I was born in the small village of Ergau 二高, outside of the air force base in southern Taiwan. My parents moved there in 1949 with the KMT (Nationalist) government as my father was in the Air Force at that time. My parents just had their first baby and my Mom asked her mother to come along for a few months to help set up her young family. Granny left her husband behind in China, assuming, like everyone else, that the political struggle between the Nationalist and the Communist parties could not last long and everybody would return home soon. That, of course, was wrong.
Although we did have electricity, there was no indoor plumbing. By today's standards, we lived in poverty. Fortunately for us, the government provided basic food items to military families, such as rice, cooking oil, and salt and we never went hungry.
Our spiritual life was at least equally poor. Most people did not have any deep religious belief, although they had a concoction of Buddhist and Taoist practice. There were a couple of churches in the small town Mi-Tuo 彌陀 near our village. One was the Protestant church "Ji-Doo Jiao" 基督教 or Religion of the Christ and the "Tien-Ju Jiao" 天主教 Religion of the Heavenly-Father (Catholic). They each claimed that their god was the true god and their church was the real church. Some kids in our school didn't talk to each other because they belonged to different churches. Such "cold war" was quiet amusing to other kids. Both churches were very aggressive in recruiting members. The Protestant church gave free food (flour, powdered milk) from time to time, and the Catholic church put up a Christmas show every year and handed out candies and used Christmas cards to kids. I loved those glittering speckles on the image of snow covered pine trees and those exotic looking people dressed in robes.
When I was 6 or 7, a minister came to our village and set up a gathering at the kindergarten. Such Christian gatherings were called "Bu-Tao (spreading the Tao) Get-together" 佈道會. Although I can't recall what they were, the freebies at this gathering must have been better than average because the place was packed. People brought their stools and benches and sat down to listen to the minister. He gave a lecture and introduced some hymns. I remember part of a song about the lost sheep. The refrain goes like this, "Never-not it is you. Never-not it is you. Amongst 100 sheep one is lost. Never-not it is you". I was particularly fond of the double-negative phrase Never Not (莫非 mor-fey, which means can it be possible? ; could it be?) as there are not many double negative expressions in Chinese. Some cleaver kids changed mor-fey to mor-guey, 魔鬼 devil. They went on singing merrily, Devil it is you; Devil it is you.
At the end of that gathering, the minister invited people to come back the next evening at 7 to sign up for the conversion. Maybe it felt like running away from home to join a traveling circus. I was very excited and totally convinced this was what I wanted to do– to be converted into Christianity. Like planning to run away from home, I did not tell anyone.
I went back to the kindergarten the next day at 7 pm. There was no light, not a person, nothing. Could it be that he said 5 pm? Or did he say 7 in the morning? I was greatly disappointed. I missed my chance to be the found sheep. But I was also relieved that this attempt was over and nobody saw me and I could go home now.
Quietly I walked home. Nobody even noticed that I had disappeared for 10 minutes.
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When the Japanese invaded China in 1937, Grandpa was with the Telegraph Bureau of the KMT government in Nanjing. He was ordered to safely transport equipment to Chungching, Sichuan, the temporary capitol during the war. He left in a great hurry and told Granny to bring their only daughter to join him in Chungching. Their neighbor Mr. Fan, an old-fashioned scholar, asked my grandmother to let him and his family of seven join her as he did not know how to handle such uncertainty and danger for the long journey. In exchange for the favor, Mr. Fan offered to gave her a class of traditional Chinese literature everyday. Three months later, she safely brought her herd of 9 to Chungcing. Mom was 12 and Granny was only 30.
When my parents fled to Taiwan in 1949 and asked Granny to help them, she was 42. She left behind her husband, her past and her own separate identity. She became, predominantly, the grandmother of her daughter's four children.
Granny moved to a nursing home outside of Taipei at the age of 80. At that time I had been living in Chicago for a few years. She was an active resident at the nursing home and participated in Tai-chi, Chinese painting, music, and joined a small Christian group at the home for Bible study. Some people at the nursing home felt as if they were dumped by their families and many others felt neglected by the society, and were surprised that my Grandmother chose to live there "for the fresh air". She was well loved for being kind and respected for her courage and wisdom. The pastor and his wife visited her regularly.
At the age of 92, she had a stroke. She fell and stayed on the floor for the entire night, shivering, but could not get up or call for help. They found her the next morning but she could not move any more and had lost control of her tongue. In the next few days she rapidly lost her ability to speak. My sister was there during those days. Granny told her, "People say I am mad because my tongue is hanging out and I make noise. I am not mad!". When I went back to Taiwan to see her, she could keep her eyes open but did not have any facial expressions. She did not say anything to me.
After the stroke, Granny lived on for another four years via a feeding tube inserted into her nose. My sister told me that Granny's last words, when she could barely talk, were, "It is so hard to obey God's will".
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We discovered "A January Adventure in Emerging Christianity" seminar through Barbara Brown Taylor's web site. My partner John came upon Barbara from a TV interview on Religion & Ethics. The interview was about her book "Leaving Church".
John's multi-facet religious background includes being born into a Presbyterian family, attending Catholic Mass with boys in his Italian neighborhood, hanging out with his Jewish friends at school, and in his late teens reading heavily on Buddhism and Eastern philosophy and going to New York to visit Ram Dass.
On the other hand, I have attended church services no more than ten times in my life. I remember being deeply moved at my first communion at an Episcopal church here in Central Florida a couple of years ago. Kneeling down with my hands held out, I was humbled– not the way politicians say "I am humbled", but as if to say "I am sorry" and "Thank you" at the same time, and really mean it. Other than this particular experience, church seems to me a nice, upright, social gathering place and not much more. I was more moved at the Bach Festival's concert "The Passion According to St Matthew". I was more moved by reading Annie Dillard.
For the last few years, we went to at Epworth-by-the-Sea on St. Simons Island to attend the January Adventure seminar. It was at Epworth this year that I remembered my childhood "near-rebirth" experience for the first time. I wish I could remember more, such as what the minister said 50 years ago that made me want to sign up to Christianity. I can't imagine that it could have been anything profound. Only a second-tier minister would bother to come to our little village. What did this minister say, beyond the routines of heaven and hell, that could have moved my heart that day? Was it the song about that sheep? Could that be possible?
Just as I do, I'm sure my grandmother would have enjoyed such intelligent and enlivening lectures and discussions at Epworth! How much she would love to see the Sidney Lanier Bridge, the savannah, and the old live oaks with hanging moss swinging in the gentle breezes. She would be pleased with all of these. But perhaps she would rather sit quietly and talk with her own pastor? Although I always thought of him as dull, Granny accepted the Tao he taught. And she did her best to obey.
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