Moving (Pt.12)

June 22, Sunday.

It was the final day of Corpus Christi, when at last I stepped out the door and went into the Gothic Quarter to seek the “Dancing Egg.”

In the courtyard of the Museu Frederic Marès, I sat for a long time. The place had been newly adorned with flowers; around the fountain, colour blazed in intricate harmony.

Tourists passed by, some pausing as I did to rest a while.

I gazed at that egg, “dancing” upon the column of water, and fell into a quiet trance.

In nearly a year of living in Barcelona, I had witnessed countless festivals. Yet this was the first one that stilled me—stilled me entirely—because of a single, fragile egg.

The lavish flowers proclaimed the goodness and abundance of creation; the fountain’s stream, God’s ceaseless grace; and the egg itself, the purity and frailty of life.

The egg’s delicate balance upon the flow of water revealed the mystery of grace and the tension of human existence; the union of Christ’s divinity and humanity—a miracle that should be impossible, yet simply is.

All these connections arise easily. But I wondered, too: does the egg’s hollow not also suggest death?

So many who call themselves Christians, merely moved by their own emotions, have not emptied themselves. And yet, it is undeniable that their lives were at some point genuinely altered by the intervention of grace. Does this, too, count as “salvation”?
If a life is to be wholly borne up by grace, must death first be endured?

At eight o’clock that evening, I joined the Corpus Christi procession that set out from the cathedral, winding through the narrow, timeworn streets of the Gothic Quarter.

The procession was long. Priests and laypeople formed ranks in traditional attire: some carrying tall banners, some bearing crosses, while the band played Catalan melodies.

Incense hung thick in the air. Pressed in by the crowd, I shuffled forward until I was near the raised monstrance. I longed to see it clearly, so I walked with it the length of the street, no longer merely a spectator but, for a moment, absorbed into that venerable space.

I remembered how, in that international Evangelical church, the Eucharist had once been given as croutons and plastic cups of grape juice, passed along by volunteers after the sermon occasionally. Later they switched to prepackaged cups, distributed at the door before service.

I had never once seen a formal consecration there.

If the Eucharist bestowed upon the Church by Christ can be perfunctory, will grace also become cheap in people’s hearts as a result? If the Eucharist is a fine work of art made of gold and silver, does grace really not seem cheap in people’s eyes?

Or is the materialization of grace itself another form of cheapness?

I drifted on with the procession until we reached the Basílica de Santa Maria del Pi, where the pace slowed.

Inside stood a crucifix, flanked by nuns and a choir. Across the street, townspeople waited. As each formation passed, they dispersed into groups of two or three, bowing deeply to the crucifix.

At last, the monstrance was set before the crucifix, and the choir began an ancient hymn.

The songs were wholly unfamiliar to me. Elderly women beside me, in traditional dress, began to hum along; then younger voices joined, until the whole crowd sang. Surely they had been raised in this tradition from birth.

The gravity of ancient ritual pressed down, warding off the cheapness of grace. And in that weighty moment, standing before the corpus christi of my childhood faith, I realised I was an outsider.

Eventually, I left the throng. I wished to enter another church.

But when I checked my phone, it was already past 8:30 pm. Most churches were closed; only the Iglesia de la Concepción was still listed as open.

The sky had dimmed and the wind rose. By the time I arrived, its doors were shut.

The flower carpet at the entrance was ruined. The street lay nearly empty but for passing cars. A light rain began to fall. The festival was over.

Yet turning a corner, while studying the facades of those stately buildings, I noticed an open door.

Plain to the eye, it concealed a secret courtyard—a hidden garden.

My heart lifted. I stepped in, and there before me unfolded a cloistered Gothic courtyard.

A lush central garden lay enclosed by the cloister. Magnolia trees grew in symmetry, two tall, two small. Behind them stood palms, banana plants, and other greenery I could not name—an island of stillness, verdant and alive.

At its heart rose a fountain encircled by palms and banana trees. And upon its jet of water, another egg danced, scattering bright petals into the pool below.

The vase-shaped fountain base was dressed with red and white blossoms and clusters of purple grapes. Cascades of crimson blooms flowed downward like streams of blood.

Two arches, entwined with green vines and white baby’s breath, were dotted with tiny red flowers, enclosing the fountain beneath a floral canopy. The red blossoms were planted also around the basin, like droplets of blood fallen on that island of green.

I was alone, yet the place felt alive. For this was no museum piece but a living convent, linked to the Iglesia de la Concepción—its walls hung with posters of upcoming events and smiling faces of the congregation.

The sconces on the walls were lit, casting warm light on the painted Stations of the Cross.

As in the shabby little church of my childhood, I walked once more around the walls, following Christ step by step. My eyes filled with tears. At last I leaned against a stone pillar beneath an arch, turned back, and beheld that egg pulsing at the center of a fairy-tale world.

A miracle—life sustained by grace at the very edge of death.


In the following days, I packed up my room and luggage, dealt with the belongings I didn’t want to take with me, booked a medical check-up at the hospital, and went several times to the Capella d’Adoració Perpètua Reial Monestir Santa Isabel to pray, to meditate, and to count down the days until my move.

During that time, I went once more to Carrer d’Ogassa, leaving a suitcase at the new place. While wandering around the nearby streets, I came across a Roman Catholic Apostolic church founded in the 10th century, and happened to join their Mass.

Everything is so peaceful, yet so full of vigour.

Afterwards, I went to El Turó de la Peira, the small hilltop park behind my new home.
Shaded circular paths led up to a platform at the summit, from which one could see a panoramic view of the city, crowned by a towering cross.

Beneath that cross, watching the sunset glow fall over the distant mountains, my heart brimmed with praise and gratitude to the Lord.

Later, Tina sent me a message, asking whether I had found a place and, in a tone warm and casual, invited me to hang out, as though nothing had ever happened.

“No, it’s too draining,” I replied.

“All right. If you need anything or run into difficulties, you can reach out to me. That time you said you fainted from acute gastroenteritis really scared me. Take care of yourself.”

I suddenly thought of my mother. All my life she had been utterly unempathetic toward my inner feelings, yet showed extraordinary concern for my body. Every time I fell ill, she seemed invigorated.

Two months ago, something Lida said to me echoed what my mother had said before I left China. Back then, my mother, nearly deranged, clutched my wrists with a death grip, pinned me down on the sofa, leaned in close and hissed: “When you become a mother yourself, you’ll understand me.”

And Lida had said to me: “When you reach my age and experience, you’ll understand.”

Even her last mocking words to me on WeChat echoed my mother’s taunts—

“What about your running-in, your submission, where is the Triune God?”

I had not expected that the two Christian sisters with whom I was most involved abroad—Lida and Tina—would in the end replicate my mother’s words. It made me shudder.

I did not reply to her.

In those days, I did not write, nor work on redesigning my website, nor prepare any podcasts.

Instead, I read two books.

One was The King in His Beauty, a collection of selections from the letters of Samuel Rutherford; the other was The True Christian’s Love to the Unseen Christ by the English Puritan pastor and writer Thomas Vincent.

It was then I realized that I had not, in fact, been groping after faith entirely alone as a child in that small city deaf to the Gospel—that was merely an outward impression.

From a spiritual perspective, I had never truly been alone. All along I had been communing through words and music with that cloud of witnesses, standing in the stream of history, weeping with them.

These were the ones who held a deep and piercing affection for the sweetness and transcendence of Christ, and now they were taking me by the hand, teaching me the practice of “loving Christ.”

Only after leaving behind that restless church environment could I finally face Christ directly, once again gazing at His beauty in deep contemplation and delight.

As a man, Jesus is incomparably beautiful. He never lost a single trace of human feeling or wholeness, and yet remained entirely holy and divine.

And this very person is interceding for me before the Father, and will stand as my advocate in that ultimate court of heaven.

What, then, have I to fear?

The surroundings remained oppressive. I reflected on why, from childhood to adulthood, I had always seemed to draw the manipulations and abuses of others, and on how I resisted human authority.

A ladder of growth came clearly into view.

As a child, I believed that God had made me in His image, and that this was a dignity of creation—therefore any trampling, suppression, or violation was never rightful.

That first stage of resistance was a pure, innate sense of justice—a response of glory offered by a creature to its Creator.

At twenty, when I bid farewell to God, I lost that sense of resistance, leaving only an obsession with my own pride.

Near thirty, when I encountered the salvation of Christ, my resistance was no longer merely for the sake of “human dignity,” but to bear witness to the reality of Christ’s redeeming grace in me.

I am one redeemed at the highest price by Christ’s own blood. Therefore I am more precious than I ever imagined, and no one has the right to trample on my dignity in Him.

And now, after a year of living within the church, I have at last reached the third stage—

I love Christ, and I resist human authority not in order to fight for myself, but because I must obey the Christ I love.

Any authority that would hinder me from pleasing Christ, that would press me into compromise with the world, I must reject.