Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Monday, January 22, 2007
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Who I've Been Makes Who I Am
A quote I came across in Dachau (formerly a WWII concentration camp, now a memorial) went: "We are creating the background history for tomorrow". We do that both collectively as a whole, and also on an individual basis. This is why the study of history, both personal and collectively, is so important to understanding who we are and where we're going. I unfortunately have a pretty bad memory, especially on personal events (I think this is partly because I'm very forward-looking). One of my goals this year is to develop a discipline for recollection/reflection, even if this starts with asking myself "what did I do 2 days ago?" So take a moment and recall: what did you do two days ago??
Check out some of the "Year in Pictures" collections that recently came out. Some really encapsulate the significance of major global events of 2006, others are simply amazing captures. Enjoy and Happy New Year! ^_^
2006 Year in Pictures Collections
BBC
CBC(Editor's Choice, Viewer's Choice)
Globe and Mail
MSNBC
New York Times
Time Magazine
World Press Photo
Friday, December 29, 2006
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Bending Over the Abyss
Solitude: the fine art of intentionally doing nothing for extended periods of time. As a Christian discipline, its understood as a way to separate yourself from the busyness and noisiness of this world. It is to be quietly still in God's presence, and through this quiet stillness, to actually be open to God's voice and presence. The world is a busy place, and we love the noise and activity. Have we considered the effect of that noise and activity on our ability to hear from, and respond to God?
Monks in ages past would literally flee society: literal solitude. Solitude will look different for us in our modern age, but the glaring importance of it remains.
A book I've currently been reading struck me as a moving reminder as to why we must continually seek God in the stillness of our hearts:For inner silence depends on a continual seeking, a continual crying in the night, a repeated bending over the abyss. If we cling to a silence we think we have found forever, we stop seeking God and the silence goes dead within us. A silence in which He is no longer sought ceases to speak to us of Him. A silence from which He does not seem to be absent, dangerously threatens His continued presence. For He is found when He is sought and when He is no longer sought He escapes us. He is heard only when we hope to hear Him, and if, thinking our hope to be fulfilled, we cease to listen, He ceases to speak, His silence ceases to be vivid and becomes dead, even though we recharge it with the echo of our own emotional noise.
Thomas Merton
Thoughts in Solitude
The Christian faith is about a relationship, may we be ever attentive and ever vigilant.See my books on solitude
Friday, December 01, 2006
Blog Updates
I've made the move to Google's new Blogger Beta, so what you'll notice is the new labels. Each post I write can be assigned labels, which you can think of a way of tagging all my posts.
So for example my previous post was tagged: article, chinese and culture. By clicking on any of labels you can see all my other posts with similar tags.
I plan to be blogging more these days, for whatever reason the juice is simply flowing. I'm not really a fan of my current colors/layout however, expect a makeover coming soon! I'm an obsessive compulsive minimalistic. Flickr has a photo group of neat web designs, hoping to draw some inspiration from there. Cheers!
Monday, November 27, 2006
Where I begin
Its sort of like being beat up. Well sort of anyway. You feel a bit spacey, and there's some difficulty in focusing that can be accompanied by head throbbing. Not to mention the temperamental effects including impaired patience, mild unhappiness, loss of judgement, and just feeling plain drained. Its not a great state to be in. This is the world of sleep deprivation. Its a good reminder to know that sleep deprivation is used in torture. Suddenly the stupidity of self inflicted sleep deprivation grows in magnitude. There's something to be learned here...
Reflecting on this has reminded me of the clear depravity and brokenness of man. I constantly mess things up. I rarely know what's best for me, and even when I do, I have an uncanny history of choosing otherwise (sleep deprivation). This goes across the board though, don't forget that we're a species that lets 40,000 children starve every day, kills millions in wars, and causes countless broken relationships and families.
This is where life's biggest questions and conflicts begin: understanding there is something very wrong with us. This is why my faith (Christianity) is so mind-blowingly relevant to me. It meets me where I am: one who is hopelessly depraved and broken. Our attitude upon recognizing this should be one of humility. Its very easy for Christians (well anyone) to become proud and cocky. I think this is only possible when we forget our place. We are not in a place of strength of power, but of weakness and need. This is the most fundamental of truths in what it means to be a Christian. For it was in that place of weakness and need that God met us, it is where God saved us. Our humble recognition of that is where we need to begin, day after day.In the economy of mercy
I am a poor and begging man
In the currency of grace
Is where my song begins (Economy of Mercy - Switchfoot)
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Lost in Translation
Who am I? Over my travels I constantly met people of different nationalities/ethnicities. After learning each others' names the next question is always "where do you come from?" or essentially "what are you?" My reponse was complicated. If I said "I'm Canadian", they would sort of peer at me strangely, since they're really asking about type of Asian ethnicity I was. If I said "I'm Chinese", they would be puzzled by my fluent English and North American mannerisms. What I eventually found is that "Canadian Born Chinese" (CBC) really is the most accurate, albeit a bit longer (and thus harder for non-native English speakers to immediately understand). The problem is I'm not fully Canadian or Chinese. The Chinese have a slang for me, 竹星仔 'jook sing jai' (literally "bamboo star boy"). This term is used to say that just as bamboo appears in independent sections, I am such a section. Thus I do not connect with either the section that grew before (Chinese) or that which is growing after(my Canadian side). Rough.
The last couple years I have yearned to find my cultural identity, this post is about how this journey started.
The book The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan absolutely floored me. The book is a collage of the stories of 4 Chinese couples and their 4 CBC daughters living in the US. Jing-Mei Woo(a CBC), the main character, goes through her journey of finding cultural identity. Her mother passes away, and Jing-Mei discovers she has long lost sisters in China who have never met their mother. The other parents tell Jing-Mei she must tell her mother's story to these sisters: who the mother was, all that she had suffered, and all that she had done for these lost sisters. The daughter is at a loss for words, and stutters that she wouldn't know what to say... she is torn between feelings of shame, guilt and confusion. She always argued with her mom, always thought poorly of the Chinese way of doing things, and really never understood or appreciated the Chinese way of things. It was with a deep sadness that I empathized with Jing-Mei.
Since then I've been trying to get more exposed to my parent's culture. This involves getting back into learning Chinese, watching Chinese movies, reading books, but much more important than all this - simply having an open, receptive attitude.
Understanding one's culture identity is incredibly important for growing as a person. To know who one is, one must know where one came from. For almost all of us, that's learning about our parents' culture and background. Those by far are the greatest influence on our core values, perspectives, temperament, communication style, morals, etc etc I could go on.
As I grew in my friendships in Austria it was so enriching to encounter different cultures - the conversation that comes out of it causes us to learn to identify our own culture. So when I explained that I was 24 but still lived a home (one of the few amongst our group) I had to think about why that is, and why in CBC culture this was actually almost always the case.
There have been ups and downs in this journey. Culture is a tricky, and quite vague really. I'm reminded when my whole family sits around the dinner table (myself, 2 older CBC sisters, dad born in India, moved to Hong Kong as a teenager, and mom born near Canton and moved to HK in early twenties). We're all different. We're all really really unique ("really" used for emphasis, really you can only be unique or not - really). Culture is a convenient generalization, but really we all exist on a cultural spectrum, with varying similarity and variance.
So this is where I am - learning about who I am, and where that comes from. God has made us with so much cultural variety. And our culture is something we're all proud of, and the thought of losing culture seems both sad and shameful. This isn't the case though - our culture simply changes. Yes its true my Chinese culture is definitely watered down, and likely my children (well, pending children) will retain even less traditional Chinese culture. There will be something in its place, something different - but also something worth treasuring and being proud about.
And if I persevere, perhaps I will not find myself as flustered as Jing-Mei. Instead I will be proud to tell of the culture from which I come from. If I also persevere as a student of culture, hopefully I will be able to fairly evaluate different cultures, and take from the good, and keep from the bad. As a Christian this will also mean what God's culture is like, what are His values and perspectives.
What about you? Tell me about your culture.
My Books tagged with 'Chinese'
My Links tagged with 'Chinese'
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