Roger W. Lowther's Blog, page 6

32. Kintsugi Academy

Last week, I shared with you the story of the tsunami violin, “The 1,000 Bonds of Hope” project. Nakazawa-san made a violin out of debris left by the tsunami and a sound post out of a small fragment from the Miracle Pine Tree, a symbol of hope throughout Japan. His work was not just creation but re-creation. He was literally redeeming brokenness in this world to make something life-giving. This violin is traveling the country of Japan through 1,000 performers to bring people together after the darkness of the earthquake in 2011, and now especially through the COVID-19 crisis in the midst of our isolation and division.

Today I’d like to share Kunio Nakamura-san’s message about Kintsugi Academy and the role kintsugi can play in our lives. This traditional Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold is packed with meaning. Here Nakamura-san is answering the question, “Why bother fixing broken pottery? Why not just buy something new?”

[Nakamura-san speaking in the conference]

The art of kintsugi is not just about fixing. Some people spend $50 to fix a $5 mug. Why would they do that? Well, he told us, it’s because the value changes over time. If you use a mug for 10 years, it becomes more valuable to you. It’s no longer worth just $5 but something more.

Nakamura-san learned kintsugi as a technique, but soon realized it’s so much deeper than that.

He shared how he regularly goes to Tohoku, to areas most affected by the earthquake that struck in 2011, and that even now people bring him objects to fix that were broken at that time. They didn’t throw these things out but stored them somewhere, in a closet or in the back of some drawer, until 10 years later they finally came to this point.

Kintsugi has traditionally been about bringing broken vessels to professionals to fix, but he finds meaning in each person doing the repairs themselves. He’s experienced first-hand the self-healing that can come through such a process. And so rather than a craftsman, he sees himself more as an evangelist for kintsugi, for the good that it can do. And he wants to bring this wherever it’s needed in the world, especially areas of conflict.

Teaming up with modern artist Makoto Fujimura, he’d like to see kintsugi go to the Gaza Strip, the U.S.–Mexican border, places of racial tension, or schools where violence has occurred. The corona epidemic put a stop to all travel for now, but next year he hopes to be holding workshops with people in all these areas.

More than repairs, he teaches how to repair, and more fundamentally, that repair is possible.

He’s especially interested in the technique yobitsugi. Yobitsugi is about bringing different parts together. From several pieces of debris, you can make one beautiful bowl. Or symbolically, by taking broken pieces from countries in conflict with one another, you can use them to make one vessel. Adding gold to that, an image of hope and light around the world throughout history, makes the message all that more powerful.

Before our “Aroma of Beauty” conference, Nakamura-san led a workshop with about twenty of us. It was amazing! He began by going around the room and asking everyone’s story behind their broken vessels, and why they were fixing them. One couple was to be married the following weekend, and so this mug was a symbol of their union together. A man shared about his son whose marriage had fallen apart. Another man shared about a severe depression he had the previous year and needed to know that beautiful things could come out of his brokenness. It did not feel like we were in a pottery fixing class but like some therapy session.

I worked on a twice-broken plate our church, Grace City Church Tokyo, uses for communion. The first time it broke a couple of years ago, I repaired it with gold in a kintsugi workshop. The second time it broke, when my son knocked it down from a drying rack in our kitchen, the previously repaired crack was safe and untouched. It never occurred to me that the crack not only made the plate more valuable and beautiful, but stronger as well! The cracks, the most beautiful part of the plate, were now also the strongest parts! There’s so much deep wisdom in that!

When I repaired it this time, I used silver so I could capture the timeline of the two breakings, and I also used the art of yobitsugi, including a small piece of sheet music from a broken porcelain figure.

Nakamura-san walked around the room talking to each person and hearing more of their story. And he kept saying over and over again, “Slowly! Go more slowly!” It was not about fixing an object, he reminded us. Rather, it was about giving yourself time to internalize what you were doing.

God remakes this world to not only be more beautiful than it was before but stronger through it. He reconnects our isolated parts across all perceived barriers, gives wisdom and strength from trauma, and shows a new creation full of beauty and hope as we journey through and beyond this pandemic. And the art of kintsugi is helping point the way.

Watch other videos from our “Aroma of Beauty” Conference

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31. Tsunami Violin

This week I’ve been working on putting subtitles to the various talks from our “Aroma of Beauty” conference we held here in Tokyo in March. There were so amazing stories shared. Although it was all in Japanese, with subtitles soon you’ll be able to watch and hear them as well. But I want to take this time to share one of them with you now in this podcast.

It’s really exciting to me how God shows himself through the art and culture of the world. And through the story of the tsunami violin, I was once again reminded of that.

I’ve briefly mentioned the tsunami violin in a number of podcasts in the past, but this time I want to go deeper and pass on to you some of the things that Muneyuki Nakazawa shared in the conference.

This tsunami violin was made from debris in the disaster area. When Nakazawa-san first visited the disaster area and saw the wood everywhere—every wooden structure destroyed, every tree knocked down—and walked through it with his wife, she said, “You know, this isn’t just debris. This wood is fragments of people’s lives. They represent hopes and dreams. Can’t you make a violin from that?” Well, of course, Nakazawa-san loved the idea and set out to do exactly that.

He calls himself the “violin doctor.” His role is to fix and heal broken sick violins, but he also makes new violins. And he was given a small piece of wood from the Kiseki no Ippon Matsu, the Miracle Pine Tree, the only tree left standing in a beautiful grove of 70,000 trees. Every one of them was knocked down but one by the tsunami that hit the city of Rikuzentakata.

This tree was a special image of hope. People thought, “That tree’s still standing, I can too.” Even when it eventually did die from salt left in the soil left by the wave, it continued to be a symbol of hope. I tell a lot more about this story in my book Aroma of Beauty.

So Nakazawa-san was given a small piece of wood from this tree after it died and wanted to do something special with it. The sound post, the konchu (魂柱) in Japanese, literally means “spirit pillar.” I think that’s a pretty cool name! Sound post? Boring. Spirit Pillar? It’s like out of a fantasy novel!

Here is Nakazawa-san talking about it in the conference. [clip]

You can watch the rest of that clip with English subtitles in the video below. Here Nakazawa-san is talking about how without the sound post, without this small piece of wood, the violin is dead. But with it, the violin comes to life. It sings like it was meant to. It really is the soul of the violin, the pillar, the foundation.

Listening to Nakazawa-san talk I could not help but think of the Spirit of God and of Christ. There are just so many levels of meaning here! I thought of the scripture verse from Romans 8:11.

“If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.”

The Spirit gives life to our mortal bodies. Just as the konchu, the “spirit pillar,” gives life to the violin, made from dead wood, useless debris laying in the mud, the Spirit of God gives life to us. This Spirit comes to us because of Christ who was hung on the tree, the cross, the most famous of all trees, enduring the full onslaught of the tsunami of destruction that hits this world because of our sin. The Spirit is our life and foundation. We can freely sing with life in ways not imagined possible because of his work in us.

So this violin of hope, this tsunami violin, is now traveling the country of Japan spreading this story and this hope to person after person. It’s called “The Bond of 1,000 Tones” Project. There have been over 1,600 performances so far. In the performance in our conference, our teammate Christina Davison became the 749th violinist to play the violin in a performance. She then went on to perform it at the annual festival in the art village of Seto, as I mentioned in a previous podcast.

Nakazawa-san is trying to reach the goal of having 1,000 violinists, amateur or professional, perform in formal and informal concerts. He pointed out in the conference that the number 1,000 is full of meaning in Japanese culture, representing wishes and prayers.

Perhaps the most famous is the senbazuru or 1,000 paper cranes, and this holds the meaning that your wishes will be granted by the gods when 1,000 paper cranes are made. It means longevity and life. I saw these multi-colored strings of paper cranes at memorial sites throughout the areas devastated by the tsunami.

Senbazuru in Minami Sanriku, Japan

In history, the most famous example of the senbazuru was made by Sadako-san. She was two years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and was exposed to radiation. Later she died of leukemia.

I remember when I visited St. Paul’s Chapel shortly after 9/11, the chapel near the World Trade Center, and it was full of strings of 1,000 paper cranes sent by school children in Japan.

Senbazuru at St. Paul’s Chapel in New York City

There’s also the senninbari or 1,000 person stiches, where one thousand people stitch into a belt or piece of cloth with prayers of protection.

After the tsunami, I remember reading about the “3.11 portrait project” by photographer Nobuyuki Kobayashi. His goal was to take 1,000 portraits of people in the disaster area. At that time, all the pictures people owned were washed away in the tsunami. I often found them outside in the mud. Kobayashi-san wanted to help people build new memories by taking new portraits of people and giving them to them. Sometimes he would have schoolchildren write notes of encouragement on the back first.

There was also the “1,000 Portraits of Hope” Project by artist Naoto Nakagawa. He held an exhibit just a few blocks from where I live here in Tokyo. He went from shelter to shelter hand drawing various people. Nakagawa-san lives and works in New York City, so I heard more about this exhibit as it travelled around Manhattan from my friends who live there, especially when it was exhibited at St. John the Divine, which is near Columbia University where I went to school, and got into a lot of newspapers. He too was trying to reach 1,000 portraits.

So the violin doctor Nakazawa-san shared stories of his hopes for “The Bond of 1,000 Tones” Project. And he also shared something that Empress Michiko told him when he told her he wanted to reach 1,000 performers to spread this hope around the country of Japan, and she said, “People forget so easily so go slowly, very slowly. If you send out this music, these tones, to even just one person, then they’ll remember.” It’s so cool that this artist got the endorsement of the Imperial Household to pursue this project.

I’m just so excited how God is bringing hope to the people of Japan. After such a terrible disaster, it was hard to find the light, but the lessons we learned then are just as applicable now, for all of us around the world during the spread of COVID-19. We’re enveloped in darkness. People are lonely and isolated. We have to hide our faces from one another with masks. We’re afraid to even get near each other. Entering someone’s home or a church is a place of fear and danger, and it’s impossible to see what will happen next.

“The Bond of 1,000 Tones” shows us is that we’re not alone. We’re surrounded by community. The tsunami violin, born out of disaster, provides just one more way to bring us together, and is just one more example of how the arts builds community and can build the church.

Pointers to Christ are everywhere in the world around us. We just need more and more Christians to talk about them, to praise the good and beautiful things we see in the world and show how it makes us think of Christ. And who knows? God may be calling even you to bring these conversations to a foreign land.

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30. Setomono

Everyone in Japan knows the word setomono (セトモノ), because you find it on quite a few boxes you get in the mail. It means “fragile,” but it also literally means “product of Seto.” Seto is an art village known in Japan for its ceramics with over a 1,500 year history, longer if you count the indigenous people who lived there before that time. And today that pottery tradition is alive and well.

Last week, I went to Seto to assist my teammate Peter Bakelaar, who runs an art gallery there called Gallery NANI. Seto was having their large annual festival. Streets were blocked off to traffic and filled with tent after tent of artists selling their pottery. The items I saw were amazing! Some pieces were so intricately painted that I was afraid to touch them. Others were made to look like they were made of solid metal. The most impressive were those that worked designs into the pieces not with paint but with different kinds of clay rather than paint. It reminded me of the wood working tradition of mixing together different kinds of wood, some light, some dark, to make toys, furniture, or pictures. Except that, it looked much harder to do that in clay!

My wife Abi and teammate, Christina, traveled to Seto to give concerts all day during this festival. They performed in Peter’s gallery using the “tsunami violin.” The exhibit “Scars: The Path Toward Healing,” which we talked about in a previous podcast, remembers hope and healing through the arts in the 10 years since the earthquake and tsunami struck on March 11, 2011.

During this festival in Seto, Peter made the main attraction in his gallery the large “kintsugi” piece in the middle of the room. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of pottery repair, but this time Peter made it out of wood. It’s hard for me to describe, but the gaping wound in the wood gradually healed with each successive layer of gold painted wood. He invited people to participate in the piece, even during the concerts, by pushing nails into the wood. Each one represented a person who died in the tsunami, 19,000 in all. It was a beautiful display of the healing that can come from wounds and scars.

While in Seto, I had a chance to visit one of the clay mines in the area. At the top of the hill, the clay layer was down about 30 feet from the surface and made of the highest quality of clay I have ever seen. It was exactly like what you would buy in an art store. I grabbed a handful from the ground, made a little figurine, and placed it on a rock to dry in the sun. That clay was really heavy.

1,500 years ago people found this layer of clay as it came out near the river that now runs through the center of the town. And over the centuries, they dug further back into the hillside following the layer.

Pottery is a huge part of Japanese culture, so different from the wood and stone culture of New England where I grew up. Tea kettles, cups, bowls, plates, and dolls. Even tiles for the roofs of Japanese homes. Many of the walls in Seto are even made of pottery.

It’s fascinating to me how periods of Japanese history are defined by different types of pottery. The Jomon Period (10,500–300 BC) was known for making pottery by coiling ropes of clay and firing them in open fires. The Yayoi Period (300 BC–300 AD) was known for simpler pottery with no patterns. It was named for a region of Tokyo where this kind of pottery was first found. The Kofun Period (300-538 AD) is known for its roofed kilns, tunnels that went up the sides of hills. Because these kilns were enclosed, they were able to reach much higher temperatures. Also, the pottery was made using a potter’s wheel for more uniformity.

Growing up in Western culture, I was taught to think of history in terms of the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. Of course, Japan also went through these periods, but instead of stone and metal, the early history of civilization in Japan is defined by its pottery!

In Genesis 2, the Bible talks about the gold and onyx buried in the ground and the bdellium found in the plants. From the very beginning, before the fall, God provided resources not only for men and women to eat but to make things beautiful. In Seto, the ground we walked on was begging to be used to make things. It was so easy to see and appreciate this gift to us, to delight in making in this world and see God’s call to do it for the sake of his glory. The clay-rich ground of Seto is just one more example of how God loves us and provides for us.

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29. Cow Pie Water

Exactly 19 years ago, my wife and I started our hike on the entire Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), 2,659 miles from the border of Mexico to the border of Canada. It took almost six months!

My oldest son is about to go to college, and so he, his brother, and I will be hiking part of the Appalachian Trail this summer for a few weeks to celebrate as our family begins a furlough in the U.S. Planning for that trip brought back many memories from the PCT. The strongest is the time we became so dehydrated that we were sick for weeks afterward. I tell this story in my book Cow Pie Water, which you can find on Amazon. In fact, the whole book is named after this story. The rest of the book is a compilation of all our trail journals from that trip.

https://www.amazon.com/Cow-Pie-Water-Pacific-Mexico/dp/B08NWJPNBY/

All forty were completely empty. I lifted each plastic gallon jug just to be sure. Hikers in the previous town promised a huge cache of water here. Whatever drops had been left quickly evaporated as the sun mercilessly beat down. The hot dry wind blew in my face, bushes and cacti too short to provide any useful kind of shade at all.

Abi and I were in the Mojave Desert, infamous for its killer heat and lack of water. Trail angels routinely leave an abundance of water for thirsty hikers. We didn’t carry enough water, because we simply couldn’t. It was too heavy to carry so much so far.

Trying not to get discouraged, we kept hiking hoping there would be another water cache not too far down the trail. After about an hour, we spotted it. But as we got closer, we could see some bottles laying on their side and others moving in the wind. These too were empty. To keep the containers from blowing away, a rope snaked through every handle and around a bush.

We picked up our pace, becoming concerned.

Pretty soon, we passed another empty water cache, and then another! And then we stopped. We were still weak from serious dehydration just a few days before, when we found a dead horse in the middle of a small murky pond, the only water source in a whole day of hiking. Then too we were forced to move on empty-handed.

I put my backpack down and checked the data book. The next water source was another unbelievable 37 miles away! In this over 100 degree heat, we were never going to make it. My face and body crusted with salt from sweat that never had a chance to run down my skin. The ground was nothing but sand, cacti, and bushes. Nothing can live without water. There were no buildings or paved roads as far as the eye could see in all directions.

“Well, this isn’t good,” I said, trying to make Abi laugh with the magnitude of the understatement. But she did not laugh.

I pulled out my map and found what was labeled an “unreliable water source” about a 30-minute hike off the trail. I hated to add the extra hour and fatigue of hiking there and back, but what choice did I have? I left my backpack with Abi in the inadequate shade of a two-foot-high cactus and went in search of it, filter and water bottles in hand.

Why are we so needy for water? You would think humans could last longer without it. Just a few hours in the sun, and we can barely function at all. A few more, and we’re as good as dead. Nothing is more essential to life than water.

All the stories of thirst in the Bible suddenly became very real to me. The Israelites were thirsty crossing the desert. The deer in the Psalms panted for streams of water. Jesus said, “Give me a drink” (John 4:7) to the woman at the Samaritan well, and “I thirst” (John 19:28) on the cross.

After about 30 minutes of walking, I heard the faint mooing of cattle, and my hopes began to rise. Where there are cows, there is water! But as soon as I saw them, my heart sank. The cows stood right in the middle of the only sign of water, nothing more than a muddy patch of ground. And the area was full of cow pies. Why did the cows have to choose this spot, the only water supply for miles around, to make their toilet?

Cautiously, I inched forward, not wanting to spook the cows or ruin my sneakers in the filth. I stuck my hand into the muck and scooped out a little hole. It felt exactly like you would imagine it, sticking my hand into a stopped-up toilet.

I inserted the intake tube of the filter into the muck and pumped, clogging it almost instantaneously, and it took all my strength just to keep going. I looked suspiciously at the water accumulating in the bottle. Nothing was floating in it, but it had a very distinct yellow tint.

Hesitantly, I took a small sip. It was warm and tasted . . . I’m not sure how to describe it . . . strange. Metallic. On the trail, I often filtered and drank from muddy puddles, but this was different. There was definitely more than spring water in that gulp! But I drank some more.

I kept pumping and pumping with all of my energy, doing my best to get a full liter before taking it back to Abi. In a far away land in my distant memory, I always had running water at the turn of a faucet. It was hard now to imagine that such a place ever existed. Out here, we drink cow pie water.

Abi’s eyes got big when I described the source of the water. She opened the lid and sniffed the warm yellow liquid.

“You really drank this?” she asked.

“It won’t kill you,” I said. “Probably.”

“It smells,” she said, then drank. “Ugh, it’s like drinking directly from the backside of a cow.” She downed half the liter and passed it back to me. We were thankful to have anything at all.

Looking at the map again, we saw that if we hiked all night we could reach a fresh spring by the next morning. Finishing it off, we began to walk again, dehydrated and weak, desperately in search of water.

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28. Ryokan Taigu

I’d like to introduce you to a little poem. It’s kanshi, which literally means “Chinese poem.” Although, actually it’s not Chinese at all. It’s a Japanese poem, which uses only Chinese characters, in this case five per line. It’s almost like a puzzle, where Japanese take Chinese letters and work within quite a few rules to say something as beautifully as possible.

This poem is by Ryokan Taigu, who lived in the late 1700s and early 1800s, and is one of the most popular figures in Japanese history, known for his poetry, calligraphy, and a very unique way of looking at the world. But more than that, he’s really known for the way he cared for the small and the weak. “Taigu” is a name he gave himself, and anyone who can read Japanese will immediately recognize the meaning. It means “big fool” or “great fool,” so Ryokan called himself “The Great Fool.” In this short poem about food, Ryokan asks a very basic, and seemingly very foolish, question. And that is “Why do people eat?”

I translated this poem with the help of my Japanese teacher, and so I would like to read it to you now. Here is the poem:

誰家不喫飯　Everybody eats
為何不自知　but does anybody know why?
伊余出此語　I ask and
寺人皆相嗤　everybody mocks me.
爾与嗤我語　Instead of mocking me
不如退思之　think about it!
思之若不休　And then think about it some more.
必有可嗤時　There will be a time for laughing.

誰家不喫飯　Everybody eats
為何不自知　but does anybody know why?
伊余出此語　I ask and
寺人皆相嗤　everybody mocks me.
爾与嗤我語　But, hey, in mocking my words
不如無自欺　you fool yourself.
若得無自欺　I’m telling you,
始知我語奇　try to see the wisdom of these words.

誰家不喫飯　Everybody eats
為何不自知　but does anybody know why?
伊余出此語　I ask and
寺人皆相嗤　everybody mocks me.
寺人嗤尚可　Actually, I don’t mind if you laugh.
我亦欲嗤之　I want to laugh too.
嗤々倘不休　Laughing, laughing, with everyone laughing
直到弥勒時　the time of Miroku will come.

Okay, so I’ve taken a little liberty with the tone of the English, but I’ve haven’t changed the meaning. Personally, I think Ryokan would have really liked my English translation.

I want to especially talk about this last line, because those of you do not know Japan are probably not familiar with this figure Miroku. Here are the last two lines again:

嗤々倘不休　Laughing, laughing, with everyone laughing
直到弥勒時　the time of Miroku will come.

Miroku is a bodhisattva, which is believed to be an enlightened being that has chosen not to pursue nirvana, in order to rescue people from cycles of rebirth. He is seen as beings of compassion. Whereas Buddha has renounced all ties with this world, Bodhisattva is still connected to this earth in order to save us. I’m not a scholar of Buddhism, so I shouldn’t say more than that, but what I find particularly interesting about this poem is how asking a question about food led Ryokan to this being, who will come at the end of the world to save us.

Why does food, or more specifically, the need to eat, lead Ryokan to this figure? Isn’t that interesting? Ryokan suggests that there is something to this question. That food is not just about food. It’s not something we just eat in order to give us enough energy to get through the day. That there is more to it.

As a Christian, I can’t help but think about Christ. Christ tells us that food is never just about food. That there is something fundamental about our dependence on food that points to God. That the infinitely diverse and creative and beautiful foods of all the nations of the world throughout time actually reveal something about Christ and how he works in this world. That God is speaking to us through all of creation, including our food. That it’s not merely stuff. Christ even says that he is the “bread of life” and that “whoever comes to me will never go hungry” (John 6:35).

I find it fascinating that a poet in 18th century Japan, one hundred years after the last Christian was killed or kicked out of Japan, who had never met a Christian, had never seen a Bible, probably had never even heard the name of Jesus, wrote about how food leads us to a savior who will come and save us all.

Isn’t this a great case for foreign missions? How can someone know the gospel unless someone tells them? How can someone know that Jesus claims to be the bread of life unless they hear it from the Bible? There are so many pointers to Jesus and his gospel in Japanese art and culture, Japanese food and Japanese poetry, because God put them there. The next step is for some Christian, missionary or Japanese Christian, to come along and talk with them about it. And isn’t this the secret of contextualization, to show how God has already been working in Japan since before the first missionary set foot here and letting the Holy Spirit do the rest.

Christianity is not a foreign religion. Christ is not a foreign figure. He has been in Japan all along. May more and more people come to know him.

27. The Hotel

In the city of Minami Sanriku, on the northeastern coast of Japan, the Kanyo Hotel sits on a high cliff overlooking the ocean. This is a really nice hotel, which usually costs well over $300 a night to stay there. The food is amazing, and there is a really cool cave-like hot spring built into the side of the cliff, so you relax outside in hot spring waters while feeling cool sea wind blow in your face, and watch the sunset over the ocean.

However, I didn’t get to experience any of these things. This is because I visited the hotel one month after the March 11, 2011 earthquake. The parking lot was full of military and relief trucks. The large lobby was like a dark cave that constantly echoed the voices of people talking on cellphones. Whiteboards and tables with lists and maps plastered every surface. Noisy generators lit lanterns. And on top of that, there was no electricity and no running water.

The night I spent at that hotel was one of the most unpleasant of my life. The toilet in my room was full of human refuse, where it had been for weeks. Someone tried to use duct tape to seal it shut, but the smell leaked through anyway, and it was unbearable. I stayed there with two other guys, in this really tiny room built for one. There were no sheets or any way to keep the room clean. The following nights we decided to sleep outside in a tent just for the sake of the fresh air.

Because the Kanyo Hotel is high on that cliff, it was one of the only buildings left standing after the tsunami. It was also by far the largest, so it immediately became the headquarters for relief efforts throughout that region. 95% of that city was destroyed by the tsunami, which was 68-feet high in that region.

Most buildings in Minami Sanriku are at sea level, but the schools, to protect the children, are on high ground. This meant that when that wave came, quite a few children were orphaned. The Japanese news showed survivors spelling out S.O.S. with debris in school yards and on rooftops. Miki Endo, a 25-year-old employee of the city’s Crisis Management Department, was hailed as a hero on the news for broadcasting live over the loudspeakers pleading with people to reach high ground, right up until the moment she drowned. Of the 130 people working in her building, only 10 survived, including the mayor, by clinging to the very top of the rooftop antenna. I saw this building. All that was left was a steel structure and a memorial for those who were lost.

I came to this hotel to give a concert. They asked me to set up my portable pipe organ in the lobby, which I connected to a generator we brought and placed outside to keep the noise away. Couches and chairs lined up to face the organ. I’ll post pictures of this in the show notes for this episode.

You know, looking back at this concert, I’m a little embarrassed. You see, I made a huge mistake. I completely misread the audience, starting with a long, meditative, and actually rather heavy piece by Duruflé. By the end of it, almost everyone was asleep. It was 7:30 at night, and the audience was made up completely of relief workers. They had had a VERY long day and were incredibly exhausted and stressed. They needed something light and happy. Not the organ music I had planned.

I had to do something quickly to change up the program, so I went up the Japanese singer Nozomi who came with our team from Tokyo. She too was almost asleep, as we also had already had a really long day of travel and delivering supplies.

“Would you like to sing the next piece,” I asked. “I can accompany you on the lobby piano.”

She agreed and started to sing. Her unaccompanied voice echoed through that lobby. Little by little, people stopped talking on cell phones. The relief workers sitting near us began to wake up. I quietly joined on piano, not wanting to disturb the scene, and within a few minutes Nozomi had everyone laughing and clapping. I spent the rest of that concert accompanying her on the piano, completely forgetting about the organ. The atmosphere was amazing. Everyone was so relaxed and happy. It was amazing how quickly Nozomi was able to change the mood of that room.

After the concert, people came up to us. They thanked me for bringing Nozomi, which by the way, her name means hope, so maybe it had a double meaning. The other team members said it was the best concert yet. So much for all that effort bringing the organ from Tokyo! Although, it wasn’t a complete waste. I did get a lot of time interacting with people afterwards showing them how the organ worked.

It’s funny how in situations like this, you come with a plan, but you have to be ready to change that plan immediately. You really never know what’s best until the moment, and what we needed in that moment was the crystal-clear voice of a soprano.

The next day, our team delivered milk and supplies to families throughout the mountain region. Milk was really hard to get at that time since the Fukushima nuclear power plants decimated the milk industry in Fukushima, and all regular supply lines were cut off. People in that region had absolutely no access to groceries or supplies of any kind. Only people in shelters were being taken care of. Gas stations were closed to everyone except relief vehicles with permits. As we delivered the supplies, Nozomi sang for people at each stop. Of course, it would take way too much time to set up the organ, although I did think about setting it up in the back of that 2-ton truck and just sliding the door open at each stop. Nozomi just sang by herself. And the people loved it. And I’m glad I was able to be a part of it.

Once again, music showed itself to be useful, one of those “necessary” things we needed after the disaster. The aroma of beauty wiped away the stench of that hotel toilet. It helped us relax and drew us together. It gave us strength and encouragement to go on with the next day and the next, and do what needed to be done, and not be overwhelmed by so much suffering and loss. 3.11 is not the first disaster people have faced in Japan, and it certainly won’t be the last. As we continue to face the darkness and challenges of the corona virus and the next disaster, whatever that may be, may this aroma of beauty continue to find its way to many.

26. The Water Child

A couple of weeks ago, Sawako-san, a woman in our church here in Tokyo, produced a musical comedy called Breast Wars. It’s a story about a woman in her 40s in her struggle with breast cancer. In one scene, she sits in the waiting room of the doctor’s office singing, with the clock ticking down, “Should I? Can I? Is there no other way?” while the nurses, while also singing, try to pull her into the other room to be operated on. The other patients join in as well, singing their differing opinions about whether they should go or not.

There’s nothing humorous about breast cancer, but this scene is certainly humorous. Sawako-san did a wonderful job of bringing life to a very difficult situation. In our art, life, faith discussion the other day, she shared her personal experiences with breast cancer and her inner struggles she had through it. She told us that she made the musical because she wanted to encourage others going through very difficult times, to tell them they are NOT ALONE, that there is hope and community and life even in very difficult situations. She told us how what really surprised her about the production is how it brought people together. Christians from many different churches and non-Christians as well, they all came together and enjoyed working together. She told us there was something life-giving, not just in the performance, but in the planning, rehearsals, and production as well.

Listening to Sawako-san talk and share her story, I thought about how this is exactly what I also have experienced. The reason I started Community Arts Tokyo was to build that kind of community, where people love one another, make something together, and bring hope and healing in really dark times.

I thought through the stories I’ve been sharing in this podcast over the weeks. I thought of Hiroko-san who took broken pieces of sea glass and made beautiful objects with them, and gave them as gifts to people, bringing beauty out of a time of devastation after the tsunami. I thought of Nozomi Project, that group of ladies who make beautiful jewelry out of broken shards of dishes and cups. I thought of the church in Kamaishi that didn’t throw out their piano, but rather rebuilt it, knowing full well how much time and money it was going to cost. There is story after story of people bringing hope and healing into their broken worlds through the arts.

There is a man name Nakazawa Sensei, who we showcased in our conference on March 13. He went up to the city of Rikuzentakata on the northeast coast of Japan after the tsunami to help with relief efforts. He saw all the wood and the debris covered in mud. He realized the trees were all that was left of the beautiful and famous forest that once sheltered and protected the people of the city from strong coastal winds. He realized the lumber was all that was left of the homes where people lived. It was not trash. Rather, it was memories. Because he is a violin maker, or a “violin doctor” as he calls himself, he decided to make the TSUNAMI VIOLIN, which is now traveling the country of Japan for concerts by 1,000 musicians. Nakazawa Sensei announced in our conference that we were the 749th concert! That’s pretty cool, isn’t it? The violin was played by our teammate Christina Davison, who will also be taking the violin to Seto, Japan next to play in a big traditional festival and share the story of the violin with the people there. Again, this is just one more example of how the arts can bring healing in really difficult times, bringing people together as they share a common story.

I’d like to share the story of my friend Ellen McGinty and her book The Water Child, which came out on March 2nd and is available on Amazon. She will be the guest speaker at our next Art, Life, Faith gathering here in Tokyo this month.

I love this book! It’s so well written. It’s the story of a Japanese teenager who has always been irresistibly drawn to the ocean. Her mother was a pearl diver, and there is nothing she’d rather do than become one herself. At the climax of the book, the main character travels back to her hometown just before the monstrous 3.11 tsunami hits, and it takes every ounce of her strength to survive in this world where the ocean she loves is now bent on destroying her and everything and everyone she loves.

Ellen McGinty lives in Japan, and her husband’s parents were leaders in the relief movement. As Ellen heard story after story of heartbreak, she wanted to remember and tell these stories to others. She wanted to honor their lives, so she wrote a novel, her very first one. It’s a work of fiction—every character is made up—but quite a few of the characters are based on real people and quite a few of the events are based on real events.

There’s one scene that is especially moving when, Ellen told me this is based on a true story, the driver of a yaki imo truck, a truck that sells hot fresh baked potatoes, decides to stay behind when his truck gets stuck in traffic on a bridge over a river, and he uses his loudspeaker to tell everyone to run, that the tsunami is coming. He continues to do this until both he and his truck are overcome by the wave.

This beautiful novel, The Water Child, is yet one more example of how tremendous pain and suffering can give birth to life and beauty. For reasons I am just beginning to understand, pain and suffering in this world are catalysts for creation, especially for creating beautiful things. In the mud, in the devastation, in the dark, we crave something with beauty and hope and light. And we will do anything we can to hold on to it. This is the unmistakable power of art. This is the tool in the Creator’s hands, which he has lovingly put into our hands. May we always have the strength and wisdom and love to use it.

25. Finding Hope in Hard Things

During the month of March on this podcast, we’ve been telling story after story from March 11 and the terrible earthquake that struck Japan 10 years ago. I was surprised when headlines in the news the other day read, “March 11: The Day Everything Changed,” but the articles were not talking about one of the most devastating earthquakes in recorded history but about the day one year ago that the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic. So for all of us in Japan, 3/11 is now a double anniversary. And in my family’s case, a triple anniversary since my wedding anniversary also falls on 3/11!

The trauma that people have experienced this year, and the trauma that people have experienced 10 years ago, will impact them their whole lives. So many lives were lost, and there’s nothing we can do to bring them back. There are just some things in this world that can never be fixed. So, what do we do with that? Do we just despair? Do we just curse God and die? If we don’t make a conscious effort to do otherwise, this trauma will not only ruin our lives but the lives of everyone around us as well, and I’ve seen that time and time again here in Japan. There are many stories, which I am not going to share now, but they hurt. This pain, this suffering, this death, this loss … I’ve known too many lives here destroyed by these things.

To wrestle with this question a little more, I’ve invited Pierce Taylor Hibbs to come on the show. He is the author of Finding Hope In Hard Things: A Positive Take on Suffering. The major theme of his book is that hard things do not have to lead to despair or more brokenness. Listen in to hear what the Bible tells us about how suffering is a tool in the hands of God.

Read more about Pierce Taylor Hibbs on his website.

24. The Cathedral

Japan is no stranger to devastated cities. As I traveled giving concerts through city after city ravaged by the 2011 tsunami in Japan, my thoughts eventually turned to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No other city in the history of the world quite compares with their destruction.

They are the very first “ground zero.” In one brief flash of light and fire, every living thing vaporized into thin air. Those further away who survived the initial explosion continued to be torn apart at the cellular level by radiation that perpetually shot through their bodies.

But the story of devastation in Nagasaki begins hundreds of years earlier. In 1597, twenty-six Christians were marched 600 miles through the snow, from the political center of Kyoto to the economic center of Nagasaki. They climbed a hill each to their own wooden cross, where the men and boys were bound and stabbed through the heart with spears. Every ship entering the harbor for months afterwards saw those bodies and understood their message. “Christianity is not welcome here.”

Christians fled north to the village of Urakami and beyond, where they hid their faith for the next 250 years. They became the kakure kirishitan, the “hidden” Christians, forced to participate in humiliating fumie interrogations, where they tread on images of Jesus and Mary.

In 1865, Japan opened back up to the world. After the hidden Christians introduced themselves to new missionaries, the persecution started all over again. Thousands were imprisoned, and hundreds died. Responding to outrage from around the world, Japan at last gave official permission for religious freedom, a policy it still holds to this day.

In 1895, Urakami Cathedral began construction. It was the largest and most spectacular cathedral in all of Asia. Here, finally, God could be openly worshipped in Japan and no longer hidden. The cathedral was a clear symbol of the presence of God with his people. The Christians built where the humiliating fumie interrogations took place for hundreds of years, and near the hill where the twenty-six martyrs hung. The building was named St. Mary’s Cathedral, after the one who witnessed the suffering and death of her own son, the Mater Dolorosa, or the Mother of Sorrows.

On August 9, 1945, not twenty years after the cathedral was completed, an atomic bomb detonated directly above the roof. Of all the places! How is it that God would allow the destruction of this symbol of his presence, a place where people could finally gather and openly worship him? Why would he allow the Christians of Nagasaki to be stomped on like this, like the fumie persecution of so many years before?

The bomb detonated at 11:02 a.m. during a mass as the Feast Day of St. Mary approached. More people than usual gathered. A girls’ choir sang the Psalms when the shockwave hit. No bodies were ever found.

Of course, the target was not the cathedral. The bomb was meant for somewhere else, a chemical weapons plant further north in the city of Kokura. But when the plane got there, thick cloud covering prevented a visual of the site and the bomb couldn’t be dropped.

The plane flew on to the secondary target, the city of Nagasaki, a powerful harbor with weapons and steel manufacturing. Here, too, the clouds hid the ground. The plane, running desperately short on fuel, had little time. Later they would practically crash-land in Okinawa with only five minutes of fuel left in the tanks.

After two bombing runs and no visual target, and no ability to drop the bomb, the clouds suddenly . . . miraculously . . . parted. The hole opened just large enough to make out a racetrack next to a river that ran through the middle of town. Without hesitation, they dropped the payload and flew to a safe distance. But as the bomb fell, it moved a bit until it was directly over the Cathedral of St. Mary. This poor church, the Christian center of Nagasaki, and in some ways all of Japan, sat like a bullseye for the most powerful weapon ever made.

In an amazing coincidence, the Emperor of Japan officially ended the war on August 15, the Feast Day of the Assumption of St. Mary—Mary, the Mother of Sorrows, the very person to whom the cathedral was dedicated!

In the inferno of the bomb, practically every piece of wood turned to ash except one: a wooden statue of Mary. This statue became known as the hibakusha Mary, the A-bombed Mary, a survivor of the bomb. The paint of her face boiled away, transfiguring her into a ghostly pale white. Both glass eyes melted completely away. Her right cheek was smitten and scarred black by the flames.

When I visited Nagasaki and stood staring at Mary’s statue, I don’t know what I felt. The site seemed too precious or holy to take a picture. I thought about the Christians who hung on crosses not far from there. I thought about the fumie images of Jesus and Mary that had been tread on for centuries, and I thought about the flash and the wind and the flame. So much sorrow in such a small area!

I wanted to speak with someone and process what I felt, but at the time, there was only one other person in the church, an older woman selling postcards, with absolutely no expression on her face. However, when I looked in her direction, I thought I saw her nod slightly as if to say, “I know. I know.”

In Japan, there is a saying. Ikari no Hiroshima. Inori no Nagasaki. “Hiroshima rages. Nagasaki prays.” While the people of Hiroshima turned to protesting nuclear weapons around the world, the people of Nagasaki turned to prayer. This image of Nagasaki as a praying city was especially reinforced by the writings of Takashi Nagai.

Nagai was a Christian doctor who self-sacrificially set up a small hut just outside the cathedral soon after the explosion. He helped a lot of people, but then he eventually passed away only a few year later from lethal doses of radiation. In his book The Bells of Nagasaki, he wrote that the city, and particularly the cathedral, was a kind of sacrificial lamb which not only ended the war but continued to prevent another nuclear explosion. He believed everything was under God’s sovereign guidance and control, working all things for good, and he believed the trauma of Nagasaki was part of that plan. His prayer was for Nagasaki to always be a symbol of peace. He wrote,

The atomic bomb falling on Nagasaki was a great act of Divine Providence. It was a grace from God. Nagasaki must give thanks to God.

In so many ways, these words and images point me to Jesus, the lamb sacrificed for the healing and peace of the world. Jesus withstood the ultimate consuming fire of God’s wrath, the inferno of hell itself. He was smitten on the cheek by guards and blinded by blood streaming into his eyes from a crown of thorns. He was buried in the rubble of our sin, and then rose again, scarred, from the ashes. Christ on the cross is the true and ultimate ground zero of all of humanity’s war and hate.

We considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. (Isaiah 53:4–5)

“Jesus withstood the ultimate

consuming fire of God’s wrath,

the inferno of hell itself.”

Part of the bell tower from the church remains in the very place where it fell on that tragic day. The bell itself now sits in a glass case, ready to ring out once again in the new heavens and new earth. As the Apostle Peter wrote,

That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells. (2 Peter 3:12–13)

In the destruction of everything by fire, Peter points to the promise that all scars and brokenness will be filled with meaning, purpose, hope, and beauty. One day, we will enter a city that can never be destroyed by fire. As we wait for this perfect renewal and restoration, through our little acts of rebuilding, we experience the work of redemption God has already begun.

The people of St. Mary’s decided to rebuild their cathedral and not leave it as a ruined memorial, like so many urged them to do. Today, you can walk up their stairs, and enter their sanctuary, and marvel at their high vaulted ceilings and beautiful stained glass windows. When you do, take note of the red glass that fills the sanctuary with a warm glow. They represent the tsubaki plant, common around Nagasaki. In 1597, just as the twenty-six were martyred and their blood spilled on the ground, these ruby red flowers began to bloom all over the hillside.

The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, and the beauty of the church is built on the sacrifice of Christ and those who follow him.

On a cold day in February in 1597, the Japanese Christian Paul Miki spoke his final words from the cross. He urged everyone to look to the sacrifice of Christ as the answer to the tragedy in Nagasaki. He assured them of hope in suffering and the end of all destruction, through the words and power of Christ. Miki said,

All of you here, please listen to me. . . . I have committed no crime, but have only been teaching the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. For this, I am being put to death. I am happy to die for such a reason, and see my death as a great blessing from God. In these last few moments, when you can rest assured I will not try to deceive you, I want to affirm and make clear, “for the salvation of man, there is no way other way than the Christian way.”

Just as Christians teach the “forgiveness of your enemies and those who wrong you,” I forgive Taiko-sama and all those involved with sentencing me to death. I have no hatred for Taiko-sama. Instead, it is my greatest longing and hope that he too and all Japanese people would become followers of Christ.

23. Our 3/11 Story

For the past couple of months, I’ve been sharing stories of my experiences after the 2011 earthquake in Japan. For this episode, I want to go back to the very beginning. I want to start with Day 1, the day the day the earthquake hit and how we got involved in the relief movement. This is going to be longer than usual, so brace yourselves, but I hope you’ll find it useful as we all think about how God may use us, all of us, especially as artists, in the tragedies and traumas of the lives of everyone around us.

“Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday . . . ”

A dozen or so Japanese children slowly repeated the words after me, doing their best to copy the pronunciation of a native English speaker.

“Thursday, Friday, Saturday . . . ”

We sat on a mountain of futons, piled to one side of the room. It was March 14, 2011, just three days after one of the largest earthquakes in human history. We were in Fukushima, not far from the infamous nuclear power plants.

As I glanced out the window, I saw that the snow had stopped falling, forming dirty puddles on the frozen ground. I knew how cold it was outside, because it was not much warmer inside.

Just moments before, most of the men left to distribute gasoline we brought from Tokyo to help stranded cars. Meanwhile, I was doing my best to entertain this group of children. The other adults were cleaning up after lunch.

It’s hard to imagine what these people had just been through. Two days before, they were forced from their homes and towns with nothing but what they carried at the time. Most did not even have a chance to pack a suitcase or grab a backpack as they were pulled off the streets by the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. Their homes were now a nuclear wasteland, which they most likely would never see again.

When the earthquake struck, I was riding the Tokyo Metro, deep underground, on my way to a dentist appointment. Suddenly, the train stopped so quickly I thought for sure someone was on the tracks. Then a short announcement came over the loudspeaker.

“Please wait a moment. We have a signal from the emergency earthquake warning system.”

What? An earthquake?

Bamm. Seconds later, it struck. After the sudden jolt, the train car rocked gently, but rather than dying away, it increased in intensity, and then got stronger still. Pretty soon, all I could do was grab the edge of my seat and hold on. I was surrounded by people, but I didn’t hear a single sound from any one of them. The squeal of metal filled my ears as the train strained against the force of the ground throwing us in every direction.

What is going on here?

I’ve felt hundreds of earthquakes before, but never anything like this. Minutes later, not seconds, I was still holding on.

It was the first time in my life I’ve felt an earthquake that was actually dangerous. Usually earthquakes fade away before there’s time to feel anything at all, but this was different. I began to imagine the earth splitting open and rivers of magma rushing toward us and tunnel ceilings coming down on our heads.

When, at last, the shaking stopped, everything was quiet.

Suddenly, noise erupted from the loudspeaker. The conductor spoke so quickly I had no idea what he was saying, but, to be honest, it didn’t really matter. He could have been reading his grocery list, and I wouldn’t have noticed the difference. It wasn’t that I was uninterested. It’s just that, at that moment, I had too many other things to think about, like “Would the magma come inside the train?” and “When the magma comes, what’s the best way to get out of here?”

It’s probably not normal to think about escaping rivers of magma while taking trains to the dentist. But, clearly, this was no ordinary day.

I’ll escape through that door, I thought, when finally the train started moving again.

But then it stopped.

It moved.

It stopped.

It moved again.

It stopped again.

We spent a whole lot more time stopping than moving, and every time, the conductor rambled on about his grocery list.

I wonder if I should get out and walk, I thought. At this rate, we’ll be here all night.

Over an hour later, the train finally arrived at the next station and opened the doors.

The chaos outside struck me like a brick. The platform overflowed with people, as security yelled through megaphones.

• • •

When the earthquake struck, my wife Abi stood waiting for the elevators at the base of our thirty-two floor apartment building. She was on her way back from dropping our son Eastin off at karate.

The ground beneath her feet jolted, and the power to the elevators immediately cut off. As the whole building shook around her, she could do nothing but think about the falling twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center.

I need to get out of here . . . now! she thought.

She stumbled outside, where she was overcome by the sound of the building’s steel structure roaring as it twisted against the bucking ground below.

She looked down the street to see a line of elementary school children coming home from school. Then she noticed the heavy clay tiles flying through the air like popcorn from the houses across the street.

“Kochi e kite!” she yelled in Japanese. Come! This way!

She gathered the children, one after another, from the danger of the street into the safety of the lobby. But as she looked around her, she noticed she was surrounded by glass.

Oh, please don’t shatter! she pleaded to the two-story high walls of window. There was nowhere else to go. All she could do was wait, and hope.

At last the shaking died down, and children began to connect with their parents. Others continued their journey home.

Thinking of her own family upstairs, Abi entered the stairwell and began the long climb upwards. A steady stream of people moved past her on their way out of the building.

Loudspeakers in the stairwell crackled. “Please evacuate! Please evacuate! This is not a drill. Please evacuate!”

Not a drill? Abi thought. Do they really need to say that part?

On the way upstairs, she found a little girl crying.

“Where’s your mommy?” Abi asked.

“I don’t know,” the little girl sobbed. Clearly, she had been alone when the earthquake hit, but dutifully followed the instructions to evacuate.

“Okay, don’t worry. We’ll find her together!”

After bringing the girl down to the lobby and finding her mother, Abi again began the long climb upwards. At about the 10th floor, she heard a familiar voice.

“Mommy!”

She looked up to see seven-year-old Aidan, one-year-old Coen, and her parents, visiting from the United States.

“Oh, thank goodness!” Abi exclaimed.

Her mother braced herself against the wall as she handed over Coen, a look of pain on her face.

“What happened?” Abi asked. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, don’t worry about me,” her mother said. “I was trying to get my grandson, when somehow a table got in the way!” She explained how everything crashed around her—glasses, dishes, mirrors, pictures, books, and CDs—and Coen woke up screaming from his nap. “Your apartment’s a bit of a mess,” she apologized

They were interrupted by the loudspeakers, again barking instructions.

“I guess we’d better head down,” Abi said.

Now reunited, the family joined the flow of people heading to the shelter being set up outside my son’s kindergarten.

• • •

Meanwhile, I was still trapped underground in a subway station. Staff shouted over megaphones. Passengers yelled at cell phones. Children cried, and alarms sounded. The cacophony was overwhelming.

I remained in my seat, wondering what to do next. It was hard to think with so much noise.

I looked around me trying to figure out where I was, but couldn’t see a station name anywhere. The other passengers remained in their seats.

I tried my cell phone, but there was no connection.

Should I get off? Clearly, the train was not going anywhere anytime soon, so I stood up. Wherever I am, I guess I’ll have to walk from here.

Stepping onto the platform and dodging my way through the crowd, I searched for the quickest way out of this mess and for some clue as to what to do next.

An insanely long line blocked my exit of people waiting for the payphones. It would take hours to make a call that way, I realized. I apologized as I pushed my way through and onto the stairs leading up and out of the station.

Stepping onto ground level, I noticed I was in the middle of a business district. An ocean of grey suits and ties filled the streets, packed solid like Times Square on New Year’s Eve except obviously without any of the festivities.

Another large aftershock struck, and I heard yelling in front of me. Mado kara hanare, someone shouted. Stay away from the windows!  More people poured out of buildings around me. Security wrapped off a large section of sidewalk with yellow plastic tape that said, Tachiiri Kinshi (Do Not Enter).

Amidst all the chaos, I suddenly remembered the dentist. I looked at my phone. I was already over an hour late. Obviously, I was really having trouble thinking straight, but with the dentist only one station away, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to head in that direction. Thirty minutes later, I found him in the street.

“Konnichi wa, I’m so sorry I’m late!” I called out as I approached.

The dentist gave me a surprised look. “Hunh? How’d you get here?”

We talked for a little while, and then I asked, “Any chance of finishing that root canal?”

“I’m sorry, I think that would be difficult given the circumstances . . .” As he trailed off, we both looked up at the building, half-expecting it to crumble right there before our eyes.

“I see,” I said reluctantly. My tooth was really bothering me, and I wasn’t sure when there would be another chance to do anything about it. But there was nothing for it.

“Please be careful,” I said, and started the long walk home. I tried my cell phone again, but there was still no connection.

Rivers of people flowed by me, walking in high heels and suits. Many had marathon distances to cover to get home. Some would take all night.

A crowd gathered in front of the display window at a big bank. I stopped to see what was going on. There, on a large TV, terrifying images replayed over and over again: Black waves surging over sea walls, racing through cities, and continuing far inland.

I’d never seen anything like it, and all I could do was stand there in disbelief. I didn’t know if these scenes were in Japan or somewhere else. If people around me started running, I’ll start running too.

Many aftershocks later, I finally made it back home, just as it was getting dark.

I used the building intercom to call my apartment from the lobby, but no one answered. I talked to a few people in the lobby, but no one had seen them. I even went to the karate studio, but no one was there.

I came back to the apartment and was just about to begin the long climb upwards when I found a handwritten note taped to the wall. The fact that the note was in English was what caught my eye.

We’re okay. Come to Eastin’s school. Abi.

I followed the instructions, and moments later I found them. We have never had such a happy reunion! After all the hugging and kissing and crying, Aidan told me, “I didn’t like that one.” I told him I agreed! I’ve experienced hundreds of earthquakes before, but never anything like that. I hope I never have to again.

“They told us there was a tsunami in Tohoku,” Abi said.

“I think I saw it,” I answered. “That was To-ho-ku?” Unfortunately, I had no idea where or what To-ho-ku was.

Right at that moment, we were at sea level, on the edge of Tokyo Bay. “Are we safe here?” I asked hesitantly, not sure whether I should voice my concern.

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

• • •

The next morning, haze filled the sky from oil refinery fires burning out of control. Trains still were not moving, hindered by the frequent aftershocks. Cars were stuck in massive traffic jams and lines for gas stations grew. Supermarket shelves quickly emptied.

The terrible images I saw the day before were repeated over and over again on TV, but now from many more towns: cars and homes washing at high speed across farmlands, boats smashing into bridges, S.O.S. signs spelled out with debris on rooftops, a lone ship being pulled into a massive whirlpool.

It seemed like some bad dream. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening.

When cell phone service finally started working again, we called friends and family. At the same time, hundreds of emails poured in from the United States and around the world. American TV and radio stations and newspapers too tried contacting us to get firsthand accounts of Americans living abroad.

As I looked out at the city from our balcony, trying to make sense of it all, I watched a long line of people walk across the bridge, many still on their way home out of the city.

My eyes wandered to the old traditional homes next to our building. This area was famous for hundreds of years of history. In fact, it was one of the reasons my wife and I chose to move to this part of the city. We loved the contrast of the old and the new. In the past two decades, a dozen or so apartment buildings rose to 40 or 60 stories high. More than a few in the neighborhood were not too happy with the sudden influx of outsiders.

My eyes registered what I was looking at. Gaping holes opened in roofs where clay tiles had once been. The earthquake had knocked them down to the street. I realized the first rain would cause a lot of damage, and many of the older folks wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

Wanting to be useful, we gathered a few volunteers from church and showed up at these homes carrying blue tarp and string.

We must have looked ridiculous, because many of the residents just stared at us in complete amazement.

I tried to explain in broken Japanese that we wanted to help, but I didn’t even know the Japanese word for roof tile. (I looked it up later. It’s kawara by the way.) Who in their right mind would allow us to climb their house?

Most refused us outright, but a few did allow us to help, occupying us for the rest of the day. I think they just felt sorry for us.

What were we doing?

What were we supposed to be doing?

• • •

On March 11, I planned to celebrate our wedding anniversary. That was the day we married, eleven years before. After visiting the dentist, I was going to take my wife to a nice restaurant.

The bigger celebration was to start a couple of days later, when we headed to the mountains for a few days of skiing without children. Abi’s parents flew in from Jackson, Mississippi to make all of this possible.

But now, there were some complications. We sheltered in a cold auditorium. Our apartment was full of broken glass. No trains, taxis, or buses were moving. Every restaurant was closed.

Clearly, I had to cancel dinner, but what about the ski trip? And if not that, didn’t we have to do something to celebrate? Isn’t that my job as a husband to figure that out?

But Abi had other things on her mind. She asked me, “Didn’t we live outside . . . for six months . . . hiking from Mexico to Canada?”

“Yes.”

“And haven’t you camped on mountains in the winter?”

“Yes, but I don’t see what . . . ”

“I think you should go,” she interrupted.

“Uh, go?” I asked dumbfounded. “Go where?” While I fretted over ways to save our anniversary, Abi actually did something useful. She talked to people.

The pastor of our church communicated with pastors in the disaster area. My boss gathered supplies and prepared a truck. A driver was needed, she explained, one with outdoor winter experience.

“What?” I asked in disbelief. “What about our anniversary?”

“It’s okay,” she said. “We’ll celebrate some other time.” And just like that, it was decided. I would go. And I would not go just anywhere, mind you, but to Fukushima, the very place in the news as infamous as Chernobyl, with exploding nuclear power plants.

As radioactive plumes spread over the region, the people evacuated quickly. Most couldn’t even get home first to pack clothes or valuables. They scattered in shelters with nothing but what they carried in their hands.

Akira Sato pastored a church not three miles from there. He just happened to be in Tokyo when the earthquake struck, for a seminary graduation. He frantically tried calling each of the church members, trying to find out where everyone was, and desperately needed to return with a truck of supplies.

It was now my job to help get him there. I pulled together my winter camping gear.

Backpack? Check.

Down sleeping bag? Check.

Camping stove? Check.

Toilet paper and shovel? Check.

Water filtration system? I was pretty sure it would be useless against radioactive particles, but whatever. Check.

I didn’t even know where Fukushima was. I had to look it up on a map. 250 miles north. Okay, I thought, that’s not far. I can walk if needed. I have the gear to do it. Before children, Abi and I walked over ten times that far across the United States on the Pacific Crest Trail.

I was ready for anything.

But, no, I wasn’t ready for this. Not even close.

My missionary team leader was waiting for me at the truck when I got there. Just the night before, he drove north with another pastor to the city of Iwaki, just south of the nuclear reactors. He gave us some advice.

“Keep the radio on so you know about new tsunamis. If you hear sirens, head for high ground. Be careful of roads. Many parts have washed away, and there are no signs to warn you. If we hear about further deterioration, we’ll give you a call. Good luck!”

Sirens?

Washed away roads?

Deteriorating nuclear power plants?

It felt surreal, like some apocalyptic action movie. What was I even doing here?

I didn’t know if roads were passable that far north. I didn’t know if I could find gas to get back. I didn’t know how many more explosions there would be of nuclear reactors. All I knew was that there was no electricity or running water or food. And there were people, a lot of people, in need.

It was about midnight when we headed out.

Closed highways forced us to take local roads. Fortunately for us, not another vehicle went in our direction, toward the nuclear power plants. We drove around fallen walls and buildings. We avoided large sinkholes and fissures. We made long detours around impassable bridges.

It was the longest night of my life.

• • •

With three small children to take care of, Abi thought about what to do next. She called two Japanese friends, mothers of Aidan’s first-grade classmates. They talked on the phone as our children ran noisily around the room. In the background, images of devastation played nonstop on TV. Anxiety and stress levels were high.

Abi told them that I drove a truck up north. “Feel free to bring stuff over for the disaster area,” she said. “When he comes home, I’m sure he’ll be going straight back.” Then she invited them over for lunch, but on their way, the two women messaged their friends, who in turn texted others. The doorbell started ringing, and lunch never happened. Within two hours, food and emergency supplies filled every bit of floor space in our apartment, straight to the ceiling.

A woman with an apartment in our building brought big bottles of water. When she saw the situation, she called the building manager and got permission to move everything to the community room downstairs.

Many who brought donations stayed to help, receiving, sorting, and repacking boxes by category. By late afternoon, the community room was completely filled with row after row of boxes piled taller than could be reached without a chair. In just a matter of hours, the neighborhood was mobilized through the power of women with cell phones.

Abi was thankful her parents were there to help. Without them, there was no way she could have handled the children and organized the supplies that continued to pour in.

There was no more room and the women of course wanted to send the boxes north as soon as possible, but I wouldn’t be back with the truck for another day. They called every rental car company, but not a single vehicle was available anywhere. Everyone was fleeing radiation from the nuclear power plants.

In the middle of the community room, Abi began to pray. As she did, her phone rang.

“We heard what you’re doing,” the voice on the other end said. “Would a truck be useful?” Forty-five minutes later, a two-ton truck pulled up, full of fuel and ready to go.

Men returned home from work and helped by loading boxes into the truck, while Abi worried about the next problem. Who would drive the truck? Again, she began to pray. As she did, the community room door opened.

“Sumimasen. Excuse me.” A young Japanese man poked his head inside. “I heard about your relief effort. I work for an NPO in Africa, and I’m in Japan for a short holiday. Is there any way I can help?”

Abi had to laugh at the timing. “Um, can you drive a truck?” she asked, trying not to get her hopes up.

“Yup, that’s what I do,” he said.

“Um, can you drive a truck . . . now?” she added.

“Of course. No problem.” He departed with the truck that very evening.

In this way, our role in the emergency relief movement began. In just one day, hundreds of volunteers gathered. As a community working together, we found a way to be useful. God worked through all of us in the small things, like making a call or packing a box, to make big things possible.

• • •

The next morning, we arrived in Fukushima. “We did it,” I said, pulling into the parking lot of the church where so many sheltered and turned off the engine.

I was tired, too tired to even get out. It’s pretty exhausting driving through the night, listening to the radio for impending nuclear holocausts, and steering around cracks wide enough to swallow us whole. But I wasn’t just tired, I was hungry too. And I wanted a shower. And I wanted a change of clothes.

People came out of the building to greet us, so with what little energy I could muster, I pushed open the door and hopped down to the ground. We stood outside hugging our jackets while making introductions. White clouds puffed from our mouths.

When we entered the church together, I thought I could finally rest. All I wanted to do was eat something and lie down for a little while, but then the pastor who came with us announced, “Okay, let’s sing and pray together.”

Wait, what? Worship? Now? What about lunch? I may be a missionary, but I have to confess, this was not the first thing on my mind. I didn’t think I could even keep my eyes open, but did my best to follow the pastor’s lead.

Ironically, I actually remember the pastor’s message to this day. “In circumstances like these especially,” he said, “God promises to be with us.” The words encouraged me, the urgency making them more powerful. In that moment, I deeply felt the presence of God.

We eventually did get around to unloading the truck and eating lunch, then teaching English as I explained before.

Now I’m done, I thought. We would be driving back to Tokyo as soon as the men finished dispersing the gasoline, so this was my only chance to rest.

I went to the corner of the room where there was an old keyboard and some sound equipment. It looked like a good place to lie down, out of everyone’s way. Besides, as a musician, I’m always comfortable where the keyboard is.

“Can I help you?” a woman asked me, as I got behind the keyboard. She spoke with authority, so I knew she had some kind of position at the church.

I was too embarrassed to ask about lying down, so instead I said, “Um, I’m a musician. Would you mind if I played a little?”

That’s not what I meant to say, and I don’t think it’s what she expected me to say. Her face lit up. “You mean a concert?” Without waiting for an answer, she started asking people to line up chairs around the keyboard in semicircles.

Oh no! I thought. A concert is definitely not what I meant. It would be nice to play a little bit, just to relax, but if I thought I was tired before, it didn’t even compare to how I felt at that moment. The smart move would have been just to clarify the misunderstanding.

I was wearing jeans and boots and a winter coat because it was so cold inside. My hair was a mess from dozing in the truck while others drove, and I was dirty. I was stressed and tired from taking local roads all night since the highways were closed, keeping an eye out for holes caused by the earthquake. Also, I did not have a single piece of sheet music with me.

I turned and saw that people were already beginning to take their seats. Rather than make excuses, I decided I’d better use the time to quickly figure out a program in my head.

There wasn’t much under my fingers at the time, being between concert seasons, and I had just run the Tokyo Marathon. Preparation for that ate up all my practice time. I’m an organist, but there were some pieces I always remembered on the piano. And there were some organ pieces I could try playing without the pedal part, like Bach’s famous “Little” Fugue in G Minor and Toccata in D Minor. I supposed I could fill up the rest of the time with Japanese folk songs, American ragtime, and improvising on Christian hymns. It might be nice to also lead a celebration of Happy Birthday for anyone with a birthday in March.

Under these less-than-ideal circumstances, I decided to do what I could and turned to face the audience. I hope I don’t regret this, I thought as I gave a short bow. The audience responded with polite applause. I sat down at the keyboard and began to play.

I don’t think I played very well. I’m so glad that my teachers were not in the room or that I was not on stage or being recorded. I certainly would not have won any competitions. Yet, I don’t think I’ve ever played for a more appreciative audience. It wasn’t just the applause and the shouts of “Bravo!” and “Wonderful!” but all the comments afterwards. The music had a power I’m just beginning to understand. It didn’t even occur to me that music could be useful or even “necessary” in a situation like this. For a brief moment, there was no emergency. There was no earthquake, tsunami, or nuclear radiation.

“The music had a power

I’m just beginning to understand.

It didn’t even occur to me that music could be useful or even ‘necessary.’”

I entered the relief movement to bring necessary items of food, water, and supplies. Now I was playing music and pretty soon my full-time job became giving concerts in shelters throughout the disaster area for months to come. Despite the aftershocks, the devastation, the mud, the all-night driving, living in a tent, eating instant and canned foods, no running water, no showers, no flush toilets . . . despite all these very much less-than-ideal circumstances, it was like I found music for the first time.

“It was like I found music

for the first time.”

The beauty was a continual reminder of the presence of God. He was as tangibly present as I have ever felt him.

At the end of each day, Christians gathered at relief centers. While eating canned food and instant ramen, we shared stories from that day, prayed together, and sang songs of worship, just like on my first trip to Fukushima.

As the tenth anniversary of 3/11 approaches, I don’t want to forget the people or conversations from the northeast coast of Japan. I want to celebrate with all who will listen what happened during that time. It is my sincere hope that in hearing these stories, all will be deeply encouraged and realize anew how God works even in the darkest of times.