I can't sleep tonight...:P It's not much fun. People need their sleep.

Grr...I'm definitely tired and overstressed...I tend to stay up too late and just procrastinate when I feel like this. :P

Anyhow - just wanted to note that Brainfall.com classifies my personality as that of Charlie Brown, in Peanuts...

"...always optimistic and persistent, and everyone appreciates your simple sweetness. Sometimes, however, your anxieties get the best of you, and life's mysteries can confuse you."

Actually - that was rather accurate. No wonder the Lucy personalities have always frightened me. Although...I have not read Peanuts enough to know whether those statements apply to me in the exact same way that they apply to Charlie Brown.


Today during church we watched a ten-minute clip of The Nativity. I had many reflections on that but it is late and if I don't go to bed I shan't be good for any work tomorrow, and there is a lot to do. Suffice it to say I think I want to watch the rest of The Nativity too, sometime...it was very touching to realize that this...this...is the story that we're celebrating. A simple story from a rugged land in an ancient time - one whose essence is quite lost in the elegant whitewashedness of modern celebration.

So if I can be sunshine and smiles to so many people...then why do I get so depressed so often when I'm all by myself? It seems I can hardly stand being alone now, even though I need down time. I guess when I'm alone it is just too easy to think too hard about life.

from dust, to dust

As I was browsing a hi-so bookstore in downtown Bangkok yesterday evening, I observed that the overall gist of things is that we come come from apes and are headed toward machines. We are ready to find our origins in the dust of the earth, and ready to meld ourselves with the same. How strange that we are so horizontal...that rather than embracing the vertical that we are capable of, we are very willing to say that behind us, is dust - and ahead of us, which we can determine, we would also like to strive toward dust - albeit a highly developed dust.

"By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return." - Genesis 3:19

I think humanity is working unawares to fulfill this prophecy - in between pre-birth life and post-death life we are adding post-birth dust and pre-death dust. Apes, headed toward machines.

How strange that the same Lord God who said, "You are from dust and to dust you will return" - the One before whose words we must humble ourselves - is also the One who lifts us beyond man's highest position in the most humanistic of thinking. He has touched us with the divine - with His image, with souls, and the capacity to think and reason.

It would seem that it is more blessed to be sick, with friends, than to be in good health and alone. I have always thought that it is wiser to isolate yourself if you are sick than to expose yourself to others who might catch it. But I guess maybe there is another wisdom that could apply.

I know a group of friends at church who would rather be all sick and miserable together because they are sick yet happy because they are together than to stay in the solitary confinement quarantining themselves and be miserable and sick and alone.

Maybe it is this carefree spirit of togetherness and selflessness in the sense that they would rather be with each other than alone and that they don't mind catching a cold from a sick friend that makes them so insanely fun to be with.

I absolutely love hanging out with them, and just seeing them all makes me smile. :)

It is funny what music is, what music can do...how it can help me to feel better, lol...and just feel whimsical. I can just listen to whimsical music and feel happy, or a little happier than before. Somehow maybe those notes elicit the few endorphines needed to make the difference between wallowing in depression and feeling the brilliant hope to carry on. Just the right music can do this. Sometimes it's rather silly music, lol. But the right notes and harmonies...

What is happiness anyway? It must be a construct. ;)

Okay...I think I must have had too much sugar this weekend. I feel really awful right now and unable to concentrate or make decisions. Sugar always makes me emotionally unstable. It is funny when the difference between a positive perspective on life and nearly wanting to die lies in a couple of sweets. :P

I've not been doing very well the past four or five days. I don't know why. It is terrible; yesterday someone made a random comment about how I maybe shouldn't have done something and instead of taking it with grace, I just burst out crying. That is so not me. :P At least, I hope it is not. Aside from that sad occurrence (this is going to be a rather bluish post), I have just come from breathing more secondhand smoke. Secondhand smoke is a terrible thing. It makes me a bit upset to think that so many smokers smoke, when it's others who have to take the consequences of their habit. Maybe they don't realize, though...after all, who really keeps up with all the rumors and tabloids about developments in the scientific realm? Anyhow, in case you didn't know...breathing secondhand smoke is worse than smoking itself. So maybe in that case we should all become smokers...yeah...and breath each other's secondhand smoke. Then things would even out! Get both the good and the bad. ;)

Okay. I will try and smile. The housekeeper is really nice and I really do want to talk with her. Despite that she smokes one cigarette before lunch and one cigarette after, and that it is difficult to time my arrival right between cigarettes A and B...and even if I manage to miss the first, I don't have to courage to just get up and leave before the second - but maybe it would be better for both of us if I did - the sum of it is that my lunches are tainted with nicotine, which has a grand ability to diffuse. I have a hard time understanding what a liquid gas it is...it seems to permeate every bit of air in the surrounding vicinity.

Well...other random observations. I think Thai people are accurate guessers of personality and class. At least, the creation of class exists here because it is one of those things that materialize when people believe in it and they believe in it here. So maybe they're accurate...and they can perceive what people are really like, no matter how hard they try not to be like that...which is cool...but...way to trap people in!! Which is hard because it seems like no matter how hard you try, you are always what they perceive you to be.

Before I send this woebegone little post out into cyberspace...I think I will change the topic a bit. Today we had a meeting at the office; we discussed Imago therapy, courtesy of Harville Hendricks. It was interesting; it is a theory about how couples can move past tension and discord into relationships of harmony and fulfillment. The theory, which has quite a bit of philosophy about human nature and existence mixed in, talks about how each human bears wounds from childhood. Apparently we seek a partner who will help us, in a sense, finish our childhood by healing those wounds and bringing resolution so that we can achieve wholeness. That person is usually a composite of our parents - both their negative and positive traits, but mainly their negative ones. That is why so many marriage relationships have so much discord, he says - because we marry people who will wound us in the same way our parents did, which is an unconscious attempt at bringing us into a place where we can find healing from our wounds. I suppose we repeat the same scenarios in an attempt to find a different ending, and ending of resolution.

It is a very interesting theory and I think it bears vestiges of truth. But mainly I think it is a rather confused perspective. For some reason his reasoning reminds me of Martin Buber's relationship philosophies. Martin Buber is a religious secularist, which is already an oxymoron in itself. Perhaps there is an answer somewhere around there to why his teachings have always disturbed me. It sounds so right, and yet...so wrong. I think it is one of those theories that fits together intellectually, but in reality flies in the face of all that we believe in as Christians. In fact, it seems almost that the relationship between God and humanity could be fitted into that paradigm - almost. But no - I think that Buber is at the opposite pole. This is where you land, when you think as far as you can intellectually without God in the picture. I think that Imago therapy achieves its goal, but in a manner empty of soul and meaning...the reason being that God is the author of romance; the author of love.

This is why love songs and love stories are so close to the heart of humanity, why anyone can resonate with it, why it is a very good way to draw people's attention. This...this is woven into the foundation of our existence.

Yes, we can have romance without God...but I think it will miss the soul of it. And without the soul, it appears to me like sawdust - painful. Like a mockery of what could be. I thought the Imago therapy was very interesting to hear about and to discuss, but it was also painful to consider its product. Not bad in itself, but simply all it is not.

So I am "home" for Thanksgiving and feeling so much nostalgia it freaks me out. For some reason I feel like I "flew" home for a break or something. I haven't been back home in a month, maybe. But this time the house smells like pumpkin pie...we had our celebration two days later. And during the night the weather was so cold it didn't feel like Thailand. And I had interesting dreams too.

So much nostalgia freaks me out. Especially smells and scents that remind me of times gone by. Right now the smell of pumpkin pie is freaking me out.

I guess for the past two months I've immersed myself in Thai culture and it's another world...now I come home and everything is so reminiscent of American culture. :P I've always had trouble living two lives; you cannot give your all to both. I need to learn to be more flexible I guess...and to have a more stable worldview that doesn't start to cave under the pressure of little things like nostalgia. :-)

"Behold, I will create
new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered,
nor will they come to mind.

But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I will create,
for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight
and its people a joy.

I will rejoice over Jerusalem
and take delight in my people;
the sound of weeping and of crying
will be heard in it no more.

"Never again will there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days,
or an old man who does not live out his years;
he who dies at a hundred
will be thought a mere youth;
he who fails to reach a hundred
will be considered accursed.

They will build houses and dwell in them;
they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

No longer will they build houses and others live in them,
or plant and others eat.
For as the days of a tree,
so will be the days of my people;
my chosen ones will long enjoy
the works of their hands.

They will not toil in vain
or bear children doomed to misfortune;
for they will be a people blessed by the LORD,
they and their descendants with them.

Before they call I will answer;
while they are still speaking I will hear.

The wolf and the lamb will feed together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
but dust will be the serpent's food.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,"
says the LORD.

~ Isaiah 55:17-25

" 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and plant it; I will break off a tender sprig from its topmost shoots and plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain heights of Israel I will plant it; it will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar. Birds of every kind will nest in it; they will find shelter in the shade of its branches. All the trees of the field will know that I the LORD bring down the tall tree and make the low tree grow tall. I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish.
" 'I the LORD have spoken, and I will do it.' "

~ Ezekiel 17:22-24

She's still hanging in there...

So it really doesn't look like little Artemis is going to make it...

But yes, I am certain God cares - even for little kittens...even when they don't make it.

Every Season
Nichole Nordeman

Every evening sky, an invitation
To trace the patterned stars
And early in July, a celebration
For freedom that is ours
And I notice You
In children’s games
In those who watch them from the shade
Every drop of sun is full of fun and wonder
You are summer

And even when the trees have just surrendered
To the harvest time
Forfeiting their leaves in late September
And sending us inside
Still I notice You when change begins
And I am braced for colder winds
I will offer thanks for what has been and was to come
You are autumn

And everything in time and under heaven
Finally falls asleep
Wrapped in blankets white, all creation
Shivers underneath
And still I notice you
When branches crack
And in my breath on frosted glass
Even now in death, You open doors for life to enter
You are winter

And everything that’s new has bravely surfaced
Teaching us to breathe
What was frozen through is newly purposed
Turning all things green
So it is with You
And how You make me new
With every season’s change
And so it will be
As You are re-creating me
Summer, autumn, winter, spring

It is so sad...one of the little kittens here at the office seems to be dying. It is the cute one, too. Most everyone says it's going to die, but if only it could hold on just a bit more...

And this is why I don't want any pets. It's hard to face the idea of it dying, and this is not even my kitten.

But perhaps there is hope...God cares for the sparrows, and I can see His care for kittens in their delicately formed paws and pleading yet playful eyes. He formed them so gently and beautifully. And whether or not this little kitty makes it, God cares for it...for us.

A great excerpt from a counseling book I'm reading, from a section titled "Don't Try to Do Good":

"The object of helping others though counseling or other similar work is to assist them in marshaling their own strengths so that they can confront and deal with their lives effectively. This requires understanding and other skills, but it does not need the overkill of doing good through imposing decisions and strategies on others. One element that every good relationship requires - whether in love or counseling - is the kind of self-restraint that acknowledges and respects the potential of the other to begin to put order into the confusion of his or her life. We can give others our time, our understanding, and our honest selves, but what we do beyond that may be quite harmful if it proceeds from our need to do good.

"It is an enormous gift to make ourselves present in a responsive and understanding way in the lives of others without trampling all over them. As psychologist Carl Rogers once noted, it takes a lot of discipline to do what we can for others and then, literally, let them be. The real good that we accomplish flows from those relationships in which we have come to terms with our own needs to redesign the lives and plans of others. Self-conscious do-gooding may be one of the signs that we should inspect our own emotional lives more carefully and face honestly any need we may have which could interfere with helping others to take care of their own lives. The people we help will be freer and so will we."

(The article isn't credited. :P)

a teeny bit overwhelmed...

wow...today just flew by! yay...

Wow...I cannot believe I posted those three posts this morning before work. Either I was half asleep or today was sufficiently lengthy and draining to make this morning seem like days away.

Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.

- Habakkuk 3:17-18

So...I can go from the Tower of Babel to Hershey's chocolate in less than half a minute, lol. And no, as far as I know right now there is no connection between the two. But maybe one can be found...

Sometimes we get tired of doing all the little things from day to day, of living a life made up of a bunch of small, seemingly unconnected parts...of chipping away at the dull but needed mundane things.

Now, what if this is the case, but one day someone comes along with a challenge, a higher calling...albeit a very difficult one?

I think the funny thing is that often what happens is we slip back into the mundane and use it as an excuse to avoid what we wished for in the first place. It may be out of fear of our lack of capability or else not wanting to be disturbed from our "comfort." I don't really think such comfort is truly comfort...we can live satiated lives and not be comfortable. I think the more difficult calling is ultimately the more "comfortable" one. But it scares us, and we manage to convince ourselves to hide away in tasks that exploit something like one-tenth of our true capability as humans and even less of our weakness made strong in Christ.

I think what we answer to our mental contemplations about this is so much of it. It's our minds that fear, and tell our bodies to settle back into "comfort" and inaction. Half the action is the choice made in the mind...and choosing to shy away in our minds is tantamount to binding ourselves to inaction, because once we make that mental choice, our minds work with us and our choice to find evidence to convince us that what we want really is best...

...after awhile it becomes hard to tell truth from deceit. We so easily deceive ourselves!

"I have no doubt whatever that most people live, whether physically, intellectually, or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness... We all have reservoirs of life to draw upon, of which we do not dream." ~ William James

'"For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ.' ~ 1 Corinthians 2:16

I am not yet sure of the implications of juxtaposing these this quote and this verse. I'm still thinking about it.

On the one hand, I think that the first quote doesn't take into account our limitedness as human beings. I know that limitedness firsthand; I would like to be so much more than I am, and yet I am not physically capable of it. And I think most people are like that; their minds think much farther than what they can, in their physical humanness, handle. Even the amount of consciousness we make use of, we cannot handle.

Yet 1 Corinthians 2:16, evaluated next to this verse, evokes an interesting thought - I think that in Christ, we do have "reservoirs of life" to draw upon, of which we do not (cannot) dream. "But we have the mind of Christ..." - that is something to think about. If William James implied such things about the human mind, what there must be to us in Christ!

We cannot live in ignorant bliss! It is oxymoronic. If we are wholly ignorant, is it doubtful we can live in bliss, because we don't know what bliss is...we are only living in what we think is bliss!

random random Saturday night post

This has been a crazy week and I'm so very tired.

I am so glad P'Jai is moving in tomorrow! I almost typed that last sentence as "a roommate to talk to" - lol. I seriously need someone to talk to so I don't go crazy...:)

reflections upon a warm summer evening

Today I woke to the pounding of jackhammers next door. Apparently the neighbors had decided to redo their driveway, because the foundations had sunk into the ground. So it was chainsaws and jackhammers most of the day, with only a couple periods of reprieve.

I found I could be thankful that my job description didn't include working jackhammers. And for those workers, they could be thankful they had jobs. And for people without jobs - perhaps they can be thankful they don't have to work jackhammers.

In the evening, when the jackhammers had stopped, there was smoke because people were burning trash (normal in Thailand) - and this gets rather unbearable when it's also hot and dry (or hot and humid).

But I was sitting on the porch reflecting, and thinking. And I realized that I could actually sit there in peace; there were no mosquitoes, which was pretty amazing considering the time of day. I was able to enjoy the fresh air (the smoke had dissipated) and the sunset and watch my brothers practicing basketball and observe the plants in our yard flourishing from the rains of monsoon season. At this time of year in Thailand you can't look places without seeing lush greenery.

Perhaps I am beginning to sound like Pollyanna. But as I sat and thought, I realized that rejoicing is our greatest good in trial. There is something in the old adage, "Grin and bear it." - although most people who we see grinning and bearing it are almost certainly doing a whole lot more things than grinning and bearing it. Sometimes it's very hard to grin.

It's just, when you have nothing much left to give, energy-wise or emotional-wise, you can continue to give joy to others by being at peace and being charitable - and somehow, in some small ironic sense, these things can bring a great amount of joy. If you rejoice in trial, I am convinced the joy comes back to you.

The flip side of this is a bitter, complaining spirit. I feel sorry for people who have allowed themselves to fall prey to that (and for myself, when I do - because I do give in to the temptation at times) - because at that point, we have nothing left. Absolutely nothing. We become leeches, siphoning the life from others. No matter how much is given to us, we cannot notice it because we refuse to listen to what we hear - to validify any blessings God has given us by accepting them.

In those moments, that's when hope is lost. We become blessing-logged creatures, bloated because we give the blessings no place to go where they can bless us. In this uncomfortable state, we hurt many who try to help us.

Mm. As I sat on the porch today, I noticed the sunset sky above the rooftops. It was a pinkish-peach sky with pale raspberry blue clouds - a very sweet sky. Then I noticed the things most obscuring my view - a big satellite disk, and our own friendly-neighborhood electric lines, silhouetted against the lovely dusk. It is funny to think that these...things...that have become lifelines to many of us - obscure a sunset sky, which is every bit as, if not more life-giving and sustaining to the human soul.

The blessings are there, very much so - if only we choose honesty within ourselves, that our ears might listen for what is there for us to hear.

"What is Discipline?" ~ Amy Carmichael

When I refuse the easy thing for the love of my dear Lord,
And when I choose the harder thing for love of my dear Lord,
And do not make a fuss or speak a single grumbling word;
That is discipline.

When everything seems going wrong and yet I will not grouse,
When it is hot, and I am tired, and yet I will not grouse,
But sing a song and do my work in school and in the house;
That is discipline.

When Satan whispers, "Scamp your work"--to say to him, "I won't,"
When Satan whispers, "Slack a bit"--to say to him, "I won't,"
To rule myself and not to wait for others' "Do" and "Don't";
That is discipline.

When I look up and triumph over every sinful thing,
The things that no one knows about--the cowardly, selfish thing--
And when with heart and will I live to please my glorious King;
That is discipline.

To trample on that curious thing inside me that says "I,"
To think of others always--never, never of that "I,"
To learn to live according to my Savior's word, "Deny";
That is discipline.

listening

I've often read or heard the phrase that has become a sort of concept: "You weren't really listening." How much do we really listen? I mean, we hear, most certainly - unless we have an inane ability to block out input - but a lot of the time, we miss stuff right below our ears, and it all goes right past our noses.

I'm mildly sardonic because it is ironic.

And I wonder whether I really hear that phrase when I read it.

The stuff we hear only registers in our conscious when we, to some extent, listen for it. Until then, it just goes in one ear and out the other - no matter how many times or how obviously it is presented to us.

Humanity and denial are largely synonymous.

Here is the concrete example that cemented all this for me tonight.

For over twenty years, I've had over 99% of my evening meals with my family. And while my brothers boisterously regaled themselves with funny stories and movie re-enactions, and my little sister and I raised random topics here and there, my mom would tell us to listen to what my dad had to say, because this was his chance to really talk with all of us since most of the day he's at work.

So we'd stop and listen - but maybe I didn't really. My mind would go, "Oh, he's starting on another story again." From work, from news on the radio, from his childhood. And I'd hear. And enjoy it. But not really realize. My mind has done this I don't know how many times - "He's telling a story again...there he goes again with another story."

And I didn't realize until tonight that my dad likes to tell stories. I heard his words, but I don't think I heard him. All these years. I can't believe it. Now I'm just about to leave home, and I finally realize that one thing that makes my dad really happy is telling us stories - and they're fun stories.

Tonight he cooked the meal, too. It was a really special meal. He cooked the meal, and told us stories...he likes to hear us laugh.

If only I'd listened to him - realized how much it meant to him. My dad is the one who doesn't demand much of people. He doesn't have a whole lot of personal likes in terms of material comforts - at least, I think he does, but he doesn't indulge. He will spend money on us before he spends it on himself.

And here I finally discovered another precious thing that really makes him happy. If I'd realized it sooner, then I could have spent a lot of dinner-times really participating in the stories, and listening, and saying stuff that would make him happy.

It is funny we look for clues to people's personalities and miss the obvious. Too much is hidden in plain sight. Maybe we need to revise our concepts of "plain." Plain sounds boringly harmless, but it is really quite dangerous. Beware lumping most of life into the category of mundanity.

So I suppose this is a little tribute to my dad.

But also a reminder to myself - do I really listen to God? Or do I only hear? I think listening to a person is the way to their heart, and thus it is with God. Mary listened.

I guess the next time I hear, "You're not listening to me!" in some movie or book or even in real life, I'll actually start to listen more, instead of just commenting to myself how often I hear and phrase and wondering why.

Jesus said, "He who has ears, let him hear." I think ears - and all the other senses with which we can listen - are gifts. Valuable gifts from God. Let us not squander them on ignorance or dishonesty with self.

What I would be without God

I like to contemplate, sometimes, what I would be if I did not believe in God. I like to ask others, too, because I think it tells something of personalities.

I have concluded I would:

- be New Age, and take up elements of Zen that I found attractive
- participate in meditation and alternative healing
- believe God can be found in everything (a Colors of the Wind perspective)
- believe in the power of love and unity
- believe in relativism

To me, there is a certain beauty about all these things. They are attractive. I take the good elements from the things on the list above that I can without going against my beliefs. But intellectual beauty often falls short of truth, and there is a truth I have come to believe in that draws me more than what my mind initially comprehends as beautiful. This truth is also beautiful, but that isn't the sum of it. It is more than intellectual beauty, or things my heart longs for. It is a compelling truth that won't be ignored when I view life as honestly as I possibly can.

poor blog..

Poor neglected little spot in cyberspace. I feel like the little prince in Antoine Saint-Exupery's book - tending his little planet.

hands

"But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, 'If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.'" ~ John 8:6-7

"The same finger
Of the strong hand
That had written ten commands
For now was simply scribbling in the sand...

Could that same finger come
And trace my soul's sacred sand
And make some unexpected space
Where I could understand
That my own condemnation pierced
And broke that gentle hand
That scratched the words I’ll never know
Written in the sand..."

~ Scribbling in the Sand, by Michael Card

"I know why animals don't have technology! They don't have hands!" ~ Andy, 12

"Why did they nail His hands and feet? His love would have held Him there." ~ "Why," by Michael Card

foundations

Today I was at a mall, sitting at a sort of pavilion outside. I was enjoying the nice atmosphere and suddenly this pounding started. I turned to check what it was - across the street was a construction site; a huge piece of machinery was pounding a metal post into the ground. At first I turned away to ignore it, but then I did a mental double take. That metal pillar was part of a future building's foundation. It would support an apartment building tens of stories tall. People would depend on it for their safety...their very lives. They'd go to bed at night assuming the building had a firm foundation; probably the underground pillars would be the least of their life's worries. They'd take it for granted. It's for all those people that all this preliminary work is done before a single brink is laid - essential work; indispensable work.

And I stared as the metal pillar took a beating to instill it in the ground. I marveled at the strength of the contraption pounding it in - grotesque rusty red iron framwork that resembled a cross between a crane and a pulley with a heavy weight attached. I tried to understand what was driving the machine and where it derived its strength, but I could not figure it out. I watched as the mysterious, ugly machine repeated itself, the weight pounding the pillar down, foot by foot - from twenty feet above the ground to five, to four...

The thought hit me that we, as humans, don't have the strength to take that kind of pounding. That's why we can't be our own foundation. We're just not strong enough. We're fragile. We shatter under the kind of force it would take to establish us on our own in this universe. It's just not even a possibility. On our own, we're temporal.

This may be stretching the metaphor, but I saw a parallel what I saw today and Jesus' sufferings for us. He Himself underwent horrible beatings devised by humans - with grotesquely distorted minds and motives difficult to understand - to establish what He did for us. He spared Himself no separation from the lowest the earth had to offer. And in a way, that is why He is able to be our cornerstone - the firm foundation we can trust in as we go to sleep each night. He is fully established on this earth, pounded deep into the worst of the earth's dust. He and His testimony, He and His saving work grafting us into the family of God - will not be shaken. Trusting in Him as our cornerstone, we can become a very part of that building.

There is so much talk of building good foundations in all walks of life. Today helped me understand it a little better. I also understood a bit better, I think, what it meant for the Lord to lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone.

So this is what the Sovereign LORD says: "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; the one who trusts will never be dismayed." ~ Isaiah 28:16

"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock." ~ Matthew 7:24

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. ~ Ephesians 2:20

the generating generation

My Gmail inbox is pushing 1000 conversations. Scary. If our generation is deserving of a qualifier, it "generating" - we are a generating generation. Such a strange place earth has become. It seems like in so many dimensions volume is increasing - activities, music we have access to, stuff there is to fill our heads with (wikipedia anyone?), number of relationships we engage in, amount of correspondence, web accounts, server space, discarded waste cyber and non-cyber...the kind of stuff you avoid dwelling on because it just gives you a big headache.

But the ultimate scheme of things hasn't changes...hasn't changed at all.

22 1/3

hypocrisy

Hypocrisy is one of the things I hate most. The scary thing is that the more I think about it in the lives of others, the more I see it in my own. It is mind-boggling to realize that humanity is pretty much characterized by hypocrisy. If I think about hypocrisy too much I pretty much go crazy, because I certainly stand condemned - despite the fact that I often go out of my way to avoid appearing so.

I was reading Oscar Wilde's sardonic satire The Importance of Being Earnest today. Really all of it seems funny in a wild sort of way. It seemed I should laugh at a lot of the statements made by the characters, but I couldn't really, because it was all too true. Which is exactly why his play is so awesome. His characters say all the things we usually avoid saying in real life...things we usually avoid saying but hear anyhow, in the silence of the unsaid.

What a lot of energy (and time and money) we spend trying to maintain appearances! This is also a mind-boggling thought. It is a dangerous pursuit that is just fulfilling enough to tantalize and just unfulfillable enough to destroy. And it easily takes over a life.

If more people would be courageous enough to tell the truth then maybe it would give the less brave the courage to do so too. But so long as we all play the game, life is one massive facade. It will only break down when a few courageous people dare to bare themselves. Who else will do it?

On a side note, evil hides in [many forms] of darkness. So long as we hide, guess which side wins out?

pride and selfishness

Sometimes when God gives us something really precious and good, our tendency is to want to hoard it, and to fear losing it. I started thinking about one of these things God has given me, last night, and I was thinking, "What if I lost it?" And the thought scared me.

So then I wondered whether I should completely discount it.

Then I realized something. No, I should not completely discount it, or desire to get rid of it.

Rather, pride is selfish. It wants to hoard things like intellect or talent or beauty or material wealth or even loving relationships, because pride fuels selfish ambition. It wants these good things all for itself, to further itself. Faced with the concept of loss, it shies back in fear.

Pride is not only a fearsome but a fearful vice.

But humility - humility can properly cherish these good things, because it is concerned about giving the glory to God - even in loss would it glorify God.

I can fully thank God for the good things He has blessed me with, whatever the amount, if I am fully concerned with His glory. And I don't have to fear losing them, either, if I am obsessed with the right things such as being a slave to righteousness and God's glory!

xanga

This blog is thinking of moving to Xanga. The name Xanga sounds so strange to me; it evokes images of Chinese martial arts or Japanese anime...but the Blogger set-up feels claustrophobic to me. Xanga seems more adaptable and more open-air...

education initiatives and all that

I was just thinking randomly today that it's ironic and we seem to need more and more education to get anywhere in the working world. I mean, what is our world working towards? It seems like we're not working towards anything, but just trying to maintain that pinnacle that's always been around. As more people get educated, more education is needed if you want to get to the top - or even to get a decent job. It's just that once there is more selection, people want a finer sieve - because our natural tendency is to strive for the best - so employers raise the bar.

I may be wrong, because I don't know a whole lot about this stuff. But really - what are we pushing towards? It really feels like we are pushing some people down and some people up, as we always have. And so I don't think the poverty situation will ever greatly improve; it may improve some, but not a lot, which seems sad.

Ephesians 4:29

"Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen."

I never really seriously thought about that before - "only what is helpful for building others up"? What does that look like? It's got me thinking. I think a lot about the first part of the verse - no unwholesome talk - but I think sometimes I forget that second general guideline, which tempers the first part and definitely alters things a lot. What an excellently clear qualifier; when I think about what that would look like, it is so beautiful. If only we really did speak only the things that would build others up and benefit those who hear!

I am thinking I really need this verse. Lately I think I have hurt some people through things I said.

This also makes me think of Matthew 15:11, when Jesus explained, "What goes into a man's mouth does not make him unclean, but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him unclean." In verse 18 He continues, "...for the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man unclean."

Our words are an excellent heart test. I think we need but look over the content of our speech and conversation over the past 24 hours or past week or so to see what is in our hearts right now. A very accurate test, and scary.

When I think about it...I think I really need a heart makeover in some areas.

hard life

So...yeah. Life is hard. But that's what makes it life, isn't it?

...

Post-Solomon:
"Meaningless, meaningless, all is meaningless!"

Post-Einstein:
"Relative, relative...all is relative!"

relaxing

I learned something on Friday while making dinner. Making a filling dinner for a family of seven can be rather tiring. I told my mom happily that I would do it, because I wanted to cook...a homemade meal is so much more awesome than the take-home you find in a supermarket or fast-food delivery or something. Which is what I heard my mother say we were going to have that night (Friday is the laid-back night; everyone's tired). Thus my offer to make dinner. I was all too ready to set out to save my family from finishing off the week with an anticlimactic tasteless, untasteful meal.

I energetically pulled several cookbooks off the shelves to look for ideas. To me cooking is an adventure. I hate making the same thing too often. It's always a chance to try something new.

But my energy pretty much fizzled out when I opened the freezer and found only ground beef and beef shanks. I can eat vegetarian but it is hard to cook a satisfying vegetarian meal for a family of non-vegetarians. Here I wish to readily admit my perfectionistic tendencies. I could have made beef soup...a really yummy one...but I don't like soup in hot weather. I could have made spaghetti or some variation of it...but we had already had spaghetti the night before.

Here I came to a crossroads, and I started to panic. I felt like telling my mom there wasn't enough in the fridge and could she please just order dinner. One half of my mind said, "Tell her...this is a good time; dad can buy it in since he's still on his way home...tell her before you start and get yourself into the mess of a half-accomplished Friday dinner..." And the other half said, "But take-out is DULL. Remember those highly unpalatable meats...and roast chicken we had last time...anything you make, even a simple something, will be better than that!"

So right then I made a decision. Rather than panicking and stressing my way through the cooking, I would do it slowly. Meals don't materialize; they are produced through a series of small steps. I would relax and cook my way through that series of small steps, rather than waste a lot of energy stressing while I was cooking. After all, cooking is a good way to occupy my time, with many more fruits to show than idleness...or just doing random stuff. Why not just cook and keep at it and slowly but surely move closer to the goal. I would do my best with whatever we had and it would be an adventure anyhow.

This is the crux of the story - my decision to relax my way through the task, rather than stress my way through the task. This is so significant to me I feel like emboldening that last sentence. I do this with so many things in life - besides the healthy amount of stress needed to accomplish any task, big or small, I also stress and stress and stress and have nothing to show for the extra stress except a lot of wasted energy and often panic. So this is a realization I plan to apply to a lot of other things in life. Really if I could relax and enjoy rather than stress and panic life would be so much more of a fun ride, lol.

There is a happy ending to the Friday night dinner story. I decided I could make the savory rice recipe I'd found in a cookbook, substituting a couple ingredients to make up for what we didn't have. I made a carrot-radish-green pepper-onion-baby corn-shallot stir-fry. And when my dad called and I overheard my mom asking him to pick up a couple of grocery items I asked for some chicken fillets too; I could make those last when they got home.

The savory rice/radish stir-fry/chicken fillets in cream gravy was a success and a warm memory. And the leftovers were all eaten up over the next two days, ever last bit. And if I'd given in to stress at that moment Friday evening we'd have had to settle for an impersonal ill-seasoned take-out meal made by who knows from our nearest grocery store.

good things to think about

"We are all too eager to confess the sins of others for them, rather than to confess our own." ~ excerpt from yesterday's sermon at church

"I am more certain of the reality of Jesus Christ than I am of my own reality." - Chuck Colson (so often we have that backwards!)

silence and pain

"'One learns of the pains of others by suffering one's own pain [. . .], by turning inside oneself, by finding one's own soul. And it is important to know of pain [. . .]. It destroys our self-pride, our arrogance, our indifference toward others. It makes us away of how frail and tiny we are and of how much we must depend upon the Master of the Universe.'" ~ The Chosen, by Chaim Potok

Silence and solitude literally force this interaction. They teach us to "look into [ourselves . . .], to walk around inside [ourselves] in company with [our] souls. [. . .] the heart speaks through silence." (ibid)

Loneliness is painful, but a great teacher.

conclusions

We are eager...often much too eager...to draw conclusions. We want answers now. This is most likely conditioned by the widespread instant-gratification mentality. We want to understand right away, forgetting that the greatest lessons may take years to learn. There is a symbiosis between our minds and time.

We do not always take time for contemplation. I always thought the faster you got it, the better you were. But true answers to hard questions only come with time, else they aren't really answers. They are, perhaps, mere intuitions that but brush the surface of the answer. The answer itself, the whole of it, is not a part of us.

This, I suppose, is what the greatest scholars in any discipline understand.

Too often a quick answer takes into consideration only a few nuances, when the question itself extends in many directions.

It is a bit scary to me that I apply this instant-gratification mentality to my reading of the Bible. Growing up I mostly thought in terms of "read, comprehend; read, comprehend" - a sort of rhythm I came to expect.

But then I began to notice that what I naturally did was more to read and contemplate...sometimes no more than a few lines at a time. And often a few lines take up days, or even weeks. I usually set out to swallow each of the Pauline letters in one gulp, but I have learned now that a verse or two is adequate. A full chapter is really too much to seriously think about at once.

I understand now too why God gives me lessons and experiences that last years before I even glimpse an answer.

This is just one more incident that reinforces our humble position. We are far from kings of this existence. We are more like very small moles slowly tunneling away at an understanding of reality and truth.

beauty...and pain

I think beauty and pain are related because they both have the capacity to rend our hearts. We cry tears of sadness, and tears of joy. How strange that two so very opposite things share the capacity to undo us. And so it is that joy is not necessarily absence of pain, nor pain absence of joy. It is interesting that beauty and pain are abstract yet neither emotions nor entities. Not only can they evoke similar responses...often they come hand-in-hand. How is it something can be so beautiful it hurts, and that in some of the most painful things there is beauty to be found? And somehow, to human beings, both beauty and pain are necessary to wholeness. We must not only experience them in real life, but find them within us.

Why do we call them beauty and pain? Why do we call beauty...beauty? The same for pain. I suppose we categorize things by the emotions and responses they evoke within us, by how they feel to us. The things that evoke this certain response we call "beauty." And we also have "bittersweet." What if our categories were flawed? Maybe everything is bittersweet...

It is so late. Not a good time to write a thinking-hard post. I'm not making a whole lot of sense anymore. More on this later perhaps.

crazy hair day

I think I might be a little bit crazy today. After dinner I was just talking with people and I started noticing their hair. I was thinking what an effective thing hair is. But just then the absurdity of it hit me - I mean, it's just this stuff sprouting out of your head, you know? I started laughing wildly because hair is a pretty wild thing - literally...pretty and wild - that makes no sense, but it works. A lot of stuff in life is like that. It doesn't make sense but it works.

Now, hair still makes more sense than eyebrows. I mean, whoever would have thought that brows could be so effective on the human face? Is there any human being that could have thought to put brows on themselves? I think brows should make any serious artist worship.

Of course this could go on and on. Hands don't make sense either, but they are some of the most beautiful things in all of creation.

N.B. Hair still isn't making sense to me. As of now I take one good look at people's hair and just start laughing like crazy.

i love yummy, healthy treats!!

I sort of thought this up the other day and it was really good!

1 ripe banana (not too ripe)
1/4 cup plain (sweetened) yogurt
2 tsp. cocoa powder
1 T. milk powder

Optional: some crushed roasted nuts like cashews or walnuts

Slice the banana neatly into a pretty bowl/glass. In a cup, mix the cocoa powder and the yogurt until it looks like chocolate pudding. Spoon it tidily (lol) over the bananas. Sprinkle the milk powder on (if it's milk powder mildly sweetened with a bit of vanilla flavor it's even better), then the nuts.

(TIP: It tastes really good if you freeze the yogurt overnight first, then mix the cocoa powder in...it's harder to mix it in but it gives this really nice chilled effect. I like to keep frozen cups of yogurt on hand - not frozen yogurt, though. That is ridiculously expensive in Thailand.)

Lol. You don't have to do it exactly this way. There are myriad possible variations; you get the picture. I never follow recipes exactly. I always go with what's in the kitchen, and anyway art is not formulaic and cooking is definitely an art. Treat yourself to a bit of creativity...go with what you have in your kitchen!! ;)

human beings!

Lol. Sometimes little kids say "human beings" and it comes out "human beans," lol. So cute. But anyhow. Humans are SO complex! To think that if we were to catalog one person's every characteristic, thought, and action, I do not know how many books it would take. Really words are inadequate to describe us, because really we cannot even fully comprehend ourselves. I like to think about how God knows our "inmost being" - depths I'm certain I have but don't even know about. If we were really the greatest beings in this universe, I think we would have minds that could comprehend and fully know ourselves. As it is, we do not. But just think - God does for Himself, and that is another characteristic that makes Him God. That is almost scary to think of fully knowing yourself. But He can, and it doesn't destroy Him. I think that it would destroy me to know that much. My mind just couldn't hold that much knowledge.

The fact is, humans are not only complex but unique! It just blows my mind to think how every single human being who has ever existed since the beginning of creation is a unique person whom no personality test or description can encompass, who has their own unique likes and dislikes and needs and pet peeves and background that shaped them. Every single person I know is SO complex! There are only a few people I can begin to understand deeply, because deeply understanding people takes time. But even all the people I have never started to try to understand are unique in their own way. Every single person! I understand some people better than others; some I try but fail to understand. But oh...forget all that is without; it is certainly mind-boggling to think of all there is to be known just within ourselves!

So I suppose maybe that is why God gave us language, art, music, dance, and all these forms of self-expression. In a painting, in a song, in poetry and prose, in dance, whether ballet or ballroom - these are where we glimpse the breadth of all that is within us. We don't need planes to fly or spaceships to travel light years from the earth; we have that capacity within us!

on realness

So our culture definitely has an obsession with realness. This generation, at least. Thus, perhaps, our fascination with randomnity and self-expression both positive and negative.

Tonight I was getting rather frustrated because it feels like so much of our time is spent on facades. I mean, you could make your life one big facade to cover up the truth. At one point in the conversation I felt that half the people in the world are faking and the other half are casting their pearls before swine. Now I know that is hyperbole and the truth is that all of us do it some of the time and some of us do it all of the time.

But sometimes it is frustrating when there is fakeness and you know it. Especially when it's two way. It is probably a mark of insanity to never notice when people are fake, but also a mark of insanity to always think people are being fake. I guess the danger of talking about fakeness and realness is that then people might start to wonder whether you're being real...

Well, today my mom told me some really significant thoughts. They are significant to me because a) I have never ever heard or even thought about it before, and b) because this may be the first really profound thing I've heard about realness.

Firstly, she said, we are sinners and so we do have to fake, to a certain measure, not to follow our sinful nature at times. We can't do everything our sinful natures would have us do.

Secondly, a lot of us do spend our time hiding and nourishing our facades, because we are ashamed of who we really are. But the truth is that we should be ashamed of ourselves, because we're sinners.

Thirdly - we have to keep fighting that temptation to hide; we have to be honest about our faults, because in all reality bringing our sins out into the light is the way to heal ourselves.

I feel better now. But just in case you ever wondered, I am not Pollyanna.

cooking!!!

Oh my goodness...I just have to say this, just for the record. Today, for the first time in a couple months, I made a meal and it didn't tire me out and I was happy and eager to do it. I guess I have to start slow. Today's was just heating leftovers, making stir-fry, and cooking rice. But seriously...I love cooking and I miss being able to cook. For the last while or so even just washing salad tired me out and seemed like a huge chore. Now it's like...I'm ready to fill the house with good food again...which is something I really like to do. Okay. That was horribly random.

hmm.

This is mildly frustrating. I have so much stuff I want to say I don't know how to say it. Maybe I should try to forget that this is a blog and not a dissertation about life. Lol. I guess I'm having a hard time writing lately. But I'm glad for all the stuff I have been able to post. I love thoughts, value reflections on life and it's really nice to have them down in organized, recorded form someplace. There was a time when it was much harder to write. Now this blog is kind of like a friend...not a friend I interact with, but a repository that stores my thoughts.

Yeah. This is the place to store the randomnity in my life.

so tired

So...if I blogged about all I've been thinking about these past few days, I could write enough to fill a book.

whimsical little smile

I usually love emoticons. But there is one smile I really like to have that they so cannot capture. I don't even have a name for this expression. It's like a small smile (but it really is a smile) and a little frown (but it's not an upset frown; it's a thinking frown)...and a little "he he" laugh from deep inside all combined. And we have three separate emoticons to capture each of these expressions but none that combine it. It is a smile nuanced by a thoughtful frown and a mirthful AND sarcastic laugh. It expresses "I know exactly what you mean" and "I just don't know," simultaneously. It captures the beautiful ironies, paradoxes, and oxymoronity of life.

Either you understand or you have a big headache.

I think my personality changes from time to time. Or rather, the expression of my personality. I don't think I have MPD, but I do notice I feel and sound different from week to week.

I deleted my Facebook profile picture today. I feel very ambiguous. I think I could either laugh or cry, and I think I have everything figured out and nothing figured out. There is nothing wrong in particular. Nothing right in particular either. I'm just going through thinking-hard stretch of road. And this means I figure a lot of things out, and the more I figure things out the more I realize how much I don't have figured out.

It is a wonderful feeling. Maybe it should be called a finite feeling infinite. Which is much more fun than an infinite feeling finite - which is also sometimes what I am.

And now I have a question: Does anyone know how to stop a mind from working or at least slow it down? Because I am finite and a little tired and kind of need a break right now. Insert: [whimsical little smile]

one of my favorite things to do

What I love to do is have a long super-deep conversation with someone...even deeper than ordinarily deep...and then afterwards, have some quiet time to think about it - time with no other relational or factual input, so that I can carefully mull over and digest all we talked about. This is best done sitting outside on a sunny day with a mild breeze. I sit and soak in the bright, vivid lusciousness of pure color surrounding me in the green of the plants and the blue of the sky...and even in bricks and cement. The latter two things are wonderful even if they are often deemed colorless because they mean I can see! And I'm not color-blind. And I breath in air. And I just sit and be. I really think I like being more than doing. Although it's not always convenient, it feels so good. And I think about our conversation - the content, the beauty of having had it.

It's not normal not to be at least a little crazy in some small sense.

I am normal.

a...headache? and, ironically, thanks for senses

I've never had such a bad headache before. I almost literally feel nauseated. I don't know what a migraine feels like, but if it feels like this I feel really sorry for people who suffer from them. I've read stories before of people who suffered from incurable headaches...dreadful headaches. Wow. I commiserate. Again blogging is a diversion. I don't know what caused it. I went to bed and it kept getting worse and worse. So I got up and took some Tylenol. The headache must be at least partially psychological, because as soon as I swallowed the Tylenol - and I exaggerate not - 50% of it went away. So now I'm trying not to focus on it so much, because if it's psychological then thinking about it will probably make it worse. I think though that this is what they term the "splitting headache," and I really wonder that I can't remember having such a bad one before. It would seem that it's a pretty generic experience.

Oh...and if it really is psychological - I'm in pretty desperate need of a placebo. Lol. I remember feeling really bad one day and all of sudden this thought pops into my head: "I'm in desperate need of a placebo." But of course that is rather ironic because if I can think to think I need a placebo then probably I don't really need one.

As I thought to take the Tylenol I also thought of all the people in this world suffering from headaches or various physical pains without access to Tylenol. Really a very limited population of the earth has Tylenol or some variant of it. Or some native painkiller. Anyhow, I feel blessed to have Tylenol.

I also remember the last time I had a really bad sore throat, or an awful mouth sore. Whenever I'm in a lot of physical pain, I try to think it away by thinking of other things that could hurt more, and usually it helps quite well because it is a mental diversion. This does not work for my little sister or brother. When they're in pain and I suggest thinking of things that could hurt worse, they beg me to stop because they say it only makes the pain worse. But anyhow, there are all sorts of pains that I don't know about. The headache is new territory for me, and it makes me think that I have to be thankful because really there are myriad possible pains that I've never ever even experienced, much less am suffering from now. The last time I had a really bad sore throat, I told myself I would be perpetually thankful ever after whenever I was free of a sore throat. So I am thankful that I don't have a sore throat right now, or a mouth sore. A headache, splitting though it may be, is much the preferred option by far.

But I think that a headache is unique in that the territory it affects overlaps with your mind. So it's kind of difficult not to focus on it.

Maybe you have figured out by now that all this typing and all these thoughts are merely a diversion.

I just love music. I can't express how wonderful it feels to me to just resonate with music. That should be counted one of the 7 wonders of the world. (Did you know they just had people vote for the new 7 Wonders of the World? Yes - 70 million people on 07-07-07 for the new 7 Wonders of the World...I'm getting rather tired of 7. Before that day I thought it was a nice number but it's really beginning to feel cliched in modern use. It's symbolic but I don't think God meant it as an "auspicious" number. Nothing to be superstitious about.)

Today our family visited this one other church; my siblings were participating in a special program there. They had a professional pianist today. Oh my goodness - I hate crowds [of people I don't know], but after the service, this guy played some interlude-type music and I just wanted to stay in that room, even if what also filled that room was tons of people milling around.

Today has been a day of music. One of the things my siblings did was sing a song in the Karieng language - thy had been on a mission trip to teach English in a Karieng school. Oh, the song was so lovely - and so...Karieng. Their songs are so quaint, and so reminiscent of their culture. I marvel at how the smallest details in the melody make the music reflect their culture - a note here, and interval there...a lilt in the beat. Yesterday I had a voice lesson. And today, right when he got the chance (he's been gone for three weeks), my brother Ike gave me the latest Josh Groban CD. It was the sweetest thing ever. He spent the last of his savings on it. And he just randomly bought it for me. It wasn't really like a coming back gift, because he'd been upcountry - so this was something he could have gotten in Bangkok, but I guess he just saw it when he was in Chiang Mai (a relatively big town) to get on the train to come home to Bangkok...and bought it for me. And he couldn't wait to give it! Oh my goodness...:) I can't really express...yeah.

So I have lots of music going around my head, but in a nice way.

Wow. The headache is a lot better. I guess the Tylenol is kicking in. I seriously wonder whether Tylenol is a placebo.

God didn't have to create music. What a gift - what grace. He gave us music, colors (and shape and form and line), texture, taste, senses...

"O taste and see that the Lord is good." - verse - I need to look up the reference.

"You are beautiful beyond description - too marvelous for words; too wonderful for comprehension...like nothing ever seen or heard..." - praise song

2 Corinthians 4:18

...while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

(NASB)

random random thoughts...on blogging, i guess

The floodgates have been opened - beware. I feel almost as if, having started writing, I can't stop. The more you write the easier it is to express, and expressing feels good. It's just such a relief to let some of it out.

You never know what a day may bring. I never know what a day may bring in terms of thoughts. I'm so disorganized. But so are most blogs. That's the whole point, I guess. To get away from essays and term papers and assigned writing. An outlet for stream-of-conscious. Unfortunately for any readers I am...very stream of conscious. I like to say I'm an concrete example of abstraction - I'm concretely abstract and abstractly concrete. I wonder if it makes it hard to follow. I like tidiness but I never did put much stock in structure. Structure hampers life. Lack of it also hampers life. Pick one.

Today I decided to check out some other blogs; one I found randomly by clicking "next blog" and the other was one highlighted by blogger.

Trying out TimeSnapper, which is a free Windows program that automatically takes a screenshot every 5 seconds, every 5 minutes, every 5 hours, whatever you like. I've got it set to every minute (with the limit set to 3 GB). This is part of my grand plan to create a memex (lifetime store of everything). Other components: Google Desktop for searching email, calendar, tasks, files, past webpages; daily webcam photos; Emsa personal keylogger; chat/IM logs; Evernote. - http://jonaquino.blogspot.com/

Wow. Creepy. I am a packrat of sorts because to me everything has a memory connected to it. But...screenshots every minute? That's insane, even to me! A "memex" would be complete overload. Some things it's just more pleasant to forget. Have to live in the present and leave room for the future too!

Another one, not the blog itself but the author's little blurb about herself:

Once upon a time I met a frog. I kissed the frog. He turned into a Grumpy Prince. I married him anyway. We had a baby. This meant getting pregnant. Being pregnant is very strange. I felt an intense urge to blurt this out to everyone. Having a baby also, oddly, means ACTUALLY having a baby. I felt the need to blurt this out as well. I am still blurting. Welcome to my blurt. - http://notes-inside-my-head.blogspot.com/

Now that's profound...cutely profound? Or profoundly cute? Both, I guess. So there are a lot of people out there with something good to share. What freaks me out is how many people are sending their voices in the the blank void of cyberspace, having something significant to say, wanting to be heard. Even if blogging is just about the most informal way to get your thoughts out, people don't usually take the trouble unless they have something important enough to them that they think it's worth saying. How will they all be heard? I guess in the caring friends that take the time to read what they have to say; we all have a circle of lives we touch. It is still scary though to think how many blogs exist in all, and God hears them all.


I have a question I've been thinking about for the past several days. What would it be like to befriend a person completely like yourself? I think I have made the discovery that, frankly, if I met myself on the street in a different body, I probably wouldn't recognize it as me! I'm just not used to seeing myself outside of myself. In fact, if anything, I am always trying to put myself in other people's shoes; I tend to mimic people. I suppose if I met myself then that self would decide to mimic me too. At which point we would lose track of who we were.


Right now it's raining. The windows are open, and I smell all the cool freshness. It reminds me of Hosea 6:3 (NIV):

Let us acknowledge the LORD;
let us press on to acknowledge him.
As surely as the sun rises,
he will appear;
he will come to us like the winter rains,
like the spring rains that water the earth.

Oswald Chambers once said that when people are in trial and in pain, it isn't our job to help them out of their pain. How dare we take away that which will help them most to grow!

There was a story of how a boy saw a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. It had to struggle very hard. The boy felt sorry for it, so he tore the cocoon off. But there was something very wrong. The butterfly's wings just lay in a heap; they didn't expand. And they never did. This butterfly couldn't fly. The truth is that the struggle that the butterfly goes through to get out of its cocoon strengthens the muscles and gets the blood flowing into the wings. Without the struggle, the wings do not develop properly. I have this image in my mind of myself, and many others, like a butterfly in the throes of leaving its cocoon, struggling to expand its wings. It's painful and beautiful all at once, and such a delicate process that none can interfere...only watch and wait.

I can't sleep tonight. I have a bad habit of thinking profound stuff out before bed, and it doesn't really help me to fall asleep.

The truth is I'm slowly dying...of heartbreak. Non-romantic heartbreak. I guess I do have a tragic side. I find I'm still working through anger. Working through it keeps me from becoming bitter, but it means not stuffing it and so the feelings do resurface every once in awhile. I can't really be honest enough to express how hard everything is or how uglily I respond sometimes, just wanting to hurt people who have hurt me. Contrary to popular opinion, I can and do get angry at times, and it's not cute. I want to be honest - but maybe the most honest I can be is that I can never be really really honest. I'm not brave enough, and sometimes discretion is wiser anyhow.

um...

When I think about all the struggles I don't have, it is hard to admit what a hard time I do have. It feels ridiculous to say I am tired and miserable and overwhelmed with being tired and miserable and overwhelmed. But I don't think this is unnatural. As Christians we do have our struggles cut out for us; God - who knows our inmost being - chooses those which will make us grow, specifically. (sigh) It's so lovely and so hard all at once. Sometimes a bit of laughter helps. The comical in our position begs recognition. Think the Julia Roberts face - the one she makes in Mona Lisa Smile when she slips on some ice and falls flat on her back - it's this wide-eyed, sad little pout - i.e. everything's going so wrong it's almost funny. Or Peter Parker in "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head." I just love his one line: "Let's do lunch this evening." Yes...let's all do lunch this evening! It's better than no lunch, and it is a change of pace...

Oh, goodness. God knows what He is doing in my life. Even if I have to wait until the evening to have lunch, it will be a good lunch. Yeah.

sometimes i just need a break from thinking

Yesterday was a thinking-hard day. I thought and thought and thought about stuff - about people and personality types and how all that fits together, about various schools of thought in theology. I spend lots of time just trying to comprehend. And then I was getting overwhelmed, and I realized I needed a break from all these frames of thought. I needed to just remember who I am, who God is. To return to how things initially were in Eden for a moment, away from knowledge and and the search for knowledge. To just be me, and let God be God. A friend sent me the song "God is God" by Steven Curtis Chapman last year. I've listened to it so many times I can play the whole thing on the piano; I can hear it in my head whenever I want, with the awesome background instruments. Whenever I listen to that song, I feel like I'm standing in an endless black void of space - standing still, but it feels like dancing too - and just looking up and feeling the greatness above me, around me. I just feel my smallness. And the great void spreading out from me. And it actually doesn't feel frustratingly limited, but right and good and fulfilling.

I just have to share some of my most favorite lyrics ever:

God is God - Steven Curtis Chapman

And the pain falls like a curtain
On the things I once called certain
And I have to say the words I fear the most
I just don’t know

And the questions without answers
Come and paralyze the dancer
So I stand here on the stage afraid to move
Afraid to fall, oh, but fall I must
On this truth that my life has been formed from the dust

God is God and I am not
I can only see a part of the picture He’s painting
God is God and I am man
So I’ll never understand it all
For only God is God

And the sky begins to thunder
And I’m filled with awe and wonder
‘Til the only burning question that remains
Is who am I

Can I form a single mountain
Take the stars in hand and count them
Can I even take a breath without God giving it to me
He is first and last before all that has been
Beyond all that will pass

Oh, how great are the riches of His wisdom and knowledge
How unsearchable for to Him and through Him and from Him are all things

So let us worship before the throne
Of the One who is worthy of worship alone


Through my conversation with another friend (how many friends have I mentioned so far, lol - but gotta give credit where credit is due, lol), I came to realize that so many of the complicated wordings by philosophical greats are simply an elaborate attempt to dance around the one greatest Thing, the only Thing that matters, the one Thing that cannot be avoided because it permeates all - God. He is the sense in a life that doesn't make sense.

Why I'm not a Calvinist...or an Arminian.

Yesterday I had a conversation with a really good friend of mine. Through this conversation I concluded that, just as God is, in Anselm's terms, a greater Being than which none can be conceived, His love is that of which a greater love cannot be conceived. In allowing for His full sovereignty, and our full freedom - Christianity is the religion of paradoxes - we also allow for the greatest, fullest love that could possibly exist.

I never want to live a religion of terminologies. It's not pride that makes me want to say that I don't belong to any particular denomination or named ideology. Rather, I don't want to be locked in by a lens that humanity has developed to boost our limited understanding.

I was talking last Sunday with a man who is like a second father to me. I think he is one of the great theologians of this age. :) But he said something I really liked, so I decided to quote him on it:

"Good philosophy doesn't require an undue amount of intelligence, but a good amount of honesty." ~ Kwong Tessalee

...about who we are, who God is...how much we can actually wrap our minds around. I love how he said he likes to remember that really he is like a very small dog looking up, wide-eyed, in wonder and puzzlement at something very, very big.

a dream

Two nights ago I asked myself about rejoicing amidst the worst of trials:

I've been thinking lately and wondering why "Life is Beautiful" is one of the most popular movies of all time. You have this guy, living humanity's worst nightmare, and he's rejoicing throughout it all. How is this so attractive? How ironic that this is the very life God called us to - rejoicing in trial. The question is, living our worst nightmare, would we do the same? I think we have the chance to prove the message of this movie everyday.

And then I started to wonder whether it would be worse torture to be shut up alone all your life, or to be put in a concentration camp with your fellow man.


That very night, I had a very vivid dream. I dreamt that my family and I were being persecuted for our faith in God. I have had a couple other dreams about similar topics, but they were all humorous in some way. In one, we were in the Holocaust, being persecuted because of our race, but we were squished into a punch buggy (all seven of us!) and I had a time-bomb in my backpack. In another I dreamt someone I knew (don't worry; it's not anyone reading this!) came to our house and started persecuting Christians. And in another, it was the end of the world...but that dream had funny twists too.

This dream was different in that it was dead serious. No humor. I woke up thinking I understood how persecuted Christians feel - being hunted, and having no time to pause and catch your breath. It was like a nightmare, and not.

In it, my father was killed. He had been involved, with some other people we knew, in distributing Bibles and trying to spread the Gospel. But we had no time to mourn his death. We had to leave our residence in a hurry. For some reason the only people in our family were my mother and I and my little sister; none of my brothers were in it. We went down to the basement, where our car was parked, and left. We were being watched, and the police were on the lookout for us, and we even drove right over a barrier in order to get away. We spent some time hiding out in the city, and finally made it to an open-air market, where we met up with some of our friends who were also trying to escape, and some Thai believers (but we were in Malaysia) came and led us the rest of the way to a sanctuary for persecuted Christians. It was situated on the side of a mountain, and was basically an open-air gathering of people (but for some reason it was a sanctuary and we were hidden).

There was a vast crowd gathered, and as we arrived and sat down in relief, I noticed that the old lady next to us - and most of the crowd - were in rags. The looked poor, and starved. But in their eyes was hope and peace. Then three young men arrived. They had been tortured and maimed in the worst way for their faith, but they ran up the side of the mountain. And these looked happy - joyous, even. And despite their handicaps, they were running. In looking around me, I realized how rich we were - how well off we were. We weren't starved; we were very well dressed; we'd just left a car. All that united us was that we had been through trial, losing my father, and being hunted down - but I wasn't ashamed, just amazed at the faith of those around me. And the little we shared seemed to be enough. We were all in the same place.

I wonder if God wanted me to realize something in this dream. Not all of it made perfect sense. But to me it was profound. I have often felt ashamed that I have never experienced persecution for my faith, or else endured the torture that so many other Christians have and still do today. And I'd given up reading stories of those who do, because it gave me so much anxiety - for them, and for my comfortable state. But after I thought hard about this dream, I realized that these are my trials - loneliness, illness - what seems unbearable at times. This is what God is using to shape me and perfect me for the final day. And, like those persecuted for their faith, I am learning to rejoice in trial - to have joy, peace, and to mount up on wings like eagles and to run and not be weary.

It was a scary dream, but I was glad I had it. It seemed, also, that for a moment I shared in what all these other witnesses have experienced. To think...that we cannot comprehend humanity's worst nightmares. The Holocaust is a classic example, but within the Holocaust itself and throughout history have been those persecuted for their faith (and even those of other religions have endured persecution). But what has often made me wonder is that the worst tortures are thought up by fellow human beings...that we ourselves have the capability to hurt - to hurt others terribly, if we so desire. When we're angry, these things surface. To think what God has saved us - and continues to save us - from. Let us continue to take hold of that salvation!

so much to say

Oh, wow. I think today is writing day. I can think of five or six topics I want to write about...so today will be a day of many posts!

This just makes me think of what John said in his gospel - "And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written." (John 21:25, NASB) I love that he says that - acknowledges it. If, even over a couple of days or a couple of weeks, I can't keep up just writing my thoughts down...oh, it just gives a glimpse of all Jesus must have done and said and thought on this earth. The Gospels are but a limited account; really what they mean to convey is immeasurable, and insurmountable in words. I think that if I kept this perspective in mind as I read the Gospels, it would make them come alive so much more. I used to take them at face value and hardly use my imagination. I don't mean the Gospels are insufficient, or that we should take liberties at interpretation, but we have to work with the matter, especially in this day and age and culture and language. We have to work to understand just all God did for us when He sent Jesus. It's huge! How often do we even start to grasp it?

He didn't just send us one book; He sent us the equivalent of a library that wouldn't even fit on this earth.

hard day

So today was a really really hard day. Sometimes there's nothing you can do except bear it out, and strive to keep believing. When all is said and done, a lot of the things I long for at the moment are not the things that have the power to fulfill me - they're important, but not the most important. I have that here, right at my fingertips.

"The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and saves those who are crushed in spirit." Psalm 34:18

"For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison." ~ 2 Corinthians 4:17

It helps to tell myself the truth - to write it out so I can read it to myself. And I suppose I can be thankful for time to contemplate. After all, when things are really busy, there isn't much time for that and sometimes I end up feeling numb inside. Life is hard when it's slowly eking itself by; life is also hard when it's too much of a blur.

I like the phrase "after all" - the fullness of hindsight is packed into it. One day, I'll stand and look back. "After all," I'll nod and sigh, amazed. "After all."

loneliness

Loneliness: such a charmingly provocative topic. But I don't mean this in the romantic sense. I'm speaking in the most general sense you can think of.

I said I would make it a point to blog about a not-so-good day. Which today was. Until I decided to blog. When I start to blog things get better - firstly, I'm no longer so focused on myself. Secondly, all the good things that happened today come to mind - because I would really rather talk about the good stuff than the bad stuff. Thirdly, I'm forced to interact with a mental audience. But today I am set to talk about my bad day. So that is what I will do.

Well, it was one of those days with moments where I wondered whether it's worth it to fight it out when there doesn't seem to be much fighting you can do. When the "getting better" takes so long that you wonder whether you can endure the waiting. And the worst thing, feeling horribly lonely. It is funny how you can talk to people online and have excellent conversations, but sometimes it also makes you more lonely - maybe it whets your appetite for embodied community. That's why movies don't help either. You can lose yourself in someone else's life, but only until you have to return to your own. Same goes for books.

I think that's why we're so lonely in the "communication" age. Myriad forms of communication have been propagated but they're like canned communication. Like fixing Campbell's soup or ramen noodles rather than cooking a real meal. Like recombined milk - dried out and then re-liquidated, our voices and photos and letters are pixelated for teleportation and reassembled on the other side, and a lot is lost in the process.

It is funny when you get on Facebook and you're feeling rather lonely and everyone else looks lonely too. Facebook. Myspace. Online networking. Communities for lonely people.

I think we're all so lonely because we seldom take time to pursue the purest, most whole form of community. We've dumbed down communication because so many things have take our time we don't have time to invest in one of the things we most need. I love love love being able to send people random messages/posts on Facebook in the middle of the day (or night, for that matter) to tell them how much I care for them or what a difference they've made in my life. But we can't live on candy.

If we were dying...slowly dying inside - and we decided to find medication - we would be paying all we had to get the best possible form of that medication, rather than some cheap copy. This is not to say that I have not been blessed by chatting or emailing. They have been an unspeakable blessing to me during this time when I haven't been able to get out much because of my health condition. God has used it in amazing ways. All the same, I feel as if they are a mere taste of 24-karat communication - what God meant for us to have. And our culture sanctions all too well medicating our needs for community - connection with other human beings - mediated by electronic devices.

I really want to emphasize I don't think cell phones or IM or online networking or emails are bad at all. I mean...what if your best friends (and some of the biggest blessings in your life) happen to live on the other side of the world! What I do want to say is that we can't live solely on this form of communication. :)

But I think connection is a big part of what we lost in the Fall. Even when we can have embodied presence, we're still working to repair the ruins from the Fall; working toward that 24-karat connection - the original wholeness of Eden. Loneliness is difficult. Working at relationships may be harder. I love the lyrics by The Fray's "Over My Head" -

Let's rearrange
I wish you were a stranger I could disengage
to say that we agree and then never change.

Any time I start on invest in relationships it feels like going diving. Relationships don't succeed when people don't mutually die to themselves, don't pursue understanding, don't work to communicate. Disagreements are the cracks we sustained in the Fall...ever after in our interactions with each other we've had to work to formulate the glue. (He he...this is truly the day of mixed metaphors.)

Sometimes I just wonder, though, what this wholeness we're working towards in relationships looks like. How does God picture that wholeness? Does He have a dream for us?


All this said, today was a hard day. I would make a bad ascetic. No shutting myself in a cell for contemplation. It's so funny - when I'm alone, not by choice, I want to be with people. And when I'm with people, a lot of the time I want to run away and contemplate.

I've been thinking lately and wondering why "Life is Beautiful" is one of the most popular movies of all time. You have this guy, living humanity's worst nightmare, and he's rejoicing throughout it all. How is this so attractive? How ironic that this is the very life God called us to - rejoicing in trial. The question is, living our worst nightmare, would we do the same? I think we have the chance to prove the message of this movie everyday.

And then I started to wonder whether it would be worse torture to be shut up alone all your life, or to be put in a concentration camp with your fellow man.

to age gracefully

I just realized....

Every day, we're working ourselves into the people we will become. So basically we have every moment now to work ourselves into joyful old people rather than grumpy old people.

Hee hee...I think blogging makes me more joyful somehow. It's just fun to share...even if I don't know who I'm sharing it with.

So far I've mostly blog about the good days. I should blog about the bad moments some too. But one thing - the good philosophies still hold true on the bad days!

where hard times and bitterness do not corrupt

One morning, two weeks ago, I woke up and realized something. I was bitter. There was no other word to describe it. And the thought was so clear I know it was God, in His grace, pointing it out to me. In that moment I saw that going on that way would only harm me...and others. It was a lovely Saturday morning out but I felt awful inside. I'd been a walking tomb of anger for approximately one and a half weeks. I still think, to this moment, that the issue merited the anger...but I know now that the pent-up anger did not merit the damage!

I was so shocked. For the first time in my life that I could seriously remember, I was a bitter person, and it felt so ugly. And maybe for the first time I also understood its cause: that bitterness is pent-up anger that isn't doing anyone any good. If I had held onto it, I do not know what I would be like now, another two weeks later. I am scared to think of it. I was awful to myself, awful to other people, awful to God. That very day I decided to let go of the anger...to forgive where forgiveness was needed. The next day at church we had communion which helped to solidify that commitment.

Now I am shocked to realize what a different person I am. I think that in letting go of that bitterness, I realized that I had to let go of many other small issues too. Really I think that I had seriously been conscious of the anger for only a little while, whereas it had been building up for a long time...possibly even for a year. And if I wasn't going to be bitter, I couldn't keep any of the anger. It is so much easier to smile...really smile, and to laugh. I don't feel like I have storm cloud above my head all the time anymore. I haven't felt so...light...in such a long time.

Would you believe...and I think it is possible...to work through tough issues with other people and in your life without being angry? I think it sure helps things to heal faster. I can say this because the issues themselves are not over. I'm still working through them.

But that weekend, I made one discovery. Oh, trials come. If we want to grow in the Lord, we're asking for it! But when they do come, we have two choices - to let them corrupt us and etch lines into our faces, or to rejoice as we're going through it. Because one day the trial that's weighing us down at the moment will be gone. And what will be left will be us - and if it's a bitter us, we won't be able to enjoy the good days. We'll be left in ruins. Whereas if we rejoice during the trial, how much more happiness we might have - not only during the trial, but when it's over. And we'll be the stronger for it. Joy is all in who we are, and rejoicing now is a true investment for the future.

When I say "rejoice in trial," I don't mean smiling all the time. Oh, definitely there will be moments when we can only smile a little inside, but our mouths just won't go, or else we're working our lips but our hearts are slowly cracking apart...and times when we can't even say, "smile." There will be moments when we can only cry. But we have to rejoice all we can! We can even rejoice as we cry a little, because crying helps. Maybe we'll be smiling through the tears, but that means we're still smiling.

And maybe one day we'll cry because life is getting harder and harder but actually we're getting happier and happier. And it's not a hollow sort of happy. It's real happy. And maybe it even looks kind of stupid because it is so opposite to all we're going through.

I think this is the secret..and that finally I can say it, to some small measure, with the Apostle Paul:

"I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want." ~ Philippians 4:12

And what a great secret it is.

The secret of a resilient spirit.

After I thought all this through and made this realization I cried a little too, because I realized that something even harder is sure to come along now that I've learned this lesson. But Jack Hayford put it so well in Pursuing the Will of God when he said that maybe God doesn't show us where He's taking us because surely we would shy back and say we couldn't handle it. But He's presently molding us into the people that can handle the future.

It is still so hard. Just because I write all this doesn't mean I'm all sparkles and bubbles. Maybe it sounds like it. But I think I have a right to be a conundrum, because rejoicing in trial is oxymoronic. :) That said, I have one more thing that I can rejoice for (another joy I can pull out at any moment) - and that is choosing not to be bitter...and being able to remain beautiful inside even in not-so-lovely circumstances. I am also thanking God for lesson-reaping time...that finally it is here. After two years interspersed with moments wondering why I'm still on earth at all, I think this is possibly the lesson. I'm just taking lots of breaths now because soon I'll probably have to dive under again!

One of the best things about joy is how share-able it is. :) After I let go the bitterness, I had a renewed ability to laugh with others and make people laugh. I think wholesome laughter is one of God's gifts to us in trial!

I guess I'm just realizing this week that it's hard all over. Everywhere I turn people are hurting or in pain or just having a hard time.

Just one thing. He is the God who gives us diamonds when we ask for gold. Diamonds...come at a high price, but they're worth their weight.

wonderful?

I was just sitting here thinking that God has something in store...whatever it may be, it will wonderful. I was kind of smiling about that. And suddenly I realized...what do I mean, something in store? I don't have to wait for the wonderful. With the perspective that God has something amazing in store ("No eye has seen, no ear has heard..." - how direct can the Bible get!), it is wonderful right now already! Gotta live in the present and enjoy the moment, lol. :P

the center of the universe

It is interesting to think that each of us, to ourselves, is the center of the universe; we think from the point of reference of ourselves, and everything else does rotate around us, in a sense. So what if our entire lives were meant to broaden our mindset? To teach us to think farther and farther out from ourselves, to take a bird's eye view on life? Maybe it really is so, for it seems that is the only way we can ever understand why so much of life seems to go against the grain of human nature. It always seems we have to live backwards to go forwards, to give up ease and comfort and natural wants and ambition for self, if we are ever to succeed in all the truly important things...

the perfect verse for a perfectionist...

I was thinking yesterday that 1 John 4:18 is a verse for perfectionists. I read in a book about perfectionism (Why Do I Put So Much Pressure on Myself, by Kathy Collard Miller) that one trait common to perfectionists is this constant feeling that God is displeased with us, that we just don't measure up. But: "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love." (NASB) To the perfectionist, that is profundity two ways. To put it in a perfectionist's terms, we musn't fear imperfection, because that fear would itself mar our perfection. I find this highly amusing. I mean, just read that sentence-before-last over to yourself real fast ten times. Inner laughter guaranteed. Maybe good therapy for perfectionism would be to take a half-hour doze of laughter daily - and at least two-thirds of that ought to be at ourselves.

I think I need to make a list of all the possible e-laughs that exist. Lol is getting rather dull. :P

I had meant to write a longer post but I'm just not up to it today. And I already said what I wanted to say most, and there is no need to be long-winded! So in the spirit of the above paragraphs, I'm not going to pressure myself to write anymore. :)

Hmm...it just hit me that two words I usually second-guess the spelling on are "commitment" and "guarantee." Uh oh. Not good.