Marked

Fresh Ink - Dec 2014

One of my last acts before leaving Malaysia in December was to get inked - a physical sign of my four year sojourn in Southeast Asia and the mark it has left on me. 

While the more direct line leads from my days as a youth worker in Apple Valley, through Theological and African Studies at Yale, and then straight to my current work in Tanzania. . . To skip over Malaysia would be to miss an incredibly rich formative period of my life. One that has shaped and, undoubtedly, will continue to shape my life in the years to come.

So what does it mean?

Translated literally, 飘逸石 means (more or less) 'drifting stone' but has some poetic nuance to it.

The first term 飘逸 means 'drifting' but has a 'gentle feel' to it. Some friends have described it as "effortlessly, gracefully flowing with the wind." Others have noticed an air of purposefulness as well and described the movements of the people in the 'Fight in a Bamboo Forest' sequence from the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

The final term, 石, means rock or stone. The character itself is meant to resemble cliff-face with a stone that has broken off from it at the base. The personal significance of the term for me is that the original meaning of my name, in Greek at least, means 'Rock.' Growing up, there was a plaque on my bedroom wall that read "Peter: Rock, 'Be Ye Steadfast'" and a verse from the Prophet Isaiah.

Taken together, I chose them as a self-description of sorts and a reminder to be one who is solid, steadfast, and stable and yet also fluidly moves as the Wind and the Spirit blow.




Also, for what it is worth, I did a lot of fact checking with several different Mandarin speakers to make sure I wasn't accidentally marking myself as 'Kung Pau Chicken' for all of eternity lah.