Twitter Updates

from: racialicious.com

Re-posting this because it’s so great. Racialicious does a great annual Halloween round-up here.

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It’s something else.

Had a stimulating discussion w/ the team @rooseveltcc about mental illness in the Northwest and how getting healthy becomes almost like a full-time job for those with mental illness. If I am candid enough I can say that I understand this, partially. I’ve suffered from depression and anxiety attacks since as early as 13, sitting in the middle school boys room hunched over, beset by some strange overwhelming, irrational sensation. Since then I would have 2 more major “episodes”, one in college and one post-college, which averages out to one every 4 years or so. The last time I had a depressive episode was Read more…

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Quick update: just finished an intense 7-week course on Biblical Greek which ranks among the top 5 hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life, thus explaining my online reticence. But I look forward to using this vacation for some quality writing, and blogging well.

During the summer term we had a visiting lecturer @ Regent – Minho Song, a Korean pastor from Toronto who taught a class on the missional church in North America. I would have been thrilled to sit-in save for the fact that I was mired in parsing Greek verbs, and juggling two babies at home. Still, his class reverberated throughout the Korean community @ Regent, discussing if it is indeed possible for a church that is bounded within ethnic identity to be effectively missional in a non-Korean context. Read more…

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Still fresh from licking my wounds after closing down missio (interestingly the last few posts have been about church planting) I find myself actually open again to the idea of planting again someday. Mind you, I would never ever plant again the way we did it before. Not to discredit our work and those who’ve travailed with us – not a second was wasted nor regretted in my view. But this baby’s got some mileage and if I’m ever gonna do it again, the process has to be a lot more efficient, more streamlined and success has got to be guaranteed. Because failure is just WAY too costly, and I’m not alone in testifying to that. Failure’s great – it teaches you things – but yeah – you’re not smart if you like to make the same mistakes over and over again. Read more…

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While it’s still been only recently that we shut down missio (last December) it is an anniversary of sorts in that the prior summer was when it really started to hit home: This isn’t going to work. It was the pits. And while it sounds cliche, it’s true, failure in starting a new church is like experiencing a death in the family. It hurts for a long time, and does things to your head, messing up your confidence, shaking some of that youthful cockiness you may have once had. Perhaps it’s for so much good. But in the end it still hurts – and you wonder if you’ve got damaged goods. Read more…

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Yeah; that just about says it perfectly.

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Listen to this rhetoric coming from the Republican party re: Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor:

“White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw.” – Newt Gingrich

“a reverse racist” (comparable to KKK leader David Duke) – Rush Limbaugh

“picked because she’s a woman and Hispanic, not because she was the best qualified.” – Curt Levey

“a Latino KKK without the hoods or nooses.” (on National Council of La Raza, the nation’s largest Hispanic advocacy group) – Tom Tancredo(Colo.)

These were in response to Sotomayor’s comment: Read more…

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I’m gonna be honest here as the past several posts have been on racial issues. While it’s important for me, I should say it’s not the only thing I think about. But I’m sure a little book that’s making BIG waves has something to do with it (see previous post). Rah’s book is influential; and people are talking about it everywhere and it’s lighting up the blogosphere. So naturally there’s a lot more chatter about race issues. But a small detail has gone unnoticed – anyone recognize that’s it’s “Asian / Pacific-American Heritage Month”? Holla. Read more…

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Do any of you relate to the experience? The names, taunts, bullying based on race (and recently, sexual orientation)… regardless of where you stand on the (political) issue I can say as an Asian-American, it sucks when you get the egregious slur, slanty-eyes, kowtow bow or whatever. It hurts. It belittles. So the gratification I received when I read this story of the Korean-American student who got suspended for defending himself when called a “f***ing Chinese” by a white classmate, was suspended, and then was pardoned with a community moving towards reconciliation. It’s that last word that gave me so much gratification: reconciliation. This is one way – the best way to respond to schoolyard racism. Get involved parents. Don’t let your kids get stupid, don’t exemplify it. And when there is the inevitable slip-up – as there was in this case – move quickly to correct it. It can do more than right a wrong – it can bring a community together.

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I’ve been thinking about the chase to acquire “followers” via twitter and I’ve come to the conclusion that to pursue this end, for those in religious ministry, is a sort of spiritual death of a kind. It’s one thing to get a follow and to follow back; it’s another thing to spend endless hours on a computer trying to build up a mass following by following hundreds of people you don’t know. My “following / followers” ratio is quite modest and I am aware of this; but to try to jack this up somehow I think is almost an ungodly attempt to get noticed. Marketing has its place. But there’s something dying when a pastor tries to “self-market” him / herself like this. Agree / disagree?

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