Dear world,
Today I’m the girl crouching at the cliff edge, wrapped in a coat and watching the waves. The day is grey, the sea is grey and it seems that all colour has leached out of the world. There are questions unanswered and sometimes it seems as though laughter is some a faraway memory, a golden echo from an age long past.
Oh, I’m blue today so hold my hand, world, and tell me things will be better tomorrow. Send me a rainbow, a flower, a sparrow in the midst of grey, send me a little wonder so I’ll remember that life is good and full of joy.
Remind me that peace comes rarely and that – despite the present weariness – this really is a time of peace. Remind me that I have friends who love me, who're there. Most of all remind me of the Shepherd who guards me and guides me still.
Dear World. Remind me that when night's candles are burnt out and the larks sing, I will wake to a new day and there will be time to sit by a roaring fire and rest. There is no fatal journey to Mantua, no poisoned chalice, no dagger awaits. Those stories are past are past and this is a new one, a new chapter.
Mehldau today - he's darkly exultant in this one - but then I'm in a dark place for the moment so here it is.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Saturday, October 3, 2009
III - 秋
中秋 is my one of favourite festival of all chinese festivals.
A long time ago, my family would gather at my Ah gong's house every中秋. So much noise, merriment and childhood fun was had running around his frontyard, lantern in hand, facsinated yet afraid of the candles and nervously writing glow letters with fizzing sparklers while the "grown up people" sat and drank tea.
My grandfather died the year I turned 18 and the celebrations stopped then but every year I look up at the fat smiling moon and take a minute to remember him and indulge in nostalgia for times past.
Autumn is a time for harvest, for gathering the fruit of what we've sown and for watching the world flame with colour - orange, sienna, gold, red, vermilion against grapy sunsets of dusky purple-red clouds. It's a time like no other, to celebrate colour and life, a time to enjoy the fruit of summer's labour.
But also a time for taking stock: looking at the seasons past,weighing to see if it has been time well spent, if the work done in summer was good, was enough.
A good time then,to remind myself of the importance of discipline and work. The fruits of autumn may only be gathered by those diligent in the Spring and Summer and so the musical and dance lessons and practice times must be strictly kept, the studies must must get done and in general, one's nose must be kept to the grindstone.
A poem by Su Shi below, reminding us of the preciousness of this moment where life is good and the moonlight floods the sleeping world.
Then Keats on the ripe summer spilling into a bountiful, rich autumn - autumn in cahoots with the gentle old sun to bring abundance into the world.
Finally, my favourite version of this jazz standard so far - listened to 5 of 'em before posting up this one. Go youtube the Nat King Cole, Eva Cassidy and Keith Jarrett ones too but Stan Getz stole my heart with his melancholic unadorned walk through "Autumn Leaves". Richness without fanfare,simplicity with shaded emotion. Lovely.
***
***
"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells."
- John Keats, To Autumn
***
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
II - Summer
"Summer lovin' having a blast...."
Apples, stone fruit, roses in full bloom and the heat haze over lavender fields. Last summer, I took myself off to a farm north of Melbourne and did nothing but sit in the sun and think. Summer's a time for dreamin', spinning fancies, strumming the guitar, eating out of doors and oh, summer is a time like no other, for love.
I wanted to start a post this week like this:
"Dear World,
I love you today.I'm well again and in love with life, with reading, with my books and my friends and my work... and with my new earphones! Listening to Norah, Krall, Jarrett and Evans on the train is finally possible. Thank you for the hymns that rise, circling through the consciousness to wing my heart up up and up. "
I miss writing letters - pressing pen to paper, making loops and swirls and embellishing all my 'g's and 'y's and any letter with joyous little serifs. So friends, if you get a curly little epistle or card from me, don't be surprised; life is good, God is good and so hugs and kisses - epistolary or otherwise - to all are due.
Mary Oliver poem on the mysteries of nature,the turning of the seasons. Who can hear the grass grow, or the clouds gather, thickly bringing rain, snow, hail or scatter to unveil skies azure, indigo, cerulean pure? Only the infinite He, in whom we live and move and have our being - who makes the sap rise and has set all things in their place.
Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith
Every summer
I listen and look
under the sun’s brass and even
into the moonlight, but I can’t hear
anything, I can’t see anything –
not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,
nor the leaves
deepening their damp pleats,
nor the tassels making,
nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
And still,
every day,
the leafy fields
grow taller and thicker –
green gowns lofting up in the night,
showered with silk.
And so, every summer,
I fail as a witness, seeing nothing –
I am deaf too
to the tick of the leaves,
the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet –
all of it
happening
beyond any seeable proof, or hearable hum.
And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees,
and the mystery hidden in the dirt
swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?
One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn’s beautiful body
is sure to be there.
- Mary Oliver
The classic summer song :) Oh Travolta's hair! and those tight tight unbreathable jeans! Circulation is important, people!
Sunday, September 27, 2009
There were no exceptions
Faith for the long haul, that endures the test of time, of the questioning pluralistic secular world, faith that makes sense of that world. The test, as always, is in the living.
Full article here:
A thoughtful Asian-American student came up to me on Saturday night, wanting to talk further about the Smashing Pumpkins. We had been talking through the evening about my observation that those who continue on in deepening faith are people who have the spiritual skills and theological tools to engage the brokenness of the world — artistically, politically, economically, sociologically and on and on — in the name of Christ.
Earlier I had told a story about going to one of the Pumpkins' "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" concerts with my teenage sons, and wondering about some of what I had seen and heard. From the 15,000 person "YES!!" to the lyrics in the song "Zero" — "God is empty just like me.... I'm in love with my sadness" — to another song with the lyrics "... I'm still just a rat in a cage," we pondered what words like that mean in a culture like ours.
On the one hand, what is being said that we ought to listen to, really trying to understand the dreams and disappointments of the artists and of the culture they represent? On the other, what is foolishness and ought to be called what it is? As we sat in a quiet place he told me that even with all that he believed about life and the world as a Christian, there were times when he found himself singing out, with all his heart, "... I'm still just a rat in a cage." And he wondered what to make of it, viz. what was it about those words that rang true to his experience of life and learning?
Like so many I have met in universities and colleges all over America, he found himself wondering whether the Christian faith can truly speak to all areas and arenas of human life, from personal hopes to public dreams. In words I have heard so often: when push comes to shove, is it really true? Can the Christian worldview truly address the sadness I have experienced and the brokenness I meet as I try to live out what I believe in the world? Or is the fallenness I see and hear all around, in myself and in everyone I encounter, in the end just too much, too complex, too hard?
If we could account for this story by blaming it on the secularizing influences of Yale, or on the theological and psychological deficiencies of one student, then we could all breathe easier. We might imagine ourselves off-the-proverbial-hook. But that is not possible. I have heard this story so many times in so many settings from so many students — in both secular-spirited universities and Christ-centered colleges — that I have come to believe it is the central challenge facing serious Christian students today.
On the question at hand we can listen to those who have made their way through their university years and who still believe that the gospel of the kingdom is real and true and right — decades after their own experience as students. The last half of the book, The Fabric of Faithfulness, is a report on what I found as I listened to men and woman from all over the U.S. and the world who, 25 years later, were still pursuing a coherent faith. Those who, in the language of the Yale student who invited me to speak, had "sustained spiritual depth on into the rest of life." I asked them a host of questions centered upon the relationship between their present commitments and their experiences as students two or three decades earlier.
What did I learn? That those who keep on keeping on, growing in love with God and his world, are people marked by three habits of heart:
* they developed a worldview that could make sense of life, facing the challenge of truth and coherence in an increasingly secular and pluralist society;
* they pursued a relationship with a teacher whose life incarnated the worldview that they were learning to embrace; and
* they committed themselves to others who had chosen to live their lives embedded in that same worldview, journeying together in truth, after the vision of a coherent and meaningful life.
There were no exceptions.
The novelist Walker Percy writes of the person who "gets all As and flunks life." It is a warning lurking around the corner of everyone's life.
For you who are serious about God and the worldview that grows out of the word of God, listen and learn to the saints who have gone before you. And above all, make sure that your every experience as a student — every class you take, every book you read, every friend you make — serves to deepen your love for what God loves. That is what the college years are really all about.
***
"For when there is a question as to whether a man is good, one does not ask what he believes, or what he hopes, but what he loves."
--Saint Augustine
***
Questions: Where have you laid up your treasure? Read this weekend (in a story book, no less!) that preparation for the life spent in eternity must begin in the here and now - sobering thought, pulls one back from heedless frivolity and reckless expenditure of time and resources.
***
The BMG took me to SKS bookstore last week and I went ever so slightly mad. Banning myself from buying any more books for about a month (at least!) so that the book queue can be reduced, somewhat. The last two weeks have been awful for my reading life, constant migraines and sleep disturbances having plagued me day and night. This last weekend was spent quietly - mainly resting, not even reading/listening to sermons - just resting quietly so that my brain chemistry will right itself again. The meds are helping, kicking in at long last and it's so good to feel well and whole again!
***
Book queue:
Saint Augustine's Confessions and The City of God are on the queue. So is Milton's Paradise Lost. Oh dear. Methinks that all book buying shall cease until several of the monstrously large reads are down.
Halfway through Kerouac's On the Road. What a ride! Utter disregard for literary conventions (mostly forgetting the existence of the humble comma and semi colon), bebop, jazz, sex, drugs, hitchhiking, men named Dean who sleep with every woman in sight, crisscrossing the US of A, grapepicking, exhausting just to read it.
Full article here:
A thoughtful Asian-American student came up to me on Saturday night, wanting to talk further about the Smashing Pumpkins. We had been talking through the evening about my observation that those who continue on in deepening faith are people who have the spiritual skills and theological tools to engage the brokenness of the world — artistically, politically, economically, sociologically and on and on — in the name of Christ.
Earlier I had told a story about going to one of the Pumpkins' "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" concerts with my teenage sons, and wondering about some of what I had seen and heard. From the 15,000 person "YES!!" to the lyrics in the song "Zero" — "God is empty just like me.... I'm in love with my sadness" — to another song with the lyrics "... I'm still just a rat in a cage," we pondered what words like that mean in a culture like ours.
On the one hand, what is being said that we ought to listen to, really trying to understand the dreams and disappointments of the artists and of the culture they represent? On the other, what is foolishness and ought to be called what it is? As we sat in a quiet place he told me that even with all that he believed about life and the world as a Christian, there were times when he found himself singing out, with all his heart, "... I'm still just a rat in a cage." And he wondered what to make of it, viz. what was it about those words that rang true to his experience of life and learning?
Like so many I have met in universities and colleges all over America, he found himself wondering whether the Christian faith can truly speak to all areas and arenas of human life, from personal hopes to public dreams. In words I have heard so often: when push comes to shove, is it really true? Can the Christian worldview truly address the sadness I have experienced and the brokenness I meet as I try to live out what I believe in the world? Or is the fallenness I see and hear all around, in myself and in everyone I encounter, in the end just too much, too complex, too hard?
If we could account for this story by blaming it on the secularizing influences of Yale, or on the theological and psychological deficiencies of one student, then we could all breathe easier. We might imagine ourselves off-the-proverbial-hook. But that is not possible. I have heard this story so many times in so many settings from so many students — in both secular-spirited universities and Christ-centered colleges — that I have come to believe it is the central challenge facing serious Christian students today.
On the question at hand we can listen to those who have made their way through their university years and who still believe that the gospel of the kingdom is real and true and right — decades after their own experience as students. The last half of the book, The Fabric of Faithfulness, is a report on what I found as I listened to men and woman from all over the U.S. and the world who, 25 years later, were still pursuing a coherent faith. Those who, in the language of the Yale student who invited me to speak, had "sustained spiritual depth on into the rest of life." I asked them a host of questions centered upon the relationship between their present commitments and their experiences as students two or three decades earlier.
What did I learn? That those who keep on keeping on, growing in love with God and his world, are people marked by three habits of heart:
* they developed a worldview that could make sense of life, facing the challenge of truth and coherence in an increasingly secular and pluralist society;
* they pursued a relationship with a teacher whose life incarnated the worldview that they were learning to embrace; and
* they committed themselves to others who had chosen to live their lives embedded in that same worldview, journeying together in truth, after the vision of a coherent and meaningful life.
There were no exceptions.
The novelist Walker Percy writes of the person who "gets all As and flunks life." It is a warning lurking around the corner of everyone's life.
For you who are serious about God and the worldview that grows out of the word of God, listen and learn to the saints who have gone before you. And above all, make sure that your every experience as a student — every class you take, every book you read, every friend you make — serves to deepen your love for what God loves. That is what the college years are really all about.
***
"For when there is a question as to whether a man is good, one does not ask what he believes, or what he hopes, but what he loves."
--Saint Augustine
***
Questions: Where have you laid up your treasure? Read this weekend (in a story book, no less!) that preparation for the life spent in eternity must begin in the here and now - sobering thought, pulls one back from heedless frivolity and reckless expenditure of time and resources.
***
The BMG took me to SKS bookstore last week and I went ever so slightly mad. Banning myself from buying any more books for about a month (at least!) so that the book queue can be reduced, somewhat. The last two weeks have been awful for my reading life, constant migraines and sleep disturbances having plagued me day and night. This last weekend was spent quietly - mainly resting, not even reading/listening to sermons - just resting quietly so that my brain chemistry will right itself again. The meds are helping, kicking in at long last and it's so good to feel well and whole again!
***
Book queue:
Saint Augustine's Confessions and The City of God are on the queue. So is Milton's Paradise Lost. Oh dear. Methinks that all book buying shall cease until several of the monstrously large reads are down.
Halfway through Kerouac's On the Road. What a ride! Utter disregard for literary conventions (mostly forgetting the existence of the humble comma and semi colon), bebop, jazz, sex, drugs, hitchhiking, men named Dean who sleep with every woman in sight, crisscrossing the US of A, grapepicking, exhausting just to read it.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
I - Spring
Spring, as Neruda says, arrives in the flower and the water and if Spring speaks of tender new beginnings, a new love, a fresh start then the magic is that it will always be, can always be Spring.
Wordsworth has daffodils and Yeats, his bee loud glade but I have Spring in Melbourne: the Tesselaar tulips, shy green leaves peeking at me from the trees outside the university gym, skeins of geese flying south away from the cold and snows of the north, carrying the warmth of the northern summer with them south south to the land of Oz.
Hopkins brings one round to contemplate - amidst the beauty - through the glass darkly, the echoes of Eden in the freshness and beauty of the season. The best promise - that we now see in part and shall one day see, the whole.
Jarrett playing Shenandoah after his long illness - how I love this track - first heard it after recovering from the flu and have gone back to it now that I'm recovering (thank God thank God) from the migraines that have plagued me, made lucid lines of thought difficult and reading impossible for nearly two weeks.
To all my friends: here's to new beginnings, as full of promise and joy as the unfurling green leaves, jade green, seafoam green, translucent in the sun.
***
NOTHING is so beautiful as spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.
-- Gerard Manley Hopkins
***
***
Psalm 23
The LORD is my shepherd;
I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: for thou art with me;
thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:
thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Illustrator - Myke Amend
So I meant to post up some pretty light filled pictures - the brother's wedding is this weekend after all - but got utterly blown away by this site. I think it's been much too long since I sat down and consumed my fill of graphic novels.
Myke Amend is an illustrator and painter and is very very good at putting a surreal otherworldly spin on art. Link is here and pictures below. I like the fantasy and flying ship ones but I'm not such a fan of the goth illustrations; I've never been all that fond of gothic literature and by extension, gothic art. Surprising for someone who's a devout fan of Sandman but I think Sandman is really as far as I'll go. I would really rather read about spaceships than about vampires or any other overdone gothic novel.
Plus I think one reason I like the spin-off Death series is precisely because it makes fun of the goth culture.
Totally unsurprising that he lists Jules Verne, H.P. Lovecraft,Mary Shelley and Neil Gaiman as influences - I blurted out "So Jules Verne!" the second I clapped eyes on his illustrations.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Rhinocerous
W: Yeah I still can't tell the difference between a rhino and a hippo!
A: Huh?! But they're totally different!
W: yeah I know but and when I see a photo of one, I get it. But then I'll see the other and completely forget which one already!! How?
A: Uh, don't you teach primary school? What if you have to tell the kids about rhinos and hippos?
W: I think as long as I can teach rhino in one class and hippo in the other... plus there are pictures with labels!!
A: ....
***
The rhino is a homely beast,
For human eyes he's not a feast.
But you and I will never know
Why nature chose to make him so.
Farewell, farewell, you old rhinocerous,
I'll stare at something less prepoceros!
Ogden Nash
***
W is a darling and one of the strongest persons I know. She teaches school and still does not know the difference between a rhino and a hippo. But really, in a world where crazier things happen - it's not that preposterous or important :)
A: Huh?! But they're totally different!
W: yeah I know but and when I see a photo of one, I get it. But then I'll see the other and completely forget which one already!! How?
A: Uh, don't you teach primary school? What if you have to tell the kids about rhinos and hippos?
W: I think as long as I can teach rhino in one class and hippo in the other... plus there are pictures with labels!!
A: ....
***
The rhino is a homely beast,
For human eyes he's not a feast.
But you and I will never know
Why nature chose to make him so.
Farewell, farewell, you old rhinocerous,
I'll stare at something less prepoceros!
Ogden Nash
***
W is a darling and one of the strongest persons I know. She teaches school and still does not know the difference between a rhino and a hippo. But really, in a world where crazier things happen - it's not that preposterous or important :)
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