From “Thoughts in Solitude” (c) Abbey of Gethsemani

Prayer of Thomas Merton

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,

and the fact that I think that I am folowing your will

does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you

does in fact please you.

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this

you will lead me by the right road

though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always

though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me,

and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

“You measure change, not by behaviors altered in the first generation, but by what the next generation takes as a given.”

The quote is from Helen Haste. i got it from here, but the quote was originally a paraphrased quote by this guy here.

Blings from the Holy Land

NOT a book on Palm Reading folks

But sure looks like ‘palm-reading’ when flipped open eh? hehe

Actually there’s still another item, will post it soon. Thanks mate!

Instead of a thesis explaining my extended hiatus or self imposed exile or whatever, i’ll just attempt a simple post here la…

Ok. That’s it for now.

Likewise i’ll be away tomorrow. Taking a break. After excessive barrage by political reality shows lately.

While i’m away this song is dedicated to y’all. Originally by Dylan, but i prefer Hendrix’s version

All Along The Watchtower

There must be some kind of way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There’s too much confusion
I can’t get no relief

Businessmen they drink my wine
Ploughmen dig my earth
None of them along the line
Know what any of it is worth

No reason to get excited
The thief he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who think that life is but a joke
But you and I, we’ve been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us stop talking falsely now
The hour’s getting late

All along the watchtower
Princes kept the view
While all the women came and went
Barefoot servants too

Outside in the cold distance
A wild cat did growl
Two riders were approaching
And the wind begin to howl

8 Things I’m Passionate About
- Foosball
- Foosball
- Books
- Bookstores
- Movies
- Art
- Food
- Foosball

8 Things I Say Too Often
- Sharks.
- Wait.
- Sure or not?
- Eh?!
- Ok.
- Umm.
- Damn it.
- Yea.

8 Books I’ve Read Recently (read, but not necessarily finished)
- Confessions of a Philosopher by Bryan Magee
- Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
- Sabbatical Journey by Henri Nouwen
- The Plague by Albert Camus
- Christology by Veli-Matti Karkkainen
- Recovering the Scandal of the Cross by Joel B. Green and Mark D. Baker
- Writing Theology Well by Lucretia B. Yaghjian
- 10 Conversations You Need To Have With Your Children by Shmuley Boteach

8 Songs I Could Listen To Over and Over Again
- “Sound of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel
- “Smooth Operator” by Sade
- “The Wind Blows On” by Leslie Cheung
- “Green Green Grass of Home” by Tom Jones
- “Kau Ilhamku” by Man Bai
- “Belaian Jiwa” by Carefree/Innuendo
- “After the Dance” by Fourplay
- “Home” by David Buble

8 Things I’ve Learnt in the Past Year
- I’m a great influence to my children (see how they pick up all my bad habits with ease).
- Don’t waste time pleasing people who don’t have your best interests at heart.
- One can be overstimulated by the make-believe that one loses the capacity to be intrigued by the authentic.
- One mustn’t always judge people by what they do, but by how far they’ve come.
- Never give anyone the key to your self-esteem.
- Make-up should be about highlighting beauty, not about masking ugliness.
- You can never go wrong when you do the right thing.
- Shit happens. They may be fertilizers but they’re still shit.

I let the question linger for a moment. Sometimes when I’m not prepared to give a quick-escape response to a serious query, I would just let the question hang up there, as if to let its full effect dawn on me before I take up arms against it. Or maybe I was just buying time.

I explained that God speaks to us through many ways. I gave examples.

She repeated her question, perhaps worried that papa didn’t understand her fully.

So I had another go, and this time offered other angles as well. Frankly, I don’t think she bought my explanations. It is likely that I have misunderstood her question from the beginning.

I think it’s fair for her to reject the idea that God would speak to her through indirect sources—say, the natural world, events, rituals, peoples, scripture, etc—than through personal encounter. I’m quite certain she longs to have a conversation with God in a way like she does with another person. Somewhat, she’s less willing to accept that God is absent from her life (in a sense) than I am.

Nouwen exposed in his book, Sabbatical Journey, that somehow we don’t fully trust that our God is a God of the present and speaks to us where we are. I wonder how we would react to this comment in view of recent natural disasters, and political and economic depressions around the globe. Or when my cleaner lady’s 11 year old son went missing for more than 24 hours in the same area last week where Sharlinie was allegedly kidnapped.

I’m not sure how the dots are connecting, but at this point I’m thinking about the words, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’.

Maybe some questions achieve their purposes by the very means of being raised up, though nailed down, for all spectacle and scrutiny. Maybe some questions are meant to provoke, instead of assure; to stimulate faith, instead of fortify beliefs. Until such time, perhaps, when the questions became answers, when doubt is replaced with faith…

Manure and fruitfulness go hand in hand.

Put more crudely:

Shit and fruitfulness go hand in hand.

Wanna get your hands dirty?

.

Ministry is contemplation.  It is the ongoing unveiling of reality and the revelation of God’s light as well as man’s darkness… ultimately it is the continuing search for God in the life of the people we want to serve.  The paradox of the ministry indeed is that we will find the God we want to give in the lives of the people to whom we want to give Him.

He who wants to bring about change has first of all to learn to be changed by those whom he wants to help.

.

Henri Nouwen, Creative Ministry.

i was telling Mynn and Zjern the Good Friday story and when i reached the part about Jesus’ crucifixion, Mynn cringed and held both hands to her ears in protest. Zjern objected with furrowed brow. Undeterred, and thinking that i should ground my kids in the fundamentals of the faith, i climaxed with Jesus’ death.

-

“Jesus cannot die.”

“He did. He must, in fact.”

“Jesus cannot die. Jesus is God.” (!)

“Well, yes. You’re right. But he did die. We’ll see later that…”

“Jesus cannot die!” (angrier tone now)

“OK, let me fast forward to three days later…”

“Jesus cannot die!!”

-

Now even our kids have their boxed-in ideas about God.

Whether we like it or not, believe in the historical witness or not, Jesus did die the death of a convicted and abandoned man on a Roman cross about two thousand years ago.

Like one of his disciples, Peter, i’d probably have gone against Jesus’ wishes to draw out my sword in defence of my Lord when the soldiers and religious officers came to arrest him at the olives plantation. What future is there in death? Game over. Period.

Must all good things come to an end?

i must continually choose to respond yes, because otherwise there would be no Easter. There can be no Easter without Good Friday (which strictly speaking is not really ‘good’. But ‘Good’ because there’s Easter to look forward to).

Today, i finally get to tell Mynn and Zjern that Jesus became alive again after three days in the tomb. They’re very happy indeed, and assured their poor father that Jesus lives in their hearts. And i thought, well good, someday we’ll get another chance to talk about that subject as well…

Happy Easter everyone!