjuku.
Folks, I fell in love a little bit. These creatures are so weird. They like to be (gently) poked! They purr! They are not as soft as they look!
Punch and Vanilla were inside the cafe (not really a cafe, because you can’t actually drink anything while hanging out with the capybaras), while Yanbo was kept out on the patio. I really felt for Yanbo—the literal outsider, the marginalized one. Punch and Vanilla were lolling on mattresses indoors while Yanbo was out there, exposed to the elements. He even tried to open the sliding-glass door with his teeth.
But then the humans at Cappiness told us that Yanbo can be a bit of a bully and a biter and a jerk, in particular toward his brother, Punch. Relatable. Just another ordinary family.
Programming notes: This Sunday, I will be preaching at Westminster Presbyterian Church here in Grand Rapids. All are welcome, in person or online, at 10 a.m. ET.
After a season of intense travel, I am pleased to report that I have no plane tickets booked for an entire month. I am less pleased to note that I’m way behind on my PhD dissertation, so the bulk of May will be devoted to that work. I won’t be traveling again until the very end of the month, when I fly to North Carolina to preach at my beloved Crosspointe, on May 31st.
The following Sunday, June 7th, I’ll be at West End UMC in Nashville, Tennessee. Then, on June 14th and 21st, I’ll be preaching at First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, Calif. If you’re in or near any of those places, please mark your calendar and gather with us for worship (or join online).
On a recent long airplane ride, I watched the entirety of the first season of the wondrous emergency-room drama The Pitt. (We don’t have HBO at home.) One line, spoken by Dr. Robby, has stuck with me. “This place will break your heart,” he said to his gathered crew of exhausted doctors and nurses. “But it is also full of miracles.”
That’s true of the wider world too. And even as we bear witness to heartbreak, we also have to keep looking for the miracles.
That’s it from me this week. As ever, I’m so grateful for your presence here with me.
All my best,
Jeff
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.