Son, life is not about what you want...It's about how you cope with it there and then...
- Lo Wing Ee, 1952-2009
If you come across an adorable baby in Turkey, you are to say that the baby looks like a donkey! This may sound ludicrous, but you are actually paying the baby and its mother a major compliment. This custom is rooted in the belief that there are evil spirits all around, which may grow jealous and cause bad things to happen to the little one. Hence to avoid bad luck, you deceive the evil spirits by uttering the opposite of what you mean.
- I’Ching Thomas, Attentive Eyes, 19th Feb 2009
I majored in psychology, but only because it was the easiest major...
- Gene Weingarten, a humour writer for Washington Post Magazine.
"What do We Choose to See?"
A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.
Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule. A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk. A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.
The one who paid the most attention was a 3-year-old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.
In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.
No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.
Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.
This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of an social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?
One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?
AN OLD golf pro once told me that fatherhood has a huge impact on many professional players. According to him, something about having a baby calms a man down, makes him more focused, relaxed and ready to bring home the big prize.
- S Murali, The New Paper, Bundle of joy helps you get bundles of cash?, Dec 30, 2008
Now two prostitutes came to the king and stood before him. One of them said, "My lord, this woman and I live in the same house. I had a baby while she was there with me. The third day after my child was born, this woman also had a baby. We were alone; there was no one in the house but the two of us.
"During the night this woman's son died because she lay on him. So she got up in the middle of the night and took my son from my side while I your servant was asleep. She put him by her breast and put her dead son by my breast. The next morning, I got up to nurse my son—and he was dead! But when I looked at him closely in the morning light, I saw that it wasn't the son I had borne."
The other woman said, "No! The living one is my son; the dead one is yours." But the first one insisted, "No! The dead one is yours; the living one is mine." And so they argued before the king.
The king said, "This one says, 'My son is alive and your son is dead,' while that one says, 'No! Your son is dead and mine is alive.' "
Then the king said, "Bring me a sword." So they brought a sword for the king. He then gave an order: "Cut the living child in two and give half to one and half to the other."
The woman whose son was alive was filled with compassion for her son and said to the king, "Please, my lord, give her the living baby! Don't kill him!" But the other said, "Neither I nor you shall have him. Cut him in two!"
Then the king gave his ruling: "Give the living baby to the first woman. Do not kill him; she is his mother."
- 1 King 3:16-27
The movie Gandhi contains a fine scene in which Gandhi tries to explain his philosophy to the Presbyterian missionary Charlie Andrews.
Walking together in a South African city, the two suddenly find their way blocked by young thugs. The Reverend Andrew takes one look at the menacing gangsters and decide to run for it. Gandhi stops him.
"Doesn't the New Testament say if an enemy strikes you on the right cheek you should offer him the left?" Andrew mumbles that the thought of the phrase was used metaphorically. "i'm not so sure,"Gandhi replies.
"I suspect he meant you must show courage - be willing to take a blow, several blows, to show you will not strike back nor will you be turned aside. And when you do that it calls on something in human nature, something that makes his hatred decrease and his respect increase. I think Christ grasped that and I have seen it work."
- Philip Yancy, The Jesus I Never Knew.
You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.
- Matthew 5:38-39
Perhaps as you look at our world today you wonder if God is still at work in such a way. I want to encourage you that He is, for in my work and ministry I have seen his provision.
Having been involved in Bible smuggling in China, I was intrigued to learn of a man named Chris who had gone out from the UK to do the same. Every three seconds someone in China becomes a Christian, but there’s a real lack of the Word of God there.
This is what happened to Chris: he and his team stood at the pickup point in China where they were to meet their contact, who would utter a password, and they would deliver their Bibles. They arrived with only minutes to spare, but the contact didn’t show up. Knowing they were being watched, the team started walking towards the edge of town as though leaving.
Hot and tired, they stopped at a nearby park for a drink of water, rest, and prayer. It was hard to understand why after all the difficulties God had brought them through that something had gone so wrong. They had looked to Him for provision and direction, and yet their mission had seemingly failed.
Soon the team became aware of three very ragged and dirty men under a tree behind them. Chris felt the Lord leading him to go over with some water. When he offered it, one of the men suddenly spoke the password very clearly in English. The rest of the team hurried over in amazement and pieced together the men’s story from the little Chinese that they knew.
Two years earlier, God had given a word to these Chinese men in one of their services that they should plan for this trip. He would lead them to this park, on this date, and have Bibles ready for them, which would be brought by white men from far away. Since they were all poor farmers, it had taken a long time for them to save the money for food and shoes for the trip.
The men had walked for two and a half months, mostly at night to keep from being arrested. Coming from the far north of China near Mongolia, they had climbed a range of snowcapped mountains, traveled through the desert, and crossed several rivers without a compass or any knowledge of the country. All they could explain was that God had shown them where to go.
How did they know the password? How could they speak it in English when they knew no English? How did they survive the heat and the snow without protective clothing? It could only be God.
When the men saw the Bibles, they cried and praised the Lord for a long time. They had brought cloth bags with them to carry the Bibles home, and inside each one was a small watermelon that they had carried all those miles as a gift of appreciation. Even though they had been without food for several days, they didn’t eat a single watermelon.
The team exchanged clothes with them and Chris explained what an honor it was to put on those dirty rags. The shoes were completely worn out, but the team chose to go barefoot and give up their own shoes, which fit the others perfectly. Apparently God had chosen each group member based in part on their shoe size. Many tears were shed as the team prayed for the Chinese and sent them back home with food and money for their journey.
- Amy Orr-Ewing, A Slice of Infinity (1825): Behold! Dec 4, 2008
"There is no greater promotion than motherhood..." Mediacorp tv series, Sayang Sayang.
genuflect \JEN-yuh-flekt\, intransitive verb:
1. To bend the knee or touch one knee to the ground, as in worship.
2. To be servilely respectful or obedient; to grovel.
Genuflect is from Late Latin genuflectere, from Latin genu, "knee" + flectere, "to bend."
| Falling in love again after being struck with amnesia |
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| OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) -- Is it possible to find the same love twice in a lifetime? Jeff Ingram and Penny Hansen were about to find out. If they were going to stay together, they would have to get to know each other all over again. For Jeff, there was no past. But Penny knew Jeff in another life - before he went missing and wound up on a downtown Denver street with no memory. "Dissociative fugue," doctors called it, a rare form of amnesia caused by stress or trauma that can influence people to travel far away from their homes. Jeff was found, but he had no idea who he was, much less who Penny was. Now he hunches over the countertop and peers at the foreign words in the Betty Crocker cookbook. One-and-a-half cups of egg whites. He should know this. He used to bake so much that he had a special cake platter to display his creations. Today he moves about the kitchen a bit unsure of where the ingredients are kept. He shoots a puzzled glance to his girlfriend. "I haven't shown you yet how to separate an egg," she says as she cracks the egg and gently demonstrates how to toss the egg between the two shells to separate it. He and his girlfriend, Penny, brush by each other. They exchange flirtatious smiles, like a couple in the first bloom of romance. To Jeff, she is as new in his life as angel food cake. When Jeff and Penny met for the first time in 2005, the connection was instant. Jeff joked that he should just kiss Penny immediately and get it out of the way. They had talked on the phone every other night in the year since they connected on an Internet game site. Never mind that he lived in Canada, where he worked in a mill, and that she lived in Olympia, Wash., where she worked as a state transportation and policy analyst. The 988 miles were little hindrance, and finally Jeff moved to join her. Relationships hadn't worked out for either in the past. But now, at 40, they were in love. She did not blanch when he told her he had once suffered amnesia in 1995 - that he had turned up in Seattle, nine months after disappearing from his home in Slave Lake, Alberta. Where had he been? How did he get there? He did not know, and he never regained memories of his life before he vanished. It was just a medical condition, she thought, a small matter compared with all of Jeff's fine qualities - his kind and gentle way, his sense of humility, his nurturing soul. Last summer, Jeff proposed, and Penny accepted. Then, on Sept. 6, 2006, Jeff said goodbye and walked out of their tidy green house. It was 7:30 a.m. and Penny was crying. She wouldn't see him again for a month. Jeff planned to drive to Canada to visit a dying friend in the hospital. He had been meticulous in his planning, lining up a job there and renewing his driver's license. "This isn't a goodbye," she told him. "If you miss me, I'll be right here," and she touched her heart. But Jeff never called. He never answered his cell phone. He never made it to Canada. Something horrible had happened, she was certain. Penny didn't know it, but Jeff did surface four days later. Only it wasn't Jeff - it was someone so confused he didn't know who he was. He remembers picking himself off the street in downtown Denver, a place he had never been before, and somehow finding his way to a hospital. He didn't have a name, so a Denver Health hospital worker wrote "Alpha 74" on his chart. Jeff underwent a battery of tests. He was hypnotized, given an IQ test, fingerprinted and had spinal fluid drawn. He was tested for drugs and scanned until it was determined he was the healthiest person in the hospital. He was sent to live at a transitional housing facility. He spent time going to church and visiting with some Denver police officers he'd come to know; they suggested a plea on national television, and on Oct. 22, his face appeared on news stations all over the country. "If anybody recognizes me, knows who I am, please let somebody know," he said. In that vast television audience, someone did recognize him: Penny's brother. And though Jeff had shaved off his mustache and goatee and was wearing different glasses and a hat she had never seen, Penny knew him instantly. Jeff was waiting in a room at the Denver police station when a detective walked in and tossed some pictures down in front of him. "This is Penny," the detective said, as Jeff stared at her picture. Beautiful, he thought. Absolutely beautiful. Penny was pacing and crying at the airport. Forty-six days has gone by since Jeff had left their home that morning. She had been searching the sides of highways, checking hospitals. And now they would see each other again. To him, it would be for the first time. To her, it was a homecoming for the man she loved. "Welcome home," she whispered in his ear. That night, Penny showed him where his clothes went and then offered to sleep on the couch. She didn't want to force the relationship. But Jeff said no. He needed her. He needed to know he was loved and missed. They laid in bed and held each other. And they cried. But he didn't know her any better than he knew a stranger. He didn't even know who he was. What would become of them? Could they fall in love again? Jeff was home again, but nothing felt quite right. Coming home was just the beginning of his struggle to find out who he was. Penny became his guide. But to Jeff they were just empty memories. They meant nothing to him. Looking at his own photographs was like looking at someone else. There were no emotions behind the images. In the beginning, Penny had to show him the most basic tasks - how to put detergent in the washing machine, how to make a scrambled egg, how the shower works. He relearned the names of states and got reacquainted with movies like "Star Wars" and "Harry Potter." They went to visit old friends. As they drove, Penny explained the relationship Jeff had with them. "You were good friends," she said. But what's missing was their history. Did they ever have a fight? Did he truly like the person? What kinds of things did they do together? How close were they really? Jeff Ingram was home, but he really was just an observer to his own life. "I want to be who I was," he said. "That's what I think about every waking moment. I want it all back." His mother and stepfather came down from Canada to visit. Conversation was awkward and there wasn't much to say. He doesn't remember Canada. He doesn't remember family holidays or if he was close to his mother. Sometimes Penny, without meaning to, bombards him with information. At times it is too much, and he has to tell her to stop. It sends his mind into overload. He has a constant, throbbing headache that won't go away. "He is the same person," Penny said optimistically. "He just can't remember he is." But she keeps her own feelings to herself. She doesn't want to burden him with her struggle. She is hurting, too. Their relationship as she knew it is no more. He politely smiles and nods when she talks about holidays they celebrated, places they went. "I'm just extremely sad," she said, tears welling. "I'm sad for him. I'm sad for what we had. It's heartbreaking." --- The old Jeff hated green peppers and turnips. The new Jeff loves them. His likes now are based largely on food he ate in the hospital. He used to build with Legos, but now isn't quite sure what to do with them. He still smokes though, just as much as he did before. Penny jokes that she wishes she could have told him he never smoked. He likes the song "Roxanne," new to him though it came out in 1978. Pop culture is almost overwhelming and, at times, confusing. "William Shatner is Captain Kirk," Penny tells Jeff. Thoughts swim around constantly in his head, with no permanent home. Experts say there are three types of memory: emotional, motor and intellectual, which includes long-term memory. Jeff's motor memory, the ability to know things automatically, such as a burner being hot, was intact. But not much is known about this rare form of amnesia. It is usually triggered by a stressful or traumatic event. Jeff believes that his friend's cancer in combination with his sensitivity to the anniversary of 9/11 most likely caused it. There is no way of knowing when, or if, he will get his memory back. Penny, fun-loving and constantly smiling, has been his teacher and comfort, always reminding him of who he was and how much she cares. She took time off work to be with him. Weeks after his return, Penny was walking through their house when Jeff blurted out: "You know what? I love you." She started crying. He still was getting to know Penny, but his heart knew. "There's a reason we're together. It's bigger than us," Penny said. "Even though he doesn't know me." --- On Dec. 31, 2006, a few friends and family gathered at the home of Penny's brother as the sun beamed in through the windows. Inside, the couple, smiling and holding hands, recited their vows. "You are my friend, my lover, my hope and my happiness ... ," Jeff told his bride. "You never gave up on me when others might have. We were meant to be together forever." Then it was Penny's turn. "Jeff, I fell in love with you not once, but twice. Everyone wishes for a miracle in their lives and you are my miracle. I love the way we both can finish each other's sentences. I love that we can play like kids. I love how we hold hands and walk together in a comfortable silence. ... But most of all, I love your unconditional love for me." Their lives are not untroubled. Jeff is working on regaining memories that may never come; he still mourns the loss of who he was, and he is afraid, as is Penny, that he will disappear again. He worries that he'll go out for a cigarette and not return. But for now they are newlyweds - laughing at the same jokes, settling into a comfortable routine. And every Dec. 31, as the world celebrates the new year, they will celebrate their anniversary and the chance they were given to fall in love all over again. They picked that day, they say, so they would never forget. -13 Feb 2007 , ANGIE WAGNER, Associated Press |
