A Blog for the Reader to Finish!

Sometimes it’s instructive to step away from reality into semi-reality and allow our imaginations to fill in the pieces. This is often how stories aid in digging out deeper truths - think of Jesus’ use of parables in doing this. So here, I will present a little story and invite the fertile imaginations of my readers to finish it. I’d be interested in hearing how each of you writes the ending!

In this story, everything about the earth is normal except for one small detail. The water balance of the atmosphere is such that it is always cloudy all over the earth. No one has ever seen the stars. The sun is just a blurry red ball that arcs across the day sky and the full moon barely makes a glow on the surrounding vapors. It’s like living in Beijing on a day when the PM2.5 index is hitting 300.

Things proceed quite normally in this slightly abnormal world until one day, Seiko, an unusually adventurous man, climbs the icy mountain on the outskirt of the province. He climbs and climbs, up through the encircling fog, barely able to see his way forward. But his determination to get to the top of this mountain remains unabated as he pushes onward, ignoring the perils surrounding him. Suddenly, beyond all expectations, he breaks through the cloud cover and emerges into a scene where the dark of night is aglow with the sparkling glitter of the stars! Never has anyone viewed this panorama of the heavens. The peak of the mountain lies just beyond him and he clamors to its icy top and pitches his tent. For a month he remains there on that mountain peak, cataloging the movement of the sun and the phases of the moon as they play across the newly discovered vastness of the heavens.

As his meager provisions run out, he is forced to forsake his isolated observation post and slide his way down the slopes of the mountain and rejoin his fellow earthlings. But he is a changed man. The experience has presented him with a brand new reality of the world in which he lives. It is a reality he must somehow share with his fellowmen. It is a reality you and I are comfortable with. But in this brave man’s world, this new knowledge will cause a traumatic stir.

And here is where I must leave the reader; at the edge of the intriguing precipice of watching new knowledge crash in upon this slightly abnormal world. Here is where I am asking you to pick up the story and tell what happened upon his return. There are a lot of areas to explore as we watch this entry of new knowledge impacting earth's inhabitant's cherished worldviews. How will it influence the social and political structures? Will technology be able to leverage this knowledge to benefit humankind? And most interestingly, how will it affect the religious environment of this world? What might the inhabitants have worshiped during the ages when no one had ever seen the heavens? We are so used to seeing how every religion on earth references the heavens, the moon, the stars, and the sun, as the region where their deities dwell. Where did the “deities” of this earth dwell prior to the discovery of the heavens? The ocean depths? The bottom of caves?

And whatever happened to Seiko? Was he hailed as the world’s new purveyor of truth or was he killed as a martyr for skewering the established paradigms? Was he a unifying or a dividing influence in the world? What predisposed some inhabitants to listen to him and some to hate him? Did he share the same fate as Jesus? Write a paragraph, an essay or an epic! Make a movie of Seiko’s life work! Use it as a chance to explore how people accept new information into their carefully sculpted worldviews. Have fun!

Convicted of Plagiarism

An email arrived on my phone the other day. It was from a colleague whose job it is to be the advocate of Chinese exchange students who are studying abroad. A student had submitted a research paper that the plagiarism-sniffing software at the school had alerted to a 75% copy rate. The student was being asked to respond and defend his actions. Obviously, the copying had happened, and it was wrong, but the student had an excuse; she was hospitalized with an acute case of appendicitis just before the submittal date. A doctor’s note substantiated this claim. She had no choice but to take the shortcut of copying substantial portions of a friend’s work and adding her own insights where appropriate.

How was my colleague to advocate for this student? A difficult question considering that the response could determine the student’s future direction at the school. 

As I pondered the right response, another question, from another of my Chinese friends came to mind. He had asked whether I thought Trump was doing the right things for America or for the world? The question arose out of his concern about the disastrous consequences of the recent tariffs imposed on China. That question led my divergent mind to turn to yet another incidence of copying to which I had a personal connection.

In one of my previous jobs as a design engineer for anesthesia machines, I had designed a system that was quite avant-garde; in fact, it was so unique that the FDA refused to allow us to use it on our machines because it violated the world standards for the proper design of anesthesia machines. Our lawyers had to battle with the FDA for a long time before they finally agreed and allowed us to use it. So, one can imagine my chagrin when I took a job working as an engineering support to a Chinese anesthesia company and found that an exact copy of my hard-fought design was being used in their machines. My anger was somewhat mitigated because the design had been on the market for several years. Besides, the original firm had taken the design and moved its production back to the company's home country, causing people in America to lose their jobs. So turn around was fair play! But it left me with unassailable proof that the Chinese were not at all shy about copying other people's products verbatim. It was just as unassailable as the proof that this poor student, plagued with appendicitis, had copied another girl's work and submitted it as her own.

Both the student and the Chinese could have made the ethically correct decision. The girl could have cited her sources and the Chinese could have paid a royalty for the design. But both took the easier and more lucrative path. The school administrators were not being remiss in calling out the obvious plagiarism. And Trump is not remiss for calling out the Chinese violation of property rights. It is not a pleasant task for either party to level the ethical playing field. And it takes someone with a lot of guts to step in and call people to account. It may mean the student might not graduate and it may curtail economic growth if they enforce reasonable standards of ethical behavior. But in fairness, someone needs to do it. And for my friend, who is to be an advocate for this girl, and for myself, with deep ties to people in China who are being impacted by the economic downturn, it can be quite a gut-wrenching situation to endure.

This all suggests yet another connection which was the central theme of the book, “The Righteous Mind.” The author, Jonathan Haidt, stated that he wrote the book to answer the question, “Why can’t we all just get along?” The book is a classic in ethical understanding but still leaves one with the unavoidable conclusion that walking in another person’s shoes will always be a difficult task. Adjudicating fairness will never be easy. Just ask Solomon, who once advocated the slicing of a newborn child in two to be fair to the quarreling mothers. See 1st Kings 3:16–28. But until we find another accommodating planet or at least a deserted island to which we can take our petty grievances, we will have to learn to somehow get along. So in this, let’s all do some plagiarism of Jesus whose example tells us to relate to one another with “love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” 1st Timothy 1:5. Allow yourself to be convicted of sincerely plagiarizing Jesus!   

Drink Ye All of It

Taking communion in church today drew my mind back to what I think was my most meaningful communion service. More precisely, it reminded me of what had happened with the grape juice in that service. No, it had not miraculously transubstantiated into wine, but it did take on a new meaning for me that day. 

It all began with a mistake. Our church was on its annual church retreat at a local camp called The Variety Club. We were going to have communion during the Sunday service, but someone forgot to bring along the grape juice and the cups. I'm not even sure that they are any longer available, but some resourceful person went to a local market and found these tiny cans of Welches grape juice. They must have only been about a 3 oz. size. They bought enough so that all the people taking communion could have one. At the appropriate time in the service, each person was given their own can and we were going to all "drink it together."

It was at that point, with the little, unopened can poised in my fingertips, that a sudden realization came to me. There was juice in that can -- good juice, life-giving juice -- but it was unavailable until the can was pierced. Jesus' blood, the covering for our sins, was also unavailable until His body was hung on the cross. He needed to have His body pierced so that we could access that cleansing blood.

And then when the time came to drink the cups, one could hear the pops around the congregation as each person opened their can. Another realization came to me as I started to drink from that pieced can. Unlike the draught from the typical communion cup that barely is enough for one swallow, these cans contained abundance; way too much to swallow in one gulp. It took time to drink it all. There was enough in that can satisfy the thirst and refresh the body. 

There was special significance that lay in those realizations that day. I was glad to be reminded of them as I lifted the little cup to my lips today in church. 

While we are on the subject of Welch's grape juice, I would recommend that you look into the amazing story of how this brand of grape juice came to be. It is fascinating to discover that it grew out of the confluence of the temperance movement, the discovery of pasteurization and the right people in the right places. Charles Welch summed up his dad and his life's work in his will:

Unfermented grape juice was born in 1869 out of a passion to serve God by helping His Church to give its communion “the fruit of the vine,” instead of the “cup of devils.”

You can find more at the link: http://www.umc.org/who-we-are/methodist-history-controversy-communion-and-welchs-grape-juice

Unusual Footprints on the Sand

We all are familiar with the "Footprints in the Sand" poem. Here is a variation -- a rather insightful variation -- on that theme. I thought it would be a wonderful addition to my blog which have the footprints theme.

Footprints Revisited-Transcribed from Vertical Hold video 5/19/04

One night I had a wondrous dream

A set of prints on the sand was seen

The footprints of my precious Lord

Yet mine were not along the shore

But then a stranger print appeared

I asked the Lord 

What have we here?

This print it large and round and neat

But Lord it’s just too big for feet

My child, he said in somber tones

For miles, I carried you alone 

I challenged you to seek my face

Take up your cross and walk in grace

You disobeyed, you would not grow

You would not stand against the flow

Your neck was stiff your ears were shut

So there I dropped you on your butt!

Because in life there comes a time 

When one must fight, when one must climb

When one must rise and take a stand

Or leave one's butt prints in the sand.

People Do Not Do Stupid Stuff

Ok! I admit that the title was click-bait! But I also believe that it is true in this sense: yes, people do a lot of stuff that we might think is "stupid." But they have always justified what they are doing in their own minds. If they truly felt that what they were doing would make them look stupid, they would not be doing it. Looking at people's actions from this point of view, asking how they are justifying the apparent "stupidity," opens a new avenue of understanding about their actions and how to address them. It is really the old "walk a mile in their shoes" philosophy, but it needs to be reinforced in today's partisan ugliness that usually has people talking past each other in the self-serving drive to advance one's own point of view.
Attempting to follow this philosophy led me on a rather interesting adventure several Sundays ago. My starting point for this inquiry was the apparent disregard by the Left for the benefits of the currently booming economy, which at least for me, was creating the demand for many new office spaces served by vast expanses of windows through which the natural lighting would flow to illuminate otherwise dismal cubicles. New construction is happening everywhere, and unemployment is at historic lows. Who could be so "stupid" as to feel that this is a bad thing? In casting about in my mind for a reason for how the left could be feeling like this, I happened to remember a view that had assaulted my eyes upon emerging from the north end of the Lehigh Tunnel on the turnpike years ago. Fifteen years ago, this had been a devastated landscape, more akin to Nevada than to the Poconos. Lately, this view has been softened considerably by the return of vegetation. But how had this desolation been caused?  I had known that there had been some mining companies in this area that were somehow responsible for the devastation. Breaking out of the tendency to follow confirmation bias, the fine art of only looking for ideas that confirm ones already held opinions and actively suppressing other ideas, often requires active measures. Since the weather was perfect for a motorcycle ride on that Sunday afternoon, it seemed like a good day for some activity. I determined that I would ride over Blue Mountain and explore the valley beyond for better information onto what had caused the destruction. My rather nebulous plan was to seek out some talkative native sole at a local café and ask them over a cup of coffee what had happened to the valley.
So, with the glorious sunlight bathing the landscape, I headed north on Kings Highway and up and over the stately Blue Mountain with the Appalachian Trail running along its spine. I arrived in the valley and proceeded east toward the industrial town of Palmerton, PA which sits just north of the point where the Lehigh River bores its stately way through the imposing mountain. This brought me along the base of one of those devastated-looking hillocks with a factory town clinging to its southern flank. I turned up the hill into this little village and rode past row after row of little bungalows, nicely maintained but obviously built with one goal in mind; providing cheap housing for a large group of factory workers. There, standing on the sidewalk absorbed in conversation, were two of the elderly residents of this little town. I pulled to a stop beside them. "Can either of you answer a few questions about what happened in this valley?" I asked. The one gentleman rolled his eyes and said, "I'm out of here!" and walked off toward the rear of his house." The other man said, "Do you have a couple of minutes?"
I assured him that indeed I did, and with that, he directed me to have a seat on his front porch while he ducked inside and returned with an armful of newspaper clippings and a photo album. As the next hour or so would prove, I could not have happened upon a better representative to tell me about the disastrous history of the valley. His name was John Colberta, and he had lived in the valley for 74 years. For 41 of those years, he had worked as a machinist for the New Jersey Zinc Company. This company ran the dual zinc ore smelters that lined the north side of Lehigh River that ran through the valley. Pictures from his photo album documented what the valley looked like back in 1954 when the huge, industrial complex spewed billowing clouds of noxious waste products into the skies. At that time, there were still some trees evident on the northern slopes of the valley that lay just across the Lehigh River from this burgeoning complex. This was when John had started his career in the factory, making tooling fixtures for the smelters. He showed me the roller kilns and the huge vacuum tubes that sucked the Zinc oxide dust from the smelters and deposited it into the bag cars. These cars would then transport this important industrial product to the factories across the country that used it in a plethora of industrial products such as paint, and alloys for copper that turned it into bronze that was used for countless cannon muzzles. He showed me that little doors that would be opened to dump the lead oxide into the mix to create the now-banned leaded paints. He talked about the blood testing that was conducted monthly to check that toxic levels were not affecting the workers. From the looks of his body -- clearly visible since he was not wearing a shirt -- he had come through this exposure unharmed. There was a groove across his right shoulder, but that he said was from a bullet that had managed to pass through his jacket and a bit of his skin, causing what he said was a rather "uncomfortable burning sensation!" He was thankful that God had prevented him from leaning a bit farther around the corner as he was investigating where the shooting was taking place. But otherwise his body, and obviously his mind was not worse for the wear of living in this valley which had been listed on the priority list of the USA superfund sites in 1983. His album contained pictures from 2010 of the final demolition of the plant's extensive buildings and the subsequent covering of the entire site with 10 feet of dirt and meandering walking paths. 

Obviously, my penchant for seeing God's hand in a lot of the coincidences of life, caused me to be astounded by how perfectly my plan for finding that talkative and fair individual who could, with authority and without seeming prejudice, relate the history of the storied valley. He did not seem able to understand my interest in the valley as a means of understanding the politics of today. But for me, it galvanized an understanding in my mind. I had struggled to understand the left's "stupid" stand against industrial progress until I saw and felt first-hand the ravishes that capitalism had had upon this valley. For it was fair to say that is was capitalism and the headlong pursuit for products and industrialization that had given rise to that ugly factory and the denuded hillsides. I could feel the gut-wrenching revulsion to this blatant despoiling of "Mother Earth" by the extraction and conversion of its treasures into our playthings. Such reckless acts of violence against nature must be terminated immediately … at least they must be moved to a remote location where we can't see the pollution. We still would like the products, but we would rather that the extraction processes be done far away from the pastoral hills that we wish to save for our grandchildren. Now China! That would be a great place for this to happen! Give China the scourge of capitalism and let their environment be traumatized. Let their citizens fall plague to the attendant pollution. That would be an acceptable solution to the continued need for these cheap products that leave such nasty environmental footprints.

With that understanding of what the world must look like through the eyes of a dedicated environmentalist, I felt more equipped to understand the reason that the Left, who hold Mother Earth in reverence as their god, could find a booming economy to be such a revolting development. After all, the more people with jobs, the more demand for things and the greater the usage of precious resources. A flat or declining economy saves these treasures for future generations. Suddenly it was possible to understand Obama's gloating, as reported in Reuters on July 14, 2009, that his presidency had presided over 800,000 manufacturing jobs that had gone overseas and were never coming back! Good riddance to these destructive, polluting jobs. Instead, he noted, the kids of the future would need free education to train them in skills that would be needed in computer jobs – jobs that would not send smoke billowing into the atmosphere and toxins spreading into our water tables. And it was in support of these "proper" kind of jobs that my glass installation was working. It was finally clear to me why job-killing regulations and massive expenditure to curb global warming was merited. This was the penance to the god of the environmentalist for the callous use of America's resources. It was thereby fine to spend massive amounts of money to buy first-class tickets on polluting jetliners to attend conferences on curbing pollution.
With this realization in hand, I could fundamentally understand why these elitists do not think their position is "stupid." Anything that saves the earth's resource is good and proper. For this same reason, population control saves resources since abortion saves unwanted mouths from requiring our food. I might not agree, but I can better understand the position after seeing the affront of Palmerton's denuded mountains. And this bridge to understanding seemed to be a better way of addressing the partisan divide than fortifying oneself in one's own little corner and firing broadsides across the cultural chasm. And some of these gut-felt emotions against excessive consumption actually align with my own deeply held desire to avoid waste and to live as efficiently as possible. It is a view that I would refer to as trying to be a good steward of earth's resources. Again, we might not agree on what this looks like in totality. But at least it gives one the basis to disagree respectfully.
Do people do stupid stuff? Given that most people would do anything to avoid embarrassment, it seems that people who are guided by a rational mind would only do stuff that they have been able to justify as non-stupid in some more or less convoluted manner. If the mind is not being rational, as is the case with drugs, alcohol and other physiologically distracted thinking, all bets are off. In that case, stupid is the order of the day. But in the case of rationalized, stupid-looking actions, understanding the justification behind the action seems to be a possible path forward to allowing improved communication.

Exploring God's Logistics

According to the definitive definition of logistics found on Google, "logistics is the act of coordinating complex movements or projects or solving complex problems." There are people who actually do this for a living, but I prefer to leave most of my logistics in the hands of God. Ok, some would call that poor planning, but I like to think of it as the Proverbs 21:1 watercourse that I am traveling down -- just following God's direction. It is kind of like that poor freighter that I saw laboring down the meandering Rhine River on my approach into Dusseldorf one time. From the viewpoint of the captain of the vessel, he might be frustrated because he was going South when his desired direction was North. But from my viewpoint in the airplane - which was more like the overview that God might have - he had no other choice. He had to follow the river! Following that southerly meander of the river was the only way of getting his vessel from the heart of Germany to its destination on English Channel.

Sometimes it is instructive to memorialize some of those logistical pathways just to better understand that God's ways are higher than ours and are so beautiful in their artful meandering. One such pathway began for me with a question asked by a speaker at Spruce Lake Retreat some 20 years ago. He passed out little notecards and told us to answer this question. "What is one thing you want to commit to God to do over the next year?" It didn't take me too long to scribble down on my notecard that I wanted to conduct a block party for my neighborhood. I had always wanted to get together with the neighbors who I've never met and find out about their stories. However, it took me a lot longer to put that simple statement into action. That card lay tucked in my Bible like a burr in my saddle for about 7 years. And then one day, God's watercourse carried me into the backyard of lady who had just moved into the neighborhood. I welcomed her to the community and in the midst of the conversation mentioned that I had long harbored the desire to host a block party. "Let's do it!" came her instantaneous reply.

Her response reminded me of the passage in Acts 3 where Peter and John went up the temple at the time of prayer. They saw a lame man lying there. In verse 3 it says, "Peter looked straight at him, as did John." It seemed in that moment that there was a coupling of minds and purpose for Peter and John. They ended up healing a lame man. My neighbor lady and I had fixed our collective eyes on the same objective. "As did John" is a powerful expression of what happens when two people combine their individual passions together. That commitment between the two of us grew into a committee of committed persons and for the next 5 years, up until my new job took me on such frequent trips to China, we had large gatherings of the surrounding neighbors with wonderful interchange of shared identities and interesting stories.

Another 7 years or so passed and one day I was riding through the neighborhood and saw a for sale sign up on one of the houses. I had done some carpenter work in this particular house, building a wall unit for their mudroom where each of the kids could have their own cubby and coat rack. I swung my cycle into the drive and knocked on the door, wanting to make sure that I had a chance to get a picture of my handiwork before the family moved away. The man of the house answered the door and invited me in. In the midst of the conversation, he mentioned that he was so thankful for the block parties that I had started in the neighborhood. "Those parties changed our families lives," he said. Surprised, I asked him what he meant. It turned out that it was at one of those parties that he met a neighbor girl who they would not have otherwise met. Marissa had become their family babysitter. She had become part of their family in that role and had grown up with their kids. Her mentoring had had enormous impacts on their kid's lives. The whole family felt that they had been enriched by that connection.

As I rode home from that encounter, I passed the Souder home. Marissa's dad was working in the drive. I pulled to a stop and greeted him and shared the joy of that conversation that I had just had with the other neighbor. He called for Marissa to come outside to hear the wonderful accolades for herself. I found out that she had just returned from a mission trip to India where she had seen first-hand miracles from God. She had so many amazing stories to tell. I told her that it didn't seem right that her she was living within a quarter of a mile of my house and I had not even known that all these wonderful things were happening.

"Are you going to churches to share about your experiences?" I asked.

"I shared at my church," she answered. "And I would like to share at other churches if I get a chance."

"Well, let's line you up to share at Covenant," I said.

And so it came to about that Marissa graced the pulpit of our church with her presence and shared very eloquently and passionately about God's work in her life. So impressive was her sharing that it energized the youth in our church to invite her to be their resource person for their youth retreat. And then they went with her to Guatemala on a mission’s trip. Her passion for following God rubbed off on every member of that team. One of those team members was a young Chinese exchange student studying at Christopher Dock. That time of missions served to focus her understanding of what the Christian faith is really about. Later, that same girl was to have a wonderful meeting with Paul Yin and myself and discuss farther the of impact faith on her life. And still later, she was to meet with Paul in Beijing to get introduced to his Chat group at a Coffeehouse before her eventual return to the states to take up her studies at NYU. What a foundation God had built into her life by her acquaintance with that girl who babysat those kids!

Another branch off of that logistical pathway was the sharing done by yet another lovely young woman whose life was literally resurrected by the connection with Marissa. This young girl of 17 suffered depression from having perfectionistic goals in life that she was unable to live up to. It got so bad that she decided that she was no longer worth anything to anyone and elected to drink a cup of antifreeze and hopefully end it all. It almost did. But at 2 am in the morning, her failing body awoke her to consciousness just long enough for her to dial 911 on her phone. They were able, by some additional miracles, to reestablish her failing kidney function and bring her back to life at the hospital. It was Marissa who walked alongside of her through these dark days of near death and recovery. God, through her ministry, helped bring healing and recovery to her body, but more importantly, to her soul.

When she stood before church to testify about the ordeal through which she had just walked, she started by apologizing for her lack of ability in public speaking. Never was self- assessment so incorrect. For the next 30 minutes she held the audience spellbound as she shared the intimate details of her crisis. Her cadence was perfect; her annunciation precise. Even her hand gestures communicated with eloquence. This presentation could have captivated an audience of 10,000! And through it all, her voice remained strong, never cracking under the strain of the depth of her emotions. It was not until her ending prayer that the tears and the emotions of it all broke forth and the outpouring of her prayer to God was understood by Him alone --- as well it should be.

When I thanked her later for her powerful sharing, she was quick to connect the dots back to Marissa. And to make that trail of dots even a bit longer, I am hereby connecting that logistical pathway back to that question asked of us at Spruce Lake so many years ago. "What are you willing to commit to doing for God?" Your decision today may affect the world at some near or far distant point in time. Your action could have eternal consequences.

What Treasures Lie Beneath the Mists of an Enchanted Land

It is the beginning of April, 2018. I click the submit button on Amazon's CreateSpace and launch Paul Yin's book into the public domain. It is called "Explosions of Joy". What were people going to think about it? Would they trash it and tear it apart? Would they note its worth or its unworthiness! This had been a kind of scary process, putting my stuff out there in the general market.

But in reality, it is not my "stuff". It is Paul Yin's writing, flowing in eloquent prose from a near photographic memory. What amazing command of the English language this man has for a native Chinese speaker! And Trina Kraus is a superb co-author with Paul, taking nearly 90,000 words and massaging, aligning, trimming and generally adding "pixie dust" to create an enthralling reading experience. We tried to follow all of Marlene Bagnull's expert advice in editing and polishing. We were told to keep it to under 60,000 words and now I am glad we did. We now have enough material that there could be a ready sequel. And Paul, who they gave only a week to live after his heart failure 1-1/2 years ago, is alive and thriving in Beijing. His life is generating new books even as I write this. He has an unassailable, positive attitude toward life.

How is it that I, a farm boy from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, became the contributing editor for the man who brought psychology to China? I can remember I was on my first trip to China as a medical engineer giving guidance on developing anesthesia machines to a Chinese company. The airplane was descending over the mountains of Mongolia on its approach to Beijing. The sun was setting behind the horizon to the west. The sky was lit in pastel purples and pinks merging with the deep blackness of space. Below me were the sharp, black spines of rugged mountains pushing up out of a blanket of white mist. The thought penetrated my mind. "I wonder what treasures I will find hidden under those shrouding mists in this land of enchantment". Paul Yin has turned into one of those amazing treasures and this book is just a small piece of the great joy it has been to have him as my "accidental" friend.

And though it was indeed accidental, Paul and I agree that it was really more providential. It was June 21, 2013. I was in China for perhaps my fourth time. My software engineer colleague, Vid Ruksys, and I were sitting at a booth the Lei Café at the Beijing Airport, waiting for our typically delayed flight back to America. Apparently, our talk, actions and demeanor attracted the notice of a Chinese man sitting across the restaurant. He came over to the table and started the conversation with a statement sure to raise surprise in our minds. "Well, those Broad Street Bullies just aren't what they used to be!" What was this obviously Chinese man doing bringing up a historical reference to the Philadelphia Flyers? How did he know them and how did he know we were from Philadelphia? That was just the beginning salvo of a conversation that lasted for the next several hours as he settled down at our table to await his similarly delayed departure.

And what a delightful passing of the time it was. We got brilliant insights into not only the amount of information this man had packed into his brain about American sports teams, but also music, psychology, and the contrasting social structure between America and China. It was unfortunate that airline efficiency meant that the delay only lasted 3 hours! This conversation could have gone on all night.

As it turned out, in many ways it did go on more than all night; it has lasted for the past 5 years! We exchanged email addresses and I wrote to him upon my return to America. And then events conspired to add an additional connection between our lives beyond the elongated conversation at the Lei. Less than two weeks later, on July 6, 2013, Asiana Flight 214 was landing at the San Francisco airport and came in too low. It crashed into the embankment and somersaulted its way down the runway. Forty young people from China were aboard that fated plane. I get an email from Paul that he was now in Quzhou, the town where these girls were from, serving as a grief counselor to these girls and their families. Suddenly there was a solid connection between this tragedy on the one side of the Pacific Ocean and the lives of these girls on the other side of that vast ocean.  

Then on March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared en route to Beijing. "What are you doing now?" I asked via email. "One disaster is wrapping up and now another is just beginning. I'm at the Lido Hotel ministering to the families here. I have set up my headquarters at the Starbucks," came his reply. As the world was blanketed with 24-hour news coverage about that missing plane, I suddenly see my friends picture on CNN being interviewed by Anderson Cooper. In the days and weeks that followed, Paul, in his red, Arsenal scarf, became the voice of the grieving families as they breathlessly waited for news of their loved ones. 

I got laid off from my engineering job in July of 2014. This job had provided my opportunity to travel to China about 3 times a year previously. But between January and June of 2015, God provided me with two free trips back to that land of Enchantment to visit, tour and experience its wonders. On both trips I was able to connect with Paul, first for a whole day of delightful tea and conversation in his home across from the SOHO center and then for a rather expensive steak dinner at the Intercontinental Hotel in Beijing. These were delightful occasions when talk could flow freely without the restraint of potential censorship on WeChat conversations.

Things took a decidedly negative turn on November 11, 2015. I got a WeChat from Paul saying that he was in the hospital with a massive heart failure and the doctors only gave him a week to life. "Fortunately, they say it is incurable," he told me. I was completely perplexed by that statement, telling him that I never heard those words strung together in one sentence before. Apparently, there was nothing that they could do for this congenital heart problem so he said they would not be spending a lot of money trying. But in response to all of this bad news, he wrote a letter to his heart, thanking it for all of its 53 years of uncomplaining service and attempting to strike a bargain with it. If it would just keep on beating, he would listen and care for it much more assiduously in the future. He still had things in his bucket list that he was hoping to accomplish with its cooperation.

He wrote that letter on my birthday, December 22, 2015 and by January of 2016, his heart was responding positively to his letter and to various Chinese herbal medicines. I told him that I believed God had given him a reprieve to write his memoirs. He assured me that he didn't believe that God had kept him alive just to breath. He took up the challenge of putting together his life story by starting to dig up his old yearly newsletters which had become his habitual way of communicating with his friends back in China during the 22 years he had spent in California. He sent these to me along with other commentary on his life. Pretty soon I had the foundation for a very compelling book assembled on my computer.

But I am an engineer, not a writer. I knew I didn't have the horsepower to actually commit this material into a real book. But God apparently also knew of my incapacity in this regard, so he arranged for the woman behind me in Sunday School class at the beginning of September 2016 to raise her hand with a prayer request. After teaching English for 16 years, the new school year was starting, and she had yet to have a solid teaching position secured. "Please pray!" Well, after class I asked her if she might consider helping me edit this book, given her skills as a English professional. She was ecstatic to take up the task! Suddenly I had someone on my team who could identify and correct a dangling participle and who could add those eloquent flourishes and edit, revise and organize the material into a thoroughly readable manuscript.

With Trina on board, we made a lot of progress in shrinking the original 90,000 words down to the 60,000-word size that we were told was appropriate for a memoir like this. We were about ready to say that it was ready for publication when a thought occurred to me. We really had not sat down with Paul to go over this work word-by-word and make sure it was reflective of his voice and accurate with its facts. It was just then that my boss at work called me aside and said that he really did not have work for me for several weeks. "Could I take some time off?" Well, certainly. I would go to China and meet with Paul! I started to arrange the trip. Paul was free and would gladly take me around and introduce me to the venues and the characters in the book. But then he had a better idea, or maybe it was God's idea! "Why don't I come to America for 10 days?" Wow! Now that was definitely a better idea. This way he could meet Trina and the three of us could do the final edit together.

And that is just what happened, with the added benefit that the first Sunday of Paul's trip fell on Super Bowl Sunday. There is no conclusive evidence of this, but in retrospect, it seems that what God had in mind was to create a way for His name to be broadcast across National TV. As it turned out, for three years now, whatever city in the USA that Paul happened to be visiting, their sports team won the national title. This was the year for the Philadelphia Eagles to be in the Super Bowl, and with Paul visiting the City of Brotherly Love, naturally the Eagles won. And anyone who was watching TV after that event can recall how much God's name was lifted up by the members of the Eagles team. It was glorious to watch, and I duly credited it to Paul's presence in my house!

One other benefit to Paul's being here was that the Christian Writers Conference was also being held locally and we could go there and get lots of great help. And Paul was able to be at church for the second Sunday and I interviewed him during the Sunday service. What a great pleasure to interview this amazing man and draw out a lot of his stories for the congregation to hear. Now, they too could understand more fully the fascination that I had displayed with walking beside the man for so many years. They can all join me in praying that God indeed continues to strengthen him and his heart so that his ministry to the world can continue unabated. 

God does some really crazy things in life sometimes! Even crazier than creating something like a platypus. And Paul and Trina and I are one of those crazy constructs - welded together into an amazing trinity by forces too wonderful to contemplate! We have already seen this book profoundly affect lives and we pray that it will continue to be a source of healing and joy to many people around the globe. It is truly an unexpected treasure extracted from beneath the mists in that land of enchantment!