The Beautiful Mess

It is interesting to notice the way that my perception of how long I'm going to be in Japan changes the way I minister. When I told God back more than a year ago how I was willing to stay in Japan however long He called me to, I remember noticing that it changed everything...my heart through all of itself into the mission here because of that belief that I was here for a long time. Now that (pending any major surprises) I am heading back to the U.S. in April, I find the result has been a throwing aside of caution. I am teaching boldly...at least for me. No more patience...the days are numbered. And this is what my teaching looks like when I am being bold...

My Beginner Bible class has stopped being beginner in any sense of the word. Part of this is because Winter Term has characteristic low numbers, and rather than being a true class, it's almost a cell group with me, two church members, and Takaaki. The poor guy hears more sermons a week than anyone else I know. ;-)

I've borrowed a curriculum called The Beautiful Mess from a Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. I love telling my Japanese students the title for the course, because they can't fathom what "beautiful" and "mess" are doing so close to each other. Our first week was all about ways that we try to hide our messes from God. It was amazing. We had a list on the board of what the mess was and how we tried to hide it from God. Etsuko came up with something brilliant. One mess we wrote down was "sin, guilt, and shame" and when I asked how we tried to hide it, Etsuko immediately said, "charity." Once she had explained about doing good out of guilt rather than out of love, the other church member was sitting with a very intense, concentrating look on her face. I don't know if I've ever before gotten this woman to turn her eyes to herself and not just look to others...she's one of the people who serves *all* the time. And I found myself wondering and hoping for the possibility that this woman could serve not out of feeling shameful or inferior, but out of the knowledge of how awesome God thinks she is. I imagine her shining instead of trembling.

The Beautiful Mess curriculum always ends with time praying for each other, and I decided we would do so every week. And that has been powerful.

My pastor's son speaks English

Today, Yuki came into the office singing jibberish that sounded suspiciously like English. His dad called him back and told him to speak English. This is the result... :-D






EDIT: No, no...it's not really English. But you can hear in the sounds that it's what he's imitating. Anyway...

Africa meets Japan

I went out tonight.

And what's more, I went out of my own free will. But there was very good reason for this...one of the new J3s, Carolyn, discovered a concert in Shinjuku that was combining Taiko (those huge Japanese drums you may have seen before) and drums from Ghana. We walked about thirty minutes in nearly freezing rain to find it, were lost, had to stand up through the whole concert, and all in all, it was one of the greatest concerts I have ever been to. Carolyn turned to me at one point during the night and said, "I would have walked out there all night for this!!!"

I've always loved Taiko. It's dance and drums together, and it just doesn't get so much better than that.

But I did have to laugh a little bit at one part of the concert. Two men from Ghana were on stage. One was playing drums, the other was trying to get a Japanese crowd to clap. I'll come back to this in a minute.

When I was in South Africa, we were put to shame by a music group. It was January. They sang a number of energetic songs with all the heart they had. At one point, they came up close to the microphones, stood up straight and still, and sang "Deck the Halls" as though they were members of a fine choir. It was very boring. Then, those mischievous African grins overtook their faces once again, they stepped back from the microphones, and they swayed and sang "Deck the Halls" for real.

Later, they announced how this group of students from St. Olaf was there and how we were going to sing. They tried everything to get us to have spirit. But we were up there, still and stern, singing beautifully but with something missing. I couldn't help thinking how dead we had to look...we were exactly like their jokingly stern version of "Deck the Halls"!

There weren't nearly enough opportunities in Africa to make music with Africans. Being in a circle with Africans making music is pretty close to pure freedom for me. Heaven on earth.

So...back to the Shinjuku Japanese / Ghana drum performance...

I had to laugh because one of the Africans got us to clap in this rhythm. We were supposed to clap on the second and third beat. The whole audience got this down and ran with it. The beat never altered, but was a steady "ichi NI SAN ichi NI SAN"...except that the drummers weren't sticking to the same beat. They would speed up or slow down. The man who had led us into clapping eventually changed the beat he was going at from two beats together to three and the audience continued it's steady "ichi NI SAN"...never changing or adjusting to the music.

Later, I was saddened by it, because the man who had been leading the clapping got off the stage. As part of the audience, I watched him try to start clapping along with the next song. No one joined him. He lasted about a minute before he started pausing longer between claps, and finally stopped all together and faded against the wall. It's hard to be the only one clapping. I was thinking about being in South Africa and how hard they worked to get us to be alive while we were singing.

The different kinds of beauty struck me, though. Japanese beauty is intentional, balanced, artistic, masterful. The taiko drummers were perfectly synchronized, and everything from the beat to the position of their arms is structured.

The African drums had little visual appeal. But while I had no urge to move at all during the taiko, I couldn't stop moving during the African drumming. That contagious freedom is what is most beautiful to me about it. I feel like I'm part of the music.

I always wonder how that freedom fits into Japan. If it's just my culture that makes me long for it, and culture shock that makes me feel like it's missing. Do people born and raised in Japan long for that kind of freedom too? Somewhere inside? Do any of the taiko drummers ever just get the urge to break out and start doing a dance all their own, leaping from drum to drum in some spontaneous, crazy way? I wonder.

Life Goes On

I woke up this morning to a Japanese voice shouting outside my apartment. "Yakiiiiimoh! Yaaaakimoooh! Ishi yaaaaakiimoh!" Or, directly translated, "Baaaaked potato! Baked pooootatooo! Rock-baked potato!!!" Living in the middle of Tokyo, such sounds do not usually wake me up anymore. But recently it's been the New Year's holiday and the streets have been strangely silent and empty. Today they are back to normal...business men rushing about, bicycles ringing bells to shoo pedestrians out of their path, and the occasional baked potato van running by.

But with all this going on, I almost feel like I'm not in Tokyo anymore. Don't ask me where I feel like I am. Maybe Limbo, or the State of Transition, or the Land of Too Much Thinking. I wonder if it's a little how to feels to know you are dying...all around you plans are being made, new ministries born, friends are changing and growing, churches are changing and growing...I watch it all with a kind of wary distance, knowing that I will leave it all very, very soon...but wanting to cherish everyone and everything that surrounds me.

I think as a result of this cherishing, it was the first Christmas that I didn't miss America. We had a handbell choir at church this year...a group of high school girls, some of whom were the tiny and yet able to throw around the huge bucket bells. I watched some men from the congregation go up and try to play those same bells after church and fail.

A special joy for me this Christmas was Etsuko. I've watched her get bolder and bolder about sharing her faith, and this year she took it to a new level. We were setting up candles to get ready for the service, and as soon as it was just the two of us, she told me, "Pamela, a miracle happened!!!" Apparently she prayed up the courage to give Christmas cards to all her neighbors in her apartment building. She told all of them that she was a Christian, that she prayed God would bless them that Christmas. One woman came up and met Etsuko for the first time, deeply moved. She told Etsuko that she had attended a Christian school and so she had studied the Bible as a teenager, but she hadn't thought about it for years until she got the card. Etsuko took her boldness to a new level and asked the woman if she would like to read the Bible or some Christian books together sometime, and the woman agreed.

Part of real life being on pause has been a lot of time with my missionary community these past few weeks. We're all pretty scattered when breaks aren't happening, but when they do happen it seems like lots of time gets made up for. And bottled up loving and arguing all seems to come out at once. So, basically, God has given lots of time with my Japan family. Life is never, ever boring in this group of people. :-) This break included:

• getting news of a really good friend's engagement
• getting news of another friend's engagement not a week later (something is in the air in Tokyo!)
• setting up a lot of futon pads as a giant maze and then failing miserably in attempting to convince the missionaries to come upstairs and rescue a kidnapped companion (my friends have no compassion, I tell you! ;-) )
• worshiping and leading prayer without a voice--but yay for good prayer and worship time in English!
• the creation of a major earthquake contingency plan including the need for boats and Morse Code transmission devices...which most of the other missionaries somehow don't seem to want to go along with. ;-)
• After all the talk about major earthquakes, a minor earthquake the day AFTER all my friends left my apartment...I was shaking harder than the ground. I'm not afraid of being in Tokyo during a major earthquake, but the thought of being trapped alone is really not appealing.
• Broke the silence barrier...at least once more.
• Going out to a shrine on New Years to shiver with my two friends and be available in case Jesus had anyone for us to talk to. Got videotaped by three drunk Japanese girls who now think they've met three missionaries from Nebraska. Stood watching crowd after crowd of people throw 5 yen coins into the shrine, bow to a false god and wish for a good New Year until our feet and hearts were numb. Reflecting on this, I am thankful that I am in a group of people where such "adventures" can take place.
• Slept in the latest I ever have in my un-sick life (1:40pm...hehe)
• Cheese fondue. Need more be said? :-D
• Interrogated my sister's new boyfriend over the webcam while he was on the other side of her cellphone.
• Managed to come up with words for my Hongo report. Sent my report to a church member to translate. Decided that I really need lessons on how to speak / write so a translator can do something with it. :-/
  
• Discovered that my friend Jenae is as competitive and into games as I am. Felt silly about how long it took us to figure that out (2 years). Had an awesome time trying to cream each other at a bunch of games.

So...life goes on. And this list doesn't even include three rather major things. Some doors are closing much more quickly than I thought they would...others are opening up. And slowly, slowly, God pushes me into going on too. Now...if only I could apply that to lesson plans... ;-)