Interstitiality

Feeling lucky?

For someone who is a Presbyterian minister, I believe a lot in luck. My particular belief in luck has its roots in Japanese American culture, for sure; but, as is typical among Asian Americans, my particular embodiment of that cultural expression is fraught with conflicting and overlapping notions from the East and West. One can see me practice my belief in luck when I am trying to find a parking spot in Evanston—no easy task. I put my trust in what my kids call “the parking mojo” and ouila! a parking spot quickly appears. In my family’s thinking, if you do things in your life that are in line with luck—practice the proper rituals, live the moral life, work hard, do good to others, etc.—you will have more luck. If you drive around, angry at life and everyone, you do not put yourself in a good position to have luck; and hence, you do not stand a very good chance of getting a parking spot. This notion of luck supposedly works for aspects of your life such as wealth, health, happiness, and, of course, the well-being of your favorite sports teams. Does good/bad luck work? Ask the Cubbies. However, luck does not always work. There are times when you can feel the parking mojo flowing through your veins, and yet those opened parking spots mock you as if to say, “Give it up kid!” A rational person would look at this practice and say, “Isn’t this all just chance?” I would answer, “no.” Mock the mojo and the mojo will mock you. It’s not so much that luck is a person whom you must appease. It is more like the force, and you must become the Jedi master. The more you are in tune with it, the more someone is likely to say about you, “the Force is strong with this one”—the more likely you are to put the proton torpedo in the Death Star’s shaft.

If you sense theological rumblings in my ramblings, you would be correct. Within biblical concepts such as wisdom (in both the Proverbs and Job/Ecclesiastes sense), I would say, even our notion of the Creator, one can identify this idea that one must be in alignment with Dame Wisdom or YHWH for shalom—peace, wholeness, completeness. It may not guarantee that you get every parking space, but this alignment provides one with the proper way to be in the world. Obedience, therefore, is not just about following a set of rules. It is about getting in line with the Alignment.