Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours

Mother Teresa was not like the rest of us. She was still human, of course, but unlike me, she's very determined and driven on what she wanted to do with her life. At the age of ten she wanted to be a nun, and she started two years later.

I was reading her life story. How she refused to have a ceremony/party to honor her work and asked if the $6,000 could be sent to the poor in Calcuta. In an interview, someone asked what would a person do to promote the world peace. She said, "Go home and love your family." But her answer is contradictory to what she's done. Her home is in Albania. And her family was there also. She left home to build a charity ministry to take care of the lepper, the sick, everyone who is shunned from their family. And what she had done, was not only creating a "world peace" that had influenced the political situation around the area, but also inspired many people to show care and love to others.

And of course she was not the only one who did the work of taking care of others. But there is something in her humility, her simplicity, that is just different from others. If she was glad and happy helping the poor, was it part of her self-interest that she's doing that? What motivated her, really? Why did she do that? Why she wanted to be a nun?

I believe that motivation matters. Mother Teresa proved it. Many people might do what she did, but her motivation, her love, was just made a world of difference. Her famous motto is "small things done with love will change the world." She didn't say "small things done with love will change the city. or the church. or somebody. She gave away love and it kept coming back to her, making her a well of love where everyone around her could feel.

I might be going to the PCUSA mission trip to the Gulf Coast in March, if I can get my application on time. There are more people interested than the available spot. I will also go with the Vineyard church group to New Orleans in April. Another great thing about my job that lets me keep saving time to use as I please (with the boss' permission, of course).

I am worry about my motivation more than I am worry about budget or timing or my availability at work. I have to admit that one of the reasons I am going is because I feel good when I help others. Does it mean I am being selfish or am I serving other people and fulfilling my needs, too? Or am I doing this because God's love is overflowing in me; it is impossible to hold the fountain shut.

Because of my job, sometimes I had a hard time to fit the schedule to serve with people at my downtown church. But God had led me to another church, who is like me, is overflowing with love, they can't hold the door shut. I am comfortable to go to two churches at the same time. Afterall, it's about the big C church, where Christ is, and how we could further His Kingdom. I have a small group who will go out twice a month greeting people and showing them that God loves them. We coordinate our own supplies. We will go both with the church and by ourselves. My other small group, that consist of more younger crowd, go around downtown more often than I would be. I know how precious the freedom of speech is; I've lived the opposite. I am comfortable to proceed people and hand them God's love without being pushy. We offer prayers only if people wanted to, and most of the time, people are open to prayers. One day in my downtown church, a navigator missionary from Norway who just came back to Ohio said the perfect sentence: "As believers we've loss confidence that people are hungry. And we have the answer."

But until I gave away love, I would never found love. Until I had the right motivation - to love others - I would never completely be satisfied of what I do with my life.

To love at all is to be vulnerable

The longer version is "To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable." -- CS Lewis.

I am not just talking about eros, but also platonic love, agape, and love to thy neighbor. It's easy to say it, Jack! But, it hurts like hell when it happened. Muffin was my last attempt to love a pet. He (I thought it was he until I found out the fish was pregnant and gave birth to nine tiny other fish)/she died on me without a cause. I almost, loved her as if she was my friend. And then she selfishly left me with her nine kids alone. What a person should do with nine tiny fish? I didn't cry yet, I was determined that it was my last time to have a pet! I got Muffin from my friend so that I could grew a healthy lotus plant. The lotus plant died and the fish remain, temporarily.

I gathered a courage to have a fish after thinking that it won't hurt that bad if I lost it. I've lost two dogs, a cat, and two rabbits. It was not fun. But it was really not depend on what type of animal it is, it's how we feel towards the creature. I love Muffin, eventhough she was a mosquito fish if compared with other type of fish with lots of physical beauty. Coming home to see Muffin was a treat! Seeing her hiding from me when I gave her food gave me giggle. So when I lost her, it was not fun either.

Losing a love is way more painful because, of course, there were more senses that got involved, more memories created, feelings, reactions remembered. It felt almost like a high dose of serotonin mixed to raise adrenaline. Jack said that I had to be vulnerable to love, and loving is better for our well being than turning ourselves into monsters by containing our hearts in a safety box. Locked. But being able to survive from it was another adventure.

Last night, I asked my best friend how we can find true love. He said, "By not looking for it." The same way with happiness, you don't go around and search for it, just enjoy life and focus life on God.

My sister, the best sister in the world, never gives up on encouraging me to be vulnerable. Although our lives are very different, she tries to understand who I am and who I want to become, and reminding me that, I can't give up on this, because God put the desire in my heart for a reason.

When I lost Muffin, I started to wonder if her death was my fault. When I lost my boyfriend, I wondered about the same thing. I probably contributed in Muffin's death, as my friend told me I was not a very good fish mom because I left her for two days. But, relationship is a two way street, and when it doesn't work, it doesn't mean there were something wrong, it's just, doesn't work. Period.

It took me awhile to get into this point. It has been four months since the break up! And it will take me awhile to love someone again. Until I gather the courage, pick up every piece of it, and start to move on. Vulnerable is not an easy word to spell.

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.

Don't make me come down there. -- God.

I am blessed with friends with their own characters whom had taught me to respect differences in backgrounds, cultures and point of views. We seems to agree to disagree, well, most of the times, anyways. More than everything, I am amazed how they could still be my friends despite of my opiniated minds and how my take in certain issues could sound extreme (I realized). Over dinner several weeks ago right after I picked up my car, we talked about silly things the last things you would want to know, to global warming. And then they began to skew their heads a little, noticing this isn't a topic we would agree on.

Soon we went back again to our previous conversations about whether global warming is a hoax or it is true. I used a recent argument about how in the last century we had extremely raised the temperature of the earth to a certain degree that had changed the balance of the environment. Scientists have found ways to track temperatures back to 1000 years ago through digging layers of ice. The truth is, we're melting. Every second.

Now, why would we (christian) "seem" to refuse the facts? God never did say that the world won't change. God said we have to take care of it. And we might have failed to take care of it. I have a lot of respect of scientists because they have the "how" answer; but I know God has the "why" answer of all things.

Each of us then reached the point that, no matter what happened to the world, whether global warming is true (it's true!!!) or not, the three of us agreed that it is our responsibility to sustain the world we live in. To be a steward of what God had given to us.

if love is blind, friendship closes its eyes....

The beach house was the last place in this world I want to be in knowing what she did. I heard the waves crashing to the rocky beach. In the dark I could feel in my eyes the lighthouse moving its head in a rhythm, offering a certain hope that there was someone out there. She fixed my blanket. She checked if I were awake The next morning, on May 14, 1998, we went back to the city.

Was there something wrong, she said, noticing my silence for the last four hours we were working together in the lab. I said yes but only in my brain.

I showed her the newspaper instead. Yesterday, three students from Trisakti Christian University were shot by the military police while they were demonstrating, demanding to ask Soeharto to resign, to lower gas price, and to clean the government from corruption and nepotism. None of which was new to our ears. I heard that we're having a strike too, today. Are you planning on going? I said to her. I am always skeptical in "repairing" our government; it's just unimaginable to me, the amount of work and the result that will follow is not worth it. And if there is a noble thing to do with my life, trying to cut a three hundred year old banyan tree with a knife is just a waste of time. I am not planning to, she said.

The hour was two and no one was in the building except us and one security guard. I continue to edit the reports while you were working on the graphs. This report needs to be done by tomorrow and we both know we're not supposed to be here. The office of environmental conservation is located about a block away from the main boulevard where the main students’ demonstration was happening. I heard a couple of our classmates are there too. Too many bad things happened when we're protesting; there's nothing in my brain saying that it's a good thing to do. No matter how much we said we practice "non-violence", some inconsiderate people would start the fire, throw some rocks to the military police, turning a car, or any object appeared in their eyes to be burned, and will trigger more violence, more kidnapping, from police.

It was 15:00 p.m. when we heard the gunfire. There was no radio, no TV in this building, only local telephone that connect us to the outside world. No body else unless the two of us in this building. This was one of the days that I was grateful to be alive and ask God to give me more time to live. Nothing we could do except stay there and hide. I talked with my roommate on the phone. We heard that students' demonstration is out of control. The Military Police were arresting each of them. One of my classmates injured in the head.

By six o’clock the situation was under control but for some reason the town was shut down by the incident. The electricity line was cut off and a curfew was enforced. She went to the west; I went to the east side of the campus.

I wish I could say goodbye to her and told her I already forgive her for what she had done that night. I may be her friend, but I am not a judge who decides if what she did was wrong or right. The next morning I found out that the police had randomly arrested the students. I’ve never heard anything from her since she went the other way.

I wish I had a drop of courage to just say it.

*On May 14^th, President Soeharto was forced to resigned after the incident that killed at least six students and countless of injured and missing ones in the demonstration to end the corruption, lower the price of gasoline, and economic recovery. The horrendous violence on May 14 and 15 left estimated 500 dead, and there were other deaths as rioting swept through the cities of Surakarta, Yogyakarta, Semarang, Surabaya, Medan, Bandar Lampung, Palembang, and Ujung Pandang. While an uneasy calm seems to have been restored nationwide as of this writing, the likelihood of another round of violent unrest is high as long as fundamental economic and political problems remain unresolved. Around 570 churches were burned, 3,000 Chinese were raped, and I couldn't recall how many people were killed in that day. Satanic, demonic actions, I would say, that drove the mass to do those horrible things.

I don't know what the future holds, but I know what holds the future.

It's a relieve to know that some things in life are just beyond our control. I thought of that again, and said, is it? Isn't it painful knowing a destructive situation that we have no control off?

Tonight, again, I was questioning what it means to be a friend. I have good friends, and they meant a lot to me in good and bad times, but last night, I was examining my self if I would be a good friend when I knew a destruction is going on in a friend's life and I don't have a control over. Somethings are just beyond my control in my life, let alone in someone else's. I asked God if I should totally withdraw from the situation and let this friend learn the hard way, or be with them at all times without judging and let the friend realize what's going on.

I don't want my friend to get hurt. It's not like the person doesn't know what's wrong or right. It's not rocket science, but some clouds in our eyes when everything looks rosy ahead of us, we don't know the next turn is a dead end.

At dawn, my conclusion was to support this person by prayers. That's all I know what to do, especially when I don't know what else to do. When I know I am not in control, it was a relieve because I know there's someone who is totally in control of the universe and every creature in it. Things might get rough (or may not) for this person, and being a good friend, all I can do is pray. And let the one who knows the future knows we're surrendering to Him.