I was 17 years old when I visited the Korean War Memorial in Washington D.C. It commemorates the sacrifices of the 5.8 million Americans who served in the U.S. armed services during the three-year period of the Korean War that began on June 25, 1950. 36,574 Americans eventually died in hostile actions in the Korean War theater. Looking up at the huge stainless steel statues anchored to the ground among patches of Juniper bushes separated by polished granite strips, I felt remorse at the loss and sacrifice, but guilt, too. Despite this prominent memorial, it is also called the Forgotten War.

During those years I also began not only to look for different classrooms but different teachers. They came to me in the most unexpected ways, for example, once when I looked in the mirror. At one point, I chopped my hair. The kids would say that I look like halmuhni, their grandmother, my mother. It was inevitable, I suppose. It's strange how often throughout the day my mother, and my grandmothers materialize before me. I would say something in a certain way, or feel my body in a particular posture or doing a gesture, and I can see in my mind's eye my mother, and her mother saying or doing it, too, I am an echo of her.

“For grace to be grace, it must give us things we didn't know we needed and take us places where we didn't know we didn't want to go. As we stumble through the crazily altered landscape of our lives, we find that God is enjoying our attention as never before. ” -Kathleen Norris

The text from Acts invites us to see this passage not as a mandate or moral prescription for church life but a description - an image of what community looks like when we table together. When we come together on a regular basis - in the midst of our shared fragility and vulnerability - our brokenness and neediness - we get a glimpse of that kingdom-come, heaven-on-earth that we ask for in the Lord’s Prayer.

But we all suffer. For we all prize and love; and in this present existence of ours, prizing and loving yield suffering. Love in our world is suffering love. Some do not suffer much, though, for they do not love much. Suffering is for the loving. This, said Jesus, is the command of the Holy One: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." In commanding us to love, God invites us to suffer.” ― Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son

New year. New decade. New digs.