George Martzen "georgos"

Sometimes when I look in the mirror I wonder who the ang mo (caucasian) is.  Sunday I had a similar experience at the 74th Anniversary combined worship at Paya Lebar Chinese Methodist Church.  As we sang the Hokkien songs (I used the Romanized text) I was feeling proud to be Hokkien.  Wow, all our voices so nice, blending together, so beautiful.  When my colleague gave announcements in Hokkien I followed in English.  Well, I sort of designed the service.  But someone after thought I was interpreting Hokkien into English.  Mei banfa. Wo bu dong. No, I enjoy my Hokkien and other Chinese friends, but my ancestry is from the other end of the Euro-Asian landmass.  My mother was English and my father German (Volga Deutsche), and the two spoken languages I tried to learn in my youth are German and Spanish, not Chinese.  But back to the combined service at PLCMC, I am interested in the experience of solidarity evoked by that congregational sing...

Last night I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by the retired NT professor, Richard Bauckham, on "The Johannine Jesus and the Synoptic Gospels".  Bauckham is guest lecturing this week at Trinity Theological College (Singapore).  His presentation was based on a new commentary he is writing.  Though I dare not call myself a New Testament scholar (having lost my fervor for rabbinical debate some time ago), I do preach and teach often enough on the Gospel of John to know that it takes me into a very different space than do the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). In fact, I admit that I frequently shy away from preaching on John.  Dr Bauckham, who brings a historian's eye to the narratives, clearly acknowledges the diversity of the gospels, though in this lecture he seemed reluctant to jump into etiological speculations, but rather to point out that there are many different ways to do historiography. He may have spoken more about this at other lectures, but...

In Equal Justice Under the Law , Sojourner's Jim Wallis has observed a strange irony in this week's U.S. Supreme Court rulings.  First, on June 25, the court struck down as unconstitutional a part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 intended to maintain free voting access for low-income and people of color.  Many of my friends in justice ministries were shocked at this ruling.  When I first saw the headlines, I really thought it was a joke, or that someone had accidently brought up a news article from the 1930s.  The next day the same court also thwarted two laws that had prevented same-sex marriage, the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California's Proposition 8, the "Marriage Defense Act". While recognizing that many Christians have deep concerns about homosexuality, based on their reading of the Bible, Wallis has joined a growing number of religious people who support same-sex marriage as a matter of civil rights.  After all, legal marriage in the U...

I sat at the foot of the hill - Bukit Timah - and watched the show, energized. Rain coming down in buckets, whipped by the wind, like the swallows, dancing in the currents high above the trees, fully engaged in the movement.  Lightening struck here and there, in booming octophonic fidelity, electrifying the air. The music echoed from the clouds to the earth, from Bukit Timah to Bukit Gombak, between the great trees and the buildings .  Boom, boom, boom!  The trees all clapped their leaves and swayed to the rhythm of the sky, danced to the rhythm of the earth, pulsated with the leaping electrons.  Only the swallows dared venture out, twirling and soaring with nature's ensemble, joined to the fleeting liminality while ants and humans scuttled anxiously inside. The voice of thunder takes over during the reversal. Nature rules again; the birds, the trees the hills, the clouds and the earth all rejoice.  Slowly the rain subsides, the wind dies down, the atmospheri...

We are now well into our mission itineration - that's where we as GBGM (United Methodist) missionaries return to our home territory and visit our supporting churches, and potentially supporting churches.  Friday night Chin Cheak spoke to members of the Chinese congregation at First UMC, Alhambra.  Sunday morning I preached at Baldwin Park UMC (La Iglesia Methodista Unida).  Tomorrow we drive to Palm Springs where Chin Cheak will share with the United Methodist Women's unit.  Next Sunday we both preach for different services at China town UMC in Los Angeles, and the weekend after in San Diego.  This is a mercifully loose schedule that allows us to get other homeside matters taken care of, including for me a final synthesis paper for my 1.5 unit spiritualty course at PSR. With that little paper I hope to clarify my own position vis a vis the relationship between contemplation and action.  I am beginning to come up with a formula that needs to be filled out ...

I haven't seen the concession speech, but at 6 pm Singapore time ( +8:00 GMT) it looks like Barack Obama will be President of the United States again.  I don't usually comment on US political events, but this election was so close - 50.2% to 48.3% of popular vote, though Obama had an overwhelming lead in the Electoral College.  I'm thinking more about the mood my family and I will meet as we arrive in southern California in two and a half weeks for our GBGM mission itineration.  We will be speaking to supporting churches there, before moving on to central and northern California.  California is a blue state in the elections, with the majority supporting Obama, but that doesn't mean it is uniformly Democrat or liberal. Hardly.   In fact, my inland California moderate Democratic views are considered conservative when I go to the Bay area. I can imagine from the Gospel passages about Jesus walking up and down first century Palestine that he did a lot of liste...

I just took a quiz on Beliefnet - " What's Your Spirituality Type ?"  I thought I'd check it out since I'm interested in liturgical spirituality, and currently doing some readings on the tension between contemplation and action.  The idea that there might be different "spiritual types" is not new.  Assuming one's spirituality is a mode of integrating one's relationship with God or the transcendent with the with the world and one's own life, it would make sense that some do it differently.  It's even possible there might be spiritual archetypes, just as a Jungian approach to personality could posit types and archetypes.  There are even inventories on spiritual gifts that suggest correspondance to a person's personality typology.  So what is my spirituality type? Actually this Beliefnet survey does not address these issues at all. It merely assumes a single hierarchy, not multiple archetypes, of "spiritual"assent to given rel...