Chinese New Year

Today is Chinese New Year, the beginning of the Year of the Rabbit. My sister in Hong Kong sent me a greeting card, showing the plum branches they bought for the new year. The Chinese characters say, "May your wishes come true and may you have luck and harmony."

As a Christian, I celebrate three different new year days. The Christian calendar begins with the season of Advent. I spent the first week of Advent last year in Victoria, British Columbia, and preached at Christ Church Cathedral. We began the new year preparing for the birth of Christ.

The New Year of the Gregorian calendar begins on January 1. This is the day of circumcision of Jesus (the eighth day of his birth) and the baby was given the name Jesus.

The Chinese New Year was a big day for my family when we lived in Hong Kong. My sisters and brothers all returned home on New Year's Eve for the big banquet. It was a time for family reunion. The Chinese New Year is about family, relationships, and food.

New year is a time of renewal and fresh start. In many ancient religious traditions, there is the myth of eternal return.

There is a group of psalms called enthronement psalms, such as Ps 47, 93, and 96. These psalms emphasize Yahweh as the king.

Clap your hands, all you peoples;

shout to God with loud songs of joy.

For the Lord, the Most High, is awesome,

a great king over all the earth. (Ps 47: 1-2)

Some have suggested that these psalms were likely used during Israel's New Year's Festival, which celebrated Yahweh's kingship and rule and God's covenant with Israel. The all-powerful God is king of the universe.

The belief that God rules over the universe is under much attack today. Stephen Hawking has said, "Let there be no God!," and there was light! He also proudly proclaimed, "Science makes God unnecessary."

Yet his Cambridge colleague Stephen Toulmin reminds us that traditional world picture combined "an astronomical, a teleological, and a theological picture" and stressed "cosmic interrelatedness."

Toulmin's teacher Ludwig Wittgenstein, said in Culture and Value, "An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it."

Indeed, "the opposite of faith is not doubt, it's certainty," writes Anne Lamott.

Preparing for Chinese New Year

The Chinese New Year will be this Thursday. People who are far away from home will return home for the holiday. They will prepare special foods and give children pocket money and new clothes.

The preparations for the New year can teach us a few spiritual lessons.

You have to clean the house, especially the kitchen, which can be full of greasy smell because of the stir-fly. If you don't do so, the Kitchen God will give you a bad report. Periodical cleaning is great for your spiritual health too.

I will give out the Chinese word fu for "blessing" on red paper to the students in my spirituality class. I will ask them to clean out a corner of their room and put the word "blessing" there, and create an altar or a space for meditation.

The Chinese like to buy flowers for the New Year. Before his death, my father used to buy narcissus bulbs and cut them at a certain date so that they would blossom during the New Year. He would give each of his children who were no longer living at home narcissus bulbs for the holidays.

The New Year is the beginning of spring. It is fitting to welcome spring in our lives with flowers. Some of the favorite flowers for the Chinese include peony, chrysanthemum, lily. They also like blooming plum and quince branches.

Family and friends gather for a sumptuous meal on New Year's eve. The people in China have a long holiday for the New Year and traffic will be very congested. Those migrant workers will try their best to return home, as the New Year is the most important time to see the families.

To mark the auspicious New Year day, my mother would only eat vegetarian food on that day. She would offer thanksgiving to the ancestors and pray for the coming year.

Since I have moved to the U.S., I do not keep up with the tradition. But this year when I visited my sister in New York several weeks ago, she helped me to select some narcissus bulbs. They are blooming in the kitchen and giving out tiny white and yellow flowers.

My EDS colleagues gave me a large bouquet of flowers at the party yesterday in honor of me for receiving the honorary degree. I was very thankful for their kind gesture. So now I have enough flowers to fill three vases. My daughter is working and can't come home. All I need to do is cleaning up the kitchen and I am all set for the New Year.