13 Jan 2015

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 

6 Jan 2015

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






2 Jan 2015

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.