Eyes wide open

At this time each year I hear the message of Easter at church: Jesus, who was God as a human being, willingly gave himself to be killed for our sake. This was to take the punishment for our sins. Three days later he rose from the dead. He later ascended into heaven, and we can follow after him in eternity. This year, I think about this message in the context of a world like ours today where morality is a hugely important conversation. I don't mean morality as in exclusive church-ey piety, which is definitely not a central conversation (but rather, unfortunately, the butt of jokes). I mean morality as in living justly and ensuring no one lives in injustice, and at the same time cultivating patience, kindness, generosity, and other virtues in myself.  On the matter of justice, the past year's enforced shutdown of normal life has given me more breath and attention to observe and respond, in what way I can, to grave, prolonged injustices around me. I think of police brutality, raci...

The only book I've read by Dietrich Bonhoeffer is Life Together , which comprises his reflections on how Christians do community together, or to take a cringey contemporary Christian phrase: how Christians do life together  (cringes to the point of physical crumpling).   He provides several insights from his experience & theology which really put a finger on many (potential or actual) problems hiding within our pursuits in "Christian community" today. I identify with many of them: both as defects in the way I approach community and also as defects in Christian communities I've tried to be a part of which really just turned me away. Thank you to my wonderful boyfriend Yi Khen for knowing just what to get me for Christmas <3 One of the most helpful distinctions that Bonhoeffer draws in his book is that between spiritual community  and emotional community . This is how he first explains it: "Because Christian community is founded solely on Jesus Christ, it is...

I've not known nearly as much pain as many others have, though there are griefs that still weigh heavily on the chest on long quiet nights. What I write today is not meant to heal anyone's pain completely, or even substantially. The process of bearing is hard enough, let alone the process of healing. But I write this to reflect on the meaning of pain, first to help myself make sense of it, and second, hopefully, to offer you some comfort as I do—especially at a time when I know many are aching from the weight of a pandemic that has not lifted for a year, and injustices that have not lifted for ages. C.S. Lewis has written quite a lot on pain. Of his books, I've most recently finished  The Pilgrim's Regress , which is an allegorical novel recounting Lewis's own journey in figuring out the meaning of life and joy and pain, and everything.  At one point, the main character John (representing Lewis) is walking with a Guide. We're not told much about who the Guide is...

Photo by  Mink Mingle  on  Unsplash In 2020, I listened to 955 artists. My top song, which is 8 minutes 15 seconds long (Josh Yeoh's Here in the Waiting ), was streamed 86 times, making for 709 minutes 30 seconds streaming this song alone, or nearly half a day. And that's just one song by one artist, out of the 955 others. A few weeks ago I came across the idea of studying songs  in the Bible, producing what we'd call a biblical theology of song . I hate how academic that sounds, because enjoying a song is usually a natural, fluid, emotional process. But I realised that by surveying songs in the Bible—asking why, and in what circumstances, they are sung—I learned a lot about how to appreciate a song. Songs have been sung from ancient times, for much richer purposes than solely entertainment.  #1 Expressing beliefs and emotions Songs in the Bible are sung to express beliefs and emotions in a way that prose can't. Some of the most well-known songs in the...

This year, like many other people, I couldn't go home for Christmas. It was my first Christmas away from home. The winter is also cold and snow-less where I am, which is the worst weather combination. I'm thankful though that a family at church invited me over to have lunch with their family on Christmas Day.  Experiencing this rather sombre Christmas, coming at the end of an awful year that still hasn't ceased to be awful, I've got to peel away the candy wrapper of my childhood Christmasses and notice how little of the night of Jesus's birth matched the tinseled festivities we've grown familiar with.  There was a lot of pain beyond Mary's labour that night long ago, which even marshmallows in hot chocolate would not have remedied. This variance between the darkness of that night and the joy it still rightly inspires, gives Christmas a deep, meaningful glow that we've had the opportunity to reclaim this year.  The first Christmas was away from home I...

(Expanded from my eulogy at his funeral—celebrating the life of David Ho Lim Cheng and his return to his Maker)  My yea yea was nothing short of an excellent man. He was defined by a few unchanging values. Some of those values were all-important: for example, that all of life is lived to God's glory, that you use your might not to serve your own interests but to serve God and others, and finally,  that you never stop serving, not even in old age.  These were the values that yea yea held to strongly, and it determined how he spent his days.  There were also those values that yea yea held to quite strongly but which were perhaps less serious: for example, you never give up an opportunity to eat oh chien , however many there are in front of you, you always bring your granddaughters to KFC when your son drops them off at your house, and, as became evident in the last few weeks, you never decline tau fu fah , not even if you are semi-conscious and bedridden. Yea yea lived...

I was recalling some things I read in C.S. Lewis's autobiography Surprised by Joy  (an excellent read). I came across his account of journeying with literature while exploring religion, and he wrote about a curious distinction between the more religious and less religious writers. I'm not sure how strongly people would agree with his observation, but in any case, that was his personal experience in figuring out what he thought of Christianity. One thing I think is for sure though, is that his observation probably doesn't hold up for art in the past few decades.  Here is what he said:  “All the books were beginning to turn against me. Indeed, I must have been blind as a bat not to have seen it long before, the ludicrous contradiction between my theory of life and my actual experiences as a reader. George MacDonald had done more to me than any other writer; of course it was a pity that he had that bee in his bonnet about Christianity. He was good in spite of it. Chesterton ...