Exodus 28: Priests were to wear sacred garments for dignity and honor when they served in the tabernacle.
Matthew 22: In one of Jesus' parables, a man was ejected from a wedding for not wearing wedding clothes.
Conclusion: Biblical worship means wearing your best.
John 13: During the Passover meal, Jesus took off his outer clothing, wrapped a towel around his waist, and washed his disciples' feet.
New conclusion: Biblical worship means wearing your best unless dressing down helps you serve others.
Biblical gender roles
Genesis 24: Rebekah gave Abraham's servant a drink from her water jar at the spring of Nahor and watered his camels.
John 4: Jesus asked a Samaritan woman for a drink from her water jar at the well of Sychar.
Conclusion: Biblical manhood means letting women carry the water jars.
Luke 22: Jesus told Peter and John to follow a man carrying a jar of water to the house where they were to prepare the Passover meal.
New conclusion: Biblical manhood in Jewish culture usually meant letting women carry water jars, but Jesus broke the stereotype to give his disciples a sign.
Where else does the Bible break its own stereotypes to unveil a deeper law?
In the following passage, James Michener describes a meal at a Mexican restaurant in the small town of Centennial, Colorado in 1973, before Taco Bells dotted the landscape.
We turned east on Mountain and walked four blocks to a noisy restaurant called Flor de Méjico, and there again we were warmly greeted, this time by a robust Mexican introduced to me as Manolo Marquez. "We knew you'd be back," he told Miss Endermann. "Tonight the best in the house, on me."
He showed us to a table covered by a red-checkered cloth and a well-greased menu which Miss Endermann told me had been invariable for the past five years. "I hope you like Mexican food," she said.
"It's not common in Georgia."
"We'll introduce him to it, Manolo," she cried. "Three plates, with a sample of everything. And some Coors beer." She asked if I knew this Colorado beer, and I said no. "With Mexican food it's sort of heaven," she assured me.
The door opened and the black man I had seen on the street entered and came to our table. Miss Endermann kissed him, then said, "This is my friend and counselor, Nate Person. Not only a good barber but a sagacious one. He knows where the bodies are buried."
Person, a gray-templed man in his fifties, asked where I was from, and when I said Georgia he laughed. "That's a state not high on my list."
"It's getting better," I assured him.
"High time," he said evenly.
"You must tell him everything you told me," Miss Endermann said, and Nate nodded.
I suppose it was a good dinner, but the items that faced me were so unlike what I was accustomed to in Georgia that it all tasted like a hot jumble. "The toasted thing is a taco," Miss Endermann explained. To me it was more like French-fried cardboard, and the enchilada and tamale seemed so nearly identical that I never did discover which was which. The stuffed pepper, called a chili relleno, was mostly fried cheese, but the salad was great. So was the small glass of pomegranate juice. And the Coors beer was, as she had predicted, "as light as a cupful of mountain water."
After we had finished the dinner, which Miss Endermann and Person gulped as if they hadn't eaten in weeks, I began to experience the most pleasing sensation. It was as if my stomach were in harmony with the world. "That must have been pretty good food," I said. "Tastes better now than it did going down."
"Join the club," Miss Endermann said. "Nate, remember that first time you made me try it? Thought I'd die."
- From James Michener, Centennial: A Novel (Random House, 1974)
Great advice by Kerry Ann Rockquemore over at Inside Higher Edon how to discern your own needs so you can ask for help. Let me summarize her approach:
1. Identify your biggest challenge and what you need to overcome it
2. Determine who can help you most quickly and effectively
3. Draft a short email request to that person asking for a brief conversation to discuss your specific challenge and need.
Repeat this over and over for four months, practicing these conversations with a number of potential helpers, and by the end you'll have a network of support that you didn't have before.
Songs are like horcruxes in the Harry Potter films -- when you've lived in different cultures, parts of your soul are buried in different songs that your friends and family at home can't understand, and you only half-understand yourself. On days like today, I bring those songs out and mull them over, dust them off and type them out, and finally learn what each word means, which together had meant so much to me in the past.
This song, like "恩典之路 / Endian Zhi Lu / The Path of Grace", is about a path. I was introduced to it in Sønwal Yosep's living room after church one Sunday in Chiang Mai, or maybe it was in the courtyard in front of the church while everyone was eating lunch -- one of the youth, probably a young lady whom I was too shy to speak to and I wouldn't have known enough Rawang to speak much to anyway, pressed me to buy a CD called "Køm Zøp We Shont Nønt / Hkum Tsup ai Tsaw Myit" ("Perfect Love", with the first title in Rawang and the second in Jinghpaw) with videos and songs by a Rawang singer named D Mata. (I still don't even know what clan name "D" is supposed to abbreviate: Døngkang? Døngkung?)
So I bought it, and one of the songs, called "Shongnønt Tvra / The Path of Love" has been one of my favorites ever since. I present it below in Rawang as it appears in the subtitles of the music video, with my own suggested corrections in parentheses, followed by a rough translation into English.
A few things about this song impressed me:
- steadfast, patient hope in God, waiting while praying, implying faithfulness and hope during a long but temporary separation between lover and beloved
- calling the intended person "shongja" (beloved friend)
- the plural use of "loves" and "souls" (like the Thai and Lisu belief in calling back the nine or seven souls and tying them back together with a string bracelet), whereas in an English-speaking worldview love is seen as an uncountable mass noun and each person is seen as having only a single soul
- the importance in Rawang culture of having a peaceful life, which might reflect both the Hebrew concept of shalom, that is, total wellbeing in community, and the political concern with ongoing civil war in Burma
- talking about one's path, or way, as well as the path of the two people together; this can refer to the course and direction of their life, as well as their patterns, habits, outlooks, and set ways
- the strong start of the chorus, "Ngvngdøng shongnøntni na svng shonge" (with a strong, firm love I love you), which calls to mind the Lord's words in Jeremiah 31:3, "I have loved you with an everlasting love." This is appropriately the site of a strong set of power chords by the guitar and bass in the soundtrack, which adds to the deep delight I feel in the song.
- the ending, where the verb í 'to be' is conjugated for future tense with the combination of the 'change of state' or 'upward' suffix -long and the nonpast declarative marker -e, for a combined meaning of ílonge '(it) will be (a peaceful life)'. This reminds me of the passage in Dvzv́rrì (Acts) 1:8 where Jesus tells his apostles, "Ngà shvkse èí lóngnønge" (you will be my witnesses"). In mvngør zung (Rawang summer school) in Chiang Mai one year, we all got T-shirts with this phrase, and I can never forget the teacher (Shøngrvm Jungbay?) making all of us repeat it after him again and again -- Ngà shvkse èí lóngnønge. Fun times!
Shongnønt Tvra / The Path of Love
Mvn (written by) Vgu Døzi
Yo (sung by) D Mata
(Verse 1)
Shongnønt ri na dvpvt
shvngbe na svng zønge
e kvm
nga ni o tvra shvngbe
kangpe kaq svng tvlengo
shongja e Gvray kaq ju erøt
tiq lvpvt mongzøl lun lvm
(Verse 2)
Nga mvsøn ri na svng
tiq dvciq dvpvt wvng (wa?)
zønge
satan ni dvløt (dàløt?) ra we
shvngbe svng jor lun lvm rvt
shongja e nagø ju erøt
nga ni o lvpvt mongzøl lvm
(Chorus)
Ngvngdøng shongnønt ni na svng shonge
jurøt no so ri na svng wa cange
nga ni shongnønt tvra shvngbe
Gvray nønt i kvt nø
shongja e
mongzøl lvpvt i longe
shongja e
mongzøl lvpvt i longe
All my loves for you I give to you.
Believe.
All our path I turn over to the Lord.
Beloved friend, pray to God
To get a peaceful life
My souls to you, for a lifetime, I give.
Though Satan contests
To be able to overcome all
Beloved friend, you too pray
For our life to be peaceful.
With a strong, firm love I love you
While praying, I wait for you alone.
All our path of love
When it's God's will
Beloved friend
It will be a peaceful life
Beloved friend
It will be a peaceful life.
*This post is dedicated to a general hopeful longing inspired by this song, and not to anyone in particular. Thanks to Vgu Døzi for writing such thought-provoking lyrics and to D Mata for singing them so soulfully.
I first heard this song in 2010 at the church in Jincheng, Jinmen Island, Taiwan. It has stuck with me ever since, with the line "one step, again one step / this is the path of grace". It's still true today.
Note: the first two lines of each stanza are the Chinese characters, followed by Pinyin romanization, then a semi-literal English translation modified from Google Translate in italics, and then the official poetic English translation in bold. I find that the official translation is smoother, but the semi-literal translation is often more meaningful.
祢是我的主 / 引我走正義路
高山或低谷 / 都是祢在保護
nǐ shì wǒ de zhǔ / yǐn wǒ zǒu zhèngyì lù
gāoshān huò dīgǔ / dōu shì nǐ zài bǎohù
you are my Lord / (you) lead me on the path of justice
high mountain or deep valley / in all you are protecting
Lord, You are my guide / the shepherd of my life
Through the hills and valleys / You're always by my side
On July 2-4, 2023, I got the opportunity to join the 4th Rvwang American Conference in Omaha, Nebraska. Below are several videos where I was featured. Thank you to everyone for your generous hospitality, especially Kangtø Nawdin and Chan Omsar for driving me back and forth, Svra Nvnghø Sønrvm and Svra Yungtvng Shinyø for your leadership, Svra Lahtaw Naw Lawn (Dr. Steve Morse) for your encouragement, and Svra Gvsun Abey, Svrame Svre Mary, and Svrame Tønkang Zvmishar for your interest and patience in interviewing me and helping me practice your language. Keep in mind that these are just informal talks with a Rvwang audience in mind. Please forgive anything where I misspoke. :)
Today is my mom's birthday, July 9th. She would have been 64. Unfortunately, she passed away from breast cancer on November 22, 2020. Our relationship was complicated, but this morning I started remembering one of the best things she did for me and my siblings -- when we were growing up, she would write out long passages of Scripture on big sheets of paper and hang them up on the wall by the dining room table, and she would lead us in reciting them together before meals.
I started thinking through Romans 6, one of the passages we memorized, to see how much I could remember, and I could make it through almost to verse 12 before I got the sentences mixed up. So I got out my journal and copied out the whole chapter -- it took me from 6:49 to 7:16am, time well spent in recovering those precious memories -- both of her and of the message from God or "form of teaching" that she "entrusted" us to (Romans 6:17). When I think through those verses, I still hear them in her voice.
Happy birthday, Mom. I don't know why, but a lot of our early pictures together involve books in the background. Thanks for teaching me and loving me. See you again soon.
