Poems Read at Synod School

Fish

When they got there, they found breakfast waiting for them—fish cooking over a charcoal fire, and some bread. – John 21:9

Peter dives into the icy morning waters of Galilee,
his broad sunburned chest so full of regret,
he could not get to the shore fast enough.

The ashen sky giving way to blue,
when he finally reaches the shore,
the sea weighing on his shirt and beard.

Peter wipes the salt off his eyes and walks
to the small fire waiting for him
and when he sits he cannot remember 

the words he rehearsed if given the chance
to set things right. How does one begin
making amends with a friend you denied?

He hears the water rubbing the pebbles,
the robin returning to the cries of her hungry
chicks, and his lung catching breaths.

Then the friend gives Peter a fish, a skin
crisped into a deep sliver, deciphering 
the new day’s light. His lips wade the temperature, 

then tears off the flesh enfleshing 
the nourishment of the deep sea.

For a moment,

he forgets 

his guilt,

knows only 

the full-bodied pleasure

of a fish perfectly grilled,

over an open fire,

on a spring morning,

with an old friend.

This story of Jesus finding Peter to ask about Peter’s intention, and especially this detail of Jesus preparing a breakfast while waiting for Peter and his friends to return to shore with their catch, is the tenderest scene in the Bible.

I’ve Lost my Grandpa’s Marbles

I’ve lost my keys,

I’ve lost my glasses,

I’ve lost many a sock,

which eventually meant the whole pair.

I’ve lost my marbles,

the one my grandpa gave me,

the one he played with as a kid,

a Korean peasant orphan,

when Seoul was still dirt and a village,

which he kept in a silk pouch,

embroidered with a gilded dragon,

which he stole from a yangban,

which was his only possession,

which he gave me when

he immigrated to America,

after-which he lived just two more years,

and he tried to discipline my tongue to say,

sa-rang, so-mang, na-ra, no-rae, see,

to which I told him, I have no need for your Korean,

after-which he taught me to play marbles.

I’ve looked all over

for those glass translucent worlds,

those swirling balls of yin and yang,

those tear-shaped drops of memories.

Perhaps it was inexorable karma,

to lose what was never his to give

or mine to receive,

or maybe it’s just the

fundamental law of discovery,

you never find what you seek;

stop seeking, and you will find:

like, 

          my keys, 

my glasses,

and my wife 

                          like Newton’s

gravity, the linchpin for his bodies

in motion and their affections,

which fell on him in the palm-sized ball

of an apple one fine picnic-morning,

so the story goes, though

never my socks, and i can’t

trust that paradox enough

to stop looking for my grandpa’s marbles.

there are other things

I’ve lost of such significance.

For example, I lost meaning,

             and innocence, 

and my cat.

Actually, I couldn’t have lost a cat,

since I never had one,

but it feels like I did, because tonight,

I long for the solace of my hand

running over a cat’s weight on my lap.

Can you lose something you never had?

Yes, love

        marbles

        grandpa

Singing “Everyone’s Lonely” with my Korean Immigrant Mother

At this past Louisville Waterfront Wednesday concert (sponsored by WFPK, a Louisville Free Public Media radio station on 6/26/2019 ), I experienced several firsts.

A first: My wife performed live with a Rock band!

This happened, as these things go, because she happened upon the right group of people—joined Louisville Civic Orchestra as 2nd violinist a year ago—who happened to have the right connection: the conductor, Jason Hart Raff, who happened to meet the lead singer of Jukebox the Ghost, Ben Thornewill, at a children’s party where they shared their childhood dream of putting together an orchestra and a rock band. That serendipitous spark took two years of conversation and hard work—as these things go—to become an evening delighting the packed Louisvillian crowd.

A first: People screaming for a conductor’s baton.

Half way into the song “Somebody”  Jason threw his second baton to the crowd when he had relocated his first and favorite that had slipped from his fingers when he was conducting while jumping to the driving beat as any good rock loving audience would. He threw the baton with the charisma of a rock star and everyone scrambled for it as if Slash of Guns n Roses had thrown his guitar. Who knows? Maybe a girl caught that baton and the fever of conducting strings and winds—because Jason makes it look so freakin’ cool!—has been passed on and you will hear this story from her perspective 15 years later?

A first: my mother, who moved down from New York a week ago, was next to me at the front of the stage raising the roof, singing “Everybody’s Lonely.”

I would believe that my mother climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro before believing she would be rocking next to me. She is a Korean immigrant who 39 years ago left all the friendships she had invested in for 34 years in Korea, for a different future for her children. She understands English, but she laughs and cries watching Korean drama. She hums hymns when doing dishes and never heard of Coldplay or Maroon 5. And she has arthritis. But there she was dancing next to beer chuggers. She herself wasn’t drinking so I can’t credit the alcohol. Certainly, she wanted to wave to her daughter-in-law on stage. But it was also the music of Jukebox the Ghost, a sound that crossed boundaries of age and culture, though it’s a very particular American pop.

Their sound is a blend of Maroon 5 and Coldplay….(continue to Cultural Weekly)

Expecting (Poem)

ian-1st-birthday

For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. – Romans 8:22

My wife has been in labor for 20 hours
but the boy’s not ready for his revealing

What’s he waiting for?

I shuffle back and forth, from my wife’s bedside
to the waiting room, where both mothers
are wondering if they should stay put
or run some quick errands, they ask,
What time does the doctor say?
I say, Anytime.

A n y     t i m e         k e e p s             s t r e t c h i n g.

Earthquakes of the womb
are getting longer and frequent.

(please continue to read out Outlook, thank you)

On The Passing Away of My Grandmother on 6/9/2016, A Fierce Saint

We would like our saints to be pristine. But there are no faultless saints. Often, their virtue is their vice, just turned towards God, a weakness lit in God’s generous light and it suddenly becomes strength. In this way, all saints point to God and give us hope that we too can be counted a saint.

My grandmother, Won Song-Jeol, was a fierce woman. To those who saw her taking Q27 bus at Main Street of Flushing NY, she was a frail old women needing help getting up the stairs. To those who saw her at church, she was a caring elder with her tall slim body, child-like smile and kind eyes. But those soft features just barely concealed her fierceness.

When she was 40, she prayed for the salvation of her husband, Son Dong-IL, and continued to tithe even though her husband beat her for what he deemed thieving. Then one morning, he was struck dumb and could not speak for days.

When he felt the call to ministry, she moved her family of 8 – six children — to Seoul where she balanced 20lbs of rice over her head to sell on slum streets to pay her husband’s seminary tuition.

It was this fierceness that made her a prayer warrior and spiritual giant.

That same fierceness also made her a difficult person to live with at times.

When she lived with her first son in New York, she kept nagging her daughter-in-law in the correct way to cook, clean and do laundry though her daughter-in-law, my mother, was in her sixties and a grandmother with 4 grandchildren.

I vividly remember an incident. She was arguing with her youngest son who was then a missionary with a two year old girl of his own. Voices rose, both were shouting simultaneously when suddenly she hurled a sofa pillow and hit him squarely in the face. I was shocked at the velocity, almost knocked my uncle’s glasses off, and at the childishness. The argument was over a Gypsy boy my uncle had adopted. His daughter was getting sick because of the germs the boy had brought home and the father’s duty, she was convinced, was to return the boy. My uncle refused and he got the pillow.

We would like our saints to be pristine. But there are no faultless saints. Often, their virtue is their vice, just turned towards God, a weakness lit in God’s generous light and it suddenly becomes strength. In this way, all saints point to God and give us hope that we too can be counted a saint.

Her fierceness bent towards God became persistence in prayer. She was a prayer warrior,  navy seals of petition. You need an impossible prayer, send her in, she will get an answer. When I called my brother Daniel after I heard of my grandmother’s passing, he finished our call asking, “So who is going to pray for us?”

She prayed for hours every evening, and then hours every morning, because she was a fierce women. Her fierceness tired God out until God eventually gave in. Do you know of the parable of the widow who hassled the local judge until the judge finally relented and gave her the justice she begged for? That’s a story loosely based on my grandmother.

If Guinness tallied the most 100 day prayer campaigns finished– and why not since they have records of longest nail– she has the world record. She prayed such lengths because she was a fierce woman and prayed until she got an answer from God.

Death did not scare her. She was fiercer than death. She longed to go quick and fast, ready to be united with the Lord and reunited with her husband. “Don’t stick me with tubes!” she made her children promise.

But when she fell and hospitalized, it was difficult for her children not to try their medical best to keep her alive. When she went to hospice, three days later she left this life. I think she chose not to fight to live. This too was her fierceness, strong enough to loosen the fingers, to lose what cannot be held.

I know choosing to recall more of her faults than her good deeds in a snapshot such as this is misrepresenting. But everyone who knows her even a little already knows her as the prayer warrior. I know her as the great pillow shot and that make her my grandmother.  I miss her.