Good-Bye for now...

I have been concentrating on constructing my new blog: www.mindblink.org

It appears that I will not have any time left to write any posts here. It was fun while it lasted... Perhaps I will be back someday.

Please come and visit my new blog.

What I've Learned

Oh, and to share my latest:

I made a video of what I've learned in the past year about myself, religion, faith, people, different perspectives, and life in general. It contains bits and pieces of my thoughts from previous posts. In case you didn't see it before, here's the latest revised version:

Slow Posting

To my readers (all three of you):

I apologize for not having the time to post any new thoughts here. I have been a little preoccupied with my new business adventure as an MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) Practitioner. I have been working hard on my MBTI blog recently.

But do not fret....

Cultural Differences

I have information about "Type and Culture" on my MBTI blog, in case anyone is interested.

Learning to Breathe

WARNING: The following may cause nausea, vomiting, and/or uncontrollable convulsion/seizures in those of the non-Christian persuasion. Read at your own risk. ;-)

These thoughts are more as a challenge to those ‘go-get-em’ proactive prayer-warrior types.

What is prayer? The question came up during a recent discussion at church. Hmmm… We agreed that prayer is not what most of us think of it as. Jesus taught us how to pray via the Lord’s Prayer. But how many of us truly understand what it is that he was pointing to?

Prayer, to me, is about constantly reminding myself to lean into him. It seems that I often suffer from short-term memory loss when it comes to this. (Is it old age?)

“Come to me, all who are weary and I will give you rest… Take my yoke upon you… My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Are they just words of a lunatic? Jesus speaks in metaphors all the time. (my kind of a guy!! ) His words speak to me in this way:

“Just breathe... Take deep, slow breaths, and ride the waves of life. Trust in the breath that I give you, and I will not let you drown. Breathe with me…”

Okay… I know some of you may now think that I’m a lunatic. **shrug** But I have faith that you’ll get over it. ;-)

Now, this is God’s honest truth: The moment I tense up and forget to breathe, I find myself beginning to sink. Then the waves start to crash in on top of me. The world becomes a scary place. I end up furiously swimming for my life with no end in sight… and slowly running out of air. But if I remind myself that all I have to do is just breathe the abundant supply of air that is always available to me, then I feel myself relax and I am able to ride the waves. When I realize that it’s my failure to trust that will cause me to drown, not the waves themselves, then there is no more fear.

Remember? The word spirit comes from the Latin word meaning breath. In my view, the Holy Spirit is the air that we breathe, which is Christ.

It took a long time for me to learn how to breathe. It is amazing that something that seems so simple and elementary ends up being the hardest thing to learn.

Yes… the way I see it, prayer is simply remembering to breathe…






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Image:
Corbis

My New Toy

The Flip camera is the best invention of the recent past!! Yay!

Okay... please don't judge my video-making skills...**cringe**... but I'm rather pleased with the way my very first video project turned out. I only learned how to use the Windows Movie Maker two days ago (where have I been?). It's amazingly easy... ergo, my finished project below:

Are We Putting Our Children at Risk?

Are we putting our children at risk of fundamentalism by sending them to Sunday school? If so, as Christians, what are our options? And does anyone even care?




In a discussion over at Hugo's blog, the subject of children and Sunday school came up as follows:

Marthelize: Even if I think back to Sunday school, I can’t quite remember being taught anything different from what Angus teaches.

Ben-Jammin: Same here.

Marthelize: Yeah..It a makes me wonder about the merits of sending children to Sunday school if all they get there is “conventional wisdom”.

But it is a much more ‘digestable’ version. How much harm is there in teaching a young child a lesson in holding onto their faith ? As they get older and their faith and spirituality develop, they will learn about the “real” meaning.

Unless they subscribe to the teachings of Buchan and the like. Which I think would be a tragedy since learning about theology from a farmer is like being taught dentistry by a mechanic…

Hugo: The problem the atheists have with that, which they call “moderate faith”, is that it is the “breeding ground” for fundamentalism. It is those that are recruited at a later age. The outspoken “evangelical” atheists, the “new atheist” publishing “movement”, wishes to dry up that pool of moderates, in order to get rid of the pool that feeds the fundies. Because fundies are dangerous.

The “radical” branch of the “emerging church movement” approaches the problem from the other side, developing and evolving the religion to become one that is about a way of life, instead of a “knowledge” tradition (whereby “knowledge” may be the traditional/conservative/incorrect/fundie knowledge of young-earth creationism and science denialism).

To borrow a quote from a comment on How Creationism Destroys Faith (de-conversion.com):

"I think much of the die-hard attitude towards creationism is that fundamentalists honestly don’t seem to have faith in God. They have complete and total faith in the Bible, and if one iota of it is not literally true, then their faith is shredded. For as much as they go on about it’s not a religion, it’s a relationship, they seem to be lacking the relationship part."

The Bible, then, represents their “knowledge tradition”. The knowledge that they feel is important, and must be defended against all competing knowledge.

But I digress…

The question becomes: how can one send someone to Sunday school, if that means a greater risk of them becoming a fundie? I’ve touched on this in the post Children Church Beliefs at Stellenbosch Gemeente, and will come back to interesting developments in the emerging church. (For example, an omega course, the flip-side of the conservative/charismatic-emphasis “alpha course”. Lovely idea…)

You can read the full post (rather long, but well worth the read) here.

I see parents all over America trying to "do the right thing" by sending their children to Sunday school. My husband often tells me of his childhood where he was forced to go to church (Catholic Mass) every Sunday with his brothers, but his parents did not accompany them. Then there are countless parents that I know of personally who are oblivious to anything that the minority (yes, I believe those who actually "think" are the minority) is concerned about when it comes to our future. They neither agree that Christianity (the religious teachings therein) is a part of the problem nor do they care.

The fundies try to force and train their children to become mini-fundies, and the indifferent/ignorant leave their children vulnerable to whoever/whatever is influencing them to follow the status quo.

Am I wrong in thinking that we are the minority? Is there more concern for our children's ability to think for themselves than what I seem to observe? Are we creating our own impending world of mindless sheep who will follow anyone with a soothing voice and carrying a stick? (The stick could be success, wealth, fame, credentials, power, whatever we tend to idolize... including the fear of hell and the hope of heaven.)

www.all-creatures.org

Letting Go

A friend once told me (and I've posted this somewhere before) that in order to be truly free, one has to let go of: 1) the desire to have; 2) the fear to lose; and 3) the need to change.

At the time, I thought I agreed with what he said. I just didn't know how I would be able to achieve that. But the more I think about it, I'm not sure that the "letting go" is possible. I am thinking that those are unavoidable human traits. If I become thirsty, how would I be able to simply "let go" of being thirsty? And why would I want to? I rather enjoy being human for the time being. I'm not quite sure I understand what he meant by those words, but these are my thoughts...

Perhaps the secret lies in being able to accept that we're only human. We cannot transcend humanness. What we must "let go" is the unrealistic expectation of being more than what we are. Wouldn't it make more sense to just embrace our own imperfection and shortcomings? By accepting and embracing our frailties, would we not be able to force our obsessions to lose their power?

My friend Richard tells me, "You are what you do." I have to admit that at first, I did not agree with this statement. But the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that it is very close to the truth. Who we are does get expressed through what we do. What we do is an expression of who we are.

Who I am is what I do... Who I am becomes the expression of life that I breathe... The word spirit comes from the Latin word spiritus, meaning "breath." As we breathe each breath and live the life that we are given in every part, we become the expression of life itself, who is God.

Maybe that's what he meant by "letting go"... ?

All I can say is that I have some very smart and deep-thinking friends. :-)


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Image credit:
Herringer Kiss Gallery

Amazing Amazon.com

May I just point out that Amazon.com is a wonderful place? I don't know how I ever survived without it? :-?

I just discovered this upgrade feature for the books I order from there. Wow! I can't describe how helpful that will be to me in my future research and designing my lessons. Of course, it's not available on all books, but still...

Am I just slow to catch on??

"CHARIOT"

Swing, like a chariot
At the trumpet call
When we're all unsaved,
Swing like a wrecking ball
Like the heart of God
What a mystery
Filled with the wedding feast
For the snakes and bees
With the angel teeth, swing
Come and carry us
Come and marry us
To the blushing circus king
And dance like elephants as he comes to us
Through a fiery golden ring
With a violin and a song to sing
As he brings for us our wings
Now he's one of us
Plays the tambourine
Breaks the bread for us
And sings
Will you wait for us
Will you stay for us
Will you grace us everything
You're a wrecking ball
With a heart of gold
We will wait for it to swing
Like a chariot
Swing it low for us
Come and carry us away
So we will become a happy ending
So we will become a happy ending
Fire come and carry us
Make us shine or make us rust
Tell us that you care for us
We need to hear a word for us
Let your body stand with us
Or let our rags be turned to dust
Chariot you swing for us
We think that you can carry all of us
So we will become a happy ending
So we will become a happy ending
So we will become a happy ending
So we will become a happy ending

Just in case you're missing this...

On Discovery HD:

The Numbers Do Not Lie...

I know... I really should come up with my own original idea for a post. But hey, my brain is shot from thinking too much for my MBTI Workshop I am currently teaching.

Two lessons down, two more to go... Yesterday was the most hectic to date, trying to get my presentation ready for last night in the frantic, last-minute revising mode I always find myself in... not to mention the brilliant ideas that I just cannot do without, which only seem to come up way too close to deadline.

The problem is, whatever it is that I'm working on, it's never good enough. It can always be better. Ergo... the constant edit, re-edit and the countless revisions up to the very last minute. Yep. Perfection is where it's at. **sigh** At least I don't dwell in the past once it's done. There's no time for that, because I have to start making improvements for next time... Ah, life for me is about always moving forward. I cannot sit and idle for very long, which is not always a good thing, I admit. But c'mon, let's not dwell on my shortcomings...

Speaking of perfection, Hemant referred to this on his blog recently, to which I left the following comment. Those of you who like numbers, tell me what you see... (Miller, I know you must have something to say...?)

My theory is this (bear with me, and resist the temptation to roll your eyes):

7 represents perfection.
3 represents whole, fullness (trinity).
10 represents 7 + 3 (perfection + fullness) = completion.
Completion ^ 3 (again, fullness) = 1,000 represents us, here on earth.
12 represents the world (time & humanity) (12 months/12 hrs... 12 desciples)
12 x 12 x 1,000 = 144,000 (where did we see that number before?)

Makes sense to me, as crazy as it sounds... :)

So, along that same line, 666 means none other than "near perfection". Looks like God, walks like God, and talks like God, but is NOT God. Close, but no cigars... But still, it's better than 555, don't you think? You're definitely not a zero, that's for sure... ;)

A New Face on the Scene

Pastor Mike Clawson is a proud new father. Just before Father's Day, too! Very appropriate. As I was gazing at the baby picture he posted on FA, I wondered what the baby is thinking about. I imagined the life ahead of him and the many lives he will be touching. I know I promised no touchy feely posts here, but we're talking about our future, aren't we? Today's babies will become our future. I wonder what that future looks like??? I wrote this poem as a baby gift to him:

Hello little one,
The world awaits you…
What do you see
With your eyes anew?
What do you hear
With your ears so pure?
What do you feel
With your heart afresh?
May you only breathe
The air of love;
May your tiny fingers
Sooth our morrow…

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Image credit:
5xinc (Ints Vikmanis)

To Fit or Not to Fit?

It is amazing what a good night's sleep will do for you. I feel like a different person than I was yesterday. No, I'm not bi-polar. I still stand by everything I said yesterday (though perhaps with a little less intensity). :-)

Anyway, I'm on this new thought. I did an MBTI workshop with a group of teens last night, and it was an eye-opening experience. For them and for me.

One of the parents who came to pick up their teen stayed a while to talk. One of the topics that came up was the difference between the Eastern culture/religion and the Western culture/religion.

The types of behavior that are encouraged and rewarded are different according to our environment. What happens to a child that does not quite fit in with whatever the majority happens to be in the family that he's born into? Neighborhood? Culture? Religion?

When you study the personality type statistics, the modal type is different in each group. As we get older and mature, we tend to gravitate toward where our type fits in well. But we have no choice as to what environment we are born into.

My mind has taken off running, and I can't seem to catch up to it. Do any of you have any thoughts?


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Images:
OpticDistraction-photoblog
Bargainpack.com

Get Real... You're not that great!

Okay. I'm gonna rant a bit here.

I just don't get it. Why are people such snobs? Just because they have the PhDs or what have you, does that give them the right to dismiss people as if they are not worthy to be in their presence?

Get your heads out of your intellectual butts and take a deep breath. You will realize that there are so many more colors in the world than your teeny weeny 8-color crayon box of a brain.

Don't make me come after you. Because I will, you know.

Whole Body Donation?

Is the thought of donating your whole body to science disturbing? Not to me. I do remember making a comment on a thread a while back that I want to donate every part of my body to science. Then about a week ago, I received an email from someone which contained the following paragraph:

Without question, I believe that everyone should consider whole body donation to science, and that all the body tissues and organs be used without any return of remains. Currently, I am a whole body donor to the Anatomic Gift Foundation, located in suburban Baltimore. If you're interested in a no-frills, recycling of your body after death, in which your remains will be utilized for research and transplantation, I would recommend that you call the AGF at 1-800-300-LIFE, and ask for Dawn Bardsley. Dawn's Brother Brent created the national tissue bank services of the AGF, which collect only half of the 1,000 or so cadavers needed for research projects each year. More information, and donor forms, can be found online at www.anatomicgift.com.

I checked out the website, and this particular organization is in Maryland. There are other similar organizations in other parts of the country.

I have absolutely no attachment to my body, and after I die, I don't see any reason to be stingy with it if it could help to improve other lives. Why not? Besides, it will be a huge savings on funeral expenses. Have you seen what the cost of a funeral is lately? It's astronomical. My family can still receive the ashes from the unused parts, and it's free.

I've talked with my family, and I was able to convince them. They can have a big party in honor of me with the money they would save. :-) I am really seriously thinking about this, so if you have any negative thoughts on this, please speak up.

Do you think it's morbid? I know that no one wants to think about death. But death is part of life. To me, there's nothing morbid about it. Of course, I'm not done with this life yet (in fact, I just got started), so I hope I don't have to face the end of it too soon... but I do get excited about what comes next.
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Image:
David Ho
(May I just point out what an awesome artist David Ho is?)

My Defining Moment of Belief

Okay... Here's my revised testimony. As I post this, I'm dedicating it to all of my friendly (and not-so-friendly) friends over at the Friendly Atheist. Yay! ;-) I read this to my fellowship yesterday (before I revised it slightly again). It was much better received than I had feared. I have re-written my testimony (about my 'moment') several times in the last four years, and this is my truth for now. I think it's getting close...

Anyone who knows me well knows that I’ve been conversing on-line with atheist bloggers in the past several months. Recently, a post on Friendly Atheist asked, “What was your defining moment of unbelief?” to which many commented with very honest and painful thoughts. For most, the reasons stated had to do with confusion, loss, disappointment, and rejection. They described many unpleasant experiences they’ve had with Christians. It made me think. I’ve had those similar experiences. I’ve had a few which almost destroyed me. But why haven’t I walked away? Why am I still a believer?

You may not know the term “deconversion”, but that’s what the atheists call the process through which they abandon their religion. Inspired from the thoughts of the atheists, I decided it would be good to write about my own ‘deconversion’ experience, as well as attempt (once again) to describe my defining moment of belief rather than unbelief.

I still remember it clearly, and I’m certain I always will. It was about 7:30 a.m., Friday, April 23, 2004, alone, in my bedroom. It was the single most significant experience of my life, yet it was the most insignificant in nature. I’ve attempted several times in the past to write about this, but I could never get it right… it never seemed quite accurate. I now see that I had been trying to put too much emotion into it; trying to make it somehow more dramatic than it actually was. I realized that I had been trying to mold my experience into a story that I thought people wanted to hear, and it always seemed lacking somehow. I’ve concluded that it was probably because I was still struggling to understand what exactly happened to me. I’ll try to stick to the facts this time and not go into the unimportant details. And no sob stories… no whining. I promise. So here we go.

Christianity, especially the kind presented to me by the evangelicals, had always made me, well… nauseous. The idea of God intrigued me, but nothing that the religious people preached made any logical sense. However, I did buy into the mindset of thinking that religious people were somehow morally superior to the non-believers. Thus, I called myself a Christian just to get the other Christians (and my own conscience) off my back.

Then 9/11 happened. I watched in horror as the Twin Towers crumbled to the ground on my television screen, and I felt something in me die. I saw my beloved city and its people covered in debris and ashes, and I wanted to know why. I started growing feelings of hatred toward religion. I wanted no part of any of it. Why were those people praying on TV? Stop it! I wanted to shout to them. Can’t you see that those who flew those planes were also praying to God? I wanted the whole world to stop praying and see what we are doing to each other in the name of religion – in the name of righteousness.

The days passed and life soon returned to normal. I did not attend church, but I continued on with my life as a pretend Christian. Living in the Bible belt, it’s difficult not to. But inside, I rejected the whole concept of God which was taught to me for 40 years by my culture, religion and society. I was determined not to let anything or anyone ever tell me again who God was. I reasoned: if God is real, then I should be able to know him on my own, outside of any religion. If He isn’t, then all the more reason not to waste my time on religion. Made sense to me…

In April of 2004, through a series of unlikely events, I somehow ended up in a week-long Bible study session held by a Korean missionary who only spoke Korean. First of all, it’s humorous to imagine a missionary from another country coming here to teach the Bible. Secondly, I’m not even completely fluent in the Korean language. Sure, I can converse adequately in everyday conversation. But in no way could I fully understand the boring sermons in Korean. Why was I even there? Bible study was the last thing I wanted to do at the time. Whatever the case, this kind, gentle Korean man taught me how to look at the Bible not as a book of religious dos and don’ts, but as a book of historical facts, symbolisms, and stories of real people with real human experiences.

I became intrigued and soaked everything in. It finally started to make some sense. I thought, okay… the Bible is not as much of a nonsense as I thought it was. But I still didn’t understand the spiritual nature of the whole thing. I didn’t just want to believe for the sake of believing. There was definitely something more to it than what meets the eye. Perhaps this time of curiosity would have ended as another “stage” I went through, and my life might have eventually gone back to the way it was, if the following had not occurred.

I cannot even begin to fully describe or explain it, other than to say that it was nothing that I did or said. I remember that on that morning, I woke up with somewhat of a frustration at not knowing, of being in a fog. I knew I had another Bible study that day, but I felt empty. I was overwhelmed by having to go on pretending about this phantom God/being that now seemed too big to dismiss, yet not real enough for me to be convinced. The mere thought of remaining in this spiritual limbo was enough to make me insane.

Then… there it was. I didn’t consciously DO anything. But there was that… flash? No. It was more like…a blink. It was a blink of the mind. That’s what I’d call it. In one very insignificant mind-blink moment, everything was illuminated. The frustrating fog suddenly seemed to have disappeared. It was a moment of… shall I say, absolute perfection? No sound. No vision. No thoughts. Nothing. Nothing at all. Yet everything was perfect. Supreme clarity. Then the moment passed. Or did it?

I looked up and saw a picture on my dresser. A gift from a friend. A picture of Jesus in front of the cross. The words read: “I asked Jesus ‘how much do you love me?’ ‘This much,’ he said, then he stretched out his arms and died.” The next thing I knew, I was curled up into a fetal position and weeping for what seemed to be hours (which probably was only a few minutes in reality), but I didn’t know why. I just felt… no pain. No fear. No baggage. I just felt like none of that matters and everything was okay. I didn’t know it then, but looking back, it was then that I suddenly understood grace.

I got dressed and went to the Bible study as planned. On that day, I willingly walked into the welcoming arms of religion. Because that’s all I knew. It was the quicksand that I found myself sinking into for the next three years. The religious and legalistic teachings of Christian leaders big and small, along with my own conditioned thoughts of what being a Christian looked like had me in a stranglehold that was squeezing the very life out of me. The harder I thrashed to break free, the deeper I sank.

The “deconversion” process, as the atheists call it, for me was just as hard and painful as they describe. But somehow, I was able to break free from the grip of religion and right back into the arms of grace. I grabbed a hold of the outstretched arm of my current pastor and the fellowship (appropriately named Second Touch), and I was slowly pulled out of the quicksand.

We are a body of believers, with many of us having run away from the laws of religion in search of grace. Day by day, we are learning (at each of our own pace) our true identity as we were meant to be. The very reason why Christ came into the world is so that we could have life. I believe with all my heart (and mind) that he wants us to be free to breathe deeply with him with no restrictions. When my time here comes to an end and I have to leave this body, I will be able to continue walking with the full knowledge of exactly who I am.

A strange phenomenon, the most ironic thing that I cannot figure out for the life of me, is the close connection I feel to the atheists that I’ve befriended in the last several months. They helped me heal from whatever residue I had left in me of the disease of religion and, at the same time, strengthen my faith in Jesus Christ.

Through my conversations with them, I have come to know them as real people, and I consider them my friends without agenda. Their refreshingly (and sometimes brutally) honest thoughts and opinions help me to look at everything through a clearer lens and from a much wider angle. They have somehow become a vital part of my freedom. The differences in our beliefs aside, I have great respect for their views. I would have never imagined that I would be standing here today boldly announcing my friendship with atheists; and to borrow a phrase from a speech given by a well-known atheist Richard Dawkins, “The universe is queerer than we can suppose.”

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Image:
Cara Barer Photographer

Man and Nature

The animal kingdom is a fascinating place.



Capitalism is also a fascinating human phenomena. Never ceases to amaze me...

:-)

What if?

Christian Andreas Steimel


Here's a wild thought...

Matt recently posted a couple of videos on his blog, and they made me think.

If what Dawkins says is true... and the string theory holds, then could it be possible to fathom teleportation... and even time travel?
**cue the Twilight Zone theme music here**

Nature vs. Nurture

I have been studying the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). I recently attended a week-long intensive workshop to learn the theory behind it. Coincidentally, Pastor Mike over at the Friendly Atheist posted a thread about the link between personality and belief/skepticism and mentioned the MBTI. While I was posting a comment in response to a question asking the difference between type and trait, I decided to try and work out a thought that’s been on my mind. So here it is:

Firstly, traits are universal. We all possess personality traits, which differ only in the amount possessed and can be measured. Tests measuring amounts of trait produce a normal distribution (on a bell curve). Extreme scores are important for discrimination, and too much or too little is often diagnostic. Traits cause behavior.

Type, on the other hand, is made up of inborn preferences (Carl Jung). The test involves sorting into categories, where the mid-point separating the categories is important for discrimination. This is the reason for the forced-choice questions. It does not produce a normal distribution (S-curve). Scores show confidence in the sorting process. Behavior is an expression of type. It is Jung's theory that just as we are born with our physical preferences (right or left-handed), we are born with cognitive preferences as well when it comes to perception and judgment.

We can talk traits without type but cannot talk type without traits.

Now... this is my own theory:

Nature vs. nurture. I (for now) buy into the type theory of Jung. I agree that we have inborn preferences. I also believe that from the moment we are able to communicate, we are very much influenced by society. We become conditioned to behave according to what we learn as right and wrong instead of operating out of our preferences. For instance, being outgoing is good, shy is bad. Quiet is good, loud is bad. Smiling is good, crying is bad. Obedience is good, questioning is bad. Neatness is good, complex is bad. Decisive is good, change is bad. Focus is good, dreaming is bad. Etc. etc. etc… If we behave in the good way, we are rewarded with attention and praise. If we behave in the bad way, we are punished with correction or dismissal. We learn to push ourselves toward the status quo. Some of them fit our preference, and others are very uncomfortable.

If we end up spending too much time in the uncomfortable state, we become stressed and psychologically and even physically unhealthy.

I am beginning to believe that many of the problems in society are caused by ourselves denying who it is that we were born to be and trying to be something we are not. What’s even more alarming is that so many of us have been conditioned for so long that we don’t even know what it is that we naturally prefer.


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Image credits:
David Ho
Crimson Duvall