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The Envious Dancer and the Grace of God

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What does one do when they feel that they don't have the skills needed to perform at the level they would like to? Get some instruction. Get feedback. Practice. Practice. Practice. Generally, investing a bit more intentional time, money, and effort can lead to growth in any particular skill set. I've spent my whole life doing this. I started playing violin at the age of 6. I took private lessons every week for 10 years. I would practice 6 days a week, 1.5 hours each day. I drilled etudes and scales, learned and memorized concertos, participated in youth orchestra, did masterclasses and chamber music camps. I invested thousands of hours and my parents thousands of dollars, resulting in enough skill that I could improv with friends, play in wedding quartets, join worship teams and jam without too much fear. In short, I had achieved a level of mastery that met my desires. School was very much a similar thing; by investing more time and effort, I could normally get the grades that ...
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Swing Dance: Slang or Sonnet?

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  Is it gatekeeping? Is it just caring for the art form and people’s safety? At the end of last year, one of my closest friends asked me if I wanted to learn Biblical Hebrew. Me, who clearly has a very non-busy life, said yes. During our first lesson, he told me that because ancient Hebrew is so ancient, it has a plethora of strange rules. Thus, learning it meant either committing myself to learning all the rules or just start memorizing vocab and brute force it. One way: tedious and monotonous. The other way: quick, but prone to error if not done correct. In the past few years, I’ve noticed increasing tension in the country western community pertaining to how serious we should take the hobby. Upon some reflection, I believe that swing dancing is quite similar to language learning, and much of the recent disagreements can be nicely explained by comparing it to learning and speaking a new language.  A bit of background on my own relationship with dance. I started dancing Fall t...
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Dissecting the Gospel of Marriage and the Reality of Singleness

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  "Marriage is the greatest blessing in life" Christians LOVE talking about marriage and if you're in college, you're practically drowning in relationship talk. It's the tea. You're drowning in the tea. When you meet someone who you have not seen for a while, after the standard pleasantries of "what have you been up to?" have been exchanged, the topic invariably goes to "how's the love life?" At least once a school year (if not once a term), there is a relationship talk. Some older Christians seem set on trying to set you up. For as much as we sing love songs to God, we seem too often to be equally focused on finding that someone "special" we can sing love songs to as well. When we leave the halls of our church and go into the secular world, marriage and relationships are shoved into our face as well. Any dissection of the music charts reveals song after song about love. We all know that it's important and we should want ...
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Stuck Between Worlds

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    Man what a year. First WW3 memes with Australia on fire, then a pandemic which quite literally changed life as we know it. Add to that a summer of racial tensions and then a crazy election, life in America has been a mixture of both really exciting, really stressful, and really boring. But tonight, I'm here to talk about my experience with being an American, being Asian, being a Christian, and often just feeling like I don't truly 'fit in'. To start off, let's go all the way back before I was born, back to the 70s. During that decade, my parents immigrated over to the US. Being fairly young (before their teen years), most of their main education was in the US as opposed to other's who came to the US for college or post-grad opportunities. Fast forward to March 19th, 1999, Dennis and Angela had a son, and the world would never be the same.    I'm technically first generation, but part of me feels second generation. I have a lot of first-gen Asian American...
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On a Mission

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Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy doing this blog. However, there is something about realizing the importance of regularly making posts, and the minor amount of stress that comes with trying to create content. Today, after work, I was walking back to my car. Now, in my town, the fires from eastern Oregon gave us the present of smoke, rendering the sky and the sun a nice orange hue. However, today, after a brief downpour, the skies opened up, showing the lovely light blues interrupted by the occasional wispy whites. The sidewalk was the nice wet sidewalks that us western Oregonians are so used to, so, I grabbed my smartphone and took the shot. The composition isn't great. The dynamic range is pretty meh (which is honestly why I converted it to B&W). Yet, I kind of like it. Yes, I do wish that the sidewalk was more geometric (the center seam isn't perpendicular with the cross seams which REALLY annoys me), but the photo captures a unique view, and view that I woul...
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The World Around Us - Oregon State Fair

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For someone who has lived less than an hour away from the Oregon State Fairgrounds, the past 18 years you'd think that I would have been to the state fair prior to this year. But NOPE! This year was my first year. To be honest, fairs really aren't my thing. My parents have ingrained in me a wise fear of fair rides, and the food is always overpriced (and also incredibly fattening). On that note, I was able to get an elephant ear that was a solid 18 inches in diameter all the way around. But anyway, fairs aren't my thing. The only reason why I went up this year was for KING & COUNTRY was playing and admission was only $2. That's a deal that you can't pass up. Anyway, the concert was pretty great. They were awesome and I think most everyone there had a great time. However, during the entire concert part of my mind was thinking about everything outside the amphitheater. Everyone. I think at least a solid 90% of the people who went were Christians. I thin...
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Do you even pray, bro? - Mary's Peak, OR

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This past week, my buddies and I hiked up to one of my favorite places around Oregon: Mary's Peak. The view up there is always amazing. Add to that sunset, and it's a gorgeous view. Anyway, so we hiked up and were sitting there and enjoying the view. After jamming and singing a bit (there's a trend when I'm with friends...), one of my friends brought up a really interesting point. "You know how we can easily sing and play worship songs for a half hour or even an hour? Why does it seem to be so hard to do that when we pray?" We discussed a bit about prayer and faith, and he then suggested that we pray for 15 minutes. He started a stopwatch on his phone, and we started to pray. And boy. That was an experience. To be honest, in preparation for the hike, I thought that I was going end up writing about how the hike is worth it, and how in the Christian life it takes effort but the end result is worth the pain blah blah blah. You know. But, God, in Hi...
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