(photo by romanlily)
and maybe
just maybe
us trying to make sense of things
with formulas and theories
isn’t helping
because beautiful arguments
no matter how eloquent they sound -
cosmo, onto, teleo
- can’t explain the finer details
the nuances
the lives we lead and
what this is really all about
What is, therefore, our task today? Shall I answer “Faith, hope, and love”? That sounds beautiful. But I would say – courage. No, even that is not challenging enough to be the whole truth. Our task today is recklessness. For what we Christians lack is not psychology or literature… we lack a holy rage – the recklessness which comes from the knowledge of God and humanity. The ability to rage when justice lies prostrate on the streets, and when the lie rages across the face of the earth… a holy anger about the things that are wrong in the world. To rage against the ravaging of God’s earth, and the destruction of God’s world. To rage when little children must die of hunger, when the table of the rich are sagging with food. To rage at the senseless killing of so many, and against the madness of militaries. To rage at the lie that calls the threat of death and the strategy of destruction peace. To rage against complacency. To restlessly seek that recklessness that will challenge and seek to change human history until it conforms to the norms of the Kingdom of God. And remember the signs of the Christian Church have been the Lion, the Lamb, the Dove, and the Fish… but never the chameleon.
– Kaj Munk, a Danish priest and playwright killed by the Gestapo in 1944
The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.
- Proverbs 29:7
This was supposed to arrive as a separate letter, but I never got around to sending the first one, so PART II is here, in the same envelope. Anyway, I really do hope that this will reach you in time, before you leave for Thailand. Let’s catch up in January when you return, okay?
Last night was the Fungus Fairy Tale Ball, our last youth rally for Two Thousand and Six. Chara and Adora were the MCs, and they were hilarious (well, I think so anyway!). I went to church everyday (except Wednesday) last week to help out for the rally and Christmas, as if to compensate for the year when I had been M.I.A. from church. The rally ran over two nights, and today I realised that I haven’t felt so happy in the company of people since I don’t know when. The kids in Fungus are mostly younger than me, and a lot of them are still at that age where their innocence is not so tainted and they still live with idealistic dreams… and being around them is so much more easier; and in some ways, freeing. I don’t feel like I am being judged in a harmful sort of way and their exuberance is contagious, which I really love about them. They teach me how to be crazy again, something I miss being. The past few months, though I’ve grown and so forth, I feel as if the humour and laughter and spark in me has been subdued, turning me into a dull, brooding, moody, extra critical, super cynical beast. It’s a healing process, all this, toward wholeness; for that I am very thankful to God for allowing me to rediscover these amazing people and giving me the freedom to let loose, be myself, and live.
Well, what else can I say? Send me postcards!
“Be joyful in hope,
patient in affliction,
faithful in prayer.”
- Romans 12:12
Her dad passed away today.
Death. Throws all superficiality away doesn’t it? In the face of death, grief is this and this and this and this. For all the things I want to say, I cannot.
Something about how I remembered vaguely about praying Your will be done, not ours, not ours, not ours.
This is it. Anymore will only cheapen everything.
I love you. I just wish it sounds so much more than hollow words.
