Thursday, June 29, 2006

J.A.F.A.

Is the zoo air-conditioned?
~ Simon, zoo-bound on the 171.

Every once in a while, a random rock or two orbits into your path and you find yourself whizzing along, hurlting through space together for a little moment in time, before eventuality does the inevitable.

Simon was a JAFA (Just Another Friendly Australian) who was sitting solitarily at the next table in our inferior Thu Giang guesthouse on Thouc Bac street in Hanoi, Vietnam. An invitation, a following 3-hour bus-ride sealed the deal, and Simon and I have been hanging out sporadically for the past 4 days or so, with never a dreary moment.

What would Ting do with a monkey?
~ Myself, after Simon muses over the possibility of getting Ting a Monkey as a present.

It's strange to contemplate on the fact that Simon and I have only known each other for less then a week. And as I told him, it is rare that I meet someone whom I get along so well with, and it is perhaps good that we hung out for only 4 days before Turkey called him forward.

At anyrate, it was a blessing, to be The Embarrassment belonging to this truely Fantastic Australian.
I, along with the buddhist beads around my wrist, look forward to January and Whistler.

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Words of wisdom from Uncle Clive.

"But that would be putting the clock back," gasped the governor. "Have you no idea of progress, of development?"
"I have seen them both in an egg," said Caspian. "We call it 'Going Bad' in Narnia. This trade must stop."

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader~ CS Lewis.
-I Just need to Blog-

Says she as she sits at the communal desktop in the dead of the night, wrapped in a towel and squinting through post-contant-lense spectacles. She also thinks that Gladys' mode of conversation has had too much of an effect on her.

Despite what Ting and Simon say, I am not an energizer battery and I am in deadly need of rest. Bus and train rides of late have been more taxing on my soul then normal. It is odd that after three weeks of travelling peasent class (as Tom puts it) around SEA, swamped by garden produce and Khmer Karaoke, I develop motion sickness in comfortable Singapore. I suspect that the quesiness has more to do with my state of being then it has to do with the juices in my brain.

What of? I think I am once again, off balance. Catapulting off somewhere into outerspace without a care in the world. But here is what I think is going on:

I want people. People People People. I almost want nothing more then to reconnect with the friends of my youth in a bid to rediscover myself here and now by remembering then and there.

Have you heard of Moderation?
Sarah to myself.

Somewhere, I do have some hazy sense of the idea. But moderation is NOT my middle name, and for all the glories of being extreme, I suffer a cost. Not something to whine over, but rather, to be cautious about.

So I want people. People People People. So much so that I cannot bear to be alone anymore. And the danger of it all! Perhaps I am unable to face myself again?

That being said, there's nothing to panic about. I think this is a positve step away from introspection, which I am convinced (thanks to L'abri) is a bad thing.

Now Lord, grant me the abilty to self-reflect again. In your presence. And then I will come to the heartfelt recongition of how empty my big words are, and how full of shit I am about my concepts of social justice and how much I need to drop it all and find my balance again, in You.

-----------------------------------------

The last time I cried

Was today!
I was going to blog about this tomorrow but I'm on a roll. Baby.

I find it spectacular that after 10 years, the books that still move me to tears -without fail- are the Chronicles of Narnia. Mere faery tales! And yet with such truth! Beauty! Love! They are the source of my theology. They stir in me the passion i desire to live out and the ferver I yearn to burn with. I find the Jesus that I have grown up with is too boring, too rigid, too stale to encompass life. But Aslan! Here is redeemer saviour friend. But then I know, in order to realise His presence, I must be as faithful and trusting as Lucy.

Such truth! And in my insatiable excitment, I start crying on the MRT as I sit on the floor, nose buried in these dog-eared, children's books.

The church is too afraid. Too afraid of anything that it cannot conceptualize, co-ordinate and control. Anything unconventional is dismissed as hearsy and the dangerous are damned with unholy labels. But what of?! There is too much beauty and truth in the world for the church to stake monopoly over, and if all truth is God's truth, then let us seek to stop bickering and start loving.

He makes all things, all things, beautiful. In his time.
All things, in the context of Christ.

"I say, Su, I know who they are."
"Who?"
"The boy with the wild face is Bacchus and the old one on the donkey is Silenus. Don't you remember Mr Tummus telling us about them long ago?"
"Yes of course. But I say, Lu-"
"What?"
"I would't have felt safe with Bacchus and all his wild girls if we met them without Aslan."
"I should think not," said Lucy.

~ Prince Caspian, by CS Lewis

And with that in mind, let me march out into the dangerous world, tasting life in the presence of a holy, merciful God. Uncontainable. He's wild you know.

Do not call anything unholy, that God has made Holy.
The earth is the Lord's, do we as the church have any reason to hate or fear?

I need to stop bleeding.