{"id":2552,"date":"2023-09-23T09:00:07","date_gmt":"2023-09-23T16:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kingdomrice.org\/?p=2552"},"modified":"2023-11-06T18:38:04","modified_gmt":"2023-11-07T02:38:04","slug":"home-belonging-restoration-embrace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kingdomrice.org\/2023\/09\/23\/home-belonging-restoration-embrace\/","title":{"rendered":"HOME – BELONGING – RESTORATION – EMBRACE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Pastor Andrea Wong of Hong Kong<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When people first meet me, they often ask, “Where is home for you?” A seemingly simple, yet complex question\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You see, ordinarily, my default is to say: Hong Kong.<\/strong> It\u2019s where I was born, where I\u2019ve spent most of my life, but also where I currently reside. But the thing is, \u201chome\u201d isn\u2019t confined to geography. <\/strong>I wonder about places and communities where connections and history run deep. Places that I would readily and still regularly return to\u2026places where I\u2019m actively building into around the world, that continue to shape me, where I know I belong, am known and understood. Spaces that have caused and continue to cause me to flourish, and ones that I would want to fight to see expand in health\u2026 (I could go on!) For me, \u201chome\u201d is multifaceted<\/strong>\u2026 and I\u2019m thankful that when I think about it like this, there\u2019s more than one place that I can call home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hong Kong harbour and skyline, seen from Victoria Peak on a rainy night of June 2019.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But when it comes to Hong Kong, this city really does hold a special place in my heart<\/strong>. As a pastor for over a decade here, the notion of home holds profound importance. Despite being one of the world\u2019s most densely populated cities, it can paradoxically be one of the loneliest places. I\u2019ve personally experienced what it\u2019s like to be in proximity with many, and yet feel disconnected. And knowing this, it has and continues to be a deep longing for me to build and create \u201chome\u201d for those where this has been absent<\/strong>. How for example, do we create pathways where people can enter into a place, and feel, not just welcome, but seen? <\/strong>This and many other questions are ones that I\u2019ve carried, and became more pronounced two years ago when my church community went through a significant transition\u2026 (A story perhaps for another day)… <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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During this \u201cdiscombobulated\u201d time, one of the places that I thankfully discovered a sense of \u201chome\u201d was through Kingdom Rice\u2019s \u201cNew Lenses\u201d cohort<\/a>.<\/strong> There\u2019s so much that I could say about the experience: the gift of connecting with people around the world,  the joy of excavating stories together, the way that it gave me space to process and articulate things that I hadn\u2019t felt able to do before\u2026 honestly, so very much. But perhaps what I will say that struck me the most, was this incredible sense of being invited into a place of safety, vulnerability, and authenticity, that at once felt new, but also so familiar.<\/strong> It\u2019s almost like my heart knew that I was always supposed to be in an environment like this, where the encouragement called out a wholeheartedness in me that felt like it had gone dormant for a season. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I recently read a book by Andy Crouch named \u201cThe life we\u2019re looking for,\u201d and want to share a particular quote from it that resonated with me: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cYou are a part of a household if people know things about you that you do not know about yourself, including things that if you did know you would seek to hide. You are part of a household if others are close enough to see you and know you as well as, or better than, you know yourself\u201d… <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although I was only in the \u201cNew Lenses\u201d cohort for a few months, what I experienced was this very thing: being a part of a household\u2026 being a part of a \u201chome\u201d. I<\/strong> discovered things that I didn\u2019t know about myself, and what a privilege it was to be able to be invited to \u201ccome in close\u201d… to really see, and to discover in wonder, the complexities and intricacies in us all. How sacred to hold joy and pain together, to be seen and heard and encouraged that I was safe to be me. To know that \u201chome\u201d means you don\u2019t have to hide, and that there are people who champion and will honour one another on the journey of knowing oneself and each other in fuller, and more wholehearted ways. And what a gift it has been for me in the days since, to dream about what this could look like, replicated and modeledmodelled, beyond our cohort and in my own community.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I reflect on this, I realize the New Lenses cohort was a pivotal moment that reignited my passion for fostering communities where people can find connectedness and belonging, and safely unfold their own stories while also being made aware of a larger narrative. <\/strong>In the myriad of ways that it\u2019s been healing, transformative, connected, challenging, and anchoring, I can’t think of a better way to describe my experience with Kingdom Rice than as a \u201ccoming home\u201d. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Pastor Andrea Wong of Hong Kong When people first meet me, they often ask, “Where is home for you?” A seemingly simple, yet complex question\u2026 You see, ordinarily, my default is to say: Hong Kong. It\u2019s where I was born, where I\u2019ve spent most of my life, but also where I currently reside. But…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kingdomrice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2552"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kingdomrice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kingdomrice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kingdomrice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kingdomrice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2552"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kingdomrice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2645,"href":"https:\/\/kingdomrice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2552\/revisions\/2645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kingdomrice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kingdomrice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kingdomrice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}