All posts by Kathy Khang

Keep It Simple, Stupid: Going Green

Over the years my understanding of the creation account has changed. I would picture Barbie and Ken doubling as Eve and Adam, and, maybe it had something to do with a series of Bible stories on tape that my parents bought for us, I always heard God’s voice as Burl Ives. (Imagine my shock when I watched “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” for the first time. God was also Sam the Snowman.)

Some Sunday School teachers would emphasize the number of days while others would focus on things like Adam being created first. My mind would wander off and imagine dressing my Barbie and Ken dolls in fig leaves or animal skin.

Once in a blue moon a teacher would remind us that having babies is God-ordained by quoting Genesis 1:28:

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Fruitful? Increase? Fill? (Insert very optional abstinence lesson here, which didn’t matter since none of our parents were ever going to talk about sex. I don’t even know the Korean word for sex, now that I think about it.) Check.

Subdue? Rule? Doesn’t that mean we can do whatever we want ‘cuz God left us in charge?

No. Subdue and rule doesn’t give humankind carte blanche over the earth. Left to our own devices we have some issues to work out. I’ve grown to understand that God’s mandate to us is not to rape and pillage the earth but instead to care and create.

Nancy Pearcey in her book Total Truth writes:

In Genesis, God gives what we might call the first job description: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” The first phrase, “be fruitful and multiply” means to develop the social world: build families, churches, schools, cities, governments, laws. The second phrase, “subdue the earth,” means to harness the natural world: plant crops, build bridges, design computers, compose music. This passage is sometimes called the Cultural Mandate because it tells us that our original purpose was to create cultures, build civilizations-nothing less.

I continue wrestle with this interpretation as much as I am grateful for it. It reminds me that I can stop having babies (thank you, Jesus!) and still participate in being fruitful and multiplying by helping develop the social world. It also makes me think about the natural world. As a Christian I can often be guilty of living in the not-yet – looking heavenward so much so that I lose sight of the life here on this earth God has given me.

So over the years my family and I have talked about what it means to participate in harnessing the natural world, so to speak. What does it mean for our family and the impact it has on the world/community/neighborhood around us? How can we make what can become so complex and beyond us (like building bridges) into something simple?

Well, we’ve tried a few simple things can slowly change the way we interact with the natural world to see how that changes us and our relationship with God and others.

We garden. It started out with some potted plants and then a raised bed with patio plants and then a smaller and then larger chunk of the grass that we hate to fertilize, water, mow and rake.

We recycle like crazy. Our village makes it easy with curbside collection in a separate rolling cart. We usually fill the recycling bin and our garbage bin feels left out.

We compost. Again, it’s easy for us. We have a very nice yard and some bushes that hide the ugly compost bin. The kids quickly caught on, and it’s fun throwing in dryer lint with the banana peels. No critter problems or strange smell. It’s a little bit of a pain in the dead of winter since that means sub-zero temps and snow/ice to trek through. A couple of times the lid was frozen shut.

We bought rain barrels. Again, this has been easy for us. We could afford to buy the barrels through the university extension office, and we have a gutters we can cut (well, Peter cut them) because we own our home. We have two barrels, not homes. I would get another one if I could figure out how to replace the chain link fence with a nice hedge of bushes for free.

We use a random unscientific combination of Craigslist, Freecycle, Goodwill and garage sales with the usual stores. You cannot believe how thrilled I was last summer when Elias came along with me to a garage sale and snagged a box full of legos and a box of Bionicles for a mere $10. Never mind that I need more legos like I need a hole in my head. He understood the art and skill of second-hand shopping!

Nothing new, complex or completely odd in that short but simple list. But isn’t that what makes it become easier? One step at a time? What are some of things that you have tried/are trying to harness the natural world and why are you doing those things?


You Can’t Make Me But You Might Make Me Want To…Read This

Bloggers blog to have an outlet for the many thoughts cooped up in their heads. At least, that’s what I’d like to think. Sure, there are some who think their writing will compel thousands to instantaneously subscribe to their blog, which then leads them to fame and fortune.

I blog because I love to write, and it’s a bonus when my writing is good enough that it connects with you, challenges you, annoys you and makes you want to keep reading. The weird thing with blogging is that most bloggers I know want people to read their posts. You make it fun in a different way. The comments let us know you’re there, but there are ways to know that there are silent ones who read as faithfully as they can. Thank you. We/I can get needy that way, wanting readers. We’re very vain that way. We figure if we write it, it surely must be worth reading. But with a bajillion blogs out there it’s easy to get lost and be very lonely.

So in the spirit of broadening our RSS feeds, I’d love to know what blogs – other than More Than Serving Tea, of course – you follow and why.

Thanks!

Popular.

Being a published writer is a very strange thing indeed. I remember feeling grateful and proud when I saw my first byline, and I remember that More Than Serving Tea didn’t seem real until the first copies arrived at my home. I couldn’t believe someone was going to read what I had written.

But that’s when the fear and doubt really try to settle in and get comfortable. Getting published (or writing a public blog) doesn’t mean anyone is going to read what you wrote. It just means you’ve entered a new kind of crazy, manic, creative, wishful, hopeful, fearful place. Being published doesn’t mean having readers.

Blogging has opened up an entirely new avenue for writers to do just that – write and then hope their words will have readers who not only read what they’ve written but love it. Or at least like it enough. Is there anyone out there who blogs on a public blog and doesn’t want people to read it? You? You write a public blog but you don’t care if anyone reads it? Liar.

😉

We bloggers all have our good days when we write something that we think is funny or thoughtful or thought provoking, and our lovely readers concur. And then we have our bad days when inspiration never strikes or the words aren’t as clever or don’t turn quite right.

I would be lying to you if I told you I didn’t know how many readers I have. It keeps me humble because most days here at More Than Serving Tea it’s a small but faithful bunch. It’s been fun over the two years or so to learn a little more about some of you, and even better to actually meet some of you (Alvin!).

But today (Friday) was not a good day or a bad day. It was weird. I was popular.

I’ve seen surges in my readership, especially when the likes of Scot McKnight or Sojourners crosspost or link to my blog. It is flattering because I respect both blogs and the communities that read those sites, and I’m grateful to have that exposure and mutual respect. And it is dangerous because I see how easily my humility turns false and gratitude for a God-given ability to write wants more than feeling God’s pleasure as I write. I want fame . Or at the very least some blogosphere popularity.

But today the blog stats were beyond anything I had seen, so initially I thought my post on keeping my mouth shut was beyond amazing. I still think I had a pretty good line or two and that the overall post was well-written, but that really wasn’t it. I lucked out and my post made some popularity list that I think is created randomly. I could say that it was a God-thing, and maybe it was. I’m pretty sure in some way it was. I just don’t think it was to make me popular and famous, per se. Popularity, even for one day, can feel like success, and even success is fleeting and misguided because it easily makes me stare at my bellybutton.

Today was a good lesson in popularity because I had it and I was “it”, and, friends, it is the same as it was in high school. Fast, flattering and fleeting. I can only hope that a handful of the many first-time readers (heck, I’d take one) would stick around for the ride to join the ranks of my long-time readers, first-time commenters. But that’s popularity.

I could work hard to try to be witty and write posts with popular tags in popular categories. I could try to be popular, but if today was a God-thing, God was giving me a tiny bit of space for me to think about why I gave a “bleep” about what other people think about my writing before I gave a moment’s thought to whether or not my words communicated integrity, faith, grace, hope and love.

Do I want to be popular first or do I want to be found faithful first?

Why Can’t I Just Shut Up?

I have a problem. My internal filter doesn’t always work. Sometimes thoughts that aren’t fully formed but in the process of being “felt” come out of my thought bubble and rush through my mouth.

My parents did the best they could, teaching me to be appropriately silent first in the way children are supposed to be silent and then in the way young ladies are to be silent. Opinions are best left in the head, and simply naming my alma mater should be enough to gauge intelligence. Words, particularly spoken ones from my mouth, aren’t necessary. Besides, who would want their son to marry an outspoken, opinionated woman? Those traits aren’t high on the “myuh-new-ree” (daughter-in-law) list.

There are times when the properly trained Asian American woman-ness kicks into high gear, almost as if someone dialed me up to “11”. I can smile, nod, look like I am in agreement with whatever is being said and then walk away without a word. It happens, I swear.

My parents also knew enough to know that some things were irreversible. We were here in America, and one day (or almost 40 years) their firstborn would be an American. They struggled to keep the “Korean” first through language, dance, songs, food, worksheets and flashcards and hyphenated “America” by reminding me that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Or is the oil?

I suppose that is part of growing up part of a generation raised to be bicultural – Korean and American – and finds itself developing a third culture – with or without the hyphen – that takes not the best of both worlds and rejects the rest but takes both worlds and creates something both familiar and new with its own best and rejects.

So there are times when I get squeaky. The dial gets turned the other way, and I can’t shut up. The raging extrovert in me, the angry Asian American woman who is tired but clearly not tired enough to shut up comes out and I hate when that happens because I hate that I feel like I should apologize for bringing to the conversation a different voice, a different perspective.

I can talk about things other than race, gender or class. It’s not always about race or gender or class. But many times race or gender or class (or all of the above) are in play. And the other night it was soooo easy. We were discussing The Help
, and there are still hours of thoughts and questions inside my head. Last night was just a taste. Why couldn’t we have started out with something lighter like a Nicholas Sparks book? Bahhhh!

No spoiler alert here for those of you who are still on the library’s list for the book or in the process of reading it. You know that the book touches on issues of race, gender, class, friendship and love. And if you read this blog you know that those issues are what keep us here in this cyberspace.

But those issues are uncomfortable, and it’s not always easy to go from discussing our feelings about a book to how those feelings translate into real life when it’s all so new and we don’t yet know our similarities let alone our differences. But how could I not talk about how I see life in our town as being different but not so entirely different than what we had just read? How could I not bring up how the rules of engagement between the junior league women and their help are as subtle and dangerous as describing “suspicious” cars and their drivers in broad generalities? Don’t we still have subtle lines drawn and communicated about who belongs where? How could any of us read the book and not choose to be uncomfortable if not for one night?

Adventures in Parenting and Life 101 Because I’m Always Learning: Scheduling

This morning was set aside to calendar.  Yes, calendar as in the verb in relationship to the noun form. Me, my latte and my calendars cozied up now that my iCal and iPhone is synced with a Google calendar (we are a cross-computer platform family where PC and Mac must lovingly and painstakingly co-exist in forced harmony) for a morning of new events, mapping out future childcare needs and plans for cloning when two parents and three children are supposed to be at different places at the same time.

I’m certain that my parents had some method to their madness, but it really wasn’t quite as full and weighty as what we/I make life out to be now. My parents didn’t have the money to afford all of the activities – tae kwon do, magic class, owl pellets class, ballet class, pointe class, modern dance class – that fill up my evenings and weekends. The priorities were school and church and anything beyond that was gravy. We took Korean language classes, which I think were free through the church and then priceless when we stopped going to a class and my mother would simply buy the books, make photocopies and make us do the worksheets during the summer months, and piano lessons, which for me gave way to a few years of flute lessons. There was little space, money or felt need for summer camp, swimming lessons or sports camp because for many years we were latch-key kids who learned to float well after I had mastered my multiplications tables and long division and yet learned early on that competitive sports were not in our future.

My parents didn’t know they needed to carry around their digital calendars. I remember my mom having a small paper organizer and the house always had free calendars from the bank, back when banks gave customers toasters, calendars and lollipops, and the Korean grocery store, which still give out free calendars. But they also didn’t know what we weren’t getting to do because they were too busy trying fairly successfully to provide for us more than they had had.

These days in my affluent suburban existence I can parent through my issues – swimming lessons because dammit my kids will be stronger swimmers than I am and tae kwon do or dance classes and the occasional tennis or golf lesson because life is too short to not have a brief introduction to a “life long sport” they can carry into their retirement years.

I am not alone in my angst. The bar is higher and more competitive for college, and at Bethany’s high school orientation I began to hyperventilate (maybe it was those crazy strobe lights and lasers during the slideshow) at all that the “average” kid has to do – academics and extra-curricular – to be college-worthy. No study hall so she can get in an extra elective, but how will she manage the course load with her classes if she keeps up with dance or takes on other extra-curriculars? Or keep the study hall so she has extra time during the day to get the extra work done, but will her overall academic course load be enough? The calendar feels heavier just thinking about it.

At least she’s never heard the “Why don’t you have all A’s? Why isn’t this B+ or A- an A” talk.

And it’s not even just the parenting part of scheduling. Have you ever watched a group of adult friends try to schedule a night out or an extended family try to plan a trip together? My girlfriends and I have been talking about celebrating our 40th birthdays at some spa, but the first round of e-mails were rather amusing. We are very, very busy (but so help me if it means celebrating after we all turn 40 we are going to do this!).

I’m grateful to be alive, deeply grateful for the opportunities, access, ability to have and do so much but sometimes it feels a little out of control.

For awhile we had a rule: each kid was limited to one activity. But then we started fudging our way around that one with band because technically it was at the school, during and after school so it didn’t feel completely like an extra activity. And then Bethany made the poms squad, which was related to her dance classes. And then youth group/confirmation/Wednesday night Kids’ Club was extra but also important so we made room. And so on, and so on, and so on. I was hoping my youngest would try baseball, mainly so I could hang out with the other moms during practices and games, but he wanted no part in another activity no matter how much he could learn from being on a team sport. Sometimes, our kids are so incredibly wise.

Everyone has a system. Mine has evolved over the years as DINKs became parents of one, two and then three. My trusty Franklin Planner gave way to copying everything onto a wipe board. Now I am completely electronic with five color coordinated calendars that Peter and I can now sync online relatively seamlessly. A printed copy goes on the fridge so the kids can check to see if a sleepover will conflict with a family event.

So how do you get through it? How do you manage and schedule your time and, if you have a family, your family’s and family time so that everyone doesn’t need a clone and resent you?

You Can’t Make Me But You Might Make Me Want To…Read This

I love a good book, and Wednesday night is “Bedtime Stories” – the book club my neighbor and I started. I’m hoping the name catches on. Anyway, we will be meeting to talk about our first book, The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, which I’ll blog about later. But finishing our first book means needing to have suggestions for our next book.

We aren’t book snobs – any genre will do, and a book that has already been out for a few years is preferred. That way we have a better chance of getting it for everyone through our public library system.

So, which five books would you recommend and why?

Love Or Hate “Eat, Pray, Love”?

Have you read “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert? If so, did you love it or hate it or was it just “eh”?

Well, I have not read the book, but enough folks around me have shared their opinions about the book. I know of one woman who, after a few chapters into the book, absolutely loved the book. Others who have read the book, and mind you they were all women, were turned off by the author’s story – divorce leads to travel, food and love with a dose of whine.

Minus the divorce and travel it sounded a bit like “Julie & Julia” to me, which I enjoyed in the theater but never bothered to read the book…I did end up buying Julia Child’s French cooking tome but I digress.

The general consensus was that Gilbert’s book was a whiny memoir, but I came across this op-ed piece (via Scot McKnight at Jesus Creed) and had to ask all of you who have read the book or decided not to read it like I did based on the reviews.

Jessica Wakeman contends that:

“…Eat, Pray, Love the book (and soon, “Eat, Pray, Love” the movie, starring Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem) has turned out to be a lightening rod of controversy in the most disappointing of ways. The negative reactions to “Eat, Pray, Love” show just how resentful, bitter, contradictory, and quite frankly, hate-filled we are towards a woman who does something for herself.”

So far there are 401 customer reviews that rate the book 1 – star on Amazon out of more than 2,000 total reviews. I’m an author, but I’m not that kind of author – New York Times best seller kind of author, and I’d be lying if I said/wrote that I wouldn’t want to be that kind of author. NYT best seller? But with the fame comes the crap, and I’m not that good of a writer nor do I really want to deal with more crap. But it’s worth thinking about whether or not the criticism is, as Wakeman writes in her opinion piece, gendered and taking shots at Gilbert because she is a woman doing what Wakeman contends would have been an adventure story had a man lived the same life and written about.

There was similar criticism of the movie “Julie & Julia” – mostly but not exclusively from male movie reviewers. My thought at the time was that the movie critics were taking themselves too seriously and perhaps not understanding that this was the coming-of-age story for one almost-30 woman. Yes, Julie Powell was whiny, which is why she needed something else to ground her. Lucky for her, pounds and pounds of butter and bacon fat helped ground her, and she happened to gain some self-awareness and some success.

Is/was the criticism of “Eat, Pray, Love” or “Julie & Julia” gendered? Are readers (and are they predominantly women?) doing the same thing they accuse Gilbert of doing – whining and complaining – but about someone else’s success instead of about their own average lives? Or would the book even mattered had it been written about and by a man or would the publishers have looked at it and thought “this is nothing new”? Perhaps the issue of gender isn’t so cut and dry; isn’t it possible that a big reason this book made it is because Gilbert is a woman and leaving everything behind to find herself is a novel concept?

Now, I chose not to read the book. Instead I read several other books by non-white female authors because, quite frankly, I needed a different perspective, point of view and voice than what is so prevalent and prevailing. Gilbert is a woman, but the older I get the more frustrated I become with the false dichotomy of race and gender that I often experience. As Gilbert’s book became a rising star her star wasn’t in the same constellation as what I was seeking out – authors like Amy Tan, Bich Minh Nguyen, Yen Mah and Toni Morrison. So my reluctance to pick up her book was less gendered criticism and more cultural/racial and spiritual. I’m certain there are common bonds between all women, but I’m tired of people telling me the differences don’t matter. Differences make life complicated, interesting, compelling, frustrating and hard. I don’t want the same all the time, especially if someone else is the one always defining the “same”.

But I could be wrong about it all, so I may request the book at the library and revisit my reluctance. I’ll have to think about that some more. For those of you who read Gilbert’s book, what do you think?

Will Race Matter In 32 Years?

What do you think?

Will race matter in the year 2042 – the long-forecast end of the United States as a white-majority culture? What will happen to “multiethnicity”, “multiculturalism”, and “race”? How will things change, or will they, in the next three decades?

The Visions 2042 Project is inviting people to think ahead, dream ahead, imagine ahead and then write 1,000 – 2,000 words. Details are all on the link folks, so click, imagine, write and submit.

This project is sponsored by the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University.

Life and Death and Life In Death

It has been a long week.

By the end of tonight I will have been at the same suburban funeral home three out of seven days this week. One evening and morning were set aside to mourn the loss of Peter’s uncle, and one evening was set aside to mourn the loss of a friend’s father.

The two deaths this week gave way to opportunities to talk. I talked about my mother-in-law’s death with my husband and my sister-in-law – what we remember from the days leading up to and after her death, feelings and memories that rose to the surface after being together at the beginning of the week for Peter’s uncle’s wake and funeral.

I talked around death as my parents shared with me some details about their estate since it’s never a good time even though it’s always a good time to talk about life insurance policies and living wills.

All this talk, and I’m tired. I’ve been to many memorial services and wakes, but I have found those of first generation Korean immigrants to be some of the most mournful, sorrowful, and emotionally draining. Outward expressions of grief are limited to the occasional sob and cry, but the room is filled in black with a respectful, honoring, but heavy grief. No one but the presiding pastor speaks above a whisper, and stories are told without smiles or laughter.

Photo displays may include pictures filled with smiles and fond memories, but the photo by the casket, often marked by two black ribbons around the top two corners, is an expressionless headshot. It’s as if the person knows they will not be around to see this photo that captures life and death. It’s not unusual to see rather large flower arrangements adorned with messages of condolences written on ribbons or banners from the deceased’s or surviving family members’ Korean high school or college/university alumni association.

Some of the traditions, even in Christian Korean funerals, are connected to Korea’s Buddhist roots where the dead are wrapped in yellow hemp; the men of the deceased person’s family wear small bows made of yellow hemp and the women still wear small white ribbons (white being the color of death and mourning) signaling to the world around them that they are in mourning.

I once told my mother that I would not want to put my own children through that kind of memorial service when I die. My mother quickly shot back, “That is how you show respect to us when we die.”

The wake for a high school classmate’s mother was the first example of a different way to celebrate life and death. I walked in and was quickly alarmed and confused. People were sitting casually in small groups around the room, some dressed as if they were headed out to a nice lunch but there was enough color and lightness in the room that surprised me. I was wearing all black. (Actually, I wore a lot of black in those days, but that’s for another post.) They were talking, laughing, sharing tears and memories of my friend’s mother. There was talk about life in the presence of the dead, talk about life with life and laughter.

But in neither my Korean or American contexts have I found a good space to talk about death, particularly death in light of the living. I find it fairly easy to talk about those who have already died, but death and ways to celebrate life in death are more often than not reserved for the moments as families plan the funeral.

So it has come as some relief in the weightiness of the week’s events that this week began with Easter and last night was spent  preparing for Sunday’s worship service…

There’s a day that’s drawing near

When this darkness breaks to light

And the shadows disappear

And my faith shall be my eyes.

Jesus has overcome and the grave is overwhelmed

The victory is won, He is risen from the dead.

Serving as a Rite of Passage and Mark of Faith

So yesterday I wrote about the realization that I had become an “ahjumma”. Despite what you think, I’m cool with it. No really. It’s OK.

But comments on my FB page are proving that some of my girlfriends are not so ok with it. It’s all in good fun, but has got me thinking about womanhood and how hospitality and service carry both the brokenness and the redeemed parts of my culture and faith.

My childhood connections between the acts of service I often saw the ahjummas performing were more often than not fond memories – very little baggage. My mother and her friends were in the kitchen at church or at home. Nothing more, nothing less. But as I aged how I perceived their place and those acts of service changed and became less positive (or even neutral) and more negative. Service became less about hospitality, mutual submission and loving my neighbor but more of  being put in one’s place and being subservient or less than a real leader. As a young woman, my place was to be in the kitchen, in the nursery, in children’s Sunday School, with my mother, in the shadows. I associated those places and roles rather negatively, mainly because those were the only roles open to me.

And being the kind of young woman I was, I bristled at the idea that somehow my breasts and uterus limited my abilities and worth. My understanding of what service and submission and leadership and worth transformed and redeemed by Jesus was very limited, and in the end I did not want to become one of “those” submissive and weak women.

But the laughter I shared with my girlfriends over cake and rice cake was hardly borne out of weakness. We chose our place – to stand willingly and lovingly beside and behind another friend to do for her what needed to be done for her guests. We weren’t the young girls who needed our mothers to tell us it was time to cut the rice cake. We were the women who simply knew. Our acts of service were both a blessing to her and to us, and that was borne out of knowing who we are before doing what we do. We may not want to be called “ahjumma” but I am beginning to think that how and why we serve marks some sort of rite of passage for us into womanhood with a unique expression of that womanhood as Asian American women. Just a thought I’m lingering within…

Perhaps that is part of the transformation I am still going through, managing the push and pull to love others through my acts of service precariously balanced against the tiredness and bitterness of serving others who do not appreciate all that I am doing for them. I am both Mary and Martha – mentally wanting to sit at Jesus’ feet while simultaneously creating a checklist of things to do. I am worried and distracted, independent but still bound to my parents and children, faith and culture.

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