* tiny but powerful *

Christ and culture. I feel like so many things boil down to that. How do you reconcile the two? How the heck do you deal with culture anyway? How important should it be? Does Jesus transcend culture? --coexist with it? --transform it? All of the above? What about a place that has many cultures? --a person who has more than one? --"neither, but both" (in all seriousness)?

What about growing up? --the generation gap? What things about my parents and relatives am I supposed to grow to become, and what about them is a product of "culture" or "their time" that I wouldn't become even if I tried? Can I ever really be "Chinese", either in their eyes or in mine? Do I want to be? Does that necessarily mean being exactly like them? Is that even possible? Do I have a choice? Do I have any clue?

What does it mean to be a child of God? How does that fit with being a child of my family? My brother wants to "preserve the culture" in his future family. Well, so do I, I think. What the heck does that *mean*? And what about Christ in the context of my future career, or even my remaining year at Stanford? Does growing in Jesus mean rejecting my "culture"? Some parts of it, yes, but then what am I left with?

How do I decide where to go to church for this coming year? Nine Sundays spent between The River and Grace Presbyterian, and I'm nowhere nearer a decision than I was at the beginning of the summer. How much of my reactions to each place are a product of my "culture"--of the past 4 years, of the past 21 years? How much of that is okay? Which part(s) of me is God trying to challenge and transform? What is it time for?

I resonate with the second half of Eric's post from earlier this month: "Somewhere, deep down inside, I had assumed that most of my major character traits would be formed by now. They're not." I think that's true for me too. How could it not be? How little time it has been (!) since I first began to understand who God is and how that's relevant to my life, to how I view *everything*--especially myself. Who did God create me to be? What is He equipping me to do? What in my life is supposed to be comfortable; what will just always be a struggle? Where is God calling my heart? How do I best serve other people? What does that translate into, for me, in everyday life as Tina Wong? Will God bring me somewhere that completely opposes the "culture" I've known, or will He put me somewhere where things come more naturally?

These are some of the questions I've been wrestling with this summer.

I know one thing, at least. Culture doesn't make sense to me, but everything makes sense in God's hands. It'll take me a lifetime to figure out how to live a life sharing the grace, the power, and the love of Christ with those around me (whoever, wherever that may be), but in the meantime Christ's grace covers me all the same. Because, rest assured, I will make many mistakes. At any given point, He has the answer -- sometimes just for that place and time (perhaps specific to me), sometimes a little more universally. Sometimes I'll get it; sometimes I won't. Sometimes that'll be because it's not in God's timing for me to know or to learn yet; but sometimes it will be. Sometimes that means I'll have to wait, and sometimes that means I'll have to go ahead with something that doesn't make complete sense to me.

Does that mean that reason has no place in faith? Of course not. Sometimes I think that people (especially Christians) get too caught up in the idea of "leaps of faith" and underplay the importance of reason in decision-making. I realize as much as the next person that "faith" means trusting when you can't see or prove, but that doesn't mean trusting blindly! I remember one of Pastor Keith's messages from several years ago when he reminded us that "what the Bible calls faith involves having sufficient reason to put weight down on something as real and true. Real faith is never blind. A person with faith asks the sufficient questions and gets the sufficient answers, but then still must believe some things which remain a mystery." Basically, I don't neglect the ledge that leads in the direction I should jump (which also closes the gap by whatever distance it offers), instead of just hurling myself any which way.

The same thing applies to making Godly decisions. Just because in the end you may have to take a leap of faith doesn't mean that you shouldn't exercise your mind -- or that it's bad to reason things out. I know I tend to err on the extreme of thinking too much, but I don't buy it when people lump everything under, "Faith isn't supposed to make sense." I think that's bull. Sometimes faith doesn't make sense, but sometimes it does. The responsible thing is to think things through carefully, even if you have to be extra careful to "lean not on your own understanding" (Prov. 3:5). This may sound somewhat familiar because it resembles my leadership style: just because we trust God to provide for us does *not* mean that we don't work hard and strive for excellence. The key lies in proper perspective. Similarly, God gifted us with reasoning; we're supposed to use it, and use it well. Just like with anything else, we have to be careful not to misuse the gift.

I didn't mean to go off on all that, but it's been a pet peeve of mine for awhile.

I guess what I mean is that I realize I can reason all I want about the slew of questions I poured out above, but the reasoning itself can lead to many different conclusions, and in the end the right one only makes sense with God in the picture. How I make the decision is every bit as important as the decision I make.

I know I'm confused about a lot of things, and that growing through it will involve a lot frustration and pain and more confusion -- but at the end of the day, I can rest assured, because the gospel is simple: the grace of Christ is sufficient for me.

I updated my quote page for the first time in 5 months.

I also just realized how little I blogged this month. My August archives are going to be sad.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOO!! :)

I ran into a handful of high school people last night when my brother and I were picking up some dinner to-go from Los Molcajetes. They called out my name as we were walking out the door, and I looked back at them all confused because Chris Jarvis now has a similar haircut to Jeff Russell's and I spent a few seconds thinking, "Huh? Jeff?! Wait, I'm in Castro Valley, that can't be Jeff. I'm in Castro Valley, right? Yes, I am. Then who is that??" Once I stopped being confused, it was much easier to recognize the other three people at the table: Jonathan Tse, Amy Yeung, and Rebecca Weisman. Wow -- I've barely seen any of them since we graduated in 2000, especially Amy and Rebecca. It was a weird three-minute encounter. They joked, "They don't teach you to be very observant at Stanford, do they?" It was uncomfortable because I immediately felt the Stanford/non-Stanford barrier go up (you guys know what I'm talking about, right? I hate it - because c'mon, we're just normal people like the rest of you). I only had enough time to exchange the usual "how are you's" and ask if they've all graduated (they have, except for Jonathan) before they urged me not to keep my brother waiting any longer.

Home can be weird. More often than not, for me.

On a brighter (or at least less confusing) note, it was good to catch up with Wendy over lunch last week. Even though we don't talk much during the school year, we always fall back into comfortable conversation when we do meet up. I enjoyed hearing about her experiences teaching math in SF this summer (isn't it odd that a lot of my friends seem to be headed for education?). It's interesting that I've stayed more connected to her than I have with people from my own graduating class. Recently, I've also enjoyed spending more time with my brother's girlfriend and getting to know her a bit better. Louisa and Tim came with me to Stanford for the SRC Jammix last Friday, and I had a great time (re-)teaching them all the dances. It's also been fun to join forces with her in making fun of Tim. ;) Ah, poor boy. Heehee. Actually, it's struck me this summer that my brother has grown up a lot. I guess a lot of that happened while I was gone at college and I didn't really get to see the process, but he's very different than the brother I knew four years ago. (Well, not completely different, since he still likes to annoy me by farting all over the place.) But in any case, I'm really glad that we're growing into a different brother/sister relationship. Tim is cool. :)

My two major projects of the past two weeks:
1) Painting my room BLUE!!
2) Updating the Testimony website!!

With the help and expertise of my brother and his girlfriend, we painted my room (at the Bellingham house) over the course of two days last week. My brother and I still need to touch up one of the walls where we'd run out of paint for a second coat (we got more yesterday so I think we'll do that later today), but other than that it's pretty much done. I'm so happy with it! I love the color!! It makes the room feel so much better. :) Yay for blue!

Updating and cleaning up the Testimony website has been a HUGE undertaking. I could never have done it without Brian, who has been super amazing and helping me with everything I asked (and even a lot of things I didn't ask). It's kind of sad that it came down to me doing all the updating, seeing as all the CS I know I've only learned by inspection and reverse-engineering, but really... I had to do it because I couldn't bear letting it wait any longer. The website was just ridiculous. First of all, it hadn't been touched since before Spring Show, so I made some temporary updates to the homepage so it wasn't widely proclaiming our "next" show on May 8, 2004. :-P Then, you would not have believed the state of the webspace directory or the html code in all of the files -- it was painful to look at. I guess that's what happens when different people make patches to different pages and no one pays attention to consistency, but my goodness! There were extraneous font tags EVERYWHERE, and too many fonts and colors that clashed with each other, and broken links, and lots of other messes. Plus the webspace directory was littered with nonfunctional files from the previous web design, and photo/image files were scattered in different places with different naming conventions. It was insane.

So I slowly sorted through everything -- renaming files, consolidating backup folders, and reorganizing the whole directory in the process. In the meantime, Brian (poor, brave soul) sifted through the crazy html and created a CSS file that controls all of the page styles in one place and standardizes all the fonts (YAY for standardizing fonts!). He eventually also reworked the entire site without frames, because he said it was bothering him. :-P I've redesigned the layout of the "members" and "repertoire" pages so that they're organized by year, and I resurrected the practice of posting our show testimonies online as well. I still have some other minor changes in mind (plus a bunch of photos that I need to figure out how to display nicely), but the bulk of the labor is pretty much done. I can't believe it! It's so much CLEANER now!! You know me and how cleaning makes me happy. :-D

So here's a HUGE THANK YOU to Brian Lee for doing sooo much work that I could never have done with my own measly CS knowledge - above and beyond what I ever would have asked of him. Thanks also go to Mike Lin for fixing a couple important bugs that he noticed and investigated! Go look at the website now if you haven't already! :)

Chi-En's leaving again today, this time for two weeks at home. I'm sad that she's going to be away so much for the remaining six weeks of summer, but alas. I'll probably end up spending more time at home (in CV) myself, and just make the best of the time when I do have my silly roommate around.

Life post-camp has been good. Lots of sleep and bumming around and seeing friends. The first couple days were pretty crazy -- camp cleaning, Jenny Lin Concert, Esther's birthday party, and Deborah's violin-student reunion dinner -- but after that I was able to slow down. I spent Tuesday through Thursday last week at home, mostly relaxing and cleaning out my room in preparation for the move. I finally threw away so much junk! -- old college pamphlets and application materials, scrap paper from high school classes, records from coordinating past Jenny Lin Concerts. I also found some fun boxes of photos, diaries from elementary school, old letters and cards, clothing from middle school that still fits (that was the baggy era), and lots of craft materials. I even came across some more recent stuff, like all my Spanish work from Madrid and my baptism certificate from June 2001. I'm not nearly done sorting through everything yet, so it'll be interesting to see what else I uncover.

Recent highlights:
- reuniting with old orchestra friends
- seeing my old orchestra director and violin teacher (both of whom I had for 7 years)
- badminton fun with Joseph and Bryan (The Adventures at Arrillaga...)
- sleep!
- playing with Chloe, our cute little puppy at home
- dim sum = yummy
- finally catching up with Erin on the phone!!
- lunch with Tony and Dana (how on earth did we miss that huge sign?!)
- singing Happy Birthday to Mia's voicemail and ending up with no one on the melody
- awesome chamber music at the Music@Menlo Prelude performances
- dinner with Melisa and Brian
- Friday Night Waltz (my first night dancing since Waltz Week)
- filling in at Kids' Community, and readjusting to the younger age group
- lots of food for thought from The River's message series, "Stronger Together"
- picnic and games with Chi-En, Cammie, Jenn, Adam, and Jeff
- Dohnányi's Piano Quintet in c minor, op. 1 ... Wow.
- going to my first West Coast Swing lesson (which was mostly fun except for the meanie people)
- bumming around all day
- watching the video of CVHS Concerto Concert 2000
- talking to Moo on the phone!

Yay for time off. :)

Happy Birthday, Dana and Janet!

Happy Birthday, Tracey!

Things I Learned During Camp Galileo 2004:

1. The Rubber Chicken holds magical powers.
2. It is possible to count 12 heads in less than 2 seconds.
3. A worm habitat is not a parent's idea of Cool Project To Take Home.
4. Sometimes, four layers of butcher paper is not enough to protect the table underneath.
5. Mushrooms do not hunt tigers.
6. When using human lungpower, it is best to start inflating from the bottom layer of the kiddie pool.
7. Girls prefer lyrically-intense team cheers.
8. Hot glue does not adhere to broken clay.
9. It is okay for a kid to be kicked out of camp. End of story.
10. Parents aren't always right.
11. Bees are attracted to Lunchables.
12. 7:30am isn't *that* bad.
13. It is necessary to make "Do not eat paint" one of the rules in Art class.
14. Packing tape stains carpet.
15. Rubbing alcohol, thankfully, removes packing tape stains from carpet.
16. If a kid is giving you problems, talk to his parent. On Monday. (Yes, in my case it was always a "him".)
17. The most effective way to soak someone with a water balloon is to aim for the wall right behind their head.
18. The planet song! "There are meteors...METEORS..."
19. The teamwork of the staff makes or breaks the well-being of your camp. And we were so blessed.
20. Kids are awesome. Even after all the blood, sweat, and tears. (Literally.)