spumoni's Xanga

Sunday, March 27, 2005

Sun, 27 Mar 2005 20:49:25 GMT

what a fun book!

angee gave it to me when she came back at the beginning of march. she saw it and thought of me since i had told her that it seems my life revolves around food now. :P it's true.... i think about food at work (i'm a nutritionist), eat food every day, cook food when i'm with ed, and love to try new restaurants and visit old favourites!

this book is about a food writer who visits all the new restaurants in new york city, has been trained in cooking in france so she's an amazing cook herself, and almost all her friends and relatives are great cooks too! who knew a book about food (filled with mostly detailed food descriptions) could be so entertaining!!

Wednesday, January 07, 2004

Wed, 07 Jan 2004 17:45:25 GMT

i took a break from reading this book over the holidays. now i'm back and reading lots again!

here's an excerpt that explains very well why bad things happen on this earth, but that ultimately good can and will triumph.

in highschool, i took pride in my ability to play chess. i joined the chess club and during lunch hour could be found sitting at a table with other nerds poring over books with titles like classic king pawn openings. i studied techniques, won most of my matches, and put the game aside for twenty years. then, in chicago, i met a chess player who had been perfecting his skills long since high school. when we played a few matches, i learned what it is like to play against a master. any classic offense i tried, he countered with a classic defense. if i turned to more risky, unorthodox techniques, he incorporated my bold forays into his winning strategies. even apparent mistakes he worked to his advantage. i would gobble up an unprotected knight, only to discover he had planted it there as a sacrificial lure, part of some grand design. although i had complete freedom to make any move i wished, i soon reached the conclusion that none of my strategies mattered very much. his superior skill guaranteed that my purposes inevitably ended up serving his own.

perhaps God engages our universe, his creation, in much the same way. he grants us freedome to rebel against his original design, yet even as we do so we end up "ironically" serving his eventual goal of restoration. if i accept that blueprint - a huge step of faith, i confess - it transforms how i view both good and bad things that happen. good things, such as health, talent, money, i can present to God as offerings for his use. and bad things too - disability, poverty, family dysfunctions, failures - can be "redeemed" as the very instruments that drive me to God.

Friday, December 19, 2003

Fri, 19 Dec 2003 02:47:49 GMT

a touching book of inspiring short stories.

but i find that it's mainly about people backed by big organizations who do good works for other countries rather than local people who use their talents to improve their own lives. i guess you can see what i'm partial to. but this book is sponsored by big organizations and writers supported by big organizations, so it's only understandable.

Saturday, December 13, 2003

Sat, 13 Dec 2003 22:10:40 GMT

without an element of risk, there is no faith.

faith means striking out, with no clear end in sight and perhaps even no clear view of the next step. it means following, trusting, holding out a hand to an invisible guide.

faith is reason gone courageous - not the opposite of reason, to be sure, but something more than reason and never satisfied by reason alone. a step always remains beyond the range of light.

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

Wed, 03 Dec 2003 20:44:51 GMT

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.

~ Thomas Merton

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Those that say that they believe in God and yet neither love nor fear him, do not in fact believe in him but in those who have taught them that God exists. Those who believe that they believe in God, but without any passion in their heart, any anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God-idea, not in God.

~ Miguel de Unamuno

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

Tue, 02 Dec 2003 19:23:30 GMT

still reading this book and it's great! but i find that most of the time i don't take the time to sit and let things sink in. and make a difference in my thinking and living of my life. the book is so interesting that i read right through it and want to get to the end... but what good is reading if it doesn't have an impact on me after i'm done?

once again, phil yancey's words express things in ways much better than i ever could, so let me share some more of his quotes with you.

The Christian has a great advantage over other men not by being less fallen than they, nor less doomed to live in a fallen world, but by knowing that he is a fallen man in a fallen world.

~ C.S. Lewis

That recognition forms my starting point in undertaking a journey to know God.

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I wonder if God has perhaps fenced off an area of knowledge, "The Encyclopedia of Theological Ignorance," for very good reasons. These answers remain in God's domain, and God has not seen fit to reveal them.

Consider infant salvation. Most theologians have found enough biblical clues to convince them that God welcomes all infants "under the age of accountability," though the biblical evidence is scant. What if God had made a clear pronouncement: "Thus said the Lord, I will welcome every child under the age of ten into heaven." I can easily envision Crusaders of the eleventh century mounting a campaign to slaughter every child of nine or younger in order to guarantee their eternal salvation - which of couse would mean that none of us would be around a millennium later to contemplate such questions. Similarily, the zealous conquistadors in Latin America might have finished off the native peoples for good if the Bible had clearly stated that God's overlooking "the times of ignorance" applied to all who had not heard the name of Jesus.

Reading church history, not to mention reflecting on my own life, is a humbling exercise indeed. In view of the mess we have made of the crystal-clear commands - the unity of the church, love as a mark of Christians, racial and economic justice, the importance of personal purity, the dangers of wealth - I tremble to think what we would do if some of the ambiguous doctrins were less ambiguous.

Tuesday, November 25, 2003

Tue, 25 Nov 2003 03:18:58 GMT

finished this really great book. it's a long one: 372 pages. ok, not super long but fairly! here's one last excerpt:

...in its striving for a school, the village was going through a painful transition, one that might become much more violent, or might not, but one that was necessary. development, if it is to mean anything, is not about a school or any other product. it is about the process of a community coming together and deciding to change. only when the people of biharipur sit down together, when men face women and yadavs face dalits, when the lambardar and the widow with no name argue until they agree on a site for their school, when they finally refer to it as their school, will their work become lasting.

beyond that, i had no idea how the village would move forward. rajinder couuld be chased away. there could be more clashes. there could be more deaths. but change didn't have to be violent. with the right kind of guidance from the communities around them - the people of biharipur could find ways to plan their shared future and then create it.

there is enough evidence of this happening in other places, from tilonia to timbuktu, in bangaladesh, bihar, the shea-nut forests of ghana and segou, to assure rajinder, amma, the sikhs and their neighbours that they are not alone. this quiet struggle to take charge of their lives is the greatest struggle that the world carries into the twenty-first century. it isn't about past grudges, encumbering traditions or debilitating histories. it's about their future as a community.

when biharipur finally sees itself as a community, only then will its people begin to find that elusive process called development.

Saturday, November 22, 2003

Sat, 22 Nov 2003 06:17:37 GMT

God gives us just enough to seek him, and never enough to fully find him. to do more would inhibit our freedom, and our freedom is very dear to God.

~ rod hansen

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how to promote God's absence, according to cs lewis:

avoid silence, avoid solitude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. concentrate on money, sex, status, health and (above all) on your own grievances. keep the radio on. live in a crowd. use plenty of sedation. if you must read books, select them very carefully. but you'd be safer to stick to the papers. you'll find the advertisements helpful; especially those with a sexy or a snobbish appeal.

Friday, November 21, 2003

Fri, 21 Nov 2003 07:05:14 GMT

in a mysterious passage in daniel 10, the bible describes a scene with close parallels. daniel cannot understand why one of his prayers has not been answered. then an angel shows up to explain what has been occurring in the unseen world: for three weeks the angel has been trying to overcome resistance from the "prince of the persian kingdom" in order to answer daniel's prayer, and only recently has gotten reinforcements from a heavenly power named michael. i doubt daniel ever prayed casually again.

i am more and more seeing the need for prayer, constant prayer in our lives. in order to discern God's leading, stay true to our faith, support God's work in this world. often we forget that there is something that happens in the supernatural when we pray. it's not just btwn us and God. there's more to it that we can't see. that's an incentive to pray harder cuz our prayers really do make a difference.

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one so often hears ppl say, "i just can't handle it," when they reject a biblical image of God as father, as mother, as lord or judge; God as lover, as angry or jealous, God on a cross. i find this choice of words revealing, however real the pain they reflect: if we seek a God we can "handle", that will be exactly what we get. a God we can manipulate, suspiciously like ourselves, the wideness of whose mercy we've cut down to size

~ kathleen norris

Friday, November 21, 2003

Fri, 21 Nov 2003 04:15:26 GMT

opposites attract.

but sometimes/often it's the cause of a lot of conflict too. that explains a lot to me about what's going on these days.

i think it's worth it though. builds character, understanding of diff types of ppl and gives one a new perspective. life experience. we're better ppl because of it.