Planting Tomato Seeds on Earth Day

On this Earth Day I am planting hope.

I am going to put the seeds that I have saved from last year’s cheery tomato plant into the soil. I went to Home Depot to get a cherry tomato seedling last year. The tomato plant yielded many juicy and yummy cheery tomatoes in the summer and into the fall. They were so good that I decided to save some seeds to see if I could grow them next spring.

I read in a Chinese newspaper that I can save tomato seeds in two ways. I can save some cheery tomatoes and freeze them in the freezer. I saved two and yesterday I defrosted one of them so that I would still have one left, just in case.

The other way is to take out some seeds from a tomato and dry them, so that they will be ready to be planted in the following season. I will experiment to see if seeds preserved by both methods would germinate.

I first tried to grow vegetables in the spring of 1996, after my family moved into a house we bought in Massachusetts. I have grown up in Hong Kong and there was hardly any land for growing.

So in 1996, we started a garden plot of 3 feet by 12 feet in our backyard and grew tomatoes, lettuce, green peppers, green onions, and beans. I also grew a few basils and thymes, herbs I did not use often but gave very fragrant smell.

The tomatoes and lettuce were so fresh when we used them for our summer salads. The most amazing thing was watching the little seedlings grow and bear fruits. Gardening was something I have never tried before and it opened a new world for my family and me.

After growing for several seasons, my family stopped doing it because we were too busy and the summer months were hot. I had many other things to do in the summer: reading, writing, taking walks, and catching up with my life…whatever that was.

Last June, I taught a June course on God and Creation. Our class went on a field trip to see an organic garden at a monastery, about 45 miles north of Boston. A student of mine was in charge of this organic garden and he explained to us the relation between sustainable farming, food, and God’s providence in very concrete ways. For example, he showed how different plants grow symbiotically together in his garden.

After the June term, it was already late for the planting season. But my husband and I decided to start growing again!

We created a new garden plot of 5 feet by 22 feet. We divided it into 6 beds and grew tomatoes, red and green peppers, zucchini, and butternut squash. I was so glad to be able to grow Chinese bok choy from seeds I bought from Chinatown. Though I had only 8 or 9 not very healthy-looking bok choy plants, hardly enough for two meals, I bragged about my success in the fall.

So this year, I am observing the international Earth Day by doing something simple: plant some tomato seeds. This is a concrete way of bringing awareness to my busy life of the intimate connection I have with the environment.

As I watch the tomato seeds germinate and grow, I will learn not to take the foods I eat for granted. I thank all those who have grown the foods I will eat on this particular day and remember those who have very little to eat or have to go to bed hungry.

Asian Americans Should Care about Immigration

The public faces of undocumented people in the U.S. are people from central and South America. The Latino group has been leading the effort to demand a path to citizenship and to challenge legislation that would discriminate undocumented immigrants.

Where are the Asian faces? Among the 12 million undocumented people in the U.S., about 1.5 million are Asians. They have come from different Asian countries. Many don’t speak English and work in jobs that others don’t want.

At the annual meeting of Pacific, Asian, North American Asian Women in Theology and Ministry (PANAAWTM) held in Norcross, Georgia, from March 24 to 26, 2011, participants discussed the theme “Immigration, Borders, and Boundaries.”

Anne Joh, a professor at the Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary set the context by discussing border and boundaries in globalization and the neo-liberal economy. She pointed out scholars such as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have argued that contemporary Empire is increasingly de-territorialized, with capital and labor moving across national boundaries. Yet, Joh said, walls have been constructed to keep people out and to maintain national boundaries, such as the walls in Israel and along the U.S. border.

Among the Asian undocumented immigrants, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people face double marginalization. Elizabeth Leung of the Pacific School of Religion talked about the invisibility of Asian LGBTQ people and the difficulties for them to come out to their community. Since they are undocumented, they cannot access supportive systems and ask for help when they are in need. Leung reminded us that there are more than 2,100 verses in the Bible about caring for the poor. The aliens are included in the category of the poor, and we should be concerned about their welfare.

Helen Kim Ho, a Korean American lawyer who left her practice of corporate law to become the Executive Director of the Asian American Legal Advocacy Center, Inc., challenged the participants to be involved in immigration issues. As a person of faith, she said churches and faith communities have very important roles to play to stand up for the voiceless and to shape the values of society.

Ho said Asian Americans should not remain silent on immigration issues. As a group Asian and Pacific Islanders were the first to be stigmatized in the nation’s immigration law. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act, signed by President Chester A. Arthur, effectively stopped Chinese immigration for ten years and prohibited Chinese to become U.S. citizens. It was the first major law restricting immigration to the U.S.

The Chinese Exclusion Act foreshadowed the other acts restricting immigration in the 1920s. In 1929 the National Origins Act capped overall immigration to the U.S. at 150,000 per year and barred Asian immigration.

It was not until the Immigration Act of 1965 that the national-origin policy was eliminated. Since then more and more Asians immigrated to the U.S. to join their families and to work in various professions. Today, Asian Americans make up 4.6 percent of the population (about 14.6 million people). We are one of the fastest growing racial/ethnic groups (in terms of percentage increase) in the U.S.

Asian Americans have been seen as perpetual foreigners in the U.S. because of the history of racism. The myth of “model minority” and internalized racism make it difficult for some of the Asian Americans to speak up for undocumented Asians. The sense of shame surrounding the issue of illegality and undocumented status further compounds the problems of mobilizing the Asian American community.

Yet speak we must. These undocumented workers work hard, pay their taxes, and contribute to our society. The Bible teaches us to care for those aliens and strangers among us. In a parable in Matthew 25, Jesus said that whatever you did for the least of these, you did it to me. Let us heed the call and stand in solidarity with those who are voiceless and afraid to speak.

Nature in Japanese Art

Japan is situated in a major earthquake zone. The country suffers from earthquakes and natural disasters frequently. In 1923, the Great Kanto Earthquake destroyed 70% of Tokyo and 80% of Yokohama. The death toll was 140,000. We have yet to find out the magnitude of the loss of lives and properties in the recent 8.9 magnitude earthquake and tsunami.

I wonder if the precariousness of life is one of the reasons that Japanese artists and poets display such attention and love for nature and its beauty.

The tsunami reminded me of “The Great Wave of Kanagawa” by Katsushika Hokusai, created in the 1820s. This is the first in the series of his woodblock print Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. Although it depicts not a tsunami, but an open big wave of the sea, it captures the power and ferociousness of the water.

The impermanence of nature and beauty features prominently in Japanese art: ikebana (生け花 living flowers or the way of flowers), tea ceremony, and poetry.

One of the Japanese poetic forms is haiku (俳句), consisting of 17 moras, in 3 phrases of 5-7-5 moras respectively. The moras are not the equivalent of syllables, but English writers use syllables as their guide. Traditional haiku focused on aspects of the natural world.

The most famous haiku poet was Matsuo Basho (1644-1694). The best known of his work is “The Old Pond”

古池や　蛙飛込む　水の音

fu-ru-i-ke ya (5)
ka-wa-zu to-bi-ko-mu (7)
mi-zu no o-to (5)

Translated as

old pond . . .

a frog leaps in

water’s sound

After the tsunami last week, people wrote haiku and circulated on the Internet to express their feelings and to remember the dead. Here are a couple of them and some are taking poetic license to change the form.

Enraged Pacific

Fire, water, endless destruction

Hope and hopelessness collide

(Nohea)

Big tsunami wave

Washing over everything

Wish it wasn't there

(Alexander Hopkins)

Unanchored ships

Tossed in chaos of

Tsunami’s raw power

(Walterrean Salley)

Praying for Japan

Watching the videos in which the cars, houses, and fishing boats were blown and carried away by the tsunami in Japan was like watching a horror movie. How could we fathom the huge loss brought by the biggest earthquake in Japan’s history? Thousands of people have died and many are still missing.

Where is God in this? And where can we find the manifestation of God’s love at moments like this?

It always seems cruel to me to find moral and religious lessons out of somebody else’s tragedy. At moments of loss and uncertainty, we rely on the ancient wisdom of people who have experienced and survived many tragedies throughout history.

I remember listening to a rabbi talking about the Holocaust many years ago. When asked, “How can the Jews believe in God after so much loss and suffering of the innocent?” The rabbi said, “We don’t know how, but as Jews, we have been questioning and demanding God for an answer for a long time.”

Throughout the Bible and especially during the exodus, the Jewish people had been calling out to God, demanding God to justify God’s own action. I found comfort and solace in that God allows us to ask these soul-searching questions.

It is not a lack of faith when we argue with God and demand God for an answer. It is precisely faith seeking understanding, a vocation for all of us who are learning and doing theology.

In the Jewish magazine Tikkun, there is a section called “Ask the Rabbi.” After the tsunami that hit Southeast Asia in December 2004 killing more than 220,000, a reader asked how could God have allowed the tsunami to happen. Rabbi Michael Lerner responded: “I don’t know and there are no answers, but only responses to the question. The difference is this: an answer seeks to dissolve the question, a response recognizes the ongoing validity of the question and seeks to remain in connection with it.”

The Rabbi suggested that we should stop thinking of God as a big man in heaven deciding our fates and controlling nature. Instead, he wrote, we should understand “God as the force of healing and transformation in the universe, the aspect of the universe that is the source of love, kindness, generosity, social justice, peace and evolving consciousness, and that this aspect of the universe permeates every ounce of being, every cell, and unifies all being.”

Last Sunday during worship, pastors in Japan tried their best to provide solace for the frightened and anxious people. My friend the Rev. Claudia Genung Yamamoto, a pastor of the West Tokyo Union Church, focused her sermon on Psalm 46: “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.”

Yesterday in my spirituality class, we used the ritual of “touching the earth” introduced by the Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. We bowed down, touching the ground with our foreheads, and remembered our ancestors and our spiritual teachers. We bowed and sent our loving energy to people in Japan.

After the disaster, we saw the outpouring of prayers, love, and compassion for the victims and for those who care for the injured, the sick, and people who have lost their loved ones. The orderliness and strength of people lining up for long hours for food, water, and basic necessities impresses us.

We pray for mercy that the nuclear reactors will not explode and spew a radiation crowd like the disaster in Chernobyl. We pray for strength and courage when the Japanese people need to muster their energy to rebuild their society for years to come.

Radical Love by Patrick S. Cheng

Radical love is “a love so extreme that it dissolves our existing boundaries,” writes my colleague Patrick S. Cheng in his new book Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology.

While queer theory could be highly theoretical and off-putting, Cheng’s Radical Love summarizes the contributions of queer theology in the last fifty years in an accessible and readable way.

So what is “queer”? This term was used in a derogatory way, but has been reappropriated as a neutral or positive term since the late 1980s. Cheng defines “queer” in an inclusive manner: as an umbrella term that refers to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex people and their allies; as a label that embraces transgressive actions against societal norms, with respect to sexuality and gender identity; and as a term used to subvert and erase boundaries especially in queer theory.

After tracing the genealogy of queer theology, the book proceeds to discuss the three persons of the Trinity, following the framework of ancient creeds. God is the sending forth of radical love, Christ can be seen as the recovery of radical love, and the Holy Spirit as the return of radical love.

Following queer, poststructuralist, and postcolonial theorists, Cheng questions the rigid boundaries such as the East and the West, homosexual and heterosexual, male and female, and divine and human. He argues that Christian theology is a queer enterprise, destabilizing all kinds of fixed binary categories.

Queer theologians insist that gender identity and sexuality are social constructs, and these constructs are often deployed to provide sanctions for the status quo. To “queer” is to challenge “common sense” and to render what is hidden, transparent.

For example, the Roman Catholic Church has used Natural Law to justify its arguments in favor of heterosexuality and procreation. But biologist Bruce Bagemihl in his book Biological Exuberance shows that hundreds of animal species engage in homosexual, bisexual, and transgender behavior.

While feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether has questioned, “Can a male savior save women?” queer theologians go a step further to queer the gender and sexual identity of Jesus.

Jesus, as the embodiment of radical love, crosses sexual boundaries. Nancy Wilson and others have shown that Jesus was sexually attracted to both men and women: Mary Magdalene, Lazarus, the beloved disciple in John, and the nude young man in Mark 14:51-52. The late queer theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid portrays a Bi/Christ that challenges our fixation on binaries.

I suspect many readers will find the portrayal of Jesus crossing gender boundaries even more challenging. Virginia Mollenkott writes about the intersex Jesus Christ, that Jesus has two X chromosomes (from Mary), yet phenotypically male. Justin Tanis suggests that Jesus’ life experience parallel that of many transgender people.

Furthermore, Elizabeth Stuart argues that the body of Christ is the church, which consists of a multitude of genders sexualities. Baptism and Eucharist reveal that gender and sexual identities are not of ultimate concern.

The book might remind some readers of the “boundary war” among feminists in the mid-1990s. While feminists such as Marie Fortune argued for clear boundaries in their work against sexual abuses in the church and workplace, Carter Heyward decried that rigid boundaries could also betray us and reinforce hierarchical relationships.

In Cheng’s book, binary distinctions and hierarchical constructs are overcome because of radical love. Sexual abuses and oppressions of all kinds are clearly contradictory to radical love. But love without justice is blind. I would like to see more discussions on how to protect radical love and how to differentiate radical love from love that goes awry, and from abuses that masquerade as love.

One of the strengths of the book is that it touches on all major doctrines of Christian theology: revelation, trinity, creation, sin, atonement, church, saints, sacraments, and eschatology (the last things). It showcases the breadth of the theological output of queer theologians. The book includes further study questions and a lengthy bibliography. It will be a very good resource to be used in the classroom and in church and small groups.

I hope that the publication of Cheng’s book will stimulate more discussions on queer theology among the younger generation, especially among the racial and ethnic minorities. Although Cheng has included racial and ethnic minority authors, their voices are often drown by those of white authors’. I hope that more work will be available that explores the intersectionality of gender, race, class, sexuality in our changing world politics.

Preparing Students for the Pacific Century

“How do we as theological educators prepare students for the Pacific Century?” I asked the faculty of Brite Divinity School at the Texas Christian University at Forth Worth, Texas. The twenty-first century has been dubbed the Pacific Century. While politicians, economists, and social scientists pay a lot of attention to the rise of China and India, what do we need to do to prepare students to be future ministers and civic leaders?

I spent two days with the faculty and students of Brite Divinity School and the Department of Religion of Texas Christian University at the invitation of the Asian (Korean) Church Studies Program. The animated discussion on transnationalism and theology in the Asia-Pacific prompted me to think more about the question I have raised.

Many theological schools in the United States have not positioned themselves to face the challenges of the twenty-first century. Currently we have three major geopolitical blocs shaping the future of the world: North America, the European Union, and Asia-Pacific. But our theological curriculum is very outdated, leaving the Asia-Pacific largely out of its scope.

There are historical and social reasons why theological schools have not caught up with the shifting geopolitics:

· The limitation of disciplinary boundary. Faculties are trained in specific fields, and some do not think Asia-Pacific matters in their field and should be included in their syllabus.

· Theological faculties are ill equipped. Many of the current theological educators do not feel equipped or prepared to talk about the Asia-Pacific, with its complexities and diversity.

· Asian and Asian American faculties feel marginalized. Tokenism is still an important problem. The one or two Asian or Asian American members of the faculty feel that they are the “designated” experts, called upon to manage diversity and to interpret Asia from Japan all the way to India!

· Not sufficient Asian or Asian American students. In some theological schools, Asian students, usually Koreans, make up a significant percentage of the student body. But there is a lack of students from other Asian countries to embody the diversity that is Asia. In other schools, Asian or Asian American students represent only a tiny minority of the student population.

· The Asian “ethnic” churches are seen to be conservative. In the debate of issues such as homosexuality in U.S.A. and Canada, Asian “ethnic” churches are perceived to be conservative. Progressive seminaries find it hard to build relations with these churches.

While I do not want to underestimate these barriers, I want to argue that theological schools need to be forward-looking.

· Teaching for a changing world. Preparing students for the twenty-first century does not simply mean including Asia-Pacific in the curriculum. It means broadening students’ worldview to include a global perspective. Students need to know about the formation of “Chinamerica” and its impact on the world and especially on poorer countries.

· Broadening the definition of theological competency. Some schools have included globalization in its requirements. This is a good first step. But it is not enough to ask students to take courses to fulfill this requirement, while the “traditional disciplines” remain largely unchanged. I would like to see global concerns included across the curriculum, in worship and liturgy, as well as in the culture of the school.

· Retooling and diversifying the faculty. Theological schools need to provide resources and incentives for faculty to re-imagine how their fields address the twenty-first century. It is also not enough to have a few tokens of racial and ethnic minorities or international professors to be the spokespersons and champions of diversity.

· The “silent” Asian students in the classroom. Some Asian students do not speak up in class because of language barriers and their socialization process. Instead of treating them as second-class citizens in the classroom, how can faculty and students engage in meaningful conversations about multicultural pedagogy? A useful resource is a report on Asian and Asian American pedagogy and teaching materials offered by a research team.

· Religious diversity. We must help students understand the challenges of religious pluralism and the religious actors in international politics in the global era. I recommend Thomas Banchoff’s Religious Pluralism, Globalization, and World Politics.

· Beware of learning opportunities in the community. Theological schools should encourage students to take advantage of learning opportunities about the Asia-Pacific offered by universities and the community. Strategic alliance with Asian and Asian American religious and civic leaders can be fostered.

Womanist Pedagogy

American schools are as segregated as before Dr. Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement. How can we help to create space in the classroom such that issues of race, gender, class, and sexuality can be discussed?

Three African American professors discussed the vision and concerns of womanist pedagogy at the Southwest Regional Meeting of the American Academy of Religion this morning in Dallas, Texas. “Womanism” is a term used by Alice Walker in her book In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose to describe the perspective and experiences of African American women.

Professor Keri Day, Director of Black Church Studies at Brite Divinity School at the Texas Christianity University, spoke of moral imagination as a form of moral action. At a time when white male Eurocentric knowing is still the norm in many schools, she called attention to the ways imagination can contribute “to evoke new worlds,” as Toni Morrison has said. She used the work of Paulo Freire to discuss consciousness raising and critical awareness of the complexity of the world.

Engaging the work of Michel Foucault, Professor M. Francyne Huckaby of College of Education of the same university, spoke of creative chaos and seducing power in liberating pedagogy. Foucault has talked about the technology of the self and governmentality of power. Dr. Huckaby emphasized that within relation of power, there is also the relation of vulnerability. Power is never final or total. Womanist pedagogy can help students understand the underside of power and use it creatively for social change.

Professor Melanie L. Harris cited the work of her colleague Jack Hill to discuss teaching for diversity.* Hill offers several pedagogical steps, including: (1)acknowledge your own social location, (2) deal with resistance, (3) dismantle “safe spaces of niceness” in order to promote transformation, (4) deal with conflict with an ethic of care, and (5) share power as a way of creating a communal context of learning.

In her response to Hill’s work, Dr. Harris discussed her use of womanist pedagogy in the classroom, adopting the critical insights of Katie G. Cannon, Marcia Riggs, and Emilie Townes. Cannon, a pioneer in womanist ethics, stresses the dismantling of outmoded and conventional knowledge and demystifying racist and sexist ideologies. Riggs models the commitment to theory and praxis in her book Plenty Good Room. Emilie Townes uses Toni Morrison’s metaphor of womanist “dancing mind” to describe the sacred moment of learning between teacher and student.

In the discussion following the panel, participants raised the question of how might people of other social locations learn from the womanist approach. A white participant wants to use some of the critical insights in negotiating differences in her predominantly black church.

A black male student asked how male professionals might support the work of womanists. One of the panelists responded that it is important for black male professors to continue to lift up the voices of womanists, and not just learn about them when they are writing their dissertations.

A black woman who graduated from divinity school and is teaching in public school asked if the womanist scholars are bringing their pedagogy to the black church and community. It is often a challenge to be a scholar and activist at the same time. Dr. Day's Black Church Studies program seeks to bridge the gap between academia and the black church community.

*Jack A. Hill, “Fighting the Elephant in the Room: Ethical Reflections on White Privilege and Other Systems of Advantage in the Teaching of Religion,” Teaching Theology and Religion 12, no. 1 (2009): 3-12. Followed by responses by Melanie L. Harris and Hjamil A. Martínez-Vázquez.