IMF Party!

Further to the last class party in August with an 80's theme (complete with Coney Dogs and Aha! tracks), we were going to have a "Back-to-School Birthday Bash" for E and S last Sunday, but since (i) some of us couldn't find our old school uniforms and (ii) the rest couldn't fit into them anymore, we settled on a "IMF/World Bank" theme. The idea was that we were going to sit around and talk about erhm...useless topics of universal interest - something we have been able to do quite well since the happy days sitting in the corner foyer in Bukit Timah... :)

And what's a theme party without games! Found this very educational children's website that had dowloadable flag outlines of every country in the world, and so we played "Color the [Obscure] Country Flag" contest!

By the time Mongolia took on the Reich colours, we were all rolling on the floor in stitches...

Finding God V: Conversations that Disturb and Entice

(from page 191)

"Moving through our problems toward finding God requires a fresh understanding of community and a courageous willingness to enter it. We must learn how to talk with one another so that the object of our conversation is to disturb one another with how manipulative, defensive, self-serving we are. Our conversations must also entice us to influence others for good, to enjoy our uniqueness, to rest fully in the goodness of God, no matter what happens.

When community is working, tensions may seem unresolvable and pressures overwhelming, but the opportunity to find God will remain if we stay involved. We must not yield to the urge to retreat into the silence of safe superficial chatter. We must keep talking. And our words must matter.

The richest conversations always tell a story. Each of our lives is a dramatic story of how a relational, passionate, thoughtful, purposeful and depraved person handles the experience of life. Woven into our story will always be the tragedy of our using people, our defending ourselves against them, and our worshipping ourselves. The fallen structure within each of us sees to that.

But the indelible stamp of the Savious insures that the story will also include a tale of noble inspiration, usually in an almost unrecognizable subplot, but still undeniably present. Those good passions, whether smothered beneath bad ones that rule us or released to become a driving force, are neither effective or commendable until they draw their energy from a confidence in God's goodness.

Both the storyteller and the listener need to hear the doubting soul struggling to find an identity. They need to look eagerly for the movement of God that frees people to give, to be, and to worship. Typically, conversations that lead us toward a deeper awareness of God first disrupt, then entice.

Most interactions should be pleasant ("Hi , how are you?"), functional ("Would you pick me from the airport?") or important ("As elders, we need to decide how we are going to deal with this disturbing news.") No one is quite so irritating as the junior counsellor who turns normal conversations into therapy sessions. Uninvited probing into motives and weighty expressions of concern spoil pleasant, functional and important conversations.

But true community must include meaningful moments when the quality of our relationships with God, others, and ourselves are discussed. Each of us have friends who know us well and care about us, friends who live honestly enough to wrestle with unanswered questions. With those friends, we need to risk a level of self-disclosure that makes us uncomfortable.
...
Good conversations are often disturbing. They deal with the edge in someone's voice that puts others on guard. They face up to the pain that a friend's snub or a parent's neglect has provoked. Good conversations uncover the terror and rage that often lie hidden beneath a veneer of comfortable relationship. If there aren't times when the very foundations of our relationships are torn away and we continue on only because of Christ, we are not building strong and real relationships."

(Exhibition, Caixa Forum, Barcelona)

Travels in Iberia IV : The Guernica Does Exist

Even the very excellent National Museu Centro de Art Reina Sofia in Madrid will have a shop set up at the end of its special exhibition Picasso: Tradicion y Vanguardia selling this to tourists:

heh. I didn't buy the certificate, but I did see The Guernica at the exhibition, which will probably count as one of the most memorable musuem experiences that I have had, thanks to the well-considered layout of the exhibition and a very intelligent audio guide.

The audio guide in particular thoughtfully led the vistor through the exhibition in a way that brought to life the history and genesis of the Picasso masterpiece. The Guernica also met for the first time two other great Spnish paintings that inspired it: (1) The great Goya painting, Shooting on 3rd May 1808, borrowed from the stately Prado Museum down the road and (2)the startling Execution of Emperor Maximilian by Edouard Manet, 1867-8

Loved the way the audio guide engaged the viewer in the experience: "Now, look across the room at the Guernica again and then go behind this wall and turn to your right, you are now looking at the painting that first inspired the Guernica. Press 13 to hear more about Goya's - Shooting on May 1808".

The guide also gave quite a lot of insight into the artist's state of mind and psychological condition during the period he painted the Guernica. I was very surprised to see the number of preparatory drawings displayed that Picasso had made leading up to the painting the final mural. There were many more things that he could have included in the picture - various people, objects, symbols etc. He was so impacted by the war that he had many things to say and represent, and what finally appear in the famous painting we see today were what he finally decided to include after many revisions. I guess it's like any piece of great art or literature, we don't always see the intense thought (and probably psychological tug of war) that had gone into their creation. It is even more telling to see the smaller paintings Picassao made after he finished the Guernica of each part of the work, with all sorts of variations, as if he continued to obsess with the images of war, not having exhausted all he wanted to show us.

It was a rare exhibition and I am glad to have had the chance to see it. My favorite amongst the three is the Manet. But all three are really powerful in presenting the reality and shock of human cruelty and pain. I guess, whether or not the artists intended the message, the paintings show that Evil does exist. We have all seen it.

Finding God IV

"Someone is here! Final reality is personal. I know it."

(at page 155)








(Bronze door, La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona)

Finding God III: Lamech vs Enoch

Talking about Eden on earth the other day, Larry Crabb says in this book that we each have a choice to make: either we try to rebuild/recapture Eden in our lives, or make our pilgrimage towards Heaven. He contrasts Lamech and Enoch, both the 7th generation progeny of Cain and Abel. He says: Lamech declared: “I will build my city! I want my pleasures now.” Enoch said: “I will build God’s kingdom! And trust God to one day build a city for me to enjoy.” Because God cares deeply about his children, many times he chooses to relieve our suffering and solve our problems. But because his love is.. rooted in what he knows is best for us, he provides us with something more interesting to live for than ourselves. He catches us up in the supernatural reality of living for an eternal kingdom.

"As we explore our lives, we must never get so immersed in ourselves that we fail to remember that there is something far more wonderful to ponder. If I am to reject Lamech's approach and come to God as Enoch came, I must surrender my fascination with myself to a more worthy preoccupation with the character and purposes of God. I am not the point. He is. I exist for him. He does not exist for me.

The question we need to ask is this: Are we merely living, or are we walking with God? Are we merely committed to feeding our own souls, to arranging our lives around getting our needs met, to building our cities? Or are we committed to knowing God, to cooperate with him as loved participants in a plan larger than ourselves, to becoming like the Son whom the Father adores, and to waiting for the city that Christ is building right now?

The path to joy lies not in recovery from wounds, or setting boundaries, but in identifying and repenting of our commitment to advance our own well-being as we see fit. When that commitment takes priority over our determination to know God and make him known to others, then my friend is wrong. Our worst problem is sin, not pain.

We need to see ourselves as more sinful than wounded. We need to face the ugly, self centred energy present in all our conversations. As we become more aware of our self-centredness, our demand to feel better weakens under our developing humility. Awarenss of our self centredness puts us in touch with our longing for a clean heart and a giving spirit. Awareness of God's forgiveness makes us gratefully amazed that we are accepted by someone who sees us at our worst. "

Travels in Iberia III : The Other End of the Ocean

Confirmed lah.

I like the sea best when it is The Ocean, with its waves crashing on deep rocky cliffs.

First fell in love with the ocean when I stood in front of it two years ago during the US Leaf Tour in the coast of Ogunquit, Maine.

On this trip, I saw the other end of the Atlantic Ocean. It was just as awesome.

We were at Cabo da Roca, which is part of the Lisbon Coast and officially the most Western point of Europe. Interesting to think that at one point, the civilized world might have thought it to be the furthest point one could walk till one reached the end of the world. The Portuguse poet's Land's End.

Where does the sea end and the sky begin?

According to GPS equipment, we were at:

Latitude - 38' 47' North
Longitude - 9' 30' West

It was a good place for one to spend the afternoon talking to the ocean.

Finding God II: The Second Journey

Two phone calls, from two good friends, received during the trip. Each informed of a decision/desire to embark on a second journey.

Was reading this from the chapter "The Second Call" in Brennan Manning's The Ragamuffin Gospel:

"Many people between the ages of 30 and 60 - whatever their stature in community and whatever their personal achievements - undergo what can truly be called a second journey.

A man can have piled up an impressive portfolio of dollars and honors, and get his name in Who's Who, and then wake up one morning, asking, "Is it worth it?" Competent teachers, nurses, and clergy can reach the top only to discover that the job no longer fascinates. There is no where higher to go. They find themselves terrified of stagnation and asking, "Should I switch careers? Would returning to school help?"

Anne Tyler's heroine in her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Breathing Lessons, is driving along a country road with her husband. Suddenly the middle aged woman cries out. "O Ira, what are we going to do with the rest of our lives?" This is the question of the second journey.

Second journeys usually end quietly with a new wisdom and a coming to a true sense of self. The wisdom is that of an adult who has regained equilibrium and stabilized. It is wisdom that gives some things up, lets some things die, and accepts one's limitations. It is a wisdom that realized: I cannot expect anyone to understand me fully. It is a wisdom that admits the inevitability of old age and death.

The second journey begins when we know we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the morning program. The second call is a summons to a deeper, more mature commitment of faith where the naivete, first fervor, and untested idealism have been seasoned with pain, rejection, failure, loneliness and self-knowledge."

Travels in Iberia II: The Three Bears

In between that moment when we were driving on the ubiquitous motorways leading out of Lisbon city, and the other winding down the heavily tourist-resorted coastal area in Cascais, we entered a bosky realm of pointed castle turrets and mammoth moss-covered trees crowding out the dancing sunlight. In what seemed like one upward curve in the road, we found ourselves in an archetypal fairyland, with dense undergrowths of ferns and grey stone walls stained with every shade of sierra on the sides.

Ok, if you photoshopped away the tourist buses and backpackers who were commendably walking their way to the top (who probably saw more lilyponds, gingerbread houses and real fairies along the way), you could probably understand why this particular corner of the European continent was eulogized by poets:

"If I had Aladdin's lamp, the genius should transport me, my household and my books to Sintra....the most blessed spot in the habitable globe, will almost bring tears to my eyes." - Robert Southey

And for course it was Lord Byron's "glorious Eden", and Samual Taylor Coleridge always said he was going to retire there.

It was probably the best part of the entire trip for me, and the one that I was most looking forward to. The two German sisters that we met the night before were completely raving about it, and hey, who wouldn't want to visit the place which inspired Southey's (thought popularly to be Grimm's) "Goldilocks and the Three Bears"! :-)

I can't quite figure what it was that lent to this sense of unreality. Maybe it was the spruce and fir vegetation (lush, but not the Kota Tinggi kind of lush, as I was telling my travel buddy), or the strange mountaintop Pena castle with its colorful assemblage of minarets and sentry boxes (on entering the front gate of the castle, it looked exactly like the place where a wicked king might have locked up Rapunzel!), or because you could just imagine yourself spending a whole summer here sitting on a moldy bench at the edge of pretty Monteserrat town writing a book while little rabbits and frogs skipped past you into the forest.

One wished there was more time to explore the Park (the castle's private forest) with its lakes, trees and walking trails. Or to explore the other palace, a little way below that had an intriguing name like Sete Ais ("Seven Sighs") and attractions like the Magpie Room.

We spent most of our time in the curious Pena castle, which was an absorbing blend of Hispanic-Moorish architecture on the outside and Italian renaissance drawing rooms and toilets on the inside. It had an amazing balcony looking out to the Sintra borough, with the ocean in the distance, and clouds rolling over the hills dotted with clusters of Portugese red steep roofs at your feet. That particular scenary from that vantage point had a deep impact on me, because I had always pictured that when God set on Judgement Day on His great high throne, this would be the picture before His eyes, his beautiful natural creation before Him, and his people coming out of their houses to meet Him.

I think it was at that moment during my trip when I was looking out of the glass-less windows of the stone balcony that my mind started to really rest from the stresses of pre-holiday deadlines, and to let the cool mist take away mundane cares...

Finding God I: A Personal Note

From the preface of Finding God, by Larry Crabb:

"Let me tell you why I wrote this book.

I have come to a place in my life where I need to know God better or I won't make it. Life at times has a way of throwing me into such blinding confusion and severe pain that I lose all hope. Joy is gone. Nothing encourages me.

Perhaps the most important lesson I learn as I go through dark seasons is this; there is no escape in this life from pain and problems. I can live obediently, practice spiritual disciplines , and claim my identity in Christ, but problems still continue.

More than anything else, I need a person to trust, someone who can give me hope, joy and peace in the midst of lie's unpredictable struggles. A plan to follow is not good enough. Applying biblical principles does not always make things happen as I want. Without someone to trust, I must either pretend things are better then they are or live to relieve the pain. And if neither denial nor efforts to relieve pain do the job, I will end my life through immorality or craziness or suicide.

The rhetoric we're all used to - "just trust the Lord, pray more, get counseling, follow God's plan more carefully" - must give way to the reality of finding God.

I wrote this book in response to the desperate cry of my heart to know God better. More than ever before, I am convinced that God yearns to be known by us far more than we want to know Him, and his great work in us to increase our passion for knowing him until it is stronger than all other passions. Developing that passion in our hearts is a long difficult process to which God is relentlessly committed. The way is hard, the road less traveled than others, but the journey is worth it.

God is immeasurable good, and He can be trusted."

(from page 11)

Travels in Iberia I: Lonely Planet Guides

Some of the guidebooks used during the trip. There really isn't a perfect guide, but some are better than others depending on the place you visit. Lonely Planet is the overall best for cities, methinks, while Eyewitness is pretty good for less urbanite areas(as long as you have another decent map to get to those ulu spots!) as it has nice birdseye's drawings and photos. The Rough Guide was surprisingly useful and very detailed although the layout's kinda drab.

And there was one other book companion which I was glad to have brought along:
Read the book twice, front-to-back, during the trip. Forward Scout had sent intelligence ahead of time that the moo flight to Madrid was long, not to mention inflight-entertainment-free. I grabbed the book off "the shelf of yet-unread books", minutes before heading for the aiport (which was quite fortuitous indeed, since there were very many yet-unread-books on the aforementioned shelf). Well, I think it did go a long way to prevent this holiday from becoming another spiritual vacation, as tends to happen when one was in a new place distracted with new sights and stuff.

Have you read any books that spoke uncannily of your mind and tells alarmingly of your heart? I have read only a few of those, and this was one of them.

More, later.