2023 Christmas Letter

Dear Friends and Family,

Another year has been survived, and I am glad the weather has cooled off and the holidays are half-done. Looking back over the past 11 months, I cannot think of anything particular that I can drape as a blanket description over 2023. People have come and gone (I'm still ticked off, Beth!), travel has been.... travelled, and I have watched much television and done much crafting.

I guess the biggest unavoidable story is that my mom has stage 4 pancreatic cancer. As I write this letter, she has had two rounds of chemo with the hope that it will buy her some more time, even though we know it is no actual cure; pancreatic cancer + stage 4 = you're done. I'm really proud of her calm attitude towards the whole thing (the cancer is also in her liver). The outpouring of support and concern for her has been amazing, to say the least; from phone calls to delivered meals to unexpected yard work from neighbors, fellow parishioners, and friends. She is feeling grateful and at this stage, reasonably comfortable. The diagnosis came in the first week of October, and the average lifespan is 2-4 months without chemo. So me and my sisters (who are all fortunately here in Nashville) are trying to pack in all of the conversations and tie up all of the loose ends.

As some readers may know, my father died from leukemia when I was three, so I think I have always considered that THAT was the one and only big medical illness that would affect our family; sort of like a law of averages. When I ran into a deer with my car when I was 30, I referred to it as having hit MY deer – I think you only ever hit one deer in a lifetime. So having both parents with extreme cancer is the kind of thing that makes me go "so why couldn't I win the lottery instead of this?"

In August, me and my mom and sisters went to Quebec for almost a week to celebrate her 80th birthday, and had a really great experience. We had no clue this was on the horizon, but looking back she was having some aches and symptoms that were almost certainly related to the cancer. But there were beautiful cities and scenery and meals, and we all really liked Quebec. The six months I spent daily on Duolingo trying to refresh my French in preparation was almost completely worthless, as I could never come up with the right sentences as quickly as needed, and it really wasn't necessary 99% of the time. I recommend both Quebec City and Montreal if you like walking up VERY STEEP hills.

This past January I returned to my yearly work convention (this time in New Orleans) for the first time since covid started in 2020; for two years we did virtual meetings, which meant around 95% of what I typically do to prepare was unnecessary. So last December was stressful, as I added back all of my previous tasks and some new ones as well. My nieces Emma and Ginny got to come work with us this year for the first time, and I must say, I love having the opportunity to spend this much quality time with them as young adults. They are joining us again in January for our meeting in San Antonio, which makes me very happy!

Hobby Updates I resumed singing in my church choir this year after being very erratic about it for the last few years. You really can get burned out on almost anything you like, wouldn't you say? So I needed some time away before I could return with any enthusiasm. For a while there I was afraid I had really lost a lot of my upper vocal range, and would only be good for weakly singing with the bass section. I had even gone so far as to look up doctors at the Voice Clinic here at Vanderbilt. Then one day a few weeks ago I realized I was able to sing almost back in my normal range, so that was a relief! Apparently covid has caused some loss of vocal range for many singers.

As many of you know I am a knitter/crocheter/embroiderer, and have been since my childhood. Back in September I discovered Beading as a craft, and am completely enamored with it. I'm pretty much just making stars with beads at the moment (LOTS of Christmas ornaments), but the way you zip and weave the beads together is very satisfying, and I highly recommend it for a therapeutic exercise, and very suitable for people with OCD since it has to all fit together perfectly to work. The name of the kind of bead-weaving I am doing is called Peyote, which cracks me up. It looks like a fabric woven from beads.

I am still obsessively watching Chinese television dramas. I've discovered that the good ones can be rather hard to find, and so I have re-watched a half-dozen or so of the best ones multiple times while I dig frantically for worthwhile series, and wait for new shows to be aired; apparently 2023 has been a bad year for good Cdrama. If you spend any time around me, you know that I am apt to bring the topic of Chinese culture and societal norms into almost any conversation, but I usually preface it with an apology before rambling off on the subject.

I have started reading translations of some of the novels these series are based upon, and found a strange new world... they are mostly what are called web novels, which means they were self-published online in Dickensian-style installments, and once they gain a large readership or any significant popularity, they might be optioned and made into a series. One of the tropes that is apparently SUPER popular is spontaneous time-travel from the present to the ancient past, wherein the traveler is stuffed into the body of someone (often quite younger) who has just died, and gets to carry with them all of their modern knowledge and confidence, and merge it with the original memories of the person whose life they have taken over. However, the censorship for television in China is pretty strict, and for some reason they have decided in recent years that historical dramas with fantasy elements like this as a plot point are “not good” for China, so the time traveler aspect of these stories is usually removed altogether, so the hero/heroine is just extremely smart/talented. They LOVE to send back doctors, engineers, scientists, or anyone with a skill set that would give them a significant advantage when introduced into a pre-modern society. It's a strange and fascinating world. If you want to sit and listen to me go on about the differences in cultural morality, I will be happy to oblige you! While I recognize that popular TV shows are not necessarily an accurate portrayal of a society's moral code, it is hard to avoid seeing their attachment to portraying certain habits.

There are a lot of series that are basically Chinese mythology combined with fairy tales, and not just for kids. But bear in mind that their mythology has reincarnation built in, which is a convenient way to fix problems or stretch out a story. Immortality, magic pills and medicines, and martial arts are juxtaposed with high school bullying techniques. My word, they love to bully people in these stories! Very much a "might makes right" world.

Recommendations from 2023:

A Dream of Splendor (Chinese drama, available on Amazon Prime). This one actually came out last year, but I didn't want to put two Chinese shows in last year's letter! This show is one of the best in terms of story, script, acting, themes, etc. It's more realistic and subtle, and I believe more historically accurate. It's the story of a woman named Zhao Pan'er and two of her friends, who struggle as single women to live a good life in a society that resists women trying to do business or be self-sufficient. It's very satisfying; they are all smart and talented, and there's a happy ending and a good love story. It's visually beautiful, and the costumes are a treat to look at. This is NOT a simple watch; there are subtitles, all the names seem the same, and there's a learning curve to understand how that world works. But if you've enjoyed watching Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings, then you'll be fine; it's just a different world than ours.

The Boys by Ron and Clint Howard. This autobiography by the Howard brothers (one famous, one less so) is unique in the history of Hollywood biographies, in that these two kids grew up in show business in a healthy, balanced home. Their parents were simply amazing; as good actors themselves that never really made it, they did bit parts when they could, and the rest of the time managed their sons' careers. They raised their children to be excellent human beings, and apart from some addiction issues for Clint, their lives have turned out well, with little of the tragedy and traumas of other child stars.

CROWD-PLEASER by Maria Bamford (comedy album). I've recommended her albums before; on this one she talks about mental health, 12 step programs, cults, and her family. I think she's hysterical, and can really hit the nail on the head, especially when she talks about being brought up in the church. Youtube link

I'd say that's plenty long enough, wouldn't you? I hope you are having a lovely holiday season, with just enough ordinariness that life doesn't feel like you have to eat chocolate for every meal. A party atmosphere every day is EXHAUSTING!

Love,

Susan

Tribulation Trauma

Facebook comment, October 6, 2015

Hi Don... this post showed up in my Facebook news feed, and I thought I'd read your blog. I wanted to tell you that while I find it entirely believable that we may be on the edge of a great societal upheaval, I am dubious about it being necessarily the End Times. In part, because I have heard you and my other pastors give their congregations these same warnings, with almost identical phrases, for over 40 years. As a 12-year-old at Belmont Church, I was so completely convinced that the Seven Last Years would come at any moment, I did not believe that I would live to be an adult. Let that sink in - I was certain I would not live to be twenty. I had no hope for the future, beyond going to heaven when I was executed for being a Christian, if I was strong enough to not deny Christ. Which, after all, is what those Chick Tracts at Koinonia Bookstore told me would happen. I knew enough to know that we couldn't be certain when the rapture would take place, and so it was best to prepare for the worst-case scenario.

We were prepared to be right with God and prepared to die in the End Times because scriptural prophecies were all pointing to it happening soon... in the 70s. In the 80s. In the 90s. And now in the 21st Century. Our family looked into buying a farm way out in the country to hide away, and my mom read up on edible plants. And I tried day after day to find peace instead of fear that I would be tortured for being a Christian. Even now if I wake at 3 am, I will stay awake thinking about what I will do when our world begins to collapse. Will I literally run into the hills, taking nothing with me?

It's not that I disbelieve scripture in regards to the End Times. But I do question spiritual leaders saying that they KNOW something is about to happen. Because to this day I bear the trauma of fear and anxiety of believing I would not live to grow up, because you told me I wouldn't. Not to my face... not to me personally. But to the congregation of adults I sat within, and my parents who believed you too, and then reinforced those teachings at home. Now decades have passed, and it hasn't happened, and I have to wonder what value there is for us as Christians in being perpetually on high alert. Because all it served to do to me was make me terrified, and more focused on how I could achieve a godly death, rather than loving God and my neighbors and living out the Gospel.

You are, and always have been, a beloved spiritual leader to me. I will never cease to respect you. You married my parents, you led my dad's memorial service. But I can't help but wonder if I might have ended up leading a less fearful life if I hadn't been led to believe that I would die soon in the Tribulation.

_____________________________________

I don't remember when I first became conscious of the fascination our church had for the End Times/Tribulation/Second Coming/Seven Last Years/Rapture. The visual memory of my personal fear was contained in a Chick Tract from the stack the church had available beside the Christian comic books in the Koinonia Bookstore. I could read Spire Comics' "The Hiding Place" and "Tom Landry and the Dallas Cowboys," then follow it up with a Chick tract on the end times, which for maximum terror had a memorable picture of a man being taken in handcuffs to a portable guillotine on the back of a police motorcycle. 

I remember my mom reading books on end times prophecy, and sharing the information with us. I remember sermons on The New Age Movement at church, which taught us that unicorns and rainbows, transcendental meditation, some guy called Lord Maitreya, and anything about Eastern religions were part of the beginning of the end. The Rapture was the hoped-for ticket out of the impending horror, but that wasn't a guarantee, since biblical prophecy wasn't entirely clear if it would come at the beginning, middle, or end of the seven years. Nor was it clear if all Christians would be included; it might just be 144,000 of the BEST Christians. I was fairly sure I wasn't one of them. I was terrified that I would break under torture and deny Christ, thereby guaranteeing that I would go to hell.

I remember one morning mom sharing a colorful dream she had with us; that all of us and other church friends were hanging by our fingers from the edge of a fiery pit, and one by one we were falling into the abyss. Apparently we were all scared in the dream as we fell one by one into the fire, but it was still a good thing because we would get special credit as martyrs.

I was around 10 years old.

Since we couldn't count on an early exit with the rapture from the coming hell on earth, my parents started thinking about making preparations to get us off the grid. One Saturday we and another family went out to look at a piece of property about an hour away, with the idea of making it into a farm and building houses. I'm not sure what kept us from following through with this; perhaps the fact that it was going to be an expensive and uncomfortable project. Instead, my mom got a book on edible plants, and I remember us going around the yard trying to identify some of them. I remember Queen Anne's Lace being mentioned as good when dipped in batter and deep-fried, although where we would be getting oil, flour and eggs to accomplish this when on the run from death squads was less clear.

When I turned 12, I remember doing the very basic math and coming to the conclusion that even if I managed to survive the entire seven years of tribulation, that I wouldn't live to be 20. The fact that my parents had kind of given up on making any sort of preparations (that I was aware of) didn't keep me from grieving that I wouldn't live to grow up. I wouldn't get to be married or have kids, I couldn't be certain that I would come out on the other side of it in heaven, and whenever I might manage to forget for a while the doom hanging over my head, there was sure to be the occasional sermon where our loving pastor Don would put down his Bible and depart from the sermon briefly to remind us that he was absolutely certain that the end times were coming in the next few years.

In my teen years, I would read the occasional religious novel about the Tribulation and try to mentally prepare myself for the worst, even though in retrospect there wasn't anything else going on in the world that indicated that my life was on a shortened trajectory. The End-Times sermons and prophecies slowly diminished, and my mom stopped reading books by Constance Cumbey. I graduated high school, and I half-heartedly applied to a couple of colleges and was accepted at the one that I could (fortunately) afford. I got my degree, and a job as a secretary on campus for a few years. It was about this time that I realized that I had in fact lived past 20, and I could see no likelihood that the end times were anywhere on the horizon. By this time I was going to Christ Presbyterian Church, where the pastor would carry on the proud religious tradition of occasionally stating with all spiritual and prophetic confidence that we were, in fact, in the End Times right now.

Fear of Tribulation never really left me, even if I stopped being actively afraid of the worst case scenario. When Y2K was on the horizon and everyone started wigging out that computers and power might go out everywhere, I fell into a severe depression that almost made me suicidal; this sort of disaster was always how the End Times started in fiction. I was lucky that I happened to share my fear with my tech guru brother-in-law, who said he'd done some investigating, and that the power grid would not be going down on December 31. In the years before and since, dreams of living rough and trying to hide would happen occasionally, and even now I am tempted to buy camping gear although I hate camping. But on a gut level I still wanted to be prepared, even though I finally came to believe that there would be no tribulation on earth.

About a decade ago, a friend of mine talked on a Facebook post about the dozens of surgeries he had endured since childhood (he had multiple birth defects) and how he wasn't supposed to live to grow up. And he mentioned the traumatic toll that knowledge can have on a life. I understood what he meant. Even now as a woman old enough to be a grandmother, I feel like I haven't really made many significant choices in my life, nor had any dreams I tried to accomplish. I can't remember having had any dreams for my life, beyond just wishing I lived with a different set of circumstances and a different personality. I never dated, never married, never had sex, never fell in love. I feel like I have lived a half-life; I have friends and a job I like and enough money to own a small place of my own and a car. I have hobbies. But my sisters both married and had children, as did my college friends, and so I look on to their lives, not with envy, but with shame that I have failed to live a complete life. Even though I don't feel that marriage and children would have necessarily suited me.

I can't blame my condition entirely on End-Times teaching. Both of my sisters got the same dosage of fear and prophecy as I did, yet it seems to have left them untouched. I suspect I am neurodivergent because I was always eccentric, (even though in my adulthood I learned how to hide it better) and that as a result I was more susceptible to coalescing all of this trauma into a burden that made a normal life difficult. But I do blame the church for not taking the hearts and minds of young children into account when teaching this sort of thing. I know I am not the only one to be traumatized by Tribulation teaching.

I don't like Mr. Darcy

I've been watching a LOT of Chinese historical television dramas (cdrama) in the past year, and after picking up on the stereotypical heroes for these shows, I have decided to say the unthinkable: I don't like Mr. Darcy. And I never have.

Darcy: Li Hong Yi,
"Wulin Heroes"

I know this is controversial; I adore Jane Austen's novels, and most of the film and TV shows made about them. But I do not understand the allure of the strong, silent, SULLEN, UNCOOPERATIVE, JUDGMENTAL hero that has developed in popular culture as a result. Chinese TV is riddled with this sort of hero, and I do not find it attractive; I find it infuriating. Yes, they silently love the heroine, and are "technically" good men underneath their impassive and cold facade. But dear me, they are MISERABLE to be around! It's their way or the highway. They don't like other people, except for their handful of loyal friends or servants, and the heroine. Nobody is good enough for them. But who wants to be with someone like that? Who wants to spend their time with that sort of person?

Not Darcy: Zhang Linghe,
"Maiden Holmes"

I can't help but think of them at family gatherings and parties. Standing beside them, knowing that they hate all these people, and have no interest in being friendly. It would not be fun to do anything with them that involved other people, and that would result in social isolation and diminishing friendships. That, my friends, is a red flag for an abusive partner.

So why am I writing about Darcy in the context of Chinese TV dramas? Because he is EVERYWHERE. It is rare for him to not be the hero of their historical dramedies, so when they actually have a cheerful, outgoing and friendly hero, you really feel the difference. The men that smile, that laugh, that happily spend time with new acquaintances and people in general just elevate the mood on these shows, and make me so much happier when I watch them. I do suspect that the Darcy-hero model is a convenient character for casting handsome yet mediocre actors. If all you have to do is stand around and look pretty, impassive, and annoyed the majority of the time, you don't have to be particularly good as an actor.

Darcy: Xing Zhao Lin,
"Choice Husband

 

I've known for a while that I didn't particularly care about Darcy when watching various versions of Pride and Prejudice. I should infinitely prefer someone like Bingley, even though he isn't particularly bright. Actually, my favorite Austen hero is Henry Tilney from Northanger Abbey. He is smart, funny, cheerful, and understands human frailty. When the heroine behaves foolishly, he scolds her in a reasonable way, then forgives her. He is more realistic as a balanced human being. Yes, he teases her a lot, and she doesn't always understand him, but he is kind and cheerful. Never underestimate the value of cheerfulness in life!

Not Darcy: Riley Wang,
"Choice Husband"

This realization was brought home to me while watching clips from a new cdrama series called "Choice Husband" (I have watched a few episodes; I don't actually recommend this one). The two male leads in the love triangle at the center of this story really bring out this contrast; the main hero is everything I have described as typical Darcy, the other is cheerful, affectionate, and a joy to be around. The main hero looks like a cold statue most of the time, but the almost perpetually joyful face of the second male lead made him far more enjoyable to watch. I rooted for him to win in every scene he was in.