Ready for Christmas

We’re in the final few days before our flurry of Christmas activities gets underway (well, not including the stories we’ve already been sharing the last few weeks of adult and children’s English classes). This evening, I went to check on the progress of our truck Christmas broadcast. The poster’s ready!

 

Unfortunately, prospects aren’t so bright for our first outdoor activity. Temperatures are expected to reach a new low for the winter Saturday night. Furthermore, construction has just begun in the area in front of the temple where the night market is usually held. Who knows where we’ll eventually set up our table with Santa Claus…

Coarse-Sounding Language

Last week I was chatting with some elderly women who are friends with my neighbors. They cannot read, and only speak Taiwanese, so communicating with them in my low-intermediate level  Taiwanese is difficult at best.

Without intending insult to them or Taiwanese culture, which I love, I used a term to communicate that when I first came to Taiwan, I found the Taiwanese language disagreeable to hear, not pleasing to the ear, coarse, etc. My point was that it sounded that way to me because I could not understand it.

Oops. That comment really stuck with them!

Today when I walked back to the house after visiting with a neighbor,  the two old ladies flagged me down when I said hello to them. Today on the television, they said, was a foreigner who spoke really good Taiwanese. He said that when he first started learning Taiwanese, he found it very beautiful to the ear!

台灣人本土意識很強。 Next time I’ll try to smooth things over by emphasizing how lovely I am finding the Taiwanese language now that I am finally beginning to understand more of it.

Christmas Caroling Truck

I wrote in the previous post about the truck advertisements for local election candidates, and the resulting idea I had listening to them every day.

Translating that idea into reality for Christmas took far more time and energy than I expected. Because we have 4 other Christmas activities we’re preparing for I had to put in a lot of overtime.

Here’s the poster we’ve created to post on each side of the truck:

And here’s a clip from the track I mixed in modern Taiwanese (very different from what is used in Presbyterian churches), repeating every 30 some seconds. I also mixed in a Christmas greeting.

I am hiring the truck and driver for two full business days. Amazingly, they still use old-style tape cassettes instead of mp3s. So I had to save my recording in that format, which reduced the clarity, but I think both the music and message will still be heard.

Now everything is in the hands of the advertiser so I’ll prayerfully await the opportunity to observe the truck driving through every little street and alley of every village in our township (30,000 people) on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day! May Jesus Christ be lifted up where He is not known!

Election Trucks

This Saturday elections are being held to determine mayors, county magistrates, and city/county councils here in Taiwan. Trucks with noisy loudspeakers blaring candidate mottos ride up and down the streets. A funny rhythmic one I heard last week is: 口湖鄉長要換，不然口湖會更爛！Our county is one of the hotly contested elections, so extra efforts are being made by the candidates to get their message across. Here’s an example I caught on video last night:

As a westerner who values privacy, I find all the noise obtrusive. Similarly, a Canadian coworker shared the following anecdote earlier today with us: “One day while I was chatting with a local friend, I was feeling very annoyed with a passing advertising broadcast truck.  To me the blaring female voice was like fingernails on a chalk board.  I was startled when my friend turned to me, obviously enjoying it, and commented how nice it sounded to her.  （那個女人的聲音很好聽！）

Although the loudspeakers are just a bunch of noise and invasion of privacy to us, they are an acceptable form of communication/advertisement here. Wouldn't it be exciting, if, after the election, I could commission those same trucks to take the following message in colloquial Taiwanese to every street in every village in our two townships:

Thiⁿ-sài kā in kóng, Bo̍h-tit kiaⁿ; in-ūi góa pò lín tōa hoaⁿ-hí ê hó siau-sit, hō͘ peh-sìⁿ lóng ū hūn;
in-ūi kin-á-ji̍t tī Tāi-pi̍t ê siâⁿ í-keng ūi-tio̍h lín siⁿ chi̍t ê Chín-kiù-ê, chiū-sī Chú Ki-tok.
Lín beh khòaⁿ-kìⁿ chi̍t ê eⁿ-á ēng pò͘ pau, khùn tī chô-ni̍h ê, chit-ê chiū-sī hō͘ lín chòe kì-hō.
Hut-jiân ū chōe-chōe thian-peng kap hit ê thiⁿ-sài saⁿ-kap tī-teh, o-ló Siōng-tè, kóng,
Tī ke̍k kôaiⁿ ê ūi êng-kng kui tī Siōng-tè, Tōe-chiūⁿ hô-pêng tī I só͘ hoaⁿ-hí ê lâng ê tiong-kan.

In English that would be:

The angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, 
and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."

Instead of the candidate's portrait, we could post a picture of the Nativity, the angels, or the star of Bethlehem burning brightly in the night. The drivers/trucks will be available soon…

Staircases

I’m thinking about staircases today.

More specifically, a sketch of staircases I saw in Lesslie Newbigin’s The Open Secret (following Walter Freytag’s The Gospel and the Religions) which tells me how I can dialogue with people of other faiths here in Taiwan:

 

In Taiwan, a stock answer someone will give you about religion is that “all religions are good”, “all religions are the same”, etc. They all help us to do good, be better people, etc. I heard this again just this past weekend from an elderly Taiwanese speaking man with whom I was enjoying tea.

So, for example, Christianity may be represented below by the staircase on the left while Buddhism points to the right:

This view, actually, is not too far from from what Newbigin says:

The staircases represent the many ways by which humans learn to rise toward the fulfillment of God’s purpose. They include all the ethical and religious achievements that so richly adorn the cultures of humankind. But in the middle of them is placed a symbol that represents something of a different kind – a historic deed in which God exposed himself in a total vulnerability to all our purposes and in that meeting exposed us as the beloved of God who are, even in our highest religion, the enemies of God. The picture expresses the central paradox of the human situation, that God comes to meet us at the bottom of our stairways, not at the top; that our real ascent towards God’s will for us takes us further away from the place where he actually meets us. I"I came to call not the righteous, but sinners.” Our meeting, therefore, with those of other faiths takes place at the bottom of the stairway, not at the top. “Christianity” as it develops in history takes on the form of one of those stairways. Christians also have to come down to the bottom of their stairway to meet the adherents of another faith. There has to be a kenosis, a “self-emptying.” Christians do not meet their partners in dialogue as those who possess the truth and the holiness of God but as those who bear witness to a truth and holiness that are God’s judgment on them and who are ready to hear the judgment spoken through the lips and life of their partner of another faith. (page 181)

Quoting further from Newbigin:

Obedient witness to Christ means that whenever we come with another person (Christian or not) into the presence of the cross, we are prepared to receive judgment and correction, to find that our Christianity hides within its appearance of obedience the reality of disobedience. Each meeting with a non-Christian partner in dialogue therefore puts my own Christianity at risk.

The classic biblical example of this is the meeting of Peter with the Gentile Cornelius at Caesarea. We often speak of this as the conversion of Cornelius, but it was equally the conversion of Peter. In that encounter the Holy Spirit shattered Peter’s own deeply cherished image of himself as an obedient member of the household of God…(p. 182)

We are, in the end, “not the exclusive possessors of salvation, nor as the fullness of what others have in part.” Nor are we the answer to the questions they ask. So why then do we dialogue and share about our faith? Ours in the end is a humble task:

The purpose of dialogue for the Christian is obedient witness to Jesus Christ, who is not the property of the church but the Lord of the church and of all people and who is glorified as the living Holy Spirit takes all that the Father has given to humankind – all people of every creed and culture—and declares it to the church as that which belongs to Christ as Lord. In this encounter the church is changed, the world is changed, and Christ is glorified. (p. 183).

Here’s my refinement to the simple diagram above, with each staircase representing a different religion (yes, atheism is a stair too):

And finally, my Christmas version… The Word became flesh and dwelled among us:

Thank you, Father God, Son, and Holy Spirit, for coming into the world as a defenseless baby in the lowest and meanest of circumstances. Thank you for meeting me at the very bottom of the stairs, in the gutter, so to speak. Thank for guiding me to the light, just as you directed men and women to the infant Jesus in antiquity. On the basis of your light, power and strength, continue to change me Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!