Aug 23Our StorySome things you need to know about me: I loathe, loathe mass celebration events, whatever the occassion. I like cheesiness. I don’t like muscular positivity or some kind of enforced togetherness. Ack. I like songs written for mass celebrations to be singable by the masses. …Music3 min readMusic3 min read
Published inChew Lin’s Signs of Life·Aug 30, 2020CountingThis is an extended edit of something I wrote for The Birthday Collective’s Generation C19 project. Go browse the site to read other folks’ Covid-in-Singapore experiences! I’m reposting mine here, so I can make a few comments. I returned from Boston in mid-March, some of the vignettes here already swirling…Singapore4 min readSingapore4 min read
Published inChew Lin’s Signs of Life·Apr 28, 2020Gratitude and SurpriseThis is a version of what I prepared for the Billings Prize Preaching competition. The original idea was seeded by Madhu and Jie Hui, in a conversation about what has surprised us so far about our experience of the coronavirus that we’d like to carry into the future. …Divinity School4 min readDivinity School4 min read
Published inChew Lin’s Signs of Life·Sep 30, 2019Endings, Beginnings, ContinuationsWho knows where the arrow leads? Or what happens after the wall ends? The graduating MDiv candidates at Harvard Divinity School all do a capstone project of some sort — it might be a book proposal, a research paper, a program, a syllabus. This is meant to be an opportunity…Life2 min readLife2 min read
Published inChew Lin’s Signs of Life·Jul 21, 2019The kingdom of the sick, the kingdom of the wellEvery Thursday at noon, the Dooley Chapel on the West Campus of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center hosts a short service, as a way to lift up and hear the prayers that people have left over the week. This past week, I was the presiding chaplain. …Chaplaincy2 min readChaplaincy2 min read
Published inChew Lin’s Signs of Life·Apr 23, 2019Dispatches from the (Near) FutureThis is edited from a paper submitted for a class on comparative monasticisms. Part of that class involved visiting with several monastic, or monastically-inspired communities from Christian and Buddhist traditions in the Massachusetts area. My futurist training compels me to say that for stories like these, the stories themselves are…Religion14 min readReligion14 min read
Published inChew Lin’s Signs of Life·Feb 22, 2019Who’s (not) there?“You’ll definitely meet your mother here.” My applications for a chaplaincy attachment had brought me to a senior living facility. One of the things I expressed was the trepidation that I would meet someone who would remind me of my mother. Of course, this is materially untrue: my mother is…Grad School4 min readGrad School4 min read
Published inChew Lin’s Signs of Life·Nov 14, 2018I don’t do hopeSomeone was reflecting that I was putting a lot of work into an internship application and asked, “what do you hope to get out of it?” I don’t wish to speculate what motivated the reply, “I don’t do hope.” That is simultaneously an accurate and imprecise thing to say. I…Life2 min readLife2 min read
Published inChew Lin’s Signs of Life·Oct 21, 2018Midterm updateSigns of life, after the regret of not writing over summer (apparently the lack of writing and the stacks of unread good intentions is a common thing): I might add makeup/skincare people to a list of informal chaplains: from the enthusiastic SA at CVS who recommended me my current Everyday…Chaplaincy2 min readChaplaincy2 min read
Published inChew Lin’s Signs of Life·Jun 15, 2018Devotion and DisciplineThe word for this year seems to shaping up to be “devotion”. Some context: some time ago, I decided that while new year resolutions were made to be broken, setting an intention or a theme for the year was a helpful thing to guide how I wanted to make decisions…Life Lessons5 min readLife Lessons5 min read
