Sermon: The New Exodus

 How was this year different from all other years?

We have wandered in the valley of Coronavirus for a year now, but for the toll it has taken on all of us, doesn't it feel like we've been wandering for forty? As of 3/16/2021, 535,000 Americans have died from complications from COVID-19. Millions more have been sickened. And just as in the story of the exodus, so many of our elderly have been lost their lives during our sojourn towards a vaccine.

But now the end of the nightmare is almost upon us, and the promised land is in sight. The question is who will be allowed to enter? Who will be allowed to feast on the milk and honey, and who will be locked out (in prison, in immigration detention centers) as we enter the promised land, will we leave essential workers behind in the desert? Will we be content to celebrate finding ourselves free again, while others are still in servitude? While others are still wandering?

What if this year was different from all other years because we welcome EVERYONE into the land of milk and honey?

"You may say that I'm a dreamer. But I'm not the only one. I hope someday you will join us. And the world will be as one"

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What if there is nothing?

What if there is nothing? No truth. No answers
What if all we were taught to believe
Turns out to just be illusions in the land of OZ
Can we stop seeking? Can we stop grasping?
Can we just say no no no no no no no
Can we just be?

What if we don't need to be stressed all the time?
What if work isn't the higher calling it proclaims itself to be?
What is it to be human? What is it to be me?
Can't you see? Can we not just be?

No meaning. No purpose. No higher calling true
What if all there is in life is what I do for you?
A gaping void of nothingness save what you mean to me
So many people searching, so many people lost
Trying to find meaning...

Wake up. There is no meaning. There is only me. Only us. Only vegan sausages.
Vegan sausages. Compost. And lots of useless searching in between.

Dad you never get it right (Dorky Poetry)

I know a lot I really do
Do not dismiss me hear me through
I know a lot I'll tell you this
All about the Kelowna virus

Oh CORONA oh I see!
I knew it's not from Tennessee
So you say it's from Wutan
Isn't that in Pakistan?

It causes Corbin seventeen
Something deadly and obscene
Lucky lucky yes for me
That there is none in NYC

Oh there is? That's something new
I bet it's not in Kathmandu
We should go and then you'll see
As we smoke good peyote

Do not fear we will be fine
I've got some hydroxychloroquine
Don't worry there's no need to rue
The power of belief will make it true 

I really have great kids

I'm sorry, what can I say? They are so wonderful!

Yesterday Alma (my 3 year old) had the building blocks out. She had them standing up in a line, and at the end she put them in a circle. It got to a point where with each new piece she added, she knocked another down. Then she'd pick it up and try to put it back and knock down another piece. She was so absorbed, and so pleased by the sculpture(?) that she'd created.

Why is it that as we get older, we're not allowed to play with blocks anymore? Why is it that as we get older, we're not supposed to join in with 3 year olds' games anymore?

... Wouldn't life be better if we spent most of our time trying to help each other build sand castles on the beach?

Oh wait, we can't do this because of the Corona virus. Never mind; let's go back to being stressed out and pushing each other down in our "adult" things

"Jan needs to let your father go"

"Jan needs to let your father go". So said Peggy (Pei-shien) Wong when she came to visit my parents. Nothing could be truer. She needed to give my father permission (and the courage) to face his condition; to face up to the fact that he is reaching the end.

My parents have decided to take a cruise to the Caribbean and back. In the days before, my father's blood pressure rocketed sky high. He has become his anxiety, and neither he nor my mother can adapt to their new reality.

Meanwhile, my family and I are taking our first vacation in about a year! I have never needed a vacation like I need this vacation. Reconnecting with Caroline and our kids, and having them forefront in my heart and mind is so restorative!

Over the course of my father's illness, I have become increasingly dissatisfied with American cultural values: Consumption, focus on the self, small families, proxy competition using your children, money as the one and only marker of success. It's so hollow. Contrary to American culture, I am 100% convinced that a life spent putting career before family is a life wasted.

It is a shame that my parents are so totally unequipped for what they are facing. And that they are so totally resistant to other ways of evaluating what a good life means. They have become consummate consumers, and cannot comprehend death as a part of life. My father has only fear and pain ahead of him, but he cannot admit this to himself. He still wants to live, and he still wants to live like he's always lived.

Me myself: It took a while, but I have come to accept and love my parents for who they are. To understand that for all of their studies, they are limited in the ideas that they will consider. My job now is to support them - the only way they will let me help them - and to focus my emotional energy on my kids, my wife, home life, and getting the family (and hopefully my resistant mother) through this in one piece.

Aversion to assessing one's self

My parents are totally adverse to assessing themselves, and have passed this down to my sister. Beyond that, I/we (Caroline and I) think that this is a very American value - don't think about whether what you are doing is making you happy/content; instead, use your place in the social strata, your salary, your politics, and your technology (TV, radio, mobile phones, social media) for self-affirmation.

I don't think this was ever how I wanted to think, but for a long while, society - as well as my parents - pushed this on me. I am very grateful to Caroline for getting me to think about how I use technology, and more generally about the things I invest in emotionally. It seems to me for those living by external expectations of who they should be, it is a recipe for nearly constant dissatisfaction for nearly everyone.

Christmas 2019: I Hate Big Gatherings

We celebrated the 4th night of Hanukkah (it was also Christmas, which we don't celebrate) with my parents last night. As per usual, my mother insisted that we must hold a big party at her house.

My mother did

• Nearly all the cooking (although she let Caroline make the latkes, and I think she sent Sophi or Jon out to get a pair of rotisserie chickens)
• Hung all the decorations
• Wrapped all the presents
• Took care of dad
• Organized the invitations
• ...Basically everything

As I've chronicled, she's been exhausting herself taking care of dad well before we had this party, so now she like, really really really exhausted. And you know what? Exhausted people are so much fun to be around...

My father

• Pulled out his feeding tube again a couple nights before. Which actually wasn't the worst thing, as in he'd already managed to effectively destroy the feeding tube cap (non-replaceable) before that.
• Was feeling sick and in a terrible mood. And I was tasked with sitting with him and trying to cheer him up; it didn't work
• Was very short tempered with everyone, especially mom
• Wouldn't take his feedings or his medicine

My sister

• Held court talking to her sister-in-law Adie about
• How wonderful and beautiful California is
• How awesome her Peloton cycle is, and how it has changed her life
• How stupid her children's friends parents are
• ... And when she was done she spend the remainder of her time on her awesome phone

My brother-in-law

• Was on his phone and spoke to no one, as per usual

When the party was done...

mom

• Lost the yogurt container containing the syringes she needed for tending to dad
• Poured dad's pain relief medicine down the sink
• Blames dad for everything

And dad

• Yelled at me and Caroline to help mom find the syringes / yogurt tin
• Yelled at mom that he was in pain and needed his pain medicine
• Got an broken up ibuprofen pill that mom has smashed up (in lieu of the medicine she'd poured down the sink) stuck in his feeding tube, and yelled (more like grunted angrily) at mom
• Wrote me an email at 3:30 AM apologizing, but also noting how frustrating mom's care and her inability to accept help is to him
• Blames mom for everything

My parents

• Can't communicate. And so they are never going to solve these problems

Why oh why do we need to do big gatherings?