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Posted on 30 November, 200726 February, 2010 by Justin

It's been two years

Propinquity: I miss it.

Categoriespersonal, writingTagslove, propinquity, relationships

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justinbfung

Trying to be present in all of my #paternityleave

Trying to be present in all of my #paternityleave moments with this little member of the @asianamericangirlclub.

Thanks to @andreaackermann for the onesie.

#katherinejunia @carolyn85

. @toddgrabowsky shared this beautiful and poignan

. @toddgrabowsky shared this beautiful and poignant poem by @padraigotuama this morning as part of his talk in our My Most Important Question series at @christcitydc. Grateful for Pádraig’s words, and Todd’s too.

You might as well love.

#mmiq

S E V E N Y E A R S One of the readings at our w

S E V E N Y E A R S

One of the readings at our wedding was from @madeleinelengle’s “The Irrational Season”:

“Ultimately there comes a moment when a decision must be made. Ultimately two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing to take. It is indeed a fearful gamble. Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature. … If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation. It takes a lifetime to learn another person. When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected."

I do not always have the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, both in my marriage and beyond. I do not always embody a love that is participation and not possession. One manifestation of that comes in my need to be right, in my desire to have things the way I want them to be. (Carolyn could tell you all about this.) In and of itself, that need, that desire—they’re not wrong. It is our natural inclination to shape things the way we think they ought to be shaped; after all, we have our reasons for wanting things to be the way we want them to be.

But as any therapist, pastor, or wise friend will tell you, being right is not the most important thing in a relationship. If you are always right—and if you are always proving you are right—your partner may well be miserable. I say this from my experience as a partner who has caused harm because of that need to be right. One of the practices that has helped me grow in this regard—both in my marriage and in life—is what Dallas Willard calls “the discipline of not having the last word.”

Always learning. Grateful to be learning with you, C.

Topping up on Vitamin D with #danielignatius. cc

Topping up on Vitamin D with #danielignatius.

cc @carolyn85

Two months of #katherinejunia. Two months of learn

Two months of #katherinejunia. Two months of learning how to be a #girldad.

cc @carolyn85

Grateful. #mothersday #danielignatius #katherineju

Grateful. #mothersday #danielignatius #katherinejunia

Hanging at Starbucks. Waiting for car inspection.

Hanging at Starbucks. Waiting for car inspection. Working on a sermon (with my dad’s commentary). Already run into two friends I hadn’t seen in years! #monday

This #earthday, remembering a place of stillness f

This #earthday, remembering a place of stillness from a couple years ago, a reminder of God’s creativity and artistry. May we steward well (better) the home entrusted to us.

Got to preach about the Good News today (my first

Got to preach about the Good News today (my first #Easter sermon in ten years!) through the experience of Mary Magdalene. Because news is never just out there; news always affects people, always impacts people—those who experience it, those who hear it, those who see it.

2,000 years ago, a poor, brown-skinned Palestinian Jew, part of an oppressed minority in a remote corner of the Roman Empire, a man called Jesus was crucified on a cross. On that day, though most didn’t know it, he took the sin of the world on himself and into himself, and three days later, when God raised him from the dead, he defeated sin and death and hell, he exposed violence and scapegoating and shame for the death dealers that they are. That’s what the good news means. It means that God’s love wins; it means that God’s love is not only as strong as the grave, as the poet of Song of Songs wrote, but love is stronger than the grave. In his life, death, and resurrection, God in Jesus showed us who God really is, what God is really like; God in Jesus showed us that we are loved by him, that we are valuable to him, that rescue is at hand, that it doesn’t have to be this way, that new life and a new way of life are possible. In the words of Father Richard Rohr, “Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity. Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God.”

Easter Sunday is Resurrection Sunday; it’s the first dawn of God’s new week. The darkness is fleeing, the sun is coming out. Easter Sunday tells us that, ultimately, death and sin have been defeated and Jesus has the final word—love has the final say. Though we are not fully there, though we still know sorrow, Easter Sunday is the good news that changes everything. Jesus did die, but he is alive now. And through our tears and in our sadness, he meets us, and he speaks our names, and he asks us to go out as his representatives, wounded healers. He sends us to bring life where there is death, love where there is hatred, light where there is darkness. In a sense, we are all “apostles,” we are all “sent”—just as Mary was—to say, “I’ve got good news: Christ is risen. Love overcame death. Love still overcomes death.”

Grateful to have gotten my (one-time J&J) vaccinat

Grateful to have gotten my (one-time J&J) vaccination shot this Good Friday at the historic Shiloh Baptist Church. Let’s end this pandemic.

Our first passable selfie as the #fungfamilyoffour

Our first passable selfie as the #fungfamilyoffour. #danielignatius #katherinejunia

Introducing ... Katherine Junia Fung. Born on Mar

Introducing ... Katherine Junia Fung.

Born on March 24, 2021, at 12:50pm.

“Katherine” comes from the Greek katharos, meaning “clean” or “pure.” “Junia” is named by the Apostle Paul in the New Testament letter of Romans as one who was “prominent among the apostles,” an example of a strong woman leader in the early church, a witness to the values of God in a patriarchal culture that often prohibited women from leadership positions. [More back story: For most of the last two millennia, it has been accepted that Junia was a woman’s name and that she was considered an apostle, but for a few centuries — and in some circles still today — it was inconceivable that a woman could be in so senior a position, so some translators changed her name to Junias (which appears in only one other instance in historical literature compared to the more common Junia) or engaged in some ‘creative’ interpretive gymnastics.]

We also invited my parents to give our kids Chinese names, as another way of honoring that part of their heritage. (We’ll share Daniel’s shortly.) For Katherine, my parents chose 潔明 (Kit Ming in Cantonese), connoting God’s cleansing and brightness or clarity, in the same vein as her English names.

Our prayer for our daughter is that she would fearlessly pursue all that God has for her and become all that God has made her to be: generous and compassionate, which Jesus said was part of cleanness (Luke 11:41), shining like a star in the world because she holds on to the word of life (Philippians 2:15) — life for herself and for everyone else as well; and that she would be unafraid to lead and love as God enables her.

#katherinejunia

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