There's always music with that flutter. {Feb Love series}

Today, I share some beautiful music I found ~

Just click on here:

Lovely Music

(the 4th tune is a bit edgy so you may want to skip it)

As the music surrounds you, remember LOVE is real, powerful, and beckons. It is also described by two crazed lovers in Holy Writ like this -

love is strong as death,
jealousy is fierce as the grave.
its flashes are flashes of fire,
the very flame of the LORD
~ Song of songs 8v6

(new american standard version)

- this was my wedding text but I never heard it preached as the speaker used another text ! -

But I tell you what. 

I have glimpsed, tasted, been scorched by Love's strength. The way God refuses to let go, the way He sticks around, holds me steady, chastises and reminds me I am first and foremost His. His beloved. His. Through His gift of Jesus, I have become one of His children; and I am destined to love like He does.

His Love flashes like fire, it does, to burn up my hazy commitment, my sloppy, silly and even stupid moments of infidelity.

Love is

strong

fierce

fire

Yes. He Does. Every Day. Even Now.

(even the guys!)

God wants to restore us to who He sees us.

Yes. This.

( I find it hard to stomach this too)

and now, for some quieter music to let
Love
come close
Agnus Dei

The Love series begins in a few days.

To make sure you don't miss it, 

type your email in the box that says 'follow by email'

and you don't have to use the internet; 

just check your mail !

Love shows us the details matter

I never had much patience for details.

I would finish your sentence (in my mind of course) which meant I pretty much stopped listening by that point. In school, I used to make notes and doodle and as the teacher's voice trails off, my mind would be busy with connecting what I heard with other stuff and maybe even have my left brain begin debating with my right! For meetings, I would draw up the agenda, and move the meeting along, satisfied that we had taken a helicopter ride across the terrain and had a big picture view, never mind the individual trees that may require attention.

I'm married to someone who has a head for details and feels much happiness when he knows the exact route, location and cost.

How long will this take?
Who will be there?
What's this costing us again?

His questions used to rile me as petty, nervous and unnecessary; and so the uneasy and often painful dance of opposites called Step-on-toes was a regular feature in our life.

Now, many years later, I pick up some new dance steps - and I realise how important the details can be; indeed how life-saving. When I listen to someone, I have to listen for details. In my coaching and mentoring, often what is most needful is muffled between the lines and need to be probed and surfaced. Only when the vital information is gleaned can the response be truly helpful. No point giving someone painkiller for a hemorrhage.

But there is a threat to this necessary life skill of noticing the details that count.

Today with hi-spped ethernet, we - naturally detailed or learning to be - can be so swept by the traffic on this colossal highway that we lose sight of what we stepped into the traffic for in the first place. One link here and another post there, one tweet here and another instagram there. The speed on this information highway I find my introvert, cautious, detail-oriented half losing his edge as infornever ever slows or pauses for you. Everything becomes a blur as we careen down the autobahn - making it hard for us to pick up any details! We can read stuff and jump to conclusions, tempted to 'like' something because we really want to be liked by our friends.

Our lives are a blur too as one task piles up on another and one moment morphs into another - we grasping and munching at life, hungry to suck the marrow out of it in our hyper-consumerism.

a baby is born. next.
a friend marries. next.
a family member is gone. next.
a vacation is over. next.
what's next....?

Always on the the next thing. And people, even our souls become vague. We hardly truly touch, feel, know anymore 

- until -

Humanity teeming at 7 billion. Such a huge mass. We become just Homo Sapiens, a species, surviving by the fittest - until -

God became man.
God an difficult, vague, faraway, abstract idea, reality ... becomes concrete, near, specific, detail.
He has a face, speaks a certain twang, has his laugh and his own eye-twinkle, perhaps a favourite dish or colour.
We may not know these bits much but there is enough to think of Jesus and get to know Him.

The early church looked to Jesus in a disciplined fashion. He was constantly in their consciousness. They devised a new calendar to reflect that life revolves around God's purposes. January is the season of Epiphany.

Originating in the Eastern Church, the Epiphany takes its name from the Greek epiphania, which speaks of a revelation and an awakening. It celebrates the divinity of Christ shining through his humanity when the Wise Men came, guided by a star; during his baptism, and at the first miracle when Jesus turned water into wine.* It's a beautiful notion. It is noticing the details. Is Jesus God? What details give that away?

When I think back on how I came to Christ and how I have grown; I can see moments of awakening and of deepening. Personal epiphanies where Christ becomes particularly striking and meaningful to me. The details of a faith being filled in on a large canvas.

And love - cannot happen in the abstract. It is concrete, specific, particular. Who wants to sing a general love song? No, the songs that reach our hearts are ballads of one man and one woman's trials and triumphs.

In our hurt and busyness, we use a very large brushstroke and apply general strokes
all men
all teens
all boys
all girls

But love is about 

this man. this teen. this boy. this girl. at this time

As we move in February where Valentines are bought and given, I am going to look at some specifics and details of love. Join me and share with me what strikes you as we go.

*catholicculture.org

374, not 24/7 living - and here's one moment of it!

Everyone and everything is hurtling toward 24/7.

food
banking
friendship
on-line living
work

Did you hear about the CEO who lives in the sky? He travels so much, he doesn't have a home. His life is string of transitory moments in hotels and peering out plane windows. Perhaps, a piece-of-real estate-in-the-sky. {watch here: the homeless CEO}


It is a world that spins on its own axis and goes round so that 'nothing is new under the sun', but also one bugeoning with hope and Newness; often coming out of strange quarters like this Ghanaian's who could be earning far more and putting his poverty behind him. Instead, he chose to return to the rural poor and give them a hand up with his design and manufacture of bamboo bikes!. Here is a man who knows what matters is a life that is self-forgetting.

Of self-forgetting. there is a lovely verse from the Psalm. This verse speaks of a Delight so massive and great that it brings with it the gifts of our heart's desires. A strange non-equation: getting what truly matters not by going after them, but by going after the Giver Himself.

Psalm 37v4:

delight yourself in the LORD

and he will grant you the

desires of your heart.

It's not a badgering for the goodies. It is enjoying the good that will come as we self-forget in the presence of Someone who occupies our attention, longing and imagination.

This is of course a constant turning over of our longings, distractions and frustrations over to Someone wiser, stronger and totally good.... and then, surprise, surprise: the 374 moment comes: like this one in the video.

I love music - and what a blast to see two of my favourite ppl make music together!!

Come on, live 374 with me! It's a New and Living way to go.

Newness: it happens when we walk like Jesus

The most amazing endeavour any human can undertake

is to get out of his own skin.

After all, the furthest distance is between two hearts.

This means the most courageous exploration and the grandest discovery is the road of com-passion: to share and come along, in suffering. Indeed, the happiest times the heart, the home, and even the earth has known are times when we reach out to each other and sought to understand and co-operate. But our world is scarred with recurring reminders that pock-mark our humanity - just this past week, the crazy grief as hearts filled with suspicion and rage give vent to its poison gunning down innocent lives.

Cutting through all the rhetoric and press perspectives, the needy question no one can answer in our media remains: what can bridge these hearts?

She told me how she visited her neighbour with dementia and was surprised the old lady could call her by name. the old lady is locked up at home the whole day while her son goes to work. It's a terrible plight; and I asked if God may desire her to reach out in some small way, maybe to bring a meal? I see the reluctance in her eyes. It would be easy to chide someone for being selfish; but aren't we all? And the distance within our divided heart is enough for a heroic conquest.

The church service began and this song came on King of all the earth {listen as you read on}.

Suddenly, i see a picture before me as the song played on. I caught a glimpse of someone's back and felt instinctively that it was the Lord. I the follower, a few steps behind my Lord, watching him from behind. Then it hit me.

Most of us carry about us so much dissatisfaction. There are so many bits of our life we don't like and our constant desire and sometimes prayer is for God to remove or change the circumstances. Sometimes, we reach a spot where we allow that perhaps what needs to change is ourselves. But we often linger there and stay our gaze on our unhappiness. The change doesn't come for a long time or even; never ever comes.

What about Jesus? Does he implore God to remove him from sticky situations, zap his enemies or with a divine sleight of hand re-arrange his circumstances?

We hear him plead in Gethsemane, yes, but in his daily life, there is none of this terror. Everything in the world that he went through is not known to him when he was in Eternal Union with God beyond our time-space. But the Cross is a particular terror of such cosmic proportions; Gethsemane is beyond our comprehension. I refuse to claim it as a picture of our need to surrender.

Let's face it. we have hoped for that boss to disappear, that colleague to flop, that friend to quietly un-friend us so we can breathe again... Yes, include all the venomous, murderous thoughts while we are at it.

Those are the thoughts Jesus won't entertain because it is not in His being to go in that direction.

I know. I used to protest too: he is God after all! Yes he is, but we are "partakers of the divine nature" Peter reminds us. {see 2 Peter 1v4}

Peter's fellow apostle puts it across in a different way in his letter called 1 John. He made it pretty clear: it is one way or the other. Either you are following Christ, trusting Him for your salvation, and one of His... in which case, you are to "walk as Jesus did" {see 1 John 2v6}.

I thought back to what I saw while the song played. His back was a little bent, as he is trying to fit into a smallish space; as if he sees something, or someone, and wants to reach it.

I hate bending myself to adjust, adapt and risk pulling a muscle or two. I'd like to avoid those uncomfortable spaces, those unlovely people who make me feel like they are draining the living lights out of me.

But Jesus is going to

Encounter
Enter
Engage

He is going to

Throw light
Touch
Transform

and this is precisely how Newness works.
We follow the Newness Bringer - he who has wrestled with the worst of darkness, been held hostage by death, and triumphed over all of it. And now, through His Spirit working in us, He is seeking to spread Newness for and through us -- as we walk as He walks.

I just returned from a gathering of national pastors.One of the best pieces of news I heard is that some young people in Singapore have found out that those garbage cleaners, mostly from Bangladesh, save on their finances by living in the dumps, sleeping next to the rodents who recently grabbed the headlines. These young people have started visiting and befriending these workers. This is Newness in a sleek city of good looks, organised days and clean streets!


Martin Dugand* found seven traits in all good explorers who actually carve out new trails and solve mysteries: 

Curiosity, 
courage, 
passion, 
independence, 
perseverance, 
hope and 
self-discipline

What a new way to think of our Lord, the Explorer! We too are now explorers because a whole new territory has opened up for us.

Go on, look hard. If you see Jesus walk right ahead of you, walk right into that scary, disconcerting, stressful, uptight and inconvenient situation. he will even slow his step and take your hand.


*The Explorers, the book

Newness: when you are missing a person, or a plane

Everyone is asking, "with the technology we have today, how can an object as large as an airplane go missing?".

Sometimes we ask really good questions.

The debate roils around, and on the tele, I hear the interviewer back up the Consultant for Aviation accidents (or something like that), "we can now have real time updates of movements and conditions of the planes can't we?".

Our solutions are a different matter.

Then someone tweets, "do we really need real-time updates?".

Do we? What is real-time? What is real?

They say that grief echoes.

When you experience a loss, it has a way of dragging you back to some earlier loss. Loss is like this huge package, a behemoth, a cloak, a darkness that shrouds over. It takes time to unwrap, to battle, to rumple through and find a way out.

It is of course good that after the Tsunami we have better warning systems and after these missing planes, we may have better aviation standards. But the loss, the loss.

I don't know anyone personally from the Air Asia flight now rusting at the bottom of the sea; but I have lost four - all suddenly. That disappearing airplane, iced, breaking, speeding, tossing ripped me so fast I didn't feel it at first.

I just stood there one Saturday in church and felt breathlessly sad. My four persons whose absence means holes in my life return to my mind. Without warning, the tears came and I join the grief of those whose who suddenly lose a piece of themselves.

And Loss is often what it takes for us to realise what we are made of, what we hold truly dear.

It then dawned on me that I have not written anything much about my four; except for several facebook posts about my brother. If there was anyone I wanted to write about, it would be my parents. I have so much to say: all about their living, their lives. To talk and write of their dying would be a cold exercise requiring me to wield a scalpel to perform a review of events. I cannot do that for they feel still so real to me, living on in my memories and sometimes showing up in my dreams. I doubt those are the events they enjoy me recounting.

"If you feel breathless and a numb sensation..." appear in a chat group, with advice on coughing and breathing to prevent a heart attack. Am I now to hold dear to this little factoid which my father didn't know, broadcast it and improve lives?

Is information and perhaps several plans for increased safety or escape routes the way forward? The last time I traveled, shortly after the MH flight disappeared, my daughter said to me, "come back safely ok?" My losses and the world's have been hers too.

The world mourns and momentarily philosophizes: it's the same old story after all isn't it? We who have mastered and looted from air, soil, sea and space -- yet over our very own lives and souls, we simply cannot precisely ensure security.

Right into this tired thought, old and worn aha moment, something New has come. The story has changed. This philosophy isn't all there is; not since Christmas and Easter. Those two real-life events introduced a new security to us all, if we would have it. It is a security beyond time-space. The old folks call it 'eternal life'. There are dimensions to light, sound and space we don't fully know; but the Bible speaks of a time and space we live within, and one we can eventually be a part of if we believe.

All my four missing persons are secure out there somewhere. I may or may not be telling others to check their hearts, drive safe, or avoid extreme sports. But I will be urging them to choose a security they really don't want to lose.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

~ W. Wordsworth, Ode:Intimations of Immortality 

Newness: when we re-new our thoughts and keep them fresh

Did you know thinking can get old? 
That it can play like an old vinyl stuck on a groove where you find yourself return to the same spinning cycles of longing or loss?

a berlinderhand - an old hand cranked gramophone

Studies have shown that we are creatures not only of habit; but of comfort, including a comfortable way for our neurons to fire. It's like the train set that goes round and round the one track. Our thinking can get routine - and - dull.

But you protest: I am not the creative sort! I am sorry your protest isn't sound. My first answer, regarding being creative is here {go on, be creative!}

More than that, I am not talking about creative flashes in our brain circuitry here.

Christ tore the veil that eternally separates God from man and came onto earth, died, resurrected, defying the enemy of life, and leaves us the Holy Spirit to put in motion a renewal process that will lead towards the climatic day when we have new bodies; and heaven and earth gets a makeover! This process has begun. This process is God's agenda. It is His will. God the Creator is re-creating, and we made in His image have been invited to play a part. God is making all things new!

Just one very real problem: we lose sight of this agenda, this will of God marching forward.

St Paul calls us to recapture it through a change of our mind:

"Do not be conformed to this world (this age), [fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs], but be transformed (changed) by the [entire] renewal of your mind [by its new ideals and its new attitude], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His sight for you]. " ~ Romans 12v2, AmpBible

We have to watch it when our minds go soft and starts to get into familiar grooves. I dare say that as we grow older, this tendency can increase. (so perhaps thank our kids for challenging our thoughts and pushing us to stay relevant and fresh).

Take the word 'love' -- way overused, not enough understood, sought and lived.

What does love mean?

Today in 1 John 4v7 -

  Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

There is plenty to store away, think about, and decide upon here. 

Accordingly, love is ~

 to value, esteem, feel or manifest generous concern for, be faithful towards; to delight in, to set store upon. {Mounce Interlinear}

Quite immediately it becomes clear to me who and what I do love, and do not love! Coffee, cat, causes, comfort, virtual connection (the new 5 Cs) or Christ, community, commitment?

John calls us to value, esteem, be faithful, show generous concern, take delight in and set store upon our spiritual family and to extend that outward. He goes on to give us a very basic reason for this: it is God's nature to love and if we truly have new life in us and a living relationship of coming to know God more, then love becomes a natural outcome, product, fruit.

Do we have a choice to love or not? Yes. Just that to choose not to love - anyone - is to choke the Life out of ourselves. And egad, we are such with-holders and hoarders aren't we?

cold wars
cold shoulders
and maybe even, cold food

Where do we go to get warmed up? To thaw out our hearts so we can share our shoulder?

Everyone needs, wants and seeks love.

The next verse in 1 John reveals the answer. It's again so overused, we lose sight of its simply sublime power. God Is Love. This means No God, no love.

Again you protest, and I join you here. There are many loving and lovey-dovey things happening apart from God.

But God is Love is understood by us in what God did: love us, the un-loveables. We are not compatible with God folks. Our ways are hell-bent and resistant, or outright rebellious. Yes, God loves us; but it's not because we are.so.cute!

God who is love sought us and first loved us; and those who respond, He puts His life in us so we feel a 'compulsion to love' - this lovely phrase from St Paul who in 2 Corinthians 5 was talking about how he's committed to what he does and is motivated by love to do it even though he's too weird for some and they call him 'intense', 'not quite proper', 'out of his mind'!

I suppose heaven on earth, eternity in time, new in old will always feel in the least, awkward.

A new species of Homo Spaiens, clumsy, requiring constant re-tooling, at times brave and expansive, other times, bewildered and huddling now move on planet earth. And they need to be reminded often that they aren't like the rest they live among. They are to bring in a new order, a new way; and they will succeed if they re-new their minds, often.

meow/roar

Newness: new friends and a soul story

{2015 NewNess Series}

2014 has been quite a year. I came to know many new people, a lot in the creative community.These folks amaze me with their talents, gifts, and commitment to craft and Christ. I feel so enlivened by them. I am so grateful for their lives and the difference they want to make to the soul-scape of Singapore.

But a problem surfaced as it does with new stuff; such as new, talented people. You wish you were like them. I did! I am sure I will continue to! Look at what will be called A-Listers: a lawyer who is a poet. A lecturer with his own ukulele band, a young writer who gets featured at the Singapore Writer's festival, a young mother and musician who provides amazing leadership, a young man who can play the old pipe organ!  Yes, Wow! I wished to have opportunities, training, pedigree...they do. I wished I had their gumption, discipline, energy.

My wishing is not mere fancy. There is something about creativity and craftsmanship that really draws me and feeds my soul. This group has a homecoming feel to it. It reminds me of the time I switched from a being Science student (a semi one really as my grades weren't sterling) to the Humanities. I began to enjoy and thrive; in fact I shone. I came home!

But - sometimes you can come home and find that you're a lil old for everyone and everything. You can come home and feel like it's humming so well along, you cannot bring anything more to it.

When a damsel is in distress, she calls for her prince. But an old dame had better have it together and not be in distress! I will be told by popular wisdom not to be so silly, to whip up my self-confidence, remind myself of how far I have come and assume somewhat cocksure that I am a gift to these folks! Other smart options would be to get inspired and take up the painting, photography and drumming I never did earlier.

Interestingly a setback in architecture means : a steplike recession in the profile of a high-rise building, usually dictated by building codes to allow sunlight to reach streets and lower floors...

Looks like some light is trying to get to the lower floors.

The giving bit. Aren't gifts offered and presented by a Giver? And isn't the value of a gift a matter of the depth of relationship? (which is why my son's art means so much to me). I may or may not be a gift; that is for others to tell me, which is nice if they do; but may peace remain if they don't.

The gung-ho bit? Yes, there are things I'd like to do, like learning to draw birds. But on a scale of importance, that may have to wait for now. Also, the past few years as I see my life more as an unfolding of Life, I know that the artist of my life is not me and my clumsy brushstrokes rarely make up the defining lines.


But, there is one thing that I need to . really . watch.

The feeling of not quite fitting in or making a difference can and does at times cause my soul to pull back. When it starts to do so, the heart gets somewhat crumpled and things get lost among the folds and layers: like generosity, authenticity, and love. A protective layer can form that encrusts the heart so its tenderness is no longer accessible.

A good thing can turn out quite differently, even wrong.


We are familiar when this happens with sad, traumatic events. But mere carelessness, over time, can also change a heart.



So Kindness sat with me and bid me look at this heart trying to fold and hide its beat.

In our days of self-fulfillment, we devour every bit of suggestion, colour, excitement possible for daily life is too humdrum and reality too dreary. We reach for the unreachable: our actualized selves, our perfect spouses, our brilliant children, our incredible portfolios....every one of them increasing the contrast between life-as-is with life-as-it-should-be that is showcased on facebook, soundcloud, youtube, instagram et al.

I confess to Kindness that I have been party to this and I am reminded that this is not the air that I am meant to breathe. Indeed while intoxicating, it  is actually toxic in the end. The highs it promises will not last and I will come crashing down when my views and followers decline! Kindness points me to the Great  One who in wisdom set me in time and place. I wasn't born too late or in the wrong hemisphere.

Our capacity to love and appreciate more than what we know or have experienced before, like when one visits a foreign land and feels at home, is a gift of expansion. It is the toxic grasping of modern culture that turns the wondrous discovery into a pouting and whining.

Goodness comes quietly by and I am warmed by her as I think how surprising this journey of new friends has been. It hasn't the been stuff of school-girl angst about liking and being liked, but a slow gathering of hearts and minds, like finding more seashells along the shore!

I recognised that the sins of Envy are Discontent could have been the fruit I eat if I had not watched what I am sowing in my heart. I see too that the enemy's favourite weapon of Deception with its armada of Accusation, Confusion, Exaggeration were set for my heart's co-ordinates. So I moved my heart from its spot to a place it is always safe: under the Light.

Don't let the toxic fumes of this world's values and the shadows the enemy casts distort and destroy God's good gifts!

"Don't be deceived... Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." ~ James 1v16f

Here's to a new year and more fun with more friends who are always so good for the soul.

Here we are - again - a little more Brave

For many years now I have kept to this habit.

As my birthday falls on the last day of the year; it seemed fitting to spend some of the day in reflection and prayer. When I first began this habit twenty some years ago, it was of course filled with zest and vindicated by a wonderful list of 'things accomplished' and 'things to look forward to'. It's great to feel your life making sense and moving towards Promise.

In between, there have been hard years, and the habit has been at times --

dry
difficult
desperate

There were those years when looking back brought mostly tears. When looking forward was frightful. When a thick silence hung between heaven and earth so my beautiful journal was a blank.

I have tried praying, fasting, flipping my Bible to see where it may land - because, honestly, I needed some serious help. Life was not getting easier. Marriage, ministry, children, parents, siblings, friendship, world events... and some days it feels they are like the ribbons and I the May Pole - just that the dance isn't merry but fierce with sudden movements and I am wound up and stuck and suffocating...

Just as we thought Osama has been taken down, the economy is stabilizing, the mystery of the missing plane is fading from memory; we have fresh news of our impotence once again. The world stage is but a large screen projection of what is previewing in our little apartments and hearts: mystery trumps mastery.

But we operate by mastery. Really, when we cut a life down to it itty-bitty parts; it is mostly habit.

Our thought patterns are often habitual. We don't often think new, grand thoughts. We screen, interpret and decide pretty much the way we have done as long as it worked well enough. The way we talk and relate to people is often habitual too; we even find ways to talk with different people and can switch that on when we are with that person. Most of our emotions are knee-jerk-habitual as well.

Heart-warming elements in great stories are written around habits. Love that character? Why of course, just look at the way he lights and smokes his pipe when he wants to think, or look at how she wakes up and checks on her little garden each morning. The habits endear us and make these characters life-like. But story-book character habits live in our imagination, not share our bedroom or eat at our table.

Journaling, reflection and prayer is perhaps the habit to examine all habits! It is the habit that opens the window to Mystery.

Mind you, a civil war can break out. Habits are very resilient. They won't go quietly away and suffer adjustment without a fight. But they are also interestingly reasonable. When you can unpack a habit and remove what energises it, changes can come.

The last few years, I have given myself more space, and the habit to wrap the year-end-and-start with reflection, prayer and listening sometimes stretches into weeks. I remind myself it is not a medal I pursue but a model of life I desire.

Life and Love after all, cannot be forced.

So souls, today I am listening to these two songs and I think you will enjoy them too:

Blessings

The perfect wisdom of our God

Here we go, another year, a little more brave.