Your feeling eyes, my falling life

I fell for you -
because your eyes were just a little bit sad
when you smiled
it seemed like your eyes knew
something your mouth wasn't letting on.

And that glint when you were thinking
some private joke I thought you'd share
with me later,
after everyone else had left.
Those eyes seemed like the only ones
which could look into mine
and see what was going on inside,
not for what was wrong or what was right,
but with humour and empathy's ready light.

I'd feel for the promise
the hint of sensitivity
of (im)maturity
of subtlety
of the something more.

Of the one
I'd never found
before.

I felt like mine could see - for a moment(!)
that spark of an internal landscape
that painted new horizons in my own
with the light of your eyes.

And swiftly, I was felled.

Bliss beneath the Moon

Four eyes gleam with the same vision -
no spectacles are these -
two are mine, two are yours.

Common vision begets common thought
common thought begets common voice -
incoherent and unintelligble to the others -
running in subtext, we have our own language.
Dancing through daydreams, we share our musings
without regard for propriety or linearity of thought -
we can leap through quantums, holding hands and smiling.

We relive memories
we build dreams
we share laughter
we imagine the future
we commiserate the present.

Separated by continents - by time - it matters not, when

we are tied by the constant sameness of who we are together
even if our thoughts touch only for a brief moment -
before the tides of life pull us onwards.

Inexorably we grow up -
but nothing, it seems,
can make us grow apart.

Pins and needles

[SPOILER ALERT]

I watched an episode (4) of House, M.D.: Season Five today in which an adopted Chinese girl sets out in search of her birth parents, and ends up gravely ill.

In the end, it is discovered that her parents placed pins into her brain in an attempted murder, because China had a one-child policy, and the parents wanted a boy.

When her adoptive parents hear the diagnosis, they request that she not be told that her parents attempted to kill her because they didn't want her. They understand her to be emotionally fragile and fear that she may react badly, especially as she had history of alcoholism and smoking. However, the doctor explains that the pins pierce through specific areas of her brain, including her addiction centre (I'm guessing the VTA / some part of her mesolimbic system).

"She may not be as fragile as you think," the doctor says.

"We know our daughter," they respond.

He says, "It's not her fault, she's not who you think she is."

[/SPOILER ALERT]

How much of how we behave is really comprehensible to the people around us? It's so easy to look at someone who's a drug addict, or who's got problems stealing, or with violence, and to say, "I'm not like that. How can they go about ruining their life like that..." It's so easy to judge others, and delineate them as different from ourselves.

But do we really understand exactly what's going on in their lives, in their minds? How much of what they think and do is really of their own volition? If you were placed in that situation, with that brain chemistry, can you say with conviction that you would choose to not be a druggie?

In fact, when you stop and thinking about it, how much of what we think is in our conscious control? That girl had physical, metal pins in her head that affected her and caused her to behave differently than what is biologically considered to be normal. But we have pins too. Maybe they don't seem to be there in a literal sense, but our genes code for our neurocircuitry, and much of our behaviour is learnt and imprinted on us by our environments. Although it may be slippery slope to say that free will does not exist, perhaps it is a less evenly free playing field than we imagine it to be for the other person.

It seems strange to think it, but I think what Sara Crewe, a privileged heiress, says about Becky, a poor servant girl in the same boarding school, about sums it up:

"Why," she said, "we are just the same--I am only a little girl like you. It's just an accident that I am not you, and you are not me!"

- A Little Princess, Chapter 5, Frances Hodgson Burnett

It is a scary thought, perhaps. Especially when we pause to consider that we are not so very different from the people we disdain or dislike, as much as we would like to believe it. In reality, there is perhaps little besides God's grace, or "accident", that separates one person's personality or fortune from another.

But ultimately, I think these thoughts point us in quite a refreshing direction in attempting to relate to other people: understanding, respect and love. Even of the less than loveable.

Caught dancing en arabesque, first and last

Today I was talking with a friend and it got me revisiting Carla Bruni, who IMHO, has the sexiest voice ever, when she sings in French (don't even get me started on L'excessive). I've been almost reluctant to listen to her English songs for fear of ruining her impossibly sexy appeal. But I had iTunes on shuffle, and realised that the song titles, and the lyrics were oddly familiar...

Googling worked wonders to discover that...she was singing some of my favourite poets! Serendipity ftw!

At Last the Secret is Out

W.H. Auden

At last the secret is out, as it always must come in the end,
the delicius story is ripe to tell to the intimate friend;
over the tea-cups and into the square the tongues has its desire;
still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.

Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links,
behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks,
under the look of fatigue, the attack of migraine and the sigh
there is always another story, there is more than meets the eye.

For the clear voice suddently singing, high up in the convent wall,
the scent of the elder bushes, the sporting prints in the hall,
the croquet matches in summer, the handshake, the cough, the kiss,
there is always a wicked secret, a private reason for this.

Those Dancing Days Are Gone

W.B. Yeats

Come, let me sing into your ear;
Those dancing days are gone,
All that silk and satin gear;
Crouch upon a stone,
Wrapping that foul body up
In as foul a rag:
I carry the sun in a golden cup.
The moon in a silver bag.

Curse as you may I sing it through;
What matter if the knave
That the most could pleasure you,
The children that he gave,
Are somewhere sleeping like a top
Under a marble flag?
I carry the sun in a golden cup.
The moon in a silver bag.

I thought it out this very day.
Noon upon the clock,
A man may put pretence away
Who leans upon a stick,
May sing, and sing until he drop,
Whether to maid or hag:
I carry the sun in a golden cup,
The moon in a silver bag.

Vocal displacement

Old man in young boy.


Black woman in white woman.

  

Just another blog post

It's been so long since I wrote one of those update-people-about-your-life kind of posts that I thought I would.

So anyways, I guess if you haven't talked to me in a long time, and want to know what's going on in the life of this nose on an ever-sideways-enlarging-stick...

1. I just enrolled in my first-ever extra-faculty course, called Reading Performance. Performance studies is an exciting field of study which explores mind-bending issues like 'Is all the world really a stage?' and 'What isn't a performance?' 
2. I can now dance again!
3. But most life-changing of all (yes, even more so than my ability to dance again), my church organised a week-long camp called Mid-Year Conference.

They do this every year, but this year, since I had no excuse for not going, I ended up going. Despite my initially blasé attitude, it turned out to be meaningful for me as it helped me to sort out various life struggles and drastically change my attitudes towards life and relationships.

The first one was the issue of managing time and talents. It's quite a big question in my mind, as I always wonder if I'm making the best use of what I have, especially given the fact that I waste a lot of time. It's also an issue in the sense that for me, blind ambition was not exactly discouraged, although I was always told to keep a grip on reality. The more I go through life and think about things though, the more an existentialist crisis seems to grip me - the Ecclesiastic 'everything is meaningless' sort of mentality.

However, one of the electives I attended in the camp, about spiritual gifts, radically changed my mindset. As opposed to mystical gifts, what one might expect, the speaker emphasized that everything in our lives, from our state of marriage, to the people in our lives, to our administrative abilities - all is a gift from God. As such, we should use these gifts to glorify Him and to edify, or build up, the church, which is really just a term for the fellowship that can be shared in Christ. The speaker drove the point home for me by giving the example of someone who spends all his time honing his ability, and asked us rhetorically if it was really the best use of his time.

As someone who struggles with people interaction at times, I tend to prefer to escape into some task - be it reading a book, or watching a movie, or dancing, rather than spending time meaningfully with others. Yet what he said made sense. I am beginning to see that there are opportunities for me to be using my life to build up the church. Most of the time, all that's really required from me is time, and a willingness, rather than any special ability.

The second issue is that of relating to boys. Being an only child, and then spending most of my pubescent life in a girls' school, I had no significant interaction with the male gender until junior college (two years pre-university education). Then, I was suddenly thrown into the deep end, as I happened to land myself in a boys' school.

As a result, I decided that I could treat guys exactly in the way I treated girls. Chat late into the night, invite each other to do stuff together, and joke around. I always figured as long as I didn't lead a guy on physically, or bat my eyelashes, I could be there for my guy friends the same way I could for my girl ones.

But over the last few years, I was grappling with the fact that the relational stance I was taking was not one that always agreed with society's notions of propriety. While I had always scoffed at gaining the good opinion's of others (at least outwardly), the fact that my church seemed to take a very traditional view of gender roles, and my experiences interacting with members of its congregation, made me suspect that I could be in the wrong.

MYC got me thinking about it again in the context of fulfilling my place or role in the church - part of that role is being a woman. Reading a couple of good books also gave me some perspective. One of them helped me to see that a component of my desire to be so buddy-buddy with guys was a type of self-centered, approval-seeking behaviour - wanting to show that this girls'-school girl could be accepted by boys too.

The other book was Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ's Control, by Elisabeth Elliot. It's a very readable book that I'd highly recommend. Basically, it's a narrative of the love story between Elisabeth and Jim Elliot, a missionary. But in the telling of it, she stops to discuss her views on various important issues in boy-girl relationships, and her clarity and godly perspective really won me over.

Mostly though, her humanity - her vulnerabilities, her doubts, her waverings - were what made the book a good one for me. I could tell that although she was a strong, godly woman, she was just like me in the humanity of her struggles, and that made me sympathetic, and more ready to accept her point of view.

It's quite hard to pinpoint exactly what she says that really changed my mind, but I think a key questions she asks is:

Is it fitting? Is it in accord with the pattern in my life that I'd like to follow? Does it harmonize with my best understanding of God's plan? What is it that brings God's men and God's women together with delicacy and grace? Do I want to walk, here as in all the areas of my life, by faith, or will I take things into my own hands?

After talking to my bible study leader about the matter, I realised that a married person's point of view is a definite vantage point in some ways. Although I cannot see myself as having the (really rather doubtful) gift of marriage, I can see how my relationships may discomfit my friends' future spouses, just as how my mother's male best friend made my own dad a bit jealous. Seen in that light, it does seem to be a kind of consideration to keep a greater distance.

Despite this though, putting thought into action remains a challenge. But as a Christian, knowing that the Holy Spirit is dwelling in me, encourages me to put to death the flesh, and fix myself on 'whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things' (Philippians 4:8).

On coping with sa-stammering

The other day a proz- s- saic^
friend mused:
I wish I could write music or poetry.
I didn't know what to say because
I'm always lost for words -
groping for them
in the greyish p- m- m-uddle
from which the right word can never be extricated
by my clumsy tongue

(instead some subpar subs-
titute stutters its way through my pharynx
unsuccessfully conveying
the glistening clarity I see/think/feel
in my head

mixing orders of
words up by the time they translate to

spoke- o- on tongue)

How do you convey the simultaneity of graphic thought
ad verbatim?
The words that delineate in a mental landscape
transmute not to linear argument.

Which is why I so admire Rhet-t-
-oric which seems to work
with the smooth efficacy of a Butler
redeeming you to his point of view.

While my words are some kind of Scarlett
lett-er -lett-ing on my stupidity instead.

Oh my silly friend
the silence of my prosaic grin
is saying only this:

If I could say in it prose,
I would not need prosody.

^Prozac is an antidepressant drug that was once widely prescribed for depression, particularly in the USA. It can also be used for the treatment of OCD, panic disorder, bulimia and PMS. In certain rare cases, it is also used for ADHD, and Asperger's.

Appearances

We're told that appearances don't matter. We shouldn't be fussed about them - that's vanity.

The thing is, all we can see of other people is their appearance. Even when you say you know someone really well, all you can really say is that you've seen their various appearances over either a long period of time or in varied circumstances, such that it gives the semblance of knowing them well.

We don't, and we can't present anything less than an appearance, to well, anyone.

Except perhaps God.

More than words

Research has suggested that between 60 and 70 percent of all meaning is derived from nonverbal behavior.

- Engleberg, Isa N., p133, 2006

Oh won't you sink with me
into the possibility
of this.

Fall into magnetic gravity
and let its nascent beauty
be defined.

Let's go slow and luxuriate
in this moment, moments, moments(!)
more -- before they evanesce.

Let's go slow as we explore
how I can express
the thousand ways you warm my soul
in the eloquence of wordlessness.

I want my l-

"I want my lung. Dr Altman, I'm big. Too big. I don't fit in airplane seats and as Jeff is always telling me, my feelings don't always fit the situation. If my food is overcooked at a restaurant, I get enraged. I want to kill the waiter. But I don't. ...I spend my days making myself smaller, more acceptable. And that's okay, because at night, when I go onstage, I get to experience the world the way I feel it. Indescribable rage, and unbearable sadness, and huge passion. At night, on stage, I get to kill the waiter and dance on his grave . And if I can’t do that, if all I have is left is a life of making myself smaller, then I don’t want to live. I don’t."

- Singer with lung mesothelioma, Grey's Anatomy Season 6, Ep 12

Is it wrong that I can identify with that sentiment? A little too much.

A little bit of bliss, a little bit of pain

From the movie Whip It, which, along with Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, Juno and 500 Days of Summer, represents a growing genre of Indie-type movie which I am just beginning to get acquainted with, and just beginning to love.

Tea(escapes

Will you take my hand and step in

to the past with me through

an open door

an open window

into sepia-ed tones (warm, worn hardwood

of faded stars gone by

into another land

into another time where

the whole world seems to fade away...

except you and me and yesterday -

Lets sip on cups of tea and swirl

the cinnamon crème-d foam

and watch it luxuriate

into perfect globs of effervescent

conversational catalysts

and let the warmth slide into us (undiminished.

although it's chilly out, we are

in oblivion) Music interjects

in scratchy tones

in soothing, dulcet croons -

the familiarity of it all permeating,

reminiscing, pondering,

communicating.

Will you sit and while away

the time with me As Time Goes

By, relieving

moments that tide you over, refreshing

you for another time (which we forget for now, and

put aside for then) -

in a fold in time's fabric), we

shall share a laugh again

while the Monroes and Hepburns and Presleys

look on benevolently, while you

warm the cockles of my heart. : )

Pet peeve

I'm often stuck for an answer when asked about my pet peeves, but I think I've recently got one: I hate reading medical journals that are filled with platitudes, non-specific guidelines and cliches. Things like ''everything is poison, there is poison in everything. Only the dose makes a thing not a poison. (Paracelsus)", or "the only certainty is that there is uncertainty", should be reserved for public addresses, philosophical musings or random bloggings where the only responsibility to the audience is to guarantee a wasted time.

If you have to use one, please use sparingly. Just as too much salt causes high blood pressure, too many platitudes aren't doing any wonders for my amygdala.

As a scientist, researcher or medical practitioner, we read journal articles to glean specific information that is applicable to our research or case study. We don't need to know your personal beliefs when we are reviewing pages and pages of literature. Generalisations and conceptual abstracts can be thought-provoking and paradigm-shifting and what-have-you, but in the right context, please.

Don't even get me started on disease aetiology. If I have to reading something along the lines of 'complex interaction of multiple factors', or 'genetic and environmental interplay' one more time...It's either that or it's idiopathic. Yes, we are a load of idiots who don't know what's really going on.

The worst part of it is, as much as we students (or at least, I) complain, I realise that us students do it too. Because we see teachers doing it, we assume it is what they are looking out for (an assumption which is not totally erroneous), and model after it.

I think the one thing I have retained from this semester is that Bob Marley died of acral melanoma. A useful fact for any medical exam - it's why I always ace them. (For the Sheldons (Big Bang Theory) who read this blog, I am now holding a 'This is sarcasm' sign)

“You may not be her first, her last, or her only. She loved before she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matters? She’s not perfect - you aren’t either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can. She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break - her heart. So don’t hurt her, don’t change her, don’t analyze and don’t expect more than she can give. Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she’s not there.”

- allegedly by Bob Marley

\Pineapple skies and passionfruit/

I still have those stacks of polaroids in

that old shoebox under the stairs -
                                                   rom back then with nothing to do but

\aughing in sundresses
 running around barefoot
  while the smell of lush grass
   ascends and intermingles with
  sun-dried laundry,
 creating a world where
  everything could be involved
   in great games of make-believe
       and hide and seek could be played
   in the castles we built transcending
 the stratosphere and
glistening with promise, refreshing
mouths melting ice cream
    as tongues meet softness and
   in softness,
  warmth and coolness combine
 unique and sweet
passionfruit tang

                          -ented now,
dusty and faded, dimming gradually sur-
                                                                passed by everything to do but

/-hrow them out

Things I have learnt this holidays

1. A blow dryer is the most awesome invention ever. Seriously. I know this is not the most godly thing to learn at a church camp, but my hair came out manageable and glossy for the first. Time. Ever.
2. Whisterpoop is a swift sharp blow to the side of the head.
3. Fluther is more than two jellyfish.
4. Balderdash is hilarious(!)
5. Baking is therapeutic (perhaps there's hope for me yet as a domestic. Hm. Good joke).
6. Cooking is best done by the recipe.
7. Last, but not least...Your love is amazing. =)

The little pickle jar, it

The little pickle jar, it stood

quite far back on the shelf,

receding from your line of view.

The stock on top is slow to clear,

when middle shelves are not as dear

and easier to get at

from the aisle-way here.

So by the time a hand reached up

and swiped it off the shelf,

the pickles were a little past

the sell-by date,

and not worth the price per weight -

the consumer put it back instead.

The little pickle jar, it had hoped

that that would be the journey home.

It never knew it had gone past

the time when you could use it last.

Instead it was left on its own,

uncertainty its only company.

Where will it go? Will it be thrown?

You may not care, you'll never know -

if it poisons someone else

that's their loss to make:

we only learn from past mistakes.

The little pickle jar is after all

nothing more than condiment

gone uselessly awry.

Life's sine qua non

Not infrequently, I come across a spark of something almost magical. Call it a flash of numinosity, or a sparkle of illumination, or even perhaps sheer aesthetic - it comes in the hearing of a pure voice, or sighting of a beautiful metatarsal arch. It comes in gaining insight into the mind of a genius, or observing the fluid grace with which certain people seem to prepossess.

All this sounds like a very sensorial experience, but I do know that when it happens to me, I cannot pinpoint exactly what senses or cognition I am using to apprehend the situation. What I do know though, is that it speaks to my soul in some inexpressible way. It makes me feel that there must be such a thing as beauty and truth in the world to be able to experience something like this. To feel so relaxed by the stimulation, to feel so excited by the sense of coherence and harmony that these experiences illicit. A thrill, I suppose, that is something akin to love.

Today I experienced such a moment listening to a lecture. The lecturer, a retired professor of anatomy and histology, left me feeling as though I didn't want him to stop. I just wanted to keep listening to him impart knowledge in his perfectly-formed, andante sentences. I was left with the desire to see more of the elegant way he saw biology, for he possessed the very clarity and alacrity I first felt when I started to fall in love with the amazing interconnectedness (and so simplicity) of Nature's way.

I've felt so strongly this way a few times before - famous people like Audrey Hepburn, Sylvie Guillem, Uliana Lopatkina, Beethoven, Richard Feynman, Anthony Grayling come to mind. But even day-to-day people have their sparkle, their je ne sais quoi that I find gives me hope of heaven.

Oh to be...

...listening to good friends playing good music, live

...a dancer in class with a good teacher and pianist

...performing on stage

...able to run

...with someone I can be absolutely comfortable with

...singing and playing the piano

These little comforts I used to take, I can't seem to find.

Green autumn bides no spring

green grapes with green tea

a year ago yesterday -

tasting sour-sweet.

fuyu samushi

frozen taste on frozen tongue -

will haru come?

Night-time conversational musings, Part I

I was talking to a friend the other day about what it means to be introverted/extroverted. We were speculating the nature of this strange trait. Is it an attitude, a characteristic, a preference?

Today, I realised that one way to look at introversion/extroversion is as a mode of fulfillment.

There are two ways in which a human can be fulfilled. One is through relationships with others, the other is through self-fulfillment. In a venn diagram, the overlapping intersection would be, I suppose, odd things like relations to entities like God, music and other abstractions.

Being fulfilled through relationships with others involves surrendering to the feelings you get when you are in the company of others. When you're devoted to loving someone else, whether it's in the form of friendship, filial duty or the (urgh, dreaded) romance, the pleasure of their company, and the atmosphere that surrounds you frees you from a sense of emptiness. To a certain extent, when you're caught up in relating to other people, you don't really have time to be caught up in your own problems, or feel dissatisfied with yourself. Even when employed in a negative way, hatred of someone can be so all-consuming that you can lose sight of your own problems. I speculate that extroverts would tend to find this way of finding fulfillment more natural and possibly more satisfying.

On the other hand, being fulfilled through setting your own goals involves being single-minded and focused. Although you may not be able to spend as much time enjoying the company of others, you certainly don't waste as much time (ever notice how spending time with others tends to make you waste so much time, pretty often doing nothing much other than waiting around?). For me, one of the consolations of a more self-directed lifestyle is that it is, to a certain extent, less of a risky venture in terms of end pay-off. I can always say to myself, 'Well, even if I haven't had much time with friends this time round, at least I've accomplished such and such.'

A rose by any other name

The other day my small group was talking about sexy names to name your child, and the few of them that happened to know my Christian name began to jibe me about it.

That got me thinking that although my name is, by consensus, decidedly a bad name for a person, it does make for great pick-up lines.

Like, 'Hi, I'm _____, and I'm yours, eternally.'

Or, 'Being with you makes me, me. I'm _____.'

Et cetera.

However, I realise that these lines would most likely be met with hearty guffaws and questions like, 'So, what's your name, really?'

I thought perhaps my Chinese name would hold more hope for me, so I went to find out what it actually meant. And you know what? I found out that my parents were not satisfied in making my life unbearable in English. They had to do it in Chinese too.

I found out that I'm a tonka bean (it's like vanilla, only with rather an edge). My name, literally translated, means New Tonka Bean. New Tonka Bean King.

I can go open a candy store - with my feel-good English name, and my vanilla-sweet Chinese name, I'm sure it'd be a hit. Although knowing Asian family values, I'd probably be disowned.

恭喜什么发财？

Why do Chinese New Year and Valentine's Day have to fall on the same day? It's like some cosmic schadenfreude specially planned to remind me of the cavities in my life.

If I say you're the one

Me and a good friend of mine agree that his voice, particularly in this song, is absolutely dreamy. =)

Similarity, much?

En le temps mon Age

Tossed up on a relentless sea,

we bury our pain beneath

the flurry of activity and

hope that eddies stirred up will tow away our troubles -

forgetting that we are not infinite bodies, so interrupted

memories will recollect and erupt again upon us.

Buoyantly, buoyantly,

we float on the surface of social niceties, mindless recreation, endless business...

thinking that if we evacuate our minds of feeling,

our hearts can go on vacation -

instead our mines are set, without our really knowing

where they are, waiting to be exploded.

No, we'd rather not risk drowning

in an ocean of uncried and quiet fragility -

we'd rather not risk a broken heart, or endanger ourselves finding that

as it turns out, there isn't really one to break.

So as the tides come in

with the waning and the waxing

of eternal gravity,

There is a kind of absentmindedness in which we deal

with the unbearable lightness of being.

So this is love

Perhaps the great mystery of love is quite simply the ability to make somebody feel happy.

Why did God create us? At the end of the day, the best that theologians - or at least, according to the theology I am familiar with - can come up with is: His pleasure.

Why do artists paint? Why do dancers dance? They might say they love to do that, or are dedicated to their work. But why love what they love? It makes them happy.

My friends inspire my love through the 'glow' of their personality - oftentimes, merely being in their presence makes me feel happy and energised.

So, at least as far as I can understand it, to be loved by someone is to have made them feel happy, and perhaps to be in love with someone is the continuous decision to keep making them happy.

I don't believe in the idea of there being one perfect person for me - the perfect fit (even enzymes don't really work that way). I'm even more skeptical of my capability of being perfect for anybody. But perhaps there are some patients whom I can better help, or friends whom I will find easier to be collectively happy with.

And I guess one day...

Looking back on the things He's done

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Galatians 5:22-23

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.

- 2 Peter 1:5-7

I was sharing with God's Clay, my Singaporean church small group, I'm grateful to God for teaching me to be grateful.

As I look back on my life last year, and the mercies that God has shown me, I've come to realise how incredibly blessed I am. It could potentially have been an incredibly scary year - independence, going overseas, being alone in the world. But I've been blessed with developing friendships, a 'family' in church and med school overseas, and just so many small mercies in daily life.

I'm just as grateful - if not more so - for the old as the new. Earlier on last year, I was feeling a little lonely because I hadn't yet met anyone with whom I could really click with, so I confided with an old friend, who pointed me to God and helped me grow in my relationship with Him.

You know how sometimes you're just living life, you get this feeling that you're at peace, and there's this bubble of happiness inside of you that's welling up and might burst - you feel a little bit like crying, but in a good way. I get it sometimes when I dance, or when I'm looking at a sunset, or listening to an awesome piece of music, or running along the beach, or laughing and clowning around with a friend. Looking back on all these blessings inspires that feeling, and as a result, I've been feeling it more and more.

I'm not sure, but I dare say it might be joy. The euphoria may not be there all the time, but yet, even in the darkest times, joy remains in the form of the knowledge that no matter how shitty things are getting, there are always little graces that God gives for us to rejoice in (Philippians 4:4) - even if the only thing you can cling to is the fact that God will eventually see you through.

I'm a rather melancholy sort of person, given to seeing the sadness or the flaws that would ruin an otherwise happy or perfect situation. But seeing how God has transformed not only my own life, but the lives of those around me, fills me with gratitude that brings joy.

You might not be able to see it in yourself, but choosing to believe in El Shaddai - the God who saves - is a step that builds so many incredible and inspiring people. You don't have to look very far to find them in your lives, performing acts of goodness, kindness, patience, and service to others. Looking towards these people (Philippians 4:8) when I could only see weakness in myself also served as a source of encouragement and hope that perhaps growth in God would allow me to become a bit more like them. I may not have - all too many times I find myself behaving callously, thoughtlessly, selfishly, boorishly, willfully. You name it, I've sinned it. - but the knowledge that one day God will change me (Philippians 3:20-21) is a very encouraging thing.

I guess in summary, this last year I've grown to know a little more of the mystery that Christianity and its transforming power holds. By simple belief in God, while I would not presume to say that I've attained fruits of the spirit, I've come to taste some of them in my life. In my small faith, I have clung to God when I was happy, and when I was sad, when I was filled with hubris, and when I was brought to shame. Over this time, I believed, perhaps a little naively that gathering in His name, singing His praises and reading His word would somehow bring me closer to Him. Gradually, my eyes have been opened to the good in my life. This has brought gratitude, happiness, and in time, faith in God that He really will be there through thick and thin. This faith has brought peace and joy. I guess that's why Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is like a tiny seed (Mark 4:26-34), in which all you need is a little faith.

Then they asked him, "What must we do to do the works God requires?"

Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

John 6:28-29

5x2 line poem

Can I write a poem,

and write it simply?

Not use any metaphors,

or flowery language,

or pretty imagery.

What do I write about, then?

What subject is suitably treated

without some technique?

What is a poem,

without aesthetic?

Yes, I am now a bionic woman.

After recently reconstructing a crucial ligament in my knee (my ACL - anterior cruciate ligament), I haven't had a very full calendar, so I've had more time to pursue other interests, such as The Big Bang Theory. Or Aimee Mullins.

They have this block of text that flashes by at the end of each episode, called a vanity card, which, as it turns out, has some pretty cool stuff on it.