Lead, Kindly Light

Still awake at 3:20. I tried — in vain — to sleep, but to no avail. 

My mind is stuck in a jungle of thoughts, a tangle of vines — each strand of which is a stream of consciousness without an identifiable beginning or a discernible end. This mental mess so fully occupies and overwhelms the grey matter in the northernmost region of my cranium that I begin to suspect that I’m actually thinking about absolutely nothing, even though I know deep down that the opposite must be true.

I gaze for a long moment at the reverse tattoo that I have acquired on my feet in the last several months. The sun was so intense, the hours in said sun so long, and my negligence in applying sunblock so gross, that one might guess that I had spilled an entire bottle of henna on these feet. One pale and thick criss intersected by two thin (but equally pale) crosses provide irrefutable evidence that the similarly patterened sandals on the doormat outside are mine.

These feet have taken me to many places since they first reacquainted themselves with the sun in late May. As they have baked and browned over the summer, I feel like my soul and spirit have likewise ripened a bit during this season. The changes were imperceptibly subtle as they occurred, but now enough time and sufficient distance have intervened, and things are beginning to slip into focus. We may not be able to read books when they are right up against our noses, because our eyeballs get all cross-eyed and funny… but when we hold things out a bit further, the visuals kick in and we are able to read what was there all along. So it is with life, I think.

Back to the baking and browning and other food analogies towards which I tend to tend. Where was I? Ah yes, ripening. Looking back, I see that it was difficult for me to leave law school — in large part because so many significant things happened during those three years. Finally, I met a sizeable group of like-minded Christ-followers with whom I could not only fellowship, but also earnestly love, and be sincerely loved by. Finally, I was given opportunities to see the insides of courtrooms — and from the other side of the bar, the side where attorneys and officers of the court write, speak, move, and think. And finally, I visited Zhong Guo, and began not only to accept — but also to embrace the heritage that had sprung a thousand tears when I was younger.

The end of the year, graduation, and the bar exam flew by in a blur that seemed, at times (i.e. during bar review lectures), to move in agonizingly slow motion. While I was trapped in the middle of that whirlwind, I still found time to contemplate and reflect, but none of those precious spare moments could compare with the power of ten full weeks of vacation, half of which I have already consumed, and with great progress to prove it.

I’m grateful that I was able to book a ticket for a plane that would whisk me away to a distant land on the other side of the world, twelve time zones away, far from cell phones, laptops, the daily dose of the New York Times, the English language, and the American culture that I know and (mostly) love so well. Only by leaving everything that I knew and thought I understood, and being subsequently dunked / doused / immersed / submerged entirely into a wildly different universe could I step back and make a far more accurate assessment of what my world back at home looked like.

Let’s revisit the food analogies. My life in America is like good, solid Dove chocolate. It’s smooth, it’s good, it’s familiar, and common. But all around me, so it would often seem, people live lives of Godiva chocolate, Lindt chocolate, imported Swiss chocolate, and the like. Fancy chocolate — in shiny golden wrappers, some with delectable surprises of gooey caramel or airy amaretto tucked inside. And those whose lives aren’t like chocolate still live good lives of… sugary gum drops. Creme brulee. Mint chocolate chip ice cream. Even Jell-O. All are pretty darn sweet, but in a land of sweetness, even the sweetest among sweets (a.k.a. chocolate) start to seem flavorless.

Imagine that Miss Dove Chocolate gets transported to a land of rich vegetation. Life is harder in that land, but in many respects, just as good (or dare I say, better). There — instead of candy — cucumbers, carrots, cabbages, green leafy things, and all sorts of other makings of a delicious salad grow and thrive. (If you feel like this analogy is taking or has long taken a wrong direction, remember that it is 4am by now). That’s what happened to me. Chocolate doesn’t and cannot fully understand the meaning, significance, or role of its sweet existence until it relocates, however temporarily, to a wholly different environment, where the big-picture comparisons and contrasts that really matter become glaringly apparent.

That’s what happened to me. And for me.

And something about understanding what I’m really about helps me move on to the next chapter with more boldness, more enthusiasm, more optimism, and anticipation. I believe there is a great adventure ahead, and more than any other time in recent memory, I’m excited to go and live it out.