What is freedom? Does a person has the right to think freely and act freely as long as it doesn’t cause any harm to anyone? In a relationship, why both partner had to think alike and act alike? Can two people with totally different character be in love and live happily and peacefully together? I think such relationship can exist, if both partners learn how to respect the other half. One of the evils of religions is that even though they all claim they are teaching tolerance, but in fact they all decline the right to exist of any thoughts contradicts to their core believes. Why can’t a good christian fall asleep in church if the priest is boring and he is tired? If God truly don’t want people fall asleep in church, he should simply keep everyone awake with supernatural means. I just couldn’t understand why Pat make such a big fuss about me sleeping in mass?
Tag Archives: faith
Overwhelmed
Recently, I got overwhelmed by church activities. There are too many meetings and events going on, and I am stressed out since it eats into my private time. Preparation for Worth Youth Day is good, but do we need to spend so much time doing all these things? Someone may prefer better prepare themselves spiritually, while someone simply don’t have such a need. Why force everyone follow the same path on spiritual quest? Tonight I had wasted 3 hours in yet another tumid meeting regarding the up coming St. Mary fund raising event, which should last no longer than 1 hour. I feel that we have way too many fund raising activities and it really bothers me. I rather spent the time working on my thesis or even sit back to relax a bit. All church activity should be on volunteer basis. Once someone committed the minimum effort, others should not push more works onto his plate than he is willing to take. Making everyone share the equal amount of work doesn’t make sense at all, since everyone’s expectation is different. Some people always complain they had did more work than others. But they gladly signed themselves for the job at first with no one forcing them. They never consider the option of doing less, which is perfectly fine with most people who want less work. Church stuff is not like real work, people don’t get pay for their service and there is no measurement on deliverable. I’m sure God doesn’t care how much time we put in, as long as we had made some effort. Serving God more may indeed accumulate more treasure in the heaven. The question is suppose that every resident of heaven is equally happy eternally, then what is the use of having more treasure if it can’t buy you more happiness?
surrender to God
Today is the first faith session organized by the Archdiocese of Vancouver for everyone going to the World Youth Day. Out of my surprise, everyone form our parish team went to the session, and we were probably the biggest group there. The session start off with ice breaking function, which it’s a good way to know more new friends that you may have to depend on in Koln. During the event, the MC tricked me to think that I have the chance to meet the new Pope representing Vancouver. I was over joyed and jumping up and down, then really let down after knowing it’s just a gag. The event is followed by a sharing from a guy, Paul, who walked from Vancouver to Denver as part of his pilgrimage in 1992 WYD. In his talked, he mentioned about how he learn the lesson of surrender to God and have to react upon surrender.
The 2nd part of the message about reaction to God enlightened me most. Usually the message about surrender to God stopped after the first part, only saying you have to listen to God and be glad on whatever he gave you. I never agree with the idea of predestination. It happened during his trip to Denver, when he and his friend rested in a national park and to prepare their spirituality, it was raining non-stop for the whole week. At first they pray for good weather, later they realize the heavy rain must be God’s will, so they started to accept it. They vowed to take everything God gave them gracefully without a question. After a few days, they finally able to start a fire to get warmth, somehow the wind just suddenly change direction and blow all the smoke to them. They try to accept the smoke at first, but realize they will be choked to death if they don’t move. Here the lesson of surrender to God take a new turn, after surrender and accepted what had happened is not enough, you also have to give a response to God. Suffering itself is only a mean to an end. The key is to find out what God really prepared for you, so you can skip or shorten the suffering part. Blindly take suffering as a gift per se is plain silly.
wash feet
Today is the day before easter friday, according to the Bible, tonight is when the last supper took place. I went to the passover mass at St. Marks college in UBC tonight. On top of the usual rituals, there is a feet washing event in the mass. I had done feet washing a few years ago in the church camp. Washing others feet is not a big deal, as long as you got to clean your hands afterward. However, letting other wash your feet, which could be quite smelly after stuff in the shoe for a whole day, is quite embrassing. Moreover I think people shouldn’t show their toes in public, let alone show them in church, it’s really disrespect to Jesus. We should propse other more elagent ways to serve other, such as shoulder massage, instead of washing feet. We cannot follow the Bible literally in today’s world, feet washing needs a modern context. Worst of all, the father didn’t clean his hand after washing the feet before handling the eucharist, that poses a hygiene problem. I begin to think, church serving eucharist is like resturant serving food, the same hygiene standard should be applied.
jumping the boat
I went to 3 farewell events for my colleagues in one day. First it’s the farewell lunch for Renee, then afternoon I went to beer and wings for Scott, and at least I hopped to the pub for Renee’s party again. There are many people leaving the company lately. Almost all the capable people are gone and join some startups. Somehow I have a feeling my boss will be next one to go. He was recruited into PMC by Scott, and now Scott and a VP who once wanted to promote him to manager had joined that startup, if they need a verification head, who are they going to hire?
Tonight is the final session of Life in the Spirt Seminar, I was expecting something exciting to happen. Instead of miracles from the Holy Spirit, all I got is a really boring mass with a long-winded priest. In conclusion, the only benefit I got from 7 weeks LSS is having a better relationship with Pat. I don’t think I had changed much spiritually. Since the average age of the class is over 50, maybe I’m just too young for these supernatural experience.