aH of smiles and tears: January 2007

Friday, January 26, 2007

"Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?... But risk being excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater."~life of pi, yann martel~

if there's something i don't quite enjoy about my major, it's probably has to do with the copious amounts of anti-roman catholic and agnostic literature out there. it does dish out a massive lashing of doubt and uncertainty to the pillar foundations of my own faith. and there's only so much i can take before i begin to feel as though my brain has transmuted into congealed lumps of red hot wire wool, thoughts fizzling away and spitting cognitive sparks of fury. it doesn't help that most people here tend to view catholicism with suspicion, and that many of my classmates worship nietzsche instead.

i don't want to pretend that i'm one of those christians whose faith is never shaken. my story and my reality is one where i always seem to be groping, searching, walking into the unknown with no security save for my trust that Christ walks beside me to guide me. it is not that i do not know that God loves me. i do know it. neither it is because i do not love God. i do. it is just that so often when i am hedged in and pierced by barbed cynicism and the chains of reason, i find it so hard to reach for heaven above. and even then, when i look up it is to see the murk and swagging bellies of a thousand black storm clouds whose greed for the water of life has leeched all reprieving moisture from my soul and the earth, their ponderous bulk cruelly obscuring the healing rays of the sun.

i argued in seminar today that the reason as to why artists and authors alike find it so easy to depict hell and suffering in the most visceral and graphic terms, and yet find it so difficult to paint heaven as anything other than (percieved) monotonous dullness where individual identity blurs away, has to do with the way in which art reflects the soul. if one takes the premise that every man is born steeped in sin, then vice would necessarily colour one's outlook on the world. everything becomes tangential and relative to the hell burning inside oneself, and thus definitive and defineable only in terms of the negative valence.

by the same logic, the limited and poor version of heaven that we paint results from our blinkered understanding of it. and if we find it difficult to imagine heaven or to comprehend the infinity of God - whose foolishness is wiser than man's and whose weakness is stronger than man's - then is it really so surprising after all that we fail to understand the logic of God's justice and God Himself? we don't even know the real reason why we as human beings do things, so how would we expect to know why God does what He does?

God is love, and all who dwell in love shall live the life that is eternal. love is the same reason why i and every other man was born free to choose, and love is the reason why He died for us. it doesn't make sense on so many levels, but since when was love ever easy or logical? so many claim that the existence of hell is indicative of a God not worth believing in. but if it is true that God loves us enough to give us the autonomy to accept His love, then God must necessarily also love us enough to let us go when we reject Him - and what fear is there of fire and brimstone, when the hell of your own making lies inside your very soul itself..

we prayed for unity among christians during wednesday mass at st mark's chapel. after mass, there was a lady standing outside giving out little blue squares of paper. i took two, and this is what i found on the reverse of one of them:

affirmation of faith
i believe in a Father
who so loves his children
to wait in silence for their return
in order to give them the best robe,
kill the fatted calf
and celebrate the feast of reconciliation

i believe in a Spirit
whose power is not revealed in the thunder of the gale
nor in the dread of the earthquake
but in the still, small voice

i believe in a Son
who broke the power of Silence
with the piercing cry
"my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

dying on the cross
he transformed the silence of death
into the death of every silence.

and somehow, that really is the beauty of it all.

Friday, January 19, 2007

Here's something my sister wrote, and I really liked it. I hope you all enjoy it.

today i learnt that i actually have grown up. as much as when each year passes and birthdays come (or maybe not, in my case) and go, i've never really felt any sharp transition from a state of youth into young adulthood or adolescence or whatever. every year was just another year. but something that i've learnt over these many 'another years' is that i truly have grown into a different person. not different as in a 360 degree turnaround of course, because no matter what essentially i still am who i am, but its more of the way i perceive things, the way i handle things, the way i react to things - these have changed over the years. and thats why i realise that i have indeed grown. im no longer the girl that used to think of fun and play and friends and disney and nice stationery and having my prince charming ride a white horse to come find me - sure, all of that is still somewhere in me, but right now im no longer that girl because now i know that fun and play come hand in hand with the right timing and the right attitude, that disney will always bring out the child in me but i can appreciate it for so much more than i used to, that nice stationery is no longer at the top of my impulse buy list because i know that money is hard earned and not dropped from the sky, and that prince charming - well, now i know if God does have a prince charming for me he will be the most charming of all, whether he comes riding on a white horse or not.

when people say that i am idealistic, i dont reject that because i know myself that i am. but perhaps the change over the years is that i am no longer an idealist with no sense of where my feet is upon the ground, with no sense of practicality nor awareness. right now i am an idealist who knows this world, and its evils and its twisted, sick ways. i am an idealist who has seen and experienced things that have hurt me and have brought me to the ground. i am an idealist who has been disappointed and had my dreams smashed into a million pieces over and over again. but no matter what, i am an idealist because i believe in the good in everyone because of the love that God has poured forth so majestically from His gates in heaven. i stick to my principles because i believe that imperfect beings can show perfect love because our God can empower us in ways that no one can fathom. and i try and try again because i believe that our God is a God of second chances.

so we're not perfect - but does that matter? what matters is we try to strive with what we can, with all our might, towards perfection, because God has promised that He will give us perfection the day we enter His gates. while we are on this earth, what is the point in being disillusioned and blinding yourself with hurt and sorrow and pain? what is the point of being bitter and thinking day after day, that no one cares about you and the world is a selfish place? the negative thoughts pervade our minds but we have the choice to thrash them into the recycle bins of our being. we have the choice to choose between to love or to hate, to try or to give up.

i admit i used to judge alot. inside my head of course, so that no one would know and judge ME for judging. haha ironic isnt it. i used to blame people for certain decisions they make, because i expected them to know better, to know what is right, to do what i thought was the right thing to do. but maybe its one thing that jc has taught me. to see things from other people's perspectives. or rather, to understand that other people DO have their right to their choices and points of view, and not everything i say is the gospel truth - not even close to that. nowadays when i encounter those situations, its no longer that indignant judging that surges up inside of me, but rather a quiet and silent prayer to God, to assure myself that He does know best and that He wants people to learn through different experiences. and a silent note to myself to remember to pray for that person. to be honest, i am pleased with this new found sense of maturity. thinking back on my past actions, it was thoroughly childish and unchristianlike. even though once in awhile, the judgemental mini me does find its way into my head, now i know that i have the ability, the choice, to squash her back down where she belongs.

from time to time when people make random statements about me, i tend to ignore most of them because most of them just reflect how little those people understand who i truly am. maybe no one knows. maybe its a secret between God and i, who i really am. maybe it is even a mystery to me, because God's plan to mould me is still unknown to everyone but Himself. meanwhile, perhaps i am still searching for who i really am. but in the midst of searching, i have found bits and pieces of that person that i am to be. small steps of maturity toward a dark tunnel that i am to step toward. its the small things that keep me going, and piece bits of myself together.

small things like the experience of working, like family, like friends, like music, like the still small voice inside of me that only i can hear.

and slowly, step by step, i am inching towards heaven being on the inside of me."

Sunday, January 14, 2007