God is dead. -- Nietzche. Nietzche is dead. -- God

So did Thoreau. The great thinker I admire for his eloquent thought and walked of life to preserve the wild, to enjoy nature in every detail and its broad horizon, the idea of social justice that requires every man/woman to live in freedom to enjoy every life.

The ironic truth that most of the great thinkers, artists, famous people were not acknowledged until they died. As if they should've been born in an older world. As if our stubborn-ness had proved that we refused to listen. As if the words these great thinkers told, the music they created, the novels they wrote need to sink in time before they burst up in the sky and into our brains. We owed to these dead men lessons of life that some we agreed other time we despised. We owed Thoreau to his thoughtfulness to go back to nature, to preserve the wild as a way for us to return to humanity, and to live with others, as much as we owed those thoughts that influenced other great thinkers (and doers) such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

Another ironic truth for me (as if truth is liquid, when it's not), is that Thoreau and Gandhi and Martin Luther King were just mortal, who had a life span, an expired date, and later on decomposed into nothingness. There's no difference between them and us, since we're part of the earth also. But there's a difference between us and the birch trees, and the peat moss, and the Walden Pond, and the water, and the fish that live in it. We are creatures with minds, but I heard that dolphin had more intelligence than most animals, and elephants have minds that could recognized themselves, and we heard enough about chimpanzees.

We have souls, they don't.

One thing I realized when I read Thoreau's quotes while staring at a picture of a leaf float on ice, was that how mighty is God who put understanding upon my mind. As if He holds the control of who would believe it and who would not -- that might lead into questioning the fairness of God, but no one could question God -- ; even the three dead people I mentioned had different point of view about God. How different does faith make. And how this faith grew no matter what. And how the faith could grow stronger when I searched more often in every corner. How when I was mind-bogglingly amazed with nature and how it changed and transformed, deconstructed and reincarnated, however adapt; I could see the creator behind all of this, and how my mind could see this because He enabled me to.

Yesterday, God gave me another revelation for life, that "what was I thinking" moment, as his way to safe my future moments. Well, that's another story that won't be told here. But it was definitely not a coinsidence that I heard a christian instrumental music in a greek take out restaurant. I was in a neighborhood of supposedly open-minded, educated people, probably where Nietzche worshipper, Thoreau admirers alike live. When the server hums with the song, I was glad, I thought she knew about it. But then someone asked what kind of music it was, and I was not even thinking anymore when I said it out loud, "It's a christian music, I am humming the lyrics," and then I stopped humming when many eyes stared at me as if I had three feet. I was not ashamed that I am a christian. I have Jesus, you can take the rest of the world from me. I admire Thoreau and took the lessons he had from his writings that I thought was right and pitch the ones that are not. I love MLK for his example of aiming higher in life and work for the supposedly most impossible thing to do and his example of non-violence act to tell our words to the authority. But above all the philosophers I love, I love Jesus, and you can love Jesus in this free country. And I can sing christian songs, even among people who despise christians, or generalized about who we are. I am a friend of Jesus, whether you like it or not.