Lazy Saturday

1. Beautiful, absolutely gorgeous weather.

2. Listening to "Clare de Lune" and music by Satyajit Ray on "The Darjeeling Limited" soundtrack.

3. Taking a nap longer than 30 minutes (try two and a half hours!)

4. Eating a piece of triple chocolate cake from Porto's for breakfast.

5. Reading a review for David B.'s new book in the LA Times. I can't wait to go to the library...

Friday Five!

Not much to report today... but I want to make sure I post my grace in the small things for today.

1. Renting a movie from Blockbuster on a whim.
2. Sewing a button on one of my favorite shirts. The button was hanging by a thread for the four months my wrist was in a cast.
3. Making lasagna for dinner with friends later tonight.
4. Looking at cakes at Porto's, my favorite local bakery. And buying a cake for dessert tonight.
5. Watching hummingbirds at the window feeder.

Ease in my uneasyness

Part of my unease about seminary is that the material is so new to me. I didn't grow up in "the church." I didn't have a Sunday school education. But sometimes, not growing up in the church is a benefit. I'm seeing the things I learn in class as fresh and new; I have no Sunday school theology that needs dismantling. It doesn't make learning the material any easier, but it's an adventure all the same.

And now, grace in the small things on this beautiful Thursday...
1. Going to the local library branch and picking out one leisure reading book. And finishing that book later in the afternoon.
2. Getting presents for two very special boys engraved.
3. Eating a fish fillet sandwich with extra tartar sauce.
4. Getting an email/ blog comment from the friend that inspired me to find daily grace and track it.
5. Date night with the husband.

365 Days of Grace

I'm still learning a lot about being Lutheran. In my initial interview with a committee member, I was asked if I would want to get rid of my Hindu upbringing. I was overly defensive in my response. I could never forget or get rid of my Hindu upbringing. It's helped shape who I am, and it's an emotional tie I have to my family. I may have come off as a bit rabid, but I'm still adjusting to talking about something that's always been an abstract subject for me.

Part of the Lutheran education deals with grace. I hear a lot of words and phrases thrown around, like "justification by faith," and "law versus gospel," and "gospel sets us free." Phrases are nice and everything, but I'm trying to figure out what this means.

In my interviews, I've admitted that I'm naive when it comes to doctrine. I'm still learning. I'm still discerning. I'm still trying to run away from this "calling" that I cannot seem to shake.

I am embracing grace this year, through baby steps. A friend posted something on his blog, "Grace in Small Things." I will list (hopefully daily) five things that have graced my life. These things may have such a gravity words may not do justice, while others can be found in simple pleasures. Here's my first attempt...
1. Splitting a chocolate bar with my husband
2. Finishing my book review without my computer crashing
3. Laughing and talking with my brother
4. Walking to the grocery store on a beautiful day
5. Cleaning my laptop and textbooks off the dining table so my husband and I can actually dine on the table.

Back again.

I've been so horrible about updating this thing. I had these wonderful intentions to update people throughout the spring quarter on what I was learning and feeling. It's now the first week of October. The spring quarter was definitely an experience. The summer held needed rest, and to discern if seminary was really the right thing for me. I desperately wanted to be Jonah, hop on the ships of Tarsus and sail away from my responsibility. The same week I was having thoughts running away from my responsibilities, the pastor at my church gave a sermon. On Jonah. And the whale. Well if that's not a bullhorn, I don't know what is.

So I find myself back at Fuller, but conflicted. Part of this walk has been lonely. I feel like there's a bit more than a God-shaped hole in my heart. I'm taking the chance to open myself up, trying to get to know more people, making myself a bit more vulnerable. I just didn't realize how scary it would be. The comfort I do find is the support of my family and friends. And God, even if I'm a terrible Biblical Greek student.

Because I love books...

1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
4. The Liars' Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
12. Blindness, José Saramago (1998)
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
16. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986)
17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1988)
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
20. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding (1998)
21. On Writing, Stephen King (2000)
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
27. Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett (2001)
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien (1990)
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch (1988)
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
36. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998)
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000)
41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (1988)
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (1988)
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
47. World's Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom (1990)
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan (1992)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000)
55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006)
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré (1993)
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)
58. Drop City, TC Boyle (2003)
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat (1995)
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
61. Money, Martin Amis (1985)
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick (1994)
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
65. The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
69. Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1983)
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell (1998)
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi (1991)
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (1994)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts (1987)
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith (2006)
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx (1999)
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl (2001)
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow (1987)
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (1991)
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (2001)
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman (1998)
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)
98. The Predators' Ball, Connie Bruck (1988)
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)

Testimony to Bricolage

The wonderful pastor mentioned in this essay wanted me to record the story of my faith journey, but since I'm awful without a script, I had to type out what I need to record...

I’ve lived an entire life of bricolage. I like to think that my faith journey started on July 9, 1979, which just happens to be my birthday. I was born to two Hindu parents, but I was born in a Lutheran medical center, St. Mark’s to be exact…

I was raised in a Hindu household, but it was pretty challenging to be Hindu in Midwestern America. Not that there was anything wrong with that. It’s just hard to find a temple community where there isn’t that large of a Hindu population. My parents gave my brother and me gifts for Christmas, simply because other kids at school received gifts on December 25th. I ate jellybeans in the spring, dyed eggs, and wore bonnets. This was just part of the bricolage, taking parts of the culture around me and making it my own.

The real shift came when I was in college. I attended local churches out of curiosity. Some of those experiences were comical; some were not so great. I had a close friend who was in really involved in LSM, and she invited me to a couple of dinners at her church. I was kind of apprehensive, given my past experiences, but I trusted my friend. And honestly, as a college student, I would go anywhere that had free food. Home-cooked free food… But along with that free food came something I was so unfamiliar with. Fellowship. Koinonia. Breaking bread with others and sharing our lives, trials and tribulations with one another.

The shift continued into graduate school. I met a nice boy, and we were going to get married. Bricolage yet again played a part in my life. The nice boy and I were going to get married in a traditional Hindu wedding ceremony, and a traditional Lutheran ceremony. At that point, the nice boy and I had to throw tradition out the window because we couldn’t find old, classic traditions in a Hindu-Lutheran marriage.

Because we were getting married in the church, I wanted to know more about it. The nice boy and I found a wonderful pastor to marry us. The pastor was even more wonderful because in the two years before the wedding, he met with the nice boy and me almost once a week (keep in mind, almost once a week for TWO YEARS) to answer any questions I had about being Lutheran. And believe me, over two years time, you can ask lots of questions. Lots of basic questions, lots of silly questions, but also lots of questions that really look at what can make someone Lutheran? What makes someone Christian?

I attended church regularly. I found a home, somewhere that was not just a sanctuary in name, but in emotion. At one particular service, the congregation sang “I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry.” The best way to describe the feeling when I heard the hymn was feeling God in my heart. I finally made room for Him in my life, in my head, and in my heart. Listening to the lyrics moved me to tears, especially

“When you heard the wonder of the Word
I was there to cheer you on;
You were raised to praise the living Lord,
to whom you now belong.”

“I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry” was sung at my baptism, where I became a child of God, sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.

Bu my story of bricolage doesn’t end there. I’m now attending Fuller Theological Seminary. Part of my reasoning of attending Fuller is bricolage. Because it is a non-denominational seminary, I hope to hear other stories about faith journeys, but from different Christian backgrounds, and different walks of life. I also want to share my story.