i believe

I don't remember the date, or even just the year, I got baptized. It was in my house, and originally for my wife, though. While they were busy getting things ready upstairs in our master bathroom where the sacred ceremony would be conducted, I chatted with church elders downstairs about "why does one need to get through a ritual like this, if he knows deep down he believes already?" "Well, that's not how it works. You see, the Bible says..."  Long story short, I figured at the end even though I don't see a strong reason for it, I don't have a strong one against it either, so why not "give it a try," as they suggested, and see what happens. So I got baptized in the same bathtub my wife did on that same day. 

Nothing happened.

My "born-again" Christian life only began many years later, and in no dramatic fashion either, when I decided I had asked questions enough, done thinking enough, gone back and forth enough, since my youth, and I knew true religion is not philosophy or academic research, but commitment and actions based on that commitment to a truth you kind of know exists, vague and incomprehensible it may be.

So I told myself to make that commitment, started professing my beliefs outwardly, attending church regularly, joining groups and ministries... talking the talk and walking the walk, that's basically what I did, and that's when it worked. I felt my rubber hitting the road, screeching and reeling it might be, the smokes and sparks were pretty real for sure.

Not that I don't have doubts any more, but I tried to suppress them, because 1) I know my human intellect is limited, and 2) maybe this is God's way of taming my vain-glory pride that I know is the biggest sin of them all. Besides, you get liberated only if someone is holding it tight at the other end for you, don't you?

Until I got liberated again a few years later, realizing God doesn't really want to hold me back on some things that my limited human intellect finds puzzling, unnecessarily. Like:

* Though we humans are God's beloved creation, we are in no position to expect how we ought to be treated by him, or how the rest of the world has come into being.  If evolution is a process God uses to mold the world and human beings to its current physical-spiritual form, it's in his absolute sovereignty to do so, even though it may hurt our feelings a bit, to think we are somehow related to those big ugly apes, just like when we found out Earth was not the center of the world a few centuries ago.   

* Bible is a great reference book to God, but not God himself. It's the finger pointing to the moon, not the moon itself. Personally my favorite part of the Bible is still those books of Gospels, stories of Jesus and his teachings--what a true God-man he was and still is. And like some people say, the whole Bible is really just a love story told from God to man. Catch that spirit, and catch that man, and that's good enough for me. Not interested in finding out how far between two poles should be placed when ancient Israelis built their tabernacles, or how the world will end with what anti-Christ beast prophesied by what verse in what chapter of what book. Some people may find these interesting or meaningful, I don't. I'd rather get out and smell the roses, or hike in the awesome wilderness that's God's reference to himself too.

* Our words and terminologies are so limited and cumbersome and can cause misunderstandings even when they try to say the same thing. Protestants like to say (with a whiff of superiority air, maybe) that their salvation is an instant "imputation" while Catholics' a gradual "infusion"; worse yet, ours comes from free grace while theirs tries to gain it through hard works. But the fact is we all struggle to keep our daily walk with God (a process called "sanctification" in Protestantese), even after we know we are unconditionally accepted and loved by him, and from what I see, many great Catholic saints' "works" are just fervent and relentless efforts to get closer to the Lord they love ever so dearly, far from wanting to gain anything in return at all. 

I can go on and list more personal beliefs of mine like these, but I don't want to, because they are not important, just some static concepts I conclude based on my observations and logical thinking so far, not the real faith that actually inspires and moves me daily.  

What is the difference between faith and beliefs then? I can't say it better than someone already did:

"A way of faith, however, is not a dogged adherence to one point of view and to the belief systems and ritual traditions that express it. That would make it just ideology or sectarianism, not faith. Faith is a transformational journey that demands that we move in, through and beyond our frameworks of belief and external observances—not betraying or rejecting them but not being entrapped by their forms of expression either. St. Paul spoke of the Way of salvation as beginning and ending in faith. Faith is thus an open-endedness, from the very beginning of the human journey."

--- Fr. Laurence Freeman, Newsletter of the World Community for Christian Meditation

My faith is at work when I find I have the circumspection to stop arguing with my wife even though I think I am right; or go out to meet people I don't think I really like to meet and then find I genuinely like them; or seeing all the wars and disasters and inhumanity happening around the world and still know all's going to be well at the end.

May that faith increase day by day without end!

russia

A friend of mine shares some pictures of his recent trip to Moscow on Facebook, that brings back some old memories of mine...

Back in late August 1998, I was sent over to Russia by the company I joined earlier that year--a publicly traded company in LA that bought the intellectual property right of the voice-over-IP system I developed in exchange for company stock and a fat check VP Engineering position which really meant VP Traveling Salesman, to demonstrate and install my internet-voice systems with national telephone companies and internet service providers all over the world that the company was negotiating co-operating deals with.

It was the end of August when I arrived in Moscow, but the weather had already turned damp gloom cold there, totally taken me by surprise, coming from sunny California. A stodgy young man named Valery came picked me up at the airport, and would become my day-to-day care taker meeting arranger liaison officer buddy companion for the next two weeks in Russia.

I was arranged to stay in a "5-Star" hotel right across the Red Square/Kremlin Palace. It was where all the foreign dignitaries stayed during the Cold War, they said. But to me it's really an old and dingy place with 5-star room rate, and I had to batter my way through a slew of young women--sexual solicitors they were--gathering at the lobby every evening just to get back to my room. 

I met with a few people who were our local Russian contacts and associates for lunch and dinner, but my main mission was to install and demonstrate one of my VoIP systems there. And here came the Murphy's Law: One of the systems I brought showed no sign of life when I tried to turn it on for check. It seemed the mother board of the "luggable" PC I carried half the world over just wouldn't take the shaking and beating of travel any more.

"Is there anywhere I might get some PC parts?" I asked Valery the next day, doubtfully. "Hmm, let me check," he said, and surprise, he did locate a local computer store where I found a made-in-Taiwan PC mother board that was exactly what I needed. I then spent one night in my hotel room under dim night-stand light reassembling and rebuilding my proprietary system back to working order.

The testing and demonstration went well at an internet service provider that was the country's largest at the time. It was located in the same facility where they said the old Soviet Union's national science research center was. (Valery used to be a Red Army officer and had his connections, by the way). I don't remember much of the place or the testing process except the gusting cold winds blowing through the open hallways, that without the sweater Valery lent me I probably would have been frozen to death right there. 

Then off we went to St. Petersburg, the second largest city in Russia about 400 miles away from Moscow--just about the same distance between LA and San Francisco, on a midnight express. We visited and met a very gentleman-like manager of a national telephone company housed in a museum-esque building near the beautiful Baltic sea. We swiftly installed and tested another of my systems there in less than half a day's time so the gentleman manager took us to sight-see some famous palaces and then a canal cruise crisscrossing the city for the rest of the day. Valery and I then had a celebration dinner at a classy restaurant where we ordered full course Russian dishes that included the famous oxtail soup (or "Russian soup" 羅宋湯, as we call it in Chinese) that I forget how it tasted since I am no foodie except that it's quite different from the one we grew up eating Chinese style.

Perhaps encouraged by the success of the installations I made in both Moscow and St. Petersburg, the company back home decided to send me over to yet another city, this time Rostov-on-don, the largest metropolis in southern Russia, for another testing and installation. We flew this time, on a Russian domestic airlines flight. The Russian-made Ilyushin airplane might be notorious for its safety records, but the service and food on board was actually not too bad. The city itself, like Moscow and St. Petersburg, was calm and orderly, and the people friendly, but probably not as international conscious as the prior two. I felt being gawked at when walking on the streets as if I were the only foreigner in this town of 1 million people.

The Rostov-on-don testing and installation was a success too. Now it's time to go home. Valery dropped me off at the Moscow international airport and we said good-bye and parted ways. It was a totally strange, Russian airport to me, with no English signs or directions anywhere and long lines everywhere. I found my way to the airlines counter and handed in my passport and ticket to the clerk. After viewing my passport for a brief second she said "Sorry, but we cannot let you out of this country today... Your visa had just expired yesterday."

What happened was the visa I got for Russia was for 4 weeks only, and my departure from the States was postponed by two weeks in the first place, then my stay here was extended for one week. As a result I had just become an illegal in Russia by one day. Nobody noticed this until now probably because my passport was turned in for "safe-keeping" by the hotel as required by law the day I checked in.

I surely had no intention of overstaying my welcome in this country and asked the counter lady what recourse do I have other than going back to the hotel and applying and waiting for a new visa for God knows how many days. She told me there was a consular from Russian Foreign Ministry that could issue temporary visas to people like my situation. So I waded my way through to the place she referred me and found that consular and got him to put a stamp on my passport for $72, cash only, he said. I was damn glad I had that extra money at hand.

I then came back to the airlines counter and started going through multiple stands and checkpoints with multiple lines of solemn Russians, with no signs, no directions, and no flight information update panels along the way, for hours, until it was way past the scheduled departure time of my flight and I completely gave up on hope of getting on my plane in time.

Then when I finally reached the waiting area of my flight's departure gate, surprise, I saw a United Airlines plane still sitting down the tarmac, and a roomful of people still waiting. The flight had been delayed and would be for another few hours, they said. Sometimes many wrongs can make one right :)

I arrived safely home in California the next day.

* Here's a YouTube video converted from the tape Valery made for me using his hand camera during my stay in Russia. It started at the underground subway station mall, to the Red Square and Kremlin Palace, midnight express to St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg palaces and canal cruise, etc., and ended with some sagely advice on happiness from Valery, my top secret KGB agent companion :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR22LG7oYsA

** Here's a news announcement made by the company after my trip to Russia. The company's stock shot up from less than $2 to $8.5 a share in one week after the announcement: 

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Digitcom+Links+St.+Petersburg,+Moscow+and+Rostov-On-Don+for+Internet...-a021104820