It was very busy 2000 years ago in the little town of Bethlehem, lots of human traffic to meet the censure call of Caesar Augustus. So full of people till the inn was without room.
So crowded and busy that the arrival of the Saviour was unnoticed.
It is just as crowded and busy today.
Friday, December 25, 2009
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Silent Night, Holy Night...Why is the night so silent?
Silent Night, Holy Night...
Why was the night silent? At the birth of a Saviour, of God.
The only announcement was that of the angels to the shepherds.
The only clue was that of the leading of the star to the wisemen.
And Joseph and Mary.
Some spreading of word by the shepherds.
Jerusalem was disturbed but not too stirred (except sometime later with the death warrant).
And then another 30 years of almost non-existence.
Silent Night, Holy Night...
Can I be silent?
Nowadays we celebrate the day with much more sound and sight.
Should we one day observe a silent night and cause the world to wonder.
Because He will come again like a thief in the silence of the night but that night will not be as silent as the first.
Why was the night silent? At the birth of a Saviour, of God.
The only announcement was that of the angels to the shepherds.
The only clue was that of the leading of the star to the wisemen.
And Joseph and Mary.
Some spreading of word by the shepherds.
Jerusalem was disturbed but not too stirred (except sometime later with the death warrant).
And then another 30 years of almost non-existence.
Silent Night, Holy Night...
Can I be silent?
Nowadays we celebrate the day with much more sound and sight.
Should we one day observe a silent night and cause the world to wonder.
Because He will come again like a thief in the silence of the night but that night will not be as silent as the first.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
What is TIME anyway?
Exdous 12: 1 The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, 2 "This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
Time is the medium in which we live. It is the psychological, mental and emotional air we breathe; and, like air, it is transmuted within us and becomes us. There is inner time -- our personal sense of the rhythms of time, experienced differently by each of us; and there is imposed time - the regimented time by which society organizes itself, the time of schedules and deadlines, time structured largely by work and commerce. These two times, inner and imposed, rarely jibe anymore, and the painful tension between them is one of the core psychological realities of our era.
In the beginning was the railroad -- the beginning, that is, of today’s experience of time. In the 1880s, railroad interests (in that era, America’s most potent business power) pressured the federal government to divide the country into time zones. Before this, 3:00 p.m. in San Francisco did not correspond to any particular time in New York, much less England and China. In fact, 3:00 p.m. in any city was only roughly coordinated even within the city limits. There was no place to call for a central reference point -- there weren’t any telephones to call with.
Coordination was largely a matter of bells and whistles. The factory whistle would blow, the town-hall clock would chime, and, if they felt like it, people would set their house clocks and pocket watches accordingly. Absolute precision wasn’t expected, nor, for most endeavors, was it needed; 20 minutes either way was, in most instances, no big deal.
Hours are artificial constructs; moments are not. The measurement of what we can an “hour” has taken on enormous importance since we began to measure our work, and our value, by the hour -- a practice barely a century old. People who are paid $4 an hour are not valued, and do not value themselves, as highly as people who are paid $20 an hour; people paid $20 an hour are treated differently, and often treat themselves
differently, than people paid $100 an hour. Today, our moments are lost in hours. And, since our moments are everything, unless they can be retrieved, all is lost.
Feeling that time is a force imposed from without to which they must conform, people use much of their energy to avoid that force, usually passively, and without interacting with one another, populating their inner lives with images again imposed, or at least supplied, from without. The soul or self or whatever you choose to call it – that intrinsic quality that makes each person unique and that is what (under whatever label) a
healer must connect with and appeal to – is confined in a time-cage and obscured by a cloud of habitual, if not outright addictive, fantasy figures.
In spite of (or because of) our advances, we have been stripped down to first causes: what marks our time. And we have to remind ourselves that time isn’t money. Time is life itself.
Full article can be found at THE AGE OF INTERRUPTION by Michael Ventura, Psychotherapy Networker January/February 1995
Ecclesiastes 3:11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
Time is the medium in which we live. It is the psychological, mental and emotional air we breathe; and, like air, it is transmuted within us and becomes us. There is inner time -- our personal sense of the rhythms of time, experienced differently by each of us; and there is imposed time - the regimented time by which society organizes itself, the time of schedules and deadlines, time structured largely by work and commerce. These two times, inner and imposed, rarely jibe anymore, and the painful tension between them is one of the core psychological realities of our era.
In the beginning was the railroad -- the beginning, that is, of today’s experience of time. In the 1880s, railroad interests (in that era, America’s most potent business power) pressured the federal government to divide the country into time zones. Before this, 3:00 p.m. in San Francisco did not correspond to any particular time in New York, much less England and China. In fact, 3:00 p.m. in any city was only roughly coordinated even within the city limits. There was no place to call for a central reference point -- there weren’t any telephones to call with.
Coordination was largely a matter of bells and whistles. The factory whistle would blow, the town-hall clock would chime, and, if they felt like it, people would set their house clocks and pocket watches accordingly. Absolute precision wasn’t expected, nor, for most endeavors, was it needed; 20 minutes either way was, in most instances, no big deal.
Hours are artificial constructs; moments are not. The measurement of what we can an “hour” has taken on enormous importance since we began to measure our work, and our value, by the hour -- a practice barely a century old. People who are paid $4 an hour are not valued, and do not value themselves, as highly as people who are paid $20 an hour; people paid $20 an hour are treated differently, and often treat themselves
differently, than people paid $100 an hour. Today, our moments are lost in hours. And, since our moments are everything, unless they can be retrieved, all is lost.
Feeling that time is a force imposed from without to which they must conform, people use much of their energy to avoid that force, usually passively, and without interacting with one another, populating their inner lives with images again imposed, or at least supplied, from without. The soul or self or whatever you choose to call it – that intrinsic quality that makes each person unique and that is what (under whatever label) a
healer must connect with and appeal to – is confined in a time-cage and obscured by a cloud of habitual, if not outright addictive, fantasy figures.
In spite of (or because of) our advances, we have been stripped down to first causes: what marks our time. And we have to remind ourselves that time isn’t money. Time is life itself.
Full article can be found at THE AGE OF INTERRUPTION by Michael Ventura, Psychotherapy Networker January/February 1995
Friday, November 27, 2009
Twilight - New Moon: 一群要生要死的狼跟鬼不知道在干什么！！
I watched the Twilight – New Moon with my god-daughter and daughter of a good friend. It is school holiday and it is bonding time.
5 sucks – Slow but superficial, Deliberate but pretentious. 一群要生要死的狼狗和鬼不知道在干什么！！And Edward looks in great need of some blood transfusion.
1st Suck – 2 hours long. For what? Time is money. But I guess in the world of vampires and werewolves, where they don’t die, time is not an issue with them. But I am a time-bound and I got my grocery shopping waiting. Watching the movie is indeed liken to entering into a twilight zone and one wonders “What’s happening?”
2nd Suck – When I saw the trailer on TV of Wolves and Vampires fighting, I was imagining seeing more blood, with the cold blooded vampires and hot blooded wolves fighting in the cinema. But what you see on TV trailer is ALL you get in the movie. When I got from the cinema is reciting of “Romeo and Juliet” – “I love you but I cannot love you.” “You want to die, but you should not die.” “I must live, it is for the good of both of us.” “It is not your fault, but mine. Please live well.” “It is my destiny (to be a wolf).” “Please don’t kill each other over me, that will hurt me the most.” “Marry me and death will not do us apart.” ”Marry me so that I can suck your blood.”
3rd Suck – I agree. This is definitely a cult movie Like the vampy and wofy in the show, where membership is by destiny and invitation only. Yes, keep it that way, don’t let the dogs out nor let us in.
4th Suck – I wonder when the production team saw their final piece before the release, what crossed their mind? “Oops… … sucks… …!”
5th Suck – The movie is rated - PG, indeed for under 16 only. The 2 young girls said they held hands throughout and exclaimed the movie was exciting and good. “Oh… … sucks… …”
Well, did I bond with the 2 girls? Well yeah. I was busy smsing during the movie to update my friends of it, the girls have to tell me to stop smsing and pay attention.
• Verdict: Disastrous sequel squanders good will created by first movie.
This is a mere six minutes longer than the first Twilight movie, but it feels like six hours. I gave the original four stars, but the sequel is tedious, long-winded and not so much undead as almost entirely devoid of life. Chris Tookey, Daily Mail UK
• http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/twilight_saga_new_moon/
• “Yes, I know, “New Moon’s” emotional energy is supposed to come through Bella’s putative attachment to newly buff best friend Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner). But though audiences gasp when Jacob uses his shirt to staunch Bella’s blood (don’t ask) and reveals a torso that would make Charles Atlas swoon, the connection between these two is so self-evidently non-romantic that it turns out not to be much of a diversion.” [Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times]
• “The characters in this movie should be arrested for loitering with intent to moan. Never have teenagers been in greater need of a jump-start. Granted some of them are more than 100 years old, but still: their charisma is by Madame Tussaud. ”The Twilight Saga: New Moon” takes the tepid achievement of “Twilight” (1988), guts it, and leaves it for undead. You know you’re in trouble with a sequel when the word of mouth advises you to see the first movie twice instead. Obviously the characters all have. Long opening stretches of this film make utterly no sense unless you walk in knowing the first film, and hopefully both Stephanie Meyer novels, by heart. Edward and Bella spend murky moments glowering at each other and thinking, So, here we are again. [Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times]
• “It feels like missing the point to talk about “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” as a movie. This is a pop culture phenomenon, some weird early 21st century aberration, our equivalent of the hula hoop or dancing the Charleston on a bi-plane’s wing. In the future, people will watch this second installment of “The Twilight Saga” and think, “What was that?” without realizing that this movie is not really a movie. It’s an excuse for a lot of people to dream.” [Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle]
• “With more bark than bite, “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” finds its brooding heroine torn from her depressive, bloodsucking boyfriend and thrust into the claws of a hunky werewolf. That’s sort of like being caught between a rock and a hard place (or, in high school terms, between a Goth and a jock), and this second screen installment of Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling series focuses, somewhat convincingly, on the emotions of an 18-year-old coping with her undying love of the undead.” [Jordan Mintzer, Variety]
• “With Chris Weitz (”American Pie,” “About a Boy,” “The Golden Compass”) taking over as director, the second movie has exactly what those fans want: Big, bouncy boy hair. Sculpted torsos everywhere. Teasing caresses of fingers on fingers, lips on lips. Love so deep and frenzied the smitten would prefer to die than go on without the other. Torsos, did we mention torsos? Most important, not just one, but two supernatural hunks snarling over the quivering carcass of a breathless, doe-eyed young woman. Swoon factor times two. [David Germain, AP]
5 sucks – Slow but superficial, Deliberate but pretentious. 一群要生要死的狼狗和鬼不知道在干什么！！And Edward looks in great need of some blood transfusion.
1st Suck – 2 hours long. For what? Time is money. But I guess in the world of vampires and werewolves, where they don’t die, time is not an issue with them. But I am a time-bound and I got my grocery shopping waiting. Watching the movie is indeed liken to entering into a twilight zone and one wonders “What’s happening?”
2nd Suck – When I saw the trailer on TV of Wolves and Vampires fighting, I was imagining seeing more blood, with the cold blooded vampires and hot blooded wolves fighting in the cinema. But what you see on TV trailer is ALL you get in the movie. When I got from the cinema is reciting of “Romeo and Juliet” – “I love you but I cannot love you.” “You want to die, but you should not die.” “I must live, it is for the good of both of us.” “It is not your fault, but mine. Please live well.” “It is my destiny (to be a wolf).” “Please don’t kill each other over me, that will hurt me the most.” “Marry me and death will not do us apart.” ”Marry me so that I can suck your blood.”
3rd Suck – I agree. This is definitely a cult movie Like the vampy and wofy in the show, where membership is by destiny and invitation only. Yes, keep it that way, don’t let the dogs out nor let us in.
4th Suck – I wonder when the production team saw their final piece before the release, what crossed their mind? “Oops… … sucks… …!”
5th Suck – The movie is rated - PG, indeed for under 16 only. The 2 young girls said they held hands throughout and exclaimed the movie was exciting and good. “Oh… … sucks… …”
Well, did I bond with the 2 girls? Well yeah. I was busy smsing during the movie to update my friends of it, the girls have to tell me to stop smsing and pay attention.
• Verdict: Disastrous sequel squanders good will created by first movie.
This is a mere six minutes longer than the first Twilight movie, but it feels like six hours. I gave the original four stars, but the sequel is tedious, long-winded and not so much undead as almost entirely devoid of life. Chris Tookey, Daily Mail UK
• http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/twilight_saga_new_moon/
• “Yes, I know, “New Moon’s” emotional energy is supposed to come through Bella’s putative attachment to newly buff best friend Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner). But though audiences gasp when Jacob uses his shirt to staunch Bella’s blood (don’t ask) and reveals a torso that would make Charles Atlas swoon, the connection between these two is so self-evidently non-romantic that it turns out not to be much of a diversion.” [Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times]
• “The characters in this movie should be arrested for loitering with intent to moan. Never have teenagers been in greater need of a jump-start. Granted some of them are more than 100 years old, but still: their charisma is by Madame Tussaud. ”The Twilight Saga: New Moon” takes the tepid achievement of “Twilight” (1988), guts it, and leaves it for undead. You know you’re in trouble with a sequel when the word of mouth advises you to see the first movie twice instead. Obviously the characters all have. Long opening stretches of this film make utterly no sense unless you walk in knowing the first film, and hopefully both Stephanie Meyer novels, by heart. Edward and Bella spend murky moments glowering at each other and thinking, So, here we are again. [Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times]
• “It feels like missing the point to talk about “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” as a movie. This is a pop culture phenomenon, some weird early 21st century aberration, our equivalent of the hula hoop or dancing the Charleston on a bi-plane’s wing. In the future, people will watch this second installment of “The Twilight Saga” and think, “What was that?” without realizing that this movie is not really a movie. It’s an excuse for a lot of people to dream.” [Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle]
• “With more bark than bite, “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” finds its brooding heroine torn from her depressive, bloodsucking boyfriend and thrust into the claws of a hunky werewolf. That’s sort of like being caught between a rock and a hard place (or, in high school terms, between a Goth and a jock), and this second screen installment of Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling series focuses, somewhat convincingly, on the emotions of an 18-year-old coping with her undying love of the undead.” [Jordan Mintzer, Variety]
• “With Chris Weitz (”American Pie,” “About a Boy,” “The Golden Compass”) taking over as director, the second movie has exactly what those fans want: Big, bouncy boy hair. Sculpted torsos everywhere. Teasing caresses of fingers on fingers, lips on lips. Love so deep and frenzied the smitten would prefer to die than go on without the other. Torsos, did we mention torsos? Most important, not just one, but two supernatural hunks snarling over the quivering carcass of a breathless, doe-eyed young woman. Swoon factor times two. [David Germain, AP]
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
龙应台：不相信 <目送>
曾经相信过正义，后来知道，原来同时完全可以存在两种正义，而且彼此抵触，冰火不容。选择其中之一，正义同时就意味着不正义。而且，你绝对看不出，某些人在某一个特定的时机热烈主张某一个特定的正义，其中隐藏着深不可测的不正义。
曾经相信过理想主义者，后来知道，理想主义者往往经不起权力的测试：一掌有权力，他或者变成当初自己誓死反对的“邪恶”，或者，他在现实的场域里不堪一击，一下就被弄权者拉下马来，完全没有机会去实现他的理想。理想主义者要有品格，才能不被权力腐化；理想主义者要有能力，才能将理想转化为实践。可是理想主义者兼具品格及能力者，几希。
龙应台：不相信 <目送>
曾经相信过理想主义者，后来知道，理想主义者往往经不起权力的测试：一掌有权力，他或者变成当初自己誓死反对的“邪恶”，或者，他在现实的场域里不堪一击，一下就被弄权者拉下马来，完全没有机会去实现他的理想。理想主义者要有品格，才能不被权力腐化；理想主义者要有能力，才能将理想转化为实践。可是理想主义者兼具品格及能力者，几希。
龙应台：不相信 <目送>
Thursday, November 19, 2009
In the midst of God, yet unmoved
I had a vacation in Taipei and visited some rather scenic places. While I was trying to absord and enjoy all of it, I notice the locals seem just moving around in their business as if the beauty does not exist.
Well, I am such as time, in the midst of (things of) God, yet unmoved.
Familiarity breeds contempt?
I do not know.
Is it really familiarity? Am I really familiar? How familiar am I?
Can I be so familiar and remain unmoved?
Well, I am such as time, in the midst of (things of) God, yet unmoved.
Familiarity breeds contempt?
I do not know.
Is it really familiarity? Am I really familiar? How familiar am I?
Can I be so familiar and remain unmoved?
Serious and Trivial
There are serious things in life being trivialised.
There are trivial things in life being emphasized.
When the serious things are triviailised, it means we spare too little thoughts and efforts than we ought to.
When the trivial things are emphasized, it means we spare too much thoughts and efforts than we ought to.
The big question is WHY?
When we cannot and don't know how to handle the serious things.
And to compensate what we cannot, we shift our lack to the emphasizing of the trivial.
Emphasizing of the trivial is good distraction for self and also help us in the traction/ deception to others
Though we cannot handle the serious, but we can still look like we are dabbling in the "serious".
+++
Screwtape Letter #17
The woman is in what may be called the "All-I-want" state. All she wants is a cup of tea properly made, or an egg properly boiled, or a slice of bread properly toasted.
But she never finds any servant or any friends who can do these simple things "properly" because her "properly" conceals an insatiable demand for the exact, and almost impossible, palatable pleasures which she imagines she remembers from the past; a past described by her as "the days when you could get a good servant" but known to us as the days wen her sense were more easily pleased and she has pleasures of other kinds which made her less dependent on those on the table.
There are trivial things in life being emphasized.
When the serious things are triviailised, it means we spare too little thoughts and efforts than we ought to.
When the trivial things are emphasized, it means we spare too much thoughts and efforts than we ought to.
The big question is WHY?
When we cannot and don't know how to handle the serious things.
And to compensate what we cannot, we shift our lack to the emphasizing of the trivial.
Emphasizing of the trivial is good distraction for self and also help us in the traction/ deception to others
Though we cannot handle the serious, but we can still look like we are dabbling in the "serious".
+++
Screwtape Letter #17
The woman is in what may be called the "All-I-want" state. All she wants is a cup of tea properly made, or an egg properly boiled, or a slice of bread properly toasted.
But she never finds any servant or any friends who can do these simple things "properly" because her "properly" conceals an insatiable demand for the exact, and almost impossible, palatable pleasures which she imagines she remembers from the past; a past described by her as "the days when you could get a good servant" but known to us as the days wen her sense were more easily pleased and she has pleasures of other kinds which made her less dependent on those on the table.
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