a personal Jubilee: starting over happens everyday

J.U.B.I.L.E.E.

It was much anticipated. Singapore's wildest, biggest, most extravagant national party! There have been many movements and moments leading up to it... groups doing craft, entire blocks of flats getting a makeover with all kinds of motifs (I just saw a block that had koalas on it!), folks making videos, writing songs, doing new and wondrous things! As citizens we were given SG50 goodie bags, and over the long celebratory weekend, there will be carnivals, free rides and museum entrances. On the first day of that weekend I even bought a yoghurt at half price!

For someone convalescing and with a few commitments to attend to; I resorted to a vicarious experience of it all via social media... everyone was totally soaking up the celebratory atmosphere over the four-day long weekend. One friend wrote, "hopping from one activity to the next, the fun never ends!". Sounds rather odd for Singapore honestly!

And of course it culminated in this parade la grande ~

largest fireworks in our history

party!

amazing black knights flew '50' formation 

-- which the family caught on TV. I totally missed it, having booked to spend time over a very special conversation with someone who just flew in. I must say I feel a hole in me for having missed our Jubilee Parade.

But losses don't have to be total! On the last day of the long weekend break, we finally headed to one of our favourite places: the Botanic Gardens, now a Unesco World Heritage site. It was so heartwarming to see families and folks strolling, enjoying the vast gardens... there was laughter and one family even did a little race across the lawn. Lovely, energetic fun with a generally cool weather to boot. It felt so good to be alive after the brush with death, and just soak up the Jubilee atmosphere!

So we're 50; and how old that feels depends on who's talking --

As a nation, this has truly been a poignant year. The fact that we are a tiny lil isle in a vast sea that is now bobbing with tremendous uncertainty is not lost to us. Looking back at our journey from colony to statehood to affluent cosmopolitan city-state is an exercise in wonder. So much and so many could have gone awry. Still, it's as if Providence charted a course for us and shielded us through it all.

Jubilee as a notion is of course far more than a mere counting of years. It is a biblical concept that is all about justice, equity and second chances. When the fiftieth year rolls around, everything must be restored. Slaves must be set free, land that was mortgaged must be returned, loans must be canceled. 

Jubilee is all of our cherished hope - the chance to start over. Can someone please wipe the slate clean? Take back my harsh words, rash decision, too quick to press 'enter' trigger finger? Can someone pls cancel away my debts, let me off the hook?

The Jubilee sounds too good to be true. It is also easily abused. The Bible warns against the abuses, and appeals to the heart that desires hope to offer it to others.

But we grasp for ourselves - first.

We want the Jubilee. We may not be so quick to offer it to others. Just forget, forgive, let go? Ask the person next to me.

The Jubilee can be mighty uncomfortable too. We are all creatures of habit and routine. To have to change course, loose bonds, re-imagine what you truly own is quite unsettling. If Ami has been making your breakfast, you could well wake up to having to make your own! From these small shifts to larger ones including taking out title deeds and handing them over; the Jubilee is hard to live out!

So each heart is squirming in the juices of calculation and wariness.

A Jubilee can only happen when we want things God's way and not ours.

It is easy to glibly raise our voices and blow our shofars at the prospect of it; but within our hearts nothing really shifts. We return back to our old ways and set patterns.

Unless -- we realise that the message of the Jubilee is about a just society that depends on God - and that happens when we are personally set free  to depend on God and not see each other as competition, see the world as a limited pie that must be carved up, see our lives as desperate, lacking, unfulfilled.

Jubilee for any society can only happen when it becomes a personal Jubilee.

We must reach for the freedom God offers us in the paradox of offering it to others.
We must reach for the freedom God offers us in the releasing of what we have crafted and engineered for our safety, security and significance.
We must reach for the freedom God offers us in the forgiving of others, and in seeking their welfare.

Listen to this:
Things We Leave Behind

It's hard to imagine

the freedom

 we find
from the things we leave behind

There is some nervousness about the future of Singapore. We have an election coming. We are maturing, asking questions and challenging norms.
There is always some anxiety in our hearts, especially those of us who are parents!


But it's the Jubilee - try to imagine freedom. And pray about finding it in your own heart first.
And that is a daily prayer, a daily discovery, a daily commitment.

More God-years Singapore!

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.

What will be NEW for you this year?

As the first day of January washed up the shores of my soul, I wrote on the board in my home, "What will be NEW for you?". Those words are still there. They remind me not to go back to the same, the old, the habitual, the knee-jerk -- not when Vision, Imagination and Longing are drawing me towards growth, difference, fresh, and possibility.

 I talked to my family - I remind us about Christmas just past; that it was Good News because Jesus had come to make all things new. We knew in our hearts the ways that hurt, that drained joy, that robbed peace from our home. We must reject old ways that have hurt us and look forward in faith, and act in accordance to the newness Jesus wants to give us.

We don't want to talk, think, or act the same. I dream of peaceable words, tender attention, patient bearing with each other...that in our daily life of believing in the New, we are being changed to bring the New to our world.

What about you?

I know it can be scary to dream. I know what disappointment tastes like. I know what defeat feels like and how it loves to linger around and turn everything stale and colourless. But, your heart and mine - are hearts held by God and fashioned by Him, are hearts meant to beat with hope, are hearts that can be be set aflame. Indeed, we need to have confidence that as God loves us and gives us His Spirit, many of what we desire are good things and ought to be in our lives, even if they are not yet! {see Psalm 37v4}

Often, God uses one of his many promises to trigger a sense of possibility. Such as ~

And he will be the stability of your times,
a wealth of salvation, wisdom and knowledge;
the fear of the LORD is his treasure. {Isaiah 33v6}

I long for stability! This verse draws me. It turns within my belly and I see the truth of it: i need to treasure, value, prioritise, honour God in my moments & movements.

Which of the many promises of God is tugging at your heart these days? {please do share with us in the comments!}


God's Word is always an invitation to an adventure of trust. 

I am learning again to take His Word - first, seriously, totally -

I have found that --
when you give the Word the place its rightful place, it anchors down and I can distinguish better; and swat away the lesser words, and, the lies.

the Word is milk and meat and when I am fed, I am less susceptible to feed myself cheap substitutes.

the Word is God-breathed; and each time I read, savour, meditate, fresh life-giving breath enters my being.

I am sure God will pepper 2014 with many specific promises and remind me of many I need to recall. But in His goodness, he began me with a familiar Psalm {yes, i have read it as part of my Psalm trek }, but it was so sweet to read it slow, write it and ask for eyes to notice what I must !

Go seek your promise(s)! There will be NEW this year!