Jesus before Pilate | Gary Alley

 "If you want to know what a man is like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals" ~Sirius Black to Harry

 J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

 Seasons Greetings! Merry Christmas! Hi and Shalom! 

We miss you and are thinking of you. Not unlike so many others, we feel a bit beat up by the year and how we have been forced to adapt to various situations and bide externalities that we never would have imagined a year ago in China. Though we may feel a touch weary from it all, we trust that “Nothing is impossible with the LORD” and that “He will make all things new”. We are grateful for the messages of hope born out of that first Christmas - the Good News. May you find grace and peace this Christmas. 

Love and blessings, 

The Hagues

"Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name, by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power not one is missing." ~Isaiah 40:26

In our busy, busy world, it's easy to get caught up in the noise, get swept from one cloud to the next, and miss the beauty of being... and other figures and phenomena all about and around us. Their being there begs us to pay attention to the lessons they might teach us. Our visual orientation, their proximity to us, their size, and their grandeur compared to our most glorious achievements... They speak; if only we have the courage to listen. 

My very brief thoughts on these things stem from a lovely lecture from Joanna Woo. She led a magnificent tour of the night sky, took time to explain massively challenging and complex phenomena, and she made them soooo accessible! SFU will host more of these in the future and are worth your time. 

https://www.sfu.ca/science/alumni-community/trottierobservatory/observatory/images-and-observing-reports-from-the-trottier-observatory/bubble-nebula-ngc7635.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl3nycmyc9M (From a previous week... this week's vid isn't out yet).

Homeland

"How can I love my home without coming to realize that other men, no less rightly, love theirs? Once you have realized that the Frenchman like cafe complet just as we like bacon and eggs- why, good luck to them and let them have it. The last thing we want is to make everywhere just like our own home. It would not be home unless it were different." ~Lewis, Four Loves, p. 27

Quick Quarantine Catch-up

China, Thailand, Vietnam, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota, and back to Indiana. We are displaced and out of our routine, but well... because I know you were dying to know:)  We were in China when COVID-19 had an earlier name, and when Wuhan had quarantined off its 11 million people. We remember our school under lockdown in China and what that meant for our life-situation, there.  On-campus, people who had traveled, some through Wuhan, were returning to campus and were told to quarantine and wear masks. The most impressive of reasons for our leaving Sias on Feb 10 - well into our third week of lockdowns - stemmed from our western colleagues' absolute contempt for these new regulations... and how that unnecessarily jeopardized the well-being of our friends and loved ones, there. So we booked tickets to Thailand, because they were cheap and because we thought this was the best situation for our family, given this context.    

Then things went from bad to worse. Squabbles over what to name the virus became a thing. Italy, Iran, and Korea were early to have significant outbreaks and then the US, too, experienced a major uptick in coronavirus cases. Our Sias admin assured us, even still, that the whole thing was blown out of proportion, China had safeguarded the spread, and we were going to need to return to campus late Feb, then early March, then late March, and then... we ran out of time on our visas. So we purchased $20 tickets for Vietnam, still being assured that returning to China was going to be required. The coronavirus moved in status from epidemic to pandemic while we were in Vietnam and her infections quadrupled. This caused a relative panic that translated into lockdowns, there. Pompeo issued a level four emergency and we got tickets back to the States, finally calling off returning as an option for the semester.  We quarantined in Indiana and a month later made our way to Minnesota, we are now back in Indy trying to keep up with it all.    

Amazingly, we are back in the house Holly and I moved to after we got married:) and have memories here that are both precious and painful, much like those important to this journey... out of one fire and into another, as it were. Indiana's numbers are increasing daily and the trend looks all too familiar. With all this political noise about our government making us all do something, they don't have the right to make us do, and the attempt to make this, too, about State's rights... the hubris, in these arguments, is overwhelming. We've chosen to wear our masks on the regular since January. It's tiring and I don't like it all the time, but "for the least of these", right? I'm grateful, I guess, that the choice is one I have the right to make... Perhaps if we were ordered not to, that might change things... In my view, whatever your trial or joy, we ought to act in a way that celebrates the good - for those around us... and for ourselves.    

In any case, currently, we are fixing-up my parent's place, reno-ing our RV:), finishing up an engine swap, finding supplemental-income-buy-and-sell projects, finishing my Sias responsibilities for the semester, and trying to make the most of what we have... God be praised! I don't mean to blame him for our acquisitions... just to celebrate the life that is ours to live and thank him for the courage to live it.  Love to all yours!

China: A Few Thoughts for Starters

I like China, but... spitting inside classrooms, kids coughing on kids, forced photos, gawking, line-cutting, people oblivious to people, and the constant melodrama of expectations stated and with disappointed returns. These are things I do not like. I like my students and my friends, here. They see us, at least many of them do.  I like our apartment and our campus. I like certain types of food, here, and their vast array of different types of mixes, sauces, which span the spectrum of bland to very spicy, from acquired tastes to simple and delicate. I like riding our scooter in every season and type of weather without all the paperwork and permissions required in the West, even in small towns. I like learning different conceptions of how to navigate life, different cultural norms that beget constancy expressed in ideas that contravene accepted western disciplines. Granted, I am very grateful for those, too. In short, China has a different palette, with a spread of colors all their own, and insistence on representations that at first glance seems hokey and half-assed, looking altogether different from our constructs.  Were we, my family and I, not insistent on grounding our experience in certain familial and religious valuations, we might have a different take away, but we are here... and different because we are here... and different because of the grounding we have as westerners who are experiencing this contrast through that lens. I like this journey and trust we are better for trusting God, here and there.