Over the years I have managed to collect pictures with most of the characters from my book. Here is the photo of Sue Lee and her son Tristan and an excerpt from “It’s Really All About God.”
Remembering good old times with Sue and Tristan at a recent birthday party in Korea Town, year 2010.
- – – book excerpt – – –
On a cold Saturday morning in December 2001, Soo Lee waited for her already-late friend on a busy street corner in Manhattan. She discovered she was standing in front of the doors of an old limestone church off Park Avenue where I was the pastor. Its large red doors were symbols of the large hands of God embracing everyone who ventured inside. That’s what God was all about, I thought—inviting people in.
For Soo and most of her friends, church was a treacherous place. But the cold was biting, and the doors were unlocked. It was Christmas, and I had titled my sermon “The Magic of Christianity.” Soo was a lively and tender young Korean woman who followed the spiritual path of White Magic and the Wicca religion, and the words “magic” and “Christianity” together drew her from the foyer into the sanctuary. She sat and listened to a story about a stable in Bethlehem, a magical moment in human history when, as Christians believe, the physical world as it appears to us humans and the spiritual world of God’s Kingdom—the world as it really is—interpenetrated and became one.
Soo, as I later learned, is a person of uncommon stamina, a single mom, an urbanite who had learned to handle the grind of New York City with the smile of a marathon runner who has found a groove in the midst of pain. My wife and I loved spending time with her. We liked the way she thoughtfully constructed her sentences. We liked the way she paid attention to what we didn’t say as much as to what we said. And we liked the way she treated everyone and everything around her. With compassion. Over the next several months, Soo and her little son, Tristan, became family friends. Soon we were caring for her boy and she was caring for our little daughters.
Some months after we met Soo, my church hosted the annual gathering of a national network I belonged to that consisted of mostly professional clergy and church leaders. The main service was going to include a closing segment we titled “Testimonies of Failure,” with six leaders who would tell us how they had failed in their religious work. It was not to be “how God turned things around for me” or “how my failure has actually been a blessing.” There would be no explanations, no justifications—just standing up, sharing the misery, and sitting down. I had a month to find someone who could address these hurting people with some healing words.
I thought of people who had cared for and encouraged me, and Soo immediately came to mind. But the thought seemed preposterous. Soo? How could I ask a witch to pray over a group of pastors? She could neither defend nor advocate for our religion—she was an outsider. But the experience of being a part of Soo’s life had opened a crack in the wall that separates “us” (those on the inside) from “them” (those on the outside). Then a thought broke through, a possibility that I found both burdensome and exhilarating. What if God is on the outside too? Does God have to be absent out there in order to be present in here?
The thought of inviting Soo into the inner sanctum of our Christian experience ripened like wine, intoxicating my orthodox faith. Everything I had been taught told me that God, in God’s infinite wisdom and love, has chosen to dwell in our religion. It was a kind of certainty one can stake one’s life on. But then everything I had experienced with Soo—and, as I began recalling, others like her over the years—told me that God dwells in the lives of people. All people. Drunk with these thoughts, I hesitated. Which should win? Religion? Or life? Should I use life to prop up my religion? Or should I use my religion to honor life?
“Okay, I’ll do it,” Soo said with a smile when I asked her. Then she added, “But only if I can pray to God as Mother.”
“Soo,” I said, and paused, taking time to swallow a momentary feeling of regret for approaching her at all, “some of these religious leaders are worn out and beaten down, and on that day, our goal is not to expand their theology but to comfort them.”
“I understand, Pastor Samir. That’s all right. For now. Let’s leave the discussion about the Christian obsession with phallic power for some other time,” she said with a gracious smile. “Is it okay if I pray to God as Holy Spirit?”
“Wonderful,” I said, relieved.
On the day of the gathering, after the six “losers” had shared their stories, the congregation was quiet, stunned by tales of the stark reality behind much of religious work and community organizing. Most of us religious people who go to our places of worship to receive religious goods and services assume that our faith is triumphantly marching forward on all fronts. Nobody wants to be a part of a losing battle. So talking about failures devoid of happy endings created an unbearably empty space in our hearts.
The sacred Scriptures say that in emptiness, God creates.
Then it was Soo’s turn to pray. After introducing her to the crowd, I stepped aside, regretting my choice again, my jaws tightening, my palms sweating. How did I get myself into a situation of bringing a witch to bless a conservative Christian crowd? Did I want to lose my job?
Or was I heeding the call of Jesus—losing my life in order to find it?
With the steady voice of a person who has no doubts that our ordinary lives are saturated with the Presence, she said, “Dear Holy Spirit, I am not a Christian. But I and my son are cared for in this church. These people who follow you work very hard to make a difference in the world and love people like us. Now they are tired, disoriented, discouraged. Please, make them see how important their work really is. What would our world be without people like them? Help them continue caring so that people like me might find a better way.”
There are religious experiences that have the power to restart our hearts, when fresh faith in God, humanity, and world is uploaded into our soul systems. This was one of those moments. A hush fell over the crowd, and Soo’s words lingered in the air like a sweet heathen scent. While some sat there paralyzed by the offense of her presence at the church pulpit, many of us basked in her compassion for us. We were hoping that if we just stayed quiet, there would be more words from her, interceding to our God on our behalf.
Life won.
After the crowd dispersed, I sat on a pew in the empty sanctuary to jot down these words in my notebook: “We are scared of finding our God in the other. Why do we fear something so wonderful?”
