Category: Spirituality
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The Taiwanese Immigrant Church
For all their lives, my grandparents navigated through languages not their own. Taiwanese is our home language, our heart language. But my grandparents were born under the Japanese occupation of Taiwan and received their education in Japanese. Later on in their adult life they were forced to learn Chinese as the Chinese Nationalists ruled Taiwan…
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The Spirituality of Staying
In the last few years I’ve looked to the women at the cross to serve as my guides through holy week, because they were the only ones who stayed and witnessed the whole ordeal. I recognize in these women a spirituality that I desperately need. Although they were powerless in the situation, they did what…
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Two Calendars
As a child I was always confused, yet fascinated by the simultaneous use of two calendars in Taiwan. I didn’t understand why my relatives would do the extra work of keeping track of two dates. It’s hard enough to keep track of one! At the same time, I liked the idea of celebrating two birthdays!…
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The One who Births All Life
It is natural for human beings to create God in our own image. This resulted in our fatherly, masculine God because that God reflects those with power. So it may seem difficult now to transform our indoctrinated minds to envision the tender Motherhood of God. I’ve found it helpful for me to envision God as…
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God our Mother
As truly as God is our Father, just as truly is God our Mother. Julian of Norwich When 14th century mystic, Julian of Norwich, writes of God as mother, she is not using God as mother, instead of God as Father. And she’s also not trying to write a feminist theology because that wasn’t in…
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Advent Week 2: Sor Juana
O foolish men who accusewomen with so little cause,not seeing you are the reasonfor the very thing you blame
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‘The God of Seeds’
On this first week of Advent we are guided by the word ‘hope’. But for those that may not feel so hopeful or prayerful in this time, Sor Juana invites us to start simple by “praying to the God of Seeds.” Mexican poet and creative writer, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695), chose to enter…
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Our Collective Soul
I believe that the church today has largely failed to create the kind of community that we all long for. The western church has developed an event-based spirituality, rather than a community-based spirituality. To be “a good Christian” is measured by attendance and serving in the many programs a church offers, rather than the actual…
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Asian Spaces and White Spaces
As a Taiwanese-American, I grew up inherently knowing a difference between Asian spaces and White spaces. School, the post office, the grocery store, small towns, megachurches…those were White spaces. In those spaces we are treated as ‘other’ and always as ‘foreigners’. In those spaces White is the norm and authority, so I learned that we…
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This Moment
I’ve had one recurring nightmare since I was a child. It’s the kind of nightmare that startles me awake. And every few years it comes back to remind me of my deepest, unspoken fears. In my dreamworld, we have returned to a segregated American society with signs all around that say ‘Whites Only.’ In the…
Finding Eden 