Campus Frontline: Our “Lingering” City, the Remaining us – Seeking the Courage to be Present (Issue 489)
Rony Tse
Staff of Inter-College Department
[email protected]
“The world is in ruins, lingering in disintegration.
Clearly deserving of death and having lived long enough, break down the curse.”
— “Being Alive” by per se
The Hong Kong band per se’s song “Being Alive” is set in the background of the end of the world and speaks of the irredeemable future and the need to hold on to this moment of lingering around the verge of death. It is a paradoxical state, a threshold between life and death, at the edge of existence, without a complete termination. Others can do nothing, but it depends on the will of the person concerned. While everything may be in vain, it is entirely in the hands of God. The moment of lingering around the verge of death is the most fragile point of life, but it can also be the most courageous moment of existence.
Lingering, staying or leaving
The theme of this year Inter-college Department Bible camp was “Lingering│Staying or Leaving—Finding the Courage to be Present”. Some fellow staff remarked that this title might be mistaken for a life and death education camp. In fact, we did touch on life and death education, but not in the ordinary ethical sense, but in relation to the life and death of our city in the present time, and how should we live in it? The Chinese term for “dying or lingering in the verge of death” is often used to describe a person’s condition, but nowadays, our city is as strange as “lingering”—a beautiful exterior wrapped in a crumbling interior, as if everything is better than before. In this “lingering” plight, we struggle with the dilemma of “staying” and “leaving”. “Staying” or “leaving” represent two different worlds, what shall we do? Based on this very close context, our Bible camp this year explored with students what we should be seeking at this moment in time. What is the spiritual guidance that can help us to prepare for the age of lingering, staying and leaving?
Discovering the light from Jesus’ parting words
Using Jesus’ parting words in John 13-16 as the theme passage, the camp reflected on what reminders Jesus left for his disciples to help them prepare for the road ahead of separation and reorganization. Jesus foretold that the disciples would suffer and promised the Holy Spirit, declaring that they would carry the memories of the old days and learn to cope with new situations, living out their faith in the midst of hiding and oppression.
Unpacking ourselves through games, art and scripture
The camp took the timeline as the framework, and on the first day, we focused on the current situation of the students and brought out the current state of confusion through games to help them enter the theme of the camp. On the second day, we invited friends majored in expressive arts therapy to lead the students to explore their inner being through art, to organize the path they have taken in the past few years, to express their suppressed and wounded inner being through the medium of art, and then to connect the individual to the context they are in, and to sort out the entanglement between the individual and the times.
With the awareness of the past and the present, on the third and fourth days of the camp, we explored the way forward with the students, to think about what we were carrying forward from the past to the present, and how to transform the past experiences into the motivation to move forward. In facing the unknown future, no matter where we are, we believe that we need courage to confront all the changes. We invited guests who have proven their courage with their lives to share with students how to confront their fears with faith and how to stand firm in their positions despite the crushing pressure of the times.
Author Ideasfung share his writing “The Courage to Live”
As a matter of fact, the past, the present and the future may be intertwined with each other, constantly repeating cycles, in which we linger, stay or leave as if there is no way to escape the coming of the end. Amidst futile absurdity, how should we live our lives? Perhaps by recognizing the finite nature of the present moment and refraining from the luxury of an infinite utopia, we can find the light of redemption in the midst of limitations and refine the determination of our presence to face all hardships.