Rant of the Exiles

I often hear complaints from Asian American that roughly go like this: “I’m a victim of low self-esteem because of how my Asian immigrant parents shamed me during my childhood. The way forward is to resent my parents and their shaming tactics and to avoid shaming experiences in the future.” According to American's society’s leading shame popularizer, Brene Brown, shame is the "intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” It’s not that this definition is 100% incorrect rather that it’s incomplete, vague, and subjective. It focuses only on the individual’s emotional experience of shame. Before shame became public emotional enemy #1, there were Asians. Eastern cultures have been centered around honor and shame for thousands of years. While it's likely that most Westerners have a different understanding of shame, the consequences for this knowledge gap are more severe for those who are bicult...

A friend at church and I were talking about dating. She met her current boyfriend on the dating app Coffee Meets Bagel. She observed there were a significant number of church members who had met each other on the app but had not previously met or gotten know one another through our church. She said: Men don’t initiate. Men are stupid.  I don’t think men are stupid. I don’t think people are stupid. I think people, for the most part, behave rationally. Let’s take a food analogy. Before processed food, people had to spend time making and preparing a roast beef sandwich for lunch. They needed fresh meat, bread, and condiments. And then they had to assemble and eat it the same day. Today, people eat a tremendous amount of processed food. For example, Lunchables are easy, convenient, and last forever. You don’t have to make them, you don’t have to package them, and they taste good. By many metrics, Lunchables are nutritious. However, it’s becoming increasingly apparent tha...

This post is different from what I usually blog about as I have many friends with loved ones who are experiencing serious medical issues. In these situations, besides being present, it’s hard to know how to be helpful, especially when sitting in on conversations with doctors. My brother , who has been a practicing physician for twelve years, recommended a book that I found incredibly useful for facilitating conversations between doctors and patients. So whether you’re a patient or the loved one of a patient, here are my takeaways on how to communicate with your doctor from Jerome Groopman’s How Doctors Think :  1) The doctor wants to help: People tend to have a polarized view of doctors. On one hand, I’ve noticed people who have a deep mistrust of health care providers. They’ve had a past negative experience that casts a long shadow. They believe doctors are lazy, dismissive, condescending, and withhold crucial information. However, one study suggests up to 83% of diagnoses...

Pastor, how do you handle the emotional weight of carrying people’s burdens? Stories are bullets Tearing through flesh, rending bone It’s my job to catch them And when hit, the kevlar takes the brunt Yet when people shoot stories And I emerge unscathed The gap between us remains A chasm of comfort divides I take off the vest, I put it down Bullets strike Loneliness, anxiety, and depression Stories of pain enter and stop I carry the weight of the sadness The slugs slacken my steps Exhaustion overwhelms I cannot contain this leaden load LORD, let the stories pass through me Let them penetrate my walls Let my borders be porous Let the stories enter and come out Let me be wounded twice  Hurt when I catch the story Hurt when I let it go Let m e feel the exit wound Stories begin with you Stories end with you In the middle, they may go through me But you hold and tell them all For you catch all the bullets...

I totally judge people. I’ve tried really hard most of my life not to judge people. I mean, Jesus said not to do it.  I've also seen so much unintentionally damaging effects of criticism and negative judgment. I’ve done it often myself. I know when I offer feedback I'm not setting out to condemn but that’s exactly how it’s experienced by the recipient.  Therefore, I want to share five steps I’ve learned to steer my observations and interpretations away from condemnation and criticism and towards encouragement and support. 1) Acknowledge your judgmental attitude and thoughts: After all these years of trying to suppress my feelings of judgment and condemnation, I now recognize it doesn’t work. Simply repeating “Stop judging” to myself doesn’t help. My judgmental thoughts don’t go away simply because I want them to. So I have learned to own them, acknowledge them, and confess them before God and it helps move beyond just hearing and being paralyzed by these negative and...

I hate silence Silence I hate it It is deafening To confront Selves  normally hidden Now disclosed by the Absence of noise Ego dreams haunt my waking Don’t leave me with me I would rather have sounds Of someone else  I drown in them The rising tide creeps upward Clinging to my throat And I can’t breathe Carnal ruminations  Hide deeper longing And this salacious hunger Swallows my imagination When outside volume turns down The inside volume blasts Thwarted by thoughts Murdered by musings Rage fantasies hem me in Circling like soldiers Prison guards approach Incarceration's thunder booms Silence I hate it It is deafening

God is big. However, in line with his gracious nature, he doesn’t always speak loudly, and hearing his voice can be difficult when I’m in the midst of fighting with myself. I have many voices going on in my head: the snarky contrarian, the positive Christian idealist, the relentless egomaniac, the compassionate shepherd, the curious adventurer, and more. But often the loudest voice is the inner moral critic. He’s a yeller. When I start to listen to some unhealthy streams - say the egomaniac's pining for public affirmation or the curious adventurer’s lust for exploration - and lose focus from whatever I was supposed to be doing, I stop myself, become aware of my wayward thoughts, and the shouts of the inner moral critic begin to escalate. The argument goes something like this: Curious Adventurer [watching Youtube cat fail videos]: Oh my gosh. Either these cats are really dumb or they’re totally being set up by their owners. I need to research this more. Positive ...