Fathers

I met Trangdai Tranguyen once. All serenity and friendliness, she was stirring a pot of perfectly clear and flavour-rich chicken broth she'd prepared for pho at Sandra's place.

Soon after, I was entranced as I read three slim volumes of her poetry in mostly one night.

This is an excerpt from Daddy's Weekend, a poem in Songs For A Boat Father:

sunup
weekend
you're keyed up running to each room
asking, inviting,
- Get up! Let's go have breakfast!
the five children turn over
all five

The father is also pictured toiling over dinner, pulling a movie from his archive for his children, constantly on the go during the weekend -- highly enthused, sacrificial, pouring love into the lives of his children whom he'd missed for years when he migrated alone from Vietnam to the US.

Such poems that so tenderly portray the translocation trials of refugee families are transformed into the universal with Trangdai's skilled pen.

Certainly it reminds me of my own sacrificial Dad. The way he enrolled us in the best schools where he had to make patient, persistent connections. The opportunities he gave us out of his limited resources, and the times he played with us. He brought me to the library when I was six and I began my lifelong love for books. I think he was the only person who tried to imagine the extraordinarily intense first days of my life in the US, and that humbles and amazes me much.

Our fathers are wonderful and flawed. They are an imperfect but still-shining glimpse of the Father's heart and the God-designed love He placed in the hearts of men for their children.

Sushi on Sunday

In Japanese, Hinata has a lovely meaning: sunny place.

That's the name of a Bethesda mom-and-pop sushi restaurant and mini-grocery. I like to share this bright space with friends but most of my lunches here are solitary, and very late.

The sushi is beautifully formed, good and inexpensive. I often ask the proprietor's friendly wife about new items I discover on the shelves, and she's supplied enticing tips on the spicy cod roe, exotic snacks and all.

It was such contentment and enjoyment today to relish sushi on the summery eve of Memorial Day while reflecting on PD's increasingly anointed sermons. That's double sustenance -- sushi and the word of God!

Our perspective changes the more we draw close to the Creator, he said. The bills don't matter as much anymore when our focus turns to Kingdom needs. Our job is to be faithful, and God's role is to take care of the rest. Often we want to do or think more to change our circumstances, but there's no true help or self-help apart from Jesus.

Such truths from God are greatly sustaining and liberating. Uncertainties begin to look like adventures instead. Tough days become doors for grace and revelation. Our shallowness is replaced by growth, intimacy, integrity, character -- an excellent journey.

Gatsby in Maryland

F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby and vivid chronicler of the Jazz Age, is buried in lil unassuming Rockville, a little down the road from where I live.

Not too long ago, friends told me that the novelist who portrayed America's shining possibilities (and also the darker reverse side of the American Dream) had links to historic Rockville.

The optimist in me loves the line about Gatsby having "some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life."

I guess I'm talking about Gatsby now because I'm hurriedly blogging the many byways of my personal journey in America as my departure looms.

Also, I'm now reading the memoir "Reading Lolita in Tehran" which has startling passages about the time when author and professor Azar Nafisi ingeniously put The Great Gatsby and his dream on trial in her University of Tehran class. It forced her students to take sides, in the days when Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution began closing down the country.

Jamaica III: Diaspora

Pastor Andrew plans to link the Jamaican diaspora in the US, Canada and the UK to reach out to the homeland, which has 2.7 million people.

With apparently 20,000 Jamaicans leaving their island each year, the economy -- and society -- is in some danger of hollowing out.

Yet Jamaica has the potential for a bigger imprint on the world. It's already famous for its exquisite Blue Mountain coffee, reggae -- and being a tropical island never stopped it from sending bobsled teams to the Winter Olympics!! That's great spirit!

My Books

I'm 50 pages into "Reading Lolita in Tehran" and it's a mesmerizing journey. Azar Nafisi's memoir is such a celebration of the power of the literary imagination in fundamentalist Iran.

Like many readers, I surround myself with books that pool luxuriously here and there, and these days I'm actually reading!

Recent gifts from friends and choices from my happy browsing include:

Common Sense 101: Lessons from G.K. Chesterton - Dale Ahlquist (Wonder-stirring)

100 Year Bloom: Your Keys to Living in Permanent Revival - Mahesh & Bonnie Chavda (My Singapore friend suggested that I visit their ministry in NC. I checked and saw that they were headed to the DC region for three days! Powerful time.)

My Life - Bill Clinton (Hey, only 25 cents from a yard sale!)

The Etiquette of English Tea - Beryl Peters

Neu Me Thich (If You Like, Mom) - Trangdai Tranguyen (Luminous reflections on parental love, the immigrant experience and more)

I won't be shipping much stuff home. But books are friends, so they'll go with me.

Snapshots

What's an image of Lubriderm moisturizer doing here?

Really soothing in winter, Lubriderm was an early discovery for me when I first lived in the US. Auntie Minar introduced it in a motherly gesture. But my Indonesian librarian friend is more than sweetness and light. On pure logic alone, she once out-maneuvered a team of car salesmen to sell me a Toyota Camry (another early purchase) at a great price.

I've been taking snapshots these days, hoping to catch fleeting butterfly memories of life in America before I head home.

This afternoon, I bought Whole Food cranberry-orange scones and took a picture. A little silly. I used to love these scones a decade ago, before I scrutinized nutrition labels. Each scone weighs in at 270 calories!

Other Pictures: The house-shaped box of crayons that occupied Julie, Megan and other little visitors. Can't ship it back. The Ikea crockery that my parents packed in their luggage for me. The cherry dining table, which still conjures up guests and good times over the years.

I'm so grateful for these amazing years in the US. As Ephesians 3:20 indicates, God has been doing in my life "exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think." What's next? My good friend TS, at a really sad moment when he and his family left for Seattle, said it best: "Look ahead."

Jamaica II: Sunglasses

My lost sunglasses travelled back to me.

I'd left them in the tour van on our last afternoon in Jamaica. A few hours later, we were walking through a crowded, boisterous part of Montego Bay city when a tall smiling man stepped up.

"I'm your driver!" he announced. It was our tour van driver Errol, just then moonlighting as a cabbie.

"Errol! Hi! Did you see my sunglasses?" I asked.

"They're yours?'' he asked, surprised.

And that's how we landed in his cab -- a safe haven after the manic hustling cabbies we kept encountering -- and picked up my sunglasses from his boss' house, before returning to our hotel.

Sue was intrigued, and definitely me too. I'd sensed God's timing at work two days earlier, when our new Jamaican friend Pauline literally opened the door to our tour possibilities on a Sunday afternoon when the tour agencies were closed.

Surprising Pauline at her workplace two days later, we invited her for dinner. She found us a local place and later told us that she didn't have money for lunch that day. She knew it was God's provision when we asked her out.

The sunglasses, the tours that Pauline made possible, and her unexpected dinner -- God displayed His beautiful timing three times, not simply once. It was a generous assurance that His timing is perfect and He is all sovereign. It amazes and comforts me, particularly at this moment just before my big move to Singapore.

Jamaica

I love the dazzling sea in layers of turquoise, azure and aquamarine that I saw everyday in Jamaica.

Also I enjoyed the odd trip to Bob Marley's village where the dreadlocked reggae star once spun his songs and now lives on as an icon for other Rastafarians. Plus our plantation lunch amid music, the high-spirited children who performed for us (above), and our nature walk near a little town of isolated Germans.

The vacation was also marked by hustling, poverty and a sense of that Jamaica could be so much more.

What lingers however are the encounters with people like big-hearted Pauline who sweetly opened the door to our Jamaican excursions and made sure we were safely transported to our hotel, twice. And our introspective tour guide Paul who had much to share after we discovered his church-planting role. Jamaican pastors like him have to work it seems.

My encounters with Jamaicans in the US certainly spurred an initial interest in Jamaica though I had very few mental images of the land. One Jamaican I know in the US is Pastor Andrew, who has such a shepherd's heart and still calls or emails sometimes though I was in his church only six months. Bonds with people are living gems.