for want of a good dose of holy anger

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

in this life,

(courtesy of the PostSecret Project)

A question for the bride

I remember hearing about an old comic strip back in the days of St. Ed’s. Two guys are talking to each other, and one of them says he has a question for God. He wants to ask why God allows all of this poverty and war and suffering to exist in the world. And his friend says, ‘Well, why don’t you ask?’ The fellow shakes his head and says he is scared. When his friend asks why, he mutters, ‘I’m scared God will ask me the same question.’ Over and over, when I ask God why all of these injustices are allowed to exist in the world, I can feel the Spirit whisper to me, ‘You tell Me why we allow this to happen. You are My body, My hands, My feet.’

– - Shane Claiborne

voice of the day

We hunger to be known and understood. We hunger to be loved. We hunger to be at peace inside our own skins. We hunger not just to be fed these things but, often without realizing it, we hunger to feed others these things because they too are starving for them. We hunger not just to be loved but to love, not just to be forgiven but to forgive, not just to be known and understood for all the good times and bad times that for better for worse have made us who we are, but to know and understand each other to the same point of seeing that, in the last analysis, we all have the same good times, the same bad times, and that for that very reason there is no such thing in all the world as anyone who is really a stranger.

- – Frederick Buechner
from Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons

escapade please

please let me sleep in peace and scribble, doodle, and find a poodle.

right now all i am waiting for is for my exam tomorrow to be over.

i wasn’t that worried about the exam, but trent calls me up three times a day just to scream about how stressed he is and how is he supposed to know what to study? so now i’m getting slightly more frantic – i don’t even know half the topics properly, let alone blab out structured essays about them.

today i spent two hours filling out questionnaire sheets on ’social memory’, nationalism, values, goals, and political ideologies. somewhere between studying and procrastinating these past few weeks, i realised that i enjoy filling in surveys, which half-explains why i’ve been scouring the net for paid surveys. either it’s a really good investment, or they’re all just out to scam your money. i haven’t decided whether i should invest an initial amount just for registration. oh the economics!

i had a great kerekere cuppocino today, so… yum for me. though i think i will ask for one sugar next time instead of two because i don’t usually have a sweet tooth and we’ve all gotta cut down on the sugar y’know? and just to separate fact from myth, you won’t get diabetes from too much sugar. but too much sugar is bad for you, of course. moderation. moderation is always good. (except for maybe feelings and actions. i gotta admit, this came from one of the questionnaires today, and i spent several minutes trying to figure what that meant for me…… oh the joys of surveys!)

the reality of (real)love

‘What is REAL?’ asked the Rabbit one day, as they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, just before Nana came in to tidy up the room. ‘Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?’‘Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’

‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit.

‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real, you don’t mind being hurt.’

‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit’?

‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real, you can’t be ugly except to people who don’t understand.’

- – Marjorie Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

we’re more alike than you might think

dear friend,
you flatter me. inspiration? thank you, but i can’t see why. i guess it is a new start, and honestly, it’s semi-refreshing, because it doesn’t feel like the usual facade you put up (or less than usual, anyway). like kurt vonnegut said, ‘we are what we pretend to be‘. i don’t really agree with him, but i think what we portray to others more or less becomes part of who we are, whether we realise it or not. remember when we just couldn’t work through honesty and transparency? i must admit, i gave up. couldn’t figure it out, so what else did i know to do but to let it slip through the cracks… it’s easier that way, isn’t it? your writing has become more polished over the years (but if you ever write a book, i will edit it for you), even though you never capitalise your letters and still leave out apostrophes (if anything, lack of apostrophes at the appropriate places irks me to bits). it’s much more refined and thoughtful, as if you’d spent several train rides sifting through the contents of your mind. it’s still beautiful in its own way, nonetheless. and it especially shines through when there’s an element of vulnerability and real honesty.

i think it’s my turn to feel like ‘fleeting fashion’ with you. funny how we can never really be on the same wavelength – one stops trying but the other keeps on going, and the cycle never stops. i wonder if we’d converge at the same point one day, free from the webs of our words. it’s what brings us together, but also what seems to divide us. let’s hope our capacity to love never stops growing – i mean, can you even reach the brink of love? so keep the good faith up – you never know who you’ll inspire.

(even though i suppose it isn’t about ‘inspiring’ per se, but fighting the right fights and running this race the best we can.)