bonsai banzai

My brother-in-law is a bonsai artist. He drives himself to a suburban hill of Taipei and spends the day taking care of his botanic yards, from dawn to dusk, Monday through Sunday, rain or shine, for the past 37 years. 

Other than that I don't really know how he works his plants, or the artistic philosophy behind it.

He recently published a book of his works and the moment I flipped through it I was caught not only by those pictures of fine looking miniatures, but also the way he describes how they were made, using the most mundane or throw-away materials, with a most respectful, naturalist touch to the plants, to come up with these creative delights that are quite a step away from traditional bonsai making.

Here are some pictures with accompanying notes I made out of his book:

The plate is a pebble I picked up at some river bank or ocean side. The plant is 20 years old, was never metal-wired or bound up, but through fine manicuring of its branches and buds was it groomed. To put a wild child plant like this on a delicate porcelain plate would be like having me pulling grass in tuxedo, exceedingly uncomfortable. 

One might think the easy way of making this formation is to put the seed in the center hole of the rock and it will grow itself to shape. If you do so the budding root, fiercely digging its way down but cannot find a way out, will hoist itself up and crash and die.

This colorful foundation was a brick relic I picked up at a river bed, shaped by the thrashing water and the turbulent sand. Just tap a 3 centimeter hole on top of the brick and put the bamboo in. The brick is a perfect water conducing material, no need to drill any holes for drainage. 

This elegant looking piece of wood has some shallow notch on top, ideal for the red Azaleas. To make it a rowdy bunch, I added the white Prunella, then the little Coleus down below.

The home base of this plant consists of two shells, the scallop on top and the clam below. Drill a tiny hole on each and tighten them up with a screw, and a most unusual vase is formed.

Slender Araucaria swaying on a flat plate conveys a tropical laid-back meme. To prevent the Araucaria from falling on the shallow plate, grow it first on a coral piece for its root to take hold, then move them to the plate.

Cuckoo flowers are of many varieties, this one is a gift from an elderly friend. To prevent it from drying up, I often put it under shade, which in turn causes some long stem to wilt and fall for lack of sunshine. Not to worry, just cut the leaves and bring it under sunshine and it will come back standing firm and tall in no time.

Lay a hard coil mesh and some soil in the open end of a worn-out valve and put on a fat stem plant, you have a tattered seasoned-looking piece here. Reflecting on this old faithful gadget making its last contribution to the plant it helped watered all its life, and my own ragged, wrinkle-faced self, I can't help but feel at a sentimental loss for a while...

* For those interested, the book is "小自然：林國承的無盆小品植栽"

http://www.books.com.tw/products/0010638256

happy new year

A college friend of mine has some farmland in north-central Taiwan and invited us along with many others there for a visit. We toured the rolling orange grove and a beautiful pond then gathered in the two-story house they built. It was quite some crowd so when Linda needed to go to the restroom and it was occupied the hostess suggested she go upstairs to another one. When she came out and went downstairs, probably because the light was dim (it was turning from day to evening), and probably because it had no handrails, and probably because the steps were of irregular shape at half flight where it turned corner, she missed the step and tumbled down.

The hostess held her at the end of the stairs, and though Linda looked conscious (shaken and pale, of course), the hostess and I immediately felt her right elbow had protruded bone. We needed to send her to the ER, everyone said, so a guy with a car, along with a couple, took us to the major hospital in the city nearby, where they took an X-ray, and saw a bone was twisted and broken, more than just a dislocation we originally thought/hoped it was, that required surgery.

They could do the surgery there, but then the city is an hour drive from Taipei where we live, and where we might be able to get better care, so we decided to hire an ambulance and have them call the hospital in Taipei to which we were transferring while I called my sister in Taipei to see if she could find a good bone specialist surgeon for us. The hospital fixed the dislocation and gave her a painkiller shot (she's beginning to feel the pain now) and put a temporary cast on her arm before the ambulance arrived and off we went to Taipei.

At the hospital in Taipei they did further exam with CT scan, and the doctor (a recommended bone specialist surgeon my sister found) came to discuss with us about the surgery options. He explained the pros and cons of trying to "pin back" the broken bone vs replacing it with an artificial joint... Long story short, though he left the options open for us to decide, I could tell he really preferred the artificial joint option, for its higher operation success rate and better long term sustainability, even though it's more expensive. So we decided to go with the artificial joint option.

It was already midnight Saturday, they did the surgery the next day, and other than some after-surgery discomfort Linda felt because of the anesthesia, it was a smooth and successful operation.

For the first two weeks after the surgery she wore a cast on her right arm, that she had to be careful not to be in touch with water when she bathed, and that hampered her movement in general. So I got to have the honor of helping her bathe and putting her clothes on and off, a fun and not-so-fun job at times, haha.

She's now off the cast for almost two weeks, and has gradually but pretty much got back to her form again, if still being careful not to strain her arm, and walking stairs extra carefully. I used to know I have a fragile wife, but now I know I have a very fragile wife that I need to handle with extra care :)

I am writing this to explain how it all happened to friends and family who showed concern when they heard about the news, and also to thank again in particular those who offered invaluable help to us during the process: our college friends who drove and accompanied us to the hospital, paid visits during and after our brief stay at the hospital, my family and my wife's family here, and the nurses and doctors of a quality and efficient health care system that ought to be the envy of the world!

Happy New Year! 

 Linda right after the surgery                  At an outing with me this Monday

 


 X-ray photo of her arm with the artificial joint

anagrams

An anagram is the re-arrangement of the letters of a word or phrase that transforms it into another word or phrase. For example, the wildly successful mystery-detective novel "Da Vinci Code" starts its storyline with a museum curator lying beside a few inscriptions he wrote before his death:

"O, Draconian devil"

"Oh lame saint"

Which turns out to be anagrams for 

"Leonardo Da Vinci"
"The Mona Lisa"

Interesting?! Here are a few more I found on the web:

Dormitory — Dirty Room

Desperation — A Rope Ends It

The Morse Code — Here Come Dots

Slot Machines — Cash Lost in 'em

Animosity — Is No Amity

Mother-in-law — Woman Hitler

Snooze Alarms — Alas! No More Z's

Alec Guinness — Genuine Class

Semolina — Is No Meal

The Public Art Galleries — Large Picture Halls, I Bet

A Decimal Point — I'm a Dot in Place

The Earthquakes — That Queer Shake

Eleven plus two — Twelve plus one

Contradiction — Accord not in it

This one's truly amazing:

"To be or not to be: that is the question, whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."

After re-arranging all the letters, it becomes:

"In one of the Bard's best-thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten."

Here's another great one:

"That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Neil Armstrong

The anagram:

"Thin man ran; makes a large stride, left planet, pins flag on moon! On to Mars!"

Finally, my try at one: 

"Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!"

Its anagram: 

"Pray a wish, share a dream, CRT my penny!"

*******************************************************************
Some had asked, and many must have wondered--I assumed--about what that "CRT my penny" means above. So here I go:

"CRT" is really just the short for "Credit". By "CRT my penny" I mean I so run out of money doing Christmas shopping I have to put my penny on credit!

It's a stretch and exaggeration, I know, but also my little poking fun at Christmas commercialism :)

Anyway, this allows me to say "Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year" to you all again at this Christmas Eve in Taiwan, with another newly minted anagram:

"May Warmth Spread, Cheers in Any Pray!"

kierkegaard

Ever heard of Soren Kierkegaard, that 19th Century Danish Christian philosopher whose progressive "leap of faith," "existence contradiction" interpretations of Christianity made him one of the early forebears of 20th Century Existentialism... that's about all I knew about him from the days of my youth, when I was wandering and wondering about life's mystery, meaning, and what not.

I recently took an online course on Kierkegaard and his philosophy and realized just how much I have missed learning from this "existential" genius all these years. 

A Socratic Task
To understand Kierkegaard and his philosophy you need to understand the life and philosophy of another great philosopher of all times--Socrates, the man who claimed "all I know is I know nothing" while pestering others to vet what they say they know, a practice that irritated the Athens city state so much they finally put him on trial and sentenced him to death for the crime of seducing the youth of the day with dangerous thoughts.

Kierkegaard took to heart many elements of Socrates' philosophy and modeled his life and work after them that he called his lifetime work essentially a "Socratic task".

Irony & Negation
Socrates usually started a dialogue pretending he knew nothing while his discussion partner had full grasp on the subject matter, and through step by step questioning stripped down the false understanding his partner had until they realized they didn't really know what they thought they knew before. Kierkegaard was fascinated by such approach since he saw many in his own 19th Century Danish society claimed to know things about which they were in fact ignorant. Also, to Kierkegaard Christianity is at its core an enigma and by means of his writing he wanted others to arrive at their own conception instead of him giving a concrete description of it, which was in line with Socrates' approach of not giving positive definitions to things in question. 

Midwifery & Appropriation
The Socrates approach did not mean to make mockery of the person answering the questions but to lead them into deeper thinking, reflecting on the conceptions they hold and finding the truth within themselves. Kierkegaard compared such form of conversing and discussion with the Christian sermon and said, "To preach is really the most difficult of all art... the art of being able to converse." Instead of preaching some external fact or bit of knowledge, the pastor, speaking as one individual to another, should encourage the members of the congregation to find the truth of Christianity in themselves, each in their own way. Every follower of Christ must appropriate the Christian message for him or herself, then.

Absolute Paradox 
One view of the popular Hegelian philosophy of Kierkegaard's time asserted there are no absolute distinctions or contradictions between things of opposite nature and everything can be mediated. For example, there is no absolute difference between human and divine, finite and infinite, temporal and eternal; each of these terms are organically related to the other and they jointly form a higher conceptual structure that can then be mediated. The Christian doctrine of Incarnation and Revelation of Christ can thus be given a philosophical explanation with no need of contradiction element. Kierkegaard objected to such explanation and insisted the Revelation is an example of an absolutely fixed, irreducible dichotomy, an either/or that cannot be mediated. He used Socrates as a model, as someone who accepted that there are some things that must be regarded as paradoxes, as he had found at the conclusions of many of his inquisitions into the essence of true knowledge. 

Subjective Truth 
In Kierkegaard's mind, Christianity should not be a collection of doctrines and dogmas or a systematic theology that tries to explain away the absurdity, contradiction, and paradoxes at the core of its faith, but a passionate embracing of them from the very depth of each individual's own heart. He called such jump from objective knowledge to religious faith a "leap of faith" since it means subjectively accepting statements which cannot be rationally justified, and is outside of, rather than in conflict with, objective truth.

For Socrates, the good is something absolute and universal, but with a subjective element involved in it as well. The revolutionary thought he introduced "reflective morality" involves the individuals consciously considering for themselves what is good, instead of merely accepting it uncritically from their parents, ancestors, or society. 

It's All In The Delivery
Because Kierkegaard believed there can be no comprehensible result at the end of mankind's search for the ultimate truth, he dismissed objective reasoning that claims such (pseudo) results while extolled subjective effort: "While objective thought translates everything into results, and helps all mankind to cheat, by copying these off and reciting them by rote, subjective thought puts everything in process and omits the result." Further, "the truth exists only in the process of becoming, in the process of appropriation."

Hence, to his hero truth seeker Socrates, he paid his highest compliment by saying "True, Socrates was no Christian, that I know... I also definitely remain convinced, that he has become one."

*******************************************************************************
Is Kierkegaard and his philosophy relevant today? 

The church is no longer a dominant force as in Kierkegaard's time; people are free to pursue their own spiritual journey through various venues. Even within the church itself the teaching stresses less on doctrines and dogmas but more on the importance of "personal relationship" between God and the individual.

The "leap of faith" seems to have lost its dramatic sting when many scientists and rational thinking men and women recognize the different realms science and religion cover and calmly choose to belong to a faith that they know is empirically unprovable.

Kierkegaard's emphasis on the inwardness and subjectivity of individuals and each should seek his/her own truth without imposing it onto others has become such an inviolable norm or common courtesy like saying thank-you and excuse-me in society that breaking it would be considered uncivil.

In all these you might call Kierkegaard and his philosophy irrelevant, or at best the progenitor of many thoughts and spiritual practices we have in our modern and post-modern society. 

But the idea that truth is not an understandable object but exists in the process of seeking it, as Socrates and Kierkegaard had spent their lifetimes doing, is universal and relevant for all ages and times, that I do agree and embrace with my own subjective heart and mind!


* Kierkegaard's funeral was an awkward situation for the Danish Church for the apparent reason that Kierkegaard had been attacking them violently up until his death. Still they sent out the presiding pastor of the archdiocese and proceeded to conduct an official service for Kierkegaard. 

During the burial, however, Kierkegaard's nephew, a young medical student named Henrik Lund who was doing his residency at the hospital where Kierkegaard's health declined and eventually died, rose up and made a long, agitating speech to the crowd. He explained that he was not only Kierkegaard's relative but also his friend that agreed with his views and felt obligated to speak out for Kierkegaard since everyone in the funeral seemed to have been talking around the point and avoided mentioning Kierkegaard's actual opinions and writings.

He pointed out the fact that the Danish Church is conducting the funeral for Kierkegaard is vindication of the correctness of Kierkegaard's attack on it. The Church, according to Kierkegaard, has forfeited making difficult demands of its followers and made becoming a Christian a simple matter of course, thus distorting and even destroying the actual content of Christianity. Kierkegaard has done everything possible to distance himself from such "official church" during the last years of his life, yet the Danish state church still accords him such rites of funeral and burial as if he were a loyal member, which demonstrates the Danish Church has no meaningful conception of Christianity, as Kierkegaard himself had argued. What does Danish church represent then, "the political powers, financial concerns, and so forth," Lund denounced! 

At the end of his speech he enjoined people to leave the official church lest they should become a sinful accomplice to it. (Got an inkling why the ancient Athenians had to put that dangerous Socrates to death for fear of him influencing young people and subverting existing social orders☺) The crowd cheered and jeered while the presiding pastor tried to stop him.

The whole event was considered a scandal and added ripples to Kierkegaard's already controversial articles that took years to recede.

** On what constitutes objective truth and subjective truth and the relation between them, here's one interesting piece that I think explains it pretty well:

Three umpires go to a bar for a drink after a baseball game. They are talking about the nature of balls and strikes. 

One says, "There are balls and strikes and I call balls and strikes." 

The next one says, "No, no. There are only balls and strikes once I call them balls and strikes." 

The third downs the rest of his beer and humbly explains, "You are both wrong. There are balls and strikes, and we call them as we see them."

trip to turksland

A close couple friends of ours asked us to join them for a group tour to Turkey last year, we couldn't make up our mind until it's too late. This year, with my wife's early retirement and more time to plan ahead, we signed up early and went on to the tour and just got back this past Tuesday.

It was a wonderful trip!

Here's how our travel plan went: We started from Istanbul, drove south, crossed the channel that divides Europe and Asia, meandered around west Turkey, mostly along the coast line but occasionally going inland for site visits such as Pergamum and Ephesus, until we reached the southern Mediterranean metropolis Antalya, then traversed north to the central wild land Cappadocia, then flew back to Istanbul, where we spent one extra day and a half touring the city, then flew home.

* The map above provided by the travel company is mostly accurate, except it skips the parts of travel from Pamukkale to Antalya then Antalya to Konya.

What do I find fascinating about this trip?

1) The Country and the History

Modern Turkey is a diminutive remnant of what was once a great Ottoman Empire that straddled between Southeastern Europe (Greece, Bulgaria, the Balkans), North Africa (Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt), West Asia (Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, western Iran), and Southern Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan), controlling the East-West trade routes and lands around Mediterranean basin for over 5 centuries. It had been in steady decline through the whole of the 19th Century (and given a nick name "sick man of Europe", just like the Qing-dynasty China was called "sick man of Asia" during that same period), however, and finally dissolved after the end of World War I. 

The Turks were a nomadic people originated from North-Central Asia, between Altai and Ural mountains, neighboring the Mongolians, and probably mixing with the earlier Xiongnu (匈奴) tribes in northern China, and were first given a definitive reference as Tujue (突厥) in 6th century Chinese history records. They helped Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) quell An-Shi Rebellion (安史之亂), and founded 3 regional dynasties in northern China after Tang's demise (後唐,後晉,後漢, their founders all being Shatuo Turks 沙陀突厥人). 

One branch of the Turkic people migrated to the Anatolian Peninsula--present day Turkey--in the 11th century and started conquering and "Turkifying" local people, while defeating the Byzantine (East Roman) Empire at major battles, forming the Ottoman Empire in the process, that culminated with the eventual invasion of Constantinople (name changed to Istanbul after the take-over) that officially ended the thousand year old East Roman Empire in 1453.

​2) The Land and the Old Ruins

Being a land bridge between Europe and Asia continents, and with the Mesopotamia "Fertile Crescent" just around its southeastern corner, it's not surprising Anatolian Peninsula was where many ancient civilizations originated or crossed paths. The city of Troy was built and rebuilt 7 times even before it was destroyed by the Trojan War, and then two more times after that; Ephesus had been a prosperous town a thousand years before the Romans came; the Greeks kept coming from the west to colonize more lands here, and the Persians kept thrusting their army through from the east to complete their imperial conquest. The Romans, with their engineering and organizational prowess, after their conquest, picked their "Club Med" spots here for healing resorts, scenery retreats, strategic positioning, etc., criss-crossing the serene Mediterranean blue sea to visit these places just like strolling through their backyard... Life must be pretty darn good for those Roman emperors (before they were assassinated too soon) in their hay days...

3) The People

Turkey is a Muslim country, with 99.8% population following Islam religion. Mosques are everywhere, blasting out calls for prayer from their minaret towers every now and then. It may be annoying at times, but somehow also gives you a sense of community in a vast country like this. It kind of reminds me of those mobile peddlers roaming around the neighborhood with blaring microphones exhorting people to buy their goods or bring out the scrap metal for collection when I was little in Taipei City... busy, noisy, yet so full of life.

To give us a truer feel of Turkish people and their culture, our tour company included two specially arranged events in the itinerary: A lunch at a villager's home where we sat and ate their home-made cooking, and a visit to a rural elementary school where we donated gifts and met with its students. Even though we don't speak their language and they don't speak ours, the hospitality, good will, and fondness of each other were well sensed and as indelible as those fancy landscapes and grand old ruins we saw in their country.  

   

4) The Food

The majority of the meals we had were at the hotels, buffet style, so we got to explore different flavors of food this agriculturally endowed country and its culinary profession can cook up for us. Not being a vegetarian myself, I found nonetheless I enjoyed their green dishes more than the lamb or beef kabob that I was familiar with before I came here. Plates I liked were: marinated white broccoli, steamed Brussels sprouts, and spicy millet salad, etc.

We tried a couple times their fish servings outside the hotel as well, once at a sea side restaurant where they let us select their catches of the day at the front counter and cooked for us, and the other time we ordered a simple fish sandwich at a street corner in Istanbul. Both were fresh and simply good.

We also liked the pomegranate juice crushed by the street vendor right in front of our eyes. It's tinglingly refreshing with right balance of sweet and sour taste, not to mention 100% pure and natural.

​​

Then there was this thin-crust bread with tomato and minced, spicy meat topping, wrapped with some Turkish herb or cilantro we had at a restaurant nearby hotel that tasted so crispy and delicious but much less filling or fattening than the typical American pizza.

​

5) The Things We Bought

I am no shopaholic and did not plan on buying anything in particular before the trip (my wife might have had different ideas I didn't know), but we ended up buying more stuff than usual during this trip. Altogether, we bought: 

3 leather jackets (two for my wife one for myself), one floor carpet (they ship direct from factory to the US or wherever you want to so we don't need to carry them), 3 scarves (cotton, wool, or silk), two leather belts, one hat because I needed it to deter the hot sun at Ephesus, one swimming trunk because I could not resist the grand swimming pool I saw at the hotel in Antalya, a vest and one pair of jeans at the clothing store right across the hotel we stayed in Istanbul, a miniature whirling dervish dancer because I enjoyed the dance by these Muslim mystics I saw at one optional event the tour arranged in Cappadocia.

   

I don't know if we got the best deals out of these items or not, especially on those bigger ticket ones, not being good bargain hagglers as we'd like to be, but I believe we got quality products at reasonable prices, and we are happy with them.

6) The Tour Guide and the Tourists

Our tour guide is a Turkish American who had lived many years in the States and been guiding tours in Turkey for almost 30 years and speaks flawless English, with great sense of humor and vast knowledge on arts and artifacts, history and hearsay, of all the places we traveled to. It's never a dull moment when he talked.

Our fellow tourists mostly came from the US and Canada region, each with different background and personality that we get to share ours with: Geraldine and Joseph are a gracious old couple from New York City and Geraldine is a practicing psychologist who seemed nervous about the food she ate every time while Joseph always smiled and looked so calm and gentlemanly with everything and everyone; Pete and Dell are a retired couple from New Jersey and Pete had been walking at least 10,000 steps a day for the past 10 years or so and said he had continued to keep at it even during the trip; Charles is a petro-mechanical engineer from San Antonio, Texas who seemed to be carrying a map exploring every new place by himself yet was very talkative and knowledgeable whenever you engaged with him; Ellen is a reporter from Detroit, Michigan who is going to write a column for this trip which she said she'll forward to us afterwards; and Galo and Sofia are the young couple from Ecuador who just got married a week before the trip and seemed to be late to the bus and sleep-deficient all the time... 

Isn't this a wonderful trip?

* If you want to see all the pictures and the photo-by-photo narration of the trip, you can go to:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10205214237300652.1073741826.1387569224&type=1&l=b9f4d76a81

happy birthday suite 57

I wasn't expecting it, but near the end of our weekly small group gathering last Saturday evening, somebody started saying "We've got someone's birthday today," and I pretty much gathered that's me they were referring to, even though my birthday was one following day away. Our small group keeps records of each's birthday and celebrates them during the month they fall on. So this was not that unusual. Still, I was a bit surprised since this was the first time the group reconvened after a summer recess, and there must be quite some things still buzzing over everybody's mind.

Even more surprising was the birthday cake they had for me--not the usual creamy pasty kind, but 5 or 6 pieces of Chinese moon cake, in all varieties: lotus seed (蓮蓉), five kernel (五仁), sweet bean (豆沙), egg yolk (蛋黃).. all well shaped well stuffed and well flavored. And you'd be surprised to know, they were all made by one young fellow sister of ours who did this for the first time, she said. Wonderful work! I regret I didn't take photo of them before eating, but not to worry, I am intentionally leaving the space below empty so when she has her next culinary surprise for us I'll take photo and fill in the blank here:

(Coming soon from sister Janet's gourmet kitchen...)

The next day, Sunday, my birthday, I went out with a group of old friends--these are couples me and my wife have acquainted for the past 20+ years, some are my college friends, some tennis partners (before I quit playing it), etc.--to a local Chinese buffet restaurant for dinner. Nominally this was just one of those get-together dine-outs we did from time to time, but at the end they all sang Happy Birthday to me and another fellow who had the same birthday as I but one year younger. And the restaurant chipped in with a special one-free-meal certificate for my next visit after verifying my ID:

This requires me bringing 3 others to get mine free. Come with me and I'll split the check with you so we all get an equivalent of 25% discount.

Now came Monday. For that my wife and I did have a planned event: we had invited all my Monday evening meditation group members to our house for the usual meditation plus the birthday celebration, not just for myself but also for another group member whose birthday falls just 3 days apart from mine. Right around 6 PM--our usual meditation get-together time--they all appeared at our house, with flowers, wine, gift, and one great looking birthday cake made by yet another culinarily talented lady. We had wine and chatted and some toured around the house since this was the first time they were here, then sat down and enjoyed the 6-dish dinner my super wife prepared for this occasion. We then went out to the yard to have a (reduced) 20-minute meditation around the fire pit under the night stars, then came back for the cake and gift and cards unwrapping... It was a joyful and memorable evening for everyone.

 

The happy birthday girl and I   

Birthday cards now decorate the top shelf of my bookcase
​

So what's to make of this middle of nowhere, obscure 57th birthday of insignificance of mine? If I am to pick up that jocular line I made on my 55th birthday (http://cdwong.blogspot.com/2012/10/memorables.html), that if turning 50 means "I know what on earth am I here for" (五十知天命), and turning 60 means "my wife's nagging becomes music to my ears" (六十耳順), then turning 55--or 57--means I am half way--or further on my way--to realizing that my purpose in life is to hear my wife's nagging as music to my ears. I am getting there, honey, just be patient.

Or to paraphrase someone, "What on earth is my birthday for?" I think it is just one explicit occasion for reconnecting, sharing, and being jolly, with friends and family, real and virtual, secular and spiritual, new and old, East and West, here and now.

And like one of my Facebook friends said on my wall: May we all be 天天安康喜樂--happy and healthy every day! 

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!