towers around the mall: thorncliffe park vs. joel kotkin

Yesterday I visited Thorncliffe Park, a community in the East York area of Toronto of which I am creating an ethnographic profile at the request of my supervisor. The neighborhood has a very high immigrant population, with over half of the residents having lived in Canada for five years or less. Most of the people in the community are South Asian, but sizable populations of East Asians, Caribbeans, and Greeks are also evident. Today the community is laid out in a horseshoe shape, with the tall residential towers forming a loop around the East York Town Centre mall.

the Leaside Towers, the tallest and most famous of the Thorncliffe Park apartment buildings

The enclosed feeling of the community with its residential towers oriented around a commercial center brought to mind a book read earlier this summer. Before I came to Canada I read Joel Kotkin's The City: A Global History. The book is tiny but dense, following the historical development of urban areas from Mesopotamia to present day in just about every cultural context imaginable. As I walked through the neighborhood, I was reminded of Kotkin's categorization of cities as “places sacred, safe, and busy.”


Kotkin observes that ancient cities typically centered around temples, cathedrals, or other religious buildings, and that secular cities today still invoke spiritual myths of power and authority with imposing structures and dramatic skyscrapers. He also notes that cities need to provide their citizens with a sense of security, something that has been true since ancient cities kept invading hordes out with large walls. Finally, he remarks that cities must have a vibrant commercial base to attract and sustain large populations of people; this is probably the most obvious of the three characteristics in contemporary Westernized urban areas.

While Thorncliffe Park is part of the city of Toronto, it appears to operate as a microcosm of these historical urban realities. Just about every apartment building has several large “No Trespassing” signs at every potential entrance, and entrance is only allowed to those who either know the access code or know someone in the building. Most of the buildings have a Y-shaped design that almost invokes a fortress, standing tall and imposing over passers-by. As a highly immigrant community, I suspect that in many ways Thorncliffe Park serves as a "safe place" for immigrants, as evidenced by the large number of culture-specific restaurants and stores and the presence of offices that offer services to aid recent immigrants. This is the function that many Chinatowns and similar ethnic enclaves came to have, and while Thorncliffe Park is by no means an exact parallel I think some common ground could be found there.

It's also hard to separate the need for safety and the spiritual function in a community like this. I was in the neighborhood during the first days of Ramadan, and being a majority-Muslim neighborhood I suspect it was much quieter than on a "typical" day. Many of the South Asian shops were closed and I happened to pass by a mosque as many people were leaving. In a neighborhood like this where their spiritual practice is the norm, I suspect many people, particularly the recent immigrants, have a comfort level that does not necessarily exist in other areas of the city.

Finally, the central role of the East York Town Centre and the large number of businesses catering to specific cultural niches reinforces the role of commercial interests in keeping Thorncliffe Park a growing and dynamic community. I suspected from research I had done about the community that the mall, being the geographic center of the neighborhood, would operate also as a community center in many ways. (For another example, I've heard locals in Brownwood, Texas argue that the closest thing they have to a community center is the local Wal-Mart, and I believe they're correct.) Sure enough, the mall appears to be not only a shopping destination but a place where everyone, regardless of background or age, finds themselves at some point. The entire bottom floor of the mall is medical services, something I haven't seen before, and the indoor architecture gives the building more of a marketplace feeling.

this picture isn't great, but it's the best I have from the mall interior

Almost of all of this is based on speculation rooted on some demographic research and one observational visit to the neighborhood, so I may be off-base on some of my thoughts here. Nonetheless, I'll be playing with this idea some more as I learn more about the area in conjunction with my practicum responsibilities.

This was also the first time I've actually been in Downtown Toronto, as I had to go through Union Station to get to the neighborhood. Here's a some gratuitous skyline shots:

retreating and preaching

This past weekend I joined the Church in the One for their summer retreat up in the country north of Mississauga. This is a yearly tradition for the church, although due to scheduling issues and timing it was apparently smaller than usual this year. Nonetheless we had about forty people staying at a cottage near Mono Mills, complete with a trail in the woods, a campfire for roasting marshmallows, and a swimming pool. Unfortunately it rained much of Saturday, but that has been pretty standard for the weather in Ontario since I arrived. At least it didn't hail, which it did in Mississauga last week.

Anyway, Pastor Jon of CTO asked me to speak a couple of times the Saturday of the retreat, giving short devotionals/sermons to the group. In the morning I spoke about the Golden Calf story in Exodus, remixing a sermon I gave at my home church a few years ago, and in the evening I spoke about Stephen's speech to the Sanhedrin in Acts. I intended the sermons to go together, focusing in the morning on being aware of what God is doing and not exchanging devotion to him for something less, and focusing in the evening on recognizing patterns of disobedience and giving those over to God.

The evening sermon in particular was pretty close to things with which I have been wrestling this summer. A common pattern for me is being completely disappointed in whatever I do or try to do in ministry. A little bit of this can be productive and helpful, assuring that I am never content with taking my responsibilities too lightly and that I am always striving to do my best. However, I tend to take it too far and have no confidence in anything I do, regardless how much preparation I make or how gifted I may be in a certain area. If I preach and give a wonderful sermon but make one slight gaffe while speaking, after the sermon I'll only remember the mistake.

After both of my sermons, but particularly after the second one, I felt this down feeling that is so familiar. With the second sermon, I feared that I had not been clear enough in what I tried to say and that I had just thrown together some unrelated points in a confusing way. As I looked over my sermon before the night meeting I felt like it just didn't work on some level, and after speaking I felt that I hadn't resolved the messiness.

(ASIDE: Incidentally, I had conversation about this with Pastor Jon a few weeks ago, and he observed that he often experiences what he calls "post-sermon depression," the feeling after speaking where one recognizes all of his or her mistakes and fears that the hearers didn't care or didn't get it. Often the speaker knows and recognizes everything he or she said wrong, while the majority of the time the audience remains completely oblivious to these errors. It was encouraging to hear that I am not alone in experiencing this.)

In spite of this down feeling, I was encouraged, by some very gracious and affirming feedback from a few of the people at the camp. A fellow seminary grad said that the sermon gave him a few ideas he had not considered before. An older woman told me the next morning that a group of the older people had stayed up that night discussing what I shared, contemplating what it means for their church. I was totally floored by that comment, as I don't recall ever being told that about anything I've said, ever.

It probably sounds cliché, but I really have to give the credit for that one over to God. Nothing I said was that profound, even if it was the best sermon of my life (which it wasn't... I hope). One verse that has always stuck with me comes from 2nd Corinthians, when Paul, while lamenting some "thorn" that has plagued him for some time, declares that God told him, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." The whole idea of power made perfect in weakness is a classic example of the paradoxical truth that underscores the whole Good News of Jesus, and it gives me relief and strength to think that even when I have no confidence in what I do, God has given me some abilities and will bless what I do when I do it for him. This summer has been fairly difficult so far with so much downtime, and it's easy for me to let myself get discouraged by what I view as my own inadequacies or failures. Fortunately God can use me anyway.

So the retreat was good, it was nice to spend some time with the CTO church family and get to know many of them better. I roomed with about a dozen teenage boys in a barn renovated into a game room, which was an interesting experience. Having been a teenage boy at one time I knew to expect that I wouldn't get much sleep, and I was correct, but what else would you expect on a retreat? It was still fun, and I'm glad I got to the chance to go and be a part of it.

Pastor Alex, one of my supervisors, returns from The Philippines sometime tomorrow, so hopefully my activities will be picking up in the weeks to come. I have only a month left here, which boggles my mind. I don't know why I'm surprised - these kinds of experiences always pass quickly - but I feel overwhelmed when I think about the time frame. We'll see what happens.

goin' fishin' - ruminations on pursuing the pearl

About a year or so I got stuck on the topic of Asian American theology for a while. I am not exactly sure why I did. I took Dr. Hanciles’ “Immigration, Religion and the American Church” class and ended up focusing my class project on generational dynamics within Chinese American churches, and then I took Dr. Dyrness’ “Theology in Global Perspective” the following quarter and participated in a group project on Asian American theology. Born out of that class, I became involved in a newly formed Asian American Theology Fellowship at Fuller, and have continued to be faithfully involved at most of their events.

All this, yet I am a white American who does not participate in an Asian American church.

At one of AATF’s events, an LA-area pastor named Ken Fong came and spoke about issues in multiethnic Asian American ministry. Fong pastors Evergreen LA, a church that transitioned from being a Japanese immigrant church to being a multiethnic church mostly made up of people from numerous Asian groups, and (perhaps most remarkably) people across generational lines. His insights were borne out of his experiences in pan-Asian ministry, but most of what he had to say has implications for anyone working in a church in a contemporary North American setting.


All this to set up: I finished reading Fong’s book Pursuing the Pearl: A Comprehensive Resource for Multi-Asian Ministry a few days ago. Fong wrote the book about a decade ago so the information does appear somewhat dated today, but the insights and implications remain quite relevant. Much of what he said in person at the AATF meeting dealt with the themes he explores in the book. In many ways it felt like Dan Kimball’s The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations with an Asian twist (though since Fong’s book predates Kimball’s, might The Emerging Church be Pursuing the Pearl with an Anglo twist?), as both books deal with what church looks like in changing North American cultural contexts and range from describing the culture to giving practical advice on points such as preaching, music direction, aesthetics and design, and so on.

Fong weaves an central analogy of saltwater and freshwater fish throughout the book, suggesting the acculurturation of immigrant groups resembles a freshwater river - settings that are largely homogenous for the immigrant group, such as an immigrant church - running into a saltwater sea - settings that are dominated by Anglo American norms. In Fong’s model, the first immigrant generation functions like imported bass, swimming in the new freshwater rivers of a new setting, attending church in their heart language and staying close to others of the same ethnic origin. Their children, the second generation, might be more like salmon, moving downstream from the freshwater streams and mingling in the saltwater bay, able to function in both conditions. Their children, the third and subsequent generations, live more like cod, swimming only in the saltwater, speaking only English and being unable to thrive in a “freshwater” setting. This flow can be seen in just about every immigrant group that comes to North America, but of course Fong applies this model specifically to Asians.

(compiled family portrait)
The problem comes in when freshwater churches (immigrant churches led by first generation immigrants) attempt to “dam up” their saltwater descendants (their Americanized children, grandchildren, and so on) in an effort to preserve their cultural identity and pass on their faith. While well intentioned and completely understandable, this reaction only leads to tension and hardened feelings on the part of everyone involved. Fong suggests the solution that the first generation should release the subsequent generations and bless them in their own way of experiencing and living out faith and community. This model has continually informed the ministries of Evergreen LA.

I suppose I have been stuck on Asian American theology despite by own ethnic identity in part because I think many white or multiethnic churches can learn from the thinking that many Asian Americans actively do about generational dynamics. Most long-established white churches more or less let their church ministries flow on while operating in autopilot, occasionally tempering the music or changing some offered ministry programs but never really taking into account how their younger people experience God and participate in the faith. I have seen some Anglo churches that also “dam up” their young people, making well-intentioned efforts at retaining their youth but simply driving them farther away and often hardening them against the faith altogether.

I am hesitant to simply apply Fong’s model to white Americans whose ancestors may have come to the US or Canada centuries ago (although some Asians can claim North American lineage for just as long) and blend into the "mainstream" of society, but when I heard him speak at AATF Fong himself made a comment to that effect. He cited the recent book unChristian by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons as one example (of many) of a book showing that cultural shifts mean emerging American and Canadian generations do not necessarily have any cultural connection to the Christian faith and thus have different perceptions of the faith and different ways of processing, experiencing, practicing, and interpreting spirituality and religion.

Perhaps white Americans do not have to consider generational shifts from a “foreign” culture to North American culture, but we may have been experiencing the shift happening beneath our own feet for a while now. As the first generations of North Americans grow up who do not have Christianity as an assumed cultural constant, the way that church looks and operates in society has to change. This does not mean that our values or compromised; quite the opposite, we have to learn how to be true to our values in a new type of context. This changing of the way church looks intends to maintain the integrity of the church, not to diminish it.

As I get involved with these churches in the GTA, I see a diversity of approaches - some comprised mostly of first generation immigrants, some of a mixture of generations, some made up of second and subsequent generation Canadians from various ethnic backgrounds. In the midst of this I see churches that bless each other and work together while allowing each other to maintain their own identity and sense of calling, and that encourages me. Perhaps this kind of networking will be one way that churches learn to reach out together in the years to come. I am not sure exactly how this looks or what problems and benefits this may pose, and I know that no "one size fits all" solution or approach exists, but it gives me something to look for this summer and to consider as I participate in future church ministries myself.

adventures in bible study

So I preached at a Filipino church this Sunday; it's been a few years since my last sermon, if I remember correctly. I was to preach on The New Heaven and The New Earth in Revelation 21-22, which is of course a very safe and easy topic about which to preach. So, I borrowed a couple of commentaries from a pastor here and racked my brain to remember everything I learned in my Revelation class in undergrad with Dr. Allen. (Basically I remembered the importance of numbers, and yes, a good portion of my message was all about the number twelve.) I would've relied on my fancy seminary learnin', but my Acts-Revelation class with a professor who shall remain nameless was the worst class I had at Fuller, if not the worst class I've had since high school, which is saying something since I took a Malaysian Language class that was almost entirely in Malay (which I don't speak) while studying abroad.

Anyway... I worked on my words for Sunday over most of this last week, spending hours at a nearby coffee shop or the local Tim Horton's composing the message. In the end it turned out to be much more academic than I like, but with all the symbolism and imagery it was hard not to spend a lot of time explaining.

Now, when it comes to public speaking, I am a meticulous planner. I like to know all of the details about my venue and my purpose for speaking: to whom am I speaking? how long should I speak? should it be more serious, more light, more intellectual, more emotional? do I need a PowerPoint, and if so how detailed should it be? etc. etc. etc.

I didn't know most of those details going into this sermon. I knew that it was a church made up mostly of older Filipinos who speak English, that they had been going through the book of Revelation, and that a PowerPoint would help. I also know from previous experience and observation this summer that Filipinos, while being very lively and loud people at social interactions, tend to sit silent and stone-faced while listening to someone talk, so don't rely too much on audience feedback as a gauge.

So I was nervous going in, but I always get nervous before speaking, with a tendency to freak out directly before I speak and then calm down once I actually start talking. That Sunday morning we arrived at the school where the church meets about half an hour before Sunday School, which starts an hour or so before the church service. (Remember that Filipinos are typically event-driven, so actual starting times remain flexible.) And as I glanced over my sermon text around 9:40, the head pastor of the church approached me and mentioned casually, "You know that Filipinos like to do things at the spur of the moment, right?"

I froze. "Um, yes..." I answered tentatively.

"Well, could you say something about church, about how important it is to come together with others for worship?" he asked.

I relaxed. In my sermon I planned to talk about how church today should be a reflection of the New Jerusalem to come, so this idea should still flow with that added in. "Sure, you want me to add it into the sermon?" I replied.

"Oh, no," he laughed. "We need someone to lead the adult Sunday School. It starts at 10."

I stared back in silent response. "Um... how, how long?" I stammered.

"Oh, forty-five minutes, half an hour," he answered, smiling. "You can do that, right?"

At this point my eyes had probably grown to be the size of small plates. I said nothing, merely standing with my mouth agape. He clapped his hand on my shoulder. "You'll be fine. Talk about Hebrews 6 or something," he offered. He then walked away.

I wasn't exactly nervous at this point, I was more just shocked. I now had about twenty minutes to find a Bible passage, prepare some talking points, and think of something to say for forty-five minutes to a group of Filipinos mostly twenty or so years older than me who probably wouldn't be too keen on speaking up in a group. This is basically a culmination of every fear I have about speaking or teaching that had rolled into a tidy package and dropped squarely on my head.

So I looked up Hebrews 6, tried in vain to come up with a handful of profound points, and Sunday School got off to a start around 10:15, just me and fifteen or so people. I'm not going to go into the details of what happened in the lesson for it's just too painful. Suffice it to say that out of thirty minutes of the lesson, at least fifteen minutes consisted of awkward silence. It was without a doubt the most humiliating and humbling small group experience I have ever had.

After this fiasco I gave my sermon and it was OK, not my most wonderful effort but not bad either. The flexibility of the timeframe for the sermon actually proved to make me less nervous, as I felt more free to take my time, make my points, and move on as necessary. Usually I tend to rush through my sermons, so this was a welcome change. I also played a hymn on the violin, so I guess I had triple duty. Regardless how I personally did, the people were very gracious and supportive. After telling some people here about my experience, several of them gave me a very easy and welcome piece of advice: "Next time, just say 'no.'" I wasn't sure if this was actually an option, but now that I know that choice exists, I will probably be exercising it in the future.

I don't preach anywhere this Sunday (at least I haven't been recruited yet), so my next speaking engagement will likely be at a church retreat for Church in the One the following weekend. In the end, sometimes you just have to embrace the awkwardness and roll with it.

community vs. consumerism - ruminations on the suburban christian

I bought Albert Hsu's The Suburban Christian: Finding Spiritual Vitality in the Land of Plenty on a whim from The Archives Bookshop in Pasadena, CA, as I was simply looking for anything even casually related to my practicum so I could put together a bibliography to meet my academic requirements. The book also seemed like it would fit in well with a one-week class I took before I left for Canada called "Encountering the City," which focused on urban mission and ethnographic research. For something I purchased more or less based on their titles alone, I was amazed at how interesting and useful it was. Sometimes, I guess you can judge a book by its cover.


Albert Hsu brings up the interesting notion that suburban living represents a spiritual quest, a theme that incidentally was often referenced in my "Encountering the City" class. He suggests that the development of suburbia represents a spiritual quest on the part of its inhabitants: the never-ending pursuit of security, financial stability, community, a place to raise the kids, and so on - it’s all an expression of the "American Dream," with a nice house surrounded by a picket fence replacing the rural country homestead. The dream is a place that you personally own where you live that you don't have to share it with anyone. This is underscored by one of the more shocking asides I've stumbled across in any book:

"In the 1950s individualistic single-family houses were seen as the American antidote to communism. Communal housing was seen as suspicious and a dangerous step toward the loss of individual identity and freedom. So suburban developers and architects encouraged individualistic homeownership as an expression of American freedom and one way to fight the Cold War." (p. 39)

Wow. I might point out how ridiculous and reactionary this was, but weren't we encouraged to do our patriotic duty and go out and spend lots of money to reinvigorate the economy in the wake of 9/11? Oops, now I'm getting political. Moving on...

Anyway, suburbs are basically defined by two philosophies: consumerism and isolationism. It is functionally impossible to live in a suburban area and be self-sufficient - malls, strip centers, restaurants, and so on define the suburban landscape, whether you are in Mississauga, Pasadena (the Houston one) or Pasadena (the Los Angeles one). It is also rare to know your neighbors or interact with the local community much at all. This is why we have "commuter churches" where almost all of the members drive from other parts of the city and involvement with the local setting is slim if present at all. With personal cars and nearby freeways (not to mention cell phones and internet access to keep in touch with those who may be physically distant), why bother knowing the people physically close to you?

Hsu makes a wide variety of points that are still running through my mind, but one that has been encountering me during my practicum is the role of immigrant communities in shaping the suburban landscape. Speaking of how different ethnic and immigrant groups change the complexion of typically white suburbs due their frequently different living patterns, Hsu observes:

"Immigrant families with multigenerational households, including aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and other relatives, demonstrate family values and identity not often seen in typical (white) American families, where relatives beyond the nuclear family rarely live under one roof. [...] Rather than asking immigrant families to conform to fragmented, isolationist Western models of suburban family life, it would be a collective benefit to our suburban status quo to be more accommodating to multigenerational and extended families. Such healthy cultural diversity has the potential of invigorating our communities with more dynamic ways of civic and communal life." (p. 43-44)

This strikes me because these are the housing patterns I have observed amongst the Filipino families I am encountering here in Canada. I am living with a family whose house is home to a mother and father, grandmother, one son, two daughters and a son-in-law. More than that, in this house and others I have visited it is common and normal to have visitors drop in unannounced or with little warning, sometimes spend the night, share food, and so on. The idea of "this is my house" appears to be conspicuously absent.

Being an introverted, private person (and one with a white American cultural background), this is not the kind of living situation where I feel most comfortable. But I think I have something to learn about being welcoming and understanding community. I may never live in a multigenerational home or have a proverbial revolving door of residents in my home, but I can learn to practice some of these principles. Another area where I am seeing this in Mississauga is in the role of house churches, where the communal expression of faith is not limited to a foreign building on Sunday morning, but is rather part of the DNA of the community, being shared between the people of the church in their own homes. I experienced this aspect of counter-cultural Christian living some with my church in Brownwood, where small groups were much more important to my weekly worship than attending Sunday service. That openness can go a long way to break down the isolationist, consumerist lie that we are defined by our possessions and by what we own.

The biggest challenge to Christianity in most suburban contexts is the temptation to be owned by the things that own us. It is the temptation to be content and comfortable with our space to live and our own things to have. I hope to learn more from my Filipino friends this summer about letting go of these material things that too often define who I am.

recapping week one

I have been in Canada for a week now, and have spent most of my time so far meeting lots of people and getting acclimated to the new surroundings. Everyone I've met has been very hospitable and supportive and willing to help and give me an opportunity to serve. I gave a devotional at a house church meeting last week and will be giving another tomorrow night, in addition to attending a wide variety of meetings, doing some heavy lifting at the WorldTeam office in preparation for renovations, and tagging along for a farewell party and a baby dedication ceremony at two different family's houses. In the coming weeks I'll be working mostly with a church body called Church in the One, which has its Sunday gatherings in a local mall.

The biggest adjustment I'm having to make so far is getting used to the Filipino sense of time. I am a very time-oriented person, meaning that I tend to take deadlines seriously, show up on time if not early to events, and get stressed out if I feel like I'm late or taking too long. This is pretty typical for most white Americans. Filipinos, on the other hand, tend to be event-oriented, meaning that deadlines and timeframes are flexible and that personal interactions take precedent over any schedule. (In Malaysia they call this "rubber band time," meaning time can be stretched as far as one needs.) For most of this week I have had to rely on others to give me rides, provide opportunities to serve, and so on, and my own ideas of when these things should happen or how long they should take don't fit into the equation. Overall, I think this is a healthy thing for me, but I'm definitely still in the state of adjusting and probably will be for a while.

Also, I'm definitely going to be well fed this summer - I think the biggest fear of the average Filipino is that someone somewhere is currently not eating. Every conversation is punctuated by the refrain of, "Have you eaten yet? You should eat something. Are you sure you're not hungry?" Filipino food is good though, so I'm OK with that.

oh, canada

And so I return to this blog after a long hiatus. I was driven away from blogging by schoolwork, and I come back for the same reason. I shall be chronicling my summer experience on this space, under the watchful eye of my faculty adviser and anyone else who cares to read. So, welcome.


Monday I arrived in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, part of the GTA (that's Greater Toronto Area, as opposed to Grand Theft Auto). I am here to work with a network of churches, most of them small immigrant or multicultural communities, doing a wide variety of tasks. Some ideas that have been thrown around include leading small groups, helping with leader training, and preaching (possibly as early as this Sunday). So far I have been meeting some of the people with whom I will be working, setting things in place for what I will be doing over the next two months.

I can't say much because I don't know much yet as far a specifics go, but I will be giving fairly frequent updates and reflections on here. If you pray, please remember me and the people whom I will be encountering this summer. Thanks!

retired numbers and ancestors, little leaguers and the unborn

I made my first contact with my site of ethnographic research this week, attending two baseball games at The Epicenter in Rancho Cucamonga, watching the Quakes take on the Inland Empire 66ers of San Bernardino (seriously, what is it with these Southern California baseball teams and their names containing prepositional phrases?). It was quite a different experience to spend a baseball game mostly watching the crowd rather than watching the action on the field.

I was pretty surprised by the atmosphere of the game; on Thursday it seemed more like a scene for people to hang out rather than a place to watch baseball. This fits pretty well with the culture of The Kook, as confirmed by one of my roommates who grew up in the area and has been to numerous Quakes games. Sunday was better, as the stadium was full of Little League teams and young families. Ironically, the Quakes dominated the 66ers on the lackadaisical day but lost pretty sloppily when the real fans and kids were in attendance. Oh well.

I haven't made any contacts with Quakes fans to talk about personal connections to the team yet, so I did "participant observation" for my first two games. The most intriguing hypothesis I have after my initial contact follows:


The Ancestors and The Unborn in Baseball

One of the books I am reading for my "Understanding Human Spirituality and Culture" class is Understanding Folk Religion by Paul Hiebert, Daniel Shaw, and Tite Tiénou. In a chapter on finding meaning in life and death, the authors describe of linkage societies, which are societies where people "see themselves not as seperate, autonomous individuals, but as initimately interconnected nodes in large webs of kinship" (p. 104). In other words, in these communities there is no "individual" as Westerners tend to understand it; people derive their identity from being part of the endless flow of the community.

Two very important figures in these communities are the ancestors and the unborn. When people pass away, they do not cease to be or go off to some remote afterlife, but they remain actively involved in the life of the community. This is where practices such as the veneration of ancestors come into play in many contexts. They must be consulted before making serious decisions, and their legacy must be keep alive and respected by the family and the community. Similarly, those who are to come later on must be seriously considered and respected, because they are the ones who will keep your memory alive when you are (hopefully) an ancestor one day.

Hiebert, Shaw, and Tiénou summarize it as follows:

"The concept of linkage provides people with a sense of meaning by giving them a clear identity and security. They are not individuals who happen to live in families - they exist only because they exist in families, clans, and communities. These groups give birth to people, raise them, marry them, give them land, help them raise their children, feed them when they have no food, transform them into ancestors, and immortalize them by remembering them when they are gone" (p. 106).


And this has what, exactly, to do with baseball? I'm glad you inquired.


The Quakes have been dealing with tragedy this season, as one of their former players, Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart, died with two others when they were hit by a drunk driver a few weeks ago. He was 22 years old and died only a few hours after he had pitched an excellent game at Angel Stadium with his family in attendance. Adenhart played for Rancho Cucamonga in 2006, so it has been just a few years since he was with the team.

The Quakes are remembering Adenhart several ways this season. On the left field line, the number 28 is written (his number with the Quakes), and on the right field line is the number 34 (his number with the Angels). Most of the ushers and stadium staff wear pins with the number 34, and the team has a black #34 patch on their jerseys.

Jersey numbers carry a special significance in baseball. Just last week all of Major League Baseball honored Jackie Robinson by having every player in the league wear his #42, which was retired from usage by the entire league in 1997. My Astros have retired nine jersey numbers, two in honor of players who passed away while with the team. Just this season the café in Minute Maid Park's center field was rechristened "The FiveSeven Grille," in recognition of Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio, #5 and #7, two players who became synonymous with Houston baseball in the last two decades.

Honors such as number retirement strike me as baseball's answer to the veneration of the ancestors. It is pretty typical to speak of players reaching "immortality" - the likes of Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, Roberto Clemente and Nolan Ryan might be the patron saints of the sport, or perhaps more accurately the Parthenon of gods. With the controversies of the Steroids Era many of the heroes of this baseball generation, the likes of Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Roger Clemens, have taken severe hits to their reputations, and unless something significant changes none of them will likely make it into the Hall of Fame. The real sting of that rebuke is that they are being denied their ancestorhood, reduced to lonely spirits like Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson before them, forced to aimlessly walk the earth. (That may sound overly dramatic, but it probably doesn't if you've read some of the baseball message boards I have and seen how many people really feel about steroid users.)

Commemoration is immortality. If you've seen The Sandlot, you may remember the words of the ghost of Babe Ruth to young Benny "The Jet" Rodriguez: "Remember kid, there's heroes and there's legends. Heroes get remembered but legends never die."

So, if the veneration of ancestors is a crucial element of baseball culture, where does respect for the unborn emerge?

At both Quakes games I have attended, a local Little League baseball team was brought onto the field with the home team at the start of the game. As the starting lineups were announced and the players ran onto the field, each starter was accompanied by one or two of the Little Leaguers, running alongside the professional players and standing next to them during the national anthem. The boys carefully watched the professionals during the anthem, emulating their positions and postures. This was even more apparent on Sunday, when numerous Little League teams were present. After the game all children were invited to run the bases, getting the chance to experience the feel of running around an actual baseball diamond at a real stadium.

Baseball teams, whether Major or Minor League, seem very aware that if they don't win over the youngest generation, the sport will die out. Why else would colorful mascots, endless freebies, and player autographs be such integral parts of the ballpark experience? In the minors, I noticed a distinct decorum regarding foul balls - if there's a youngster nearby and you catch a foul ball, you must give it to him or her. If you don't, the crowd will boo you relentlessly until you give in, focusing their attention on the culprit instead of the game. Yes, children are important.

It seems that the little leaguers and other young fans are much like the unborn members of a linkage community. They may not fully understand the game yet, but they are watching and learning. The older members of the community know that they represent the future fans, and some of them even represent the future ballplayers. Some of those little leaguers may well be starting their own journeys toward eventual ancestorhood in the religion of baseball.

Next time you're at a baseball game, look around at your surroundings. The saints of old are looking down and the youngest generation is looking up. Everything that happens on the field is juxtaposed between teams of old and teams to come, fond memories and exciting possibilities. Without the history and the future, the baseball game itself is meaningless. It is this context that makes it real, and possibly even transcendent.

Look around at your next sporting event, and let me know if you agree or if I'm just being completely ridiculous.

from the world to the desert

In the last three weeks, I have experienced professional baseball in its extremes of glory.

In late March, my sister and I attended the final game of the 2009 World Baseball Classic, the deciding match between the national teams of Korea and Japan at Dodger Stadium, joining in with a raucous group of 50,000-plus fans from across the world. Yesterday, three friends I attended the first game of the 2009 California League baseball season, the opening match between the Lancaster JetHawks (a Houston Astros affiliate) and High Desert Mavericks (a Seattle Mariners affiliate) at Stater Bros. Field in Adelanto, joining in with a raucous group of 2,000-or-so fans in the middle of the desert. It was a study in contrasts and commonalities, from the lower levels of the minor leagues to an international tournament.

The World Baseball Classic final exceeded my high expectations, as the East Asian powers played a small ball style of the game that saw a tight pitcher's duel that lasted ten innings. Our section was overwhelmingly Korean, and the fans were insane from the moment we entered the stadium. The Korean pitchers walked from the dugout to the bullpen during warm-ups, and the crowd gave them a standing ovation. I can't recall ever seeing that in another ballgame. I cheered along with our section for the Korean team, trying my best to chant along in Korean, but Japan prevailed in the 10th inning off a hit by Ichiro Suzuki. Regardless, it was obvious why these two teams were in the final - I suspect you could probably take just about any guy on either team and put him in the majors, and he'd have a respectable, if not outstanding, career.

Yesterday's game in the desert did not provide the same compelling style of play, but was almost as much fun. One of our group was a girl from Alberta who knows next to nothing about baseball; the other three of us were two committed Astros fans and a committed Cubs fan, so we did our best to educate her in the ways of the sport. One of the principal lessons came in the seventh inning, when she was surprised that everyone in the stadium knew the words to the song that was played. All the elements of minor league eccentricities were well in vogue: the booster club wearing shirts that read "BEER WE GO JETHAWKS," kids running across the field for in-between-innings entertainment, the family sitting right by home plate with K cards to keep track of the strikeouts, coupons for free doughnuts being given to anyone who caught a foul ball, and so on. I've never been a minors game, but it was a great experience; my JetHawks lost, but I did get to see the Astros' #1 prospect, catcher Jason Castro, in action. I think he could easily be playing at a higher level, and expect he'll move up pretty quickly. Hopefully he's the real deal - the Astros need the help!


I'm fascinated by baseball fandom. Maybe that's simply because I'm a fan myself and I get surprised at how emotionally invested I become and how significant my devotion to the Astros is for my daily lifestyle. For the Korean and Japanese fans at the WBC, I'm sure the game provided a chance for community watching their own favorite players and style of the game while cheering with their fellow fans in their heart language - it wasn't just a game, it was a taste of home. For the Mavericks and JetHawks fans, I suspect that minor league baseball provides a refuge of the game away from the extra drama of the big league stage, where steroids and big salaries and franchise players leaving via free agency aren't part of the equation. For me, rooting for the Astros connects me to my family and my hometown - it's much bigger than just cheering for a bunch of men I don't personally know who happen to wear stars on their hats.

For this reason, I have made baseball the focus of a project I am doing this quarter at Fuller. I am taking a class called "Understanding Human Spirituality and Culture," and for our class project we have to identify a local spiritual context, visit it, make so connections with the devotees, and study how people in that context pursue a spiritual context through their rites and rituals. We could choose an established religious venue like a temple, church or mosque, or we could pick something unrelated to organized religion instead.

The choice for me was fairly obvious: I'll be going to minor league baseball games.

The closest team is the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, so I'll be heading to several of their games and looking for how the seemingly secular act of coming together to watch young men play a boy's game reflects spiritual desires and cultural assumptions. I've already done some preliminary research, and a wealth of writing has been done on baseball as American civil religion, baseball superstitions as magic ritual, baseball stadiums as sacred spaces, and so on. I've wanted to look into this topic for a while, and this provides the perfect opportunity.

I'll be sure to let y'all know what I discover about the followers of Quakes baseball. I'm sure I'll discover quite a bit about myself in the process.

i'm gonna sing this song with all of my friends

I am dedicating this post to my friend Shane, the reason I am the violinist in a Norwegian band.

In September of 2006, my dear friend Shane made a post on his Xanga in which he introduced his circle of friends to a band he had just discovered. He had come across a low-budget music video the band had made, which was awkwardly hilarious. For people who don't like clicking on hyperlinks, I have shared the video below for your internet convenience:



The band is called I'm from Barcelona, and they are singing a song called "We're from Barcelona." The band is not, however, from Barcelona. They are from Sweden. According to Wikipedia, the band was born in 2005 when lead singer Emanuel Lundgren wrote some songs, assembled some friends, and gathered them together to record them. I liked the tune of this song, so I listened to some more of their music on YouTube and enjoyed it as well. So I prompty tried to download the album off of Swedish iTunes, which Apple would not allow me to do. Fortunately, a few months later the album was added to American iTunes, so I could use my virtual dollars instead of trying to convert them into virtual kronor.

Let Me Introduce my Friends quickly became one of my favorite albums, and when I got some iTunes gift cards for Christmas at the end of last year one of the first albums I downloaded was the band's new release Who Killed Harry Houdini?


Now, let me interrupt here to remark on how this story exemplifies the power of social media. Were it not for Xanga, YouTube, iTunes and Facebook, none of this would ever have happened. This is a distinctly 21st Century tale, born out of the participatory culture revolution that is shaping our world.


So, another one of the albums I purchased with my Christmas money was Skeletal Lamping by Of Montreal. Of Montreal is not from Montréal, but rather from Athens, Georgia. So one day, when updating my Facebook status, I wrote something along the lines of "Andy appreciates that I'm from Barcelona is from Sweden and Of Montreal is from Georgia." I know, I'm just that witty.

Facebook allows people to comment on one's status, and quickly I received a comment from a young woman named Hanne, an international student from Norway. We were casual acquaintances, being in the same program at Fuller and having several classes together, but I cannot recall a time when we hung out together prior to this status post. That does not matter on Facebook. Hanne posted in reply, "Hey, I love I'm from Barcelona, I have some friends in that band!"

I appreciate personal connections to moderately obscure bands, so thus began a Facebook correspondence about the wonders of I'm from Barcelona. It turns out that Hanne has two friends in the band, which is actually pretty low percentage-wise considering there are twenty-nine members, but it's still pretty cool nonetheless. It was an interesting conversation, and it gave me the opportunity to know a casual friend better, but I expected nothing more to come out of it.


Now, let me interrupt here to explain something. The first track on the album Who Killed Harry Houdini? is entitled "Andy," which, as you are probably aware, happens to be my name. The chorus of the song goes, "We could need someone like you in our band, A-a-a-A-a-a-a-a-and-e-e-e-e..." And I happen to play the violin, something I had happened to do in one class at Fuller where we opened every class meeting with some hymns and praise songs.


It happens that Hanne had heard me play my violin in class, and that she knew the chorus of the song "Andy." It also happened that she and her friend Ruth were putting together a band, and that they needed a violinist who would have some appreciation for Scandinavian music.

So, one day I received a Facebook post from Hanne, quoting that I'm from Barcelona song and asking if I'd be interested in helping them out playing some songs, mostly Norwegian songs. I laughed pretty loudly, then happily agreed. The band is called Dråpe (roughly pronounced TROH-puh, only the first consonant is not exactly a "tr" but not exactly a "dr" either), and it is made up of an eclectic blend of Americans supporting the two Norwegian vocalists. We had our first rehearsal a week ago yesterday, and have our first performance at Zephyr Coffee House tomorrow.

That's not much time to practice, but I think we're all pleased with how it's come along. I am excited for the coffee house show tomorrow, showcasing some covers of Odd Nordstoga and various other artists.


So, Shane, through the wonders of technology you have led to my membership in a Norwegian band playing at one of the best coffee houses in Pasadena, California. I'll remember you one day when we're headlining a major music festival in Oslo. I promise.

bring on the world

Tomorrow morning at 1:30am here on the West Coast, we will see the commencement of the second incarnation of something that history may look back on as a failed experiment, or that may emerge as an institution along the lines of the World Cup.

I am speaking, of course, about the World Baseball Classic.

This tournament, which first took place in 2006, will kick off in Tokyo with a match between China and Japan (the last tournament's champion). It is an intriguing match-up, to be sure: a country that regularly produces major league baseball stars and has a top-tier professional league almost on par with MLB, and a country where the sport has little to no following at present. I love that the tourney features both countries where baseball is a national institution (the USA, the Dominican Republic, etc) and countries where baseball is, at least as far as I understand, a marginal sport (South Africa, Italy, etc).

I am much more invested in this second World Baseball Classic than I was in the first, mostly because my sister and I will be going to the tournament final at Dodger Stadium at the end of this month. I am rooting for the USA to win, not because I have a great deal of patriotic pride, but because the team ace is my current favorite Astro, Roy Oswalt, and I'd like to see him pitch. (My other pick is Korea, because I think they got gypped by beating Japan twice in 2006 yet still not making to the final, they're a country that most people don't realize has a rich baseball heritage, and I probably have more friends from that country than any other in the tourney, sans, of course, the US.)


For some reason, I'm attracted to marginal sporting events. I also attended the 2006 MLS Cup, where I and two of my roommates saw my hometown Houston Dynamo best the New England Revolution on penalty kicks. The only catch is that the vast majority of Americans don't care about soccer, and those who do generally either follow Premier League or Mexican teams. (I saw the Dynamo play Mexican team C.F. Pachuca in Houston, and at least half the crowd was Pachuca supporters.)

And now, I am excited to go to a baseball tournament in which most American major leaguers declined to participate because they didn't deem it worth their time. What gives?


Two things come to mind:

1) A friend of mine once spent his Spring Break on a university campus in central Mexico. During a conversation with one of the students, the Mexican student made the observation that Americans don't play the sports the rest of the world plays, but make up their own. It's completely true: baseball, basketball, and American football all took their contemporary forms on American soil, and hockey has a distinctively Canadian flavor. Baseball and especially basketball may be global sports now, but you still haven't really "made it" in those sports unless you're in MLB or the NBA.

2) In his book Beyond Christendom, my professor Dr. Jehu Hanciles refers to the tendency for Western events to be given greater weight than developments in the Southern world as the "World Series Approach." In his words, "The fact that this is a national tournament (mainly confined to American teams) renders the description 'World' (first used in 1903) a glaring misnomer and evocative of overblown cultural hubris" (p. 38, footnote). Ouch. I can't say it's inaccurate, though.


I suppose one reason I like the WBC and Major League Soccer is because, even though they are still very America-centric, they are both places where the US looks outside of itself and interacts with the rest of the world. I find myself more interested when the Houston Dynamo are playing teams from other countries than when they are playing regulation matches against other MLS teams, and I think that whoever wins the WBC has a much greater right to be called a "world champion" than the Phillies, who won last year's "World" Series. In a world as interconnected and globalized as this, we cannot afford to let our sight stop at our own borders. So, I say let's bring on the world.


Then again, I also just like the sport of baseball, and I am not sure that I'm going to be able to see my Houston Astros play in person this year. Let's go Team USA, I want to see Roy O pitch!

blogging as solipsism

I was already pondering solipsism when Fuller Seminary president Dr. Richard Mouw decided to discuss it in his most recent blog post. That just puts me in good intellectual company, I suppose.

To give a simplistic working definition that I can actually understand, solipsism, aside from being an unusually difficult word to spell (solipism? solispism? solilpism? slolipsism?) is the philosophical belief that I am the only person that actually exists, and the rest of the world is simply a creation of my mind. Obviously, if this is true then none of you exist and I'm writing this for myself. You're probably thinking that if this is true then this blog post was something your subconscious made up for you to read. (That is, if you exist.)

I am not a solipsist in terms of philosophy, but I fear that if I'm not careful, my approach to blogging might make me a solipsist in terms of function. Dr. Mouw describes this when he writes, "We act like we are the only ones who have genuine experiences, and we treat others as less than real persons."

So, what makes my experiences and opinions and perceptions and so on so important that I feel the need to put them on the internet for anyone and everyone to read? I'm 24 years old, I'm still largely dependent on my parents, and I've done little outside of school. In other words, I'm not exactly drawing on some huge well of wisdom and experience here.

My main inspiration for continuing on with this blogging project is a class I am currently taking at Fuller, "Transforming Contemporary Culture" with Dr. Ryan Bolger. Much of the class involves discussion about new and emerging forms of media and their impacts on culture and the church. Blogs are a big part of the discussion, as they represent a new form of communication and dissemination of information. One of the interesting things about blogs as a medium is that a typical blog post is an unfinished, unedited thought put out to the public so that others can interact with it. This is very different from a paper or a book chapter that has been carefully constructed and presented as a clean, finished product.

So, I'm going to put these thoughts out there and see what happens. In the past I've generally thought I could only write about whatever was happening at that particular moment, more like a diary of my personal life. I'll still do that some, but I'm going to try writing about some other things as well, hopefully things of a little more weight. Maybe the few of you who read this will join in the conversation and something good will come out of it. Maybe I'll get bored, distracted, or disillusioned with the project in a few weeks and abandon it altogether. And maybe in the end this is just an exercise in solipsism, me writing for myself to help me sort out my own thoughts. I suppose that in the end, that would be OK too.

dear blogger:

I just abandoned my Xanga after five years of chronicling my life and whatever else seemed interesting at the time.

I am now turning to you as I attempt to find something worthwhile to do with a new blog.

I don't know what you are going to look like yet, but I guess we'll just have to figure this out together.

Maybe this will be the only post I ever write, but maybe this is the start of something new and exciting.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Sincerely,
Andy O