10 Lonely Christmases of Seeing the Face of Jesus

in

 I think my compulsive attending of multiple Christmas services over the past 10 years helped me reach a deep place in my soul where I catch a glimpse of the face of Christ. The Christmas songs were an opportunity to meditate on the face of Christ. Then the kind, grieving, loving face of Christ comforts me in my loneliness. The price to pay for my lonely Christmases is the deeper vision of face of Christ and it is worth it. After all, this gazing on God is the highest of all pleasures which David talks about in Psalm 27:4 "One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple."

Read More

Seeing (love's enchantment) with the Heart!

in ,

 It is only with the heart that we can see rightly because most essential things in life are invisible to the purely rational mind. For example, the enchantment of love can only be perceived with the heart. It takes imagination to see with the heart. A a mind that is solely rational will be scared by the disruptive enchantment of falling in love. 

Read More

Tchaikovsky's Symphony #5 - Hope Breaking into Sorrow!

in ,

At the end of fourth movement, Tchaikovsky resolves the music into a final victory over sorrowful Fate. Experiencing the release of musical deeply drawn tension helped me realize why someone would want to listen to it over and over again, as a way of feeling Gospel hope breaking into sorrow, during a times of trail as in WWII or as in the struggle against pervasive compulsions, the Original Sin.

Read More

Princess Bride on the Pain of Love

in ,

 It is the pain of deep but unfulfilled longing that keeps love potent. When Westley, the lover of the Princess Buttercup, in his disguise taunts her loss of first love, the Princess shouts at him, "Don't mock my love." Westley replies, "Life is pain... anyone who says differently is selling something." 

Read More

Harry Potter Book 8 - a Redux to Old Themes in a New Flawed Format!

in

Rowling's Harry Potter stories continues to delve on the theme of love being stronger than death in deep friendships, and so will continue to be perduring, in spite of the new formation not quite working. If there were ever to be a book 9, I do wish it would be a novel.

Read More

Romans 8 Adoption Analogy from Trump Family!

in

Maintaining appearances is easy, what is difficult is living a life where every aspect of our life is permeated by the love of Christ. This is a great responsibility. If we think we can love others as Christ loved us, with our own strength and resources, we are dead wrong - we are naive if not delusional about the power of the selfish gene in us. We need the Help!

Read More

Who is a Christian Mystic?

in

The one who is tuned to this deep presence of Christ in the subconscious self is the Christian mystic. The mystic does not have to be cloistered within the halls of the monastery. For the mystic the whole world is a monastery. For the Christian mystic the whole world is sacramentally held together by the Word of God (Heb 1:3) and God's presence is manifest through it.

Read More

On Why Unhappiness is Not a bad thing!

in

Happiness is an allegory as happiness is always pointing to something else. One does not get to rest in happiness. On the other hand unhappiness makes for a better story because suffering and struggle makes for a good story. If the prince did not have to suffer crossing seven seas, climbing seven mountains, defeating seven monsters to get to the princess, it wouldn't be meaningful story or romance. In fact, one could almost say, blessed are the unhappy for it makes their story more meaningful (Matt 5:4). That is why unhappiness in not (always) a bad things after all.

Read More

A Way of Stories vs the Bottom-line Culture

in ,

In as much as our lives do not have hope for redemption, our stories seem meaningless. If there are no stories worth living for, then we end up living for something else - money, power or knowledge. In as much as our identities are solely determined by the bottom-lines factors of money, power or knowledge we end up living lives of shunted humanity. In as much as we take a step back from our bottom-line obsessions with money, power and knowledge, we will see that there are richer stories to be lived with eternal hope (Rev 21:4) in which our stories will be redeemed.

Read More

What Makes for Lonely Angry Men?

in , ,

The opposite of obsessive desires is not to disavow desires, rather it is yielding to rightly ordered desires. Rightly ordered desires starts with loving people close to us, which is exactly what the mythic Sultan, Von Rumple, and the magicians Angier and Borden miss and end up as lonely angry men dead in their spirit.

Read More

A Drilling (lesson) on Faith from My Motorcycle Mechanic

in

I have to remind myself that to have faith is to trust that the Father in Heaven knows what He is doing better than I do. If I am able to trust my motorcycle to my mechanic and teeth to my dentist, then by God, I should be able to trust my life to the hands of the Father in Heaven even when I feel like wanting to freak out! 

Read More

What does it mean to love God with our Souls?

in ,

I did not quite understand the answer to this question until I was walking down the Jamaica beach in Galveston at 2:00 am on a Saturday morning. I realized that to love God with my soul is to be deeply moved by a sheer display of His brilliant majesty in a way that bypasses my heart and mind and reaches deep into my unconscious, my soul, to lift it up into an ecstasy (in the truest sense of that word) to a posture of absolute submission and worship of God. 

Read More

Tick! Tick! Tick! goes Life

in

Tick! Tick! Tick! goes Life

A perpetual loss
Of time
Of loved ones
Of precious moments

All is evanescence
All lost into oblivion
Is the ticket worth it, Alyosha? 
Or can the earth be kissed, Ivan?

But oh wait!

Little buds becoming roses
Little babies becoming lovers
Time becoming blessedness
New Creation coming into Being.

Tick! Tick! Tick! goes Life.

Holden Caulfield on Nuns who are Attractive!

in

Holden in many ways is like the millennials who care more for meaning in life than materialistic excesses. Such people are attracted to simplicity than flamboyance, ethics over economics, authenticity over pretension. Those who, like the nuns, live as people imbibing the Sermon on the Mount will be attractive to the meaning seeking millennials.

Read More

What's missing the Buzzfeed Christian Video?

in

At the most fundamental level to be Christian is not about having the right ideas, but about having the encounter with Christ through the power of the Spirit. Unfortunately, the Buzzfeed Christians have nothing to say about Christ or about an encounter with Him. They have essentially created a new legalism of conformity towards cultural sophisticated ideas in the place of Christ.

Read More