2022 Winter Issue 2
““No eschatology before I’ve had my coffee. That’s my rule.””
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East and West
Eunice S. Chung
It has been four weeks since I left the sun draped land of Texas to inhabit Vancouver’s crisp, cool air. Somewhat surprisingly, my move to the Pacific NorthWest has felt like a homecoming even while learning to speak the cultural language of Canada. I am, after all, returning to the west coast after thirteen years—where I was born and raised.
In the past year since starting my studies, questions I received from friends and strangers alike included, “What takes you to Regent?” “What do you hope to do after your studies?”— the usual suspects for a graduate student. If I had the energy for a charitable answer, I offered my earnest hopes and stories of miraculous stepping stones to get to Regent.
I came to Regent because I was plagued with questions about personhood, relationships, beauty, art, justice, politics, culture, life, and death. I came to Regent because I desperately needed a space in which I could integrate the personal, spiritual, and vocational experiences I’ve had. I came to Regent because a small whisper begged relentlessly for a space to nurture gifts that were shoved away in the recesses of my life. I came to Regent in hopes that this synthesis would breathe life into my next vocational expression. These yearnings, hopes, and fears could be distilled down to two questions:Who am I? Who am I becoming?
Growing up as a daughter of Korean immigrants on the California coast, I was a part of various communities, often segregated by race. I spent much of my early formative years as one of three Asian students in a majority Anglo-American school while attending a small Korean American immigrant church. Later on, my communities became more racially heterogeneous, but I carried a deep sense of displacement as I struggled to reconcile the cultural gap between my Korean and American identity. I didn’t know how to articulate my preadolescent questions then, but I now know that I was wondering: “Do I deny one facet of myself in an attempt to forge a coherent identity? Will the light ever pierce through the thickness of incoherence? Will I ever feel a sense of true belonging?”. And while that sense of displacement found some anchoring through the years, what can I do with my current sense of deep loss regarding my eastern heritage? Can I really understand who I am without recovering my eastern roots?
Having Regent as a rich theological space to ask “Who am I?” is a true gift. Coming from a season of life in which deep learning was scarce, I feel God’s generosity and am grateful for the privilege to be a student again. It has been an energizing and fortifying experience. And yet, I am wary to think that a purely western education will give me enough puzzle pieces to frame a more holistic picture of who I am. What was going on in the east when the Reformation was happening in Europe? What impulses ran through the eastern Christian imagination and how has that shaped the global communion of saints today? What can we learn from our eastern brothers and sisters? How has eastern history shaped who I am and might it shape who I want to become?
Admittedly, there is a sense of embarrassment from the bluntly severed relationship I have with the east, even though I fully embody the eastern appearance. Intellectual integrity requires the relentless mapping and re-mapping of one’s understanding against a richer, more nuanced backdrop of history, week by week, month by month. I am fully occupied doing this at Regent, going backward into western history, orienting the present, imagining the future, and expanding theological implications to every arena of life. So I wonder how I can carve out more space to unearth the eastern and western dialectic—to move my vulnerable internal paradox to a learning environment that will nurture its growth. There is a fragility here. There aren’t big relational, academic, or vocational incentives to nurture this dialectic between the east and the west. But there is a personal curiosity and ache to bring my Korean and American heritage into a theological context.
Perhaps my idealism is showing here. Perhaps this goes beyond the scope of what Regent, a western educational institution can offer. And that’s okay—there are already many wonderful, important questions to engage that will occupy my time. But I also wonder with such a vibrant and multicultural student body as Regent, does the yearning to bridge the east and west exist beyond myself?
Jacque Ellul illustrates that the Christian imagination is often composed of contradictory ideas; “God is beyond time and history, but with the incarnation he enters both. Dialectical tension exists between the Already and Not Yet of the eschaton. Salvation is by grace alone (Eph. 2:8-9) but also by works (Phil. 2:12-13).” I take great solace in the dialectic reality of the Christian faith. Two apparently irreconcilable things are affirmed and they meet to give birth to a new situation. It is a beautiful thing. For the time being, all I know to do is to hold space for the east and west to collide within me, asking one question at a time, with the hope of finding some clues in Vancouver, the city that sits between the east and west.
This article was written in response to the following prompt from Et Cetera: “In what ways has your own cultural background and perspective interacted with your study of theology at Regent College, and in what ways has this interaction been positive or negative?”
If you are interested in responding to this prompt in a future issue, please contact Et Cetera.
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The Proclamation
Heather Kaufmann
Manning Provincial Park, BC, July 2021
Luke 3:7-17
Dust billows at our every step
our finger pads and nostrils
lined with the grit of it
as we wend our way
through alpine undergrowth
towards the First Brothers’ peak.
Things are not as they should be:
the grass gone coarse
and sharp as wire
the horizon a haze of smoke
threatening to choke
our lungs in past neglect.
Close to the summit now
a voice ahead calls “fire”
and we run to the cliff’s edge,
see an ashen cloud now rising
over the next ridge, its tips
bone-white against unnatural blue.
Bright beacons flare erratic
at its base and a plane flies
like a thirsting mosquito in and out
of the swelling mass of cloud:
there is no baptism big enough
for this unquenchable flame.
And will there be
a bigger baptism
a greater flame
whose crucible earth
will birth a fruit
more ripe and red
than the brightest blaze
we’ve yet to know?
Here (now)
we pray for rain.
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Regent as an Elsewhere
Daniel Melvill Jones
I often wonder where our home will be after Regent. Some of my friends are very aware that they have been called here for a season, after which they will return to resume their ministries in Texas, Portugal, or Singapore. Others have lived in Vancouver or its surrounding area for years, commuting to Regent while still pastoring or being actively involved in their vocations. But many, Annie and myself included, are unsure of our next steps. We are not sure yet where home will eventually be. Yet we know that for now, it is here, and so we settle into our makeshift community.
There is a strange tension to this kind of dwelling, of not knowing how long we will remain here, of only having a vague sense of where we hope to put down roots. I know some who are worn-out by forming friendships in this context, knowing very well that those new friends will likely leave in a year or two. How are we to understand this in-between-place, this season of temporally making this city our home?
Over Christmas break, I finished reading Begin Again, Eddie S. Glaude Jr. 's exploration of the life of James Baldwin. Baldwin (1924-1987) was a Black writer and civil rights activist who lived on the margins of American culture. His relentlessly prophetic vision, queer sexuality, inability to make peace with the contradictions of America, and troubled faith made it hard for him to find a community in America. His life was often lonely and unsettled.
Yet out of a season of great emotional, physical, and artistic need, he found a home in Istanbul, a city where he could exist more comfortably on the margins. In describing how Baldwin arrived in that city, Glaude quotes from Engin Cezzar, Baldwin’s friend who welcomed the writer into his Istanbul home. Baldwin arrived without warning stating, ‘Baby, I’m broke, I’m sick, I need your help.” Engin continues:
Let’s face it—I saved Jimmy in a very, very bad period of his life. He was loosing his health, losing his objectives, his motivations… broke as hell. The man had to be taken care of… I was a friend who was offering him my friendship, my house, my family, my food, my bed. In a situation where he could rest, he could write, not worry about food, drink, or where he was going to sleep that night. He had a room in my house.
Engin did not intend to rejuvenate Baldwin’s career. He simply opened his modest home to a friend in need. He provided the physical and spiritual sustenance that permitted Baldwin to continue.
Glaude gives a name to what Baldwin experienced in Portugal. He calls it an elsewhere:
Elsewhere is that physical or metaphorical place that affords the space to breathe… to live apart, if just for a time, from the deadly assumptions that threaten to smother. Living elsewhere can offer you a moment of rest, to catch your breath, and ready yourself to enter the fray once again. …Seeking an elsewhere affords a different vantage point to assess your commitments and the depths of your loves and hatreds.
An elsewhere is a place disconnected from our homes, where we can find the clarity, resolve, and encouragement to eventually resume our vocations.
For many of us, our time at Regent is exactly that: a season disconnected enough from our ordinary callings so we can gain clarity and encouragement to eventually resume them. Given all of our reading and writing assignments, it may not exactly be “a moment of rest” (although I hope we make space for Sabbath rest in our routines). But it can give us that “different vantage point” we need to understand our “loves and hatreds”, the passions God has placed in us.
I’m amazed that Baldwin found his elsewhere through the generous hospitality of a friend. (Yet given my growing understanding of how human hospitality can be a reflection of the home God offers us, I shouldn’t be too surprised.) Baldwin’s physical, artistic, and moral renewal was the result of a friend offering the care he desperately needed.
It is fitting then, that one of hallmarks of our lives at Regent has been consistent and generous hospitality. As I described previously, The Burrow has been the primary place for that hospitality. We’ve also enjoyed chicken salad on the back patio of the Greenman’s. I’ve had more than one resolve-renewing visits in the kitchen of Craig and Julie Gay. I’ve participated in several (and anticipate having many more) deep conversations in the offices of my professors.
Each of these acts of hospitality have been offered by people who have chosen to make this city their home for now. They have invested in relationships, knowing full well that those relationships are most likely temporary. Yet the fruit of those relationships will bear fruit in cities and towns all over the world.
And so as Annie and I learn to dwell in this community, despite the uncertainty over where we will eventually be called, we are learning to offer this kind of hospitality to others. We are developing the habit of opening our Vancouver-sized apartment to new friends. We are committing ourselves to friendship, even as we wonder how long we will be able to enjoy those friendships. Just as we have been offered an elsewhere in this city, we yearn to offer that gift of an elsewhere to others.
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A Desperate Plea…
Russell Dueck-Price
It’s 2:30pm on a Tuesday. I’m sitting in the chapel for another Christian Thought and Culture lecture. I love this class; it’s thought provoking, challenging, even entertaining. The lecture is wrapping up, it’s time for a few questions about the lecture. I begin to feel it: a deep sense of dread. Someone is making their way down the stairs. Somewhere a person has submitted their question via Zoom chat. My heart is racing, I begin to sweat, my breath quickens. Then it happens: the words are spoken, “So, if postmodernity is the acceptance of all truth claims.” Crescendo. My eyes roll into the back of my skull, I tense up, my stomach turns to knots, I begin to transcend my corporeal form. I want to scream, but like a nightmare no words come out.
Maybe I am being a bit dramatic. But who knows, this is my truth, and that’s postmodernity, baby. In all seriousness, it’s not, and this is my desperate plea to you: stop saying “postmodernity is the acceptance of all truth claims.” Here’s something frustratingly annoying: there is no good definition of postmodernity. I am going to give you a philosophical definition, but I could give you something like a definition of postmodern art, architecture, film, writing, food, religion, all these things. But I won’t, because offering you concise definitions of things would be a very modernist thing to do. Jean-Francois Lyotard famously said, “I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.” So brave, yet he doomed us all.
If this is our starting point, it doesn’t mean that all metanarratives are good. It also doesn’t mean that all metanarratives are bad. It means that when you see someone on the street with their arms full of metanarratives, you stop them dead in their tracks and say “hey man, what are you doing with all those metanarratives, you absolute lunatic, how did you get those? Why do you have them? Can I steal one?” What this also means, and this is the whole reason I’m writing this thing, is that postmodernity is not the acceptance of all metanarratives, or as my beautiful, lovely, fantastic peers have said, “truths.” Someone “living their truth” is not a postmodernist. Someone saying “Jesus is Lord” or “Jesus is not Lord” is not postmodernist. Let’s say we all accept each other’s truth (what does that even mean?!), and we do a “““Postmodernity”””; this is relativism, which often gets confused for postmodernity. Why? Well, because the modern mind wants solutions and postmodernity is not in the solution business. That’s what skepticism and incredulity mean. Postmodernity is a toddler who just found out the investigative and self-centering power of the word “why.” People hear “postmodernity is incredulity toward metanarratives” and think they hear “postmodernity is against TRUTH” which translates to “postmodernity is cool with all truths.” Not true.
Now, as we sit here and look back at the last fifty years of philosophy, we get a bunch of guys like Derrida, Baudrillard, Deleuze, Guattari, and Foucault, and we say “hey, look at all these postmodernists, what a bunch of nerds.” The issue is that none of these guys are postmodernists. That’s insane, don’t call them that. It’s like calling yourself cool. You can’t call yourself cool, and it doesn’t count if your own mother calls you cool. Other people might say you’re cool, but if you are cool, you’d never acknowledge how cool you are; that’d be wholly uncool. We are getting off track, and being long winded is uncool. These are fast times, friend. What theses guys do is postmodern philosophy. Derrida is interested in language; Foucault, power; Deleuze and Guattari, rhizomes; and Baudrillard wrote The Matrix (that last one is a bit of a joke). They are wholly interested in the possibility.
Let’s talk about postmodern fashion. Traditionally, masculine business attire is a suit and tie. Sometimes you don’t need the suit jacket, and a nice shirt and tie will suffice. That’s western business attire metanarrative. Then an incomprehensible event happens in which people are forced to stay home and conduct meetings via video-chat in which only the upper body of “the businessman” is shown. Suddenly, one might be tempted to wear comfortable gym shorts, a dress shirt, and a tie. Now the overwhelming weight of the collapse of society forces one to realize “wow, this shirt and tie is really uncomfortable, what if I just wear my favorite plain t-shirt today because if the world is ending, I would like to be comfortable.” That’s nice, and your boss is equally as apathetic as you, and suddenly you are working in comfort. We still haven’t done a postmodernism. However, we ask the question, “what are the forces, factors, systems, and ideas that have gone into the belief that in order for someone to conduct themselves professionally they must be dressed professionally?” What does that word “professional” even mean? How did we come up with the concept of “professional?” Are there certain racial and classist implications behind the concept of “professional business attire” that we haven’t considered? Oh baby, throw another log on the fire because now we are on our way to doing a postmodernism.
This aspect of postmodernity is called “possibility.” Within the tight confines of modernity, there is no possibility; there is merely the progression towards the goals of “the isms.” Conservatism, Liberalism, Capitalism, Communism, Fascism: there is no possibility in these worlds, only exclusion. Modernity lacks the capacity to live in paradox—to critique, restore, and renew. Modernity cannot ask the question who, it can only ask the what and the how. Possibility, the hope that something new can be shaped from the old, gives postmodernity life.
If postmodernity is a sort of critical method, it behooves certain people to create a type of fear of postmodernity, especially when those people are the ones that will most likely be critiqued. As we navigate this world, it becomes apparent that many ideas, norms, and concepts that we hold are in need of a good ol’ critiquing because the lasting effects of such metanarratives have not been all that helpful for the majority of the people that live on this earth. There is an understandable fear, because critiquing means we must tear things down, and when those are things are a part of us it can become messy and painful. We must look to the other side for the opportunity to create something new and beautiful.
Why put forward this desperate plea? Why do I care so much? There is nothing to postmodernism. There isn’t a crazed postmodernist hiding around the corner, ready to pounce and force you to read Discipline and Punish. The truth is, you probably do a postmodernism at least twice a day (hopefully at least once, or else you need more fiber). However, when you say “postmodernity is the acceptance of all truths,” you define the undefinable and you close yourself off from allowing a critique of the world around you. You limit the possibility of changing things for the better.
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Weight of Glory (Breaking Through)
Joyce Wong
Birds are threading their way through the sky
Hear their calls in the distance
My soul is lonely and tired tonight
Full of things left unspoken
But my heart still is longing
For the dawn of Your morning
For the weight of Your glory
Breaking through, breaking through
Trees are bare and their branches look frail
Stretching out to the heavens
Grace has covered my darkest of days
Breaking into my sorrow
So my heart still is looking
For the dawn of Your morning
For the weight of Your glory
Breaking through, breaking through
Let every loss and delight in this life
Help my soul to behold You
With eyes of faith till that day I am known
And at home in Your presence
So my heart still is hoping
For I know I’m not home yet
Where my faith shall be sight
At Your side, at Your side
Birds are threading their way through the sky
Hear their calls in the distance
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Dad Joke of the Week*
I broke up with my partner because I found out they were a communist.
I should have known.
There were red flags everywhere.
*Et Cetera gaurantees that its Dad Jokes are authentic samples of paternal humour provided on a regular basis by the Editor’s own father.
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Winter 2022 Et Cetera Team:
Senior Editor: Dryden Demchuk
Co-Editor: Katrina Steckle
Co-Editor: John Davies
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Articles, fiction, artwork, and poetry are all welcome.
Submissions must be in Word format. Maximum length for prose is 1000 words. Longer stories or articles may be serialized over multiple issues. All submissions are subject to proofreading edits and may be returned for more substantial revision. Visual art must be submitted in digital format. No promises can be made about the quality of printing, but black and white line art will reproduce best. Please submit all prose, poetry, and artwork to etcetera@regent-college.edu. Classifieds for the Greensheet must be submitted to greensheet@regent-college.edu. No guarantees that submissions will be printed. Et Cetera is published on a fortnightly basis. Deadline for the upcoming issue is 11:59 PM on the Friday preceding publication on Tuesday. Submissions later than this may be considered for future issues. Current students, faculty, staff, and spouses are preferred, but exceptions may be made. Views expressed in the Et Cetera do not necessarily represent the views of Regent College, the RCSA or the Et Cetera staff. The Et Cetera can be viewed online at etcetera.regent-college.edu.
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