Re: UCW leadership

Me: I'm so sad
that I didn't get to see you two in action together

Moh lei: no worries it wasn't that great

Me: HAHAHA

voices

In my travels - particularly the legs of my journeys that have taken me through New Haven, New York, and Beijing - I've met men and women who feel, material possessions stripped away, as though the only thing they have left is their story.

I've also met many people, regardless of economic status, who feel that their stories are unimportant and unheeded. Some of these people remember their stories, but think that they're only useful as a means to an end. Hoping to monetize their background, they leverage their characteristics and very selves into concrete value. They don't think who they are matters so much as what they can accomplish.

How many people have been told, over and over again, that their stories don't matter?

How can these men and women find a voice - and how can we tell them that there is Someone out there to whom their lives matter, on an intimate level?

define: Emotional booty call

[All credit goes to jopan, IV staff at Case Western.]

"Emotional booty call n.

"A late-night summons through telephone, online chatting, or text messaging to the opposite gender -- in reaction to felt emotional distress -- for the purpose of emotional consolation and attachment in a non-platonic, dependent manner.

"This is pretty self-explanatory. Emotional booty calls happen when you "think" you have no one else to talk to but that one person of the opposite gender that you semi-like, who will undoubtedly understand your situation/distress, and will absolutely have the right response/consolation. I think there can be healthy contact with friends when processing and/or problem-solving needs to happen, but only when the person has really determined their emotional boundaries and figured out whether or not they 1) have actually thought through the situation, and if they need to be calling someone else about it (or need to ask Jesus about it first); 2) if that someone must be a person of the opposite gender; 3) are emotionally "settled", rather than reaching for the phone the minute they feel an unhelpful emotion. To consider the other side -- how might one respond if they are on the receiving end of the emotional booty call?

"Emotional booty calls = unhelpful!! and really, it's selfish - self-pleasing, and self-centered."

Children Bearing Gifts: the Relationship of Christians to Art.

Children Bearing Gifts: the Relationship of Christians to Art.

Originally given at Café a Dieu, 04.04.2009,

at The Golden Center, St. Thomas More Catholic Chapel and Center at Yale.

The first personal encounter with art that I can recall comes from the age of ten, when my sister and I attended a class taught by a professional artist from our church. Once a week, we would pick up our sketchbooks and shoeboxes full of art supplies, be packed up in the back of our minivan, and dropped off at a church classroom. There, Mrs. Barrett would teach us about perspective, colors, or shading, then turn us loose, pencils and oil paints in hand. Our parents, as they arrived to pick us up, were be greeted by arms filled with paintings and sketches, the fruits of our labors and their monthly tuition checks.

Even now, returning home, I still occasionally come across sketchbooks filled with my youthful handiwork. Browsing through the artwork, I often wonder what my mother must have thought, every week, as her son returned bearing page after page of lovingly, painstakingly, and poorly drawn STAR WARS spaceships.

My mother has preserved sketchbooks that are literally filled, cover to cover, with illustrations of X-Wings, TIE Fighters, and the occasional attempt to illustrate the Battle of the Death Star. And, let me tell you: what I lacked in aesthetic skill, I more than made up for in productivity.

By high school, I had begun to regard these drawings with a hint of embarrassment. It wasn’t that I had grown artistically; but I had grown ashamed of my youthful enthusiasm for Luke Skywalker. Recalling my younger artistic streak, I would wonder what could possibly have motivated my parents to store such pitiful things away so carefully.

Reflecting back now, I think I’ve begun to understand why my parents saved those drawings. It’s not that my art - in either content or execution - was of any aesthetic value. But they are still dear to them because of what they represent: memories of me running up to my mom after class, bearing my latest work, filled with the childish joy and simple pride of spending my youthful reserves of skill and energy to produce something just for her. And, while my mother has never been a STAR WARS fanatic, her love for me transformed my interests and delight into her own. For this reason, I think, my mother finds twofold pleasure in that artwork: first, as a symbol of her importance to me; and, second, as a genuine representation of me as I was at the time; my childhood interests and passions.

I suspect that the work of a Christian Artist is best performed when it stems from similar desires, turned towards God: beyond displays of ability, or the production of aesthetically stunning works, the Christian who finds herself engaged in Art is engaged in the same pursuit as that child painting, singing, or dancing for his loving parents: we are conveying, to God, His unequalled significance to us; and we are producing work that brings its audience into an honest encounter with the truth of our love and passions.

I. To convey to God our unequalled enjoyment of Him.

These may sound vague: what does it mean to tell God that He is of unequalled importance to us?

The first answer that springs to mind comes from the Protestant and Catholic catechisms, which open by addressing the goals of human existence: in the Reformed Church’s Westminster Shorter Catechism, the first question is asked, What is the chief end of man?, and this answer provided: Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever. Similarly, the Second Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church begins with a prologue that trumpets that “The Life of Man” has as its purpose “To Know and Love God”.

To Know God; to Glorify Him; to enjoy Him; to Love Him. If these are the primary ends for which we, as Christians, believe we have been created, how do we pursue them? How do we, limited, weak, fragile human beings, bring Glory to an almighty God?

In 1^st Peter Chapter 2, Verse 9, the apostle writes that “you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, so that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” Receiving the love and care of a vast and intimate God uniquely enables us to bring Him glory by proclaiming in His presence our joy at having seen ourselves “called out of darkness, into His wonderful light”. We were once guilty of an infinitely terrible crime, and faced with an infinite punishment, the only escape from which comes by an infinite grace, which, having been received, evokes in us infinite gratitude and joy.

And, in just the same way that my youthful dedication to my parents led me to hand them the fruits of my artistic labor – poorly executed, but faithfully offered – our infinite gratitude to God finds its expression in faithfully handing Him the poor fruits of our lives: our paintings and poems, songs and dances. In every facet of our selves, including the artistic, it is right to find ourselves desiring, first and foremost, to bring God praise, by demonstrating the quality and abundance of our lives in Him. As we begin to understand what it really means to be saved by grace, this desire to respond in joyful gratitude begins to push out all the other competing desires and patrons clamoring for our attention and service.

But, there is an objection that can be raised to all this; after all, it may sound troubling to limit the scope of our artistic expression simply to those things which bring God glory. After all, why can’t we let art be free of such external constraints, let it simply be “art for art’s sake”?

Well, for one thing, love, even as it brings freedom, also necessitates limits. Any mutual love imposes on the lives of those whom it touches; but it is a joyful imposition! Yes, Love limits us; it limits us in our impatience, when we desire to withhold forgiveness; It restrains us in our jealousy, in our boasting, in our pride, and in our anger. Love, when truly tasted, makes us long to stare into its depths and lose sight of everything else as we contemplate and adore the object of our love.

II. To provide audiences an honest encounter with the truth we find surrounding us.

And also, by saying that our art should bring God glory, I don’t simply mean that the truths we convey have to be uniformly pleasant.

A natural part of becoming a Christian is that a man gradually finds himself peering into two worlds at once: the world that is “real-at-the-moment”, and the world of “actual reality.” The world of the moment is the world of suffering, of distance, of sin; but, being brought more and more sharply into focus as we grow more familiar with God, is the world as it actually was intended to be: a world of peace, of intimacy, of healing and loving unity.

This is what I mean by saying that it the second goal of the Christian Artist to provide the audience with an honest encounter of truth: God’s revelation of Himself – at once intimately personal and immensely large-scale – provides the Christian with two points of view, both of which serve the artist as inspiration. To limit the scope of artistic revelation to one or another of these viewpoints rings false: while our hope is sure and our faith secure, to claim that we can distill our experience of Christ into feel-good, pastel-colored images of serenity and passivity is a dramatic oversimplification. If we do so, we create kitsch, a shallow sentimentality that is the opposite of Good Art, because it has no connection to the complex experiences and dreams of the audiences we invite to partake in the artistic experience with us.

The opposite oversimplification – presenting the dire state of sin, while withholding a sense of overpowering hope – is equally poor art, for it is also untrue. As Christians, for whom “in all things, we are more than conquerors, because of Christ who loved us” (Rom. 8:37), it is disingenuous to pretend that our eternal well-being can be jeopardized by the passing and momentary ills of this world.

We Christians have space to discuss both despair and hope precisely because our hope can be counted on to endure. In the Christian life, there is room for both the sad truth of the fallen world as well as the glad tidings of the redemption that is beginning to shine through its cracks. After all, without death, resurrection is meaningless; but, without resurrection, death is simply a cold, inevitable end-of-story. So it is necessary to present, in our every creative work, the full trajectory of the Gospel, never shrinking from honestly portraying the total story of fallenness and redemption; but always hinting at glimpses of the Hope to overcome the despair, and the Comforter who seeks us out in our loneliness.

Art expresses the truth, hope, and passion that we have found, or want to find, in the world around us. At age 10, I found my passion in STAR WARS; and my art reflected that. But now, for today, and tomorrow, and increasingly as the days pass, that passion is focused on the being and character of God. And I hope that the work of my hands can come to daily reflect that focused passion more and more.

Once, I drew pictures of spaceships, and happily presented the results of my work to my parents. Today, right now, we are all creating, not just as artists, but as humans going about our daily lives. I pray that we can, one day, happily present the results to our Heavenly Father.

it's been a long time

i shouldn'ta left you/ without a hot blog to get through

you know how it is, this is the life, right? I done been staying moving for the past 2 weeks nearly non-stop:

for the first week of Yale College's spring break, I was on tour with Living Water in western West Virginia (holla @ Williamson) and Kentucky.

After catching a midday flight back last Saturday, I got back into New Haven at 11:30 Saturday night, with just enough time to unpack, catch some sleep at home, wake up, pack, and head out for a full day of driving to the UCW Habitat for Humanity 2009 site, in the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania (holla @ Greene County and my people in Waynesburg).

After a week of building (a brick....) howwses and such, we took the 10-hour drive back yesterday, I spent ~4 hours fixing my computer which got infected by the Trojan.Vundo rootkit, slept, went to church, and spent a thoroughly joyful evening watching tv, napping, and thinking about streetwears and hip-hops, right where i now sit.

bidda-yow.

Big ups to the NV$N brand, Rich Long, dallas to the penn, kalvin trancao for the busy works tee, edem glover the realest hip-hop head in Berea, living water, Darlene "Dusky" O'Toole, Peter Van der Beek, "Hank Leigh", Big Ray, Lil Ray, Bobby Ray, janice wong, and time to stay moving.

more to come, but for now a quick overview of all that i had going on over the few weeks immediately preceding my travels (2/2 - 3/3/2009):

Thursday02.05.2009

In mid-January, Niche started stocking Head Porter both
in-store as well as online, making them one of the few
stores on this side of the Pacific (if not the only store) to
do so. Having recently misplaced my old Manhattan
Portage cell phone case, I seized on their January free
shipping offer and copped my first Head Porter item.


"My Philosophy" (c) KRS-ONE.



Friday02.06.2009


"ALL YOU SEE IS... CRIME IN THE CITY"

Tails! tags at the corner of Wall and Temple, New Haven.

Saturday02.07.2009

I love to see it when my people get put on...


Jess Chang and I been down since my freshman year
at school. She is a real up-and-coming talent on the
burgeoning (?) classical music scene, and her string
quartet is making big moves... it don't stop!!


B and I lived together for two of my years in Morse, and he is captain
of the Yale track team this year!!! Sonn be lookin good [||] on that poster,
doing what he do best.

Sunday02.08.2009


Sighted at church: design FAIL.

"Halls" be lucky that Hallmark isn't more litigious than they are... or
are they??


SHERLOK and SOLE stickers, New Haven.

Monday02.09.2009

After kickin it with him for a while, I crashed at my boy
Ray's downtown place Sunday night; i emerged to find
the weather crisper'n a pair of white nikes.


I dare anyone to complain about Morse college's looks!!
This is proper, nah right?


Just a good day - I kicked it in the library all afternoon, just getting
some work done and enjoying the view.

Tuesday02.10.2009

More birthdays: both David Chen and Iris Yang. Chea!


You know how we do, got the mad mad crew up in the house (c) KRS.


Green


Before they were a couple... but you can see it right?


One of my favorite Hawai'ians






Don't never say the kid doesn't still have the wild style! Holla BACK!


Birthday cake pt 1...


And pt 2.






Bday kids

Wednesday02.11.2009


I stay fly with mad styles, but you already knew that,
didnt you?

And just as I was headed out the door dressed like that,
a package I been waiting for with anticipatory and
bated breath showed up on my doorstep! So you know I
had to take that, rewind it back... (google it)


Chea!


Man... Staple even has customized packing tape...
This sort of attention to the details is just one of the
many reasons why they are absolutely killing the
game right now.


What's inside??? let's see... stickers...


Thanks Jeff!


Oh... aiight... that's what's up... and all in my size, too.


Word!! Pretty much every CD out on Staple Sounds right now,
including some live CD's of Hiroshi Fujiwara (!) jam sessions.


Another pair of my favorite denims, the Stapleton
1975. Levi's 501 cut, 14.5 oz Italian denim. No details,
no branding except for a leather hip patch, just good
jeans. I bought a pair as soon as they first came out
two Fall seasons ago, and have worn them ~2-3 times
a week, almost every week, since... good thing that i
copped when i did, too, because the price has since
jumped from extremely reasonable (120) to what they
probably deserve (170-190, comparable to APC)...
but the price for these = $0!


And more... the DJ Muro collabo tee, and a short-sleeve... in the current
Springtime weather, this is gonna get some wear, you know it.

MAJOR props to jeffstaple, the reed space crew & staff, and twitter (i
guess...). This is how you build a client base, for life.

Friday02.13.2009

James' sister hit town and we went out for Thai Food, along with
other UCdubbers.



Sunday02.15.2009


Esther Lee's phone is adorable, that's all I wanted to say here.

Monday02.16.2009


Some stickers... SOLE is gettin up...


I unboxed my ALIFE "Frog Pack" Everybody Hi's
on account of the weather being so fresh that day.


Joints scraped my achilles tendon region all raw.
Moral of the story: either break in the kicks first,
or wear something OTHER than low-profile athletic
socks.


Some of yall get this.

Sunday02.22.2009

Having not taken a day off in about two weeks, I still had a long
week of intense work to look forward to, which unfortunately
included succumbing to illness, working through it, my condition
steadily decreasing, and ultimately, starting Thursday night,
deciding to spend the following 50 hours in my room in order to
recuperate and scramble together a sermon for Sunday. At some
point during that time, I decided to bounce to New Yiddy after
church on Sunday, to kick it with the fam out there.

First night I hung with Steve Yu.


Late-night dinner..... falafel in midtown... yea!


One of the dudes I look up to and have relied on the
most, no lies.

Monday02.23.2009


Steve and his roommate have a solid place in the midtown housing
jects

After an afternoon kicking it with an old man (blee), I headed uptown
to Harlem House, home of some of the rawest dudes I know in the
City: the NYU Navigators.


You know how they get down in the city!!!


After linking up with my boy Lando Schelrissian at
the house, we headed downtown towards NYU to
his evening Bible discussions and a leadership
meeting.


Shopping with big L


He takes care of his kids way bettern I do

Tuesday02.24.2009


Uptown baby, we gets down baby, for the crown baby...

St. Nicholas Place, Harlem! It's rough in the skreets!

before heading out of town, you know I had to drop
by SoHo... but I only had about an hour of downtime
before my train left for New Haven, so I had to
choose wisely... you know UNIQLO never ever
disappoints!


This is how they're displaying the upcoming S/S 09
line. In miniature!

After finally copping the short, light, well-fitting pea
coat that I've been looking everywhere for (but
finally found in Uniqlo... sadly in canvas, not wool),
I headed back to New Haven, refreshed.

Wednesday02.25.2009


POO. Best tag.


Nobu and I straight kicking it.


Nike SB "November Rain" Dunk Mids.


"In the Chaplain's office, there are no right answers
about religion, only really good questions" <= Public image FAIL. I've noticed that they've since changed that line in their printed materials.... good for them.

Thursday02.26.2009


You said it... i guess?


The colors are pretty ill. It seems that all of em (except blue?) are
representing on this plate. Way to go James!


Tiffs & Staple design denim & jacket.


My roommate David was kind enough to bring me by
the New Haven post office... I copped a NIKE SB suit
vest (yea they made those) and the seller made the
obvious gaffe of ordering signature confirmation. So
I had to haul myself out of my little world of foot
traffic and hoof it out there thanks to David's coupe.

Let me just put this out there: NO ONE who works is
gonna be home in the middle of the day to sign for
your package!!! [||]. Come on, people.

And having copped a sweet vest, you know I had to go
all out afterwards.




Oh yeah it's like that.

Frisday02.27.2009




My Sun Chips got wedged into the Berkeley basement vending
machine. The first time in years that I used a vending machine
wound up costing me a gold dollar and aggravation. SMH.


Moh lei made a cake for Ben's bday! Ausome.

Saturday02.28.2009


As I passed the Grove St. Cemetery, I noticed these
little birds. All chillin' and such.




Andrea hard on the grind...


Waiting for the bus back home, I noticed for the first time that Yale's
recycling bins are specially branded for them. Nice touch.

Sunday03.01.2009


AISON (?) tag, New Haven.

Tuesday03.03.2009

For my upcoming birthday, my parents copped me an
H&M slim fit suit, seeing as how ive been both getting
into more growed-up wears (don't worry, streetwear is
still the default!) and also seeing as how even so-called
tailored suits are usually too large for me.




Thanks mom & pops.