The Tent: Day-to-day

Return to Rest

I've just returned from a retreat at Frasers' Hill where I was both retreat leader AND participant. It was a very insightful experience for me - both helping others come into a place of rest as well as finding rest and healing for myself. So throughout the two and a half days I would share a few thoughts, lead in the practice of a spiritual discipline, and then settle into reflection and contemplation myself.

The beauty of doing it this way was that we were all journeying together. No one was really the 'guru' or the 'leader' who had all the answers. I wasn't put on a pedestal. We could all be real and see our common struggles breaking through our restlessness to find rest in God.

Perfect Discovery

I'm so proud of what I've done with SALIVATE, my food indulgence blog. Not that many people actually go to it to look for places to eat. Not that I've reviewed that many places. It's just that the ROJAK shot looks so damned good there, I salivate when I look at it. And I've been able to put in a map and satellite photo to show how to fly in also. Now that's an achievement! Hah.

Getting away

Decided on a whim to get out of the city and look down on it, at it, away from it, just not be in it, for a while. And oh what a wonderful experience it was. We drove up the Hulu Langat hills, and just less than 10km from where the road leaves Cheras is this small clearing where we can plant ourselves and just stare at KL city in all its madness.

Whose earth is it?

Everyone has strong feelings about the shroud we are under. Take away our blue skies and majestic skyline and fires begin to burn in the hearts of Malaysians.

Only until recently did the government end its secrecy on the API - by which time, undeniable and unconcealable hazardous levels has already been superceded. But API or no API, we are all choked, and we are panicking. Like smoking rats in a cage, with nowhere to run, the frenzy is palpable. It's not just a haze in the sky, it's confusion on the ground as well.

How long will this last? How is it affecting my health? Should I stay home or go to work? Is it safe? Will there be an emergency? Should I think of moving out of the city?

To be alive again

A short lectio divina of Jeremiah 33:3 today brought these most-quoted words pounding through my brick-walled heart.

'Call to me and I will answer...'

'Call to me... you do not know.'

These words sank deeply through my callouses and brought out a throbbing cry for help. Buried alive beneath layers of rubble I do not even have words for, is this cry: 'God I need you, I need to feel, and know, and see you again. I want to be alive again, with your life flowing through mine. I am so dead. So cold. Dry bones and lukewarm spit hardly describes how frozen and encased I feel. My spiritual ECG is a flatline.'

Starting again, and again

Writing on The Tent again after a long hiatus is like starting a conversation with a friend you haven't met in years. Not knowing where to begin. Umming and aahhing. Trying to cut beyond the small talk to the stuff of the heart. Parrying one another, playing the game of disclosure vs. evasion.

What IS the stuff of my heart? What condition am I really in? If I were to answer a 'how are you?' honestly, what would I say?

Seeing the Big Picture

I'm in a period of much confusion and disillusionment. Much has been going wrong and outlook is very bleak at work. For once I have no clear path to tread and every option is both frightening and foreboding to me. It's depressing, to say the least. While moping around last night, I flipped to the day's reading of Oswald Chambers' classic, My Utmost For His Highest, just on a whim.

Stand in the Gap

I'm in the midst of preparing a topic to be presented at a friend's church this Sunday. I'm going through a few of my favorite authors, picking out gem-like quotations that I have loved so much. Sayings that have insinuated themselves deep into my belief system and have traveled with me for a long, long way. As I collate these bits of choice words, typing them into my Reference Manager, they are already working their power over me.

This happens to me each time. When I'm called to speak or write an article, I invariably do two things - search my heart on what I hold dearest, and go back to my 'gurus' who have taught me the most. Then I try to weave these things into something coherent for my listener/reader. In hope that the magic that has worked in my life will somehow filter through my own experiences to touch them too.

The little things

I envy those who can write incessantly on their blogs.

Weeks, months can pass for me when I feel I have absolutely nothing to say. Nothing of significance. Nothing to indicate the slightest growth in thinking or seeing. Nothing, I feel worth giving to the larger world. But am I right to feel this way? Perhaps it is the little things, the seemingly insignificant, the unremarkable that are the real building blocks of life. The things to appreciate and value.

Are you lost?

Reviewing my goals today, it seems I've pretty much lost my way in life. I've forgotten the higher purposes and it's no wonder I wander aimlessly. To pursue God's heart, to be a friend and home to others, to be an exemplary physician, to be a scientist who merges science and spirit, to be a writer of Truth - these are among the things I cherish most in life.