Week 4: God Repeatedly

I'm seeing God everywhere this week. So many places I won't even try to list them all.

The move is finally gathering momentum as we've set an official date that my best friend can come up to help me clear out the apt. and drive down to L.A. together.

My gratitude really goes to her and her ex-boyfriend, who's also been tasked to assist with the move.

Thank you, Selena, and God for taking care of me through her.

How Buddhism Saved My Christianity: the Abortion Issue

A few years ago I was dating a devout, evangelical Christian who turned out to be one of the great loves of my life. I was in my last months as an atheist and still hating Christianity. To combat my boyfriend's rather fundamental Christianity, I became incredibly Buddhist. (Western Buddhist, of course; I can't seem to understand Buddhism when it isn't written by a white person, which slightly saddens me but what can you do.)

In our enthrallment with each other we did not ask a few key questions until a month into the relationship. As expected we fought over several core issues: sex before marriage and most saliently, abortion. I should clarify - I fought loudly and with tears while he calmly and firmly stood his ground. His quiet conviction was admirable - even back then when I first asked him, "Where do you stand on abortion?"

He put an almost enthusiastic hand on my leg and said, "Pro-life and here's why." He was not angry or pushy; he explained the answer in the way that I think Jesus or the Dalai Lama would have done it, with joy to attract rather than an iron fist that repels.

Two reactions arose in me simultaneously. The first: I was attracted. I found him attractive because of how strongly but gently he believed his viewpoint and how unafraid he was to say it aloud. Second: I wanted to scream and die, although I was not certain in which order.

Buddhism as I understand it is all about awareness of attachment as the way out of suffering. At that time in my life, I was so attached to the abortion issue you would have thought I invented it. Nothing could get my blood pressure to spike like speaking with an anti-choice male.

So I raged for a bit, flailing against the chains that held us on opposite sides of the deepest issue a woman can face. But finally, at once point, something absolutely graceful happened: I let my old self die.

I am talking about death in a Buddhist sense - letting an old attachment or self-identity pass into the wind so that we can remain present. I realized that I had only one choice: I could hold on to my belief as an idea and continue to wail about it in pain, or I could open my palms and let go.

I chose to let go. A different quality of crying began: a mourning as I let the identity of S the Pro-Choicer die. My boyfriend, not knowing what I was doing, was alarmed, but I felt quite whole. The grief felt good, it felt good to let go of something I had held my entire life so tightly.

My boyfriend and I agreed to wait two weeks and discuss this issue after we were able to center and think on it more intensely.

Before I give the wrong impression - I did not change my stance on the issue. I am still pro-choice.

This is pivotal to my point. My practice of allowing an old self to die in that moment was not so that I could acquiesce to my loved one's perspective or to change my mind. It was so that I could release the attachment I held to my belief in a profound enough way so that I could continue to love my boyfriend while disagreeing with him. It was so that I could compassionately explore a way for us to stay together - without my needing to scream at him every few days. And mostly it was so that I would not feel so much pain whenever I heard him speak what I thought was a horrible, misogynistic, and most importantly - unrealistic perspective.

Clearly we did not stay together, although this issue was not the sole cause of our demise. And now I am careful to discover a man's belief on this issue within the first date or two.

None of this detracts from the glorious, wondrous feeling I can hardly describe of letting an old self die. I can only recommend it to you.

You will not lose yourself, although it may feel that way. You will not be swayed by "the enemy". Do not fear growing out of the skin that is too small for you.

And make sure you ask about important values a little earlier than I did. :)

A Hook Pulling Me Free

More and more every day I thank God and the Universe for taking my ex out of my life.

Every day I find ever more reasons that cement how right that event was.

Tonight for example, as I walked back to my apartment with my dinner for one (falafel deluxe), I thought, "Wow. To think that right now I might be in an apartment in Alameda, applying to a masters program I might not want to finish after all, having never started my company, living with a man who clearly is wrong for me."

To see how I narrowly avoided a misstep because of my submission to Divine intervention - Christians would assert this is God's grace in action - makes me thankful once again that I made that timely agreement.

So once more, I am so grateful that that relationship did not work out and that I am no longer blind.

Week 3: Speaking My Religion

I had a difficult time seeing God in Week 3. The closest I came was good old fashioned Christian neighborly help when a new friend from the Exodus offered to drive me to the airport without my even asking. I was very touched by that.

And I knew that would be enough. Not every week had to be Epiphany.

But I had tasked myself to find God in as many faces and I wanted another face revealed. Today, already into Week 4, I suddenly realized what it was.

The day before I left L.A. this week (to return to S.F.) I met up with a Harvard acquaintance to talk about my gestating company. Freddy just launched his own marketing agency and we met up in West L.A. to talk brand. I hadn't talked to anyone except a potential business partner about my idea and I almost shyly announced,

"I'm launching myself as an Asian American voice."

"I love it," he said immediately.

Encouraged, I gathered steam. "I'm the Asian Dr. Phil meets Dan Savage for young people. I'm not selling some product, I'm selling a brand, do you know what I mean?"

Without missing a beat, Freddy said, "You're speaking my religion," then proceeded to rattle off case studies of branding as the core of a company.

I repeated that exchange several times this week, excited that someone understood what I was trying to do, believed in it and best of all (for a fledgling company) - saw it as marketably viable!

I was also daunted by the level I could reach that Freddy described. He reminded me to aim high, as high as I can go. This served more than just to inspire me regarding this company. It brought to light how the trauma of my year in San Francisco has limited me, particularly my experiences with my graduate school.

I can only speak for CIIS, but I would like to believe (or at least hope) that other therapy schools are not as degrading to the self-esteem. This quote from one of my psychopathology books is not encouraging, however:

Medical school and psychotherapy training programs are famous for taking successful, autonomous adults and making them feel like incompetent children.
-N. McWilliams
in Psychoanalytic Diagnosis

The wonderful big dreaming quality that I had when I left Harvard and went to Hollywood was brutalized at CIIS. The fire inside that gives my walk its signature bounce, my tone its authority and my eyes their light were excoriated by the drama-filled atmosphere of the Integral Counseling Program at CIIS. The traits I most like about myself - the very ones that kept me functional, successful and still able to laugh after my two attacks in S.F. - were pounced upon and squashed. I thought Asians were repressed, but the white students of CIIS were positively bloodthirsty for any exuberance. Laugh too loud and often and you're fake. Wrap your arms around a classmate too warmly and you're attention-hungry. Hell, students got mad if you ate lunch during class. I don't know about you, but low blood sugar sure makes this skinny hypoglycemic crankier than having someone munch on a vegan carob cookie next to me. (Yes, my school had a vegan cafe. I know. Why did I even enroll?)

Confidence meant arrogance. The fact that I had a stock portfolio meant I was an evil Republican. I don't need to belabor the point: there was a misfit with this school that had tragic consequences for my sense of self.

Freddy not only gave me a concrete game plan for my brand, but he also reminded me of the limits we have as Harvard grads.

When I was accepted to Harvard, my father said to me,

I used to tell you that the sky was the limit. But now, there are no limits.

My vision has returned and the blinders I put on are lifted again.

Like getting contact lenses for the first time, my vision returned gradually. Over the last few days, I started to be able to visualize myself shooting the videos that would comprise my media site. I started seeing the topics that I would talk about abound in the news and everyday conversation. I started telling everyone about my brand, cementing its reality through repetition.

And then today two thoughts struck at once. First, I got the sense that my vision returning and Freddy giving me such encouragement meant that I was on the right path. Could this be the big thing that God cleared my life for?

Second, I heard what Freddy said again, for the first time.

You're speaking my religion.

I started laughing.

My prayer for tonight:

Bless this company. Bless this brand.

Let this be right. Let this draw supportive people to it. Let it draw the right people to it. People who believe in it and in me. Let this be.

Prayer for My Book(s)

Blessings for my new business venture

And for my novel to find its way to the bookshelves (and not through some weird evil twist like someone else plagiarizes my idea)

Prayer for the Universe to Move Me - Literally

I fly back to San Francisco later today and I am filled with trepidation for the task at hand: moving out of my apartment in the Inner Sunset, shipping the majority of my winter clothes back to my dad's in NJ, selling all my furniture, packing my things for the drive down to L.A. in 2 or 3 weeks and all this while surviving a roommate that really decreases the quality of my life (not to mention is a Nazi about using heat in the winter). And most of all, I'm most concerned that I can clean the apartment to the satisfaction of my cheap Canto landlord, despite the fact that my other roommate is one of the most slovenly people I know (which is fine to live with but not fun when you have to explain caked in food while your security deposit is being held ransom).

Thus, I pray that the Universe aid me in my move
Please send help somehow
I'm so scared and worried about doing this alone
Please let me know that I'm not alone
Please make renting and using a rug doctor easier than I think
Please help me so that my roommates will not make too much of a mess while I nervously await my landlord's judgment
Please help me not give such a f*ck about him or my roommates or what people think
Please help me to trust in you better and more completely and to trust that you will take care of me
Please help my faith be unwavering and for peace to fill my heart during this stressful time
Please remind me to breathe

And pause

And breathe.

Amen.

Week 2: Goddess Reading and Wicca

I missed prayer group this week. I was having an argument with someone and it was important to me that we process fully and come to at least a detente before we parted ways.

I did make it to the end of prayer group to drop off 2 Korean pears for the Exodus leaders. After I laid the two frightening bulbs in the bed-resting lap of the wife, who should I see but the first pastor, that 29-year-old I mentioned in Week 1!

I had not seen him for over three years. I had heard from his former roommate that he now headed a Korean church, got married and had a giant baby.

He showed me pictures of his mini me (although it was almost a same-sized me considering his stature...). Now in his mid-30's, he had put on weight but when he hugged me there was a sameness in him. I felt comforted most of all by the brief eye contact at the end. I remembered in a flash what I had most liked about him when I first met him: he was one of the few people who could look you in the eye and really show up.

For my God seeking this week I did a Goddess reading. It was powerful as usual, with themes of rebirth, change and good fortune to come. I feel most private about my Goddess readings. There is something about them that I am hesitant to share - their marginality from the mainstream. Despite what Christians will tell you about being persecuted for their faith (a whole other topic I may one day address), Christianity is so acceptable in American culture; the prerequisite of presidential candidates to be Christian is only one obvious proof of this.

It is the pagan, Wicca and goddess-based forms of worship and ritual that are ostracized and driven below. It is also the roots of my spirituality.

During my Christianity-hating childhood, I was always deeply engaged with pre-Christian spirituality. Nature or earth-based worship common to indigenous cultures make quite a bit more sense - you can see the sun, you can clearly feel the power of the ocean. That God is real. That God is daily. You have no choice but to submit to that God.

I went through a strongly feminist phase (a phase, thank goodness) during which I gained my appreciation for Wicca. A Wiccan on my freshman year floor taught me the first and highest rule: do only white magic, for whatever you send out will come back to you threefold. I was suffering a bit of a heartbreak with a guitarist on my floor and wanted my young heart accounted for. The Wiccan warned me quite lovingly never to send out bad energy. She provided a white magic spell for me instead to loosen my sadness and anger and to burn it off so that it leaves my body. The same night that I performed the spell, the guitarist came to make peace with me.

That made me a believer.

Wicca is not for me. One thing I like about it, which I did not realize until a white tranny from my old graduate program reminded me, is that it is a native European spirituality. Both he and I were pleased that it was a celebration by white people of something that is actually their heritage, instead of something stolen and bastardized from my people or the brown or black. (A particular problem for San Francisco, where trustafarians with blond dreadlocks like to live in monasteries and call themselves zen monks whose "orders" conveniently allow them to have girlfriends. I'm only skimming the pot here.)

In the same way I appreciate when white people leave my culture alone, or at best learn from me but do not try co-opt it and sell it back to me, I support Wicca but respect that it is their culture.

Why I'm Not a Christian (Right Now)

Happybear, the girl who introduced me to the Exodus, once paid me the biggest compliment. She said,

You're more Christian than some of the Christians I know.

I believe she was referring to certain values I hold. I like to think it also indicates a certain level of authenticity with which I live my life and my acceptance of the multiplicity of being. This last value, which just means, "cool with all kinds", is also the biggest reason I cannot call myself a Christian.

In short: I find it simply impossible to say that there is only "one real truth" and that all other beliefs are wrong.

It works for Christians to accept Jesus as their one true savior, or however the vow goes. I completely support their unified theory of the universe (science has not the monopoly, eh?) and I believe and see the way it works for them.

It is not my way. It is, and I say this nonjudgmentally, too narrow minded a way for me to be.

It also does not fit the fractured reality of my existence. On my private blog I write much about liminality, the state of being that exists outside the comfort of normalcy, a state of being in between or in the margins, of straddling several identities and ways of seeing at once and yet not fully belonging in any. My particular liminality derives from my embodied experience as a multiple minority or oppressed identity in terms of race/ethnicity/gender/sexuality/culture/personality.

In another sense, liminality knows no limits. I pray with the Exodus and that is whole. I practice mindfulness in a Westernized version of Buddhism and I come to peace. I perform a Goddess reading and the truth comes to me from the Divine.

I want to love God. But does God include incarnations as Hecate, Kali, or Mother Demeter?

I fear fully joining a church and fully revealing myself. I imagine (however irrationally or justified) that after the warmth of worship has faded, the rest of the parishioners see me as a heathen in the end. (This fear is amplified particularly when it comes to clique-y Asian churches. Let's not front now. We aren't just Gossip Girl, we're Gossip Nation.)

I know, I know. There is a congregation out there that seems to suit my perspectives completely. Unitarian Universalism. And I can jive with their credo for the most part. But let's speak the fact again: they're mostly white. And this clique-y Asian wants to play sticky rice.

So there it is. My confession for the day (does this count as my foray into Catholicism?)

I believe in pluralism. I believe in every truth being true. And as long as Christianity cannot accept that, it cannot accept me.

Week 1: Prayer Group

I started my hunt at the beginning.

Holidays in L.A. brought me back to the first church that I felt a connection with: the Exodus. It is a mostly Chinese-American ministry whose members began in their twenties and are now inching into their early and mid-thirties. I have been with them from their inception, when they were meeting in the living room of the 29-year-old pastor and his roommate, who led worship on his guitar.

This is ironic, surprising information once you realize: I was an atheist.

I grew up a skeptic, raised without spirituality by intelligent, academic and business-oriented Chinese parents from Taiwan. My mother was a playful but critical parent and very Cantonese in pragmatism. She had nearly joined a nunnery in Taipei but the missionaries made her feel suicidal so she left. My father remains one of the most un-mystical, cynical and mocking men I have ever met.

He taught me that organized religion was for the weak and bluntheaded. When I left my copy of The Tao of Pooh on the living room table he made fun of it and me. I grew up hating Christianity. Only stupidity could lead someone to base their life upon an obviously man-written book. Not to mention, I was extremely liberal socially and the discriminatory, condemning messages in Christianity were a clear example of its wrongness in the world.

I met two members of the Exodus on my first day in Los Angeles, while taking acting classes at the East West Players. I was a fresh-eyed kid at 20, just out of college, embarking on her dream of fame and fortune in Hollywood.

I began hanging out with Exodus kids purely as friends. Soon I was meeting up with them every Sunday for dinner, after they would hold worship.

Why did I, the atheist, continue to hang out with a rather fundamental church? The answer is short and unexciting: they were the only people who returned my phone calls.

I don't need to go into The Industry here; we've all seen Entourage. (Alright I actually haven't seen it, but I did audition for it.)

In any case, the Christians were the only people who I could get a hold of. Before you knew it, they became a central part of my entire 3-year experience in L.A. and they remain the only non-family friends I still see when I visit.

When I heard that the Exodus had evolved into a weekly prayer group, I jumped at the chance to finally get involved. Never once had I attended a service with them and I felt I had missed out.

I came late that Thursday night but they had waited for me before beginning. At the end, they put me in the center of the circle, laid hands on me and prayed for me.

I sat on the cushions in the living room of the leader and his wife, parents of two with a third on its way though they were barely in their 30's. My eyes closed, I could hear fervent whispering all around me. Sam, one of the members I met at EWP that first day in L.A., raised his voice.

Thank you God for S.

It was a full prayer in which he implored that God speak to me and guide me as I craved. But all I can remember is that first line.

I have never heard anyone thank the Creator for me. It made me feel that I was precious just for being alive. It is a sentiment I longed to receive from my birth parents and only through years of therapy and self-work have finally begun to give up on ever hearing from them. I must remember that prayer for the next 52 weeks.

Precious just for being alive

Week 0: Submission

As quiet as the voice of God, my life changed in the dwindling weeks of 2007 when I made a decision.

My life was hurtling towards a crossroads. Two of the hedge funds at the investment banking firm where I worked as an assistant went under and I was laid off along with 300 other employees. I had just completed my last class ever in a masters program of counseling psychology that I would leave unfinished. I had applied to transfer to a school in New York City and everyday I checked the mail awaiting their decision.

Perhaps it was intuition that the stage of my life was being set for something a little larger than I realized. Perhaps it was the draw of my soul to return home. I made a promise.

I agreed to submit to the will of the Divine.

In quick succession everything happened. The letter arrived; I would not be finishing my degree in my native NY. A week later my boyfriend, whom I was supposed to move in with, broke up with me via email.

I lost everything I held on to for stability: my former school, dreams of my future school, my relationship, my financial security.

Clearly something big was happening. I had asked for God to lead me where I was meant to go. I had promised I would do what was asked of me. I intended to follow through.

The one problem: I could not hear God's voice. I could hear my own shock at the quick exit of the fundamental things I had built my identity upon. But no still small voice.

I had one hope left: I could still see the Universe's love for me through my friends, my de facto family. My friends rallied to me from encouraging emails to actually driving up to San Francisco to ferry me down to Los Angeles for Christmas, since my original ride dumped me.

I crossed the threshold of the year still as adrift as ever, but with a strange, tiny little orb inside me that I can only suspect is the whisper-soft beginning of a word I have sought to know forever: faith.

When 2008 finally wiped away the pain and loss of a terrible year that barely bumped and rumbled to its end, it became clear that the decision I made in December was only the first step. I was making a vow without realizing it.

This year I will listen to my soul's call for its mother, for its harbor and its home. I am seeking God in as many faces as possible. I vow every week of this year to the hunt for God and here I chronicle my journey.

Let the hunt begin.