Lonely Blindness

A good read from the Henri Nouwen Society

In the spiritual life we have to make a distinction between two kinds of loneliness.

In the first loneliness, we are out of touch with God and experience ourselves as anxiously looking for someone or something that can give us a sense of belonging, intimacy, and home.

The second loneliness comes from an intimacy with God that is deeper and greater than our feelings and thoughts can capture.

We might think of these two kinds of loneliness as two forms of blindness.

The first blindness comes from the absence of light, the second from too much light.

The first loneliness we must try to outgrow with faith and hope.

The second we must be willing to embrace in love.

the fool for Christ

Bruised Reeds

Everyday, I get an email reflection from the Henri Nouwen Society. Reading these reflections help me keep God in mind at the start of each manic work day. Here's a reflection from last week which I found particularly striking.

Not Breaking the Bruised Reeds

Some of us tend to do away with things that are slightly damaged. Instead of repairing them we say: "Well, I don't have time to fix it, I might as well throw it in the garbage can and buy a new one." Often we also treat people this way. We say: "Well, he has a problem with drinking; well, she is quite depressed; well, they have mismanaged their business...we'd better not take the risk of working with them." When we dismiss people out of hand because of their apparent woundedness, we stunt their lives by ignoring their gifts, which are often buried in their wounds.

We all are bruised reeds, whether our bruises are visible or not. The compassionate life is the life in which we believe that strength is hidden in weakness and that true community is a fellowship of the weak.

I find that sometimes very unconsciously, I dismiss people too. It's not so much a snobbery thing as it is a genetically encoded impatience with things that don't work or which I deem are illogical. I don't know why but it is just second nature to click my heels and walk away to avoid the confrontation which will ensue when I speak my mind or put it to them.

When people at work have a track record of screwing things up or being unreliable, I don't bellyache but instinctively avoid asking them to do anything again. Where someone has a track record of being rude/pompous/difficult/irritating, I just avoid talking to them as far as practicable so I won't risk losing my temper or waste my time getting locked in conflict.

Seldom do I make the effort to brush aside the annoyance and dig deeper to see if their behaviour is the result of woundedness and attempt to draw them out or help them improve. Too often, I am too busy whizzing about to dash to meet someone/ do something else.

It's given me something to think about this Lent.

the fool for Christ

You give and take away

A few years ago, my friends Leonard and Cassilda presented me with a beautiful hardcover book as a gift. It was entitled The Misery of Job and the Mercy of God. In it was poetry written by John Piper based on the Book of Job. The book was illustrated by the God-inspired photographs of Ric Ergenbright. I found it beautiful to behold and of course admired the scintillating images as I poured over the poetry of John Piper. But my life then was one of indulgence from God, so the message of Job’s misery and the mercy of God had limited impact on my ability to grasp the mercy of God. My appreciation of the book was primarily aesthetic, hardly profoundly spiritual.

Much time has passed and I have entered a new season of life where spiritual isolation and loneliness are more commonplace in the daily struggles. I found myself enmeshed in a state of cognitive dissonance. As the demands of worldly living fast encroached upon my personal space and prayer life, I looked within to humanly resolve the problems instead. The pain of people in need wrought my heart and I tried to reach out, on my own ability even if they weren’t mine to reach out to. Less and less of my waking hours became my own. Their clutter and noise became competing voices vying for my attention. Involuntarily, I sought to rely on my intellect and human ability to quell disquiet within. My prayer life became more and more diluted as I sought to cut corners so that I could humanly have enough time to complete my chores.

Then the silence began. I started to hear less and less of Him in prayer, until one fine day, I couldn’t hear Him anymore. I was reduced to more and more bouts of silence because my spiritual ears had to strain harder and harder, hoping for even the faintest whisper from Him – a consolation that I hadn’t completely slid down the slippery slope of caving in to worldly living. People I put my faith in, let me down. Then my health started to take a beating. I fell sick more and more easily. I grew physically tired more and more quickly despite the temporary bursts of energy that I was able to summon up by sheer will power. The strength of my mind failed me too because I was tired out of my mind. Once I was down, I was no longer as useful.

So this is what the bottom looks like - a great void of emptiness amidst the Babel of working life’s daily demands. People closest to me couldn’t hear what I was really saying and I struggled to understand what their responses really meant. The pain of misunderstanding feels like the affliction of dreadful boils, whilst seated in ashes and scraping the skin with broken pottery. The silence I drown in feels like the silence of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar as they sat around Job (in Chapter 32).

I wonder if deep within I have not already succumbed to “cursing the day I was born”. I would sincerely like to think not but I have come to the edge of the city gates and the wilderness yet again. Lost in the harsh, biting sands of uncertainty and fear of the 40 years it may take me to return to the comfort of the city gates. Feeling lost could eventually lead me to “abandon and forget myself, leaving my cares forgotten amongst the lilies” or it could send me spiraling into the abyss. I hope with all my heart and soul that it is the former that will be my destination.

I cling desperately to these 4 lines:-

He is not poor but much enticed
He who loses everything but Christ
It won’t be long before the rod
Becomes the tender kiss of God

The Lord gaveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Job 1:21b

the fool for Christ

Fidélité

In school, I learned plenty about theory, very little about practical application. In University, I learned even more about theory (an overwhelming amount in fact) and it was left to me to take the initiative to discover the practical applications myself.

At work, I discovered my own hubris as to how much practical application I had really grasped – and just how much it fell under the mark of what was really required. That’s not even talking about developing the ability to draw the essential links between practical application and all that theory, by myself or how to manage upwards, downwards, forwards and sideways. Nobody taught me that being a competent craftsman was not enough, you had to be a good manager and business person too.

What did I do with my steep learning curve? Like any good Singaporean, I whinged and felt persecuted.

When I was going through the Family Law course in University, my professor taught me that marriage is really a partnership. She entreated us to consider it quasi-contractual relationship (as a starting point assumption) in order to assist our understanding of the legal rights that flow from this union.

Divine law is not completely different, marriage is also a sacramental covenant. The difference between a covenant and contract is of course that making a covenant involves the party to the covenant more intimately than it does a party to a regular contract.

By the world’s definition there is not a distinction between the two. They both can mean to “enter into an agreement between 2 or more parties for the doing or not doing of something specified.” When contracts are signed, something is expected from both sides. If one side fails, then the contract can be null and void.

A covenant, on the other hand, whether made between two individuals, or between a person and God, is sealed by the making of a vow or an oath in God's name. That's why when a person takes a vow or oath, even in today's society, it is ended with "so help me God."

We often hear married couples and counselors telling us (as a matter of head knowledge) that in a partnership like marriage, you will never find perfection, only the constant call to renew the cycle of forgiveness, in good times and in bad. Once you put your hand to the plough, you don't look back anymore. You keep your eyes forward, then you love, honour and obey.

I have a (supremely ironic) theory; that Theory whilst wonderful to examine under a microscope and place in a glass case, is completely useless without practical application – i.e. chewing on it, spitting out, and then re-chewing it (the way you would a betel nut) for the rest of your life. There’s no point standing around theorizing, as someone I know puts it, “Don’t talk so much, just do what is right, stay the course”, regardless of pretty much everything.

Working relationships, I have come to discover are exactly like marriages. Why do I say this? Firstly, you need a good fit; you need chemistry, fidelity and a willingness to rough it out as a unit, come what may. You take turns to back off when the situation calls for it, to comfort the other, to assert yourself at the right juncture, to lash out and then at the end of it all, keep going back for more…to repeat the cycle, over and over again…..sometimes, till death do you part. Fidelity cannot be divorced from the elements of repetition and longevity.

At some point, the pretty, attractive parts of theory fade into the background and what you are left with is just the stark, unadorned cognitive will to exercise fidelity. It is a kind of commitment ever mindful of the ties that bind and the unspoken essence of faithfulness. It gives me a whole new perspective on why Christ chooses to call us (the Church), His bride. We people of little faith, who fail Him again and again with our weakness and infidelities against His spirit. There is not more much to be said 2000 years later compared to what was said (through His actions) when He walked the earth.

“I have loved you with an everlasting love. I know you are going to keep failing, hurting and rejecting me from time immemorial, right until the last day. But I’m still going to do this. I’m still going to purchase your redemption. I’m still going to Calvary to lay down my life for you in spite of how many more times you have and are going to continue to let me down.”

That’s what the covenant of marriage really means, that’s the bar which has been set. I don’t know about you, but it makes me feel like an absolute whinger to contemplate walking away (from the various associations and situations in my life) everytime I think about the fidelity I already enjoy from Him.

the fool for Christ

Come down from your fences, open the gate

Driving past the Novena Church one weekend, I could not help but wonder what has become of my former mathematics tutor who used to live near the church. The only time I ever had private tuition lessons was in Secondary 4 for Additional Mathematics.

My elder brother and I shared the same mathematics tutor. She used to be his form teacher when he was in Secondary school. Then one day in the late nineties, her husband who was a pastor had a terrible car accident and was rendered a paraplegic. So she quit her job as a teacher under the Ministry of Education and became a private tutor operating out of her own home so that she could look after her husband. She had two adolascent sons a few years older than I. She put them through school and paid for her husband's medical needs through her earnings as a private tutor.

I remember that the old automated bed in the living room was always the first thing I saw whenever I would go over to her house for lessons after school. She had bought it second-hand from a hospital to make his life a little bit easier.

Sometimes, my tuition mate (another girl from my school) would be late so I'd have to wait for her to arrive before we could start the lesson proper. Every now and then, there'd be pockets of fifteen minutes wherein I would sit and watch my tutor give her husband a sponge bath or help him with some physiotherapic exercises on that automated bed in the living room. Sometimes I chatted with the pastor. But I always took care not to bring up his paralysis.

I knew then with my head that it was a tragic thing that had happened to the pastor, but I never dared to ask how she was doing or enquire about her daily burdens. I only ever talked about Additional Mathematics with her. At fifteen and a half, I assumed immediately that I did not have the mental or emotional capacity to offer any kind of relief or comfort.

Why would a weathered woman in her forties care to share the heartbreak of caring for a paralysed spouse with her teenage student? Looking back, I realise that I was utterly mistaken. Even if I did not have the emotional maturity to be a shoulder she could cry on, my attitude of avoidance of the tragedy was no Christian way to handle it either.

Too often we assume that others will be offended if we offer a helping hand and dismiss it as sanctimonious pity. But really, would anyone really turn down earnest concern when they recognise it? Apathy is a slow, insidious poison just as the opposite of love is indifference, not hate. Assumptions are often sorely misguided. The older I get, the more I realise how emotional and spiritual loneliness are an affliction to many people who have not yet reached the level of spiritual maturity wherein loneliness is instead a sanctifying/purifying experience granted by God (i.e. the dark night of the soul).

Most of us yearn so deeply to be communicated with at the level of the soul, how many of us desire to be fully seen, cherished and protected? Yet, the false requirement of worthiness inevitably stops us from taking that active step toward piercing the force field of negative assumption. Sometimes, the answer is not to think up some elaborate plan, but just to step up and be.

Many many times in the year, I do not understand my own mother. Often the words that escape her lips make me want to tear my hair out in frustration. She loves me unconditionally but often chooses the queerest ways to show it. She is incredibly proud of my success and yet inevitably apprehends a widening gulf between us intellectually whenever it hits her that I have exceeded the limits of her Primary School classroom. As a teacher and a mother, she finds it hard to grapple with the realisation that she may no longer be tangibly relevant in my learning process. I have the luxury of being the one soaring and lackadaisically reassuring her that there is no issue.

Every Labour Day is my father's death anniversary. It has been eight years already today, can you believe that? Every anniversary, she is always a little on the edge; moody, slightly reclusive, irrational and temperamental. We are built so differently, I am built just like my father....forthright and driven, the complete opposite of her....their marriage worked because of how their polarities complemented each other but in this case, I am her daughter rather than her spouse. I cannot be my father for her. Our mother-daughter relationship has been fraught with its fair share of quarrels, tears, hurtful barbs and then the perpetual commitment to forgiveness.

At the end of this month, she will end a 40 year career in teaching and finally retire to enjoy the golden years she has so rightfully earned. It is her first and last job. She has had a very respectable career in educating the young minds of this country. Yet I sense, my mother clings onto her Primary Two students as the last bastion of simple, pure-hearted souls who allow her to be that ultimate paragon of wisdom and learning to them. She does not get that awe at home as often as we would all like.

I love my mother with all my heart though I struggle to give her the assurance she craves. A not so insubstantial part of the past 3 years has been a challenge betwixt us relationally because of my directness (an occupational hazard) whilst she prefers the more meandering venacular. And so, in my own imperfect way, I have to rely on hits and misses when trying to assure her of my love and fidelity as a child.

I have discovered that my decision to scale down on social and ministry activities the past two years to spend more time at home has borne fruit I did not envisage. She doesn't need to talk to me all the time. I could be in one room reading and she could be in another listening to music or watching the telly but she feels happy just knowing I am under the same roof as her.

My act of fidelity is to belong to her and our mother-daughter relationship unconditionally, regardless of the foibles and idiosyncrasies. I want to say to and do for her NOW (not just on Mother's Day) whatever I mean to, even if it will mean more hits and misses when it comes to showing love and embracing our thoroughly imperfect relationship.

I've been stumbling through some dark places;
Now I'm following the plow.

The phases of the moon;
The chambers of the heart;
The ebb and dart of small gray
Spiders spinning in the dark
In spite of all the times the web is torn apart

the fool for Christ

Just keep swimming

I think I must have written at least a few times on this blog how I was born with severe hydraphobia. It's genetic, my whole family has hydraphobia. We get hysterical in water. Phobias are irrational fears afterall. However, I am the only one in our family who can swim.....albeit badly. It is likely due to the fact that I almost drowned twice as a child.

During one of these two incidences, I almost got swept out to open sea at high tide during a picnic at the beach my uncle's family had taken me on. I was four then, so I don't have graphic memories of getting swept out and but I have heard all the stories about that incident from my cousins. Hence, those stories have probably underscored my hydraphobia.

The other incident, I was eight. I got sucked under a mini waterfall at a country club my cousin's boyfriend brought us to (those were the days when couples brought little cousins as chaperones to make sure they didn't get up to any 'mischief').

My parents sent me for swimming lessons when I was nine, because they thought it was an invaluable skill. My fears from the almost drowning incident when I was eight were still pretty fresh. So I faked ear aches to get out of swimming classes. I hated being in the water. The scariest parts for me were when we were being tested on how well we could tread water.

In Junior College, our PE teachers were utterly draconian. I can still remember how despite my protests that I had hydraphobia, I got pushed into the pool by my teacher. "Swim! You already know the strokes!" he shouted. So swam I did. Albeit slowly and badly.

For some strange reason, I seem to produce unexpected results only when I am being pushed hard by Nazi-esque people in my life.

So the long and short of it is, I can swim. However, the first fifteen minutes in the water are always incredibly uncomfortable for me and it will be a good twenty minutes before I can bring myself to submerge my head underwater. The feeling of being underwater unleashes unbridled panic in me. My ability to swim stems from the application of head knowledge about breast strokes.

Recently, a colleague was sharing with me too how he conquered childhood hydraphobia. "It's easy. Just keep swimming," - ala Dory in Finding Nemo.



My colleague swims for 2 hours every single Sunday and on 2 weekdays a week if he can manage the time - talk about sheer determination and the application of mind over body! "There's no secret to it, you just keep trying until you can, especially at the points where you don't feel like it."

It struck me tonight, how applicable that advice is to the quest of searching for God. If we were to base our attempts on just emotions and feelings, no one would ever find God. The process would be too hard, too discouraging and too disappointing. 8 years into my spiritual conversion, I have run out of words to describe the gamut of experiences on the journey. There are too many things He wants to impart and communicate to me. Hence the silence. I find it easier to just go for the ride, instead of attempting to provide a running comementary.

I have found that persistence is vital. It is not rocket science, but it doesn't mean that it's easy to master.

I remember how after my first year of University, I wanted to quit. I felt like a fish out of the water and grossly inadequate. I asked friends, family, professors for their opinions. Everyone had something to say. Most felt it wasn't worth the pain. Afterall, reading law is not for everyone. In the end, it was my own home tutor at the faculty that persuaded me to give it another year before quitting. And after my second year was over, he persuaded me to stay on another year. By my third year, I started to score A's.

8 years on, I can't imagine doing anything else. I didn't know immediately or even 4 years into the race whether this would be for me. However much I initially grappled with feelings of inadequacy and being overwhelmed, consolations did eventually come my way. All of them arrived at unexpected junctures, all of them exceeding my own expectations.

I honestly can't remember the last tangible spiritual consolation I humanly felt.

I may have been cheered by smaller consolations along the way, but all of these consolations were the result of decisions. Cognitive decisions to be happy, contented and upbeat. None of the pipe dreams I initially harboured came to fruition. Instead, I pretty much fly by the seat of my pants when tuning into God FM. The instructions come in, and I move. The amazing thing is that everyday, I find reason to be joyful. I guess that IS the beauty of searching for God because in searching for my true self, I find Him too.

So to quote my inadvertently wise colleague (who by the way is an aethist), "There's no secret to it, you just keep trying until you can, especially at the points where you don't feel like it."

the fool for Christ

Blessed Easter

This Holy Weekend has been decidedly quotidian. Instead of the usual augustness of the Easter Vigil Mass, I elected to welcome the first light of Easter by myself and then with my family. It was quiet, dignified but nonetheless euphoric - a great release.

Leading up from the sombreness of the Good Friday service, I found that I would rather savour the fullness and richness of the Liturgy of Light slowly, pondering word by word in the readings and letting their profundity and the magnificence of our salvation history sink in, instead of the usual logistical nightmare that jostling with 1000 other parishioners often involves.

This was a uniquely peaceful and succoring experience. Humanly formed thoughts and words as between God and I were unecessary.

So this is what redemption really feels like.

Blessed Easter to one and all!

the fool for Christ

At first light

And so tonight, 6 weeks of waiting in spiritual darkness will draw to a close, with the promised joining in of Christ’s resurrection at first light of Easter dawn.

This Lent, save for a few consolatory meet ups with beloved friends on occasions like birthdays, I have been trudging on in darkness by myself. It was a personal resolution; to resist taking steps to get myself out of the circumstances of being overwhelmed by spiritual darkness and aphasia - in order to restore comfort - and instead let the bone-stripping desert experience wash over.

This has been a very challenging Lent, and I am very tired. So is the lemming. It never fails to amaze me how much our spiritual walks parallel the church’s liturgical calendar.

One of the great cinematic moments for me as a movie buff was that of Uma Thurman being buried alive in Kill Bill II by Bud (James Madsen’s character). The 6-foot tall woman is shoved into a pine box just large enough to cram her Amazonian frame into and lowered into the lonely grave of Paula Schultz. She is given a sole torchlight, very cruelly, so she can see herself panic in her last breathable minutes.



She has to experience the skin-crawling sound of earth being shoveled on top of the box and then hear the truck (the only mode of escape) drive away. Next, she has to find it within herself to calm her pounding heart down, conquer her fear of being buried alive and recall her training under Pai-mei - and the lead up to mastering his five-point palm exploding heart technique. Finally, she busts her way out of the pine box using just her knuckles and tunnels up to the surface for fresh air at last.

Though I have not literally been trapped in a pine box the past 6 weeks, there has been a significant amount of spiritual isolation and discomfort from having to sit quietly in darkness, in that tight space (brought on by the closing walls of deadlines and unhappy incidences with ungrateful clients), waiting and trying to gather my wits about me before light and air are restored, though it often feels like I will surely remain trapped forever.

I have come to realize how despite all that boot-camp training, I am more soft-hearted than I care to let on. I bleed red and warm, not icicles when you cut me. Well-intentioned friends say “You care and give too much” and advocate a dispassionate attitude toward what is “just a job”. Perhaps, but I am not ready to go down the path of divorcing my faith or my personal core values from my work just yet. I’m not ready to stop believing that the mission field is everywhere, even in one’s own backyard. I am not ready for the cockles of my heart to coagulate into the cold hard cement of indifference.

One product of this experience though, has been a surge of determination as to how I will not allow defeat, darkness or negativity to overcome me. I will not go down without a fight and I will not allow my personal integrity to be impinged by another person’s callous remarks or unjustified rebukes. I will allow the Holy Spirit who dwells within me to guide me toward the direction He charts, regardless of the bevy of naysayers, prophets of doom and misanthropes who rain down their negative and disparaging comments.

I long for the warmth of the Son’s rays upon my face. I long for His victory to wash over the wounds I bear. I believe that by His stripes I am healed. I know He gave me a heart of flesh, not of stone – I am His servant.

Isaiah 49: 2-4

He made my mouth like a sharpened sword,
in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me into a polished arrow
and concealed me in his quiver.

He said to me, "You are my servant,
Israel, in whom I will display my splendor."

But I said, "I have labored to no purpose;
I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing.
Yet what is due me is in the LORD's hand,
and my reward is with my God."

the fool for Christ

Diary of an Old Soul

How many helps thou giv'st to those who would learn!
To some sore pain, to others a sinking heart;
To some a weariness worse than any smart;
To some a haunting, fearing, blind concern;
Madness to some; to some the shaking dart
Of hideous death still following as they turn;
To some a hunger that will not depart.

To some thou giv'st a deep unrest -- a scorn
Of all they are or see upon the earth;
A gaze, at dusky night and clearing morn,
As on a land of emptiness and dearth;
To some a bitter sorrow; to some the sting
Of love misprized -- of sick abandoning;
To some a frozen heart, oh, worse than anything!

The messengers of Satan think to mar,
But make -- driving the soul from false to feal --
To thee, the reconciler, the one real,
In whom alone the would be and the is are met.

George MacDonald

the fool for Christ

Spiritual Aphasia

Lately, I have been feeling more and more bouts of silence overcome me.

There is not much I have to say.

I still speak audibly when I have to; to do my job as an advocate, to give sonant praise to God, to break of myself and comfort those whom God sends my way. There is no way that what is actually uttered sufficiently conveys all that is going on in me. They resonate only in the realm of decibels not in the spiritual.

Beyond accomplishing human function, I am practically mute.

It has been 20 months since I have returned from Rome and yet, true articulation still evades me in spite of the many movements of the Spirit in my life. It is almost as if I am spiritually autistic. During a sharing last week, the lemming commented, “You seem to have been struck dumb by God”.

The first person I thought of was Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist and husband of Elizabeth. He was a priest belonging to the order of Abijah. While he was offering incense in the Temple, the angel Gabriel appeared to him, and told him that his wife Elizabeth who had been barren for many years would give birth to a son, and the son's name would be John. Zechariah, who was an old man, did not believe the angel, and because of his disbelief, was struck dumb, thenceforth unable to speak.

When the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, she did bear a son. On the eighth day when the child was circumcised, they were going to name him Zechariah, after his father, but Elizabeth said "No, he is going to be called John." This surprised everybody because none of their relatives had this name. They then asked Zechariah, who was still mute, what name he wanted to give his son. He asked for a writing tablet and wrote, "His name is John." Immediately Zechariah's mouth was opened and his tongue freed, and he began to speak, praising God. (Luke 1:5-79).

And it hit me that perhaps I am going through my own Zachariah experience, waiting for God’s prophecy to me to be fulfilled. Perhaps in my disobedient own way, I have not single-mindedly clung to His promises or His prophecy over my life and the legacy He has willed for me.

In this time of being silenced, my tongue is tied but my eyes have been opened. I have witnessed beautiful daily little miracles amidst the awful pain of humanity that my soul recognizes but neither my tongue nor puny human mind have the ability to piece together the profundity of.

I shall wait, not just because there is nothing else I can do, but because I desire to obey. I shall wait for the fulfillment of His prophecy so that when He finally loosens my tongue, I can witness without reserve.

the fool for Christ

Greyer, and perhaps better in Time

One of my personal resolutions for 2009 has been to slow down more and avoid whizzing around the way I used to for the past 2 years. There’s a saying that haste makes waste, but it’s wisdom that’s often lost on Singaporeans, especially us young uns'. We seem to be genetically encoded to demand for and embody instant everything. Not only that, we want everything. What we don’t often think about is what happens next after you’ve “finished” accomplishing or accumulating that long list of ‘everything’. Will it all have meant anything at all in the larger scheme of things? I wonder.

The frequency of blog entries in 2008 has been lower compared to 2007 in part because my commitments at work have increased significantly and because I didn’t think there was a point in posting if I did not have anything new to say. There has been in 2008, a lot of routine and continuity with lessons already learnt in the preceding 2 years. I look back on 2008 and it was anything but vapid, just that old lessons continued to ring true and had to be re-learned over and over again. Moreover, I wanted to spend more of my neurons on living real life…and I have!

There is something about the rhythm of a routine and walking with Him that go hand in hand; like tea and sympathy. I feel a change within that prefers to avoid melodrama or the overstatement of issues. I favour positivity and optimism over the soliloquy of a defeated and broken warrior. The will to succeed and rise from the mud like an untainted lily blossom drives me. Life really doesn’t have to be so complicated; simple can be meaningful too. Tragedy and the triumph of the human spirit which it draws out can be beautiful as well.

Funny how when I was still a student, I always thought the camaraderie forged in a convent education was the gold standard of a shield to Life’s blows. “Frenz4eva” we used to write on little friendship cards to each other. I thought things would and had to be this way forever because “only the friends you meet in an environment like school wouldn’t have as high a likelihood of doing you in” (silly goose that I was). It was “the new people you met outside of school that you had to be wary of” was the mantra back in the day. But of course, we were wrong. Some friendships ended, others waned and a few survived; through sheer will and mutual effort.

Oddly, some of my closest friends at this stage of the walk are in between their late thirties and early fifties. People I met in time and through chance. Ordinarily, an unmarried twenty-six year old with no children would not share that many commonalities with people who bear the burdens of the other vagaries of advanced life. Yet such is Life; there is no formulaic way for people to meet, bond or share crosses. Second marriages, step children, extra-marital affairs, children with learning disabilities. So this is what life on the other side of thirty potentially holds! They joke I have positively aged (vicariously) through my friendships with them.

When we are younger, there is always the promise of tomorrow. “The world is your oyster” as they say. Black and white are separated by clean sharp lines. We entertain grandiose illusions of the largess Life MUST bestow upon us by sheer dint of our youth and fierce potential. Then Time breaches those previously impenetrable 'clean sharp lines'; impervious to our violent objections and giving rise to a chiaroscuro of soft greys. Then we spend the rest of our time ruing the grey days, longing for the austerity of black and white once more. I say this with a chuckle because it applies to myself most of all; that youth can be moronic and yet strangely so restorative.

At this juncture, I find the willingness and generosity of heart to accept all that God deals me with open arms, (however much I balk at first) is the most genuine form of fidelity I can offer him. My sacrifice is to be pliant. Loving the God who has loved me first, since I was in my mother’s womb is not rocket science. It takes an act of will to submit without struggling, qualifying, defending or scheming to dissuade Him. It is simple, but monumentally difficult.

the fool for Christ

Mea Culpa

Recently I got to thinking about the flawed human state and how so many of us either foolishly think we are immune to it and/or somehow find it inexcusable in others. Upon closer self-examination, I’ve come to realise that I am unconsciously guilty of this too.

Looking into a mirror isn’t always easy. Sometimes we are absolutely blinkered and so enamoured with what we see; the way Narcissus loved his own reflection. Sometimes the tiniest flaws we are most ashamed of immediately jump out at us even though others barely notice. Sometimes we only have shards of glass that barely reflect more than splintered or distorted images. It’s not easy to have a proportionate and crystal-clear appreciation of the real image staring back, sans the romantic lighting or air-brushing.

How many of us have the benefit of full-length gulided mirrors with us all the time? Sometimes what it takes is to meet a direct reflection of ourselves in the flesh. It’s a fundamental sociological principle that people always gravitate towards others that will accept them. I’ve found that I tend to gravitate towards people who are very similar to me in various ways. They run the whole gamut of character traits but each of them shares at least one or two core commonalities with me.

Some time ago, a good friend pointed out how I always seem to pick men incredibly similar to me (at least based on my perceptions). I’d always thought it’s something natural to gravitate towards potentials who share a similar interests, it never hit me before though that this could be some progeny of narcissism.

Take the current example of someone in my life right now. Right off the bat, I had maintained my distance because of his reputation for being somewhat of a rude and offensive ogre. Circumstances forced us to have to associate much more closely and frequently than I had been prepared for. It turned up an unexpected surprise in the discovery of how much we really had in common that resided beneath the veneer of all that misanthropic behavior.

I discovered an enigma that I have yet to solve the riddle to. For some reason, guardedness and misgivings gave way to us becoming strange and unlikely bedfellows (not literally of course). And that led to an accidental discovery akin to the story of The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde.

Beneath the conscious effort to procure apprehension is a rather misunderstood person filled with compassion and a sense of justice. It’s much like a durian; prickly and pungent on the outside, but if you crack open that uncongenial husk; inside it is soft, golden and generally, the good stuff. I say that I have yet to solve the riddle because this is anything but a fairytale.

Sure, he's whip sharp and fiendishly funny but some days he makes me so angry with his oafish bulldozing and snap judgments, I just want to gut him. Some days, when he thinks absolutely nobody else is paying attention, he says these beautiful, meaningful and deeply philosophical things, you scarce can believe they are coming out of the same mouth of someone who would take a bloodthirsty chunk of enemy flesh off without a second thought.

In struggling to bind the wounds he has inflicted with his barbs, I had a recent revelation; I see a reflection of myself in him. I had no idea how much flesh my own barbs could take off until now. Instead of sympathizing with these poor souls, I can offer empathy now. I know this is God’s way of teaching me meekness and obedience, subjecting me to situation where circumstantially and emotionally, I cannot and will not seek and eye for an eye. If I expect to be forgiven for my shortcomings and flaws then I cannot withhold one mite of my forgiveness to those who have wounded me regardless of degree and frequency.

It has changed my understanding of what the submission of Christ to the authority of Pontius Pilate (especially when he declared "Ecce Homo") really means. It gives a brand new spin to the words in the Nicene Creed, “Born of the Virgin Mary and became man”. For the Son of God to wear the yoke of our flawed and fallen human state was the biggest cross of all.

the fool for Christ

We'll take a cup of kindness yet for auld lang syne

And so 2008 has come and gone, with 2009 already upon us.

Though the year past may have been very eventful and woeful for many in the global arena, there is not much about 2008 that I have complaints about. It has been a very fortunate and enriching year for me in terms of travel.

Beth and I went to visit the lemming in Tokyo in late March. Though the time we were there is supposed to be a week earlier than the traditional cherry blossom viewing week, we still managed to see beautiful cherry blossoms at Ueno Park and even more of them (loads more to be exact) at Nijō Castle (二条城, Ninja Castle) in Kyoto. I absolutely loved the feeling of being uncontactable except for when I wanted to be (which is when I would pop my SIM card into Beth’s 3G phone). For once, my bosses were unable to contact me during a vacation (as opposed to being called up at 3am in London by Madame last month) Viva la CD-MA networks! And thank goodness O2 Atom Exec phones don’t have 3G capability. Japan is a beautiful and fascinating country, I’d love to go back, in spite of the horrible bout food poisoning I had on the last day in Kyoto. I was so weak that I literally crawled through Customs and the security checks on my hands and knees. I filled 5 air sick bags to the brim during the 7 hour flight. The upside of that was that I lost about 4kg after the whole ordeal. Haha!

Despite falling so very ill in Melbourne in July during Days in the Diocese, and our ghastly 14 hour bus ride from Melbourne to Sydney for WYD (where our luggage got lost), the week of staying with our host family in the diocese of Oak Park in the beautiful State of Victoria was one of the most special and heartwarming experiences I’ve ever had. It has completely changed my understanding of Christian charity and generosity. I must get off my behind and write to our hosts soon. Meeting the Pope is an experience that is in a class of its own. Despite the wheezing and constant hacking from the winter flu bug I picked up in Melbourne, I remember my heart being overwhelmed and feeling so full of patristic awe as I stood on the docks of Barangaroo screaming what was left of my lungs out in anticipation of the arrival of Benedict XVI. I had never met him in my life before that, but somehow just the thought that the Vicar of Christ was on his way to meet us, filled me with a familiar anticipation of the paternal love I’ve only ever received from my earthly and heavenly father. All the discomforts and irritations of our travelling nightmare were momentarily forgotten, as I suddenly remembered so clearly why I had made this pilgrimage.

Going to Bangkok with the girls for Sheryl’s hen vacation in November was one of the best holidays I’ve ever been on (in terms of our shopping haul and the company) but the kind of relief and deep sense of the protection of God which enveloped me when I opened the morning papers the morning after we’d landed back in Singapore will be forever impressed in my consciousness. Nothing says more about how much God loves me than the many close calls I’ve experienced.

London in December is still fresh in my mind and the unparalleled importance of family to me is cemented by the really touching moments I’ve witnessed between my Aunty and my cousin during their reunion. I am totally enamoured of my adorable little half-French niece. I vow to spoil her rotten during my next trip in June 2009 and return her to her parents only for poops and baths. Hahah. Not all the shopping opportunity in Tokyo, Sydney, Bangkok and London could come close to comparing with these experiences.

Despite the many irritations and flashes of anger with asinine people that I’ve experienced in the office over the course of 2008, there is not much about this admittedly imperfect working environment or job scope that I would change. I thrive in its intensity and challenge; it makes me feel completely alive and unapologetic to be as assertive as God made me to be. The job comes with its satisfactions and ermm…little perks/rewards too; meals at posh restaurants from grateful epicurean clients, exotic dried deer genitalia and powdered bear paw from clients from the mainland who didn’t bother to enquire if I was married and trying to conceive, but I prefer the hand-made 'thank you' cards, drawings from children of clients and cheap coffee thermal flasks (because they know how important piping hot coffee is to me).

My favourite gift was a box of doughnuts from a client who happened to be a school servant. She could not believe that I had drafted her Will for her for free and refused to accept payment. I could not contain my surprise when she subsequently returned to the reception area with a box of 12 premium doughnuts from The Donut Factory (this was during the height of the doughnut frenzy when you would have to queue for almost 30minutes just to get your hands on one box) and forced me to accept. It wasn’t so much the deliciousness of the doughnuts per se that gave me such satisfaction as it was the satisfaction of being able to put into action, that which I read law for to begin with.

In 2008, I have run the whole gamut of human emotions from warmth and elation to irritation to rage to nonchalant zen-ness to confusion and crushing disappointment. And it is this varied experience that has made me feel complete as a human being than ever before. My biggest resolution for 2009 is to slow down some more. Though my life is considerably less beset with a long list of activities and commitments than before, there is room to clear out more of the clutter. I would rather do 5 things excellently than 10 things only passably or 15 things atrociously. The greatest gift that I can give is to tap into the power of “now” and be 100% present to the people around me whenever we have the good fortune to meet or converse.

The second most important resolution of 2009 for me is to be more submissive and obedient, especially by holding my tongue on the lightning bolts of thoughts and judgments that streak through my brain especially after someone has said/done something I strongly disagree with. Though the nature of my vocation as a lawyer requires me to be able to not shy from a fight, gentleness is not necessarily weakness in the right circumstances. One of the best imageries of how this is accomplished is that of Our Lady crushing the head of the serpent. She crushed the enemy without losing any of her softness and womanhood. That is the ultimate Catholic teaching on feminity is it not?

Through my Spiritual Director’s guidance I have come to realize that submission isn’t necessarily some kind of conceding to inferiority. It is obedience to the will of God for me, however much His mind diverges from my notions of how things should be/turn out. Christ was the King of Kings and the Lion of Judah, but He submitted to the authority of Pontius Pilate because He knew what His obedience to the Father would accomplish in the larger scheme of things. I know that my own innate rebelliousness causes me to be particularly resistant to masculine authority that I do not respect. The quiet and unassuming strength of the Blessed Mother is for me, a point of reference.

And so, despite all these pessimistic forecasts which augur so poorly for the future of our global economy, I welcome 2009 with an open embrace. It may not turn out to be a year of events that I want to hear about, nonetheless it would still be a blessing to be able to wake up each morning to welcome every new day of 2009. Imperfect but God-given? I’ll take it…with a side of fries and ketchup too thank you very much.

Happy New Year everyone!

the fool for Christ

O come O come Emmanuel

Unlike the previous 2 years, this Advent, the Christmas spirit is very strongly felt in my family. In fact, Christmas came early for us during the time we spent in England with my extended family. There is something absolutely magical about Christmas in London, especially when you are there with people you love and care about. I am immensely grateful for the experience.

There is genuine rejoicing in my heart.

The best part of Advent this year wasn’t the shopping (even though shopping in London is really quite fabulous) but the Carols, especially those about Christ, our Emmanuel. Caroling with the department this Friday (after so many years of putting away my sheet music) was immensely uplifting. 

I could feel my heart so undeniably full of joy and pride as I sang those words:- 

One small child in a land of a thousand.

One small dream of a savior tonight.

One small hand reaching out to the starlight.

One small savior of life. Ooh.

One king bringing his gold and riches.

One king ruling an army of might.

One king kneeling with incense and candlelight.

One king bringing us life. Ooh.

O come, O come, Emmanuel

And ransom captive Israel

That mourns in lonely exile here

Until the Son of God appear

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Key of David, come,

And open wide our heavenly home;

Make safe the way that leads on high,

And close the path to misery.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come to thee, O Israel.

More than anything, this Advent has been about quiet but ardent anticipation. It’s strange in a way because I am not in want of anything or anyone. There is really no cause for complaint. Life is not perfect but very good nonetheless and I feel incredibly blessed every day. I liken it to waiting for something, someone or some event that I have absolutely no idea about but I just know I am waiting for.

The biggest lesson I have learned this Advent is contentment – to choose to maintain an attitude and disposition of gratitude every day for every little blessing I have received (including every inconvenience or annoyance I put up with) - to embrace the ugly and painful parts as much as I covet the consolations of His generosity. 

The more time passes, the more I am convinced that Christian love (whether familial, platonic or romantic) is so much more than about the ecstasies of feeling warm and fuzzy toward each other. It is about the overlooking of faults and the blind eye you have to turn to the hurtful things the person you love says/does to you on a daily basis, whether it be intentional or unconscious. It is about digging deeper within and allowing every day to be a new beginning for the rest of your relationship/friendship. Without the willingness to forgive and re-embrace the prodigal elements of our lives, there is no real love.

The three most powerful lines that have ministered to me this Christmas are:-

And ransom captive Israel

That mourns in lonely exile here

Until the Son of God appear

I am a captive of my humanity; my weaknesses and foibles. Without His presence in it, this life that I lead is a foolish and lonely exile (even if there are 6 billion other human beings on earth with me and I have a family to go home to everyday). 

This theme of 'exile' in my spiritual journey has begun to evolve in ways that are still beyond my limited comprehension. The desert experience of purification and sanctification interiorly remains a harsh and intensely lonely one, and the frequency of consolations dispensed, sporadic. Yet I cannot imagine any other alternative that the World offers, satisfying me more. For small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to eternal life.

Because my heart is restless Lord, until it finds rest in You.

the fool for Christ

Climb every mountain

I have happy memories from my childhood. 

Many of them pertain to games I’d played with my brothers , cousins and neighbours, books I’d spent hours lying on my back reading and hours I spent in front of the screen, enraptured by the plethora of movies my parents exposed us to. My mother grew up in the fifties and sixties, so many of the movies I started off watching were made by Rodgers & Hammerstein. One of my early favourites was 'The Sound of Music' – which had been (loosely) based on the life story of Maria Von Trapp. It was one of the closest real life examples to a Cinderella story that had ever been captured of film for easy viewing - which of course appealed to a little girl.

Watching the movie in my teens and late twenties allowed me to draw completely different lessons from each viewing. One of the most profound scenes that eluded me most completely in the early years was when Maria (the novitiate) first discovered she had developed feelings for Captain Von Trapp (whose children she was sent to be governess to) and fled back to the abbey to hide from her feelings. She asked to take her vows immediately. Mother Superior knew of course that Maria was using the abbey walls to hide from life and her real destiny outside of the religious vocation. Her advice to Maria was to “Climb every mountain”.

Mother Superior: Are you in love with him? 

Maria: I don't know! I don't know. I--The baroness said I was. She said that he was in love with me. But I didn't want to believe it. There were times we looked at each other. I could hardly breathe. 

Mother Superior: Did you let him see your feelings? 

Maria: I don't know. That's what's torturing me. I was on God's errand. To have asked for his love would have been wrong. I just couldn't stay. I'm ready at this moment to take my vows. -Please help me. 

Mother Superior: Maria. The love of a man and a woman is holy. You have a great capacity to love. You must find out how God wants you to spend your love. 

Maria: But I pledged my life to God. I pledged my life to his service. 

Mother Superior: My daughter, if you love this man, it doesn't mean you love God less. 

Maria: No. 

Mother Superior: You must find out. You must go back. 

Maria: You can't ask me to do that. Please let me stay. I beg—

Mother Superior: Maria. These walls were not built to shut out problems. You have to face them. You have to live the life you were born to live. 

One of the challenges that I have faced in my own journey has been that of reconciling the secular with the religious elements in my life. For the first 19 years, I led an incredibly secular life. For the next 6, my life had been intensely religious. The friends who grew up with me will attest to the dramatic change. In the past one year, I’ve sought to reconcile the two within me more actively. 

The religious vocation is not for me, I’ve been blessed enough to have known that very early on in the discernment process. Hence I’ve always felt strongly drawn to the marriage vocation. I decided very early in my spiritual conversion, that I could not envision my helpmate as someone who was not able to labour side by side with me in the Lord’s vineyard. It gave me pretty set views on the checklist of characteristics I wanted in a partner – hence certain choices I have made in my own personal life which would not make any sense to persons outside the actively serving circuit.

In the past one year, a certain equilibrium has come to pass within me. I’ve stopped fighting my vocation as a lawyer, more specifically, as a litigator. The reward has been a deep sense of peace and rest internally despite the physical enervation and odd irritation here and there, although the reconciliation of the “secular” and “religious” within me (and I’m using these terms very loosely) has been anything but smooth. I’ve struggled with being wrought with feelings of guilt when I’ve found myself immensely enjoying the “high-powered” lifestyle my job affords me or feeling increasingly drawn to the secular alternatives to the "set views" of what a helpmate should be.

To say that one does not enjoy the perks and purchasing power of private practice is a patent lie. Similarly, to claim that one does not enjoy the passions of an unbridled association outside the traditional checklist is denial. Yet it’d never struck me before that unconsciously I really was guilty of a certain degree of self mortification each time I afforded myself a little comfort or tenderness. It took a few conversations with a rather astute friend – who incidentally is an atheist and a Goth musician – before I realized that I had drawn artificial lines between both “secular” and “religious” in my own personal life despite having been searching so ardently for the longest time, what it means to “be in this World, but not be of this World.”

I’ve suffered because I’ve struggled with the realization that my time in youth ministry is coming to an end. (To type it out is as difficult as it is to utter it on my lips.) Yet my spiritual roots, so much of what I am today drew their nutrients from rich soil of corporate youth ministry. Even now, some of the closest friends I have who aren’t former schoolmates are people I met in youth ministry. I still enjoy their company immensely, yet I don’t feel called or drawn to certain traditional roles within the construct of classic corporate ministry anymore. This is despite the fact that I don’t have any clear answers as to what God is calling me to next. I’ve flogged myself in horror (metaphorically speaking of course) as these seemingly “heretical” thoughts crossed my mind. I wondered if my own moral compass had been tainted by the whore of Babylon. (Ok, that's abit of an exaggeration). If there's one thing I've never had trouble with, it's been moderation.

Though it has been a somewhat lonely journey interiorly because most of the people around me are either blooming late right about now or have caught their second wind and are riding high, whereas I am nowhere near losing my faith, but I seem to be caught in a classic black hole of abeyance. It is a protracted season of waiting amidst the question marks and allowing the state of abeyance to persist until He gives me a nudge back into the next momentum.

The lemming has been an immense comfort in the process of journeying through what initially appeared to be an undoing. Most ships need to know what their next port of call is before they leave the harbor they are docked at. It’s necessary to know just how far they are travelling so they can determine how much water and supplies to load before raising the anchor. It seems sometimes like I am being asked to raise the anchor and sail into the sunset towards quite literally, "only God knows where" and for "only God knows how long".

I’ve reached a stage where “asking to take my vows now” by plying on more “religious” and “spiritual” elements is not the solution to a destiny that is waiting “outside the abbey walls” despite the fact that I have no idea what really lies outside the abbey walls. To pass through the gates that give security, belonging and a sense of identity – into the unknown outside and on to the mountain which must be climbed - is a rite of passage in itself. Beyond the walls of security and on the mountains that are to come, could lurk danger in treacherous slopes or a burning bush experience where one comes face to face with God and ultimately rewarded with the greatest mission He has ever issued in one’s life. 

On hind sight, I do realize that God allows me to struggle with this immense fear of failure and the unknown because it is the basis for real empathy in future - when others who go through the same struggles walk certain stretches of the same path with me. Without having drank from the same cup of suffering, how can one have any moral authority to urge others to drink from the cup?

the fool for Christ