Traveling

[A colleague of mine, who was two years ahead of me and graduated this past summer, had written a dissertation related to the blogosphere.  What I retained from his abstract is that there is no telling if one blogger’s entry might be their last.  I could delete my blog, or set the whole thing to private to feign disappearance, as easily as I could return from the cyber oblivion with a few clicks.  I could also write one entry, abandon my blog for nine months, while still reading others’, only to post again after the long inactivity has lost all previously interested readership.  Oh well, here goes, anyway.]

I’ve been spoiled by my trusted airline company.  The paying for checked bags policy never really applied to me, because my flying across the world at least twice a year with this company has convinced them to let me check in two free bags.  I don’t even use up all my bag quota; I just check in one.  Light packer.  My flight out on Monday was not a problem; one checked bag as usual.  My flight back was something else; another airline that does not recognize me as a loyal customer and was going to charge me for checking in my bag.  If it weren’t for the liquids, I would’ve carried the bag myself.  Checking in online would’ve saved me $5 of baggage fees, but I wasn’t completely sure if I’d suck it up and pay, or if I’d ditch the liquids and not pay (...and then paying later to replace ditched liquids...).  I was prepared to pay $5 for a few extra hours to decide. 

I showed up at the check-in counter, my mind in a 6am-ish haze, poked at some keys to get my boarding passes, plopped the luggage on the scale, watched the person attach the flight info label, took the bag tag he gave me and headed for the gate.  It wasn’t until I was standing in line for security that I realized, he didn’t ask me for my credit card.  I’d saved $20, instead of $5.

As people grew anxious to get off the plane, pulling their luggage out of the overhead compartments, the dude diagonally in front of me took a step back to better position himself while grabbing his bag.  In so doing, he stepped unrelentingly on me—my shoe.  Almost my toe.  Good thing my boots are slightly roomy.

Having escaped what could’ve been a squashed toe, I stood around the conveyor belt that would bring me my accidentally freely checked-in bag and heard an annoyed huff from behind me.  The strap to a fellow traveler’s bag had ripped.  What had thudded to the ground was three-quarters my size, which, if the man hadn’t walked far enough, might’ve knocked me over.  

Thanksgiving travels....           

A Most Spectacular Dusk Phenomenon

I’ve been trekking to The National Library of France in Paris (La Bibliothèque Nationale de France, site François Mitterand) almost every day for dissertation/research work.  It takes about an hour on the metro to get there from where I’m staying.  The Library is built around a garden and where I work is the bottom floor (rez de jardin, or garden level), so I can look from inside the Library, out the expansive glass windows and up towards the tall trees in that garden, as I head for my reserved desk space, take a break from being academic, or head out for home, which is usually around the latter part of dusk.  It is at that time that a most spectacular phenomenon takes place, every day for at least 10 minutes: swarms of what seem like flies loop above the garden, but as the swooping figure eights descend closer to the treetops, you can make out the silhouettes of fluttering bird wings against a murky blue sky.  Just as one wave of birds settle into their respective trees, another wave would come spiraling towards the garden in preparation for their descent into arboreal refuge.  Wave after wave of birds.  And as I leave the library, emerging from the escalator, I hear the concert of their chirping, sounding too excited for birds returning home after a day of doing whatever birds do during the day.

Gramma’s Generosity and God’s Grace

I like to look at her round, twinkly eyes, twinkling for eighty plus years and counting.  It’s been awhile since she’s been a little shorter than me, which makes her...pretty small.  Ever since college, with the exception of the year between college and grad school, there are only a few months in the year—the only times when I’m back on this side of the world—when I would see my paternal grandmother. 

Even though she no longer walks as fast as the rest of us, of which I’m reminded when I lose sight of her and then retreat a few steps to her pace, she’s still as lucid and sociable as ever, enjoying her weekly mahjong with friends, asking us out for dim-sum and attending church activities.  None of that grouchiness I’ve seen develop as certain people age.  I can only hope that same lucidity and sociability despite age are hereditary.

My grandmother seems like an albeit aged, cute child to me.  Her size 3.5 feet make shoe shopping difficult, or impossible, in the adult department.  “You can wear kids’ shoes,” I tell her.  “They’re not as stylish,” she says, “but I can wear shoes for 10 year-olds.”  She also holds steadfastly onto her belief in rice, with the same conviction as a child believing in Santa Claus: “I have to eat rice.  You don’t have energy if you don’t eat rice.  Rice keeps you warm.” 

What’s most remarkable about my gramma, to me, is her generosity.  Not knowing what I want and convinced of the Chinese practicality of giving cash gifts, she would sometimes bestow sums too generous for me to accept without hesitation.  In such cases, the first thing I’d want to do is tell her it’s too much, followed by wanting to give her back some portion of the present, feeling utterly undeserving of the whole.  But who does that?  Essentially, I’d be saying, “I can’t take all.  I don’t deserve all, but I can maybe deserve part of it and this is how much I think I can deserve.”  Few things can be brattier than that.  

And what about God and His grace?  Might we be doing a similar thing to Him sometimes?  Of course we know how absurd it is to negotiate with God, not necessarily having direct, tangible contact with Him as we would with a grandparent, but we might reject the extent of what He gives us, by our good deeds.  Granted, faith without works is dead and good deeds cannot substitute the faith that brings salvation, but to approach good works with the attitude that we owe God for what He’s done for us is not quite right; we shouldn’t do good in the effort to make us feel we would be more acceptable to God and more deserving of His grace.  The Christian faith, as my pastor says, is not based on doing things to earn God’s favor, but that His favor has already been bestowed on mankind by what Jesus did on the cross, dying in our place (and resurrecting), if only one would believe.  He says also that nothing one does or does not do will make that person any more or less loved already by God.     

Well, I’m grateful for my gramma’s gifts, humbled by her generosity and can do nothing but enjoy her kindness.  I’m also thankful to God, who gave me this gramma, whose generosity makes me reflect upon His grace. 

Merry belated Christmas.

From the Forest

The bottoms of my running shoes crunch mostly decisively, other times slowly and softly, meanderingly, until audible traces of my steps disappear into the cold, damp, packed mud—part of the trail not sprinkled with gravel—then if I see a crunchy leaf, if it’s not too out of the way, I will go stomp on it, breaking the silence.  The mute steps continue until the gravel reappears to provide crunching ground for my soles.  I dodge dogs attached by their leashes to their owners and close my hand around my airy leash, pretending for a moment that I too am walking a dog.  I feel the low 70’s cool on my arms and legs and marvel at the otherwise almost blinding sunlight, were it not filtering through the late May foliage above.  At this moment, I am happy.

All God

“Three three-hour written exams and a two-hour oral exam.”  Daunting, but by then, I’d be ready.  I don’t need to worry about that now.  Those were my thoughts when I was first applying to graduate schools and read about the required preliminary exam.

If I were to use an adjective to describe how I had been feeling for the past 2.5 years leading up to the prelim, it would be this: scared.  I was scared, stressed and so far from feeling ready.  There was this haunting sense of guilt that I had not been diligent enough in my exam prep and that I was horribly, hopelessly behind.  It felt like my laziness and inadequacy were digging myself into this hole so huge that I wondered how God would/could help me get out of it.          

The past week or so had been rough.  The written exams spanned a week, which felt like a marathon I had to sustain through, as opposed to a one-time deal that I could just crash and burn (and recoup).  How did I get through it?  Prayer—lots of it.  I am very blessed to have the prayers and encouragement of family and friends.  I also prayed like crazy:  when I had to drag myself out of bed, continue reading when I didn’t feel like it anymore, feeling sick and tired.  Sometimes the prayer would be a desperate, “God, help me,” because that was all I could manage.   

The implications and consequences of the prelim are huge.  Based on this exam and whether I’d pass or not, I would finally really know what the academy, represented by my 4-person committee, thinks of me.  Do I have what it takes to continue in the PhD program?  Do my professors see me as a future colleague?  Is being/becoming a Christian professor in the humanities still a vocation?  What happens if I don’t pass?  Retake, or complete uncertainty. 

What does it mean to have faith in God?  I think it means clinging onto God no matter what the outcome, singing and living, “Blessed be Your name when I’m found in the desert place though I walk through the wilderness [and] when the sun’s shining down on me when the world’s all as it should be.”* 

My committee could have easily asked me many questions that would betray my ignorance, but His grace is sufficient for me and His strength is made perfect when I am weak.  If I had finished all the reading for the exam, which was humanly impossible, I might be able to boast in myself, but the fact that I didn’t/couldn’t finish and yet still passed, I could only attribute that to God. 

*Matt Redman’s “Blessed Be Your Name”