i wonder if the path to wholeness and happiness is not rooted in the things we have, the material stuff that we possess but the richness of the relationships we have in our lives. instead of tending to the quest of having more things that clutter our lives, perhaps it would be more fruitful to tend to the relationships with the people in our lives.

i heard on the radio yesterday - i wonder who th...e person was - but he was talking about his late mother - how, even in the last moments of her life, she was worried about him, telling him to eat properly, and to take care of himself. He talked about how he decided to show that he could take care of himself by learning how to cook like how his mother cooked for him all her life. He approached his maternal grandmother, who taught his mother how to cook. And he tried. He didn't get the flavor right the first few times. It just didn't taste like mother's, he said. Then finally, one day, he got it. And he related how he teared up as he tasted the flavors.

That year in May, he went to the market, picked the ingredients (after all, cooking starts at picking the best ingredients) and he cooked up all the dishes his mother used to cook for him, each practised till he got the flavors just right. And that Sunday, he laid it all in front of his mother's altar, and he told her, "can take care of myself now. Happy Mother's Day."

He related how the process of shopping for the groceries, cooking connected him somehow with his mother, across time and space, across life and death.

i am grateful, that i have been given the opportunity to nurture and mend the relationships in my life, and that is the treasure that surpasses all material things.

just remembered a poem by Irene Zimmerman, a Catholic nun. it is an amazing work that awakened my understanding of the role of women in Church,.



Liturgy

All the way to Elizabeth
and in the months afterward,
she wove him, pondering,
"This is my body, my blood!"

Beneath the watching eyes
of donkey, ox, and sheep
she rocked him, crooning,
"This is my body, my blood!"

In the moonless desert flight
and the Egypt-days of his growing,
she nourished him, singing,
"This is my body, my blood!"

Under the blood-smeared cross
she rocked his mangled bones,
remembering him, moaning,
"This is my body, my blood!"

When darkness, stones, and tomb
bloomed to Easter morning,
she ran to him, shouting
"This is my body, my blood!"

And no one thought to tell her:
"Woman, it is not fitting
for you to say those words.
You don't resemble him."

Irene Zimmerman

is it because we are afraid of being alone, or is it because we are afraid of facing ourselves that we fill our time to the brim, and have no space to be quiet, and to reflect?

Speculate as much as we want behind the causes of the consecutive breakdowns of the metro system, the blogosphere seems to have felt this as another watershed moment. The meme of different characters breaking the glass pane of the MRT train has become viral, while at the same time, SMRT continues to make one PR blunder after the next.

There are many people pointing out the systemic issues that are symptomatic of larger underlying issues that is reflective of Singapore in general. Alex Au has made many salient points in his article here http://yawningbread.wordpress.com/2011/12/17/breakdowns-and-breaking-points/ .

Many have pointed out that the way SMRT, Straits Times and the government has handled this just reveals how disconnected those on top are from those on the ground. For me, it just reveals SMRT's interest is not serving customers, but shareholders and their primary concern is to reap as much profit as possible.

Honestly, we all know everything experiences wear and tear. The breakdown wasn't the cause of people's ire. It is the response, or the lack of it, that matters. How many apologies are we going to hear before we become unconvinced? We seem to be getting a lot of assurances but very little action.

What could SMRT have done? Perhaps instead of asking customers to go through a bureaucratic process of getting a refund, they waive all fees for the day. This would come as a high cost to SMRT, but that would mean that they would have the incentive to ensure smooth running of the system.

i remember whenever a crisis happens, and some people are hospitalized, the top brass visits those affected in hospital. Your organization has caused some injury to someone, and visiting the person affected is just the right thing to do. But don't make it into a PR event, but just make a private visit.

Like the circular sent out by Mediacorp sent out after the Japan tsunami earlier this year (see http://mediaapac.blogspot.com/2011/03/mediacorp-apologises-for-tsunami-e-mail.html), the "Income Opportunity" message sent out to the SMRT fleet just demonstrates an attitude towards profit maximization with little concern for anything else. This is how Singapore is turning out - a soulless society focused on making money above all else. It is a wakeup call, and time to look inward and reflect.

from my friend, James Teng - ‎"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."

this is quoted partially from http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Faith-Tools/Meditation/2004/11/Silence-Is-Gods-First-Language.aspx . it is a good article about the practice of silence and contemplation in the Christian tradition. i think non-Christian friends will also benefit from reading this.


Deeper Silence, Deeper Self

"Silence is God's first language," wrote the 16th-century mystic John of the Cross. And silence is the normal context in which contemplative prayer takes place. But there is silence and then there is silence. There is an outer silence, an outer stopping of the words and busy-ness, but there is also a much more challenging interior silence, where the inner talking stops as well.
Most of us are familiar with this first kind of silence, although we don't get enough of it in our spiritual nurture. It's the kind of silence we normally practice in retreat times and quiet days; sometimes you'll hear it described as "free silence." With a break from the usual hurly-burly of your life, you have time to draw inward and allow your mind to meander. You may pore over a scriptural verse and let your imagination and feelings carry you more deeply into it. Or you may simply put the books away and go for a walk in the woods, allowing the tranquility of the setting and the relative quieting of external pressures bring you more deeply in touch with yourself. You listen carefully to how you're feeling, what you're wishing. In this kind of work, the free association of your mind provides the key to the renewal, and silence furnishes the backdrop where this work can go on.


Read more: http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Faith-Tools/Meditation/2004/11/Silence-Is-Gods-First-Language.aspx#ixzz1dqohgWeC

this Thursday, 17 November, is the opening for the an exhibit of 12 of my photographs at DYMK from 7pm to 10pm. please drop by! you can reply to the facebook event here https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=273080186067451

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Solitude: A Journey in Photographs



Journeys, literal or metaphorical, are solitary endeavors. We may be standing next to each other, taking in the same scene, but we may not see the same things. We live in our own worlds in our heads, and we do not know each other’s thoughts – we can only try to articulate them, often in words, so that others may have a glimpse of what we are thinking about.

Photography is another way of presenting what we see, and what we think – instead of words, we use images. The thing is, even in the perception and interpretation of the photographs, we are alone in our heads, alone in how we see and think.

romantic love is used to sell all sorts of things. products and services market themselves to couples, offering them a thousand ways to spend their money. they market to singles, offering ways to make themselves better and more attractive so they can get coupled and escape from singledom.

while all these may seem to be innocuous ways of our capitalistic system, what it has done is commoditise love. (and here i am talking about romantic love. other forms of love are also commoditised)

we are saturated with how love should look like, what we should wear, where we should go, what we should do to be in love. and ultimately, this has put love as the ultimate source of happiness, and the ultimate goal in life. i used to subscribe to the idea - after all, human beings are social creatures, and built for intimacy with other human beings. and what is more intimate than romantic love?

however, i have come to reflect more about it - and i come to realise that romantic love isn't the only source of intimacy - our relational bonds with family and friends are also sources of intimacy. there is nothing wrong in privileging romantic love above these, but i think that there needs to be some level of balance. the "romantic" idea of the couple running away and living in their own world together forever, far from the interference of society, family and friends, is a fantasy cooked up by an overdosage of movies and romantic novels. if we ignore or take for granted our other relationships, we do so at our own peril.

we live in an interconnected reality and our connections are our relationships with others. this constellation of relations is an intricate web we need to pay attention to - because it is the source of our frustrations as well the source of our joys. romantic love is not the be all and end all of our existence. just like different parts of an organism, it plays a vital role, but there are many other parts that play other different and vital roles. perhaps if we spend as much time nurturing our other relationships - our relationship with ourselves, our relationship with our families, our relationship with friends, our relationships with co-workers, our relationships with strangers and other fellow human beings - we will find our lives richer.