Home(less) for the Holidays

A few days ago, I had the opportunity to perform some last chance good deeds before the rumored "end of the world." In small, cramped office quarters, I made myself useful as a member of a very efficient assembly line, putting together bags of basic necessities for the homeless of San Jose. Plastic bags contained socks, scarves, beanies, gloves, towels, a rain poncho, and oral hygiene products, all bought with generous donations from kind families and individuals. Other donated funds were allocated to the purchase of food and warm bedding; brown-bag dinners were tied with festive green ribbon, and rolled sleeping bags and blankets were piled up to the ceiling ready to be distributed.

Once we had finished packing our goods, we loaded them into cars, along with crates of instant noodles and water. We visited a few different drop sites- walking through the darkness, along narrow sidewalks and under bridges- looking for people to receive our gifts. We were approached by a few wandering individuals, and also found a entire homeless communities nestled underneath an overpass and camping in a run-down park area. 

Serving the homeless isn't a novel activity for me; I used to go out help out with the church's Skid Row Ministry to downtown LA. On Fridays we would distribute food to the hungry and simply talk with them, offering a small slice of human interaction in the midst of their difficult weeks. Out on the streets of The Row, I interacted with people who, despite such different lives, are often just as normal as any random, amiable stranger you might meet... and I was certainly able to witness that in these run-down areas of San Jose too. These people were so grateful, offering smiles and thanks in return... all that they really had to give back to us. 

So other than locational differences, what made this charity mission different than serving with the Skid Row Ministry ? This trip was funded and backed by the Compassionate Service Society, which is a Buddhist organization. I found out that Lucas' family was volunteering their time in service this holiday season, and I offered to join them. No one ever performed unwelcome good to the disadvantaged; besides, I thought it would be a nice thing for the new boyfriend and I to do, as opposed to going out on a dinner date or something. 

As we trekked the cold streets and were met with warm thanks, I was again comforted in something I had initially felt insecure about: the implications of a bireligious relationship. I know some may disagree with me on this subject, but I've found dating a Buddhist to be tremendously worthwhile. Service is service and compassion is compassion; does it matter what language we speak if they are both love languages ?

Of course, this is a question that can only be fully answered over time. However, I do know that as of now, it has only given me more opportunities to love on others. Many of the homeless we encountered responded to our gifts with murmurs of "God bless you too," and none of the Buddhist volunteers stopped to correct them. To these weathered individuals, it doesn't matter under what or whose name we distribute our charity- what truly matters is that we are taking the time and effort to reach out to them. 



(and my dear Trisha- since I noticed that you've subscribed to my blog- you can expect to see Lucas and I at Skid Row sometime in the near future :) 

Views from the Outside

Some thinky thoughts loosely derived from a conversation held in line for the Star Tours ride at Disneyland.

I wonder... if aliens were to visit Earth as tourists, what would they think of us ?

Would they look upon us with a sense of patronizing humor, the way that an adult lavishly praises a child's elaborately and carefully concocted mud pie or crayon drawing ?

Or would they look upon us with a sense of helpless pity, the way that someone driving home from work glances at a homeless man and his bony, dirt-ridden dog ?

Or would they look at us with a sense of complete and utter bafflement, the way that students respond to a teacher when she explains something that is entirely out of line with the flow of the lesson ?


Over the summer when I was teaching in Taiwan, one of the lessons that we shared with the students was the various holidays that we celebrate in the US. Maybe it's because I've grown up with Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas, St. Patricks Day, etc... but I've never really questioned these major American holidays. We grow up making paper pilgrims in preschool and drinking eggnog in elementary, listening to Christmas classics and scooping the goopy brains out of innocent pumpkins before stabbing geometric shapes into their dusty orange shells. We grow older and retain our enthusiasm for these special days-- even if it does mean that the pilgrims and pumpkins are replaced by consecutive beers. Yet still, we grow up, and we understand, that these are all very normal things to do at their given times of the year.

However, when we were explaining these holidays to our aboriginal Taiwanese students, many of them were  confused, and even cynical. Why do you have to wear green on St. Patrick's Day ? Why don't you just eat the pumpkin? Why is Santa always so fat?

These are incredibly difficult questions to answer; it's kind of like asking an Eskimo to explain snow. They've never had to explain it, because it's just always been there.

Just as these Taiwanese children were entirely foreign to the concept of American holidays, would aliens also be entirely baffled by these small shrines to the human experience that are, essentially, social constructs ? Perhaps they would look at our commercialized Christmas and raise an eyebrow or earbrow or whatever puzzlement-expressing anatomical feature they possess. Perhaps they would observe the drunken carousing of New Year's and completely miss the concept... because their planet rotates so slowly, and revolves around the sun so quickly, that a day and a year are essentially equivalent.

Even holidays that are generally self-explanatory, like Mother's Day, or Father's Day... maybe they reproduce asexually, and instead, they celebrate Mitosis Day, or Budding Day, or whatever. Happy Spawnday ! *throws confetti*

Even if they were to peel away the commercial layers of Christmas and decipher it down to its spiritual roots, would they understand the concept of religion ? Alien civilizations that have developed such advanced technology to travel beyond their star systems into ours must have reached a level of scientific understanding that has either confirmed or denied the veritability of the world's major religions (it would be pretty neat if they found a way to go back in time and interview Jesus).

Or, another interesting possibility...even if they had come to a science-based, all-inclusive-yes-or-no-conclusion on the concept of religion, that they still celebrate holidays for the sake of their own social constructs ?

Do aliens have religion ?

Alien civilizations, no matter how advanced at this point in time, would certainly have risen from similarly humble hunter-gathering backgrounds. In Earth's young era, religion was often used to explain the unexplainable-- cosmic phenomena, strange happenings, and natural disasters. To say that a civilization came to being entirely bereft of religion is a weighty claim, and I personally am very curious to see what types of global religions exist on alien planets. God created an entire universe, and being an artistic creator, I doubt that He would have played out the exact same story on all of his habitable planets. What other miracles of water and wine, or light and shadow, exist on these other worlds--each as unique as our own? And then from these, what types of customs, traditions, and holidays arose and evolved over the span of time ?

It's certainly baffling to think about.


[currently listening: Velvetine - The Great Divide (Seven Lions Remix)]

Frequencies/Thinky Thoughts

Every now and then, my dad delves into a mix of science/theology/philosophy discussions over the dinner table. In the past, it's been resurrection over ramen and Star Trek over sushi, and last night's was another interesting one.

Somewhere in the midst of the evening's conversation, the topic turned to the current news broadcast and how prevailingly negative it is: people killing each other, political conspiracy theories, and the usual slew of petty crime that gets onto the local Bay Area news. My dad began explaining what seemed to start off as the usual stream of Asian-dad cynicism, but his thoughts became became more and more interesting as I listened. The following is as much as I can remember of his mealtime musings (probably with some butchering of physics terminology):

The world that we currently live in glorifies two aspects of a person's life: money and reputation. Having one or the other, or ideally both, is what makes a person well known and received, and the path to success is often defined by one's accumulation of these two things. This sort of society is shallow and materialistic- one that continually insists on placing the wrong types of people on pedestals that they buy with the excess wealth of their own gilded wallets.

Imagine now another world in which the two highlighted aspects are wisdom and personality. Unlike money that glimmers and reputation that shines, wisdom and personality are things that are generally invisible in our current society. Those that have done nothing but possess wealth and fame are greatly publicized, while many that do good go largely unnoticed, while . But, what if these two positive traits were just as visible as money and reputation? In this other world, wisdom and personality are expressed as two overlapping halos that emit light based on the amount that the owner possesses. The wiser, or better of a person you are, the brighter your respective lights are. With these two being so visible to the public, and thus being what most prized by society, it then becomes more important to accumulate these, rather than money and reputation.

Why are these two traits suddenly visible in this alternate world ? Because the whole world operates on a different frequency scale. Whereas our current world has our familiar spectrum of colors, sounds, etc that are apparent to the senses, there are also many frequencies that are undetectable by humans alone but only with the help of machines (ultraviolet, x-rays, etc). What if there exists another range of frequencies that are still undiscovered- frequencies that display such things like the vital traits of wisdom and personality as visible light ?

Even in our current world, individuals that have complementary levels of wisdom or personality naturally tend to get along quite well. The currently indescribable and inaccurate "science" of "vibes" and "vibing" well with others would finally turn tangible in this alternate world of frequencies, just as the science of sound, light, radio, etc has become an established science here. Constructive interference would occur among those that possess the desired traits of wisdom and personality, and destructive interference (or even discordance) would occur between those that are poorly matched.

In this very tangible way, the positive traits are continually encouraged, and communities are built up based on the cumulative wisdom and personality of their participants.