I. April will be the four-month anniversary of officially living in Brooklyn on my own (I did spend 0-3 living here, but New Jersey has been my permanent address for much longer). When I signed my lease, I didn’t realize that I was moving back to part of my history. II.  “How long have you lived in NYC?” Answering that icebreaker question recently threw me off guard. Even though I’ve only had a…

A Tale of 2 PK’s Part 2: PKs Gone Radical – Political Education, Spiritual Formation, and Critical Consciousness

As a kid, Joanna used to always get annoyed when she was introduced as “Billy’s daughter,” instead of her actual name. That’s just one of the many side effects that come with being a Pastor’s Kid, also known as PK (Footnote 1). Growing up as a PK has its perks and its discontents. Even though we are from the same family and church for the most part, we have experienced our own unique experiences…

A Tale of 2 PK’s Part 1: Perks and Discontents

Spiritual formation and political education are not often parallel paths of human development. For many reasons, we have had an unlikely journey that has led us to think about the relationship between faith and social justice. While we grew up in a middle class and conservative evangelical environment, we have come to understand and critique the implications of that upbringing, and particularly,…

A Tale of 2 PK’s Part 3: The Church We Wish We Grew Up In: Faith and Social Justice

If you hang around the two of us long enough, you will not only hear conversations about our mothers or the latest family gossip, but often our conversations turn to the role of the church, particularly the Chinese-American one, in social change, how the Church has been complicit in oppression, what theologies inform our work in social justice, and what opportunities exist in the Church for…

There is something poetic in the stringing of words that fit ‘perfectly’ together to form an arc, to form art and beauty, to create dissonance and musical serenades.

In the past few seasons I have written less publicly, but in private the ink seems to be never ceasing. Maybe my feelings have been to raw, too exposed of late to publish across such a open forum. But there is a power to seeing words…

“Can I have some change?”

He was shrouded in the dimly light street outside the dumpling store I was hurrying towards to satisfy my famished stomach. I spotted him, as I spot all the unmentionables on the street, with a heavy heart, but life called and all I could do was walk onward.

The shop was quiet when I ordered my 5 dumplings for two dollars meal. Quite the steal in New York, getting delicious ‘homemade’ hot food…

west coasters: i have been traveling in this desert for 49 years. generations have died. children have been born. when will i make it to the promised land

I. 

I’ve been ruminating over a mantra my friend Bethany told me over one of our ‘catch-up-on-life’ phone calls.

“Brave people do scary things.”

Not that the phone conversation was the first time I heard of the idea to be brave, but that day it struck me in a new way. She phrased bravery in a way where bravery isn’t “being,” but simply to live out our lives as brave people. Instead of bravery…

//instagram.com/p/etFJidi8v2/embed/

Living in the outer suburbs (or the 6th borough) of a huge metropolitan city puts me in an interesting position. Growing up travelling literally between NJ & NYC has greatly shaped my identity, habits, and how I see life. For many from Jersey, there is this awkward tension/desire to affiliate yourself with NYC instead of proudly being from NJ. For the most…

Why is it easy for us to feel lonely in the midst of a crowd? Or even at a bustling party full of family and friends — the pang of heartache and sadness coming up in the most people-filled circumstances?

In the past eight months since moving home, I have felt deep pangs of loneliness. But despite these moments where I want to clutch my heart as if someone had stabbed me, I have also experienced…

Sunday mornings.

I have been thinking a lot about vulnerability recently. It’s a dear friend I do my best to be consistent with. But I find myself failing vulnerability in the late.

On TimBeTold‘s newest album, there is a song called “Cover Up Your Scars”. Tim asks us,

You never had a lover, but if you ever did, would they ever break your heart? Are you strong enough to recover, or would you just…