Author Archives: martinschmidtinasia

About martinschmidtinasia

I have served as a humanities teacher at Hong Kong International School since 1990, teaching history, English, and religion courses. Since the mid-1990's I have also come to assume responsibility for many of the school's service learning initiatives. My position also included human care ministry with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod in Hong Kong, southern China, and others parts of Asia from 1999-2014. Bringing my affluent students into contact with people served by the LCMS in Asia has proved to be beneficial to students and our community partners alike. Through these experience I have become committed to social conscience education, which gives students the opportunity to find their place in society in the context of challenging global realities.

Meeting St. Francis and St. Clare on Good Friday

I came to Good Friday noon-day service at St. John’s Cathedral with unusual anticipation. My wife’s lung cancer was in its 19th month, and she had already outlived the very first diagnosis of 4-12 months that she had received in … Continue reading

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“Mysterious Waiting in Emptiness:” Dealing with a Cancer Diagnosis

Enjoying a family dinner at Fernando’s in Macau in August, 2023 Introduction Still burdened by a three-week quarantine for travel in and out of Hong Kong, eleven months ago we escorted our son, Micah, to the Hong Kong airport and … Continue reading

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Fire and Water: Centering Prayer and the Yearning for God

Introduction Can you have too much desire for God? This is the question that has been circulating in my mind during the summer holidays. Two weeks ago—June 28 to be exact— I wrote a note to a fellow traveler on … Continue reading

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What Happens in Mindfulness: Grace and the Holistic-Intuitive Model

Introduction When I think of the biggest changes in my three decades of teaching, at the top of the list is the role that mindfulness has come to play in education. In the watershed year of 1979 Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn … Continue reading

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Discernment and Darshan: Perceiving the “Things Themselves” at Life’s Crossroads

“I do have this feeling of bodhisattva consciousness that came to me this weekend . . . I do feel called to be a bodhisattva.” Introduction I once again find myself unexpectedly at something of a crossroads. Two years ago … Continue reading

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“Life Will Never Be the Same:” Reflecting on a Life Inflection Point

Dear Readers, I have been “missing in action” from this blog since last June after writing consistently and passionately for 10 years. What happened? As I mentioned in my first attempt to tell this story more than a year ago, … Continue reading

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Introducing the Wisdom Way of Teaching: Educating for Social Conscience and Inner Awakening in the High School Classroom

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The Second Gaze: The Essence of the Spiritual Life

Dear Students, I know for the vast majority of you taking Spiritual Explorations the word “spiritual” sounds like something quite abstract and distant. Perhaps there have been moments in nature or a certain intimacy involving family or friends that seemed … Continue reading

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A Walk in the Park: Groundtruthing Spiritual Experiences in One’s Being

Introduction I’ve been writing this blog for a decade. I have written exactly 200 pieces, I discovered recently, when I posted my first entry in 2021. Certainly, this is the longest “dry spell” of these past ten years in which … Continue reading

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Matching Your Enneagram Type with a Spiritual Practice: Exemplars from the Class of 2021

Dear students,  The beauty of the Enneagram is that it not only reveals with startling insight an individual’s strengths and weaknesses, but as a body-mind-heart system it also lends itself easily to the kinds of spiritual practices you have been … Continue reading

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