Lord, I believe you are calling me in all the circumstances of my life, but there are times when your hand is difficult to recognise. The calling can sometimes come in a disagreeable shape, a sickness, bereavement, betrayal, loss of a job, a bout of insecurity. It does not look like a vocation but rather an unfortunate accident, or a failure on my part. But success is what I do with my failures. Each step on the way is part of God's calling. How do I handle deep distress? (Taken from this site, thanks to Sivin's FB post.)

This prayer isn't for me right now but for a friend with whom I'm walking through a tough patch. She is dealing with difficulties that I can't imagine going through myself and honestly, I hope I never have to go through such difficulties. There is not much I can do, especially from afar, and I can't imagine what anyone can do to help her carry her burden. It's one of those "dark nights of the soul" times when it seems like nothing good can happen.

Restless, frustrated, and bored. BAH.

fun monday night, hopefully

Well, it looks like I'm going to be out all night but one for the next nine nights in a row! Another old friend is flying into town for a meeting so we'll be having dinner on Tues. But Mon night's dinner will be fun because I'm getting together a group of friends . . . . for the purpose of matchmaking! Hah! It'll be my first attempt and it'll be fun for me. :)

A couple of guys from badminton will be going--I think they're single although one is a bit young--and the girls are friends from college and grad school. So really, there is only one eligible guy as W is in his early twenties, I think, but it'll be a little less stressful with him around. The guys think I'm just trying to use up a coupon for 40% of at Ruby Tuesday and it is true, I do need to use it, but my old college friend at least knows that I'm trying to get them to meet one another. How else are folks going to meet new ppl if not through their friends, right?

Anyway, I'm not seriously matchmaking but I am hoping we'll have fun!

a little explanation

I posted Nouwen's meditation late last night so I didn't get a chance to say something about it. A friend who is also single pointed out that "the loneliness will always be there." I think it's true that having great friends and a good church community helps with the loneliness but I also appreciate the frankness that acknowledges that it is not quite "the same." It is also true that there are a lot of married people who are very lonely and I wouldn't trade being single for a bad marriage for anything!

My point is, it helps to know that yes, despite all my efforts, I won't banish all the difficult emotions surrounding life--whatever that may be--and that I don't actually need to do so. Until I read my friend's unexpected message, I was being very hard on myself because . . . . I couldn't help feeling bad sometimes. I think I'm doing everything I need to do at this point. My life is full, I am learning, I'm meeting people, and I'm doing my best to live in the present. But even when you do all these things right, sometimes, you feel lonely or sad or afraid. Feeling these emotions isn't a sign of failure! Emotions come and go and as long as our desire for God orders all our other desires . . . . well, then. There is meaning to these emotions and the desires behind them. This meditation of Nouwen's helps us be the human beings that we've been created to be and that's why it brings freedom.

oh what a relief. this is so freeing

Daily Meditation for April 21, 2010
              written by Henri Nouwen

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Ordering Our Desires

Desire is often talked about as something we ought to
overcome.  Still, being is desiring:  our bodies, our
minds, our hearts, and our souls are full of desires. 
Some are unruly, turbulent, and very distracting;
some make us think deep thoughts and see great visions;
some teach us how to love; and some keep us searching
for God.   Our desire for God is the desire that should
guide all other desires. Otherwise our bodies, minds,
hearts, and souls become one another's enemies and
our inner lives become chaotic, leading us to despair
and self-destruction.

Spiritual disciplines are not ways to eradicate all our
desires but ways to order them so that they can serve
one another and together serve God.

living in the present

I wonder why being or remaining in the present is so important to our lives. Secular counseling recommends it, for the most part, as do a lot of major spiritual traditions either explicitly or implicitly. Some of the more effective ways of dealing with stress includes pausing and taking deep breaths, and being aware of our bodies or the world around us. It sounds like bad New Age advice but I wouldn't let New Ageism claim this very useful practice for itself!! But I must say that because of the Enlightenment, the Christian tradition hasn't really explored or developed good understandings about the body. Within Christianity, ideas about temporality seem to me to be more implicit than explicit although if I can speak off the cuff without censure, I'd say that past, present and future are equally important. It may be true of other traditions as well but well, I'm more interested in thinking as a Christian. :)

Remembering the past is important because those reflections can teach us about how much God has worked. I am particularly thankful for how I've been changed in the past decade or so. And it gives me hope for the future because I know that the God who has been with me in the past will continue to work in my life (Phil 1:6). Thinking about the future is important because it helps to know that "this" is not "it."

But how do I live with the "it," i.e. the present? How do I live with the present and all its disappointments and imperfections?

It's ironic that even though I can now look back on all those difficult "present times" that are now past and call them good, and even if I know that in the future when I look back on this very moment that is the now, I will call it good . . . it's so difficult to "be happy" about this moment. This isn't to say that I'm unhappy about being here. At least I don't think so. I recognize the blessings in the now of my life--even if holding on to that recognition is like slogging through a waist-high bog.

Oh heck, I might as well come out and say it. I'm not very happy about being single at this point. There. It's out in the open. Okay. It's probably unwise to say anymore than this on a blog.

stepping out

Gave a talk for the Asia Society here last night. About 100 ppl turned up for the talk--but wait! I was just the supporting speaker. An established documentary filmmaker had a presentation on her work for the Museum of Chinese in America and I was there to provide back-up historical narratives on the subject. It was my first time speaking in front of a non-academic audience and it mostly went well. I was pretty happy with how calm I was for most of it. I learned some things about being in the spotlight, haha!

But today, I'm just exhausted and can barely work on prep work for class later this week.

I need to take this very, very seriously

       Daily Meditation for April 11, 2010
              written by Henri Nouwen

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Authority and Obedience

Authority and obedience can never be divided, with some
people having all the authority while others only have to
obey.  This separation causes authoritarian behaviour on
the one side and doormat behaviour on the other.  It
perverts authority as well as obedience.  A person with
great authority who has nobody to be obedient to is in
great spiritual danger.  A very obedient person who has
no authority over anyone is equally in danger.

Jesus spoke with great authority, but his whole life was
complete obedience to his Father, and Jesus, who said to
his Father, "Let it be as you, not I, would have it"
(Matthew 26:39), has been given all authority in heaven
and on earth (see Matthew 28:18).   Let us ask ourselves:
Do we live our authority in obedience and do we live our
obedience with authority?

scam?

I walked into a pharmacy the other day to get something and I walked by the aisle where they keep heat pads for muscle aches. Right below the heat pads were "foot detox pads." I had seen them before years ago but thought it was a scam then. I don't know what possessed me to buy a box, but I did and have been sticking them plasters at the bottom of my foot for four nights in a row now! The pads were originally created in Japan, I think, but they seem to be widely popular everywhere now. (Everywhere meaning HK, Malaysia, and the US.)

I don't know if this is a 21st C version of snake oil but I do know that I've been waking up before my alarm rings since I started using the pads! It's really weird. I usually have trouble waking up and staying awake and since getting here I've just been so sleepy all the time. But I haven't felt sleepy at all in the last four days!!! Being wide awake just reminds me of all the work that I'm not doing but I suppose this means that the pads are detoxing something, whatever that something is.

You're supposed to use the pads daily for the first two weeks and after that, once a week is fine. So I decided to stick it out for two weeks as an experiment. Maybe I'm awake now because I've been fatigued and sleepy for 3 months and my body decided that it was done being sleepy for awhile. So all this wakefulness could be coincidence.

---

Well, maybe I wrote this too soon. I had to go home and take a 30 min nap because my head hurts for no apparent reason. It's a little better now but not much better.

happy news

I'm seeing my fourth set of old friends who are passing through HK! The first friend who visited is from LA, the second and third, from M'sia (but who are now based in Singapore and Australia), and this most recent set of old friends is a special set. They are special in the sense that I've only met them once before and that was about 10 yrs ago!

These "friends" are actually the parents and extended family of my former college bookstore supervisor! I worked as a cashier at the college bookstore when I was an undergrad and became friends with the staff at the store (about four of them). B-cky, one of my supervisors, invited me to visit her dad's and stepmom's home by the lake in New Hampshire one weekend so I went along and that's where I met M_ller and G_nny (and several others of the extended family).

M_ller and G_nny, and G_nny's sister D_ris are visiting a few countries in Asia and they are here in HK for a few days to meet up with G_nny's son and family (who are based in China) so B-cky told me about it. I had dinner with them last night, took them out to dim sum this afternoon and they're off to Disneyland tomorrow. I'll prob meet up with them on Thurs but we're not sure what we're doing yet. M_ller and D_ris are 87 yrs old so we're trying not to do too much walking!!!!!

They're all very sharp and alert even if M_ller walks very slowly with a cane and has trouble hearing. I was a little apprehensive about meeting up with them at first because, well, it's been 10 years since I first met them and I was worried about keeping them entertained. But it's been so much fun hanging out with them that I'm a little sad about not going to Disneyland with them--especially since they asked me on three different occasions over two meals if I want to go. Well, I don't really want to go Disneyland and I do have to write up my lecture for class this Friday but it would've been nice to see them more.

Moments like these remind me of how rich my life has been and how rich it has continued to be.

PS - I leave out a letter in names so that they don't come up in Google (even though in my settings I've disabled the search function--yes, I'm paranoid) but I want to use their real names so that I can remember them when I look back at this blog in the future! In past posts, I made up nicknames for people but then realized that I have no idea who they really are now!!!