Rainy Days in Late August

Lazy rainy days in Singapore, we:

~ lunch with ex-housemates fresh off the plane from Brunei
~ have impromptu dinners with postgrad mates and their recently/currently pregger spouses
~ sleep in
~ get bought surprise! belated birthday lunches
~ have coffee with old friends
~ say hullo to Jubilee Presbyterian Church chickens
~ nap
~ celebrate new jobs at jazz bars with sake, ale, beer and sushi from Sushi Yoshida
~ sleep in
~ have very late breakfasts
~ chat some
~ watch re-runs of Beijing Olympics foil and epee fencing finals
~ nap
~ have late night talks about God, love and life
~ bake cherry butter cakes
~ assemble Stikfas figures
~ celebrate exam-passing with karaoke
~ say farewell with karaoke
~ get reminders to please do something about blueberries wrinkling in refrigerator
~ fall asleep thanking God for this respite, everything



Ikea Restaurant
Gravad lax, Swedish meatballs, fish and chips, chicken wings, Daim cake, too much information on certain in-bedroom aspects of married life.


Tokkuri Japanese Restaurant
#01-57-62 Icon Village
12 Gopeng Street
Tel: 6238 5863
Fresh sashimi with good soya sauce, wasabi and a sweet plum leaf. Simmered pork belly was melty, cod fish was slightly overcooked, saba/mackerel which arrived that same morning was also fresh but very bony and over-grilled. Macha cheesecake was pleasant.


Caffe Pralet by Creative Culinarie
#01-03/04 Eng Hoon Mansion
17 Eng Hoon Street
Singapore 169767
Tel: 6324 1663
Coffee and cake decent but open kitchen meant everyone came out smelling like whatever happened to be cooking.


Jubilee Presbyterian Church
Resident Chicken. Uninhibited excitable friendliness suggests bright saffron-coloured future for said chicken.


Bar Stop/Sushi Yoshida
8 Devonshire Road
Singapore 239845
Tel: 6735 6614/6735 5014


Ghim Moh Food Centre
Briyani


Ghim Moh Food Centre
Char Kway Teow


Liquid Kitchen
Company good. Chicken caesar apparently also good. Brownie like sweetened cardboard. Drinks ok. No tap water served.


Cherry Butter Cake. Recipe thanks to Annette of Greedy Goose! These cherries were too watery to eat plain and needed to be consigned to the flames.

Easter Cupcakes at the Easter Cupcakery and Dale Ralph Davis on 2 Kings

The almost perpetual rain over the last few weeks ruled out all macho outdoor sports (cos those huge raindrops frighten us, yeah), leaving us with nancy indoor ones like badminton. And table tennis. And figure skating.

Ugg Cookies
Ugly like the boots but less woolly and more edible

Why not go the whole nancy hog and bake something then. Darkies over blondies any day. Preferably the sort that will stick to the roof of your mouth, then to your gullet and then give you such a sore throat that only the most potent liang cha made from the horn of a pure gold unicorn can cure. It was pointed out however that although this was pretty nancy compared to a mutual friend's Indian curry which has been known to vapourise the digestive tracts of the unsuspecting, it still didn't quite register on the poof-o-meter. And this even though we left some (ugg) blonde highlights in.

Fondant flowers in naff pink and naff purple. Fondant leaves in naff green.

Righto. Would cupcakes do the trick then? Oh, and what if they were topped the sort of useless foul-tasting fondant cuties that people coo at for 2 seconds then scrape off into the dustbin?[1] Unfortunately, despite the attempt at outward adornment to accessorise the innocent cupcake disguise, these still went far wide of the poof-o-meter on account of their actually being if-thrown-will-leave-hole-in-ceiling things densely molten with 85% African Valrhona chocolate at the core and slathered with thick stick-to-your-teeth 70% Venezuelian Valrhona cream cheese[2]. Like Keith Richards in drag.

I am pink. Therefore I am not a cabbage.

(This being my first time with fondant, impeccable logic dictated that I head straight for the rosa centifolia. Meanwhile, a great debate ensued about proportionality in simulacra and the manifestation of Fibonacci sequences in roses and I forgot to hold on to the fondant, then it just got too boring sticking on more petals, hence this halfun-baked attempt.)

Woohoo! Alien eggs! Dark chocolate Maltesers.

When the beta-testers KO'ed after only a bite[3], I knew I'd gotten the recipe right. Unfortunately, since weighing machines weren't a feature in the kitchen and I didn't know how much of what ingredient had gone into the deadly dessert, there was no way of replicating that. (There were loads of "baking essentials" that didn't feature in the kitchen. The kitchenaid, for instance, had opposable thumbs and was powered by elbow grease.)

Da bunny dunna belong to Easter. So Audrey II ates him.

Tooling around the kitchen was actually an awful lot of fun. Especially with Dale Ralph Davis on 2 Kings, which led to a lot of snorting of icing sugar and laughing into the batter.

Staging area for happycake fondant decorations awaiting deployment.

Baking is reminiscent of fooling around with the chemistry set I got for my 12th Christmas but without Rylands v Fletcher consequences. Those experiments were wet squibs compared to the smoke bomb a friend made with a recipe he'd gotten off the web. The resultant product did successfully give off a lot of smoke and, as a bit of a bonus, also left a crater in his backyard. Naturally, he figured he must have gotten the ingredients wrong and tried to make another in his kitchen ex-kitchen.

So comparatively, messing about with these edibles was pretty harmless stuff, a marzipan carrot up the snot, some chocolate warming in the armpit, nothing terrible, except for the time, unbeknownst to me, someone gave away some experiments to the neighbours. I think an ambulance pulled up for the old dear next door shortly after.

Cadbury's Twirl for nesting material, Cadbury's Mini Eggs. Poof-o-meter = +1

Obviously, with such clear confirmation of my incontestable baking talent, the only loving thing to do for Easter was to whip up a batch of cupcakes for my Bible study group. What better opportunity, after all, for them to demonstrate their assurance of salvation?

And yeah so what if these products were chock-full of such healthy nutrients as refined sugar, refined flour, nuts specially for those allergic to nuts, scary E numbers, unidentified preservatives and the recommended daily calorie intake for a woolly mammoth? Focus on those resurrection bodies, people!

Very thankful for the few hours of sabbathing while kneading and stirring, listening to Dale Ralph Davis[4] gossiping about God in 2 Kings 3 - 7 ("The Days of Elisha"). It is always wonderful to have a womble through the Old Testament if for nothing else (but there's so much more to it), then just to ogle again at the internal consistency of different parts of the Bible written over hundreds of years by many different authors all telling parts of the same story.

There is also something about seeing how God worked in Old Testamental times that adds to our knowledge of the richness of his character and person and so the growth of our love for him. A read through a few books of the Bible tosses out the generalisation that the strict Old Testament God changed into a loving God in the New Testament. God's character remains consistent throughout the records of his dealings with mankind, so we don't have to second-guess his will at any given time.

From 2 Kings 3, we see a God who is sovereign over affairs so that he might choose not to help the ungrateful who do not acknowledge him (Elisha points out that Jehoram who has come to seek God to help him out of his impending devastation isn't making much sense. He still worships other gods, why come to God for help? And why should Elisha entertain him?) or still choose to help them inspite of their ingratitude. We also see a God who is generous and sometimes doesn't just give what is asked of him but lavishly more (Jehoram and his pals just needed water supplies. God gave them more water than they needed and not only that, but also gave their enemies the Moabites into their hands.). And wonderfully, God is a God who is willing to listen to his creatures. We do not realise what a privilege this is until we contrast this with how the king of Moab resorted to burning his own son as an offering to call in his god's favour for the battle (2 Kings 3:27).

God's generosity is also demonstrated in his willingness to give abundantly in 2 Kings 4:1-7 - the poor widow whose son was about to be sold off by creditors not only got enough oil to pay off her debts but even more than that so that she and her son could live off the proceeds. God works through the person's faith to bring about the petitioned result.

(Sometimes, when God works wonders in your life, it may be that he wants you to keep it to yourself; it may be that he doesn't want you to put it in your testimony at the next convention (Elisha, God's representative, told the widow to go into her house and close the door behind her).)

There are times that God gives, just because (2 Kings 4:8-37). God gave the wealthy old childless woman a son even though she didn't ask for one. Whereas with Sarah and Rachel a child had been necessary to continue the Abrahamic line so that God's promises could be fulfilled, this nameless son was, in that way, unnecessary.

We see also how God cares that people live in right relationship and full dependence on him. He made the self-sufficient needy so that they would relate correctly as creatures to their Creator and Sustainer. The wealthy old lady had told Elisha that she didn't need anything from God ("I dwell with my own people") but later, after the death of her only son, she held onto Elisha's feet and begged him to resurrect him, which he did.

(Despite Elisha being the agent of this miracle, we must remember the limitations of the LORD's servants. Elisha was God's representative, his wisdom and his power came from God. We must be careful not to make idols of God's servants because they can't bear the burden of God. And we too are God's servants - we may not always know what the Lord is doing in other people's lives so we should not presume to judge or advise if (as is likely) the LORD has hidden it from us (2 Kings 4:27).)

The caring nature of God does not mean that he miraculously spares his people from the circumstances they are in. The sons of the prophets in 2 Kings 4:38-41 weren't spared the famine in Gilgal. They were so in need of food that it was a real problem when the stew was rendered inedible because of some wild gourds someone had cut into it.

(God created the universe just by speaking, but he caters to our human weakness by giving us physical signs of his works: Elisha poured flour into the pot of stew to make it edible again. Similarly Jesus put his fingers into a deaf-and-mute man's ear and put his spit onto the man's tongue in the process of curing him (Mark 7:31-37). So we should not despise God-instituted signs like the breaking of the bread and the drinking of the wine in remembrance of Jesus' death and resurrection.)

Our God is a God who is not only concerned about his great plan for humanity but also for simple needs. For the son of a prophet who lost his axehead in the water, the loss was not trivial in his sight (2 Kings 6). He was poor enough not to be able to own his own axehead and had borrowed it from someone. And God was pleased to help the man in his time of genuine need even though his concern was simple.

Lest anyone think that God is just God of a little Israelite ghetto, 2 Kings 5 reminds us that God is the God of the whole world. God decides who wins and who loses in wars and in that instance, he gave victory to Syria through Naaman. God's rule is sweeping. There are no bounds to his sovereignty. And God is sovereign not just in world affairs but also in the small circumstances. He put a little Israelite servant girl in Naaman's household and she told Naaman's wife about Elisha.

Yet even though God is sovereign all things, we think that we know well enough so that we can presume to find God's ways offensive. Naaman was offended at being directed to wash in the dodgy rivers of Israel rather than the therapeutic waters of Damascus. But God, through Elisha, said that the way was narrow and there was only one way he could be healed from leprosy. In the same way, the gospel is offensive too to some people. It messes with their broadmindedness. Why only this way? Why only one way? The greatest objection to God's ways seems not to be the difficulty of their execution but that they humble our terribly misinformed pride. Yet humility, because of our inadequacy and our creatureliness, has been the right way to relate to our Creator since the first human was created.

The interesting thing is that if we'd invented God, we would have made him far more congenial. The fact that we are offended and irritated and angered by this God suggests that he might, in fact, be real.

_____________________________________________

[1] Turns out that people didn't scrape off the stuff after all. In fact, they liked the fondant and thought it tasted like tang yuan (glutinous rice balls).

[2] I therefore dub these "happycakes" (not to be confused with spacecakes) because of the alleged psychoactive tryptophan-carrying endorphin-inducing qualities of the chocolate and the hours of rampant giggling wrought by the silly fondant decorations (though not doubt also caused by the ingested chocolate).

[3] Perhaps this had more to do with the choice of beta-testers. A staffworker came over to our lunch table saying that he'd heard that chocolate cupcakes were emanating from hereabouts. When handed one for a small taster, he shovelled the lot up in about a minute and was perfectly fine after. (He did say however, that even though he was sure of his salvation, he still had young children that needed his care and that his wife mightn't be too pleased if I'd sent him on his heaven-bound way earlier than she expected.)

[4] Davis is a good combination of scholar, preacher and pastor (he current pastors and teaches at Woodland Presbyterian Church). He deals with the critical theories and interpretative problems of the text and traces the Messianic thread through the Old Testament, yet this is never merely academic but breathing doctrine to be lived out in our lives as our God lives and we live. Reckon his commentary on 2 Kings, The Power and The Fury, might be a good read.

More Music To Scaff Cupcakes By

The thing to do when completely rained in is to conspire with friends to drink tea and scoff cupcakes.

Click through for credits

Some cheerful lolli-pop for a little Poptart in the cupcakery:
Bishop Allen Rain
Danielson Did I Step On Your Trumpet?
Page France Say Wolf in the Summertime
Hello Seahorse! Can Let You Go
Half Handed Cloud A Suit of Clouds to Ride the Skies
Oh No! Oh My! Walk In The Park
Jane Herships The Ballad of Clementine Jones
Bishop Allen Butterfly Nets
Gruff Rhys Candylion

And if it is still pouring outside:
Cocorosie Noah's Ark
Chin Up Chin Up I Need A Friend With A Boat
and Sesame Street jingles from post-9/11 indie kids who insist that they aren't making Christian music; they just happen, they say, to be Christian:

• John Ringhofer as Half-Handed Cloud on the same Asthmatic Kitty label as Sufjan Stevens; and
  
• Daniel Smith as (Brother) Danielson on Asthmatic Kitty's sister label Sounds Familyre.

Never have songs about blood, sin, death, being hoodwinked into accepting false solutions to God's punishment and eating one's children been accompanied by such playful quirky instrumentation.

Voltaire's Candide, 1 Corinthians 7 and Unwimpy Contentment

A stale-coffee bummer of a weekend spent mostly at work, with Arcade Fire's Neon Bible as office muzak. In the early hours of Monday morning, the howls of the storm and crashing of the thunder outside were easily folded into the rich instrumental layers of portentous pipe-organs, insistent strings and giggling glockenspiels.

Earlier this Labour Day morning, we rested from our labours. Straw-hats and sunshine. Blue skies, fresh air, a quick breakfast and some tending to the garden before getting nicely stuck into 1 Corinthians 7.

The after-rain morning was for a juicy earthworm and scattered seed buffet for the feathered ones; baby spotted-neck pigeons and orioles picking their way through the grass with scarcely a peep amongst them. We've lost a few plants to the recent spate of schizophrenic weather (having been alternately flooded and scorched) but the curry, lime and basil are holding their own remarkably. The weeds, however, have gone one better and proliferated profoundly. Clearly we need some sort of scavenging goat or Japanese poodle (woolly they be) to pop round for a chaperoned nibble.

Voltaire's LOL Candide ends with the titular character saying (in response to the belligerent pontificating and endless arguing of Pangloss and Martin over The Best of Possible Worlds, The Problem of Evil and The Freedom of Will),"That is very well put, but we must cultivate our garden."; that is, the proper response to unfathomable universal misery, despair, pain and generally being dealt with the poor lot in life is not to go around theorising about origins and "metaphysico-theologico-cosmoloonigology" but to hunker down and do some honest work in one's allotment; enforced blinkeredness in face of the absurdity of the vast universe.

Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches. Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision. For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God. Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called. Were you a slave when called? Do not be concerned about it. But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity. For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a slave of Christ. You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men. So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God. (1 Corinthians 7:17-24)

Though appearing to deliver seemingly similar homilies of being content with one's station in life, the mindset of Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 is diametrically opposed to that of Voltaire. For the Christian, tending to one's proverbial garden is not done with a resigned shrug that working without useless speculation on the wide world is the best man can do with his un-understandable life; for the Christian, cultivating that garden is what life is really about and what man was created to do.

The Christian knows that the universe is intricately ordered and under the perfect direction of God. It is not the best possible world of Pangloss because sin has rendered it fallen and under a curse. But there will come a time when God will redeem this broken world just as he has redeemed from death and destruction those who have trusted in Jesus Christ (Galatians 3:13, Titus 2:14, Hebrews 9:15). In the meanwhile, the redeemed, having been bought at the price of Jesus' very life, understand that their life is not their own: by the blood of Christ, they have been adopted as God's own sons (Galatians 3:13), they are now God's possessions zealous for doing his work (Titus 2:14).

The contentment Paul repeatedly advocates (1 Corinthians 7:17, 20 and 24) is far from boring suburban mundanity or cud-chewing passivity or dull doormattery. It is embedded-agent-on-a-mission-ly exciting. The redeemed have been called by God himself (1 Corinthians 7:17, 18, 21, 22, 24). He has called them out of darkness into the light, into salvation by trusting in Christ Jesus. It is a call to be part of God's people, not a call to levitating self-improvement nor to leap like gazelles with tambourines up a holy mountain nor to move up in a hierarchy of money-making monkeys.

God called us while we were decomposing in our little lead boxes. We did not, of our own accord and intelligence, break out to find him but he broke through to find us. He engaged us in whatever unworthy condition and dastardly individual situation we were in. He did not need hastily transplanted sunflowers lining our roads before deigning to turn our hearts and minds to him.

Now that we are his people, then, we ought to realise that just as we were called in whatever condition and situation we were in, so our condition in life is really unimportant. Uncircumcised or circumcised? Mate, God doesn't care. Doesn't count for anything. But be careful to obey God whever you are (1 Corinthians 7:18-19). Slave or free? Well, it might be a little bit more comfy to be free but don't be concerned about it. Freedom from human slavery is ultimately an irrelevance. Regardless, we are slaves of Christ and what's really important, what really counts, is doing his work (1 Corinthians 7:20-23).

We are not to devote our thoughts and energies to changing our circumstances. Instead, we are to obsess about living under God's word and doing his work wherever we are. No, "oh if only I were smarter/a better speaker/a high-flyer/a yacht-owner/on Forbes' list/looked better, if only I could go to an overseas missionfield, if only my personal life was better, I would be more effective for God". We are responsible to God in the life he has assigned to us. Bite the bullet and bloom where we are planted. (Secret agent plus gardening analogy. Score.)

1 Corinthians 7:17-24 is the key the rest of the chapter. Paul applies the principles to marrieds in 1 Corinthians 7:1-16 (with a taster on unmarrieds and widows) and unmarrieds and widows in 1 Corinthians 7:25-40. Lonely and unmarried or married to a naggy, poor, depressed spouse who sneers at your beliefs? Do not get into a hot bother about changing your circumstances. Get hepped up instead on working God's garden in your situation, being devoted to the Lord and being concerned for the salvation of those around you.*

The big problem is not guidance but obedience.

So no small-minded navel-gazing here please. Don't just think about temporal puny renovation on circumstances that will pass away in time. Think big! Think macro! Think eternal! Open your eyes to opportunities for faithfulness no matter what the situation! Get jiggy wid being part of God's plan in transforming the world for all time!

Fierce.

*that is not to say that it is a sin to change one's situation in life: unmarrieds and widows may marry (1 Corinthians 7:9), marrieds may separate if it is the wish of the unbelieving spouse (1 Corinthians 7:15). But changing one's status quo should never be the overarching passion of life.

John Piper: Desiring God or Desiring Desire?

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1. Watching Volver, at midnight, with the whole theatre to ourselves, meant we could put our feet up on the row in front without kicking the backs of people's heads and chatter all the way through with such inane comments like "Eeeee. Pedro Almodovar is so humsup" (even though he's professedly gay) and "If Raimunda's mom is a ghost, why can't she just appear in Madrid instead of being stuck in a car boot?", and also, "Is Sole a very bad actress or is she just meant to portray awkwardness?" and then, towards the end of the show, "Eh. Why is there a man in white standing behind us?"

2. Completely cool geek t-shirt spotted after service. Ultimate was ultimately scuttled by rain, but some painting, baking (edible) cookies to use up soon-to-expire stuff and giving the old piano ivories a bit of a run wasn't half bad. Thank God for pottering.

3. Finally. A dry evening! Not time enough, though, for a Singapore Biathlon pitch. Time, however, collapsed and compressed, for a half-hour run round the Singapore Botanic Gardens before dinner. Nifty Nike Frees, fresh air, fecundity of flora and fauna, Lesser Whistling Ducks ducking. The next evening: underwater hockey scuttled by thunder and lightning. Sub-aqua ice hockey soon perhaps? Singapore Ironman 70.3 Triathlon in September 2007. Pwnage.

4. At the Gingers': crowding round some good curry, tandoori and prata and tossing about really bad jokes:

"Would you prefer prata or naan?"
"Ah, the naan that begot Joshua?"
"..."
"You know, Joshua - son of Nunn?"
"........"

We had a listen to a scrap of their impressive collection of John Piper's sermons and a good chat about his Christian Hedonism.

*Off-the-cuff Stuff*

Even without toe-dipping into discussions about classical philosophical definitions of the term "hedonism", it appears slightly worrying that Piper has built his whole ministry around this idea of Christian Hedonism.

The gist of Mr. Piper's argument seems to be:
Premise I: Obligation of a human is to seek one's own pleasure.
Premise II: The greatest pleasure is to be found in God.
Conclusion: Therefore, obligation of a human is to find pleasure in God.

While the conclusion may seem biblical:
1. Syllogisms can sometimes be used invalidly, eg:
Premise I: God is love.
Premise II: Love is blind.
Premise III: Stevie Wonder is blind.
Conclusion: Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

2. In Piper's case, the fundamental premise itself is fallacious: the primary obligation of a human is not the seeking of our own pleasure or the fulfilment of our desires. It is to seek God and his pleasures and desires.

3. Just because God has designed us to find greatest pleasure and satisfaction in the worship of him does not mean that we should conflate the two. Our motivation for worshipping God is not to the end of gaining self-centred pleasure but for God himself: because of who he is, his all-encompassing power, authority, compassion, mercy and love etc. Our pleasure is not God; only God is God.

Rainy Days, Luke 9, John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" and Christian Suffering

Besieged by trebuchets of unrelenting rain over the last two months, claustrophobically cooped up indoors, there being no serendipity whatsoever between those little windows of sunshine and my sporadic gaps of freetime, restless with unexpended adrenaline...

Restless in the restroom (with a Pilot V5 Black)

Bored in the boardroom (with Helvetica Black)

(We heart Helvetica Black. Especially how the lowercase A glyph gives that coy little kick to the right. Ok. Not really.)

...so distractingly fidgety and squirmy during Adult Meeting, CLOBS and Sunday service that someone threatened the immediate administration of Valium via a nice thick needle, enough was enough. And out we went.

One night, there was pizza waiting impatiently for us at Pizza Da Donato on Sixth Avenue. Late another night, there was sitting under that mishmash of leftover Christmas and early Chinese New Year decorations unique to a Singapore kopi tiam. We nattered about God in breakups and ex-es and running our own schools and backpacking the world. On yet another stormy night, there was rolling up of trouser legs and wading through riverlets of water for a special delivery, still dripping with rain, of hot seafood hor fun and steaming porridge from Crystal Jade for the Overnighters.

On the fourth night, there was nothing but slickness and blackness and wet cold that seeped into bones, so there was teriyaki and bento and sukiyaki at Akashi Restaurant with 9 people at a long wooden slab of table gesticulating and talking simultaneously about "The Peak" until someone exclaimed,"Aiyah. Got 3 guy leads and 1 girl lead. What do you think? Must be 3 guys chase 1 girl lah!", to which 6 people laughed at his outdated heterosexual naïveness and the other 2 ordered more sake, which led to talk about the new reality show "Gay, Straight or Taken?" in which there are 3 guy contestants ("sleek and gelled, strong of chin and hard of ab") and 1 girl contestant, and then the different permutations that can result, in this pansexual age, from putting them on a Survivor-style island together with 2 sheep and a male dog...[Q: But ought we laugh lightly at the latest trends in prurience?]

In the grey bleak morning, there was an sms:"Bakkutteh at Balestier? Although if it rains, it might be problematic..." and there were visions of floating a sampan past the flooded florists at Thomson with their buoys of potted plants and befuddled pythons, hanging a left down Balestier Road, then tying the raft to a stake outside Founder, gingerly lifting a steaming claypot of pork ribs soaked in peppery soup aboard, balancing bowls of you tiao and kiam chye and rice and chopsticks and little plates of red chilli sliced into thick black sauce, bobbing about and eating, and tossing the cleaned bones over, port-side, to stray dogs swimming past, doggie-style.

In the grey evening, the rain carried on in sheets, unremittingly and we ended up at Emmanuel Stroobant's new Brussel Sprouts. Not flooded enough for sampans (so without threat of an imbalance in anyone's inner ear), it was all ruddy-faced cheerfulness, hot tasty pots of mussels, foie gras pate, calling fowl for the one who wouldn't have dead cow, 70! types of hardy Belgian beer - beware evil Hep A viruses lurking in dark wet alleyways! (not), and, hanging off their stout manly arms, mounds of the frites in moules frites, snugly ensconced in virginal white bowls. (And yes, there was mention of Belgo, London and its £5 meals. But only one. A very brief one. And not soppy at all. Really.)

As the downpour started to peter out, and the black deepened in the sky, and the wind swept down the corridors in the chilly aftermath, there was time for drinks and questions so embarrassing they had to be typed out on a mobile, so of course the discussion reverberated through the quiet coffeeshop at the loudest possible volume. And there was an sms:"Wht u dg 4 din tom? Wan din?"

The task of tusk fish

So there was calamari and fish and prawns and scallops the next day at the Greenwood Fish Market & Bistro (where seafood is fresh and unbulky and good for antsy people who have been stuck indoors without sun or frisbee or tennis, and no, spanking the monkey wouldn't have helped any) and catching up and a nice drive-about after.

The next day, it was still drizzling when we got to Café Le Caire @ Al Majlis post-fidgetySundayservice (where in the midst of fidgeting, a certain metal part of a pen was accidentally propelled into the unsuspecting congregation) for babaganush, kebabs and mint tea and ribbing about skinny jeans.

Gratuitous photo of skinny jeans

And after, under brollies, we trundled along to Samar Café for more mint tea, laban lauzan and a spot of quiet reading. At Samar Café on a muted afternoon, with the patter of rain on the awning and on the pavement, the passage of time is marked by tall silent black-thobed waiters making their rounds in sandalled feet, bearing smoking bowls of incense.

Monsoon days are obviously the best days for seeing people. And t'was good to meet up and to talk about God and his work in our lives, but the adrenaline continued to rise to bursting point with no avenue for release...

...which turned out to be a good thing for Luke 9 and "Pilgrim's Progress": entering a bookshop for some Thomas Pynchon or failing which some T.S. Eliot, left instead with John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress", which, if judged by its cover art (hello, Edward Burne-Jones and attendant silly dreamy pre-Raphaelite sentimentality) and font, is the sort of limp romantic novel read by girls with a fascination for charitable good works and knitting lacy tea-cosies. Disregarding its cheesy allegorical method, it was a good companion to Luke 9 which we started on at this week's ARPC DG Bible study.

In Luke 9, Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to Jerusalem where he will suffer and die (and thereafter, be resurrected) (Luke 9:22). He warns them to be faithful despite certain rejection by the world. Discipleship is not easy. This is the cost:

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. (Luke 9:23)

It is dangerous to our salvation to lack a proper Biblical doctrine of suffering. If we know nothing about the certainty of suffering and adversity in the life of a Christian, then when we meet with them (as we surely will), we will be faint of heart, give up the faith and return to the road to Hades. But amongst the promises to God's children is this: that it is only through many tribulations that we enter the kingdom of God (Acts 14:22), and if we are to be glorified with Christ, we are also to suffer with him (Romans 8:17-30).

Denying Ourselves
Once in a while (usually during festive periods), the developed world enjoys a bit of self-flagellation, laying on the guilt trip by contrasting pictures of a pasty overweight person dripping in obiang jewellery and a little bony child with a dirty clothes hardly masking his protruding ribs. Consumerist societies are made to feel disgust (if even only for a pinprick-while) at their own over-eating, over-spending, blatant wastage and lack of self-control. Assuage your guilt, deny yourself, we are told, by skipping a meal, by taking public transport for one day and donating your savings to a charity or sponsoring a child.

But Luke 9:23 is saying more than this. Just as Christ always denied his own human will and desires, that is, his will and desires were always subordinate to the Father's, so we must deny our own will and desires and be subordinate to Christ's. This includes submitting to God's will in any given matter (for example, abstaining from fornication (1 Thessalonians 4:3)). But a life of self-denial is more than making donations to World Vision or possessing superb self-control that will allow us to follow the tenets of strict morality - it is completely denying that any aspect of our lives is ours: we would not exist if we were not created by the Creator God and our very existence would have ceased if not for the continued sustenance of that same God. Therefore nothing in our lives, not our bodies, possessions, thoughts, words, deeds, goals, value is ours. We deny that we have any rights over them. Everything is submitted to God because we and they are God's in the first place.

In denying ourselves, in turning from ourselves, what do we embrace and turn to?

Taking up our crosses daily and following Christ
Far too often perhaps, we Christians think of the cross as something to be preached to the lost, as a milestone that we have passed at some point in our lives and that we have moved on from. But if we are to deny ourselves and turn from our own will and desires, then what we are to embrace and turn to is the will and desire of God in the cross - in both its salvific form as well as its metaphoric form. Just as it was God's willed plan that Jesus' life was to be marked suffering, rejection, humiliation, death and resurrection, so it is also God's willed plan that suffering, rejection, humiliation, death and resurrection will mark the life of a Christian, for we were predestined to be conformed to Christ's image. This does not mean that we will necessarily be thrown into prison, scourged, made to wear a crown of pricklies and nailed to a cross on a rainy day, though there will be Christians who will lose their physical lives because of the gospel.

It is possible that Jesus' cross was not so much the physical one, though that was very real, as the metaphoric one - the great temptation to sin against God to avoid terrible physical suffering. And as an extension of the denial of self, the cross we bear daily are our sufferings and struggles not so much against earthly powers as against the more deadly enemy - sin, against retaining our false kingship in certain aspects in our lives, against preferring our own will and desires over that of God. Many parts of the Bible make this link, for example:

Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. (Hebrews 12:3-4)

(As with God, nothing is merely gratuitous. The acts of suffering/struggling against our sinful flesh daily produce hosts of benefits. See, for example, 2 Corinthians 4:11, 2 Corinthians 12:7, Romans 5:3-4, Hebrews 12:10, James 3:17-18, Psalm 119:67, 2 Timothy 3:17, 2 Corinthians 4:17-18, 2 Corinthians 1...)

And just as our suffering is not due exclusively to external forces but the sinfulness that is within us, so the suffering of a church body will not be due exclusively to external forces (eg. persecution, false teachers coming from the outside) but also to the continued sinfulness of members within that church body (eg. hypocrisy, pride, ambition, envy). When we encounter blatant temptation to rebel against God, for example, if someone demands at gunpoint that we deny Christ, obedience is clear, and in that sense, easy. But encountering the sinfulness of our brothers and sisters within the church which may hurt or discourage us, we face the more subtle temptation: to retaliate - a sin for a sin.

(At which point I said, despondently,"Well, the person who'll get the last laugh in all of this is the devil." But the SnifflyOne calmly replied,"No, God will get the last laugh because he will use all this, even the disobedience and sinfulness of humans, for his glory." And the OverworkedOne added later, stabbing a fry in the air to emphasize the point,"God wouldn't think it much of a laughing matter. He will judge us for our sin and rebellion. But yes, ultimately, in the end, he will definitely win.")

How nice it would be if all temptations were nicely and clearly labelled a la "Pilgrim's Progress". We'd all give Doubting Castle a wide berth, as we would Vanity Fair (where pilgrims are pressured into purchasing all sorts of vanities: houses, lands, trades, places, honors, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures, and delights of all sorts, as wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls, precious stones...). And how helpful it would be if all people were conveniently named so we'd know whom to walk alongside and whom to ignore: "Hullo, your name's Mr. Worldly Wise? Oh, right. Good day to you then."

But life is not a pantomime or a morality play where situations are clearcut and people are either wholly good or wholly bad.

Neither is life anything like Doom: there are no God-mode cheats or invincibility hacks available here.

But we do have better stuff: God's word - the lamp for our feet, Jesus - on whom we can fix our eyes (Hebrews 12:2), the Spirit who helps us in our denying of self and cross-carrying, and God's promise - for those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified (Romans 8:29-30).

I suppose for the rest of the days of our lives, the daily, even minute-by-minute, temptation will always be to embrace ourselves, to cast off the cross, to live comfy lives unharrassed by the (increasing) evidence of our own depravity and unhindered by the constant struggle to replace God as king in our lives. Yet, if we remember the faithful who have gone before us on this road, if we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and take up our cross, and run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart (Hebrews 12:1-3).

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
(Philippians 2:5-11)

*************

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Existentialism: Exit Stage Left, Hotly Pursued By A Lobster (Boiled and Slathered with Butter. The lobster, that is.)

The nights (and days even) this last week were cold and dark and cold, bitter wind howling through the eaves, roof creaking under the heavy drumming of the rain, thunder rumbling grumbling nearby.

So we took a break from wanting to throttle a really rather garrulous apostle and writing a talk to horse around messily with a 1 kg slab of chocolate, a hot oven and the last bits of a punnet of raspberries.

Late in the week, family friends were doing their own horsing around (an intense programme of Beethoven's "Kreutzer" and Prokofiev's "Sonata No.2 in D Major", with a pretty Paganini Cantabile and Wieniawski's showpiece "Scherzo-Tarantella" thrown in for good measure), on their own instruments of choice, for a good cause. After strings were spectacularly broken and manicured hands were wrung and big taitai hair was bobbed about, there were 5 ovations and a cheeky section of the audience demanding an encore.

Later still, thanks to someone's generosity and a timetable swept clear by the rain, there was the drapping of bodies over cushy armchairs and picking up where we'd left off in our distant past, bridging that gap between the cold harsh plateau where Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche were encamped, and the psychedelic drug-addled bivouac of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S Burrough. After much girding of loins (the loins, that is, of the lamb that was in the stew - with splashes of red wine), there was settling into the stacks of Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger tottering beckoningly on the table. And in the wee hours of the morning, when the storm had exhausted itself into a tired sullen patter, we moved onto the sea of Jean-Paul Sartre (also garrulous), Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus (well, if Dubya can...), Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Fyodor Dostoevsky spread across the floor. Balanced precariously on one pile was a healthy snifter of single malt whisky, neat, for mouthwash, because existentialists leave behind a nauseating blandness in the oral cavities.

In between readings, there was some cheese and port for fortification (pun fully intended). And, because of Sartre's smoky underground St.-Germain-des-Prés dancehalls and "Le jazz, c’est comme les bananes, ça se mange sur place" ("Jazz is like a banana. It has to be consumed on the spot."), there was very bad jitterbugging to Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Benny Goodman and Miles Davies. Then bhangra-ing and slowdancing to Nouvelle Vague. Then also, because it is only by making decisions that we become significant, there was hilarious pretendingtobeinthethroesofunrequitedlove singing along to Maurice Chevalier, Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel and Yves Montand.

But if making decisions to please only ourselves and instant gratification are the only things that give us value in life, then we would be very sad gits indeed. No wonder Sartre and Beauvoir spent a good bit of their lives hepped up on caffeine, drugs and whisky (well, Sartre more than Beauvoir: late in life, he was haunted by the delusion that he was being stalked by a giant lobster).

(The story about reading existentialists is this: that just like how it is by living abroad for a period that one understands more distinctly what it is to be a born and bred Singaporean, so it is by touring (touring only hor, correctives welcome!) foreign worldviews that one sees more clearly, by contrast, contradiction and negation, what it means to be Christian.)

Lots of things need more thinking about than there was time for, just me 2¢:
Rude First Intro
I first knew of Simone de Beauvoir, in the most unlikely of ways, as the woman who denied A.J. Liebling (famed, amongst other things, for his Rabelaisian appetite and memorable gastronomic descriptions of Parisian meals, a journalist of a golden generation) a pleasant dinner at Mme. G.'s. Mme. G's, according to Liebling had been "more than a place to eat, although one ate superbly there...Madame was a bosomy woman - voluble, tawny, with a big nose and lank black hair - who made one think of a Saracen...Her conversation was a chronicle of letters and the theater" ("Between Meals"). Returning to Mme. G's some months later, Liebling was distraught to find that the original restaurant had been replaced by poor pretenders to the throne. Upon enquiry, he confirmed that Mme. G., ill, had sold the lease and the good will and had definitely retired.

"What is the matter with her?" I asked in a tone appropriate to fatal disease.
"I think it was trying to read Simone de Beauvoir," he said. "A syncope."

(A.J. Liebling, "Between Meals")

Nihilism
Understandably, those historically categorised as existentialists do not seem to have agreed to a definition of existentialism amongst themselves. If we go with Sartre, whose name is unremittingly linked to the philosophy, existentialism is "the attempt to draw all the consequences from a position of consistent atheism".

Assume as Nietzsche's soundbyte goes, "God is dead" and matter is all there is and we live in a closed universe, then humans are the only conscious beings. But we have no way of knowing that it is true that matter is all there is or that we live in a closed universe; we have no way of knowing what is reality. Then, there is also no such thing as right or wrong, moral or immoral, and everything is meaningless. Life and death are meaningless. Suicide is a mere act amongst many other acts like ordering food in a restaurant or writing a note. There is no value, significance, dignity or worth in anything. The examined life is not worth living. Complete nihilism.

Atheistic Existentialism
However, very few people can continue to subscribe to nihilism and live. Enter stage right: the atheistic existentialists. James Sire elucidates his understanding of the basic beliefs of atheistic existentialists and how they attempt to save themselves from the dark void of nihilism, from a universe devoid of any meaning:

1. The cosmos is composed solely of matter, but to human beings reality appears in two forms - subjective and objective. The objective world is the world of material, of inexorable law, of cause and effect, of chronology, of flux, of mechanism. Human beings know of the external, objective world by virtue of careful observation, recording, hypothesizing, checking hypotheses by experiment and ever refining theories and proving guesses about the lay of the cosmos we live in. The subjective world is the world of the mind, of consciousness, of awareness, of freedom, of stability. Because, Sartre says, "the effect of all materialism is to treat all men, including the one philosophising, as objects, that is, as an ensemble of determined reactions in no way distinguished from the ensemble of qualities and phenomena which constitute a table or a chair or a stone" ("Existentialism") and yet, the one philosophising is self-conscious and self-aware (unlike the unconsciousness of the machinery of the universe), so self-conscious and self-aware beings are to find their value and meaning and significance in the subjective world. Our significance is not dependent on the facts of the material objective world over which we have no control, but on the consciousness of the subjective world over which we have complete control.
   
2. For human beings alone, existence precedes essence; people make themselves who they are. "If God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept and...this being is man. First of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself" (Sartre, "Existentialism"). Remember the distinction drawn between the objective and the subjective worlds. The objective world is a world of essences - everything comes bearing its nature: salt is salt, trees are tree, ants are ant. Only human beings are not human before they make themselves to be so. Each of us makes himself to be human by what we do with our self-consciousness and our self-determinacy. "At first [man] is nothing. Only afterwards will he be something, and he himself will have made him what he will be" (Sartre, "Existentialism").
   
3. It follows from proposition 2 that each person is totally free as regards their nature and destiny. Each of us is uncoerced, radically capable of doing anything imaginable with our subjectivity. We can think, will, imagine, dream, project visions, consider, ponder, invent. Each of us is king in our own subjective world.
4. However, the highly wrought and tightly organised objective world stands over against human beings and appears absurd. To us subjective beings, the facticity, the hard coldness, of the objective world seems alien. As we make ourselves to be by fashioning our subjective world, we see the objective world as absurd: it does not fit us. Our dreams and visions, our desires, all our inner world of value runs smack up against a universe that is impervious to our wishes. The toughest fact to transcend is the ultimate absurdity - death. We are free only as long as we are alive. When we die, each of us is just an object among other objects.
5. In full recognition of and against the absurdity of the objective world, the authentic person must revolt and create value. Because nothing is of value in the objective world in which we become conscious, we are free to choose our meanings and our significance. We are "condemned to be free", but in this freedom, while we are conscious, we can create value for ourselves and affirm our own worth. Our objective should be to live an "authentic" existence by keeping ever aware of the absurdity of the cosmos but rebelling against that absurdity by creating meaning in life. "The meaning of a man's life consists in proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key" (Fyodor Dostoevsky, "Notes From Underground"). A good action, therefore, is a consciously chosen action. "To choose to be this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose, because we can never choose evil. We always choose the good" (Sartre, "Existentialism"). So the good is whatever a person chooses; the good is part of subjectivity, it is not measured by a standard outside the individual's consciousness.
   

Though I knew not existentialism by name, I was greatly attracted to it, for a short while, as a kid. Thanks, amongst other things, to a S$5 copy of "Thus Spake Zarathustra" (unearthed in a secondhand bookshop in Holland Village while hiding from wrath of the school principal) and its logical consequences, I was very early on appraised of the nihilistic notion that life was meaningless and therefore not worth living. However, while systematically thinking about the suicide option and methodically researching various methods of committing it, I came upon Rollo May, an existential psychologist. Having already wandered through various psychological texts by the end of primary school and having thought rather poorly of the likes of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, Rollo May came as the proverbial breath of fresh air because, to my puny nub of grey matter, his theories considered situations that identified with my perception of reality and offered solutions that majored neither in self-help superficiality nor wayout weirdity. (He also disagreed somewhat with Freud and itching ears like these things.) Yes, he said, the lack of absolutes in the world does necessarily cause uncertainty and despair. Yes, there is evil in everyone. But we find our value in having the courage to move forward inspite of our despair, in taking responsibility for our anxiety. We are to live a radical, passionate, authentic existence - life without passion and risk and commitment is phony. (See, for example, Albert Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus")

Problems With Existentialism
Enamoured as I was for, maybe, 2 months, it was distasteful to live life purposefully when, infact, in reality, there was no purpose to be found. That was phony. It smacked of both the blinkered positive-thinking and pearlywhite dentalwork of American motivational speakers and the ineffectual intellectual games one plays to mess with the minds of school discipline masters. (Kierkgaard's prescription of a "leap of faith" in face of the absurd, posited by many a vocational religious, seemed no better. Pascal's wager seemed a common-sensical enough way to proceed, but the question in this pluralistic society would be: which God or gods? Sartre simply condemned all these practices as "bad faith", and they are rather cowardly self-delusions.)

Solipsism
Also, various practical problems are associated with the universal subjectivity of ultimate worth (other than the issue of whether existentialism itself is subject to subjectivity). What follows on from subjectivity is solipsism, the affirmation that each person alone is the determiner of values and there are thus as many centers of value as there are persons in the cosmos at any one time.

Sartre countered this objection by insisting that every person in meeting other persons encounters a recognisable center of subjectivity. So others like us must be involved in making meaning for themselves. We are all in this absurd world together and our actions affect each other in such a way that "nothing can be good for us without being good for all" (Sartre, "Existentialism"). Moreover, as I act and think and effect my subjectivity, I am engaged in a social activity:"I am creating a certain image of a man of my own choosing. In choosing myself, I choose man" (Sartre, "Existentialism"). People living authentic lives create value not only for themselves, but for others too (Sire, "The Universe Next Door").

Ethics
In a Sartrean universe, the definitions of "good" and "evil" are turned on their heads. Good means the creation of value by choosing. Evil, then is not-choosing; it is passivity, living by the direction of others, being blown around by one's society, not recognising the absurdity of the universe.

Sartre assumes the existence of some standard of morality, even if such morality is on his terms. But his philosophical structure disallows him from having any basis or foundation for such a morality.

This does not explain our universal innate sense of right and wrong, of fairness and justice, of the value of another human life. If goodness is authenticity and authenticity is being true to one's own conscience, integrity, spirit, or character, despite external pressures to the contrary, then I choose whatever pleases me and me alone. But my choice may not be the desired choice of others though in my choosing I choose for others. Therefore, the Nazis, were praiseworthily authentic when they systematically ferreted out and killed Jewish men, women and children; therefore, the Khmer Rouge were doing "good" in wiping out 1.7 - 3 million of their own people.

Even in matters not directly related to life and death, Beauvoir's characters experience the painful consequences of the choices of another - they are taut, nervy, watchful, frantic, manic, depressive and lonely. The lack of values or morals means that no one can be trusted because everyone acts purely for their own pleasure and comfort. Everyone lies to each other. Their husbands while assuring them of transparency and honesty were not, in fact, faithful and, even when their wives were understanding of their dalliances, the husbands did not deign to tell the truth about their affairs. The wives are left yearning for relational stability, significance, value and certainty of the future. (Beauvoir's answer to this seems to be that they too should inflict themselves on others in similar ways.)

The truth is that we live life predicated on the unconscious tenet that there is an objective standard external to ourselves and that standard necessarily shapes the proper actions and relationships between subjects.

(Also, the mere methods by which Sartre conveys his thoughts on existentialism - essays, novels, plays, lectures, suggest a deterministic world where there are rules about communication and language. How self-stultifying.)

Greatness of Nihilism and Existentialism
The greatness of nihilism, though, is that it courageously and clearly presents the implications of a world without God. It honestly acknowledges that people do actually live as though God is non-existent or dead. No faffing about, no hiding behind pretty intellectual theories. The basic truth about man and his condition in a world without God is that life is meaningless and bleak. And what is interesting about existentialism is that underlying all the variations on a theme is the concept that man is somehow estranged from his essential nature.

But existentialism as salvation from nihilism is, to put it mildly and politely, both externally and internally incoherent and practically untenable.

Exit Stage Left

Ultimately, Sartre's pour-soi philosophy seems more a lifetime's work of justifying his rebellious urge, intellectual posturing and selfish self-indulgence than vice versa. The diaries, letters and autobiographies of Sartre and Beauvoir show that in real life, they sought to attain their worth not from their own choices or being true to that which was internal and within them, but to the external pleasures and affirmation that those choices afforded - young lovers to stave off the fear of mortality, aging and death, attention and approval from others. Beauvoir said of one of her lovers, Claude Lanzmann, 17 years her junior, that above all, he gave her "freedom from [her] age" (note, not freedom from oppressive societal values etc). Despair and depression ensued when the result of their choices was not as they desired, and drugs and alcohol were abused to rid them of this ennui, this meaningless void in themselves and the hollow emptiness they saw at the heart of all things.

Existentialists lived, communicated, felt and made decisions according to certain values that were not the direct outworking of their philosophy. Even if atheistic existentialists say they are more moral or ethical than theists, by their own stated beliefs, they have no claim on any system of morality or ethics. Arguably, this does not necessarily prove that there is a higher moral order or a higher being; social contract, Darwanian social theory, utilitarianism or one's pick-and-mix of sociological-ethical theories might be able to explain perceived social codes without resorting to the presence of a god.

But...

...while it may not be a terribly intellectually-sexy observation, if human beings do actually live according to certain epistemologies even if they cannot theoretically prove the truth of such epistemologies, then whatever the niceties and fetching intricacies of these epistemologies, they cannot practically hold water unless they assume that however absurd the objective world, it cannot be ignored. For if you think the world is illusory or that you can out-think the law of gravity, and you step off the top of a tall building, you can be sure that you'll end up a sorry splat on the pavement below.

And of all the competing worldviews, the Christian one contains an eminently viable epistemology based on historical facts. It is deliciously coherent both externally and internally. Christians are given a strong foundation for ultimate knowledge, meaning, love, hope, truth, joy, and assurance for the future. But it is not mere cowardly "bad faith" or wishful thinking or living on Cloud Cuckoo Land, it is based on objective facts, the same facts that we depend upon throughout our daily lives. Fierce!

...

In the morning, the air was fresh. The Planetshakers were "Arise"-ing (for the textured, layered sound; definitely not for the existential saturated-self lyrics) and Jack Johnson's "In Between Dreams" was discovered in between the pages of a book where someone at some point in spacetime had co-opted it as a bookmark. There was basking in the sunshine, birds in the azure sky, croissants and a tin of crème de marrons chestnut spread each (yay, Clement Faugier!) and strong coffee.

Jabba the Hutt exits stage right

Righto. So much for me 2¢. Now that that's been pensieved, back to writing that elusive talk.

PS: One is immensely tempted to pun "the wall-eyed Sartre", but that, even to the existentialist, would be cruel.

In Which There Was A Thunderstorm and Some Curry

On a stormy night, when nothing can be heard but the roar of water crashing down from the dark expanse above and nothing can be seen in the pitch-blackness but the hazy hazard lights of passing cars, it is a joyful thing to walk home under the pounding rain, completely cold and thoroughly wet, jeans hanging heavily, when there is the knowledge that you will be greeted with the warm smell of bubbling tomato soup curling, like a welcome home, from under the front door.

And then, furthermore and additionally, because there is the understanding that between you, Carl Maria von Weber and a glass of shiraz there will be chopping and dicing and stirring in the heated kitchen as the clothes dry on your back, a good hot pot of chicken curry will sit rustled up on the dinner table for the starving bedraggled waterrats late arrivals: loads of gravy for the one who adores gravy on his choice of carbohydrate, creamy bulbs of garlic for the one who enjoys his garlic creamy, sautéed onions for the one who loves her onions sautéed, and tender chicken pieces for the one who must have her chicken tender.

How Excellent Your Name
O Lord our God
How excellent Your name is
How excellent Your name in all the earth

Your glory fills the heavens
Beyond the farthest star
How excellent Your name in all the earth

When I think about the heavens
The moon and all the stars
I wonder what You ever saw in me

But You took me and you loved me
And You've given me a crown
And now I'll praise Your name eternally
Text & Music: P. Jacobs