Chocolate for Independence Day

A short film for the 15Malaysia project by a bold Malaysian filmmaker, the late Yasmin Ahmad. This is my favorite in the series so far.

“People like us don’t get opportunities here. If you go there you’ll have opportunities. This land is only for their kind [i.e. Malays].” The unceasing mantra of my parents’ generation. Here, I think, it closes a door that could’ve led to new possibilities.

For more, visit the 15Malaysia website. Again, happy Independence Day, Malaysia.

Independence Day

The Malay Peninsula, with the climate of a perpetual Turkish bath.

Sir Frank Swettenham, British Malaya, 1906

The Malayan countryside is rather like a rich feast, with a little too much of everything good.

George Woodcock, Asia, Gods and Cities, 1966

Eve of Independence Day.

It’s been over a year since my return to Malaysia, and still the same:

“Why did you come back? Why didn’t you just stay in the US?”

“Life is so much better there.”

“There are more opportunities there.”

Let’s be clear: I’m no patriot. I came back, not for any noble reason but because my mom died and the only way to attend her funeral involved chucking my chances at a green card out the window. Besides, I’d been in a deadlock with the United States immigration for over 3 years anyway and it was time to throw in the towel.

My homeland, like all other countries, has its own set of problems—unique in some ways, but fairly standard for a Third World nation trying to get to First. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve alternated between hope and despair about our future since my return last May, so I guess at this point it depends on what day one catches me.

What I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, though, is how much my students here–past and present–seem to think of the United States as a Promised Land of sorts. In this they are merely indicative of a widespread sentiment among Malaysians, especially non-Malay Malaysians, that a better life is to be found elsewhere, which is to say, just about anywhere except here.

I lived for 11 years in what is undoubtedly one of the freest, most powerful, wealthiest, and most opportunity-filled nation in the world. Like it or not, the US has got to be doing something right to have so many clamoring to get through its borders. Yet even after all those years, it’s very clear to me that America the Great is not without its ailments. Whether its problems are better or worse than those here in Malaysia I cannot say, but what I do know is that the America imagined by my students, friends and relatives is not quite the America I’ve known. They imagine that its citizens are uniformly supermodel-like (thanks to Hollywood), that everyone can get a job and get rich if they only worked hard enough, that anyone can climb the ceiling-less socio-economic pyramid. The cars are bigger, the air is cleaner and the laws are more just. This is the America they imagine.

Perhaps it is simply the case that in my view the grapes have turned sour, but when I look back to my time in the United States, I don’t feel as though I’ve left the third heaven. What I do feel is that I’ve left one beautiful country for another.

I love Malaysia. I don’t think or say that enough.

It’s not perfect–not by a long shot. There’s ethnic discrimination both de facto and de jure. Corruption permeates every level of its bureaucratic political and economic structures. We breed all manner of lies and stereotypes about the very immigrants who are the backbone of our economy, shortchange them on the paycheck and make them work like dogs round the clock. Just to name a few.

But there is also beauty. People still have time for each other here. Our coffee shops open till the wee hours of the morning to serve tea and roti canai to chatty locals. Our social mix is a storehouse of innumerable traditions. We’re obsessed with food the way I imagine some other ancient peoples might’ve been. We have rainforests and rivers and beaches and mountains. Many people here still remember what a simple life was or can be. Without too much trouble, one can still find a village complete with fruit orchards, fire ants and goats. Just to name a few.

My American friends often ask me, “When are you coming back?” I’m not sure I can or want to. There is much that I love and like here. Though I miss my friends in the US very much and every day, this has become my home again. A strange twist in God’s plan—but a happy one, I think, and I feel no need to alter its course. So, even on days when I border on thinking that this country is going to hell in a handbasket, I’m content—maybe even thankful—to be here.

I love you, Malaysia. I don’t think or say that enough.

And happy Independence Day.

Sort of like contemporary praise and worship except completely different

Eritrean Orthodox Morning Prayer

Hat tip: Steve Kurian via Orthodukso on Facebook

Who needs Scripture?

I wrote this piece for another publication a little over a year ago. Since I’ve been struggling for some time now with carving out time to read the Bible regularly, I read it as an exercise in de-planking my own eye. Anything you all have to offer is, as always, much welcome.

*****

[Jesus] said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read?” (Luke 10.26)

Read assiduously and learn as much as you can. Let sleep find you holding your Bible, and when your head nods let it be resting on the sacred page. (St Jerome, Letter to Eustochius)

While working on a writing project yesterday I came across this text in Ezekiel:

Yet you say, “Why should not the son suffer for the iniquity of the father?”  When the son has done what is lawful and right, and has been careful to observe all my statutes, he shall surely live.  The soul that sins shall die.  The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, not the father suffer for the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.  (Ezekiel 18.19-21)

The word of the Lord given through the prophet appears to be addressing what we might call a theological opinion that had arisen among the exiles in Babylon, namely, that God punishes sons for the sins of their fathers.

I won’t go into further details about the meaning of this text because I’m not concerned here with an exegetical reflection of it.  What struck me, and what I want to write about, was that I’d never seen this text brought up in Orthodox-Catholic conversations about original sin and inherited guilt.  Having hung around some ecumenical circles in the blogosphere for a while, I’ve witnessed many a discussion (often polemical) about Orthodox and Catholic anthropologies, but strangely, I don’t remember one in which this passage was carted out and batted around. Instead, the conversations were often saturated with quotations both long and short from the Fathers and modern theologians, and centered on the implication or acquittal of St. Augustine.

I think this points to problem that is neither uniquely Catholic nor Orthodox, but rather common to those of us who are students (or self-proclaimed experts) of the Patristic tradition.  We often go on and on about how the Fathers did not possess as “systematic theology” as we now understand it, and that their endeavor of theologia stood solidly on the grounds of prayer, asceticism and the assiduous reading of God’s Word rather than on philosophical systems or—*gasp*—the scholastic method.  But for all this, are we not merely honoring them with our lips while keeping our heart far away from them?

I’ve always been taught to see the Patristic tradition as a commentary on Scripture, full of diverse voices and theological subtleties, conditioned by the historical particularities of the life of the Church—liturgy, heresy, cultural questions and so forth.  To use the terminology of Cardinal Ratzinger, the Patristic tradition is the primitive and archetypal response of the Church to the Word of God—a response which is not just one among many, but rather one to which we must ascribe authority for its unparalleled and definitive influence on the shape of our faith.  This is true not only of the content of their theology, but also of their method (if I may make a distinction between the two)—namely, the rigorous searching and exposition of the Scriptures within the lived experience of the Church.  But in all this there is still a primacy that belongs to Scripture, for the Fathers saw themselves as servants, not masters, of that revelation.

To come back, then, to my gripe: if the Patristic tradition is like a finger which pointing to the moon, have we, their disciples, often focused exclusively on the finger and forgotten about the moon?

There is among students in many Biblical Studies departments today the vice of drowning oneself in the ocean of linguistic, historical and cultural studies—the so-called “historical-critical” methods, if you will—which leads to an actual neglect of the primary text of the Bible itself.  Even as an amateur student, my experience is that many of the alleged exegetical dead-knots can be untied or at least loosened by a closer and wider reading of the text (which, I should also say, the Fathers had often already done several centuries ago).

Have we, the disciples of the Fathers, fallen into a similar vice by focusing on the commentary of the Patristic tradition to the neglect of a direct encounter with God’s Word? For all our talk, have we turned their love for the Scriptures into something to be discussed and admired from afar, rather an example to be imitated?  I can almost hear St. Ephrem say to me, “Busted!”

I’m reminded, though, of the practice of our Jewish brothers and sisters, who until today show great devotion to both Scripture and tradition in their practice Torah study.  The practice instituted by the Talmud is to read the appointed Torah portion twice, and after that to read the interpretive translation (one could say “commentary”) from Targum Onkelos once.  By doing this, the student is directly engaging the biblical text while simultaneously entering into a conversation with the ancestors of faith who’ve gone before him.

Isn’t there a way Christians can practice something similar? Must we be necessarily torn between Scripture and the Fathers?  I’d like to think not.

Apologies and Moo Point #5

Sorry for leaving this space unattended for the past two weeks. I wasn’t engaged in any marvelous ascetical feats for the recent fast. I’ve just been preoccupied with my new job as lecturer at a college about 20 miles from where I live. When the term starts next Monday (the 24th) I’ll be  teaching Introduction to World Religions and Introduction to Philosophy. We’ll see how that goes.

While listening to one of the Old Testament readings appointed to be read before Qurbana today I got distracted and arrived at this Moo Point instead:

So many neat, airtight theological systems can be exploded by a careful reading the Old Testament.

That’s all I’ve got for now. Your thoughts?