Friday, April 02, 2004

Who is this man?

To quote a friend who has recently met God, when I sms'd to ask if she and her husband prayed to accept Christ:

"how can I not believe he is God? A carpenter's son who is only 33yrs old. teach and heal pple with alsome wisdom and unexplainable power. His word read by many generations and still makes sense 2day.... Who is this man if he's not God? he is for sure not human. we love him. we wish to be with him."

Unlike probably half of the rest of the Singaporean christian community (pointedly the flock belonging to a particularly wealthy church that blocked booked and bought a few nights of the showing), I have not yet seen Mel Gibson's film interpretation of the Passion of the Christ.

Neither am I decided about how watching in visual gory detail the suffering and death of my Lord and Savior will exactly enhance my faith. How should it? Further than whipping up in me for the two hours in the theatre extreme feelings of sorrow, repentance and love for Him? Which I feel daily reflecting on the number of ways I've crucified him over and over each time I forget, each time I lie, each time I curse the tasks laying before me and the people that I have to deal with?

The film, which has attained a life and a momentum of its own, will not by any means be discredited by a few of us who have learnt to see the cross for what it is: a symbol of suffering and death. A symbol of God's outpouring of love for a creation that has turned against him in every possible way. A symbol of servanthood and humility extended to the most undeserving. I appreciate that the Passion is by far the most accurate depiction of the Gospels to date - the Christ is not a clean, handsome white bloke who reads the Scriptures with a proper Shakespearean ring, nor does he walk around with a halo around his crown - but I fear that for the two hours in the theatre - what I respond to is the product of clever digital effect, lighting and a nifty sound crew skilled and trained at manipulating the visual media to stir the souls of its captive audience.

500 or so years ago, Calvinist reformers and hordes of protestant converts, fired up against years of oppression under a power-hungry Papacy, surged through churches in Europe to destroy statues and relics of Saints, believing all such visual representations of the holy will only lead the mob to blind idolatry. While I do entertain impulses to put right things that are wrong, I do not wish to be an over-religious zealot with a holier-than-thou attitude about what we can or cannot do with the Bible. I certainly have no wish to rail against the movie industry - it keeps my weekends properly entertained and occupied. What I do want to keep is a certain amount of perspective and not let myself be caught up in the Billy Grahamish fervour that turns a crowd of the faithful into an emotional mob. Blame it on Shakespeare.

But I guess for the pre-believer, the film exercises tremendous power to affect and transform. To paraphrase another friend who ventured as part film-critic and part cynic to watch the film last night, and over breakfast this morning had this to say:

"It was such a freaky show. I was bawling through half of it (*she points at her puffy eyes*)- at first from the sheer horror of the suffering inflicted on the man - but later from something else. I don't know what it is. (*she shrugs*) And I'm never this frightened watching horror."

Who is this man, if he is not God?

Maybe I shall go and watch it after all. And bring with me someone who has yet to meet him.

Thursday, April 01, 2004

Practical Magic?

Magic is the flutter in the stomach when your eyes meet, or the warmth that spreads through your veins when your lips touch. .............But magic can also be treacherous - it is the sting that lingers long after the harsh words have been exchanged, the searing realisation when the magic has died , followed by the scalding suspicion that it is only a matter of time, to quote one Hamlet, that this too too sullied flesh will grow weary and desirous of "the sleep to end The heartache,/ and the thousand natural shocks /That flesh is heir to"

Brainjuice picks up the 5-year-old cushion with a persian rug-themed hand-woven cover from beneath her desk - stuffed out of sight when the brand new red felt cushion took its position on the chair. The unfinishedness flap that hangs awkwardly off the top reveals yellowed fabric underneath, and she notices the patches of dried blood that flowed from fingers unpractised at a more feminine art. It came to her in the first few months, a memento of his love that she had not known was to turn into a memento of destroyed idealism. What to do with it? She holds it up and fingers one of the patches. It's starting to smell of the musty basement london flat she shared with two malaysian girls. Strange- it should smell more of the air-conditioned tropical i(if she could call it that) staffroom by now. It's her own memory she's smelling. She should throw it. In a few months, there will be no more reminiscing when she starts life anew as a married woman, and there will be no room in her heart or her house for objects of sentimental value. She should throw it. She will do it tomorrow.

Practical magic works far more slowly. You don't notice it - but he does. It comes to you when you least expect it - when the book you have been eyeing suddenly appears wrapped up in your lap, with a bright yellow envelope containing a short note in a card to boot. Practical magic can sometimes be annoying - at least it is mistakenly thought to be - you get a little grumpy when something inside you tells you that you only let yourself get grumpy because you know you can get away with it.

The peaks and the troughs of practical magic will hardly make your world spin - but you know that the bumps ahead will be met with a little kindness, a dash of sweetness, a generous helping of love and most of all, and earnest, unpretentious invitation to pray with you to leave them at the feet of the Lord who paid it all.

Wednesday, March 31, 2004

Stressed out by Modernity? ___ "Beam me up, Scotty!"

It seems that by general consensus and a few opinionated journalists, although life in the 21st century is measurably and quantifiably better than 30 years ago people are more miserable than ever.

Jason Hahn, who writes for 8 days (for what it's worth the opinion pieces in the TV and trends magazine are sometimes quite illuminating!), has this to say:

" I don't know about you, but I'm very stressed with life in the 21st century. Quite frankly, it hasn't quite lived up to all its hype. I grew up watching shows like Space 1999, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek. Everyone on those shows always looked like they were having a ball, zipping around the galaxy, occasionally letting loose a few photon blasts at pesky enemy robots and wearing gorgeous costumes. So you can forgive me for thinking that the New Millenium would have a similar dose of hi-tech glamour."

Well, Jason, you are not forgiven. Whoever measures the quality of life he enjoys against the mediafantasy-utopia of Buck Rogers needs a reality check.

But to be fair, does it strike anyone as interesting how unique the times we are living in is? Never before have we worried less about where our shit goes, and more about who gets to our personal data on the internet.

As fiance and I discovered to our horrified bemusement after installing McAffee Security Software on our smashing new PC (assembled by the loving hands of a Sim Lim Square regular), within the first hour of our modem buzzing to life and plugging us into virtual universe, the firewall detected 15 other PCs either trying to "PING" us (whatever that means) or hack into our personal info bank. The beauty of McAffee is you can even trace the specific locations of the computers - 9 from Singapore, 2 from San Francisco, 4 unidentifiable locations. It felt as though they were out to get us.

Globalization unfolds on a 17" LCD monitor.

Jenadas Devan remarks in his commentary on Sunday 28 March, the real reason why we, the youth of this country, remain unconvinced when our political leaders tell us not to forget how much better off we are compared to our parents' generation is because while "progress may be measurable and quantifiable, it cannot be directly experienced."

(For the full article, click on url )

As for the shit analogy, I'm not being entirely crass. If you lived in London a 150 years ago, you'd be concerned. Quoting Devan's commentary again:

"Just 150 years ago, Londoners were still dumping everything - faeces, rotting vegetables and dead cats, not to mention "the foul and gory liquids from slaughter-houses" and the "purulent abominations from hospitals and dissecting rooms", as one contemporary document put it - into stagnant pools that stood, as eternal as the Styx, between homes."

Hence when Londoners got their sewage system just 100 years ago, it was considered "the greatest achievement of our age."

Try telling that to a Londoner today.

Or a Singaporean, for that matter.

"Unless he was a sewage engineer, he wouldn't have given a moment's notice in his entire life to where his shit would go today after he flushes. Where it didn't go to a hundred years ago would be a matter of profound indifference to him. He can flush now; it disappears, end of story."
----------------------

I guess the question is, what then makes us happy, if not progress?

I have a sneaking feeling that the same people who described themselves as happy and content with life 150 years ago are exactly the same people who call themselves happy and content today.

May fiance and I be numbered among them. Internet or no internet.

Eve of April Fool's

Just one more day. One more day to the 1st anniversary of the moment Mr. Formerly Traffic Policemen Now Officer Driving License hands over a sheet of white paper to a tremulous Brainjuice, half afraid of a bad April Fool's joke ("You passed... just kidding!"). A quick check over the white piece of paper speckled with many little squares and circles on them confirmed her joy - it said "Passed" on it.

Just one more day before she rips off with with relish the ugly orange triangle that has given other road users the license to honk liberally and swerve dangerously into her lane.

Never mind the fact that Brainjuice put her first dent on the Skoda within weeks of passing while executing a practiced 3-point turn. That can easily be chalked up to experience - these damned kerbs - who put them there?

Bar the horror that within months, she did the entire bonnet of the Skoda in and smashed both headlights in the butt of a Nissan pick-up truck that looked completely unscathed at the end of it. I thought continental cars were harder than Japanese makes? I want my money back!

What matters now is that in just a few hours time, she would have had a year to prove her worth as a true Singaporean lady driver. And her Skoda Fabia will be, in just a few hours time, as non-descript as the next car on the road.

=)