A Houseguest

Meet Squiggy! He came to Sinae and I all the way from Ohio. This is his first trip where he traveled alone but this is not his first trip to another country. He's been all over the place. He even kept soldiers in Afghanistan company. He's quiet but his presence is an encouragement to those of us living abroad. He also brought letters from the class he belongs to which were a great encouragement to me on a day when I was about fit to be tied. He is part of an educational project which the teacher who sent him to me uses to teach her students, one of which is the oldest daughter of two of my best friends. So far we've taken over 250 pictures so even though this was originally for a group of elementary school students hopefully this will give you a little more of a chance to see what life is like in Korea for Sinae and I.

We are the World

The last song I heard tonight at an English Camp talent contest at the university where I currently work was "We are the World". I guess this song is also by Michael Jackson. I remember singing this song during Vacation Bible School when I was a child and how upset my family was that we were learning to sing a secular song in church which we eventually performed in a service while the pastor was gone. My mind went a few different directions. On the one hand, with all the references to "love" in this song and the others that students sang, I thought it could pass for a Christian song. But then I thought of how love has become this safe word that is embraced by all. And I wondered if Christians could capitalize on this message by inviting people to partake of the Kingdom that takes seriously the issues of this world. I was also troubled by some lyrics and the introduction to the song that seemed to suggest that if we would just throw money at the world's problems that those problems will go away. As one who was born and raised in the richest country in the world, which also has its own issues of poverty, I felt hopeless about the answer to such problems. One of my most highly-esteemed university professors once told me to spit on the fire if I have a burden for it. That thought came to mind. I like to think that what people living in poverty need more than money or pity is time. In my thinking people need time to build relationships with someone who says, "I don't care how much money you have or don't have. I'm not going to try to fix you. I just want to be your friend and to be a part of your life if you will let me in." Is there a counterargument to this?

A Reflection on a Performance of "Heal the World"

I'm not particularly much of a fan of Michael Jackson, whether it be his early life or late life, early career or late. I didn't even know that he sang a song about doing something about the world. And it was that song that nearly brought me to tears tonight. I'm not sure I would announce this publicly under most circumstances but since I am moving to another university, and this seems to be a way in which I can successfully express my feelings, I'd like to take a few minutes to think about it. First, I think the song was merely representative of some symbolism of what I've experienced at Korea Nazarene University over the last 4 1/2 years. Actually, the first time I heard this song was after I came to Korea and worked with one university student who was majoring in Elementary Special Education. She was one of my T.A.s for a Saturday English class we were teaching. After I heard the song, my heart was strangely warmed because it seemed to match my desire to help the oppressed. Tonight I was reminded again of the song as I watched a group of children participating in English Camp perform that song. One of the T.A.s who teach that class is one of my university students. I presumed the song came from her which reminded me of all her peers whose department I used to teach in. It reminded me of all those students learning about how to teach children or middle school/high school students with special needs and how much they want to change the world. Thinking of the fact that I have had the opportunity to interact with people who probably will change the world by changing their students' lives, gave me a sense of sorrow as I look to go to a new university and a sense of satisfaction over the last four-and-a-half years I have taught at this university.

More Opportunity for Learning Korean

I just came across a more economical way of learning Korean after reading about it at http://view.koreaherald.com/kh/view.php?ud=20120810001147&cpv=0. It is http://koreanculture.org.au/culture-classes/language-class and you don't even have to be in Korea to participate. I am learning that contrary to popular belief one doesn't have to spend an arm and a leg to learn the Korean language. That is good news especially for those of you who need to learn it for more successful relationship-building. That's where I am. I dream of the day when culture is the only barrier and not language on top of that. One is difficult enough. There are also some alternatives for learning Korean online. May I also share what I am doing in my latest craze to learn the Korean language? Out of desperation to find ways to learn as many words as possible while also improving my grammar, I am trying to learn Korean definitions of Korean words. I just finished listing definitions of all the words I don't know from Psalm 93. The next step is to find ways of intelligibly memorizing those definitions which will probably requiring acquiring the vocabulary of the vocabulary.

A Lifetime of Love

I finally finished "Sheet Music", a book about how to have a healthy, intimate relationship with my wife. To put it more bluntly, it's about how to have better sex with one's spouse or significant other (I would guess the author is aiming more for the former than the latter). You're probably dying to hear all the details of the "good parts" of the book but I will let you find those in the book itself. Rather, I'll offer you a brief application of what I take away from the book. This book reinforces for me that a marital relationship is ultimately analogous of Christ's relationship with his followers. That relationship is not an easy-come-easy-go relationship. It also involves the ups and downs of the joys and sorrows of two people having an intimate relationship where they have made a covenant with one another, vowing not to be unfaithful to that relationship. More to the point, this book makes the point over-and-over again that sex is not just the cherry-on-top of a committed relationship but that it is at the center of the relationship and that everything the couple does centers around that. That may be baffling but rather than try to make sense of that paradox here I'll let you read the book. Suffice it to say that if a couple is not mutually loving one another that they will not have a healthy sexual relationship. Need a more basic example? How about a mistake I made with my wife tonight? Well, the jury is still out on whether it was really a mistake (That's the jury on my side, if you will). I thought we were just going for a brief visit to McDonald's to enjoy a few moments of air-conditioning, ice cream and iced coffee and my wife thought we were going to enjoy a few areas of air-conditioning, regardless of how much conversation we had. Well, when she saw how displeased we were at not doing anything that seemed productive, I found myself in the doghouse. Now surely you can see how this mistake on my part (or for the sake of my ego, both of our parts) might affect "tonight".

A More Reflective Life?

I've been on a roller coaster for the last three days or perhaps longer than that. Teaching seems to be a roller coaster of emotions, where I tend to base my worth on how students respond to me. I think I have struggled with the concept of teaching English for as long as I have been teaching, which has been for about four years and five months now. I keep thinking that I need to find THAT job which brings me ultimate fulfillment. But my last visit to America earlier this summer left me thinking I am barking up the wrong tree and that I need to make some resolve to somehow not equate my self-worth with the work I am doing. When I think about how best to process all of that, what with all the negative thoughts I have and all, the prospect of writing sounds more and more appealing. I have worked with different people at the Camp I'm required to work every year and regardless of the personality I seem to have trouble with the person I'm working with. When I say "trouble" I mean that I find myself feeling less adequate than the other person. Once that happens I negate the value of any worth I might have. So, I hope this is the beginning of a beautiful journey of writing books in two areas, one related to my satisfaction with myself in reference to the job I work at and hopefully another area will be with family relationships and theology or better yet might be philosophy of religion or just philosophy. In order to do this, I'm going to need your help. Can you keep me accountable to write and not simply do journaling that sounds like a diary, though I still seem to need that, too?

A New Adventure

I've started a long, difficult process of saying goodbye to colleagues and students. After all the applying I've done to try to get a job in Seoul, I have accepted a position at a university outside of Seoul, but a little closer than where I am now. Most of the time, especially with students, people receive the news without asking questions. But sometimes people want to know why I am moving to a new place. I've given a variety of answers but I'm not quite sure what the truth is. 1. It's because I want to work at a university that has a system more organized that increases the chances of me being successful in teaching students how to have a conversation in English. 2. I want to become a better instructor by working with colleagues in a more collaborative environment where what instructors think has an impact on how the university organizes its system. 3. I am displeased with the new curriculum that my current university is using and I can't bear the thought of continuing where I am at if the same curriculum is going to continue to be implemented, regardless of feedback that the whole of the international faculty thinks about it. 4. I've been teaching at the same university for four years and I want to experience working at another Christian university with similar values which also has a strong reputation throughout Korea. 5. I don't feel satisfied doing what I am doing where I am currently teaching and I want to see if that changes if I teach at a university with a different system. Of course there is no easy answer to this matter. I would guess that number five is the winner. If that is true, this is only a commentary on myself and has nothing to do with anyone else. This sort of thing resonates with my experience of the first college I attended after I finished Bible School. The university started to have some difficulties and there were people on both sides of the fence. Some said we should jump off a sinking ship and others said that if everyone leaves the ship would inevitably sink. I'm starting to wonder if my colleagues or I am thinking that way. Whatever the outcome of that discussion, I am learning how wrong my thinking has been about how little of an impact I am having on those around me. I guess one could say I am learning about the ministry of presence and that it may not make much difference what kind of work I do. I wonder if I am the type of person who finds no satisfaction in his job in and of itself, no matter what it is, but simply in connecting with other human beings. All that said, there is a bittersweet feeling about changing jobs, and I guess that is true regardless of what country one lives in. I am feeling a lot of that bittersweetness as I see the looks on students faces as they learn I am leaving. I hope we can continue to keep in touch, though I am sure that professors who are on campus will be students first choice, and that's probably the way it should be.

The Dangers of Shopping on a Rainy Day

I had the most traumatic experience of my life when it comes to shopping, but it wasn't as traumatic as you may imagine. It started with the idea of multi-tasking. I wanted to take our car in for an oil change, trying to be more responsible with the car my wife owned before we got married. Usually I move slowly but last Saturday I was going to get the oil changed no matter what. I had to take the car up a floor since there was no place to park it. While trying to juggle a book, a folder, a laptop and an umbrella I dropped the book and folder. One person saw me drop it and made a verbal sound, somehow seeming to express her condolences without saying anything directly to me. Then I completely lost it when I stepped on a flat escalator comparable to the picture above except the escalator was going down. And I went down and landed hard on my right arm. Even though I was wearing a jacket and a sweatshirt, I managed to hurt my arm bad enough to keep a bandage on the wound every day since then. Unfortunately, the computer was my wife's and I just happened to drop it on the corner where the switch was. Fortunately, she could still turn it on but we took it to the Samsung After-service center around the block and they were able to fix it temporarily. I learned that day that I'm not invincible. It is really quite a shame that we brought all those things with us because we didn't get much accomplished that day, certainly not enough to justify all of that work. This whole experience made me wonder how many times I could have been hurt like that. I seem to recall other instances where I start to feel my feet shifting from under me but I always managed to regain my composure when I didn't have my hands full. I'm probably over-analyzing, like a good INTJ tends to do, but I can't help but wonder if God's voice was somehow in the midst of all of that, saying, "Give those things to me so you can stand." Actually, these days we seem to feel quite burdened as we develop more and more of what it means to be married and what ordained ministry might look like, whether we want to step into that role or not. I guess it really is true that less is more.

I'm Prejudiced

I hope I spelled that right. This is my latest, and perhaps the most difficult revelation, that has come to my attention. I've been having a lot of battles with my wife. I thought, perhaps we thought, it was because of vision or my wanting to become an ordained minister of some kind, but it seems that the real problem is prejudice? My crime? I apparently thought that if a Korean woman loved me at all it was because I am an American and that I could be her ticket to freedom. Fortunate for me, for a lot of growth, I didn't marry a Korean who was scouting her odds of being matched up with an American. Somehow she just fell in love with this odd duck. If you know me at all, you may be either thinking what a hypocrite I am or perhaps you are one of my many good friends who thinks I need to cut myself a little slack. To be honest with you, I'm not sure where I stand myself. I will say there is a strange sense of peace after going out and shopping by myself, something I probably haven't done since I got married. And one of the shocking places I found myself was in the car section. Actually, that shouldn't be so shocking. I've been into cars since I was in elementary or middle school. My first vow of independence to myself and God was to show my dad and brother that I could fix a car on my own. I mostly succeeded at that, except when I tried to change ball joints on my '78 Ford Fairmont and I wound up taking the whole front end apart. I learned a lot but the mechanic wasn't happy with me at all. And here I am, under different circumstances, and the same feeling of peace and confusion and disappointment, all at the same time. I suppose things will be okay. I hope they will. But the blessing and the curse of this mystery that there is no certainty on how everything will turn out. But something tells me I am right where I need to be, which makes me all the more indebted to my wife who happens to be from another country. I hope I can learn to see her as my wife without the culture or the ethnicity. Does she really see me that way?

In Motion

It's been a while since I've posted anything. I would say that means life is busy and good for me. Today I hit a bump in the road by "settling" into married life. It seems ironic to me how a very simple action or no action can turn into a big problem. I suppose the same could be true, stated from a positive standpoint. If a person does a small thing, it could turn into something big. When Lent started on Ash Wednesday, I vowed to go to early morning prayer meetings called, "Early Morning Prayer Meetings (새벽기도회, saebyeokkidohwae)". I started off doing well, since it was vacation. I would get up around 4:30, go to the prayer meeting at 5:00, exercise after leaving church and then coming home to take a nap. Once the semester started, I didn't have a chance to take a nap but I still felt good about getting up early in the morning and I found that my sense of shame diminished as well. Then I decided to treat myself to a morning of sleeping in and my commitment was broken. So now I am left with the dilemma of what to do now that Lent is nearly over and what I will do after Easter comes. To tell you the truth, I feel like I have said sorry to God so many times that there is no forgiveness left.

From "The Notebook" to "Forest Gump"

I've been thinking a lot about the past lately...perhaps too much. Watching "The Notebook" stirred up some raw emotions in me. It reminded me of my own past and things I've been struggling with lately. It seems to make one think a lot about choice, though the gist of the movie seems to be about loyalty to the person one loves. Then I watched "Forest Gump", a movie about a guy who seems to be doing his own thing but then winds up making a significant difference. Of course the movie deals with destiny from time to time. And I found myself at the altar of a Sovereign God this morning. My life has taken some interesting turns lately. I met a woman whom I expected to simply learn Korean from while she learned English, though I probably expected a little bit more. We fell in love and now we've been married for almost seven months. We didn't believe it at the time but things just fell together between us and our families accepting each other and now we are focusing on developing a healthy relationship with each other before we have children. Sometimes I really feel like I am my own worst enemy. If Satan is real, I could pretty easily convince myself that I am my own Satan. I find myself thinking back to the friends I had before I got married. Even though I didn't date them, I now see the emotional bond I had with them and why it was so important to my wife to cut those ties in order to be faithful to her. I wish that someone I could tell all of them thanks for all the things they taught me and that I'm sorry we couldn't be friends forever. I thought we could. But that we carry those memories with us. Some of those friends I didn't even bid goodbye to because I thought it would be rude to say, "I can't talk to you anymore because I'm getting married." And there is still a part of me that hopes that in God's sovereignty that those friends can somehow naturally become friends with my wife someday. Sounds impossible? With God, all things are possible, are they not? But lest I set myself up for disappointment, for now, I'm content entrusting those friends in God's loving care. After all, God can do more for them than I ever could.

A Shameless Time?

I haven't done cognitive therapy for a while. Does that mean I'm cured? This tends to happen until I have more stress or feel stupid for doing something wrong and then it is back to the Cognitive Therapy. I went to a meeting tonight about curriculum-development where I teach. I went with the mindset that I was going to learn but that I wasn't going to listen passively. I was certainly not passive but I don't know that I asked the questions in a comfortable way. However, I think asking those questions helped me to learn more. That seems a little odd since I am an INTJ. The time is currently 1:28 Korean Standard Time and I am debating whether to stay awake while I try to translate some surveys or if I should just go to bed. I'm trying to get a head-start so that I can spend some time with Sinae tomorrow. She's got cabin fever from hanging out in the apartment all the time. Sinae and I have been watching "Ghost Whisperers" which starts out family-friendly and then it gets more and more scary all the time. I'm also not sure whether showing a woman getting dressed is family-friendly. Speaking of family-friendly, I showed Sinae clips from "I Love Lucy" and "Home Improvement" and I told her how America was at one time family-oriented in terms of the way TV shows were presented. I wrote a paper on this when I was in high school from a more condescending perspective but I tried to tell Sinae in a more matter-of-fact way. This is a little more random than what I usually write about. I just wanted to put something fresh on here. I am being encouraged by people who leave comments and by those who don't. One of my friends reminded me of another perspective on facial gestures which I will post on that blog sometime in the near future.

Off With My Head...or at least my face

Sinae and I are learning that the greatest barrier in my relationship is my face. When we were dating, and even now that we have gotten married, she told me how handsome my face is. But now that we are meeting people and I can't hide my emotions, it is keeping her from enjoying company. So here I sit, wondering what on earth to do. I don't recall being told this reality by any American women but I suppose it happened. I tend to think this is not a bad thing. What human being is actually able to control her/his emotions all of the time to the point that s/he doesn't show what s/he is thinking. I believe I will become a hermit or at the most, interact with animals. I am trying not to protest this new revelation, though I find it difficult to fathom. At best, this is just cultural differences and I am afraid of what it might be at worst. Before I got married, I wanted to marry someone from a different culture, such as a black American, a Latina or a Korean. I thought the Bible talked about people coming together from different nations. Now I have to wonder if that notion is a downright lie because cultural norms seem to be laws by which we judge a person's morale. And it's amazing just how different our morale can be from one country to another. I'd invite you to join me in being a hermit, but somehow I guess that would defeat the purpose and you too might be offended by my facial expressions.