Wrapping up Year #2

We remember Sam’s birthday over about a week and a half every year. First, there is the formal date, which in this case was a Sunday, but we actually went to the zoo on Saturday, and had cake with the neighbors and talked to family on Monday. We also remember it in the liturgical year, as the days between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Emily was in labor during Good Friday worship that year, as a friend read a short reflection I’d prepared for Wesminster’s service. Sam was born near sunset on Good Friday and went home on Easter morning. I like the holy week grouping because it reminds me of how tightly packed the Christian story is into these few days (from exultation, to fall, to our existence in brokenness, to future redemption).

A professor of mine talked about how his goal in the Good Friday (or Maundy Thursday service) was to drive all hope out of the Biblical story, to really live in the suffering. (This may be why The Passion of the Christ is so popular.) You can read Easter into Good Friday, but it makes better sense to wallow in the crucifixion. The scriptures are pretty clear about the horror of human being, and all of the Biblical heroes are limited and broken. The Good Friday/Holy Saturday/Easter story is often read as the redemption of the Biblical fall. I think that in some small sense watching Sam’s birth has helped me to understand suffering and redemption in new ways. (Even if I still really don’t like Genesis 3:16 and the ‘pregnancy as atonement’ theology.) Maybe this introduction is a roundabout way of saying that my Chinese has probably come far enough that I should be preaching again.

We are now nearing the end of our celebration of Sam. It’s been a challenging few weeks, but challenging in a helpful way. I’ve survived two language evaluations, a challenging series of negotiations over a coworker, and a deeper knowledge of the community we live in. Sam is coming along in his own ways, and now throws more and more words out (today, for instance, he said “purple” for the first time). I feel like with our 7.5 months here, we’ve made some good progress and are handling the changes and transitions well.

Next week we head south for the meeting of our denomination. I think it will be a fun week for us and will give us a chance to connect to people throughout the island more broadly. I’m excited for new faces, a change of weather, and the opportunity to get away from this big city. Sam is becoming a bit more challenging as a toddler, so I’m not sure how many more “huge meeting” events we’ll want to go to, but this one seems well timed. I’m also helping it spur me on in language, since I’m at a point where it’s easy to pause or rest.

Otherwise, all is well. We’re very grateful for our neighbors, who are good people. I have a Singapore colleague who came over for dinner last week and helped us better understand campus identity. There are lots of people who look after Sam: students who greet him enthusiastically, some office workers who sit at the piano with him or watch him in the cafeteria while we get food, older kids who treat him like a little sibling. It’s not a perfect place, but there are a lot of benefits to being here, and Sam is a pretty happy two year old.