Rant of the Exiles

Money has a mystical quality. In ages past (aka 10 years ago), people carried around paper currency. New, crisp bills had a sacred aura. The stamped sheets of green had a fresh aroma like a new car. And then there were metallic circles called coins. I remember my parents used to collect pennies in rolls. I haven't seen a roll of pennies in years and I'm certain it functions better as a paperweight.  Technology has worked to make money invisible and touchless. It's no longer a physical transaction. We pay our credit cards online and shift them out of our attention through auto-pay. We set up recurring donations to our local church or charity. Taxes, healthcare premiums, and 401(k) contributions are automatically deducted from our paychecks and the remainder is directly deposited to our bank accounts. Even as money has become less visible, it's also become more visible in strange and magical ways. Every now and then, I scroll through my Venmo public transaction feed and g...

My son, Caleb, graduated from high school this past May. I wanted to celebrate the milestone with an event that would foster a sense of dignity about becoming a man while also conveying responsibility and vulnerability in regards to power.  Months earlier, I told my friend Jon about my son’s imminent adulthood. Jon described how he hosted a manhood blessing event when his son turned 18 years old. He gathered a group of men that had spent time with his son. He called it Knights, Warriors, and Barbarians: The Commissioning of Sam. There were copious amounts of grilled meat. And each man spoke a blessing over his son. I loved everything about it except the name. Chivalry, protection, and courage are vital aspects of manhood but violence has a tainted narrative. The process of planning and executing this event was greatly meaningful to me. So much so, that I debated whether and how to write about it. My indecision finally broke after I recounted the manhood blessing night to...

My dad and I in Southorn Playground When I was a kid, one of my enduring memories of my dad was lectures he gave my brother and me about his impoverished upbringing. He would regale us with tales of how hard he worked to gain entrance into National Taiwan University, make it to America, obtain a master’s degree, get a job at IBM, become a successful project manager, and then own an expensive home in Almaden Valley. I have not so fond memories of sitting there in guilt and shame as he described to my brother and me the circumstances he overcame because of his diligent work ethic. That was an enduring paternal narrative of my childhood. Unlike his immigrant peers, he didn’t put as much pressure on me or my brother to succeed but he was extremely critical of us and quick to point all the advantages we grow up with that he did not.  And then when I was around 13 years old, my dad became a follower of Jesus and his narrative gradually began to shift. It didn’t become apparent t...

Lake Schmidell, Desolation Wilderness After attending the bar mitzvah of a friend of Caleb's earlier this year, I got excited about doing some kind of manhood ritual for him.  It was my first bar mitzvah and I was deeply moved by the experience. I identified two aspects of the Jewish coming of age ceremony where the adolescent male invests in the process. First, he must sing a large section of the Old Testament in Hebrew from memory. Second, he must perform a community service project and present a report during the ceremony. There was incredible symbolism throughout the worship service. Everything is sung in Hebrew and the rabbi did a great job explaining the meaning behind the objects. The Torah is held up and people touch it as it passes to demonstrate reverence and obedience. This ceremony represented the confluence of four distinct identities: spiritual, ethnic, family, and gender. The closet Protestant equivalent is baptism, if baptism were also ethnic and gender-orient...

Anne-Marie's Slaughter's controversial "Why Women Still Can't Have It All" examines why women continue to face barriers in career advancement that men don't.  After I read it, I felt angry.  I wasn't exactly sure why. I believe structural discrimination against women exists in corporate culture. I believe this bias extends to the evangelical church. And I believe stereotypes that Asian American women are submissive and compliant aren't helpful to career success either. And yet something about the article really bugged me.  But today I figured it out. In a New York Times blog post, Michael Winerip's  "He Hasn't Had It All Either"  hit it on the head. He articulated exactly what I've had trouble expressing. Who gets to have it all? Where did this assumption come from that we can get everything we dream about? Like Winerip, a writer who worked from home in order to be more involved with his kids, I'v...

Being an alpha male and being a good listener appear to be opposing ideals. But being a good listener requires a game principle called outcome independence. Here's a good primer on outcome independence from a Christian perspective (specifically for pastors!) and one decidedly not , but with gospel implications. Outcome independence means you stay focused on an important goal or process despite resistance. The Old Testament prophets including Jeremiah and Isaiah were HIGHLY outcome independent. They proclaimed judgment and repentance regardless of Israel's response. This principle will help a guy in every type of interpersonal relationship - as a father to his kids, as a husband to his wife/significant other, and as a man to his coworkers and peers. It is worth mentioning here that Asian American men in particular (and I'm preaching to myself here) would benefit greatly from learning outcome independence. Negative example: A couple days ago, I commented to Judy that she h...

Another thing I talked about at the fatherhood workshop was Bowen family systems therapy and how well it captures the typical Chinese family dynamic. The essence of Bowen theory is that the family is a unit, not just a collection of individuals. That means when one person changes, the dynamic of the rest of the family changes along with it. This understanding of the family fits well with the communal nature of Chinese culture.  One of the eight main concepts of Bowen theory is  triangles . According to Bowen, a triangle is more stable than a dyad. But the problem in a triangle is that there's always someone left out. Let's take a married couple without kids (a dyad). They might look like this below. (These pictures are really crappy. I wish I was more tech-savvy)   In the picture above, you have marital bliss without children. There is intimacy in the relationship. But once you add a child to the family, the system changes. That's what we see in stage 1 below. ...

I led a fatherhood workshop for a group of men this past Saturday. One of the things I talked about was how the typical Chinese family crushes childrens' initiative. Initiative is recognizing a need and responding to it without being asked. Most kids (and adults) don't take initiative because we grew up in a family environment where we were criticized or shamed when we did something beyond what we were asked to do, including even good and helpful things. "I know you were trying to help but how could you wash my red sweater with the whites? Don't ever do laundry without my permission again!" Initiative is foundational to leadership and manhood. A leader recognizes a problem and acts decisively, independently, and if needed, preemptively. But in Chinese culture, the combination of a controlling mother and a passive father results in children being punished for taking any kind of initiative.  Kids learn at an early age that initiative is a bad thing. I ...

I like Kay Hymowitz's writing - it can be kinda depressing but it highlights important social trends. About four years ago, I read a great book of her called Marriage and Caste . I'm surprised more people don't reference her work. She was one of the first to describe in detail the marriage gap . Articles about it are everywhere - as recent as this week . College-educated people marry at far higher rates than those who have only a high school diploma or less. People with at least a bachelor's degree also divorce at far lower rates than those less educated. This means we are creating a society where marriage is a filter for the elite and the working class and poor will stay poor due to low marriage rates. This is especially pronounced when viewed across race. In a recent article about the marriage gap's implications on fatherhood, a Pew research report published last year states 44% of black fathers with children under 19 live away from their parents. Thi...

I was talking with our church elders about the challenge of getting dads in our youth group to come to our parent appreciation night. Many of them are either out of town or too busy. In a couple instances I offered to talk directly to the dad (whom I usually know casually) and the wife or child would decline my offer and tell me that he/she would talk to him personally. This is not surprising in the Chinese church but it was little bit discouraging to me. Barna research indicates the average church gender ratio is about 2:3 men to women. That's about right in the Chinese immigrant church, perhaps even fewer men than that. It also occurred to me there is no such thing as a tiger dad. Sure, he exists, but the fact that he does makes him the exception. Amy Chua's father was, by her own admission , a tiger dad. But the fact that she is an extreme parent proves the rule. Tiger dads, by and large, do not exist, especially among Asians. Asian dads tend to be disengaged emot...