there were two questions that I didn´t know how to reply when I was talking to people on the street. The first one was, “I don´t believe in God, if God was here, why would he let the children be hungry and suffer. If he was here, why wouldn´t he show some miracles.·” The second questions, “I believe in God but I don´t believe in a church” My mouth was shut and I didn´t know how to answer them. But I will keep thinking about these questions and find out the answers throught out my personal study time.
First Q:
I had a personal revelation when I was 16 that I chose my mom, meaning I chose to be suffered by her.
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When we were in preexistence, our souls were fully matured, and there were no more things for us to learn “in concepts.” The only thing left for us to learn could only be learned through our physical bodies on this earth — not merely the “concepts of good and bad, sad and happy, etc. in our heads, but actually suffering through the pains of all things a body and mind can endure. Being mature in spirit, we knew our own strengths and weaknesses, so designed a personal plan of exaltation. These personal plans of exaltation, once thought out, must need be approved by Heavenly Father. In other words, these mature spirits, before they left pre-existence, for the most part, planned on their own the trials and sufferings they would face on earth, then submitted the plans to Heavenly Father for approval. This is exactly what Jesus did. This planning things ahead in pre-existence is called “foreordination” — e.g., Jesus was foreordained to be our savior before he was born. No one forced this plan upon Jesus; He volunteered his own sufferings on earth for his eternal glory and exaltation. Us seeing Jesus, our older brother, planning his own suffering, also followed his example in pre-existence – laid out our own “blue print” of our lives on earth, mostly on our own volition in the pre-existence because Heavenly Father respects free agency. Those of the greatest strengths in soul in the pre-existence often chose more trials for themselves on their own on this earth. Heavenly Father would never force unwanted trials on us on earth until the “last judgement day.”
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For example, I believe I have chosen to be born in a humble home with psychotic mother to learn the things that I could have not learned otherwise. I have become who I am today for the trials and sufferings that I was willing to plan out for myself in pre-existence. I believe I was a wise and brave soul who was willing to take up the burdens of all things necessary for my personal exaltation.
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People are usually shocked when I say that they have chosen their own sufferings in pre-existence because they have to stop blaming God. I usually say that I have deep respect for their courage and wisdom for their willingness to suffer such painful trials on earth. I usually tell them that the intensity of their suffering manifests their wisdom and greatness in their souls. Also, somewhere in the scripture is a promise that those who have endured more will receive greater glory, like Jesus and other prophets. Once you believe you are the author of your own fate, you can carry out the burdens more lightly in hope. While our bodies might be in hell on this earth, no one can stop our spirits from flying free in heaven when we die.
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Second Q:
Organized Institutions are necessary for our growth – institution of marriage and family, institution of government, institution of school, etc. Even a social “book club” can be called an institution. People form institutions because two heads are better than one; it reaps bigger accomplishments and multiplies the benefits if people of same minds gather together and work towards a common goal. This is why we need the church, an organized institution, so we can better understand God and his ways.
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Any and all humanly organized institutions are imperfect, including our own church because no institution can completely control the minds of each of its member unless it is a dictatorship. Thus, while any and all humanly organized institutions are imperfect, they “are” future perfections in process. So, it is still worthy of our participation and effort.
May 20, 2014
Categories: My Letters . . Author: Jessie Chen . Comments: Comments Off on My answers to my daughter’s Q in mission
This is an email correspondence with one of my former writing students, which I believed worthy of sharing. The real name of the student has been replaced with a fictitious name A.
Dear, A, what a treat to have received this letter from you! I am so honored to have been a positive influence in your life. Your mother and I never really spoke much, but we knew each other. I feel the same way about you because you used to write like I would write and ask the same questions that I once asked at your age. I ditched almost half of my high school Junior and Senior classes because I was sitting on top of the largest rock at Venice Beech, California staring at the ocean and sky, contemplating on the same questions you hunger for. I know you have burning desire for finding the truth in all things.
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Let me attempt to alleviate some of your doubts by quoting French philosopher, Descartes, who said, “I think, therefore I am.” A you think, therefore it proves that there is God. Let me explain. Descartes believed that we human beings are or at least have the potential to be Gods because we have the ability to “think.” Our mental faculty is the first step in getting rid of existential doubts because it demonstrates human’s attainability of certain knowledge. For example, even if an all-powerful demon was to try to deceive A into thinking that God does not exist, A must first exist in order to be deceived. You are a thinking being. Therefore, whenever you think, it proves your existence, and by extension, someone who has the ability to think must have created you as well.
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You might now say, well my existence still doesn’t exactly prove God’s existence. In fact, my existence could have been a “random” thing, like the “the big bang” theory that scientists believe. This theory asserts that the universe originated approximately 20 billion years ago from the violent explosion by going through the process of agglomeration – a process in which small universal particles grow into huge masses then hitting each other. But if you study the the exact scientific preconditions required for this “big bang” to occur and if you realize that its probability is mathematically less than zero, one can certainly argue that unlike “the Big Bang theory” which is almost solely based on scientific randomness, “intelligent design theory” (belief that God created humans and this earth for a purpose) is rather a logical belief through a process of deduction using our mental faculty. The fact that A could not have existed without a father and mother, and also that so much about who you are today is a direct result of and a combination of the DNAs of your creators (your mom & dad) is a proof that the “preconditions of intelligent life” is another intelligent life that bore it, another intelligent being that existed before A. There is no way, that someone like you or me was a product of random chance. Each of us are too special, too unique, and beautiful to be called random products.
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If you don’t believe human beings are amazing, ask any doctor about the biological make-up of our body. Consider our exquisite eye construction, the hard skeleton that supports our weight, our ability to hear the faintest sound, our brain’s amazing circuitry. Think of our body as a large symphony of Mozart or Beethoven. It begins by being inspired to create a music which is not tangible, then putting it into notes that are tangible, then each individual playing his precise note and part at the precise time designated. This is how creation is made: must follow the intelligent, purposeful steps. This is also much like how our body operates with its 11 systems working in concert with its director, our brain, the intelligent faculty. Sadly, many so called the scientist who should base their arguments on facts preach things that are based on “random chance,” that human body is the result of “millions of years” of Darwinian evolution. Only a believer who has labored with questions like you and have reached a conclusion like me will give some credit to the One who must have created these amazing systems designed to work as one. A, I testify that the human body is a testament to our Creator’s wonderful intellect!
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You don’t need to search far to know that God exist. Just look at yourself. All answers can be found from within. You are the answer to your question. I don’t know whether this helps, but I do appreciate the opportunity to share my insights with you. Remember, that someone who had to be more intelligent than you must have allowed your temporary and transient existence on this earth; I say temporary because we all die at some point. Our time on earth is timed and counted – another testament to intelligent design.
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Thank you for sharing your life in in the U.S. I can feel every word you say. At the same time, I also know that you will overcome all obstacles by what you call “showing” rather than “saying.” Action indeed speaks louder than words. I am so happy that you made it to the varsity track team. Being second among the African Americans meant you were the best, if you think of their physical advantages. In my mind, you are the best, and you know you are also the hero to my son, B, which was a pure surprise to me when I found out later. I guess my son and I, sharing the same genes, are attracted to and appreciate the same type of people – you.
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My small Taipei Debate Academy that I have basically started by teaching free a few kids have now become an enterprise, the Asian Debate League with growing employees (champion coaches from the U.S.), clients (12 international and local schools in Taiwan), and partners (Stanford and Harvard University Debate societies to name a few). And my small testimony to this evolution of my business is that I was “inspired by my prayer with God,” and all I did was to execute my inspiration into action using my mental faculty, which I have inherited from my intelligent Maker.
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Once again, A, thank you for your updates, and take good care of yourself and your mother and your sister. Please say hello to your mom, my good friend and someone I deeply appreciate and love. I will always have time for you and your family, so don’t hesitate to ask any questions that you may have that I can help with.
From: A Sent: Friday, December 28, 2012 7:44 AM Subject:
Dear Ms Chen,
It has been too long since our last conversation! I hope you had spent your Christmas wonderfully. I often recall all the memories and lessons I was able to experience and learn from the small class we had together. I really miss it. It has already been 6 months since I arrived in America, but my longing for returning to Taiwan hasn’t changed a bit; I don’t think it ever will. I have been slowly adjusting to the new culture. I should be used to moving by now since my family has had moved around countless amount of times, but it’s different and difficult every time. It’s crazy to think about how all the things you have told us about your life in America were just lessons half a year ago, and now they are my reality. I can always sense racism here, whether it is silent or loud. Especially in sports, my friends have always reminded me of how Asians stand no chance against naturally talent athletes here in America, but I managed to make varsity in Track and place 2nd in 200m among more than 70 sprinters around New York and New Jersey. At the finals, there were 7 African-Americans and one Asian, which was myself. I sometimes feel the limit of words, and how there is only so much I can prove with what I say, therefore I show. I think showing is one of the best solutions to anything, and it encourages me to do work harder.
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One of the things that consume the majority of my time is fortunately school work. I have always valued self-education and thinking, but was never too into the works from school. However, I matured fast enough to realize the importance of school. Also, I joined philosophy club, but I feel like high school students’ philosophical mind-state can only reach to a certain point; it’s quite disappointing. I want to become the president of club in my senior year and expand it’s field of topics. One thing I like about moving is that I am free to build myself anyway I like because the people here do not know my past. I feel no insecurity or hesitation in representing myself anyway I want.
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The biggest thing that has been surrounding my mind lately is religion. I have been trying to discover God somewhere inside me, but it doesn’t seem so easy. I am amazed how people can have so much faith in something so unprovable, and appreciate and have hope in everything in their life through that faith. I think all happiness comes from appreciation. Yesterday, I was talking to my mother’s closest friend, who is a first-generation Christian. She found her own ways to God. She told me that humans usually understand, then believe, but religion is where you believe, then understand. I think she is absolutely right. There is only so much I can understand about religion and the words of God without truly and completely believing it. I hope someday I can have enough courage to completely soak myself with the same faith she has on God.
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Anyways, all the selfish talking aside, how has your life been? I am fascinated to hear about your life and wisdom. Please update me!
Sacrifice and Selfless Love make Marriage Perfect.
The secret to the law of sacrifice is that it ultimately leads us toour own self-actualization, salvation, glory, and eternal happiness.
Sacrifice and selfless love exemplifies Jesus Christ, and he has shown us with his own blood the way to eternal salvation and glory: “Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it” (Luke 17:33). Growing up as a Mormon, I was taught to emulate such qualities of the Christ. Because of such teachings, I was able to let go of my self-egos and material comforts in order to seek my eternal salvation and glory in my marriage.
On January 18, 1992, I got married to a nonreligious but a kind college classmate of mine. By the time we got married, my husband was working at a bank in San Diego. We bought a home near his work—Carlsbad, California, a paradisiacal city by the ocean. Our house was envied by many. It was on a hill-top of La Costa Golf Resort, and it had a pool in the backyard and an ocean view, a few steps from it. It was indeed in the heart of a scenic place which attracted travelers from all over the world for an idyllic vacation by the seashore.
We were also lucky to have purchased a foreclosing flower shop for pennies on the dollar from the bank which my husband was working for at the time. My husband quit his job to run the business with me. Working diligently, we turned the business around in a couple of years, and by its third year, we were the biggest and the most successful flower shop in town. In addition, my husband’s trading company was starting to reap huge profits. We bought a nice car, we hired a live-in help, and we frequently dined at some of the fanciest restaurants in town. Life was good, at least on the surface.
As picturesque as it may sound, however, I had never felt a day of genuine happiness in such a privileged surrounding. The house was spiritless, occupied by an apathetic soul (me) due to prolonged inactivity in the church after being married to a non-member, an agnostic soul (my husband) who was burning with worldly ambitions, and an indolent soul (my husband’s sister) who was unmotivated to engage in anything that was worthy of her pursuit, not even school.
Gradually, the spirit of the Lord—my once constant companion who I could always depend on for comfort, peace, and happiness—was departing from me. For the first time in my life, I felt what it was like to lose the gift of the Holy Ghost. I started to suffer pangs of hunger for the spirit of the Lord I once had. I could no longer wait. I had to go back to my Lord, for I was dying internally.
I started to talk to my husband about joining the church. But each time, he would turn hostile, causing the two of us to quarrel bitterly. He said that he, a Chinese man, would never consider joining an American church. To avoid further turmoil in our relationship, we agreed to absolute silence on the topic of religion in our marriage.
Since talking about it was forbidden, I employed a different method to soften my husband’s heart. I hired only the Mormons in our flower shop, hoping that he would see the light of Christ from the LDS employees. This worked to a certain extend. He was moved by their kindness, responsibility, and honesty, even by some of the teenaged employees.
Though deeply impressed by the noble qualities of the LDS employees, my husband rejected all spiritual invitations by them. In fact, by the eighth year of our marriage (1998), it was clear to me that unless I take drastic measures my husband would forever remain an agnostic, a worldly person resentful of all spiritual engagement. This also meant that for so long as I condone his current lifestyle, my soul will shrivel up along with his, since I had stopped attending the church in order to keep my marriage functional by mostly catering to my husband’s needs and desires.
One day, while I was yet struggling with such issues, my husband received a call from his senile grandmother from Taiwan. In a frail voice, she begged for my husband’s return to Taiwan. She said she was too old and too weak to take care of herself and her alcoholic son—my husband’s father whom he could not get along with. Grandma also questioned whether I would be willing to live in Taiwan to take care of them.
My husband hesitated; he could not give his grandmother an affirmative answer right there and then. “Why now?” He thought. In his mind, things were great for us in America. He saw lots of potential not only with our flower shop but with his other business in China as well. Things were at its pinnacle.
While he was struggling within, I, on the other hand did not. I knew what my answer to his grandmother’s plea was. To me, his grandmother’s call was a heaven’s call from God, showing me a narrow path that I must take in order to convert my husband into the gospel. I figured that my husband would be more receptive to the gospel message if it was taught in his mother tongue in his native land, Taiwan.
However, my decision to put an end to my pseudo-Edenic life in Carlsbad was challenged by many, including my own husband. I had to reason, persuade, and even argue a few times to convince my husband to give up everything we had in America to go back to Taiwan. He was not the only one whom I had to defy: his mother, his mother’s best friend, his aunts, uncles, and a few friends of mine.
I was even contested by some of my husband’s female acquaintances I had met in Taipei. They were victims of adulterous Taiwanese husbands. Thus in good faith, they advised me to hold onto my marriage in America. “Don’t expose your young, handsome, capable husband in the wild, carnal city of Taipei,” they exhorted. However, no one could convince me to do otherwise.
At last, I was finally successful in willfully redirecting the trajectory of my life. My husband and I did indeed forego of all our luxuries in America. We did this by hastily selling everything we owned in the U.S., surrendering not only our prized materials at rock bottom prices (a beautiful home, a successful business, a nice car, etc.) but also leaving behind my lifelong friends and family in the States. All of these sacrifices were required on our part to take care of his senile grandma and his alcoholic father in Taiwan, both of whom none of his other siblings were willing nor able to care for at the time.
Yet, I did take advantage of my husband’s deep appreciation towards me right before I left the U.S. I demanded of him to become my Sunday escort to church every week for one hour as soon as we arrived in Taiwan. He was dumbfounded by this request and thus resisted by trying to bribe his way out of it. He offered me huge sums of money and diamonds but to no avail. Left with no options, he agreed to my request. I was exuberant, oblivious at the time of the harsh trials that awaited me in Taiwan.
It was 1998. Once we had moved to Taiwan, my husband—in order to abide by our agreement—started to go to a LDS church for “one hour” a week. Nevertheless, to my dismay, the life in Taiwan proved to be almost too good for my husband, to the point of him not returning home until the dusk of the night on a daily basis. Just as I was forewarned by the betrayed Taiwanese women, my husband indeed started to drink heavily and indulge in the night glitters of what the great city Taipei had to offer to its carnal and ambitious men.
However, my husband was motivated to and thus kept his part of the promise. The deal was that as long as he went to the church for an hour each week, I would grant him his complete freedom in all things in other days of the week, regardless of how much I may disapprove of what he was doing. He liked this deal, so he kept his part of the deal, but with the least amount of respect for the church itself.
He started out, therefore, as someone who cannot even be designated as an investigator, for he had absolutely no intention nor showed any signs of joining the church. Every Sunday, while my husband was fast asleep, my six-year-old daughter and I would walk to the church first. Then about a half hour later, my husband would show up, find us at the sacrament meeting, sit with us until the congregation started to sing the closing hymn, then leave hastily in order to avoid all solicitations by the missionaries and the ward members. Nonetheless, as long as he did this much every Sunday, I kept my cool with him. Although his night life which included his many male and female friends was emotionally insufferable, I never nagged nor restricted anything he engaged in for the duration of six years that I lived in Taiwan.
Worse yet, there were other external factors that exacerbated my situation in Taiwan. The weather: The sweltering humidity burned me in sweats during its extremely long summer months. The infrastructure: Neither the dilapidated building I resided in nor the haphazard city planning itself gratified me much. Nothing in Taiwan looked anything close to what I was accustomed to in the U.S. The bugs: I hated the mosquitos that would surreptitiously bit me in sleep and the humongous, flying cockroaches which at one time even landed on top of my hair. The transportation: I hated the crowded city buses, life-threatening taxis, and toxic-emitting motorcycles. The open market: I was sickened by the insanitary-looking open market. It was always crowded with shoppers and was located inside the filthiest alley right next to my home. I felt like I had no place of refuge or order in Taiwan.
Neither did I have any internal sanctuary. I was constantly weary. First, I was physically exhausted due to increased amount of housework. I was responsible of taking care of many people in the household: my alcoholic father-in-law and his many girlfriends who came to our home daily and ate with us; brother-in-law and his family, three of whom had joined us since the year of 1999; and my own nuclear family of four. Another brother-in-law and his family of five came every month and stayed with us for two-three days. I was never granted a day of privacy nor personal space. I felt totally exposed, out of control.
Second, I was emotionally shattered due to my flirtatious, worldly husband. Third, I was mentally beaten because I was busy picking up survival skills in a foreign land—Chinese language, memorizing names, recognizing streets, etc. Fourth, I was socially deprived because I was disconnected from my lifetime friends and family in America and the dismal number of friends I had at the time in Taiwan. Back then, online interactions were a novice idea, so emailing or online chatting was an unfathomable alternative. Fifth, I did not have any say in financial matters. Everything was either owned by my father-in-law or my husband. I simply had no rights, even though I was constantly busy doing things at home to make everyone else’s life happier and healthier.
Under such condition, it was virtually impossible for me to feel any sense of happiness living in Taiwan. I felt unfulfilled in every aspect of my life—my unprotected privacy, my indeterminate marriage, my deprived sociality, my abject finance. They were all incorrigible by me. The more I struggled to settle down in Taiwan, the more acutely felt I the sense of uprootedness, disrespect, and powerlessness in a patriarchal Taiwanese culture. The nights when my husband was out late, which usually lasted until the next day morning, what I did to console my broken heart and exhausted body was to quietly sing along the Korean songs being played on my CD player, feeling bitterly lonely and weeping stealthily in the Japanese Tatami situated in the darkest corner of our living room.
Eventually, my husband would succeed in sapping me of all levels of human emotions. Albeit I frequently saw my husband come home drunk in the morning, I no longer felt sadness. In fact, I was thrilled to not have him around, because his presence was nothing less than pure torture. Neither did my kids asked for their dad because they seldom felt loved by their father. In fact, on one occasion, my three-year-old son kicked him out of the bed when his father tried to embrace him. In due course, we, as a couple, stopped communicating with one another, other than for practical matters. While he was engrossed in having the “time-of-his-life,” I was deliberately practicing indifference towards him, in order to numb the pain, sorrow, and resentment I was intensely feeling inside. In time, however, many years of such practice turned into a real indifference. Indeed, I was cognitively existing but emotionally dead in Taiwan.
Not surprisingly, during the six years I lived in Taiwan, I spent more time with my in-laws than I did with my husband. Little by little, such existence of mine diminished even the self-worth of who I was as a human being. I did not have any friends, place to go, or a sense of belonging. Sadly, my identity as once a proud and capable woman in the U.S.—the very quality which my husband fell in love with—was no longer traceable in me. My cup was empty and I had no more to share with anyone. Home was hell; I no longer loved my husband; and I planned a divorce in the future. That is how I wrote it in my journal and confessed it to God in my prayers. I started to dream of fleeing to the U.S. Little did I know then that God had a plan to save me, lift me up high from my self-dug inferno in Taiwan.
My divine intervention occurred in June of 2003. A call from my mother in Los Angeles proved to be a life-turning point in my life. She, in tears, exhorted me to leave Taiwan. I was amazed at how mothers know best about their daughter’s situation. I sobbed for hours with her on the phone, thanking her. She sobbed even louder than me. I continued to sob for days, even fainting inside a public toilet on one occasion due to a sudden outflow of emotions rushing upward from my chest, leaving me gasping for air. On my knees and in tears, I thanked God profusely for releasing me from my heavy burden through my intuitive, loving mother.
I was all smiles and rejoiced in my soon-to-be-free-status in America once again. I had absolutely no more feelings left for neither my husband nor his family. I had paid my dues, and I was being released to a land of freedom, and I knew then that I would never come back to Taiwan again, since I was taking both of my kids with me to Los Angeles. I had no reason to come back, and I did not want to remember anything that had happened to me in Taiwan.
On June of 2003, I left Taiwan with my nine-year-old daughter and my three-year-old son to pursue my education and teaching career in the U.S. I knew that nothing could be worse than the six years I had spent in Taiwan, so I was not afraid of anything. I was determined to succeed, and it is suffice to say that “success” indeed was the perfect word for what God has allowed me to achieve in Los Angeles. Thanks to my supportive mom, dad, and my sister, I had won numerous scholarly honors, presented at numerous academic platforms, wrote copious amount of and have published a couple of scholarly articles, and taught at both college and high school levels.
My husband felt pressured as he realized that I had no intension of coming back to him. Summer of 2005, he came to the states to visit me and the kids. He was contrite in spirit, visibly brokenhearted in fear of losing me and the kids for good. I could see that he regretted all that he had done in the past and for what he was about to lose as a result—his children and his wife. He secretly cried non-stop every night as he watched the kids and I fast asleep in our beds (as told by him later).
Six months have passed since his visit. On December 25th, 2005, after being married to my husband for nearly fifteen years, I finally got to see him in his white baptismal robe. He indeed underwent baptism that day, washing away all his sins of the past in the sacred water. In his testimony afterwards, he admitted that the reason why he decided to be baptized was because of the sacrifice and example I had shown him and his family. “But most of all” he said, “I decided to accept and live the gospel because my wife fasted and prayed for me for the past two years. Her weekly fasting thoroughly moved me. I couldn’t deny that my wife loved me.”
Love? Is that why I fasted for him every week for two years since 2003, the year I left him? No, not exactly! How could I love a man who has hurt me so much? Although his baptism was a miraculous answer to my earnest fasting and prayers of two years, honestly, my heart had long been fossilized to feel any romantic feelings towards my husband. My love for my husband was more on a humanistic term: universal love for mankind, love for the Lord, and my love for the gospel. Needless to say, his baptism was one of the happiest days of my life. I did shed a lot of tears of joy, but as a devout Christian who had succeeded in finding a lost sheep, not as a wife.
Shocked by how hardened my heart was towards him, my husband started to do things that would eventually convince me of his sincerity in the gospel. Seeing how overwhelmed I was raising two kids on my own and going to school fulltime, he volunteered to raise the two kids on his own since the year 2005. I also allowed this to happen because the school district where my kids were bound to attend in Los Angeles was one of the worst in the nation.
Once he had the kids to himself in Taiwan, he started to build amazing bonds with the kids by living by the gospel standards. Gradually, my children started to love their father more than me. Above all, what really impressed me was the fact that he continued to stay active in the church without my influence, accepting and magnifying all his church callings by his own volition.
My husband’s complete makeover in the gospel not only impressed me, but everyone around him. People watched this man in bewilderment, including his own parents. But I did not feel any love for him as a husband yet. In fact, I was often approached by many intellectual men in my career, traits absent in my husband. Satan certainly attempted to stray me away from my husband, but he had no power over me because I was fasting and praying every week. I started to plead with God to bring back my old, affectionate feelings towards my husband, so I can think about going back to him.
Although it took us longer than we would have liked, our nightly prayers as a family to be whole again was answered on January 2006. We were sealed in the Taipei Temple as an eternal couple and a family with the kids. But it still took us another three years before we actually started to live together as a whole family due to contractual obligations I had with the school I was employed at.
On August 5th, 2009, I was finally able to come back to my husband and to my children. All those painful years are now behind me. It has been five years since my husband’s baptism. He has undergone a complete transformation of the heart, body, and mind. His heart now rejoices in the gospel; his body has been miraculously rejuvenated by keeping the word of wisdom; and his mind has been cleared of all spiritual free-radicals—all negative proclivities of his former self.
He now treats me like a queen. He tells me that he loves me every day and night. He spends quantity and quality time with the children. He works diligently and God has blessed him abundantly so that he can sufficiently provide for his family. He helps me out with housework. He takes me out every week to a nice restaurant. He is kind and generous to all the people around him. Most of all, he is faithful to God’s commandments and church callings. What more could I possibly want in a husband?
Christ has said: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear…He that feareth is not made perfect in love” (1 John 4:18). This verse assures me that the Lord is pleased with the fact that I did not “fear in love” when I chose to marry and love my husband. It also asserts me that it was all worth it—my fearless decision to give up material comforts in America in order to convert my husband into the gospel in Taiwan. Though I am far from being perfect, I have endeavored to practice “perfect love [that] casteth out fear.” As a result, my husband and I are now “made perfect in love.” In fact, I am so happy now that I find it almost surreal that bad things had actually happened in early years of my marriage.
Just as everyone else, there were plenty of seemingly insurmountable trials in my twenty years of marriage, but I now understand why we are given such challenges. The Lord wants us to be like him, and he has challenged us: “Therefore I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect” (3 Nephi 12:48).” He sends us such invitation so that we, like Him, may gain the eternal glory just as he has gained his through his atoning sacrifice. The scriptures confirm of his glory in the latter days: “Then shall he be crowned with the crown of his glory, to sit on the throne of his power to reign forever and ever” (D&C 76:108). Jesus Christ showed the way so that we can obtain our own individual glory in our own small ways in our everyday lives by learning to “sacrifice,” the fearless love that makes us perfect.
It is funny how what seemed back then a long-suffering, painful sacrifice now seems it was once-in-a-lifetime, special opportunity for me to invest in something eternally invaluable. How strange that our perspectives should change so drastically over time? As our perspectives change, our past experiences are modified in our memory cells: their meanings change. I now know that the trials of my past were God’s way of prodding me just a little so that I may be induced to reaching my full potential: my self-actualization through education; my salvation through fasting and prayers; and my eternal glory and happiness through temple marriage and sealing.
None of the adverse situations in my life was useless. It all, at the end, enriched my life and made me a happier person. I, therefore, shy away from framing my past experiences as something sacrificial. Rather, it was an investment on my part to transform even the most dehumanizing experience into something most glorious. I testify that the secret to the law of sacrifice is that it ultimately leads us to our own self-actualization, salvation, glory, and eternal happiness.
I want to share this with you because, after reading Hugo’s paper, I realized that I have personally went through the process of cultural perspectivism, in that I was first, to borrow Hugo’s words, the “naïve [cultural] consumer, frustrated and anxious.” But because “[my] spirit[could] not tolerate anxiety and meaninglessness for long,” I have reshaped the American culture that was once my “oppressor into tool” which I now wield it integratively with my other cultures for moment-to-moment, situational purposes. I can do this because I am in tandem the consumer and the owner of multiple cultures and have a diverse range of self-expressive sociolinguistic mediums; I can never be mainstreamed into only one culture; I thus believe that I have found what Hugo calls one’s “niche culture” composed of rich cultural languages and authority.
I think this is what Hugo means by a “superconsumer” a postmodernist of auto-culture, a person of credible (authoritative) culture amidst an “in-credible culture,” a concept and a reality that emerges in stages as one travels this journey of cultural transformations from being naïve to superconsumer (which I do not totally agree; I think some will get stuck in this journey, forever xenophobic if not, in Hugo’s term, an incorrigibly “passive consumer”).
If I may reiterate Hugo to make sure that I am understanding his continuum of cultural evolvement: 1) Strauss & Derrida’s (1966) two primal models: a “bricoleur,” a cultural hero, opportunist, and critic who uses one culture to undermine another and his/her antithetical counterpart, an “engineer,” a cultural fool who is one-dimensional and submissive to authority; then 2) Jameson’s (1991) “intertextualist,” a culturally unsettled, faint vestige of globalism who is unduly influenced by and thus desensitized to milliard cultural propagandas; and 3) Bhabha’s (1994) biculturalist who, rather than being desensitized, by negotiating and contesting the bipolar cultures of one’s motherland and the host country has carved out a transcendent space of beyond in a conjoining sense; and ultimately, which brings us back to 4) Hugo’s (2006) superconsumer, an emblem of self-constructed culture which one is not born into ethnically/geographically but willfully and optimistically self-fashioned by utilizing/reconfiguring contaminated (or dumbed down) original cultures in the age of hyperglobalisation.
Now, what I don’t understand is Hugo’s paradoxical concept of simultaneously submitting one’s self to a controller and yet controlling the controller. Help me with this, please. At the same time, I find Hugo’s “poetics of three critical experiences” simply exquisite! I agree 1000% and appreciate his graphic representations of his dense, potentially confusing theory.
It’s me again. Can you help me understand Kant?I’m stuck with his notion of “purposiveness without a purpose.” What significance does it hold for Kant’s claims about the human value of aesthetic judgment? I read this many times, but the more I read it, it confuses me more.
As far as I know, that’s Kant’s definition of the aesthetic. The aesthetic, to Kant, should be non-utilitarian (spelling). A knife is utilitarian-you use it to cut something with, but a poem is not utilitarian-you don’t use it to “do” something practical.
To put it differently, a work of art is not something that has a (utilitarian) function or “purpose.” But, that does not mean that the work of art does not have a purpose within its non-utilitarian realm.It has a purpose within the purpose-less (non-utilitarian) context. Take a beautiful tie for example. Its beauty lies, first, in the fact that it does not have a utilitarian purpose (I don’t have to wear a tie). But in the sense that the tie is carefully designed and produced, it has its purpose: it is meant to be beautiful, aesthetic.
Another example. Many students, English majors or non majors, ask me: What can literature do for me? They are thinking: how can literature help me get into a more profitable career? I tell them-if that’s what you are thinking, literature is useless. Can people live without the experience of music, painting or literature? The answer is: There are some people who live their lives without that experience.
The ancient Chinese philosopher Chuang Tze (or, Zhuang Tze) once said: “The great Tao appears useless” (da dao wu yong). That’s similar to what Kant tries to say.Art-or philosophy-appears useless if we look at it in the utilitarian sense.
HYBRIDITY: Deep down inside, nonetheless, I feel that even this new title, “Asian American,” is too restricting for me, especially in light of the fact that I am an Angelino who inter-socializes with peoples of all cultures. As Cohen (1997) hypothesizes, as a postmodern cultural diaspora, I ultimately and inevitably have dubious political allegiances. That is, though I maintain certain sociopolitical ties with 1) my legal country U.S., 2) my mother land Korea, and 3) the host countries of Taiwan and China, by not completely assimilating to any of these national/cultural norms, I live in what Cohen (1997) calls “no-group lands” (p.189). In this no-group land, then, my existence is a composite of liminality, syncretism and ambiguity, ultimately rendering my identity geopolitically fluid and culturally amorphous. In tiny increments, I have gradually come to embrace myself as what Bhabha (1998) calls a “postcolonial cultural freak”—an indistinguishable, marginalized, and multi-cultural member in our society (pp. 1331-1344). Now, I accept and even thrive on the fact that my identity cannot be fixed to one national/cultural locale. It is in constant flux; it can never be compartmentalized into this or that category. Rather, my subjectivity is forever in the making. It is an unoccupied whirling void without a shape. It has immeasurable depth that can soak up any culture, selectively or wholeheartedly. It is thus fluid and amorphous. I simultaneously feel that I am Korean, Chinese, and American, and lately, an Angelino. Who knows what I will be tomorrow? Perhaps, a denizen of the entire world.
I took proactive actions to advocate one of my most respected professors in CSULA, one of which was a letter to the Dean.
Nov 30, 2005
California State University, Los Angeles
College of Health and Human Services
Re: Dr. Suling Cheng
Dear Dr. Marlene Zepeda,
Hello, my name is Jessie Chen, a student of Dr. Cheng’s CHDV 140 this quarter. I write this letter to you as a student representing Dr. Cheng’s class.
I’ll get right to the point: I would like to thank you for appointing Dr. Cheng to teach this class. She is a superb teacher. In fact, if I had the power/authority, I would give her a “perfect teacher award.” Of all the professors I had so far, she is the only professor who has the aptitude to incorporate the state-of-the-art pedagogy into her lectures—the power point presentations and video clips. As a student, I deeply sense its effectiveness—i.e., video clips make scholarly concepts come alive and accessible, while power point outlines highlight and organize focal points of the discussions into a holistic perspective.
In sum, she has strategically and ingeniously structured her class in three major ways: (1) her daily activities and weekly quizzes minimize students’ non-attendance, since in order to accumulate these points, the students must be present; (2) her aforementioned high-tech visual aids increase students’ comprehension of and engagement into the discourse being discussed; and (3) her website in which she posts students’ accumulated points invariably motivates students’ academic excellence in terms of grade. In addition, other aspects of her class—such as her eloquence, kindness, humor, and other efforts, like trying to connect points of discussions to current, real life situations—collectively make her a “perfect professor,” and thus her class, a priceless academic asset to the students. It even has the power to convert a student who was initially dismally-interested in the course into a devotee of it, at least until the spell wears off (this is me).
I will briefly explain why I have decided to write this letter, just incase you are unaccustomed to receiving thank you letters from students for hiring good professors: My current situation with an awful professor this quarter for my other class (Eng 410) has sensitized otherwise a very passive me into a critical student who now demotes professor’s negligence (Several students and I have reported this particular professor to the department) and promotes his/her excellence. In other words, just as most of us would report a negligent professor, I felt that a good professor should be reported to the department as well for his/her ingenuity and distinction. Thus, although I am not a CHDV major, I am informing and appreciating you for an excellent, dedicated teacher in your department.
Thank you very much for you time.
Respectfully,
Jessie Chen (writerjc2006@yahoo.com)
November 30, 2005
Categories: Education, Personal, Teaching . Tags: Jessie Chen . Author: Jessie Chen . Comments: Comments Off on …just incase you are unaccustomed to receiving thank you letters from students for hiring good professors…
The Healing Power of My Childhood Motor Stimulations
I had the most wonderful childhood in every aspect. My parents were always busy and hardly home, but they made sure their children were well taken care of, and had plenty of friends to play with. Our house was on a hillside, surrounded by the mountains.
As a child, I remember that “playing” meant “doing things outside.” Everyday, it was given that some child friend of mine, often much older and stronger than I, would holler me and my brother to come outside and join them for some new adventure up in the mountain. As a child, though I did not know at the time, was exploring the nature by using my “gross motor skills—walking, running, and climbing.
In the mountains, there are plenty of fun things to do that require “fine motor skills” as well. For one, I remember that few girls and I would go find red bits of rocks, grind them to powder, then sprinkle it to our painstakingly chopped and marinated “kimchee,” which we had prepared from only the most natural ingredients—the fresh weeds, flowers, and wild berries. While the boys were practicing their “flying skills” like the “Six Million Dollar Man” (the TV hero of that time), using both their gross and fine motor skills (their legs for power and fingers for steering), we girls were busy making sure that the dinner would be ready for them—these hard working boys who came home exhausted and famished. “Hmm, this is very good…really delicious,” they would comment as they ate when they came back to our make-believe home. The more noise the boys made in their pseudo-chewing, swallowing, and commenting on how sweet, salty, or sour the food was, we, the girls, felt a greater sense of accomplishment and pride. Though I don’t remember exactly how old I was then, I do remember that it was many, many days, perhaps, years of playing like this in the mountains before I was put into a kindergarten.
One day, when I was much older, my mom with tears in her eyes confessed to me that I did not talk until I was five years old, because I was born with speech impairment and weak muscle tones due to my mother’s drug overdose, when I was only a two-month-old fetus in her uterus (the real reason why she was overly obsessive with me). Thus, she said that as soon as she saw that I was beginning to talk at the age of five, though it was a real stretch in her budget, she elatedly put me into the most expensive kindergarten in Korea at the time for my further cognitive development.
I don’t exactly know how this transformation happened, really—from being almost mute to verbal speech and weak muscles to walking and running. My mom thinks it is because I lived and played in a mountain area where air was fresh, and had fresh spring water and goat milk to drink on a daily basis. She may have a point there. In addition to my mother’s hypothesis, as a student of Child psychology, I think there was perhaps one more factor to this supposition—my early years of both gross and fine motor stimulations on a daily basis in the mountains. If my speculation is true, then my family’s then shoddy demographics was a blessing in disguise, in that we had to live in the most impoverished mountain district where children had no toys or TVs in their house, so had to adventure out to the mountains for entertainments.
November 21, 2005
Categories: Personal, Psychology . Tags: Jessie Chen . Author: Jessie Chen . Comments: Comments Off on The Healing Power of My Childhood Motor Stimulations
My Mother’s Psychosocial Influence on Her Two Daughters
My mother: I either adore or abhor her, but never free from her. I have often envied orphans. How free they must be! Nothing about my mother is normal. She is eccentric, neurotic, possessive, manipulative, manic-depressive, superstitious, religious, greedy, and magnanimous. She has been an entertainer all her life. She dances, sings, acts, and does everything else to prove that she is the queen of stars! She is too much! Oh, how I have prayed for freedom from her! Her obsessiveness made my life unbearable to a point of running away from her as a teenager. She is the reason for everything that had gone wrong in my life.
As I got older, however, I started to perceive her from a different angle. Not only has she torn me down, but also has built me up. Some quiet nights, I weep as I softly play the piano for I know that I owe her for the talents I now enjoy. Her obsession of me—the person whom she loves the most, in her words—has given me an unbeatable confidence in strange ways. Though I knew that there were people better, smarter, and prettier than me, I always knew that I was the best thing for my mom. She loved me in powerful ways! The power that cannot be bought with money, the power that helps me to move forward against all odds, the power that orphans can never fathom nor enjoy has become mine. I hate to admit that she has molded the very essence of my being.
Now that you know what kind of psychosocial power my mother had on me, you might guess that my sister has turned out to be as self-confident as I am—not exactly. As I have mentioned in my first essay, my sister, who was once known as the genius of my family, has always suffered from severe psychological insecurity which, she says, stems from lack of maternal love as a child. Interestingly enough, my sister, in an attempt to psycho-analyze herself after many years of receiving psycho-therapy, went back to school at night for a second M.A. degree in Psychology. As a student of psychology, what she enviously told me back then about the powerful influence my mother had on my indomitable self-confidence makes sense to me now, as her psychological concepts coincide with what I study in this class—that mother’s emotional, physical, and mental interaction with her child has life-long effects. In other words, my mother’s almost exclusive, overtly expressive love for me has killed my sister’s young fragile spirit as a child growing up under my shade, and according to her analysis, has caused her to become a chronically insecure person.
From the course textbook, I was bemused to learn that not only do “rats become smarter if they are frequently held [loved] when they are young,” but more significantly, “mother’s licking and grooming of her pup . . . leads to decreased release of stress hormones, which [in turn] leads to increased tolerance of potentially stressful conditions . . . in adulthood” (53). This theory applied to humans means that, just as the rats in this study, there is an undeniable causality between mother’s loving care of her infant and her child’s psychosocial development, which, in turn, validates my sister’s quasi-argument of “my mother’s insufficient love” being the culprit of her lack of self-confidence and insecurity as an adult.
Further, this same theory also helps me and my mother understand why she was so determined to outdo me in every realm of her life—e.g., going to college at sixteen or becoming an auditor of L.A. County at nineteen. What is so extremely sad and ironic about this is that while I was trying to free myself from my mother’s obsession of me, my sister was emotionally and physically killing herself to gain more of my mother’s love by proving that she is better than me in every aspect. Indeed, my mother is a powerful figure whose love built up one daughter’s self-confidence, while the lack of it demolished another.
The last trip I made to Taipei was purely enjoyable. Everything was great until the last day. However, as soon as I saw a young couple with a toddler in front of my assigned seat in the return flight back to LAX, my jubilant mood was compelled to shift gear to a contemplative mode, since I had to speculate whether this was a good baby or a fussy, crying one.
Just as I suspected, as soon as the plane started to move, this infant of probably no more than a year old, started to cry. I told myself that this baby is probably startled by the plane’s sudden movement, and crying is his only way to communicate his fear with his parents. The father held the baby and tried to cuddle him, but he won’t stop crying, until his mother gave him a bottle of juice. Appreciating the mother’s expertise in handling her son, I told myself that the baby must have been thirsty for him to cry like that.
But as the plane started to fly high with a sudden increase of pressure, the boy now started to shriek. He cried and cried, stopping only once in a while to suck the bottle intermittently. No one or nothing can stop him from crying now—his father and mother’s alternating hugs, massaging his back, stroking his hair, standing up and walking around while holding the baby. None of this worked. Many passengers who were near enough to hear this baby shriek started to fumble about with their bodies and made nasty faces. I was one of them. I kept making ugly faces for the next thirteen hours, until the plane landed at LAX.
In retrospect, I guess for this toddler, “flying” was a traumatic experience. This toddler, who looked about a year old must have been cognitively developed enough to know that his environment has drastically changed. And since at this stage, he can only babble or vocalize few simple words, such as “mama” or “baba,” he had to resort to “crying” as his only means of communicating his infantile sense of “life threatening situation.” Though this crying baby was responsible for miserably ending my festive mood, I must say that from the Child Development point of view, this baby is lucky to have patient loving parents, who don’t neglect his “cries” as one of many meaningless temper tantrums.
The secret to the law of sacrifice is that it ultimately leads us to our own self-actualization, salvation, glory, and eternal happiness.
JC's Mental Portal 