BLISS

The afterglow was extraordinary—palpable and potent enough to make me bloom as I went to sleep last night. The unsubsiding joy from the night morphed into delicate sprinkles of sadness and doubt the next morning. “Am I crazy to leave all these to go to Asia?” entered my mind.

My immediate family celebrated our youngest Brad’s 26th birthday. All four of our adult children and their spouses plus Brad’s girlfriend, not to mention Elizabeth’s chihuahua, Remy, Hannah’s huskie, Luna, and Jeremiah’s huskie, Balto joined us for the festivities. A few days earlier, we all gave enthusiastic thumbs up to Brad as he requested sushi and sashimi dinner at home. In recent years, we found this unpretentious hole-in-the-wall Japanese seafood market in the nearby city, owned and operated by a 90-year-old petite Japanese man. In his usual Haines white undershirt, his arthritic hands contoured to hold different sushi knives for decades. He barely spoke English but mastered the art of sushi making. Looking like he could barely walk; one would only need to look at his eyes when he hunched over and worked. Not unlike any other “master” of craft, he was never in a hurry which made a deep impression on me. Inside, I found myself cheering for him as he refused to buckle down under pressure.

The first time we were there, years ago, we waited for more than an hour even though there were only 5 or 6 parties ahead of us in line. Though the price was not cheap, the sashimi and even premade sushi of all sorts were some of the best sushi we have ever had. I ate enough sushi in my life to know what is crappy, passable, or outstanding. Ever since then, the market has earned our top trust and become our go-to sushi provider. This time was no different. Since then, the 90-year-old man retired, and his family took over the business. The congenial vibe is still the same with tiny enough improvement to know that some things changed (better organized with a bit better lighting and more choice of freshly made rolls), but the line moves much faster with a quintupled workforce with no sacrifice to the quality of the fish. I was happy to get out faster but also strangely missed the sacred waiting that was required before.

Our average size of dining table had no space after we laid out different sashimi (toro, bluefin, and ahi tunas, hamachi [yellowtail), salmon [belly portion) as well as unagi, spicy tuna, and spicy shrimp sushi, and California rolls), fresh cut vegetables, and some Japanese beers. A six-person dining table with nine of us huddled around on cheap IKEA chairs including a piano bench for two, we ate like princes and princesses.

After collective satisfactory “Aah-s,” we played games as dessert and tangerines flowed. We laughed and high-fived as our dogs were content, calm, and secure. I am sure they knew viscerally they were part of the family as we experienced family on earth from heaven. At some point, my wife and I pulled back not only because we could not keep up with them but mainly to watch them in action. I captured many photographs in my head that night as I am sure my wife did too. On multiple occasions, it dawned on me what I would be missing when we go to Asia and my heart ached.

As I have witnessed them grow older, I can’t help but look back at myself at their age. Not to beat me down but rather in the spirit of praise, they are far more self-aware, emotionally healthy, and spiritually generous to pursue their freedom journey. They have a far better sense of what is real and what is illusion which to me is an irreplaceable requirement for the freedom journey. Whenever we talk about their childhood experiences, it is always interesting and revealing as to what they remember. It is how they experienced life and what they remember that have shaped them over the years. We may share the same experiences but what we take away and remember almost always would vary, and thus create a buffet of storytelling.

In retrospect, it has been the creation and existence of free space that allowed them to process their own experiences without us meddling or correcting that played a pivotal role in shaping them. As a person, I had wished all my life for such an elusive vast empty space of freedom. As an imperfect and proud parent, I am grateful to God for what they have learned to trust their inner guidance and allow grace as an ultimate safety net.

The saying that “God does not have grandchildren” has real traction now as we all are God’s children learning to relate to God and each other. For a time, we as parents have been given the role of “stewards” to guide and encourage them to relate with the Parent who is nothing but Love. The inversely proportional relationship of vertical stewardship as parents and children and horizontal sojourneying as fellow pilgrims (or as God’s children) is fully at work in our lives.

Dallas Willard rightly observes “The obviously well-kept secret of the ‘ordinary’ is that it is made to be a receptacle of the divine, a place where the life of God flows.” It is the ordinariness of my family we celebrate and will miss because that is where God is. This is a grace and love-filled incarnation at work in our own lives. God is so holy that God must invade all aspects of our earthly lives. The Kingdom of God reigns on earth as it is in heaven and our earthly life is the receptacle of the heavenly where God’s sphere of existence lies. Our ordinary but unique container which is called life, stranded in time in light of eternity, is given to us to access and encounter the divine.

Relatedly, in the second stanza of the poem, Song, by Wendell Berry, the last line jumps out at me which he calls bliss.

But I thought even there, among the straying
steps, of the dance that circles life around,
its shadows moving on the ground, in rhyme
of flesh with flesh, time with time, our bliss,
the earthly song that heavenly is. (italicized is mine)

As they cheer us on to Asia, I cheer them on to live and embody such a life of bliss, flow, and freedom. As God’s flow flows in and through us and as God’s bliss becomes our song, we reflect God’s original design of why and how God created us. That, to me, explains the direct pathway to union with God.