Offscreen Space 畫外空間

仰望

2012-01-24T13:49:00.000-08:00

My article for the March issue of Angel's Heart:

《仰望》

小時候母親常說：「我這個孩子是總統的材料！」我卻認定自己長大會成為一個漫畫家。本質再惡劣的材料也可以通過權力、金錢、和種種人的愚昧被捧上總統的高位（試看奧巴馬之前的那一位），還未屈服世界的藝術創作卻是人可以享受最大的自由。小學時代的我是一個多產的漫畫家（產量跟學業成績成正比，反方向的），在朋輩中名噪一時（也是老師喜歡究治的對象），眾「粉絲」要排隊借閱我之前一晚的出爐創作。

時至今天，「粉絲」只剩下兩條，是自己的兒女，每晚在被窩中的閱讀首選我小時的漫畫創作（現存的只是一小部份，其餘在移民的時候被遺失或丟棄了），我自己卻不勝其煩，只因這些創作大都是男孩子純暴力的宣洩，接二連三打鬥和殺戮的場面，偶爾夾雜著似是而非的倫理反思（看來母親是對的，我真的是「總什麼」的材料），缺乏任何造就生命的品質，但兒女卻樂此不疲，每次看見同一個段落總會笑掉同一隻大牙。這應該是我一生中唯一也是最後一次成功捕捉到市場品味的創作。

今天在工作沉悶的時候我會用電腦的滑鼠繼續當年的漫畫生涯。創作的方向當然有著很大的轉變――畫的是一格漫畫，而非連環圖；如果內容仍然是充滿暴力的話，會是更厲害，不見血的那一種。追求的仍然是人類最基本的自由：反思的自由、表達的自由、抵抗的自由、尋找的自由、發現的自由。被「漫畫之父」手塚治虫所影響（尤其是他的傑作《きりひと讃歌》Ode to Kirihito），我的人物通通是獸人。兒女仍然是我的一號「粉絲」，鼓勵我在一格之內寫出小孩也可以明白卻也值得哲學家深思的信息。

以上的一格是我和兒女的最愛，題目是「向上望」。每一個人都需要向上望，追尋值得他們仰慕和跟隨的人。我們望向父母、望向老師、望向宗教領袖、望向政府、望向「總什麼」，我們仰望走在前頭的人為我們指引生命的下一步。當仰望是缺乏反思的迷信，人每天的生活就如摩擦神燈，一個以「專家」主導的層級架構，一個推卸人活著最基本責任的幾十年。我們又如何洞悉走在我們前面的人手裏拿著的可能並不是真理，而是令他們自己也失望的謊話？這些反思都是存在這一格以外的空間，人生活的真實敘事。

《馬槽疑雲》

2011-12-19T10:57:00.001-08:00

For the February issue of "Angel's Heart".

《馬槽疑雲》

每年在特別的節日最能顯明一個人的生活狀態。就以聖誕為例，很多人都同意消費主義已經徹底地劫持了節日的真正意義：信徒懇請大家望向基督的馬槽，了解和慶祝節日的真正原因，非信徒也群起建議大家要減少製造垃圾，不要只顧消費，要與家人和朋友分享真愛。但當然，這類型的抗衡只是純粹嘗試緩和危機的嚴重性，把生命被物質消費支配的程度稍稍調低。商場可以少去一些，但完全不出入商場卻很難做人——吃的喝的玩的穿的通通都需要假手他人為我生產和服務，購物不都只是一種奢侈，而多是生活的必須。再者，冬天走到室外會太冷，愣在家裏會太悶，人要不斷如螞蟻般有規則和策略地湧入商場其實是自然不過的文明進化。

因此批評聖誕被消費騎劫只是因為大家忘記了主耶穌為我們降生的大喜信息其實是對世態不中肯的理解和分析。上完教會十居其九都要上餐館，上餐館不是消費嗎？又有多少人在上教會的時候已經計劃好之前要順道購買的飲食和之後要上的餐館？那不上餐館的「另類」選擇又是什麼？如此「另類」的生活方式要求人付出什麼樣的生命代價？把這個困局列為一個純粹是「屬靈」的問題令人百思不解。如果不應該這樣生活，那人又應該怎樣生活？這是這個狹隘的觀點從來沒有實在地解答過的問題，造成人對生命意義的嚮往和具體生活形態之間一個很大的斷層，是一個商家非常樂意利用去為大家提供「答案」的空間。

聖誕卡裏那些洋溢人間溫情的冬日美景，聖誕歌裏所提及母親親手創造出爐甜品的香味，這些賦予人類生活最基本意義的生命片段對很多人來說只能存在想像中，是一些從來沒有經歷過的景象，沒有滿足過的嚮往。手拿著一盒聖誕卡，眼看見油畫中小孩子在充滿聖誕裝飾的小村落裏與鄰舍分享自由、愉悅、彼此信任和相愛的一刻，抬頭一看卻是在商場中人山人海排隊付款的長龍。購物車中是來自世界各地的食品，當中有的是什麼化學物質，源自地球的那一個角落，你我無從稽考，只知道價錢相宜（有興致長征鄰國的會得著更大的勝利），因此沒有親手創造飲食、建立家庭最基本美善的必要。飲食承包商那美侖美奐的包裝和言之鑿鑿的品質保證是我們堅持美好生活的最有效肯定。今晚將要吃的甜品是排在前頭的那位陌生人今晚也要吃的完全一樣的甜品，沒有經手任何媽媽的先進科技。這陌生人的孩子正在擦玩一部跟排在他前面的另一個陌生人的孩子也正在擦玩完全同一款式的手機（也好像是同一個電子遊戲）。他的媽媽在熙熙攘攘的室內也要穿著厚厚的羽絨才可以感到溫暖，購物車裏有著不少家居必備的藥物和補品，奈何疾病仍然終日纏擾一家大小，令對生命充滿困惑的媽媽在這最熱熱鬧鬧的一刻感到更加茫然、迷失。她身旁的丈夫是一個好爸爸，清楚知道多種解決家居大小問題的產品的詳細資料和價格（當然要歸功互聯網的偉大）。如果家居在冬日出現大毛病（例如屋頂漏水），他的經濟狀況絕對可以為他免除親自爬高爬低的必要（夏天自己也不用剪草）。但爸爸這一刻心裏最顯著的一個感受卻是一份莫名其妙的恐懼，他問自己，既然四驅車已經換了新的雪呔（他做了不少網上研究和價格比較才選擇這個型號），究竟眼前還有什麼可以令他恐懼的事物？再看看手上的聖誕卡，油畫中村落裏的小屋，仔細觀察那屋頂有沒有漏水的跡象，想像屋裏的那個男人是否也感到他那份莫名對生活的恐懼和挫敗（還是住在小村落的一家之主應該因為最接近的家居維修商店是位於離家七小時的車程範圍外而感到更大更大的恐懼不安？）

人龍終於散了。聖誕節過去了。聖誕所應許的意義仍然沒有經歷到。有人告訴他這是因為他沒有看清馬槽裏的那一位。

農夫的承諾

2011-11-29T15:09:00.001-08:00

For the January issue of Angel's Heart.

《農夫的承諾》

「所有快樂的家庭都是一模一樣的；每一個不快樂的家庭各有各的不快樂。」

昨天兒子問我關於某個《星球大戰》角色的資料，我請他包容我的無知，如果在生命中我曾經對這類型的事物有過興趣，那個日子短暫得不著痕跡。「但我可以告訴你托爾斯泰在《安娜·卡列尼娜》("Anna Karenina")中所寫的第一句，非常有意思的一句。」女兒從豎立桌上的小說中把埋藏的頭伸出來，卻只露出好奇的雙眼：「那是什麼？」我答：「你為何不自己拿來看？」女兒唉聲嘆氣，非常不滿我的造作，卻又按捺不住好奇心，老大不願意地從書架把書取下來，慢慢地讀出以上一句。讀過後以帶著迷惑的笑容示意我可以開始發表演說。

今天在溜冰場上聽著令我心動神馳的聖誕老歌，雀躍三尺，放膽做了幾個平時無勇氣亦無能力做的動作，心想：「這大概是我生命中其中最快樂的一刻，跌死應該也值得。」遺囑上的墨水還未乾透，迎面飛來大概有著同樣心志的女孩，大家踫個滿懷（是她的錯！），我跌下的一刻膝蓋先落地，痛個死去活來。所有作白日夢者都是一模一樣的不切實際；每一個墮地的天使各有各的痛楚。我不敢說自己清楚了解托爾斯泰的理念（甚至未必完全同意），但我知道快樂是一個非常脆弱和缺乏戲劇性的狀態，人生的故事多是關乎發生在這個瞬態之前和之後的事物。托爾斯泰的另一鉅著《戰爭與和平》中接近六十萬個字主要是敘述戰爭而不是和平。

身為一個家庭的領袖，究竟我最終要成就的是什麼？（如果你以為這是一個我用來帶出講章主題的反詰句，你大概讀錯了文章。書局和互聯網上有很多關於這個題目，由各類型的「專家」編寫而成的用戶手册和說明書可以供各力臻完美的父母參考。）我希望自己是一個造就快樂的農夫，培養一片土壤，讓幸福可以成長。孩子小的時候只懂得品嚐甘甜的收穫，慢慢長大時要面對和參與發生在這個瞬態之前和之後的事物。人生根本沒有什麼所謂夢想與現實的簡單分野，農夫在世人還在沈睡的一刻已經冒著風雨和嚴寒走到大地上，遙望，嚮往，預備進入前路的一切美麗和困苦。生命就是也只有是眼前的這一天。

我要培養一片讓幸福可以成長的土壤，因為眼前的這一天充滿毒蛇猛獸，牠們是凶殘的大騙子，視孩子對快樂的嚮往為販賣糖衣毒藥的機會。農夫不會說謊宣稱自己可以生產幸福，他明亮的心靈觀察和領會生活的節奏和歷程，勤勞的雙手不斷開墾生機無限的可能，每一步都體現生命的奧祕。所有不快樂的家庭都是落在一模一樣的幻象裏；每一個努力造就快樂的家庭各有各風風雨雨的耕耘路。腳下的土壤是農夫唯一的承諾。

愛做最愛做

2011-10-15T18:10:00.000-07:00

Another piece for Angel's Heart.

《愛做最愛做》

前聯邦新民主黨黨魁林頓（Jack Layton）逝世的同一週，蘋果公司的創辦人喬布斯（Steve Jobs）亦為著健康的理由宣佈辭去蘋果首席執行官的職務。我把林頓離世前的一刻寫給加拿大人的一封公開信讀了又讀，看見他貫徹始終是一個傾出真情的人。兩天後又讀了喬布斯的辭職信，發現除了肯定投資者對蘋果的信心之外，這位被譽為歷史上其中一位最卓越的溝通專家並沒有太多出自內心的說話要跟世界說。很難相信一個政客比起一個只穿牛仔褲標榜平易近人的才華偶像還要來得有血有肉。也許對投資者和顧客的說話就是內心最深處的那一句，也許他把最真誠的說話留待在傳記中才傾吐出來。難怪要請來得獎作家為自己寫傳記，最真誠的一句也必須講求包裝。

二零零五年喬布斯在斯坦福大學的畢業演講裏鼓勵年青人不要停下腳步，必須不斷尋找生命中的最愛，「尋找最愛的工作就好像尋找最愛的戀人」，如果人沒有發現自己的最愛，他就必須繼續尋找，不要滿足現狀，只有做愛做的東西人才可以真正得到滿足。不枉他是迪士尼其中一個最大的股東，我可以聽到演講的背景音樂是《木偶奇遇記》的"When You Wish upon a Star"。喬布斯的人生態度和他所發明的產品若出一轍：非常好用，也十分膚淺，完全缺乏洞察生命奧祕的想像力。試想像一個世界，當中每一個人都只願意做自己最愛做的東西，沒有人喜歡做的東西（即是人世間絕大部份的東西）是沒有人做的東西，所有人都終日無根地飄來蕩去尋找他最愛的戀人最愛的工作最愛的汽車最愛的家居最愛的娛樂最愛的飲食和那還未被發現或也許永遠不會被發現最愛的潛意識。以人為本的發明以人為終。幸好他沒有在富士康發表同一篇偉論，如果世上只有樂意高價買電子貨品的幸運兒卻沒有願意賤價砌貨品的勞工，我們哪有這麼多運動手指頭的機會？

喬布斯授權名作家Walter Isaacson為自己寫傳記的一個最大的原因是希望自己的孩子會認識他。他希望孩子了解為何自己「不常在他們身邊」。也許他是一個不能滿足家庭生活現狀的父親？也許家庭生活充塞著太多他不愛做的東西？也許他營營役役但到最終還未找到生命中的最愛？也許生命是在乎不斷的廢棄和更新，三之後是四，四之後是四Ｓ，四Ｓ之後（如果上天願意）應該是五？也許腳踏實地在家的後園栽種蔬果為子女煮一頓彰顯大地恩典和延續上主創造的飯是「停下腳步」、失敗和無能者的表現？如果蘋果公司的成功真的證實他已經因著做自己最愛做的東西而「真正得到滿足」，他又何須「希望」自己的孩子會認識自己？如果一個人的孩子不能在他最愛做的東西裏看清那個真真實實的他，他的「最愛」會否只是一個為自己生命申辯的包裝？

自我教育

2011-09-22T18:13:00.000-07:00

My article for the November issue of Angel's Heart.

《自我教育》

有人問我為什麼要看這麼多書。理由很多，其中一個最重要的是因為我們在學校所得到的所謂教育主要是訓練生產線員工的一個漫長的課程，及至課程完成的一刻，大部份人也同意讀書是人生中一個必須承受亦希望到死的一刻再不需要承受的苦難。這種學習環境大概會令莎士比亞也討厭文字，難怪孩子長大成為有生產知識卻無生活使命的一群educated fools，滿腦子充滿似是而非對人類生存和地球運轉法則的概念，沒有獨立思考，只有隨波逐流。

就以加拿大人最喜歡講的「權利」（rights）這個概念為例，我們對之約定俗成的理解並非典型的所謂negative rights，意即只要沒有牴觸法律，我們有權利不被他人干預個人的自由（例如言論自由的權利）。我們沒有要求他人為自己作什麼，反而希望不被干預。但今天當聽到rights這個字的時候，大家通常的理解卻是他人（尤其是政府）應該為我們做的事，自己應得的利益、財物、或服務。這些所謂positive rights 要求他人干涉我們的事務，譬如認為政府應該分派稅款給「生活水平較低」(underprivileged)的人以求達到「公平」（另外兩個模糊不清的概念）。與其請求他人不要妨礙我們創造未來的動力和自由，我們寧願承認外在環境的控制，邀請政府的干涉，依靠一些「有資格」的「專家」為我們作決定，為的是獲得某些我們認為身為人類理所應得的權利。

在這樣的環境下長大的人有著很混亂和矛盾的道德標準：滿腔熱血的年青人在聲討資本主義和全球化所造成的禍害的同時卻認為父母為他們負擔昂貴的iPhone和每個月的賬單是現代科技文明人應有的權利，為著不能立時得到心頭好而喊生喊死的也不乏其人；孩子的頭顱可以充滿「環保意識」（在我兒女的學校過去兩年的聖誕音樂劇都是以環保作主題），但如果在冬天提議他們把室內的溫度調低，多穿兩件衣服，盡自己的能力拯救地球，這無疑會釀成一個剝削人權的大問題；天父的保護和引導是神的兒女應有的權利，在託賴神職人員（他們是更「有資格」的「屬靈專家」）祈求醫治我肚痛的一刻卻不要問我晚餐吃了什麼化學製品；我有權利享受甚至間中讚美主的創造，但主的創造可以繼續美麗是某政府部門的責任，交過稅以後的我把身為管家的義務託付更「有資格」的專業承包人；福音是一份最終極的福利救濟金。

近日我一家在考慮收養一隻狗為寵物，我和兒女花了不少時間學習養狗的知識，也花了更多的時間探討和實踐權利和義務的關係、自由和自由的代價、夢想和現實的並存。這些最基本的生命課題在我們於學校廿年或以上漫長的生產線員工訓練課程中鮮有涉獵。女兒問我：「為什麼我們不能現在就買一隻狗？你買得起呀！」當「價錢唔係問題」的時候，它就成為最大的問題。如果我們認同今天孩子是在一大堆似是而非、模稜兩可、甚至是互相矛盾的不成文生存法則中沉溺的話，自我教育（一個真正的自由權利）就是人一個首要的義務，家庭就是抵抗風俗和實踐真善美的基地。活在安逸、自由的世界，everything is allowed，but nothing is important。一個識字但卻不懂得閱讀的人比一個被壓抑的文盲更加可憐。

這世界是我家

2011-08-16T21:22:00.000-07:00

My article for the October issue of Angel's Heart. October? Unthinkable. Far away; so close.

《這世界是我家》

我是一個很少旅遊的人，小的時候是因為家境清貧（那時去過最遠的地方是長洲，長洲以外的世界是如張保仔洞內一般漆黑的一個謎），當開始賺錢養家的時候認為在缺乏經濟基礎的生命階段花費在旅遊上是一種缺少長遠眼界的投資（現在證實了我當年是完全對的），今天在經濟和各種客觀因素都容許的情況下我卻與最基本的存在問題角力——我所希望得著對生命的造就，在旅遊回來的朋友口中我少有聽聞，在旅行社廣告中我看見的是指向完全背向嚮往的方向。

「讀萬卷書不如行萬里路」大概是不喜歡讀書也很少用腳行路的人最樂意曲解和濫用的一句說話。就如電腦互聯網在釋放資訊的一刻卻未能釋放人的心靈，人離開自己腳下的一片土壤少為他帶來實實在在轉化心靈的豐盛。遊客的獵奇並非等同對生命的發現，「景點」是消費者預期中的投資收益，一個就連對自己腳下的一片土地也缺乏意識去學習、保護、和培育的人走遠一步是為了異國情調所帶來片刻的消遣，暫時進入一個他更加不需要委身的虛擬歷程。一個從來無興趣認識自己窗外那棵樹的品種和特性的人飛到老遠去摸摸他人的名勝古蹟大概不是為了尋求生命的啟示。

如果這個世界真的是天父的世界，我們每天在這個世界的生活都是在經歷著一個奧祕；如果人願意在這個奧祕面前承認自己的無知和謙虛地生活在這個無知所帶來的限制範圍之內和體驗當中的啟示，他是確實知道自己腳所踏的是神聖的創造。飛機可以把遊客帶到另一片土壤之上，但遊客的視野卻可以仍然不超越自己的鼻尖。遊客說：「我最喜歡白色的沙灘，因為白色幼幼的沙代表浪漫。」我也很浪漫，卻沒有如此強大的聯想力。再者，眼前的這個沙灘因著各種的天然和人為的因素，有的並不是白色，也絕非是幼幼的沙，但——看，你腳旁那一塊變質岩有著美麗的鱗片粒狀變晶，如此浪漫的你大概可以體會當中對時空轉變的啟示和那盎然詩意——什麼？它把你的脚弄痛了？這個沙灘為著她不幼和不白的沙石向遊客道歉。

遊客是一個消費者、一個遙望的過客、一個指手畫腳的評論家、甚至是一個破壞者（人類對廉價機票的需求至今仍是其中一個最難解決的環境汙染問題）。只有一個真正屬於一片土壤的泥土黎民才會盡心竭力去認識、愛護、和培育自己的家園；只有一個不把這個世界二元分化為「非屬靈」的物體的人才不會漠視和蹂躪天父的創造。如果一天我要走到另一片的土壤之上，我不會以遊客的身份匆匆路過，我會以愛人的身份投入這片地的懷抱之內。

樹林中的妳

2011-07-18T22:31:00.001-07:00

My article for the September issue of Angel's Heart. I know some of you might not have access to the magazine, so here it is.

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《樹林中的妳》

And clenching your fist for the ones like us
who are oppressed by the figures of beauty,
you fixed yourself, you said, "Well never mind,
we are ugly but we have the music."

您緊握拳頭為著我們這樣

被美麗的形像所壓迫的人，

您理理思緒，說：「無所謂。

我們也許是醜陋，但有的是音樂。」

“Chelsea Hotel No. 2”, Leonard Cohen

今天大雨滂沱，自己一個人行山去。樹林中的人影寥寥無幾，大概因此特別容易交朋友，迷路的時候那遠遠微小的身影是我唯一的倚靠。我問：「我打算走到XXX，我走對了方向嗎？」她說：「You’re completely wrong（你是完全錯的）。」我覺得很好笑。我是「完全」錯的。人生真的有「完全」錯的方向嗎？人生又有幾次可以得到比我有智慧和經驗的人指出我「完全」的錯？

她為我引路。途中又遇上另外幾個她，有的是孤身隻影，有的是三三兩兩，通通都是女孩子。我覺得奇怪，難道所有男人在天氣壞的時候都躲起來了？大雨傾盆，雨水開始滲入應該是防水的外套，還是浹背的汗水開始在這件人造外殼之內凝結、流動？軀體散發溼悶的汗氣，多尷尬。我也許是醜陋，但有的是對生命的熱誠。妳呢？妳為何在這裏？難道被窩中的溫暖不是一個較為吸引的週末感受？難道潔白無瑕的儀容和形態不是所有女性都嚮往的美麗？在一片泥濘中攀爬的妳希望找到什麼？

我自己沒有任何目的。我不是在追尋強身健體的收益（它只是一個自然衍生的副產品）。我不喜歡跑步，我沒有一個好的跑步者應有明確的意向。催促我不斷一步一步踏實地向前行的並非自己的決定，而是生命的本能，是存在的必然，是造我者吹入我鼻孔的一個負擔。停下腳步的一刻是生命完結的一刻。在一片泥濘中我沒有希望找到什麼，只為了成就人性應有最基本的自由——向前邁進，發現生命的自由。只有發現生命才是真正的活著。

活著很美麗。女孩子更加喜歡美麗，更加知道美麗。但當美麗被扭曲的時候，它就變成最殘酷的暴君，迫使我們在比較中自慚，在競爭中自憐，在衰老中自棄。多少人一生都活在這個暴君的統治下，終日俯首帖耳，唯命是從。可以刻意製造出來和被販賣的美麗是暴君的騙局，在失去虛榮的一刻才真相大白。今天泥濘之中每一個發現生命的步伐都是對這個暴政的反抗，這個反抗是活著的一個負擔，所發現的是生命所應許的真善美。在風雨中妳那微小的身影不卑不亢。

妳說在樹林裏人看清自己真正的尺寸和事物之間的比例。我說多謝妳為我引路。

Now All Space Is Off Screen

2011-06-13T16:08:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I took my daughter to a bookstore to get her own collection of Jane Austen, an act that I see as a rite of passage for all women who ever take reading and probably womanhood seriously. It is a privilege for a Dad to hold her daughter's hand and pay for a collection from the most famous and probably most important female novelist of all time, and it was his personal triumph when the cashier affirmed the gravity of the moment by breathing out these words from the lowest point of his diaphragm when we laid the books on the counter: "Wow, Jane Austen..."

But it was not an unqualified triumph. I have my doubts and insecurity. I doubted in an age when kids are trained to be a consumer even in what they choose to read, if my daughter finds them a bit of a stretch from her usual taste (she likes characters that are all animals--not that human are not animals, but you know what I mean). And what if she doesn't like them? Would I see it as a failure of Ms. Austen, of me as a father, or of my daughter as a reader? Before we decided on the purchase, I turned to one random page in "Sense and Sensibility" and asked her to read it and tell me if she can understand the sentences. I didn't ask her if she likes the sentences, because there is no way for her to tell yet. I can only take the leap of faith to trust that as long as she is intellectually capable to understand the words, then one day she will grow up to their greatness. Nothing is secure other than this trust.

And I suppose I used the same approach in writing this blog. All along I am very aware of my own naivety in trusting people of different backgrounds, life styles, ideological orientations, and even skills in language comprehension would somehow find their own paths in navigating the spaces both within and outside of the "screen" I choose to display. I do not advertise my blog. I don't attach the address in my emails. Yes, I am aware many of my faithful readers do know me personally, but I would rather they don't. The arm's length is not for the sake of my detachment, but to create a safety zone for someone to acknowledge, yes, it is ok to think differently, and yes, it is also ok for me as as reader to agree or disagree with this writer, and yes, most importantly, it is ok for me to think he is very right about some things but I choose to not listen and to not change. Just because the truth is revealed, it doesn't mean I will need to move a finger. It's like laughing at a funeral when everybody is blessed with deafness.

When this space is properly observed and respected, life can go on even when blood is splattered all over the words. Oh, but the naivety of this trust. Of course people do not detach me from my writing. When people see me in person, they sometimes look to the other side. Sometimes they see through me---out of contempt or out of shame? I do not know. Sometimes when people talked to me, they tried to explain themselves, as if I needed their explanation to validate their taste in movie, in music, in life choices. Not that I do not care about the person, but I truly don't care about all these "character traits" when I talk to him/her. This is reality, not Facebook. For years, everyday I enjoyed beautiful friendship with a coworker sitting beside me, who happens to be a homosexual. In our years of interaction, God knows not for once did his sexual orientation become a "consideration" in my head when I spoke or listened to him. Not that I do not care about homosexuality as an "issue", but it was a non-issue when we were engaged in human contact. Sometimes he even flirted with me, and I always have my way to get back at him with an even funnier joke.

What a lengthy prologue. What I really want to say today is: I won't be writing this blog any more. No, there is no animosity or bitterness in my heart, not a single bit. No one is responsible for this decision other than myself. If you think this is an act of protest, then you cannot be more wrong. I will write about it if I want to protest about anything. This is an act of moving on. An act the grows out of an understanding of myself and this medium called a "blog". To me, it is all or nothing at all. I find it no longer viable to write the way I want to write. I aim to be an Alice Munro, a Michael Ondaatje, a Margaret Atwood. Whether I actually possess the talent to fulfill this goal is another matter (so far it does not look good), but the aim is there. And this is not the place. I don't know where the place is or if there is actually such a place. I can't imagine Munro going to a party without people trying to see through her. Jane Austen published the first two editions of "Sense and Sensibility" anonymously.

It was a good run. Five years. Millions of words. Some of the comics are so ingenious that I don't know which fallen angel blessed me with the wicked ideas. Some people "open" a new blog every now and then as if they are getting a new pair of shoes to pull themselves out of a moment of shitty feeling only to discard the product after the consumption satisfied the transient need (no, I am not talking about anyone specific, especially not you if you think I am talking about you; I am only speaking generally), but I wrote with diligence and commitment, as with everything else I do in life. But all good things must end. So my fellow eavedroppers (sorry for an one last jab), au revoir and merci.

Candle Against the Wind

2011-06-12T22:01:00.000-07:00

The name of this blog is called "Offscreen Space", which suggests an arm's length (at least, maybe even longer than that) in my literary endeavor and my true personhood. When the space is not within the screen, the onlooker is encouraged and sometimes forced to seek beyond and beneath the facets and discover what might not be readily apparent even after a diligent reading between the lines. I'd like to see an artist as a magician, but sometimes his act could bring about a pathological obsession.

Hiding in the "Offscreen Space", a magician never gets personal. But as demonstrated in my last post, sometimes I must be drunk on my own pride and my own words to commit some idiotic language overkills. So I am going to get personal again today and say that I am very sorry about what I said yesterday. Now I am not going to remove the post, so that you can savor its full bloody glory and see how goodness might be spoiled when Satan gets the better hold of a person.

Tonight my brother talked to me about politics, but I know his purpose was not really politics but to reach out to me. He did it out of love and I could feel it. And I looked at my kids and their cousins, everyone so happy and perfect in their own ways, so God-like, that I was reminded how God first conceived me and the way things should be. It is true that if there is no love, then there is no peace, and without peace, life is unlivable. If my passion is to contribute to a livable world for the generations to come, then I must not do things that undermine the integrity of a noble purpose. It is a lesson in the lost and found of love. My hero Wendell Berry must be having the same feeling when he wrote this poem of prayer "Candle Against the Wind":

I know that I have life
only insofar as I have love.

I have no love
except it come from Thee.

Help me, please, to carry
this candle against the wind.

Please Don't Read This (There is no picture in it!!!)

2011-06-10T21:11:00.000-07:00

The following piece of writing has no reason to exist. In fact, I beseech you to not read it and, for a long while, begged myself to not write it. It will mark one of the very few occasions when I explain my writing, an activity that I detest--explaining, that is, not writing. You are particularly not suitable to read the following if you mistake my writing on this blog for a tweet that is intended to be a quick jab here and a quick jab there. I intended to do serious writing, and if you do not intend to do serious listening, I cannot guarantee your ears won't get hurt. But, hey, you've been eavesdropping for long enough that I am sure you can't subdue your curiosity now. So let's get down to business.

Someone told my wife to tell me that a few other certain someone accused me of deliberately talking bad on yet another certain someone (confused yet?) in my previous post "When I Get Older". Yes, I was inspired by a dinner conversation during the past weekend, and I (stupid me) chose to pick a couple of examples I overheard in the conversation to write on a topic that I have in me probably for years. I said, "People before our time likes to tell us stories. Like how life used to be tougher. That a kid has only one pair of shoes and that's all. Like how one used to make clothings out of gunny rice bags." I must be very stupid to use examples fresher than a newborn's ass.

The fact that I have heard these two example for over a dozen times in my life matters to no one. The fact that I myself has also told stories to my own kids about children with only one pair of shoes also would not be sufficient to vindicate me. How prideful of people to believe they own a collective experience of making clothes out of rice bags and having only one pair of shoes. And how unthinkable for them to think that I, as as writer who also happens to be a full time worker and a father of two, would spend my precious minutes and energy to write a tweet to jab at a certain particular someone. The person in question is a person I do not even know enough about, let alone has a feeling strong enough to write about. When I said "I look at a storyteller who has supposedly gone through tougher times but at this very moment of her life is lazy, wasteful, and uninspired...", do they think I am accusing this person of being lazy, wasteful and uninspired? How the hell do I know how she lives her life? I hardly know her, people! What is the context and theme of the piece? I hope someone actually did give a shit instead of only gazing at their sensitive navels.

But it really doesn't matter. As someone has taught me time and time again before: it does not matter what you say, and it does not matter what you think, and...sorry, I forget about the rest. Anyway. Back to the original purpose of today's writing--or the non-existence of it. My wife asked me to explain. And explain I must. In fact, I might as well do it all at one shot. For my piece "Lest Not Forget", I would like to apologize to anyone in the world who has ever suffered, particularly for being a refugee, and even more particularly for being a swimming refugee. And for the piece "Rules of the Game", I would love to apologize to my lovely parents because I think boat cruise is one of the most meaningless and wasteful ways to enjoy oneself, a Babylonian way of life. My parents love boat cruise so much that I have lost count how many times they've been on one. (I am sure they've lost count too) And for that I am totally guilty of hurting my own parents. In fact, if my old brain serves me right, my parents were in the aforementioned dinner conversation and they were the ones who volunteered information about people going to church to get gunny rice bags to make clothes. Hey, why the hell was I not accused of being a parents-basher? That ain't fair!

Guilty as charged. In fact, in the past I was variably and sometimes simultaneously accused of being a "proapgandist", an "ideologist", a person with "a gun in my hand" and ready to aim and shoot (I must say, being a cowboy at heart, I like this one a lot), a person who adds and subtracts from the Words of God (this one is certainly enough to condemn me to hell). Do I not have the right to get upset over these accusations? But I've never got upset. Because they are all false and stupid. And I never see a reason to explain myself, because only time will tell. But this time is different. My wife bugged the shits out of me, and I am sick and tired of--not people falsely accusing me--but people not knowing anything about the art of writing, much like how they desecrate the Bible by taking bits and pieces out of context and justifying whatever the crap they happen to advocate. So let's talk adult for once: please stop reading my blog if you do not like to read writings like these. They are not good for you. You are not good for them. You don't understand them (yet they might understand you). My sentences are long. My phrases sometimes dangle. My pictures are dull. The layout sucks the donkey dick. There is NOTHING here for you. Please leave me alone. And if you ever--EVER--fantasize I spent time to write about you specifically, then you are just fantasizing.

OK, enough. Or maybe not. The experience again brought about a question that I have spent years to ponder upon, and I might as well take the pertinent occasion to share with you my fellow eavesdroppers. For the longest time now, I wonder why I am still going to church, a Victorian-age society much like the one depicted in Edith Wharton's "The Age of Innocence" that utterly intent on maintaining its own rigid stability. It imposes on its members set rules and expectations for practically everything. Those who breached the social code were punished, with exquisite politeness, by the other members, by authorities. They might not outright condemn you to hell for having free thoughts, but you can't be too sure if you are not too far from it. If you don't play along, they'd try to shame you into submission, with their contempt, with their false accusations. All out of love. My ass. Week after week, I waste my precious youth, for the sake of what? Hypocrisy? I don't care for that. For my kids, I must say. This cowboy can walk into the sunset alone, anytime, but I don't want to drag the little ones into the freaking chaos. I don't want to confuse them. There are nice people there. The kids are small, and they should have a chance to grow up normal. I want them to have a choice. I want them to have a perspective. I want them to tell for themselves. Time well wasted, I guess. You take some, you lose some. For now I shall wait. That's part of being a responsible adult. No, there is no crisis of faith. This is a crisis of community.

I Need A Specialist

2011-06-09T10:48:00.000-07:00

"For too long the ideal role of the individual in our society--the role the talented young have aspired to almost by convention--has been that of the specialist. It has surely become as plain as it needs to be that what we need most now are not the specialists with their narrowed vision and short-range justifications, but men of sympathy and imagination and free intelligence who can recognize and hold themselves answerable to the complex responsibilities of a man's life in the world."

And excerpt from "The Loss of the Future" by Wendell Berry

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I do not trust specialists. Of them all, I find those who deal exclusively with "spiritual matter" the least trust-worthy, for they could claim the highest moral ground while engage the least in what their feet stand on. What people need is not an opinion based on the latest school of thoughts (that are bound to be partially or entirely repudiated by the next new thought in line), not an institutionalized effort of charity to dispense piecemeal solutions to problems that we misconstrue as phenomenons isolated from a bigger moral landscape that we think can be and even should be left intact for the sake of personal convenience and moral clarity, and certainly not a Promised Land that is out of this world, beyond this body, and beneath our moral high ground; what people need is a true repentance on how we choose to live our lives, a complete upheaval of the way things were with the previous generations and are now as we also get used to them by default, by sloth, by inertia, by arrogance, and, most of all, by flipping through whatever bible that we happen to get our hands on and claiming we see nothing there regarding the urgent necessity of some "mere lifestyle choices" that should be as plain and apparent as the shape and posture of a leaf to receive light for survival and for growth yet are modeled after by the wisest species on earth only after a few thousand years and not before we have already successfully destroyed God's creation beyond recognition. Now tell me how I should and should not live, tell me how I should and should not manage my money, tell me how I should and should not think, tell me what I should and should not read, tell me how and what I should and should not write, tell me what I should and should not do as a lover, as a parent, as a friend, as a student, as a worker/slave, as a piece of meat waiting and wishing to die a peaceful death, and, most of all, (I am sure we could at least agree on one common idol) tell me how I should love. I eagerly wait for some specialist opinions.

When I Get Older

2011-06-07T10:53:00.001-07:00

People before our time likes to tell us stories. Like how life used to be tougher. That a kid has only one pair of shoes and that's all. Like how one used to make clothings out of gunny rice bags. I don't mind listening to stories like these, and in fact I believe without them the newer generations would not know how to live properly in the present "better" time. However, if the stories are not lived but only told, then they are mere relics for reminiscence and help no one.

Say, if I look at a storyteller who has supposedly gone through tougher times but at this very moment of her life is lazy, wasteful, and uninspired, then the only truths I could distill out of her stories are:

She has gone through a time tougher than anything I could ever imagine myself going through, and for that, she has done her share of suffering and deserves every single bit of laziness, wastefulness and depressing insipidity she is living now in this present better time
She was unlucky then; she is luckier now. As to what her stories could do to the billions of people who are still in a state of unluckiness, she couldn't tell. And I couldn't learn any insight on this matter from her life either
In fact, I couldn't tell what her stories have to do with my life. If anything, the only moral I can deduce from her sharing is that I am lucky, and I should pray to continue to be this lucky, and I should follow her example to exhaust and exploit the benefits of being lucky

My church is having a series on how to grow up to be a man or a woman. The more fundamental question is why we actually needed to be taught of something like this. One reason might be that the adults before our time have many stories to tell but no life to share with us.

My son often sings this song, but with some alternative lyrics that goes something like "When I get older, I will go to McDonald's and order a Double Big Mac, and I will grow fat" etc. How do you know that a parody might well be the real truth?

Try A Little Tenderness

2011-06-06T09:23:00.000-07:00

First fruit of the season. A bug ate half of it. I don't mind sharing.

Especially when I have at least another ten to come soon.

This must be one of the most beautiful mornings I've experienced. How do you make things grow? Try a little tenderness. Can't find the Sinatra version online; so here is Bublé. If you ever have a chance to listen to Sinatra singing this one, ask yourself if anyone can sing a simple scale so beautifully (the line "women do get weary").

Years Through A Hole

2011-06-03T12:03:00.000-07:00

A postman comes to my door everyday around the same time. One postman, always the same postman. I have an older style mail slot that is really a hole through my front door with a neat spring hinge contraption that requires minimal effort to open and stuff the mails in. Even so, with both of his hands full, there were times the postman found it challenging to work against the force of the hinge and make the mails go through unscathed.

One time I saw a piece of mail coming through the hole, with a push-stop-and-go movement not unlike that of a woman delivering; so I walked up, opened the door, thanked the postman, and relieved him from his labor. Then he asked me why not install a big mail box, the kind that you screw on the frontage of your house like you are really expecting something big and important to go into it, and I said blah blah blah.

The hole has been there for close to forty years. I wonder, say, if the postman's father was also a postman, would he have found it just as inconvenient? And if he has, would he have innovated to enable and empower himself to face the daily challenge from a thin wire of a hinge? While I was standing there talking to him, on the spot I came up with five ideas to make life easier for myself if I were him. If it was not a problem forty years ago, why do we have to come up with a solution now?

When I was a kid, everyone wanted to grow up and become either a policeman, a postman, or a doctor. No one would have imagined in a few short decades they would grow up to have jobs writing apps to assist people wiping their asses and wasting their youth (sometimes simultaneously). Time changes. Now the postal is going on strike, and no one gives a damn. Postmen used to be vital to a community, providing a substantial and tangible value to our well being. Mail delivery is an act of service with an intrinsic unadulterated goodness woven into the fabric of a community. For every Apple, there is always a Foxconn to haunt our conscience, but what is not to love about a man coming to your front door and giving you words that you've been waiting for, sometimes for a lifetime?

The postman limped by my door this morning and inserted a piece of junkmail, something about some hearing aid technology. Hope to hear from him again soon.

Stay Gold

2011-06-01T21:37:00.000-07:00

A busy week. Not going to write if I cannot write properly. So I shall leave you with eight of the most powerful lines in the English language, Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay". I asked my daughter to come close and look at these new leaves. Nature's first green is gold, indeed. Stay gold, my girl. Stay gold.

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Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Back to The Garden

2011-05-30T11:38:00.000-07:00

I think the most thankless kind of sermons are those given out in weddings. What possible can one say to the man and woman that is beyond what they have already heard about? What else do they not know can be made known at that fateful moment? In a world that is run by deeply diseased, if not outright psychopathic minds, what is the message that can shark-proof them from turning into an invalid or psychopath themselves and breed offspring of such?

I have one: Try your best to live your life and build a family together with and only with what God has endowed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Anything that causes you to deviate from God's intended image of you has the potential to corrupt. So the question is not how I should use, say, a computer, but rather if I should use a computer at all. Anything that demystifies life cultivates hubris and is a call to desecrate it.

The Question of An Image

2011-05-27T12:18:00.000-07:00

I choose carefully the picture that accompanies each article I submit for publication: sometimes it supplements the writing if the visual cue enhances its effect; sometimes it softens the tone (often with humor, and often self-deprecating humor) if the message is hard to swallow; and other times it even blatantly contradicts what the readers are about to read if I am aiming to jolt or to provoke.

When choosing a picture to go with my last piece 我在手機裏看見您的臉但那又如何?, I had a great struggle: the picture I really wanted is what Scorsese would call a "key image" of a movie, and this one is from "Brokeback Mountain". I was talking about the Westerns and how they are always about the Land and a yearning, and here Ang Lee captured it all in one simple composition---two cowboy shirts, doubling up, and a photo of a mountain pinned to the closet door. The image speaks loudly in a most quiet way.

And my struggle. If the reader knows not the image, then the image means not much. If the reader knows the image, he or she will likely typecast me as someone questionable because I not only promote a very questionable movie but also honor it by posting an image of it. I wouldn't break my back over being prejudiced against, but I'd hate to see the image desecrated and my message undermined. So I practiced the diligent act of self-censorship and went with an image of Gus from "Lonesome Dove", which achieves a different sort of provocation as everybody must be thinking what the hell does a cowboy have to do with seeing a person's face on a cell phone? Well, I created the long title (I hate long titles) to accompany the image and gave it a reason to be there.

我在手機裏看見您的臉但那又如何？

2011-05-25T18:03:00.000-07:00

Here is my article for the August issue of Angel's Heart:

《我在手機裏看見您的臉但那又如何？》

我的電郵服務是一項不斷被更新的先進科技。早兩天發現「登出」的按鈕被移到一個較為隱藏的角落，今天發現多了一個新功能幫助我標記每個電郵的重要性。不斷的更新可以為人類帶來福祉，也是科技和商家不斷證實自己存在價值的必要動作，背後的理念是文明不進則退，新的總比舊的好，新的會為大家帶來前所未有的方便、舒適、競爭力、甚至保障。但既然人其中一個最基本的責任是發問，我的問題是：「在得著這個幫助我標記電郵重要性的功能之前，我是否一個較為不知輕重的人？在得著功能以後，我有否變成一個更加懂得修身齊家的人？」我所認識一個把生活處理得最井井有條的人是用紙筆整理每天的事務。一天他看見我從錢包拿出記載事務的字條時，他從自己的錢包也拿出同類型的字條，我們相視而笑。

科技發展背後的理念常有著對人性和世界善意的誤解和惡意的偏見。網上的社交網絡真的可以滿足人類對社群生活的嚮往嗎？一個沒有共同參與、沒有共同付出、沒有共同承擔、沒有共同成就的群體能夠得著真正造就生命的交流嗎？還是它只是一些個體自我膨脹的塗鴉牆壁？一個沒有腳踏大地的虛擬平臺又如何使人體會生命的奧祕，當平臺上的交流多是脫離生活最基本實況的空談？物格而後知至，一個就連對自己腳踏的一小片土壤也缺乏認識的人又如何可以「放眼全球」？這是商家刻意的誤導，是我們對科技的迷信，還是大家心照不宣的自欺欺人？

西部電影的主題總是大地，敘事的動力總是一個嚮往（如果人願意放下對《斷背山》先入為主的偏見，就可以看見李安所拍出來的是一齣實實在在的西部電影，當中對大地情懷和生命嚮往的描寫就連一個美國導演也未必能夠表達得同樣深刻細膩）。西部電影史中其中一套最膾炙人口的作品是長達六小時的〝Lonesome Dove〞，故事描述兩個德薩斯州(Texas)的過氣牛仔作出生命中最大亦大概是最後一個的重要決定，帶著僅有的牲口和不斷衰老的身軀長征蒙大拿州(Montana)，希望在一片傳聞中較為青翠的土壤上終老。對其中一個牛仔來說，前進的真正動力卻不是綠茵，是來自位於旅程的半途，現居內布拉斯加(Nebraska)的舊情人。觀眾隨著他艱辛的步履，懷著差點兒按捺不住的嚮往，在旅途的中段終於遇上他生命的最愛。但浪子又怎會停下他的腳步？浪蕩的氣魄未幾又要告別安逸，憑著信心與勇氣朝向充滿恩典卻又危機四伏的大地進發。觀眾懷著同樣的心痛再次上路，不要回望情人的眼淚，深知這一生再沒有回頭的可能。

當商家看見這個滿佈商機的狀態，便立即提出科技是解決問題的最好辦法：要是他們有著電腦和電郵，這一段糾纏不清的關係豈不能透過適時的溝通得到完美的結局？要是他們有著可以一天廿四小時看見對方面容的智能手機，這些亂七八糟的什麼嚮往豈不能弄個清清楚楚？要是他們有著汽車飛機火箭，那怕要縱橫天下，就連飛上天空把星星摘下來作為定情信物也是一個煽情的可能。情人變超人，大地變灰塵，當浪漫被徹底驅散，故事便失去靈魂，以科技控制的生命是機械人的生命，情節是沉悶乏味的電腦程式。藝術創作的品質每況愈下並非標誌人類創作力的退步，卻反映新一代的創作人缺乏洞察、反省、和體驗生命的經歷。如果人願意放下阻礙他成長的種種科技，用雙腳一步一步把生命以最原始卻又最豐富的途徑實踐出來，他的生命本身就是偉大的藝術。

A New Chance

2011-05-24T09:07:00.000-07:00

Happiness is a man who wakes up in the morning with a heart full of joyful anticipation and no regret---other than what he could have done more and done better yesterday. Yesterday he laughed at the silliest jokes (some of them his own), encountered the mightiest trees, felt the strength and weakness of his every bone and every sinew, gave everything he could to make every minute counted, every meal well deserved and every laying on his pillow a true sabbath, but still he wanted to give much more because he had much more to give. Today is his new chance.

The Trees of Life

2011-05-23T18:26:00.001-07:00

Congratulation to "The Tree of Life" for taking home the Palme d'Or yesterday in Cannes. Here is my tribute with a few pictures of trees.

Western Red Cedar is considered the "tree of life" (not related to the movie), but the strength of a Douglas Fir often speaks the loudest to me.

The strength that never was.

Wendell Berry once talked about a sycamore tree that lived entirely within its means by incorporating not only what made it grew but also the adversities that came its way (fence nails and lightning strikes), and it flourished because of everything that it embodied. "It stands in its place and feeds upon it, and is fed upon, and is native, and maker." I shall forever hold on to this last line and try to live with the same wisdom and good works.

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The Sycamore - by Wendell Berry

In the place that is my own place, whose earth
I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,
a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.
Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,
hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.
There is no year it has flourished in
that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it
that is its death, though its living brims whitely
at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.
Over all its scars has come the seamless white
of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history
healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection
in the warp and bending of its long growth.
It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
It has become the intention and radiance of its dark fate.
It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.
In all the country there is no other like it.
I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling
the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.
I see that it stands in its place and feeds upon it,
and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.

The Net of It All

2011-05-20T09:42:00.000-07:00

The word "chore" in the English language is one heck of a hideous word--you can feel the dust in your nostrils and sweat dripping down your back just by uttering the damned word. The Chinese translation 家務 is more functional in denoting the true nature of the task--a family duty--with no evident connotation, positive or negative. Or so I think. Just ask a Chinese kid to do some 家務, and see if he doesn't act like there is dust in his nostrils and sweat dripping down his back. But I don't blame the kids. We adults spoiled the goodness for them by our own bad attitude towards good works--we don't enjoy doing the damned housework either!

What is a man who does not even upkeep his own house, supposedly his sanctuary? What is a man who performs his duties only with grudges in his heart and must compete against his loved ones for a "fair" distribution of the undesirable act of serving? Can a heart be unclustered if the man's kitchen is in a state of complete disarray? Can anything meaningful come out of a man's mouth when he does not even examine what gets into his mouth? Would you trust a person with your problems when he only knows how to solve his household problems with industrial manufactured solutions that are often more harmful than the original problems? Would you say a person is "creative" when he would not even innovate to sustain and beautify his immediate surrounding? Is there any credible evidence of a man's goodness if he vows to love his neighors but would not even consider taking public transit when he does not need to drive? Can a person be spiritually vigorous when he is constantly physically lethargic? If a person's excuse for handing in bad works is that they enable him to hand in good works like raising his kids and serving his Lord, then why does he think his Lord wouldn't consider the net effect of his works and see if they bring more harm than good?

Today Is a Good Day for Some Good Works

2011-05-19T15:29:00.000-07:00

Today is a good day for some good works.

There were days so bad that I wondered if good works are all at possible.

Yet it is also bad days like these that keep on reminding me the necessity of good works.

So I tend to forget about the bad days and remember only the goodness they brought.

Today is a good day for some good works.

And I will make something grow.

What Are People For?

2011-05-18T13:54:00.000-07:00

The past week I've been taking care of my two nieces. They are not my kids; I can only observe. Typical teenagers, you might say, always busy, mostly with activities to pleasure the self, and certainly do not aspire to ascend beyond them. What else can they be? The adults want them this way, the schools teach, train and enable them to stay this way, the corporations try their best to make sure they will continue to grow way, and even churches concede this is the only way. To have life any other way is unimaginable, we think.

In Eugene Peterson's "Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology", he recommended Wendell Berry's collection of essays "What Are People For?".

And what a question that is.

********************

"The great question that hovers over this issue, one that we have dealt with mainly by indifference, is the question of what people are for. Is their greatest dignity in unemployment? Is the obsolescence of human beings now our social goal? One would conclude so from our attitude toward work, especially the manual work necessary to the long-term preservation of the land, and from our rush toward mechanization, automation, and computerization. In a country that puts an absolute premium on labor-saving measures, short workdays, and retirement, why would there be any surprise at permanence of unemployment and welfare dependency? Those are only different names for our national ambitions." -from "What Are People For?," 1985, p. 125.

********************

And here is a letter Wendell Berry wrote to an editor in response to an article titled “Less Work, More Life" that proposed a shorter workweek.

Though I would support the idea of a 30-hour workweek in some circumstances, I see nothing absolute or indisputable about it. It can be proposed as a universal need only after abandonment of any respect for vocation and the replacement of discourse by slogans.

It is true that the industrialization of virtually all forms of production and service has filled the world with “jobs” that are meaningless, demeaning, and boring—as well as inherently destructive. I don’t think there is a good argument for the existence of such work, and I wish for its elimination, but even its reduction calls for economic changes not yet defined, let alone advocated, by the “left” or the “right.” Neither side, so far as I know, has produced a reliable distinction between good work and bad work. To shorten the “official workweek” while consenting to the continuation of bad work is not much of a solution.

The old and honorable idea of “vocation” is simply that we each are called, by God, or by our gifts, or by our preference, to a kind of good work for which we are particularly fitted. Implicit in this idea is the evidently startling possibility that we might work willingly, and that there is no necessary contradiction between work and happiness or satisfaction.

Only in the absence of any viable idea of vocation or good work can one make the distinction implied in such phrases as “less work, more life” or “work-life balance,” as if one commutes daily from life here to work there.

But aren’t we living even when we are most miserably and harmfully at work?

And isn’t that exactly why we object (when we do object) to bad work?

And if you are called to music or farming or carpentry or healing, if you make your living by your calling, if you use your skills well and to a good purpose and therefore are happy or satisfied in your work, why should you necessarily do less of it?

More important, why should you think of your life as distinct from it?

And why should you not be affronted by some official decree that you should do less of it?

A useful discourse on the subject of work would raise a number of questions that Mr. de Graaf has neglected to ask:

What work are we talking about?

Did you choose your work, or are you doing it under compulsion as the way to earn money?

How much of your intelligence, your affection, your skill, and your pride is employed in your work?

Do you respect the product or the service that is the result of your work?

For whom do you work: a manager, a boss, or yourself?

What are the ecological and social costs of your work?

If such questions are not asked, then we have no way of seeing or proceeding beyond the assumptions of Mr. de Graaf and his work-life experts: that all work is bad work; that all workers are unhappily and even helplessly dependent on employers; that work and life are irreconcilable; and that the only solution to bad work is to shorten the workweek and thus divide the badness among more people.

I don’t think anybody can honorably object to the proposition, in theory, that it is better “to reduce hours rather than lay off workers.” But this raises the likelihood of reduced income and therefore of less “life.” As a remedy for this, Mr. de Graaf can offer only “unemployment benefits,” one of the industrial economy’s more fragile “safety nets.”

And what are people going to do with the “more life” that is understood to be the result of “less work”? Mr. de Graaf says that they “will exercise more, sleep more, garden more, spend more time with friends and family, and drive less.” This happy vision descends from the proposition, popular not so long ago, that in the spare time gained by the purchase of “labor-saving devices,” people would patronize libraries, museums, and symphony orchestras.

But what if the liberated workers drive more?

What if they recreate themselves with off-road vehicles, fast motorboats, fast food, computer games, television, electronic “communication,” and the various genres of pornography?

Well, that’ll be “life,” supposedly, and anything beats work.

Mr. de Graaf makes the further doubtful assumption that work is a static quantity, dependably available, and divisible into dependably sufficient portions. This supposes that one of the purposes of the industrial economy is to provide employment to workers. On the contrary, one of the purposes of this economy has always been to transform independent farmers, shopkeepers, and tradespeople into employees, and then to use the employees as cheaply as possible, and then to replace them as soon as possible with technological substitutes.

So there could be fewer working hours to divide, more workers among whom to divide them, and fewer unemployment benefits to take up the slack.

On the other hand, there is a lot of work needing to be done—ecosystem and watershed restoration, improved transportation networks, healthier and safer food production, soil conservation, etc.—that nobody yet is willing to pay for. Sooner or later, such work will have to be done.

We may end up working longer workdays in order not to “live,” but to survive.

(Picture on top: A shopper emerges from Apple's flagship store in New York City with an iPhone 4 in June 2010. Picture at bottom: People line up outside an Apple store in Beijing, China, earlier this month to buy an iPad 2)

I Am Not Afraid of the Dark

2011-05-16T14:06:00.000-07:00

Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking said in an interview published Monday in the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper that he rejects the notion of heaven.

“I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark,” Hawking told the Guardian.

Hawking's first sentence ("I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail.") shows the limitation of science in explaining life, which I do not and need not disagree with, because it simply shows how he regards life and the blindness in this particular regard. However, his ignorance becomes arrogance when he starts to speak about something that he does not know and will never know sufficiently about ("There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark"). Why is heaven a fairy story? And if a fairy story, why is it one for people who are afraid of the dark? Mr Hawking, were you speaking scientifically, or were you just, for a brief sentimental moment, writing up your own poetic licence? For a nanosecond I thought you changed career.

No matter if Mr Hawking is changing career or not, I still would like to recommend a very good book to him: Wendell Berry's "Life is a miracle: an essay against modern superstition". It talks about, amongst many other things, how a human being should act with a humble awareness of his own ignorance and how a person's arrogance in denying his own ignorance is never morally neutral. I am sure a person as smart as Mr Hawking would agree with most of the things in this brilliant little book. He might even pick up a thing or two about poetry.

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Quotes from "Life is a Miracle" by Wendell Berry

"The most radical influence of reductive science has been the virtually universal adoption of the idea that the world, its creatures, and all the parts of its creatures are machines—that is, that there is no difference between creature and artifice, birth and manufacture, thought and computation. Our language, wherever it is used, is now almost invariably conditioned by the assumption that fleshly bodies are machines full of mechanisms, fully compatible with the mechanisms of medicine, industry, and commerce; and that minds are computers fully compatible with electronic technology."

"This may have begun as a metaphor, but in the language as it is used (and as it affects industrial practice) it has evolved from metaphor through equation to identification. And this usage institutionalizes the human wish, or the sin of wishing, that life might be, or might be made to be, predictable."

"I am aware how brash this commentary will seem, coming from me, who have no competence or learning in science. The issue I am attempting to deal with, however, is not knowledge but ignorance. In ignorance I believe I may pronounce myself a fair expert."

"One of our problems is that we humans cannot live without acting; we have to act. Moreover, we have to act on the basis of what we know, and what we know is incomplete. What we have come to know so far is demonstrably incomplete, since we keep on learning more, and there seems little reason to think that our knowledge will become significantly more complete. The mystery surrounding our life probably is not significantly reducible. And so the question of how to act in ignorance is paramount."

"Our history enables us to suppose that it may be all right to act on the basis of incomplete knowledge if our culture has an effective way of telling us that our knowledge is incomplete, and also of telling us how to act in our state of ignorance. We may go so far as to say that it is all right to act on the basis of sure knowledge, since our studies and our experience have given us knowledge that seems to be pretty sure. But apparently it is dangerous to act on the assumption that sure knowledge is complete knowledge—or on the assumption that our knowledge will increase fast enough to outrace the bad consequences of the arrogant use of incomplete knowledge. To trust 'progress' or our putative 'genius' to solve all the problems that we cause is worse than bad science; it is bad religion."

"If we lack the cultural means to keep incomplete knowledge from becoming the basis of arrogant and dangerous behavior, then the intellectual disciplines themselves become dangerous. What is the point of the further study of nature if that leads to the further destruction of nature? To study the "purpose" of the organ within the organism or of the organism within the ecosystem is still reductive if we do so with the assumption that we will or can finally figure it out. This simply captures the world as the subject of present or future "understanding" which will become the basis of further industrial and commercial optimism, which will become the basis of further exploitation and destruction of communities, ecosystems, and local cultures."

"I am not of course proposing an end to science and other intellectual disciplines, but rather a change of standards and goals. The standards of our behavior must be derived, not from the capability of technology, but from the nature of places and communities. We must shift the priority from production to local adaptation, from innovation to familiarity, from power to elegance, from costliness to thrift. We must learn to think about propriety in scale and design, as determined by human and ecological health. By such changes we might again make our work an answer to despair."

Animal Husbandry

2011-05-14T21:18:00.000-07:00

The other day I asked 一對終日被商家被科技被政客被迷信支配的小夫妻又會在那一天發現就連婚姻的關係也是一種競爭，弱肉強食的最埋身攻擊? When I first wrote the sentence I was instantly startled by it, not only because it was cynical but even more so because it was truthful. This is what I read in today's Vancouver Sun (click below for full article):

The fine art of moulding a new husband in 25 time-tested steps guaranteed to succeed: Bring your groom to heel -and turn him into the man you want him to be

I'd like to believe the piece is all tongue-in-cheek, but given that it appears in the ISSUES & IDEAS page, I am sure these are intended to be serious advices that the author suggests you should try some. I must say every one of the 25 advices are hilarious and hilarously workable. Since I talked about room temperature in my piece, let's take a closer look at the advice about the thermostat:

TAKE CONTROL OF THE THERMOSTAT

Most men won't switch on the central heating until there are snowdrifts up at the window. You need to nip this practice in the bud.

Wait for a chilly day, wrap yourself in shawls and lie on the sofa feigning hypothermia when your husband returns home. In those heady, early days, he should calculate your health is worth more than any fuel bill. Should he ever dare chide you about the radiators, simply remind him of "the day I nearly died."

Let me elaborate on what the author really means: a husband should calculate his wife's health is worth more than any fuel bill---but hey, why stop there?---I say a husband should calculate his wife's health is worth more than the worth of the health of all other fellow human beings added together. So to hell with global warming, and if your husband is insolent enough to attempt to lead the family to be more responsible global citizens, make sure you make him feel even more guilty for imposing greenie ideologies onto you and--for heaven's sake!--the innocent children who are frozen to death because of his wrongheadedness. It is all about a strategy to win. 婚姻的關係也是一種競爭，弱肉強食的最埋身攻擊.

Let me share with you a personal story. One time my wife was invited to meet up with some old friends, but I decided to go up the mountain by myself because, honestly, I can pretend to smile for only so long and the mountain was calling me. So she took the kids with her and it caused a bit of a scandal when people learned that she actually "set me free" to go out on my own. And the wives all turned to their husbands and launched a preemptive strike, "Don't even think I will ever let you do that!"

What can I say to these lovely ladies? You don't mind your husbands spending countless hours in front of the computer pleasuring himself with an endless supply of pornography, jerking off (behind closed door) to the images of naked bodies displayed in very agreeable positions and (in open space) to the images of consumer products and mindless amusement presented in very welcoming postures, yet you forbid him from doing something wholesome on his own. Never mind his life's vigor (sexual or otherwise) is diminishing, never mind his image of manhood, husbandhood, and fatherhood are getting increasing blurry and confusing; as long as he remains castrated by the necessary and expected consequence of domesticity, you will continue to bestow him with the titles "a faithful husband" and "an awesome dad". The fact that he has no interest to go beyond the four walls of his house does not worry you. The fact that if he ever goes out he would stay within the proper boundaries of Future Shop, Best Buy and Costco comforts you and is even a sign of faithfulness, to you and to the family. The fact that he agrees the proper role of a man-of-the-house is to shop for ready-made products and services to solve problems that the family might or might not have motivates him daily to serve his boss at work that sees him as something even lower.

And what is a neutered wimp going to do on a beautiful Saturday afternoon? Give him a can of freaking CLR to earn his balls back, I say.

Healing

2011-05-13T20:46:00.000-07:00

An excerpt from Wendell Berry's "Healing"

I

The grace that is the health of creatures can only be held in common.

In healing the scattered members come together.

In health the flesh is graced, the holy enters the world.

II

The task of healing is to respect oneself as a creature, no more and no less.

A creature is not a creator, and cannot be. There is only one Creation, and we are its members.

To be creative is only to have health: to keep oneself fully alive in the Creation, to keep the Creation fully alive in oneself, to see the Creation anew, to welcome one's part in it anew.

The most creative works are all strategies of this health.

Works of pride, by self-called creators, with their premium on originality, reduce the Creation to novelty--the faint surprises of minds incapable of wonder.

Pursuing originality, the would-be creator works alone. In loneliness one assumes a responsibility for oneself that one cannot fulfill.

Novelty is a new kind of loneliness.

III

There is the bad work of pride. There is also the bad work of despair--done poorly out of the failure of hope or vision.

Despair is the too-little of responsibility, as pride is the too-much.

The shoddy work of despair, the pointless work of pride, equally betray Creation. They are wastes of life.

For despair there is no forgiveness, and for pride none. Who in loneliness can forgive?

IV

Good work finds the way between pride and despair.

It graces with health. It heals with grace.

It preserves the given so that it remains a gift.

By it, we lose loneliness:

we clasp the hands of those who go before us, and the hands of those who come after us;

we enter the little circle of each other's arms,

and the larger circle of lovers whose hands are joined in a dance,

and the larger circle of all creatures, passing in and out of life, who move also in a dance, to a music so subtle and vast that no ear hears it except in fragments.

Always with Me

Somewhere, a voice calls, in the depths of my heart
May I always be dreaming, the dreams that move my heart

So many tears of sadness, uncountable through and through
I know on the other side of them I'll find you

Everytime we fall down to the ground we look up to the blue sky above
We wake to it's blueness, as for the first time

Though the road is long and lonely and the end far away, out of sight
I can with these two arms embrace the light

As I bid farewell my heart stops, in tenderness I feel
My silent empty body begins to listen to what is real

The wonder of living, the wonder of dying
The wind, town, and flowers, we all dance one unity

Somewhere a voice calls in the depths of my heart
keep dreaming your dreams, don't ever let them part

Why speak of all your sadness or of life's painfull woes
Instead let the same lips sing a gentle song for you

The whispering voice, we never want to forget,
in each passing memory always there to guide you

When a miror has been broken, shattered pieces scattered on the ground
Glimpses of new life, reflected all around

Window of beginning, stillness, new light of the dawn
Let my silent, empty body be filled and reborn

No need to search outside, nor sail across the sea
Cause here shining inside me, it's right here inside me

I've found a brightness, it's always with me

The Way

2011-05-12T11:13:00.000-07:00

A friend got a job offer, and I am very happy for him. I encouraged him with 大學之道 and then thought it's probably good to share these words of wisdom and truth here. Miyazaki shows such wisdom in the stark contrast between 湯婆婆's world of industry and 銭婆's world of community. 千尋 finds a way to build a community even in the filthiest of places, and for that, she becomes a real human.

If our parents and schools are teaching even half of this wisdom, our world will be blessed with much more harmony and peace. The day one shows me how a useless product like iPhone is a necessary path to lead me to The Way, I will gladly line up for one myself.

*******************************

The Way of the great learning involves manifesting virtue,
renovating the people, and abiding by the highest good. (...)
大學之道在明明德，在親民，在止於至善 (...)

The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the
world, first ordered well their own States.
古之欲明明德於天下者，先治其國
Wishing to order well their States, they first regulated their families.
欲治其國者，先齊其家
Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons.
欲齊其家者，先修其身
Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts.
欲修其身者，先正其心
Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts.
欲正其心者，先誠其意
Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost of their knowledge.
欲誠其意者，先致其知
Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.
致知在格物

Things being investigated, knowledge became complete.
物格而後知至
Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere.
知至而後意誠
Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified.
意誠而後心正
Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated.
心正而後身修
Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated.
身修而後家齊
Their families being regulated, their States were rightly governed.
家齊而後國治
Their States being rightly governed, the entire world was at peace.
國治而後天下平

From the Son of Heaven down to the mass of the people, all must
consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides. (...)
自天子以至於庶人，壹是皆以修身為本 (...)

Go (to Hell) for It

2011-05-11T12:11:00.000-07:00

A few years back when I was talking to a pastor about corporate greed, s/he shared an advice s/he gave a young man who was pondering on whether to accept a job offer from a monstrously powerful company, an offer that would involve, among other things, a dislocation from his community. The advice went like this: "I said, pray to God. If this is where He leads you, then I say, Go for It!" This answer haunts me even this very moment. I am sure it does not do the same to the pastor, for s/he was and probably still is gleefully ignorant of its repercussions. But one way or another, it will come to haunt the young man as well. He might not know what haunts him, but haunted he will be.

"I said, pray to God. If this is where He leads you, then I say, Go for It!" I am sure there are many brilliant techniques to accurately discern the will of God, and I will leave such fine art to the more qualified theorists. The really troubling aspect of this advice was in its complete disregard of the question's context: that the monstrously powerful company is indeed a proven predator, heartless in its appetite to devour the weak and the meek, blood-thirsty in winning at all cost. Even more troubling was that the pastor most certainly wasn't completely oblivious to these historical facts, for not only these are well-documented atrocities, but also s/he actually has prior experience in such a job market. The ineptitude and dangerous implications of her/his advice were startling. Am I saying the answer should be "No, you should not go"? I wish life is as simple as a clear yes or no. The problem was the pastor's simple-minded "yes" that failed to acknowledge and address the complexity of life, which was what prompted the original direction-seeking of the young man.

Would God ever lead an unsuspecting young man to a place where he will need to observe if not advance a predatory culture in order to survive and thrive? Would God ever say "Go for it!" if we seek his permission to buy a bigger car than we need to? Would God ever respond "So be it!" if we ask for his opinion on our culture of exploiting the poor and the weak for our own comfort? Either we have a very different understanding of God's attributes or we were not even talking about the same God. (OK, I know God asked Hosea to marry a whore, but I am sure the pastor wasn't thinking about something as prophetic.) And God is not as silent as we make him out to be. The destructive reverberation of our selfish decisions (often in His name) is His most direct response and judgement to our action.

And I wonder, how many of our young women and men were heeding advice like this and ended up selling their souls to Satan without knowing how or when they fell through the cracks? Look at yours truly, graduated from the most coveted business school in the Lower Mainland, with honors, no less. But I can attest to the fact with all four limbs high in the air that nothing I have learned cannot be read about in the Financial Post, which means, in short, I've spent four precious summer years of my life on pure bullshits. I still read up on the world of finance to keep abreast of human follies, and absolutely nothing new has emerged since the day I graduated: the world of money is still as fucked up as ever.

Where was Wendell Berry when I was eighteen?

*******************************

An excerpt from Wendell Berry's essay Higher Education and Home Defense

Everywhere, every day, local life is being discomforted, disrupted, endangered, or destroyed by powerful people who live, or who are privileged to think they live, beyond the bad effects of their bad work.

A powerful class of itinerant professional vandals is now pillaging the country and laying it waste. Their vandalism is not called by that name because of its enormous profitability (to some) and the grandeur of its scale. If one wrecks a private home, that is vandalism, but if, to build a nuclear power plant, one destroys good farmland, disrupts a local community, and jeopardizes lives, home, and properties within an area of several thousand square mile, that is industrial progress.

(A requirement) for entrance into the class of professional vandals is "higher education". One's eligibility must be certified by a college, for, whatever the real condition or quality of the minds in it, this class is both intellectual and elitist. It proposes to do its vandalism by thinking; insofar as its purposes will require dirty hands, other hands will be employed.

Many of these professionals have been educated, at considerable public expense, in colleges or universities that had originally a clear mandate to serve localities or regions–to receive the daughters and sons of their region, educate them, and send them home again to serve and strengthen their communities. The outcome shows, I think, that they have generally betrayed this mandate, having worked instead to uproot the best brains and talents, to direct them away from home into exploitative careers in one or another of the professions, and so to make them predators of communities and homelands, their own as well as other people’s.

When education institutions educate people to leave home, then they have redefined education as "career preparation." In doing so, they have made it a commodity–something to be bought in order to make money. The great wrong in this is that it obscures the fact that education–real education–is free. I am necessarily well aware that schools and books have a cost that must be paid, but I am sure nevertheless that what is taught and learned is free. None of us would be so foolish as to suppose that the worth of a good book is the same as the money value of its paper and ink or that the worth of good teaching could be computed in salaries. What is taught and learned is free–priceless, but free. To make a commodity of it is to work its ruin, for, when we put a price on it, we both reduce its value and blind the recipient to the obligations that always accompany good gifts: namely, to use them well and to hand them on unimpaired. To make a commodity of education, then, is inevitably to make a kind of weapon of it because, when it is dissociated from the sense of obligation, it can be put directly at the service of greed.

Yes! I am a Christian!

2011-05-10T20:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my manager asked me to write a few words about myself, and I thought it was for an award ceremony I was attending today, though I had my suspicion, for over the years I had won almost every award one could possibly win in my department and not for once was I asked to submit a biography. This morning I realized the biography was not for this afternoon's ceremony, but for another national level competition where I finished third overall across Canada.

What was interesting was that my manager "fine-tuned" my biography to make sure people know I am a columnist "of a Christian magazine", and the winning announcement with my biography went out nationally this morning. My manager is also a Christian, and I am sure his intention was all good. He was immensely proud of me, and I think what he really wanted to tell everyone was that a person of great belief would bring great work habits and ultimately great results.

But I was wary of being known as a "Christian writer" before being known as Alex-the-human-being-in-flesh-and-blood. I am not ashamed of being a Christian just as I have no problem being identified as someone having the color of red for my blood. I was only wary of the baggage that the label "Christian" carries: intolerant, anti-gay, biased, exclusive, narrow-minded, "purpose-driven" capitalist, colonizing imperialist, and (really, these two really hurts me) nature-hating and culture-trashing. Are these fair accusations? Of course not. No prejudice is ever fair. But is it fair to say Christians have indeed done much to make these shaky accusations seem substantiated? Oh, yes, my dear, oooooh, yes! How do cheap shots often turn into grand-slam home runs? If these accusations are indeed all false, then why are they perpetuating in people's mind as if they are truths beyond dispute? Media bias? Satanic attack? A sign of the end of time? Or sometimes we are really rather stupid, insolent, and ignorant?

I swear to God, yes, I swear to God, I will never again talk about any "hot topic" like "homosexuality" as if it is a mere topic to discuss about. The moment you speak up and have the slightest hint that you are leaning a little, you are already labeled either a close-minded bigot or a morally-loose compromiser. Prejudice flies fast and furious from both sides, and before you know it, you are already on a political bandwagon campaigning for a cause that you don't even know what the hell it's about.

I don't debate about what I do not care about. What I care about I do not merely debate about. I do not want to be labeled a "Christian" if by that you mean all the preconceived notions the word carries with it. You don't know me, and you must give what it takes to know me or just call the whole darn thing off and leave it at that. By the same token, if you tell me so-and-so is "gay", it means absolutely nothing to me for I only care to know about the person as a flesh-and-blood human being. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Not a Mere Idea

2011-05-09T14:05:00.000-07:00

I come across many people who admire Miyazaki's "gentler" flicks like Kiki's Delivery Service and Totoro, but have much reservation about his "environmentalism" movies like Nausicaä or Princess Mononoke.

I think there are two problems with such simplistic categorization: one being that, if one were to so narrowly define "environmentalism", all Miyazaki movies are "environmentalism movies". Some are gentle and implicit in its message, yet some are very aggressive and angry. Princess Mononoke is one of the most aggressive characters I ever met in the movies, and the movie one of the most angry I ever saw.

However, the second problem, or the real problem is that we invent the category "environmentalism movies" for a sort of entertainment with an "important message" like Avatar, which is a fine action flick but an utterly laughable attempt to speak about anything meaningful. Miyazaki would likely find it insulting to have his creations typecast into this pornographic genre. He tells stories based on a world view, a world view that I find over the years, again and again, to be most truthful. He just has many different ways to tell the same truth.

The term "environment" is itself a flawed expression. It misleads us to believe the "world" or the "nature" or the "wilderness" is something external to us, something outside of us, and thus when we are all warm and happy and very well fed and left with a moment or two to reflect on this external "thing", then we might do what is chic to "protect" it (with acts that are often hardly helpful if not adding to the damage). The world is not something external. We are the world--or more appropriately, we are part of the world, and a very small part at that.

The only way to battle such dualism in our thinking is to have a more complete world view. Not an ideology, but a world view. An ideology produces something like Avatar. A world view gives us Totoro and Kiki and Mononoke.

預備行各樣的善事

2011-05-08T09:08:00.000-07:00

My article for the July issue of Angel's Heart. A bit early, but you can't stop what you need to write.

《預備行各樣的善事》

二零一零年美國國家人道勳章得主，被譽為美國當今無輩的散文作家Wendell Berry無疑是影響我最深遠的作家。他也是一個大學教授、小說家、屢獲殊榮的詩人、改革社會的行動主義者———但他真正的身分是農夫，是造物主手下最優秀的管家。當第一次讀完他的一本散文集，我好像彩票廣告中演技誇張的演員，歡喜若狂地在家的廚房裏邊走邊嚷，指著書本大聲宣告：「This is it! This is it!」興奮的原因並非他為我提供了一些新鮮，神奇的意念，相反是他把最明顯不過的真理清楚說明，展示了一個我所接觸過最完整的世界觀，令我感到過去一切的追尋都是為了這一刻的看見。心情平靜後，我問：「為何我從未試過把以往三十六年所學會的真理拼合起來，看見這一幅最顯而易見，充滿真善美的圖畫？」我又問：「為何我一生從未遇上一個在繪畫這幅圖畫的人？」

今天和兒女又看宮崎駿的《魔女宅急便》。一個關於真善美的故事，一個又一個充滿真善美的影像和情節，看的時候要把右手掌放在心扉之上，提防雀躍的心被魔女琪琪帶走。看見琪琪因著一個簡單的善行被麵包店女東主索娜邀請進入家裏喝茶甚至留宿，我突然很想哭出來。是宮崎駿的魔力還是自己的嚮往？一個前舖後居的家園，一對自力更生的夫妻，一個和諧互助的社群，一個未被科技和物慾污染的角落，人沒有被社會趨勢所支配，卻是靠著努力和恩典向著充滿疑惑的未來熱誠地邁進。琪琪不是一個志高氣揚，打算在這個充滿商機的城市幹一番事業，為著個人的未來在那裏「大開殺戒」的年青人。一個愛自己鄰舍的人從來沒有「殺戮戰場」的心態，因為腳所踏的是社群共同的家園，手所造的是大家後世的未來。宮崎駿是電影界的Wendell Berry。

琪琪留宿麵包店之後的第一個早上，睡眼惺忪地走出小小的閣樓，因為要先走到室外才可以到達房子的另一角上廁所。我女兒說：「好冷唷！」她是女童軍，深知要為著上廁所而離開溫暖的滋味。我說：「不但室外很冷，閣樓室內大概也沒有暖氣。」一個人所見的真善美的圖畫可能是另一個人的恐怖片。宮崎駿請你留意這些細節。美國某大報章的社論曾經這樣讚譽Wendell Berry：「他是世人絕對不可以忽視的先知，但人是否願意隨著這個鼓手的拍子向前邁進卻要另當別論了。」難得有這樣誠實的傳媒。一群身心靈都極其混亂的家人會甘於謙卑自牧，共同培育一個前舖後居，收入平凡的家園嗎？一對終日被商家被科技被政客被迷信支配的小夫妻又會在那一天發現就連婚姻的關係也是一種競爭，弱肉強食的最埋身攻擊？一個只會以金錢換取權利去剝削大地剝削鄰舍剝削子孫未來的社會又如何避免自我摧毀的下場？

如果一個加拿大人要成為愛鄰舍，保護社群的地球市民，最簡單和最實際的第一步就是限制自己的「碳足跡」(carbon footprint，或譯「碳耗用量」)，例如室內溫度的適當範圍是在13°C至15°C之間。琪琪做得到，你我做得到嗎？難道我們缺乏衣物去成就一樁簡單的美事？一個能夠禦寒的軀體無疑是一個較為健康的軀體，一個健康的軀體無疑是自力更生的首要條件，自力更生所帶來的無疑是從剝削者的手上得到釋放，被釋放的生命無疑是充滿希望，充滿魄力，預備行各樣善事的自由生命。真善美的第一步就是我們今天選擇踏出的第一個足跡。

Stillness

2011-05-06T14:36:00.000-07:00

In telling the story behind his "stunt" to send Prime Minister Stephen Harper a book every two weeks, author Yann Martel contemplated on idea of stillness in life:

"To read a book, one must be still. To watch a concert, a play, a movie, to look at a painting, one must be still. Religion, too, makes use of stillness, notably with prayer and meditation. Just gazing upon a still lake, upon a quiet winter scene—doesn’t that lull us into contemplation? Life, it seems, favours moments of stillness to appear on the edges of our perception and whisper to us, “Here I am. What do you think?” Then we become busy and the stillness vanishes, yet we hardly notice because we fall so easily for the delusion of busyness, whereby what keeps us busy must be important, and the busier we are with it, the more important it must be. And so we work, work, work, rush, rush, rush. On occasion we say to ourselves, panting, “Gosh, life is racing by.” But that’s not it at all, it’s the contrary: life is still. It is we who are racing by."

I hate to talk about politics and indeed it is the last thing on earth I want to talk about. It leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth and a sore in my throat. My inclination has always been to shut up about it until I am mad as hell and am not going to take it anymore. So after days of rancor and rancidity, I want to shut up and go back to a state of stillness. Sometimes I feel like not speaking a word again until the day I die. I am sure this is not healthy.

Stillness is fishing for nothing at Durrance Lake.

Stillness in the shapes of life.

Stillness in the lights and shadows of life.

Stillness in what lies ahead around the corner.

Open Your Eyes

2011-05-05T14:12:00.000-07:00

When I called for people to open their eyes to see the real Stephen Harper now that he can do whatever he wants to do with a majority government, I got an email from a friend, asking me to be more precise about what Harper actually did. I assume everyone a good citizen and follow the news closely, but, still, it's a fair question that demands a fair answer. In fact, I will give you more than one fair answers. When you read the following news pieces, please do this also: ask if these Harper policies are Christ inspired policies.

Now, first, we all know that Stephen has a great self image. In fact, he loves himself so much that not only he rebranded the Canadian government to the "Harper Government" (click for news link), he also decorated the government lobby in parliament with photos of only himself, instead of the traditional portraits of former Prime Ministers (click for news link). Um...I wonder if vanity and exercising an undue level of predominance are Biblical qualities or not? Anyway, these are minor points. Lest one is accused of taking only cheap shots.

My Lord Jesus Christ always sided with the weak, the poor, the downtrodden, and the most needy. In Luke 12:47-48, Jesus said, "The servant who knows what his master wants and ignores it, or insolently does whatever he pleases, will be thoroughly thrashed. But if he does a poor job through ignorance, he'll get off with a slap on the hand. Great gifts mean great responsibilities; greater gifts, greater responsibilities!" (The Message). And how does such teaching of Christ inspire Mr. Harper? Let me quote from a news piece (click here for news link): "In the corridors of power, Africa is no longer fashionable. The government of Stephen Harper, which feels that Mr. Paul Martin was a naive romantic about Africa, has taken a cold, hard look at Canada's overseas aid. A new list of priorities has been drawn up, with 20 countries or regions on it. Deleted from the list were Malawi and seven other African countries, including Rwanda, still recovering from genocide; Niger, struggling against terrorists who kidnapped two Canadian diplomats last December, and Burkina Faso, whose leaders helped to negotiate the release of the diplomats in late April...The real reason for the shift, of course, is a new calculation of Canada's business and geopolitical interests. Instead of Malawi and the seven other African countries, where most people are so desperately poor that they earn less than $2 a day, a bigger share of Canada's foreign-aid money will flow to middle-income places such as Peru, Colombia, Ukraine and the Caribbean, where Canada's commercial interests are more attractive. Canada's foreign aid seems to have become an instrument of its trade policy." If Christians believe former Prime Minister Paul Martin should pay a spiritual price for leading the charge to legalize same-sex marriage in Canada, may I kindly suggest Stephen Harper should pay an even bigger spiritual price for leading a country that is endowed with the "greatest gifts" to neglect our neighbors who have the greatest needs?

Of course, un-Christlikeness often has a manifold manifestation. How about in the recent budget, the Harper government failed to allocate any new funding for drinking water on First Nation reserves (click for news link)? How about in 2010, one of the world's leading economists says the Harper government can't claim victory at the G8 for helping poor moms and kids if it freezes aid spending? Jeffrey Sachs, who is the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and a special adviser of the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, says Canada's aid spending is well below what its Nobel laureate Lester Pearson advocated a generation ago. Pearson said 30 years ago that rich countries should spend 0.7 per cent of their GDP on foreign aid, but Canada's level is about half of that (click for news link). And how about Harper cancelling the Kelowna accord in 2006, immediately after taking office? The accord was a $5 billion breakthrough agreement to improve the quality of health and education for Canada's First Nation's Peoples (click for news link). And how about in 2007, Harper cut $1.2 Billion in spending for the establishment of quality national childcare? He also broke his promise to cut the $1.4 billion in tax breaks to oil companies, the wealthiest corporations in human history (click here for news link). Um...neglecting the poor and needy and always siding with the filthy rich people, I wonder which part of Christ actually inspired him and his policies? I wonder. If I misread any of the above news piece, or if I misread the Bible, please let me know.

Of course, when a politician is always siding with the privileged men of high places, he is also actively sponsoring the rich men's many crimes against humanity with your tax money and at the expense of everyone's physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. In 2009, prominent campaigners, politicians and scientists have called for Canada to be suspended from the Commonwealth over its climate change policies. The coalition claims Canada is contributing to droughts, floods and sea level rises in Commonwealth countries such as Bangladesh, the Maldives and Mozambique. Saleemul Huq, a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said: "If the Commonwealth is serious about holding its members to account, then threatening the lives of millions of people in developing countries should lead to the suspension of Canada's membership immediately." Canada's environment department refused to comment on the call for it to be suspended (click here for news link). Ok, I already hear people saying, "Alex, damn you and your greenie ideology!" Thanks for making me laugh. By the way, do you know the Harper government weakened regulations so that more pesticide residue could be left on your fruits and vegetables (click for news)? Big deal! you said. You are so funny. And the mega agribusiness wants to thank you for your joke and your support for a more chemical-infested future. Hey, you know what, in 2008, President of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission Linda Keen reported that the aging Chalk River nuclear facility was at a risk 1,000 times greater than the international average, and Harper quickly fired her (click for news)? You think whatever happened to Japan won't happen here? Don't be too funny now.

Last and certainly not least, Stephen Harper recently is planning to buy 65 next-generation stealth fighter jets with 29 billion of our Canadian tax dollars. Why? Really, why? And the $29-billion figure is apparently a gross underestimation (click for news). So, does Harper know something that we don't know? Are we getting ready for WWIII? Whose butt do we need to kick? What would Jesus buy with 29 billion dollars?

Sorry to make you read so much today. But this is part of democracy. This is part of being Christian. And remember what I said two days ago and saying again today: open your eyes. See what Harper will do from this point on. "On the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person's work has any value." Too bad we will need to suffer the consequence of a bad builder's bad deeds before judgement day comes.

Killing His Creation

2011-05-05T10:21:00.000-07:00

Last night when I read the story of Moses and Pharaoh to my son, he asked me, "Why was it, time and time again, God deliberately kept Pharaoh stubborn so that at the end all the people in his army were killed in the Red Sea?" I said, "It's because God wanted to show both the Egyptians and the Israelites that He was God." Then he asked, "Weren't the ten plagues enough to show that he was God? Why did God want to kill his own creation?" These were his exact words; I am not paraphrasing here.

A very good question. A very important question, so important that I wonder if it has nothing to do with, as Wendell Berry puts it, that "Christian organizations, to this day, remain largely indifferent to the rape and plunder of the world and of its traditional cultures. It is hardly too much to say that most Christian organizations are as happily indifferent as most industrial organizations to the ecological, cultural, and religious implications of industrial economics. The certified Christian seems just as likely as anyone else to join the military-industrial conspiracy to murder Creation." If God can kill His own creation to serve His purpose, then who is to say we are not allowed to do just the same, if we are led to believe a certain purpose is, indeed, the will of God?

So far, the best answer I have for my son's question is in Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith. His view opens more cans of worms for me, but I respect him for at least acknowledging that this is one of the many questions that Christians and Christianity must answer to remain relevant.

Mission Accomplished

2011-05-03T08:01:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a day of real jubilation. First, the news of bin Laden's death, eight years after Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" (but who's counting?) and that the Americans are all, again, safe to go about their lives, and then we Canadians really accomplished the mission we set out to accomplish by giving the only God-sanctioned party in Canada an expected majority and for that we Canadians are all, again, safe to go about our lives.

Now that Stephen Harper can do everything he wants to do, we can only expect heaven on earth. When Harper first formed his minority government a few years back, he presented himself to the Canadian people as a man who can make tough choices. And within the first few months in office, he did just that and triumphed in an astonishing instance of political bravery and declared on all Canadians' behalf that we, as a nation strong and free and under God's sovereignty, cannot reach our Kyoto targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. By "cannot", he meant we did not intend to try. It took real guts to say it like it was to the rest of the world. As the leader of probably the most beautiful and certainly the most livable country on earth, he'd shown all countries a world-class example of real leadership. By giving proxies to our courageous government, we Canadians shared her glory and accomplishments. Now open your eyes. See what Harper can do. Now that with a majority government he can do everything he wants to do, and we finally will have a chance to see the real Harper. See for yourselves and get ready to be delighted.

In the past four years, Canadian author Yann Martel, winner of the Man Booker Prize, has been sending our prime minister a letter and a new book every two week, in case Harper might need some guidance to lead our beautiful land and the rest of the world. Though apparently none of the insights from the 101 books Mr Martel sent him actually made it to Harper's policy-making, we can safely assume that it's only because Harper does not need to read too much. After all, it doesn't matter what a person says, it doesn't matter what a person believes in, Christ is coming back in a big big way sooner or later. For now all we need to know is Harper is the closest thing we could get next to God Himself.

Still, I have one complaint: Now that the mission is accomplished, now that we are all living happily ever after, what the hell are we left to bitch about? Soon I will need to close this blog and start to write only sermons of praise.

Thinking of My Babies

2011-05-02T21:09:00.002-07:00

We climbed Mount Finlayson on the day before the renowned Swiss climber Erhard Loretan fell to his death. We almost arrived at the very top, only stopped short climbing over a last steep slope. An experienced climber saw us brooding at the foot of the slope and urged us to overcome this last hurdle to reach the promised land. My son wanted to do it. My daughter definitely wanted to do it. My wife's feet were shaking. I looked at them for I didn't know how long, and slowly let the words slip out of my lips, "No. Let's go back down." What a bummer. But I still think it was a more courageous decision than to give the go-ahead. It was a lesson in leadership. On the way back down, I shared the lesson I learned with my daughter. She still thought I should have let her attempt it. But she didn't know what she was asking for. I have never seen her so beautiful and so vulnerable.

Swiss climber Erhard Loretan was one of the few people to have reached the summits of all 14 mountain peaks above 8,000m. His 1986 ascent of Mount Everest, without bottled oxygen, by night and in just 40 hours, stunned the mountaineering world. But his career was blighted by a family tragedy just before Christmas 2001, when he killed his own infant son by shaking him to death to stop him crying. He said he had shaken the child for just a couple of seconds to stop him crying, then put him to bed and the crying had stopped. When Erhard was falling from the summit ridge of the Gruenhorn, he must be thinking about his baby.

I had never seen so many arbutus trees in my life.

One of the very few pictures I have taken during the climb, for my hands were occupied.

Playing All the Time

2011-04-29T09:14:00.000-07:00

Last night my son gave the sanest and certainly most lucid definition of "family time" I've ever heard of.

Our family usually try to do two to three activities together every night, and we are blessed with a wide array of fun options: indoor soccer (I devote a big room downstairs for this sole purpose), card games, board games, crafts, swimming, skating, biking, all sorts of outdoor sport, movie night, reading night (which is every night), walking up the mountain, going down to the shore, or even spending hours just to walk to and back from the closest store for some grocery (we use their baby strollers to transport grocery, for we do not believe in obsolescence).

Last night we were busy packing my daughter's gears for a two-night Girl Guides wild camping starting tonight, and my son was staring at the clock very very patiently for a great duration until he couldn't hold himself together anymore and burst into tears, exclaiming, "We are not going to having any family time tonight!" I tried to console him, "No, we will still have a bit of time doing something together." He retorted, with a gravita of moral dignity in every syllable he uttered, "But family time is staying together for a lot of time!" I was transfixed by his proclamation, but my wife misunderstood him and said, "But we are together." So my son clarified himself, "Family time is playing together for a lot of time!" That nailed it. I said I will need to write this down.

Let's dissect his claim to fully appreciate the wisdom behind it:

Playing. What is playing? A dictionary tells me it means "to engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose." Another defines play as "recreational activity; especially the spontaneous activity of children, (with an) absence of serious or harmful intent." A family can be together without playing, or even engaging in activities that are full of serious and harmful intent. Playfulness is also a life attitude, one of being humorous, joyful, light and confident. Playing is the purest celebration of life.

Together means "with or in proximity to another person or people, into companionship or close association, in a body, as a group". But people are by definition together even under a tyrannical regime, suffering from oppression and dispossession (as many of us indeed are, even if we often mistake friendly dictators for freedom givers and a prison for our home). I think what my son really meant was community living. Community means "a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals, with joint ownership and/or liability". But I am not satisfied with these text book definitions. As always, Mr. Wendell Berry:

"A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each others' lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves."

"The soul, in its loneliness, hopes only for "salvation." And yet what is the burden of the Bible if not a sense of the mutuality of influence, rising out of an essential unity, among soul and body and community and world? These are all the works of God, and it is therefore the work of virtue to make or restore harmony among them. The world is certainly thought of as a place of spiritual trial, but it is also the confluence of soul and body, word and flesh, where thoughts must become deeds, where goodness must be enacted. This is the great meeting place, the narrow passage where spirit and flesh, word and world, pass into each other. The Bible's aim, as I read it, is not the freeing of the spirit from the world. It is the handbook of their interaction. It says that they cannot be divided; that their mutuality, their unity, is inescapable; that they are not reconciled in division, but in harmony. What else can be meant by the resurrection of the body? The body should be "filled with light," perfected in understanding. And so everywhere there is the sense of consequence, fear and desire, grief and joy. What is desirable is repeatedly defined in the tensions of the sense of consequence."

"A proper community, we should remember also, is a commonwealth: a place, a resource, an economy. It answers the needs, practical as well as social and spiritual, of its members - among them the need to need one another. The answer to the present alignment of political power with wealth is the restoration of the identity of community and economy."

Finally, what is "a lot of time"? The Devil's work is abstraction, or more properly, an abstractedness, so that an actual event of good work exists only as a mere idea, separated from what really matters in actuality. That's why we would rather consult "For Dummies" books for parenting guidance than to listen to our kids. To my son, "a lot of time" means "all the time". And I say Amen to that.

A community is a playground where you play with each others all the time. Working can be playing, and playing can be working. Sounds like a commercial of some ultimately meaningless gadgets or cologne? The marketers didn't invent these ideas. They only hijacked them and turned them into abstractions. A community is a playground where you play with each others all the time, even in times of toil, even in times of suffering.

Today whenever my family talk about the unexpected surgery my son went through a few years ago, we recount not only our fears and gratefulness, but also the deliciousness of hospital mashed potato (my son said he is willing to go back just for that) and how I overstuffed myself with cheese and can soup while waiting for Michael Bublé to come along to sing us a song and send us "home". I can honestly say it was fun and life-affirming to go through this particular hardship.

For all I know, if we are not playing together, enjoying each others, helping each others, sharing with each others, I don't know why the hell we are on earth.

"For an answer Jesus called over a child, whom he stood in the middle of the room, and said, "I'm telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you're not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God's kingdom. What's more, when you receive the childlike on my account, it's the same as receiving me." Matthew 18:3 (The Message)

P. S. The picture is of a Kosovo Force soldier approaches Kosovar children playing in a field.

Solipsism and Isolation

2011-04-28T12:22:00.000-07:00

Two years ago, at the nadir of the financial crisis, the urban sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh wondered aloud in the New York Times why no mass protests had arisen against what was clearly a criminal coup by the banks. Where were the pitchforks, the tar, the feathers? Where, more importantly, were the crowds? Venkatesh's answer was the iPod: "In public spaces, serendipitous interaction is needed to create the 'mob mentality.' Most iPod-like devices separate citizens from one another; you can't join someone in a movement if you can't hear the participants. Congrats Mr. Jobs for impeding social change." Venkatesh's suggestion was glib, tossed off—yet it was also a rare reminder, from the quasi-left, of how urban life has been changed by recording technologies.

Excerpt from Wall of Sound by Nikil Saval

Of Technological Progress and Human Regress

2011-04-26T10:07:00.000-07:00

Just came back from the island. I love going to the island, because not only I can get closer to the nature, but also be reminded of a simpler time, a time when mommy still rocked their baby to sleep instead of relying on industrial products and services to practice absentee motherhood. I saw this product MamaRoo yesterday after I came back from the island to "civilization" and stepped into a mall for some grocery. What kind of mother wants a memory of looking at her kid being rocked into a sweet dream by an inhuman piece of machine? And if she has no shame, she might even blog about it. Lesson number one, the kid thinks: Do not rely on your parent. She does not even want to smell me.

The biggest disappointment one can have, I tell you, is not in our politicians or even in our schools or in our churches, but in our parents. But of course I already hear mommies crying foul, saying that modern parents are too busy to tend their kids in such a "hands on" manner. I agree with the sentence structure of this claim, only that I would like to replace the word busy with lazy. And where do we get the idea that non-modern parents are non-busy enough to hold their kids and bake them homemade pies? If we actually know history, we'd realize mommies used to raise a whole village if not an entire nation. I just went to the Royal BC Museum, and revisited many incredible stories of strong mamas. I wonder, how did we become such a horde of weaklings? We lost much of what God created us to be.

***************************

Excerpt from FEMINISM, THE BODY, AND THE MACHINE

By Wendell Berry

...To ask a still more obvious question, what is the purpose of this technological progress? What higher aim do we think it is serving? Surely the aim cannot be the integrity or happiness of our families, which we have made subordinate to the education system, the television industry, and the consumer economy. Surely it cannot be the integrity or health of our communities, which we esteem even less than we esteem our families. Surely it cannot be love of our country, for we are far more concerned about the desecration of the flag than we are about the desecration of our land. Surely it cannot be the love of God, which counts for at least as little in the daily order of business as the love of family, community, and country.

The higher aims of “technological progress” are money and ease. And this exalted greed for money and ease is disguised and justified by an obscure, cultish faith in “the future.” We do as we do, we say, “for the sake of the future” or “to make a better future for our children.” How we can hope to make a good future by doing badly in the present, we do not say. We cannot think about the future, of course, for the future does not exist: the existence of the future is an article of faith. We can be assured only that, if there is to be a future, the good of it is already implicit in the good things of the present. We do not need to plan or devise a “world of the future”; if we take care of the world of the present, the future will have received full justice from us. A good future is implicit in the soils, forests, grasslands, marshes, deserts, mountains, rivers, lakes, and oceans that we have now, and in the good things of human culture that we have now; the only valid “futurology” available to us is to take care of those things. We have no need to contrive and dabble at “the future of the human race”; we have the same pressing need that we have always had—to love, care for, and teach our children.

And so the question of the desirability of adopting any technological innovation is a question with two possible answers--not one, as has been commonly assumed. If one’s motives are money, ease, and haste to arrive in a technologically determined future, then the answer is foregone, and there is, in fact, no question, and no thought. If one’s motive is the love of family, community, country, and God, then one will have to think, and one may have to decide that the proposed innovation is undesirable.

The question of how to end or reduce dependence on some of the technological innovations already adopted is a baffling one. At least, it baffles me. I have not been able to see, for example, how people living in the country, where there is no public transportation, can give up their automobiles without becoming less useful to each other. And this is because, owing largely to the influence of the automobile, we live too far from each other, and from the things we need, to be able to get about by any other means. Of course, you could do without an automobile, but to do so you would have to disconnect yourself from many obligations. Nothing I have so far been able to think about this problem has satisfied me.

But if we have paid attention to the influence of the automobile on country communities, we know that the desirability of technological innovation is an issue that requires thinking about, and we should have acquired some ability to think about it. Thus if I am partly a writer, and I am offered an expensive machine to help me write, I ought to ask whether or not such a machine is desirable.

I should ask, in the first place, whether or not I wish to purchase a solution to a problem that I do not have. I acknowledge that, as a writer, I need a lot of help. And I have received an abundance of the best of help from my wife, from other members of my family, from friends, from teachers, from editors, and sometimes from readers. These people have helped me out of love or friendship, and perhaps in exchange for some help that I have given them. I suppose I should leave open the possibility that I need more help than I am getting, but I would certainly be ungrateful and greedy to think so.

But a computer, I am told, offers a kind of help that you can’t get from other humans; a computer will help you to write faster, easier, and more. For a while, it seemed to me that every university professor I met told me this. Do I, then, want to write faster, easier, and more? No. My standards are not speed, ease, and quantity. I have already left behind too much evidence that, writing with a pencil, I have written too fast, too easily, and too much. I would like to be a better writer, and for that I need help from other humans, not a machine.

The professors who recommended speed, ease, and quantity to me were, of course, quoting the standards of their universities. The chief concern of the industrial system, which is to say the present university system, is to cheapen work by increasing volume. But implicit in the professors’ recommendation was the idea that one needs to be up with the times. The pace-setting academic intellectuals have lately had a great hankering to be up with the times. They don'’t worry about keeping up with the Joneses: as intellectuals, they know that they are supposed to be Nonconformists and Independent Thinkers living at the Cutting Edge of Human Thought. And so they are all a-dither to keep up with the times—which means adopting the latest technological innovations as soon as the Joneses do.

Do I wish to keep up with the times? No.

五分鐘的教育

2011-04-21T23:43:00.000-07:00

Here is my article for the June issue of Angel's Heart:

《五分鐘的教育》

今年第一次扭開沒有安裝有線電視的電視機，湊熱鬧在勉強能夠接收訊號的「雪花台」看看溫哥華隊冰上曲棍球的季後賽，在短短五分鐘的廣告裏，我和子女獲得以下寶貴的生命教育：

一）世上只有兩種人：入流的人和不入流的人。入流的人是樂意把生命投入某商品的人，不入流的人就是世上所有入流以外的人。不入流是生命價值的徹底否定，比罪人更要被鄙視。所以那怕你是下流的人、隨波逐流的人、縱慾無度以致胃液倒流的人，只要避免成為不入流的人，你就可理直氣壯昂首闊步踏向一流的未來。

二）與第一個課題有著若干的關聯，人的光榮來自頌揚自己的墮落性。懶惰是享受，縱情屬自然。真正的低能是當你看見人家正在刻意地實踐低能的時候你竟然無聊地指出實踐低能者那極度明顯的自我意識。如果人家已經躺在沙發上歌頌自己手上的電視遙控器為他所帶來的希望和滿足，你哪還有指出如此生命型態的墮落性的必要呢？你不可能諷刺一個以整個的生命徹底體現自我諷刺的人。

三）與第一和第二個課題有著若干的關聯（我們開始看見一個有著前文後理的敘事），工作是苦難，是賺取自我放縱的代價。工作從來沒有正面的價值，因此人要不斷發明和依賴替我們受死的產品和服務。不能為我們徹底受死的產品是該死的產品，無能力為我們完全賣命的服務是應該被淘汰的服務。既然放縱是一個無底深坑，產品和服務必須依次在競爭裏不斷被更新和丟棄，只要廢棄物不是被丟在我的後園，只要被淘汰的服務員不是我自己或我所愛的人（要知道我也懂得愛），我們認同這是經濟發展的理所當然。麻雀跌下祂也顧念，但我不是祂。我跌下來的一刻定會請祂效勞。

四）人生的終極依靠（嘩！這一點很厲害，要特別留意！）是自己一手一腳一磚一瓦建築出來的「一個人的聖殿」，殿中有的是多份的保險契約、多個的銀行戶口、多元的分散投資、逢凶化吉的先進科技、保證安全的預防措施、未雨綢繆的精密計劃、鑑往知來的生命展望；總之只要上天不要刻意為難，我這個殿是破不了（甚至讓一向謙虛的我輕輕的誇口一句，我這個人大概是死不了）。圍繞著我來敬拜的是第三點所提及的各產品和服務，他們唱的是第二點所提及歌頌我實踐自我意識的詩歌，貫穿聖殿的榮光是第一點所提及生命存在的終極價值。

短短的五分鐘，太美麗的圖畫！我怕兒女承受不了她的震撼力，建議大家不如玩撲克牌。他們欣然同意。我欣然把電視關上。

The Bible Is Dead; Long Live the Bible

2011-04-21T12:46:00.000-07:00

When it comes to the Bible, many feel there is a single right meaning—the one its divine author intended. "Well, what does the Bible say?" "The Bible is very clear about that." This is part of the iconicity of the Bible in contemporary society, the idea of it as the one and only divinely authored and guaranteed book of answers, with one answer per question. No more, no less...

...Bible debunkers and Bible defenders are kindred spirits. They agree that the Bible is on trial. They agree on the terms of the debate, and what's at stake, namely the Bible's credibility as God's infallible book. They agree that Christianity stands or falls, triumphs or fails, depending on whether the Bible is found to be inconsistent, to contradict itself. The question for both sides is whether it fails to answer questions, from the most trivial to the ultimate, consistently and reliably...

...The Bible can atheist any book under the table on some pages. It presumes faith in God, yet it also often gives voice to the most profound and menacing doubts about the security of that faith. The Bible is not a book of answers but a library of questions. How rare such places have become in a society addicted to quick fixes, executive summaries, and idiot's guides. The canon of the Bible is that kind of place...

...Attachment to the cultural icon of the Bible is similarly debilitating. It's a false image, an idol. If you see it, kill it. The Bible is dead; long live the Bible. Not as the book of answers but as a library of questions, not as a wellspring of truth but as a pool of imagination, a place that hosts our explorations, rich in ambiguity, contradiction, and argument. A place that, in its failure to give clear answers and its refusal to be contained by any synopsis or conclusion, points beyond itself to mystery, which is at the heart of the life of faith...

By Timothy Beal, a professor of religion at Case Western Reserve University. An excerpt from The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

The Wild Heart

2011-04-20T21:37:00.001-07:00

Based on a true story, François Truffaut's L' Enfant Sauvage (The Wild Child) is about how the "age of reason" tried to civilize a feral child who grew up wild in the forest. It is in French, it is black-and-white, it is slow-moving (by the usual standard of movie as pornography), but my kids were perfectly captivated from the first frame to the last. And, as usual, I asked them at the end, "What do you think the movie is trying to tell us?"

Everything Truffaut tries to tell us is in this very last frame, in which the child (or more appropriately, a child) glances back at us, the adults, the civilized Homo sapiens (Latin for "wise man" or "knowing man"), the ones who propose to know how all men should live like, what all men should live for, and why all men should adhere to this prescribed set of how and what.

I wrote this following piece last year, close to the end of summer, when the sun outside my window was calling my name and my kids were doing their homework on the same table I was having breakfast. I looked at them. I felt sad for them. I loved them. I hated the prospect of what they might become. I was angry at the world. I was angry at myself for the compromises I've chosen to make while raising them. I said, you two ain't gonna live and die like the rest of this goddamn world.

《無題》

晨光一天比一天冷淡，夏日徐徐落幕，這刻只有一股寫下心情的衝動，卻未看清情感的真相，恍如一個在夏日奔馳綠油油的草地上的小孩子，無需為自己的行為辯護。奔跑可能是令人心曠神怡，強身健體的活動，但孩子沒興趣了解自己的生心理結構，此刻所有的只是一股向前邁進的生命力，除了享受著奔跑的暢快以外就只有享受著奔跑的暢快。跌到了，也許會哭，亦是對自身的限制和世界的運作規律的一些學習和認知，但淚水還未擦乾，他又已經再次起步，欣喜雀躍地向前直闖。

「孩子，但你總不能終日漫無目的地四處奔跑！你需要證實自己的存在價值，為著你的一舉一動辯護，向世界陳明你活著的意圖。來來來，請你靜止下來，讓我教你多寫兩個中文字，在不久的未來全球的經濟將會由中國主導，學習中文已經並非純粹滿足父母希望延續文化的情操，更是在弱肉強食的地球村的必要生存技能。右手寫字的時候最好不要讓左手閒著無聊，彈彈鋼琴也好，按按鍵盤也好，總比百無聊賴來得有意義，能夠同時執行多重任務是在工場的一個強勁賣點。在世上從來沒有人會把致勝之道免費送到府上，一切都要靠自己雙手的付出去爭取回來。要知道我並非強逼你承受過於你所能承受的，如果你一眾的同學和表哥弟妹都能夠同時學習三五七樣技能，我很相信我的保守態度其實已經導致你的資質未被盡用。我為著你未來的不甘心而先發制人地在這刻替你不甘心。」

小孩子遙望一片曾經讓他得著暢快和自由的草地，心裏仍然聽到大自然和純真對他的呼喚，但思維已經成熟了，知道曾幾何時自由已經再不是天父送給他的一份初生禮物。沒有工作便不應該享受閑暇，無錢便無旅行。綠茵是賺取回來的一個奢侈，偶一為之的消遣，生命價值本質以外的一些空泛事物。跑步可以強身健體，但野外危機四伏，如果失足跌倒，只會有野獸聽到你的呼喊。又試問，沒有搽過消毒液的雙手是可以用來拿食物的嗎？（如果你是有食物的話。）根據種種的分析，孩子終於認同奔馳在綠油油的草地上是一個弊大於利的行為，如果強身健體是一種自己在尋求的增值，大可在安全舒適的家居玩玩互動的電子遊戲，或在游蕩商場的時候多留意自己的心肺呼吸，在多媒體的刺激下，定能達到超越純粹強身健體的目的，是一種什麼…對，是父母諄諄教誨的所謂「能夠同時執行多重任務」的品德。爸媽，我沒有辜負您們的一片苦心。

（附筆：晨光一天比一天冷淡，夏日徐徐落幕，這刻只有一股寫下心情的衝動，卻未看清情感的真相，漫無目的地讓筆尖遊走，寫出一些沒有開始、沒有結局、更沒有教訓的浮生片段。沒有經過細心處理的文章果然是跟無所事事地在夏曰的草原上奔走的小孩子一樣無聊，實在有很大的進步和增值的空間。惟望自己一天能夠長大，寫出較為有存在價值，有造就性的文章。）

A Prayer Problem

2011-04-19T10:24:00.000-07:00

So, according to the experts, we have a health care crisis (click here for link), and it is an economic problem and nothing but. Thus the solution will certainly be one that concerns money and nothing but. With the looming election, you bet we Canadians want to hold the political parties accountable to solve our pain in the butt. This problem hurts when it really hurts; so you see, my vote is up for grabs. Suppose that I have a parent or a child waiting in a long surgery lineup, you bet the "solutions" that I hear from the politicians could easily sway my ballot one way or another.

However, is health care really a purely economic problem? Who really is responsible for my health? Why don't we say our health is a prayer problem, that we do not trust God enough to be cured of our earthly maladies? This is bullshit, and we know it. But still, this is really how we pray. How often when a person goes to a pastor and asks for a prayer of healing would the pastor actually ask: "So what have you been eating? Do you know where your food comes from? Are you aware of the part that you are playing and delight in God's Creation? Are you doing things that are killing yourself and your kids and people around you, especially those who are unable to defend themselves against your harms? Do you know you are created to be almost an angel, not just in the metaphysical or metaphorical sense? Do you enjoy your body? Your leg, the one that has pain right now, do you love it? Do you use it often? Do you love how it moves? Do you ever go out to the wild? Is the medication you are taking absolutely necessary, or do you know and love yourself enough to come up with a more joyful and effective way to live a more wholesome life?" You say, where is God in all these not very meaningful questions? He was there. You missed him.

So, yes, I do think that we have a prayer problem: we don't know how to pray well because we don't know how to live well. I can hardly trust a person that praises God for his "creation" and yet desecrates even his own body. How can we say we care for a person's soul if we don't even respect his body? We often praise God for his love, by which we mainly mean for His redemption to save us from this fallen world. And since this world is already fallen and we are looking for a better place to come, we might praise Him for his "creation" once in a while, but such sort of praise is only secondary, peripheral to our praise of His grand scheme of salvation, only to make our praise complete by acknowledging the flowers are really quite beautiful in the spring if we do not succumb to the fallenness of hay fever. This is incomplete (i.e. wrong) theology.

We do not know enough about His Creation, and it shows in how we often pray for the rain to stop and not to start as we no longer believe rain sustains our lives when food comes readily off the supermarket shelves. A farmer, a person who truly knows God's creation and delight in her own participation of it, would not pray so selfishly and thoughtlessly. We wear chemical-reinforced rain shield to guard us against the rain, even when we are mostly moving from door to door and could hardly make full use of the shield's "breathable impenetrability". We hate His Creation. Our fear of it only adds to our yearning for Him to "save" us from this goddamn world (I mean goddamn in its most literal sense).

This past weekend I heard someone calling me "different", which is as offensive as calling me "green". So what should I be? Indifferent? By marginalizing anything that is beyond the narrow scope of the so-called God's love and plan for us, we marginalize everything that God has done for us.

****************************************

Excerpt from "The Body and the Earth", by Wendell Berry

The modern urban-industrial society is based on a series of radical disconnections between body and soul, husband and wife, marriage and community, community and earth. At each of these points of disconnection the collaboration of corporation, government, and expert sets up a profit-making enterprise that results in further dismemberment and impoverishment of the Creation.

Together, these disconnections add up to a condition of critical ill health, which we suffer in common---not just with each other, but with all other creatures. Our economy is based upon this disease. Its aim is to separate us as far as possible from the sources of life (material, social, and spiritual), to put these sources under the control of corporations and specialized professionals, and to sell them to us at the highest profit. It fragments the Creation and sets the fragments into conflict with one another. For the relief of the suffering that comes of this fragmentation and conflict, our economy proposes, not health, but vast "cures" that further centralize power and increase profits: wars, wars on crime, wars on poverty, national schemes of medical aid, insurance, immunization, further industrial and economic "growth," etc.; and these, of course, are followed by more regulatory laws and agencies to see that our health is protected, our freedom preserved, and our money well spent. Although there may be some "good intention" in this, there is little honesty and no hope.

Only by restoring the broken connections can we be healed. Connection is health. And what our society does its best to disguise from us is how ordinary, how commonly attainable, health is. We lose our health---and create profitable diseases and dependences---by failing to see the direct connections between living and eating, eating and working, working and loving. In gardening, for instance, one works with the body to feed the body. The work, if it is knowledgeable, makes for excellent food. And it makes one hungry. The work thus makes eating both nourishing and joyful, not consumptive, and keeps the eater from getting fat and weak. This is health, wholeness, a source of delight. And such a solution, unlike the typical industrial solution, does not cause new problems.

Petals and Woods

2011-04-18T14:10:00.000-07:00

How do you know when spring has sprung? When Yellow Arums burst out of still dormant swamps. They are also called Swamp Lantern, with a meaning that is apparent and worthy. My son led me to this one and said I was gonna love it. And of course I did. What might not be apparent is that they are also called American Skunkcabbage, but only a bad person would know. Because they emit a skunk-like smell only when someone tries to crush them underfoot. Anyone does that deserves worse then bad odor. I am thinking about the wild boars in "Princess Mononoke".

The Unforeseen

2011-04-17T08:46:00.000-07:00

"The Unforeseen", a documentary about the development around Barton Springs in Austin, Texas, and nature's unexpected response to being threatened by human interference. Produced by two of cinema's greatest Terrence Malick and Robert Redford. Featured Wendell Berry reciting his poem "Santa Clara Valley" (the name of the movie is taken from the poem). Pay attention to the tall man walking close to the end of the trailer.

**********************

From SABBATHS by Wendell Berry

III. (Santa Clara Valley)

I walked the deserted prospect of the modern mind
where nothing lived or happened that had not been foreseen.
What had been foreseen was the coming of the Stranger with Money.
All that had been before had been destroyed: the salt marsh
of unremembered time, the remembered homestead, orchard and pasture.
A new earth had appeared in place of the old, made entirely
according to plan. New palm trees stood all in a row, new pines
all in a row, confined in cement to keep them from straying.

New buildings, built to seal and preserve the inside
against the outside, stood in the blatant outline of their purpose
in the renounced light and air. Inside them
were sealed cool people, the foreseen ones, who did not look
or go in any way that they did not intend,
waited upon by other people, trained in servility, who begged
of the ones who had been foreseen: ‘Is everything
all right, sir? Have you enjoyed your dinner, sir?
Have a nice evening, sir.’ Here was no remembering
of hands coming newly to the immortal work
of hands, joining stone to stone, door to doorpost, man to woman.

Outside, what had been foreseen was roaring in the air.
Roads and buildings roared in their places
on the scraped and chartered earth; the sky roared
with the passage of those who had been foreseen
toward destinations they foresaw, unhindered by any place between.
The highest good of that place was the control of temperature
and light. The next highest was to touch or know or say
no fundamental or necessary thing. The next highest
was to see no thing that had not been foreseen,
to spare no comely thing that had grown comely on its own.
Some small human understanding seemed to have arrayed itself
there without limit, and to have cast its grid upon the sky,
the stars, the rising and the setting sun.
I could not see past it but to its ruin.

I walked alone in that desert of unremitting purpose,
feeling the despair of one who could no longer remember
another valley where bodies and events took place and form
not always foreseen by human, and the humans themselves followed
ways not altogether in the light, where all the land had not yet
been consumed by intention, or the people by their understanding,
where still there was forgiveness in time, so that whatever
had been destroyed might yet return. Around me
as I walked were dogs barking in resentment
against the coming of the unforeseen.

And yet even there I was not beyond reminding,
for I came upon a ditch where the old sea march,
native to that place, had been confined below the sight
of the only-foreseeing eye. What had been the overworld
had become the underworld: the land risen from the sea
by no human intention, the drawing in and out of the water,
the pulse of the great sea itself confined in a narrow ditch.

Where the Sabbath of that place kept itself in waiting,
the herons of the night stood in their morning watch,
and the herons of the day in silence stood
by the living water in its strait. The coots and gallinules
skulked in the reeds, the mother mallards and their little ones
afloat on the seaward-sliding water to no purpose I had foreseen.
The stilts were feeding in the shallows, and the killdeer
treading with light feet the mud that was all ashine
with the coming day. Volleys of swallows leapt
in joyous flight out of the dark into the brightening air
in eternal gratitude for life before time not foreseen,
and the song of the song sparrow rang in its bush.

The Body and the Earth

2011-04-15T09:33:00.000-07:00

My little boy is coming down with something again today. Though his spirit is still high, he needs his rest. To be healthy is to be whole. He is sitting beside me doing his amazing drawing now. I wish him health. I wish him to be whole.

***********************************

From Wendell Berry, an excerpt from The Body and the Earth

The concept of health is rooted in the concept of wholeness. To be healthy is to be whole. The word health belongs to a family of words, a listing of which will suggest how far the consideration of health must carry us: heal, whole, wholesome, hale, hallow, holy. And so it is possible to give a definition to health that is positive and far more elaborate than that given to it by most medical doctors and the officers of public health. . . .

It is therefore absurd to approach the subject of health piecemeal with a departmentalized band of specialists. A medical doctor uninterested in nutrition, in agriculture, in the wholesomeness of mind and spirit is as absurd as a farmer who is uninterested in health. Our fragmentation of this subject cannot be our cure, because it is our disease. The body cannot be whole alone. Persons cannot be whole alone. It is wrong to think that bodily health is compatible with spiritual confusion or cultural disorder, or with polluted air and water or impoverished soil. Intellectually, we know that these patterns of interdependence exist; we understand them better now perhaps than we ever have before; yet modern social and cultural patterns contradict them and make it difficult or impossible to honor them in practice.

To try to heal the body alone is to collaborate in the destruction of the body. Healing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of loneliness. Conviviality is healing. To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation. . . . The fatal sickness is despair, a wound that cannot be healed because it is encapsulated in loneliness, surrounded by speechlessness. Past the scale of the human, our works do not liberate us— they confine us. They cut off access to the wilderness of Creation where we must go to be reborn—to receive the awareness, at once humbling and exhilarating, grievous and joyful, that we are a part of Creation, one with all that we live from and all that, in turn, lives from us. They destroy the communal rites of passage that turn us toward the wilderness and bring us home again.

The Isolation of the Body

Perhaps the fundamental damage of the specialist system— the damage from which all other damages issue— has been the isolation of the body. At some point we began to assume that the life of the body would be the business of grocers and medical doctors, who need take no interest in the spirit, whereas the life of the spirit would be the business of churches, which would have at best only a negative interest in the body. In the same way we began to see nothing wrong with putting the body— most often somebody else's body, but frequently our own—to a task that insulted the mind and demeaned the spirit. And we began to find it easier than ever to prefer our own bodies to the bodies of other creatures and to abuse, exploit, and otherwise hold in contempt those other bodies for the greater good or comfort of our own.

The isolation of the body sets it into direct conflict with everything else in Creation. It gives it a value that is destructive of every other value. That this has happened is paradoxical, for the body was set apart from the soul in order that the soul should triumph over the body. . . .

And it is clear to anyone who looks carefully at any crowd that we are wasting our bodies exactly as we are wasting our land. Our bodies are fat, weak, joyless, sickly, ugly, the virtual prey of the manufacturers of medicine and cosmetics. Our bodies have become marginal; they are growing useless like our "marginal" land because we have less and less use for them. After the games and idle flourishes of modern youth, we use them only as shipping cartons to transport our brains and our few employable muscles back and forth to work.

As for our spirits, they seem more and more to comfort themselves by buying things. No longer in need of the exalted drama of grief and joy, they feed now on little shocks of greed, scandal, and violence. For many of the churchly, the life of the spirit is reduced to a dull preoccupation with getting to Heaven. At best, the world is no more than an embarrassment and a trial to the spirit, which is otherwise radically separated from it. The true lover of God must not be burdened with any care or respect for His works. While the body goes about its business of destroying the earth, the soul is supposed to lie back and wait for Sunday, keeping itself free of earthly contaminants. While the body exploits other bodies, the soul stands aloof, free from sin, crying to the gawking bystanders: "I am not enjoying it!" As far as this sort of "religion" is concerned, the body is no more than the lusterless container of the soul, a mere "package," that will nevertheless light up in eternity, forever cool and shiny as a neon cross. This separation of the soul from the body and from the world is no disease of the fringe, no aberration, but a fracture that runs through the mentality of institutional religion like a geologic fault. And this rift in the mentality of religion continues to characterize the modern mind, no matter how secular or worldly it becomes.

But I have not stated my point exactly enough. This rift is not like a geologic fault; it is a geologic fault. It is a flaw in the mind that runs inevitably into the earth. Thought affects or afflicts substance neither by intention nor by accident, but because, occurring in the Creation that is unified and whole, it must; there is no help for it.

The soul, in its loneliness, hopes only for "salvation." And yet what is the burden of the Bible if not a sense of the mutuality of influence, rising out of an essential unity, among soul and body and community and world? These are all the works of God, and it is therefore the work of virtue to make or restore harmony among them. The world is certainly thought of as a place of spiritual trial, but i~ is also the confluence of soul and body, word and flesh, where thoughts must become deeds, where goodness is to be enacted. This is the great meeting place, the narrow passage where spirit and flesh, word and world, pass into each other. The Bible's aim, as I read it, is not the freeing of the spirit from the world. It is the handbook of their interaction. It says that they cannot be divided; that their mutuality, their unity, is inescapable; that they are not reconciled in division, but in harmony. What else can be meant by the resurrection of the body? The body should be "filled with light," perfected in understanding. And so everywhere there is the sense of consequence, fear and desire, grief and joy. What is desirable is repeatedly defined in the tensions of the sense of consequence. False prophets are to be known "by their fruits." We are to treat others as we would be treated; thought is thus barred from any easy escape into aspiration or ideal, is turned around and forced into action. The following verses from Proverbs are not very likely the original work of a philosopher-king; they are overheard from generations of agrarian grandparents whose experience taught them that spiritual qualities become earthly events:

I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding;
And, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof,
and the stone wall thereof was broken down.
Then I saw, and considered it well: I looked upon it, and received instruction.
Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep:
So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth; and thy want as an armed man. . . .

Oh, This Is So Green!

2011-04-14T11:11:00.000-07:00

You might have read why it is a bad idea to have Safe Injection Sites in Vancouver under the Four Pillars strategy, but I am pretty sure you have not read how effective the strategy has proven to be. So just a FYI:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2006/11/20/injection-study.html

http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/08/31/review-concludes-vancouver-safe-injection-site-is-effective/

Of course, I need to admit, most of us wouldn't care about this "issue" as we are fortunate enough to not even know anyone that benefited from this strategy. When we don't know, we could hardly care. It's always the case. Like, when we don't know "the environment", then "the environment" is only "an issue" amongst a myriad of issues, a side topic, a mere life-style choice, a fad of the moment, an alternative manner to conduct our daily business, an ideology (oops, there goes that word again), even a business opportunity (how many "reusable" tumbler have we collected from Starbucks without ever reusing them?). I swear I am ready to lash out if I hear one more time people telling me, "Oh, Alex, you are so green!" I utterly detest and resent anyone calling me green. I didn't invent the color green; God did. So give the credit where the credit is due.

************************************

The "environmental crisis" has happened because the human household or economy is in conflict at almost every point with the household of nature. We have built our household on the assumption that the natural household is simple and can be simply used. We have assumed increasingly over the last five hundred years that nature is merely a supply of "raw materials," and that we may safely possess those materials merely by taking them. This taking, as our technical means have increased, has involved always less reverence or respect, less gratitude, less local knowledge, and less skill. Our methodologies of land use have strayed from our old sympathetic attempts to imitate natural processes, and have come more and more to resemble the methodology of mining, even as mining itself has become more technologically powerful and more brutal.

[...]

What has happened is that most people in our country, and apparently most people in the "developed" world, have given proxies to the corporations to produce and provide all of their food, clothing, and shelter. Moreover, they are rapidly giving proxies to corporations or governments to provide entertainment, education, child care, care of the sick and the elderly, and many other kinds of "service" that once were carried on informally and inexpensively by individuals or households or communities. Our major economic practice, in short, is to delegate the practice to others.

[...]

The trouble with this is that a proper concern for nature and our use of nature must be practiced not by our proxy-holders, but by ourselves. A change of heart or of values without a practice is only another pointless luxury of a passively consumptive way of life. The "environmental crisis," in fact, can be solved only if people, individually and in their communities, recover responsibility for their thoughtlessly given proxies. If people begin the effort to take back into their own power a significant portion of their economic responsibility, then their inevitable first discovery is that the "environmental crisis" is no such thing; it is not a crisis of our environs or surroundings; it is a crisis of our lives as individuals, as family members, as community members, and as citizens. We have an "environmental crisis" because we have consented to an economy in which by eating, drinking, working, resting, traveling, and enjoying ourselves we are destroying the natural, the God-given world.

Wendell Berry

You Will Win (If You Try Harder)

2011-04-13T11:21:00.000-07:00

"So, Mr. University-Newly-Grad, how do you think you can possibly afford a piece of real estate in Vancouver?"

"I don't know. Still need to try, I guess."

"Yeah, with all these new wealthy immigrants flooding in, better sooner than later."

"I say kick them out!"

Now if you watched or listened to the Federal Leadership Debate last night, you would see none of the candidates actually offered any leadership vision to comfort Mr. University-Newly-Grad (the above was an actual conversation I overheard last weekend). Whereas whether any of the candidates actually has a vision to offer in this regard was not made clear in the mere couple of hours, it should still be apparent that Mr. Harper's vision so far shown in the past few years of governance was and is and will only deepen our poor Mr. University-Newly-Grad's discomfort.

But you see, despite his discomfort, Mr. University-Newly-Grad will still likely vote for Mr. Harper. And I predict a majority government this time. Now let me imagine what goes on in Mr. University-Newly-Grad's head:

"Um...economy is Harper's strength, or so I heard...in what exact ways, I might not know, but experts told me so--and I trust experts, for I am an expert in computer science too. I might know not much about anything beyond my specialty, but I know the value of scientific research and statistics. Education equals authority. Harper is proven to be strong in managing the economy, certifiably strong, sanctioned by our greatest experts. So I will accept that. And he's pro-family. You got to love a family guy.

Harper is planning for a six billion dollar corporate tax break to stimulate the economy, and I can't say I like the idea of people owning twenty yachts getting another five, but I guess that's how the economy works (I read the Financial Post, and, like the Bible, it contains phrases to ask me to not dispute its truthfulness). It's like you can't have your good entertainment if you don't pay your superstars an obscene amount of money. The wealthier the wealthiest few get, the more capable they will be to leave us with more crumbs. You think superstars are born super? No, they are made super. It is about fortifying your prowess to make sure you always come up on top. Now, I need to trust that the "invisible hand" of the free market will eventually funnel down the wealth to leave me with a sprinkle of benefit. So I accept the necessary evil of Mr. Harper's necessary vision.

And I say, shit man, give him the freaking majority. I am sick of this wasting money on elections. Get on with the Canucks play-offs, I say."

So let it be, Mr. University-Newly-Grad. But I remember you said something about kicking out the new wealthy immigrants? That's part of the vision, don't you see? I find your indignation very justifiable, for though your parents were also immigrants themselves, they didn't arrive with a shit-load of cash in the trunk of their Mercedes, transforming a land that they have yet to claim their home into one of being horrifically unaffordable to everybody other than those who arrive with a shit-load of cash in the trunk of their Mercedes. Now, Mr. University-Newly-Grad, please appeal to your common sense for once, and come to terms with your resentment and hostility. Despite what the experts said, your heart actually knows the real truth. For once. Allow yourself.

But Mr. University-Newly-Grad's discomfort goes even deeper. He might actually be more thoughtful than I give him credit for. What he really resents is not the Harper vision per se. And not towards the wealthy immigrants either. What he really resents is the fact that he does not have a shit-load of money in the trunk of his new Japanese sports car. You see, he is a man of fine taste. For where his money could take him, he goes his distance. So if not a Mercedes, why not a Toyota? Nothing wrong with that. A Mercedes is an eventual goal, but let him stretch his dollar bill to its maximum elasticity until that happens. And how is it going to happen? By him being more competitive. And here is the real vision: whoever has more money wins. I wish Harper would admit to his actual campaign slogan: whoever has more money wins.

You see, we Canadians are snowmen in the eyes of the rest of the world. We are yokels; we are dinks. We are backward imbecile and lazy freeloaders. While the rest of the progressing world is marching towards an exuberant future of never-ending production and consumption, in Vancouver we have only No. 3 Road in Richmond to give we yokels a taste of the sweet pleasure of hell. We were too slow in exploiting this land to its fullest potential, and now you see the consequence of dragging our lethargic fat asses around reciting Leonard Cohen: the world is coming here to take it away from us. Like how they took it from the Natives by force, by violence, by predominance, by weaponry (money is the greatest weapon; but I think you know that already). Oh, did I mention Harper loves your family? I want to be fair.

Now Mr. University-Newly-Grad, you need a head doctor. What you have here is what an expert called a case of "learned helplessness". And for that, I'd like to prescribe what another sort of expert called FIFO, which stands for First-In-First-Out on accounting statements. But in a shareholder's report, it actually means Fit-In-or-Fuck-Off.

But you can win. You definitely can win. Tell you what: don't have any kids. Work more jobs. Take more over-time. Take more medications if your body impedes you from winning (warning signs are for losers). The body is unholy, but God blesses your soul (and only your soul). In fact, to maintain this idea of dualism in your head is one big key to success. Now if you are so unfortunate to be cursed with a kid or two, try to earn even more so that you can place them in private schools, in piano classes, in whatever that can increase their competitive advantage, and, yes, in Sunday Schools (they are free)---experts will do the teaching for you. You only need to be resourceful within the narrow capacity to serve your boss(es) at your job(s), and entrust the fine art of raising cranky kids (you know they will want your iPhone once they learn how to rub a surface) only to the hands of experts. Your kids don't expect to learn much from you anyway other than from your diligent subservience to the ways of the world (just pay for the aquarium admission if they ask you about the name of an animal). Let others exercise their competitive advantage and you focus on your own. And focus narrowly. Don't mow your own lawn, don't learn about housekeeping that does not involve pressing buttons, don't cook when you don't need to, pay good attention to new rumors that made the headlines, store up on whatever people are storing up, change your locks when you feel unsafe, and make sure everyone in the house is very very warm. Outdoor is dirty. You might get hurt. Stay in your car, in your malls. Drive big cars. SUV are safer (highly unlikely to flip if you stay within the well-lit parking lot of a mall). Make sure to take out insurance early. Write your will too. Stay home. Home sweet home. Roll Up the Rim to Win, but don't you roll up your sleeves for anything other then those that would result in more money or a better conscience (both stem from the same gluttony, and gluttony is the most reliable and renewal fuel; see how all the biggest CEOs are both cannibals and philanthropists?). Be strong. Yet share your hurt. All souls are damaged. Cry when you need to. Pornography is also a good stress reliever (and mind you, most pornography involve fully clothed flesh. So don't limit yourself).

You will win (if you try harder).

To Let It Be, or to Not Let It Be

2011-04-12T11:16:00.000-07:00

Two headlines today:

Harper faces debate hammering over new controversy

Chinese buyers keep local housing prices inflated

May I kindly suggest that if a person does not know how the "issues" raised in these two separate pieces are fundamentally connected and of fundamental importance to our country's well being (or the lack of), then this person is unfit to vote in the upcoming election? In fact, by casting his/her vote, he/she will be perpetuating ignorance, corruption, and undemocracy.

I Dream of Spring

2011-04-11T12:01:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I walked up a misty mountain. I was glad that I didn't bring my camera; the temptation to capture and restrain the beauty in a metal box would have been too big. A memory such as this should fade naturally with one's ability to retain it in his head.

Listening to k.d. Lang on my way up, I realized this is music made not for the radio but for walking up a misty mountain. That's why k.d. has never been as "big" in the "music business" as her talent could have made her so (Tony Bennett compared her talent to that of Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf and Hank Williams).

The best things in life are often small.

"And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, and learn to be at home."

Wendell Berry

She arrives like autumn in a rainstorm
The threat of thunder above
I'll return from the streets of Melbourne
I'll return my love

This is world is filled with frozen lovers
The sheets of their beds are frightfully cold
And I've slept there in the snow with others
Yet loved no others before

These cold dark places
Places I've been
In cold dark places
I dream of spring

This world is filled with frozen lovers
The sheets of their beds are frightfully cold
And I've slept there in the snow with others
Yet loved no others before

These cold darks places
Places I've been
In cold dark places
I dream of spring

In cold dark places
I dream of spring

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

2011-04-09T20:24:00.001-07:00

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they

Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;

A poet could not be but gay,

In such a jocund company!

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

CAPS ARE POWERFUL

2011-04-08T21:20:00.000-07:00

YESTERDAY I RECEIVED A LETTER FROM A CERTAIN CANADIAN POLITICAL PARTY WRITTEN ENTIRELY IN CAPITAL LETTERS TELLING ME ABOUT HOW ITS OPPONENTS HAVE "IRRESPONSIBLY AND RECKLESSLY" (AREN'T THESE TWO WORDS SYNONYMS BUT I THINK IT MAKES YOU SOUND TWICE AS INTELLIGENT AND URGENT WHEN YOU GO FOR DOUBLE) PUT MY LIFE AT RISK BY CALLING FOR AN UNNECESSARY ELECTION AND OF COURSE WITH NO WORDS ABOUT THE OPPONENTS' OPPORTUNISM BEING TRIGGERED BY ITS OWN ALLEGED CORRUPTION WHICH RESULTED IN THE FIRST TIME A CANADIAN GOVERNMENT BEING FOUND IN CONTEMPT OF PARLIAMENT AND ALSO THE FIRST GOVERNMENT IN THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM TO BE FOUND GUILTY NOW OF COURSE NO ONE REALLY CARES ABOUT SOMETHING SO LITTLE ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU ARE YELLING IN CAPITAL LETTERS IN RUN-ON SENTENCES AND UNGRAMMATICAL FRAGMENTS LIKE YOU ASSUMED THE READERS TO BE ALL FUCKING IDIOTS WHO ACTUALLY HAVE HEIGHTENED NEUROLOGICAL RESPONSE TO CAPITAL LETTERS AND FRANTIC PROPAGANDISTIC GARBLES WHICH IS NOT REALLY THAT FAR FROM THE TRUTH BECAUSE REALLY WHAT DO WE KNOW WE CARE ABOUT JOBS AND THE ECONOMY AND BEING WARM AND VERY WARM AND EVEN WARMER IF YOU CAN MAKE IT SO ALL THE MORE BETTER REALLY AN ELECTION AT THIS MOMENT DOES NOBODY NO GOOD WHICH MIGHT WELL BE THE TRUTH NOW WE MIGHT TALK ABOUT HOW WE LOVE OUR FAMILIES BUT IT'S OK TO KILL OUR NEIGHBORS WITH OUR WAYS OF LIFE AND EVERYBODY IS GUILTY BUT THAT PRECISELY MAKES IT UNNECESSARY TO POINT ANY FINGERS AND IF WE HAVE A MIDDLE FINGER TO STICK PLEASE DON'T AIM FOR YOUR FELLOW ACCOMPLICES' ASSES BECAUSE WE ARE ON THE SAME ARK BUILT FOR ONLY YOU AND ME WITH A MANDATE FROM A POWER WAY HIGHER UP WHICH YOU WILL NOT FIND IN THE BIBLE YOUR BIBLE MY BIBLE ANYONE'S BIBLE BUT SOMEHOW WE ARE LED TO BELIEVE THESE MANDATES ARE HIDDEN BETWEEN THE LINES OF THE BOSS'S THUNDEROUS UTTERANCE AND WE ARE QUITE OK WITH THE WAY THINGS ARE NOW SO PLEASE GET THIS STUPID ELECTION OVER WITH PLEASE WE ARE OK WE ARE NOT OK YOU ARE OK AND NOT OK BUT STILL REALLY QUITE OK YES I THINK WE ARE OK I THINK YOU CAN SAY WE ARE OK IF WE JUST GET A MOVE ON AND EVERYTHING WILL BE OK KIDS ARE FINE GRANDMA WAITING TO DIE GOT HER BURIAL LAND ALREADY TWENTY YEARS AGO NOW WHO COULD ASK FOR MORE NOW TAKE YOUR LITTLE BALLOT GO TO YOUR LITTLE POLL CAST YOUR LITTLE PRECIOUS VOTE BEHIND THE WHITE SINLESS CARDBOARD SHIELD LISTEN TO YOUR TEACHER YOUR PREACHER YOUR EXPERT FRIENDS YOUR CORPORATE SPONSORS BECAUSE YOU DON'T KNOW NOTHING ABOUT VOTING DESPITE TWENTY PLUS YEARS OF EDUCATION AND NO YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU SHOULD NOT KNOW NOW JUST VOTE AND FOR THAT YOU WILL BE A FREE AND DEMOCRATIC MAN

Children and Nature

2011-04-07T21:45:00.000-07:00

From the beginning of time, we have been connected to nature. We, of course, are literally nature’s children, but, for the first time in history, that connection threatens to be broken by the majority of an entire generation and perhaps generations to come...

Most children are not playing by themselves out in nature. Almost all outside activity is adult supervised. Soccer moms are a relatively recent phenomenon but adult supervision seems to be essential nowadays. One person described these diamond-shaped yellow road signs which say, “Slow – children playing” as being out of date. They should say, “No children playing.” ichard Louv’s book, Last Child in the Woods, cites recent research at Harvard and numerous US, Canadian, British and European institutions. The findings are if children play in nature (I don’t mean organized soccer or cement playgrounds), climb trees, build forts and dams in creeks and go exploring, here is what happens: they have less obesity, less attention deficit disorder, less depression, less suicide, less alcohol and drug abuse and less bullying and higher marks. If one were to make a list of the main problems facing that age group and indeed any age group, it would be the same list. And nature is free...

Children’s brains have been invaded by an alien. This alien goes by the name of electronics. It comes in the form of large televisions, computer screens, hand-held games and all the way down to cell phones and text messaging. My Orwellian fear for the future is that this generation will view all phenomena, including human relations, as information on a screen. I hasten to add I am not referring to all of the younger generation. I know hundreds of kids for whom these fears do not apply. However, there are an increasing number of kids living in a virtual world. The virtual world is by definition not the real world. When this screen-trapped generation grows up, how will they vote? What kind of parents will they be?

by Robert Bateman

Is There Hope?

2011-04-06T21:04:00.000-07:00

1 Million Workers. 90 Million iPhones. 17 Suicides. Who’s to Blame?

"However destructive may be the policies of the government and the methods and products of the corporation, the root of the problem is always to be found in private life. We must learn to see that every problem that concerns us . . . always leads straight to the question of how we live. The world is being destroyed—no doubt about it—by the greed of the rich and powerful. It is also being destroyed by popular demand. There are not enough rich and powerful people to consume the whole world; for that, the rich and powerful need the help of countless ordinary people." Wendell Berry

"Too much of the world’s happiness depends on taking from one to satisfy another. To increase my standard of living, someone in another part of the world must lower his. The worldwide crisis of hunger that we face today is a result of that method of pursuing happiness. Industrialized nations acquire appetites for more and more luxuries and higher and higher standards of living, and increasing numbers of people are made poor and hungry. It doesn’t have to be that way… But we have a greed problem: if I don’t grab mine while I can, I might not be happy. The hunger problem is not going to be solved by government or by industry, but in church, among Christians who learn a different way to pursue happiness." Eugene Peterson

Well said, Wendell. Nice try, Eugene. But really, is there hope?

How do we go back to Eden, to the time when--

God spoke: "Let us make people to reflect our image,

so that they can take care of the fish in the sea,

the birds in the air, the cattle, and, yes, Earth itself."

Now that we are so used to being unnaturally warm, can we re-learn how to endure the cold?

Can our children undo the harms we have already ingrained into their very beings in forms of physical sickness, mental disorder and spiritual blindness?

We got kicked out of our Promised Land. We are at the East of Eden. Where are the garments of skin to keep us warm?

Springing Around

2011-04-03T21:56:00.000-07:00

Every day of spring is a miracle different from the next. Too bad I can only get my miracle updates on a weekly basis, and I can't tell what I must have missed in between.

If I have time I want to put my spring flower pictures in a slide show with Tony on the track. For now I ask you to do your own sliding.

The very thought of you and I forget to do

The little ordinary things that everyone ought to do

I'm living in a kind of daydream

I'm happy as a king

And foolish though it may seem

To me that's everything

The mere idea of you, the longing here for you

You'll never know how slow the moments go till I'm near to you

I see your face in every flower

Your eyes in stars above

It's just the thought of you

The very thought of you, my love

The mere idea of you, the longing here for you

You'll never know how slow the moments go till I'm near to you

I see your face in every flower

Your eyes in stars above

It's just the thought of you

The very thought of you, my love

"Fear is a tool" (yeah, no shit)

2011-04-02T10:42:00.000-07:00

"I am more and more impressed by the generality of the assumption that human lives are properly to be invented by an academic-corporate-governmental elite and then either sold to their passive and choiceless recipients or doled out to them in the manner of welfare payments. Any necessary thinking—so the assumption goes—will be done by certified smart people in offices, laboratories, boardrooms, and other high places and then will be handed down to supposedly unsmart people in low places—who will also be expected to do whatever actual work cannot be done cheaper by machines.

Such a society, whose members are expected to think and do and provide nothing for themselves, will necessarily give a high place to salesmanship. For such a society cannot help but encourage the growth of a kind of priesthood of men and women who know exactly what you need and who just happen to have it for you, attractively packaged and at a price no competitor can beat. If you wish to be among the beautiful, then you must buy the right fashions (there are no cheap fashions) and the right automobile (not cheap either). if you want to be counted as one of the intelligent, then you must shop for the right education (not cheap but also not difficult)."

Wendell Berry

One time after I shared about my hiking adventure with a friend, the first response she has for me was, "So what kind of hiking boots would you recommend?" I was on a pair of old runners with minimal remaining traction. I intended that hike to be our last journey together and a journey that I will remember them by.

"So what kind of hiking boots would you recommend?" A seemingly harmless and legitimate question. But how about hiking itself, how about the journey I shared with you about? What do you think about that? You have anything to ask me about the journey itself? The mountain? The river? No? Well, for your hiking boots question, I'd recommend you visit one of our very helpful staffs at one of our many local mega-malls. They know your problem; they understand your fear. They will make sure you will survive your adventure unscathed, safely back to your air-conditioned hotel room for a night of comfort well deserved after a day of tremendous good work that you can brag about in front of your other over-laden and under-used friends. Now put on your NorthFace technologically fortified down jacket and tell me how far north have you ever gone.

A good act of problem-solving is an act that does not involve purchasing anything unnecessary. Of course, different people has a different standard of what is "necessary". When we cannot live vibrantly with this body, this mind and this spirit that God has given us and must always look outside of ourselves to face the most basic of daily challenges, then we are not living up to the original intention of our Creator. The "solutions" that we find in the advertisements will inevitably create more problems that will inevitably lead to more consumption and waste. That's how money flows and creates wealth for some. That's also how personhood, neighborhood and planethood live and die by.

Dear Wendell

2011-03-29T21:41:00.000-07:00

Dear Wendell,

You don't know me. But you do.

These past months hardly a day went by without me talking about you and your writing in front of my family. My eight-year-old son thought your name is funny. My ten-year-old daughter once asked, "Are you still reading the same book?" She was talking about your "Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition", a book of, if I recall correctly, no more than 150 pages but I spent almost two weeks to finish. I told her it's because every page contained more insights than one could find in a big big book. I often read big big books with small small ideas. Don't we all? By "we" I mean those who actually read.

I could still recall the first time after I finished a book of yours, I danced around in my kitchen, waving the books in my hand and proclaiming, "This is the real deal! This is the real deal!" My wife said, "Why don't you email him?" But you don't have a computer, and you will never get one, I know. So I am writing this open letter to you and posting it on this cyberspace that people call a "blog", something that is mostly excruciatingly boring and meaningless except this entry. Somehow I believe life has its mysterious way to carry these words to you one day.

I am a thirty-six-year old Chinese born in Hong Kong and lived in Vancouver Canada since my mid-teen. You and I live in two very different worlds. You and I live in the same world. God concealed your prophetic words from me for the first thirty-five years of my life, because He knew I need to grow up to the messages. I am not a sentimentalist, but let me be coy for once and say that you are the Huckleberry father that I never have. Your words dwarf those from what the world considers giants. I read your books standing up, often out loud, word for word. I place your books beside my Bible. People often think a person like me does not read the Bible. People who make such a benign mistake do not read faces. They read facebooks.

I am an alpha male. I am full of imagination and often imagine myself being something that I am not. But not too often do I imagine myself being a woman. I don't know why, but I have a feeling it has to do with knowing too many men who are wimps---like, why would anyone want to be embraced by a perpetual juvenile who cannot even keep himself warm? Anyway, the other day I saw a picture of you and your wife Tanya on the dust jacket of one of your books, and I said to myself, "Wouldn't it be nice to be a woman like Tanya." It's a lovely picture, and Tanya looks beautiful and---for lack of a better word---safe. She looks safe. And happy.

God intended this world to be a safe and beautiful place. It is certainly not a safe place any more, and I wonder how soon before we no longer see it as something beautiful. You must have written and farmed in Kentucky for close to fifty years now, right? I am still looking for my place to farm. One day I will discard my computer; I know I will. For now I shall do what I can to make people feel safe and happy.

Thank you for making this world a safer and more beautiful place.

An Interesting Night

2011-03-27T22:39:00.000-07:00

An interesting night. First I tried to convince my wife's cousin that Penelope Cruz is the most beautiful woman on earth. I usually like to talk about "big topics", but for some reason tonight my cause was to settle this question once and for all and nothing else.

Then my son did an ingenious drawing that I want to print on a t-shirt to wear. True creativity, how elusive! An adult could pick his brain for days without coming up with one single original thought, but how effortless it is for the heart of a child to see the world in an unique, sensitive, and sensible light.

That aside, I still would like to reiterate that Cruz is the most beautiful woman on earth.

無知之道

2011-03-26T23:45:00.000-07:00

Here is my article for the May issue of Angel's Heart:

「那個時候已經過去了（如果世上曾經真有過這樣的時候），當你可以純粹發現知識，把它釋放在世，並相信自己已經盡了能力去實踐美善。這對我來說是標誌著科學本身的不完備，這不完備也標誌著不同學科之間亟需激烈的對話。這是一種各大專學院未能創造出來的對話，甚至是它們極力阻攔的對話。」

Wendell Berry （2010年美國國家人道勳章得主）

孩子喜歡問我生命的最大願望（成人早已失去這份浪漫，我們的所謂願望多是自私的妄想，不能或不會實踐）。我的最大願望是從世界的一角一步一步地走到世界的另一角——遠遠的另一角，完全陌生的另一角，需要我放下成見才可以了解的另一角，需要我挑戰那自以為可以放之四海而皆準的思想架構去感受領會的另一角。那是我可以純粹發現知識，把它釋放在世，並相信自己已經盡了能力和責任去實踐美善的一種生命。這大概也說明了為何西部牛仔片和公路電影（Road Movie）是其中兩種我最喜歡的電影種類。今天所未能實踐的，是在漆黑中以一秒廿四格造出來的夢。

我所說的不是環遊世界。一個旅客不但沒有放下成見的嚮往，更多是要求扭曲地道文化去滿足消費心理的外星人。我見過不少曾經週游列國卻一開口便洩露比自己家居四壁還要狹窄的世界觀的生命過客。試問世上又有多少思想毫無邏輯和智慧的律師，計算缺乏遠象和天良的會計師，和沒有父母心甚至連自己的身心健康也弄得一塌糊塗的醫生？我們正在學習鑑定人類每個基因的準確位置，但相當多的人今天連自己孩子的下落也毫不知情。這是對人類文明和知識的諷刺和控訴。我所說的不是環遊世界，而是一個在文明社會少有，能夠真真正正把世上每一個人作為人而不是可利用的物件來對待的機會，一份小孩子與生俱來卻在成長中失落了的赤誠，一種多年的高等教育成功地磨滅了的普世眼界，一個願意努力認知自己和他人的過去、落實活在屬於大家的現在、捨己創造共存共榮的將來的生命志向。

我從世界的一角慢慢地一步一步走到世界的另一角，在經歷中撿拾一片一片對生命的知識，證實了既然無知是人性的必然，今天我如何面對自己的無知便成為我能夠洞察生命中多少奧祕的關鍵。如果造物主容許我發現某一個知識，那麼我唯一和至高的目標就是把這個知識釋放，使自己和他人得著警戒、得著安慰、得著改正、得著自由。今天如果一個科學家、一個政治家、一個有著專業銜頭的什麼什麼師、一個宗教領袖、一個父毋不願意實在地面對和處理自己的無知，他都是一個隨時會危害世界的準恐怖分子。如果一個驕橫的父母可以把一個珍貴、獨特的生命毀壞得不成人形，一個核能科學家的傲慢又會為人類帶來什麼禍害？又試問自以為文明的人類為何發明了核子武器？

Our House

2011-03-24T10:09:00.000-07:00

I'll light the fire
You put the flowers in the vase
That you bought today

Staring at the fire
For hours and hours
While I listen to you
Play your love songs
All night long for me
Only for me

Come to me now
And rest your head for just five minutes
Everything is good
Such a cosy room
The windows are illuminated
By the sunshine through them
Fiery gems for you
Only for you

Our house is a very, very fine house
With two cats in the yard
Life used to be so hard
Now everything is easy
'Cause of you
And our la,la,la, la,la, la, la, la, la, la, la.....

Our house is a very, very fine house
With two cats in the yard
Life used to be so hard
Now everything is easy
'Cause of you
And Our

I'll light the fire
And you place the flowers in the jar
That you bought today

"Everything" Is Not Everything

2011-03-23T12:41:00.000-07:00

"The only science we have or can have is human science; it has human limits and is involved always with human ignorance and human error. It is a fact that the solutions invented or discovered by science have tended to lead to new problems or to become problems themselves. Scientists discovered how to use nuclear energy to solve some problems, but any use of it is enormously dangerous to us all, and scientists have not discovered what to do with the waste. (They have not discovered what to do with old tires). The availability of antibiotics leads to the overuse of antibiotics. And so on. Our daily lives are a daily mockery of our scientific pretensions. We are learning to know precisely the location of our genes, but significant numbers of us don’t know the whereabouts of our children. Science does not seem to be lighting the way; we seem rather to be leapfrogging into the dark along series of scientific solutions, which become problems, which call for further solutions, which science is always eager to supply, and which it sometimes cannot supply. Sometimes it fails us infamously and fearfully..." Wendell Berry

I sit in my car. It takes me to places. A progress, I suppose, adding something to my life. But I must ask: what is it taking away from my life and my Father's world? What is the net gain after I subtract the regression from the advertiser's claim of progression?

"This changes everything. Again." So claims a certain very fruitful manufacturer of wireless phones. Now what is this "everything" you are talking about? Does it include the time one has to offer as a burning sacrifice to be "as one" at the altar you built and dictated, the time that one could otherwise use to explore, discover, and experience everything that is not included in your "everything"?

I love my home, my Burnaby, my life, my land, my mountain, my sea. I mowed my own lawn, fixed my own roof (I tried), and I discovered something new frequently about my land even in these most mundane of tasks. I am not here because shopping is convenient---I live here to get away from shopping malls. I don't feel necessary to always hunt for the cheapest deals---how much and how often can we "rollback" the prices before regression catches up with progression and subtracts from our history, our memory, our knowledge of a peaceful corner in this otherwise tumultuous world? There must be a better way to live than to always look for crueler ways to get ahead and devour those who are weaker.

Why are we so insistent on denying our ignorance of the mystery and miracle of life?

The Smile of a Spring Night

2011-03-20T22:51:00.000-07:00

First day of spring. A spring song for you. Dale Richards played the Andy William's version on the radio tonight. But Tony Bennett's is my favorite version.

It Never Hurts to Ask

2011-03-19T16:34:00.000-07:00

Last night when I was sitting in my car, waiting to pick up my kids after Awana, a question emerged: How spiritual can a person be, sitting in his car that shields and isolates him from the many perilous elements of life, enabling him to take a stranglehold on a moral certitude that he has done nothing to attain, courtesy of a grace so cheap that goes no deeper than a layer of make-up that doesn't even stick on his weary and rapidly aging face?

And how spiritual can the children of this parent be? God bless them. Really.

Wendell Berry said: "What the Bible might mean, or how it could mean anything, in a closed, air-conditioned building, I do not know. I know that holiness cannot be confined. When you think you have captured it, it has already escaped; only its poor, pale ashes are left. It is after this foolish capture and the inevitable escape that you get translations of the Bible that read like a newspaper. Holiness is everywhere in Creation, it is as common as raindrops and leaves and blades of grass, but it does not sound like a newspaper."

I am not preaching an ideology here. "Ideology" is a term that people often like to hijack, to misappropriate for mudslinging. Please consult the dictionary for the real definition of the term "ideology" (click here). An ideology is something that you preach and prescribe as a wonder drug, a cure-all, a panacea, a final answer that asks for no investigation, no discussion, no admittance of even the most evident limitations of the human mind (such as ignorance, prejudice, and pride), and often involves name-calling (both in front of and behind anyone who begs to go beyond the prescribed scope and depth of the ideas preached).

Do you know what this is? An arbutus tree. Do you know anything about the arbutus tree? This species grows in the West coast of North America from southern British Columbia to central California, on the west slopes of the Sierra Nevada and Pacific Coast Range mountains.

I didn't know that. I know this is an arbutus, but I know nothing about it other than when it matures its beautiful orange bark would peel away to reveal a silky, greenish wood. Today an old man told me about the growth area of this particular species, and after I came home I looked it up to confirm. The man was completely correct.

We were the only two person at the edge of heaven today. He didn't volunteer the information; I was the one who asked. How awkward of me to ask him, assuming that someone who just happened to be standing there with me would know the answer to such a random question.

I was glad I asked. He didn't volunteer the information. Life is a miracle and a mystery.

Spring is HERE!

2011-03-18T07:43:00.000-07:00

Start having itchy eyes. That means spring is HERE! Hooray!

Growing with Movies

2011-03-17T12:06:00.000-07:00

Last night I showed my kids "Awakenings", a movie that I watched many times during my teenage years. It is hard to come across movies that tell simple stories, ones that even kids could understand, without being either too simple-minded or too subtle about them. It is a middle ground the requires great artistic visions and skills.

Slowly I am gathering a list of movies that might just do the job. Any Chaplin and Miyazaki movie is gold, of course. And hidden treasures can often be found beyond Hollywood.

Just look at the American animations made "for kids", and one knows we treat our kids like shits. How many pieces of crap does an average kid need to endure to get to one "Ratatouille"?

Movies can be gritty without being exploitative. Dynamites can go off in the quietest of ways.

Good movies ask us to grow up to them. Stupid movies ask us to look beneath ourselves to satisfy the lowest common denominators.

No, "Y Tu Mamá También" is not a kids movie. But I look forward to the day when my kids grow up and we could talk about it after watching it together. Unforgettable.

To Look Carefully Now

2011-03-15T22:07:00.000-07:00

"Corpses piled on bridges, corpses blocking off a whole street at the intersection, corpses displaying every manner of death possible to human beings. When I involuntarily looked away, my brother scolded me, “Akira, look carefully now.” When that night I asked my brother why he made me look at those terrible sights, he replied: “If you shut your eyes to a frightening sight, you end up being frightened. If you look at everything straight on, there is nothing to be afraid of.” With my camera, like Dostoyevsky with his prose, I have tried to force the audience — which is often unwilling — to look carefully now."

Akira Kurosawa

Christianity and The Survival of Creation

2011-03-12T08:06:00.000-08:00

By Wendell Berry (click here for full article)

"...I want to begin with a problem: namely, that the culpability of Christianity in the destruction of the natural world, and the uselessness of Christianity to any effort to correct that destruction, are now established cliches of the conservation movement...

...I have attempted to read the Bible with some of these issues in mind, and I see some virtually catastrophic discrepancies between biblical instruction and Christian behavior. I don't mean disreputable Christian behavior, either. The discrepancies I see are between biblical instruction and allegedly respectable Christian behavior...If we read the Bible, keeping in mind the desirability of those two survivals--of Christianity and the Creation--we are apt to discover several things that modern Christian organizations have kept remarkably quiet about, or have paid little attention to...

...We will discover that, for these reasons, our destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or stupid economics, or a betrayal of family responsibility; it is the most horrid blasphemy. It is flinging God's gifts into his face, as of no worth beyond that assigned to them by our destruction of them...

...The Bible leaves no doubt at all about the sanctity of the act of world-making, or of the world that was made, or of creaturely or bodily life in this world. We are holy creatures living among other holy creatures in a world that is holy. Some people know this, and some do not. Nobody, of course, knows it all the time. But what keeps it from being far better known than it is? Why is it apparently unknown to millions of professed students of the Bible? How can modem Christianity have so solemnly folded its hands while so much of the work of God was and is being destroyed?

"The sense of the holiness of life" is not compatible with an exploitive economy. You cannot know that life is holy if you are content to live from economic practices that daily destroy life and diminish its possibility. And many if not most Christian organizations now appear to be perfectly at peace with the military-industrial economy and its "scientific" destruction of life...

...I don't think it is enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. It is a hypaethral book, such as Thoreau talked about--a book open to the sky. It is best read and understood outdoors, and the farther outdoors the better. Or that has been my experience of it. Passages that within walls seem improbable or incredible, outdoors seem merely natural. That is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary, but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air, and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances, will hardly balk at the fuming of water into wine--which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is fumed into grapes.

What the Bible might mean, or how it could mean anything, in a closed, air-conditioned building, I do not know. I know that holiness cannot be confined. When you think you have captured it, it has already escaped; only its poor, pale ashes are left. It is after this foolish capture and the inevitable escape that you get translations of the Bible that read like a newspaper. Holiness is everywhere in Creation, it is as common as raindrops and leaves and blades of grass, but it does not sound like a newspaper...

...If we think of ourselves as living souls, immortal creatures, living in the midst of a Creation that is mostly mysterious--that, even when visible, is never fully imaginable--and if we see that everything we make or do cannot help but have an everlasting significance for ourselves, for others, and for the world, then we see why some religious teachers have understood work as a form of prayer. We see why the old poets invoked the muse. And we know why George Herbert prayed, in his poem "Matters":

Teach me thy love to know; That this new light, which now I see May both the work and workman show...

Work connects us both to Creation and to eternity. This is the reason also for Mother Ann Lee's famous instruction: "do all your work as though you had a thousand years to live on earth, and as you would if you knew you must die tomorrow."...

...In denying the holiness of the body and of the so-called "physical reality" of the world -- and in denying its support to the economic means by which alone the Creation can receive due honor -- modern Christianity has cut itself off from both nature and culture. It has no competent interest in biology or ecology. And it is equally uninterested in any feature of culture by which humankind connects itself to nature: economy or work, science or art. It manifests no awareness of the specifically Christian cultural lineages that connect us to our past. There is, for example, a splendid heritage of Christian poetry in English that most church members live and die without reading or hearing or hearing about. Most sermons are preached without any awareness at all that the making of sermons is an art that, at times, has been magnificent. Most modem churches look like they were built by robots without reference to the heritage of church architecture or respect for the site; they embody no awareness that work can be worship. Most religious music now attests to the general assumption that religion is no more than vaguely pious (and vaguely romantic) emotion.

Modern Christianity has become, then, in its organizations, as specialized as other modern organizations, wholly concentrated upon the industrial shibboleths of "growth," counting its success in numbers, and upon the very strange enterprise of "saving" the individual, isolated, and disembodied soul. Having witnessed and abetted the dismemberment of the households, both human and natural, by which we have our being as creatures of God, as living souls, and having made light of the great feast and festival of Creation to which we were bidden as living souls, the modern church presumes to be able to save the soul as an eternal piece of private property. It presumes moreover to save the souls of people in other countries and religious traditions, who are often saner and more religious than we are. And always the emphasis is on the individual soul. Some Christian spokesmen give the impression that the highest Christian bliss would be to get to Heaven and find that you are the only one there -- that you were right, and all the others wrong. Whatever its twentieth-century dress, modern Christianity as I know it is still at bottom the religion of Miss Watson, intent upon a dull and superstitious rigmarole by which supposedly we can avoid going to "the bad place" and instead go to "the good place." One can hardly help sympathizing with Huck Finn when he says, "I made up my mind I wouldn't try for it."

Despite its protests to the contrary, modern Christianity has become willy-nilly the religion of the state and the economic status quo. Because it has been so exclusively dedicated to incanting anemic souls into heaven, it has, by a kind of ignorance, been made the tool of much earthly villainy. It has, for the most part, stood silently by, while a predatory economy has ravaged the world, destroyed its natural beauty and health, divided and plundered its human communities and households. It has flown the flag and chanted the slogans of empire. It has assumed with the economists that "economic forces" automatically work for good, and has assumed with the industrialists and militarists that technology determines history. It has assumed with almost everybody that "progress" is good, that it is good to be modern and up with the times. It has admired Caesar and comforted him in his depredations and defaults. But in its de facto alliance with Caesar, Christianity connives directly in the murder of Creation. For, in these days, Caesar is no longer a mere destroyer of armies, cities, and nations. He is a contradictor of the fundamental miracle of life. A part of the normal practice of his power is his willingness to destroy the world. He prays, he says, and churches everywhere compliantly pray with him. But he is praying to a God whose works he is prepared at any moment to destroy. What could be more wicked than that, or more mad?

The religion of the Bible, on the contrary, is a religion of the state and the status quo only in brief moments. In practice, it is a religion for the correction equally of people and of kings. And Christ's life, from the manger to the cross, was an affront to the established powers of his time, as it is to the established powers of our time. Much is made in churches of the "good news" of the gospels. Less is said of the gospel's bad news, which is that Jesus would have been horrified by just about every "Christian" government the world has ever seen. He would be horrified by our government and its works, and it would be horrified by him. Surely no sane and thoughtful person can imagine any government of our time sitting comfortably at the feet of Jesus, who is telling them to "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you. . . " (Matt. 5:44)..."

Fuel for Thought

2011-03-10T07:33:00.000-08:00

"Our system of agriculture, by modeling itself on economics rather than biology, thus removes food from the cycle of its production and puts it into a ﬁnite, linear process that in eﬀect destroys it by transforming it into waste. That is, it transforms food into fuel, a form of energy that is usable only once, and in doing so it transforms the body into a consumptive machine.

It is strange, but only apparently so, that this system of agriculture is institutionalized, not in any form of rural life or culture, but in what we call our “urban civilization.” The cities subsist on competition with the country; they live upon a one-way movement of energies out of the countryside—food and fuel, manufacturing materials, human labor, intelligence, and talent. Very little of this energy is ever returned. Instead of gathering these energies up into coherence, a cultural consummation that would not only return to the countryside what belongs to it, but also give back generosities of learning and art, conviviality and order, the modern city dissipates and wastes them. Along with its glittering “consumer goods,” the modern city produces an equally characteristic outpouring of garbage and pollution—just as it produces and/or collects unemployed, unemployable, and otherwise wasted people.

Once again it must be asked, if competition is the appropriate relationship, then why, after generations of this inpouring of rural wealth, materials, and humanity into the cities, are the cities and the countryside in equal states of disintegration and disrepair? Why have the rural and urban communities both fallen to pieces?"

The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry edited by Norman Wirzba (Washington, Wirzba (Washington, D.C.: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2002), pp. 131

The pretty Rain from those sweet Eaves

2011-03-09T07:41:00.000-08:00

The pretty Rain from those sweet Eaves
Her unintending Eyes --
Took her own Heart, including ours,
By innocent Surprise --

The wrestle in her simple Throat
To hold the feeling down
That vanquished her -- defeated Feat --
Was Fervor's sudden Crown --

by Emily Dickinson

Lower Prices by Force

2011-03-05T21:23:00.000-08:00

The Abbotsford Chamber of Commerce is looking into the issue of why some goods are so much cheaper in the US than in Canada.

Yes, it is a big and complex issue, but really, I think this is Economics 101. Say, why don't we start with a piece of recent correlated statistic: that obesity rate is much bigger in the U.S. than in Canada?

You consume more, you waster more, you want more, you buy more all translate into lower prices. More competitions ensure lower prices. My 9-year-old knows this. And then there are also the differences in population size and density and a traditionally stronger dollar.

But let's leave this "complex issue" to a Chamber of Commerce to investigate. I am more interested in what we Canadians really want to see in this country. Target is coming. A dream come true? Or is it a nightmare?

I summon my hero Wendell Berry to shed some light on our path:

"The great moral issue of our time, too much ignored by both sides of our political division, is violence. From the colonialism that began with long-distance navigation to the present stage of industrialism, we of the so-called West have lived and gathered wealth increasingly by violence. This has been increasingly an age of fire. We now travel and transport our goods by means of controlled explosions in the engines of our vehicles. We run our factories, businesses and households by means of fires or controlled explosions. We fight our wars by controlled, and sometimes uncontrolled, explosions. Violence, in short, is the norm of our economic life and our national security. The line that connects the bombing of a civilian population to the mountain “removed” by strip mining to the gullied and poisoned field to the clear-cut watershed to the tortured prisoner seems to run pretty straight."

From “Letter to Daniel Kemmis” in The Way of Ignorance by Wendell Berry. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2006

When money is the currency of our morality, violence reigns and injustice wins.

Tennessee Waltz

2011-03-04T22:00:00.000-08:00

I love to sing. I don't sing well, but I love to sing. I can safely say there is not a moment that I don't have a song in my head.

When we play Monopoly, my son often forgets to collect rents when people land on his properties. Being a graceful adult, I don't like to take advantage of kids, yet I must encourage him to be more diligent in managing his own affairs. So I use a song to remind him when he forgets. For example, when he owns the Tennessee Avenue property and fails to notice others stepping on it, I would sing "The Tennessee Waltz". Here are a few of my favorite versions.

Can you come up with a song for every property in Monopoly? I love songs that are about or allude to a place.

Out of the Blue

2011-03-03T18:55:00.000-08:00

After Michelle, another brutalization of a beautiful son by my son. I was singing it yesterday and he picked up one line after me...and the rest was bloody history.

Here's the original song: Robbie Robertson: Out of the Blue (click on the yellow box on the right)

My 2050 Starts with 13°C

2011-03-03T07:25:00.000-08:00

Can you reduce our CO2 emissions to 20% of 1990 levels and help avoid dangerous climate change?

In UK's Department of Energy and Climate Change's new online modelling tool My 2050, users can decide what they want the UK to be like in 39 years' time. The only caveat? Carbon emissions must drop 80% while keeping the lights on.

We don't have any tool as "cool" as this in Canada (pardon the pun) because the climate change issue is not a top priority of our government. So play with this one and see what we can do.

David MacKay, the DECC's chief scientific adviser, practises what he preaches in his once draughty semi-detached 1940s house. As well as adding double glazing and insulation, he has turned the heating right down. "When I'm at home, my normal thermostat settings are roughly 13C, but lower when I am out, and 15C, briefly, at getting-up time in the morning."

My wife often asked how I came up with 13C myself. I could never tell why. Just feels right. Turns out the chief scientific adviser in UK feels the same. Now I have a proper answer to this question.

Helpless

2011-03-02T14:40:00.001-08:00

One could say: "The wind is strong."

Or one could also put it another way: "a significant and powerful Pacific low will track northwards just west of Vancouver Island during today. Associated with the system will be very strong south to southeast winds. The winds will strengthen and peak this morning with south to southeast gusts in the range of 120 to 140 km/h on the west coast of Vancouver Island and all areas surrounding Northern Vancouver island. Further south and away from the low, Greater Victoria and metro Vancouver will experience southeast to southerly wind gusts up to 100 km/h. The wind direction will rapidly shift to southwest in the afternoon as the low moves northwards into Hecate strait. Peak southwesterly wind gusts to 120 km/h will continue over areas surrounding Northern Vancouver island including the central coast. Further south a wind shift to southwesterly 60 to 80 km/h will occur as the associated front crosses Greater Victoria and metro Vancouver. Winds will start to diminish late this afternoon over southern areas such as Greater Victoria and metro Vancouver while over the central coast and Northern Vancouver island winds will not diminish until this evening. Meanwhile, strong outflow winds in combination with cold temperatures will continue to give wind chill values near minus 20 this morning over the north coast and inland regions of the central coast. At the same time, moisture wrapping around the low is producing snow over East Vancouver Island. Additional snowfall amounts of 5 cm are expected this morning over northern sections before the snow changes over to rain later this morning as temperatures rise."

Either way one is just as helpless when the wind wreaks havoc and really hurts him. Regardless of one's understanding of the wind. Regardless of how one calls it. Knock down the four walls around him, one is just as defenseless as his ancestor a million years ago.

Helpless as we are, we must face our fears. Seven Danes, including three teenagers, held on their yacht by Somali pirates since last week, had been aware they might be attacked during their Indian Ocean trip. Why would anyone deliberately put himself and his own wife and kids in such a helpless, defenseless position? Because it is their dream to sail around the world. Because they are passionate about the sea. Because they would rather be helpless than to die without ever feeling it.

Helplessness is a measure of a man.

There is a town in north Ontario,
With dream comfort memory to spare,
And in my mind
I still need a place to go,
All my changes were there.

Blue, blue windows behind the stars,
Yellow moon on the rise,
Big birds flying across the sky,
Throwing shadows on our eyes.
Leave us

Helpless, helpless, helpless
Baby can you hear me now?
The chains are locked
and tied across the door,
Baby, sing with me somehow.

Blue, blue windows behind the stars,
Yellow moon on the rise,
Big birds flying across the sky,
Throwing shadows on our eyes.
Leave us

Helpless, helpless, helpless.

Strong Wind

2011-03-02T07:43:00.000-08:00

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, n how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, n how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before theyre forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind,
The answer is blowin in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before its washed to the sea?
Yes, n how many years can some people exist
Before theyre allowed to be free?
Yes, n how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesnt see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind,
The answer is blowin in the wind.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, n how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, n how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind,
The answer is blowin in the wind.

回家的路

2011-02-27T09:55:00.001-08:00

Here is my piece for the April issue of Angel's Heart.

窗外雪花一片一片的飄落，一個似曾相識的景象，心境卻跟往年有別。曾以為最浪漫的時刻莫過於是雙掌抱著一杯熱烘烘的飲料，身處暖融融的被窩，欣賞窗外的漫天風雪，品味室內的情意綿綿，非常造作的場面，卻永遠有著其吸引力。今天吸引我的浪漫再不存在於刻意製造的客觀環境中，而是自然而優美的生命故事，一些出自童真的渴求，夾雜著青春的冒昧，一齣令刻舟求劍者摸不著頭腦卻叫通達人爽心豁目的法國電影。

今天晚上九時半，我和兒子一同望出窗外，他說：「唉！雪到現在才下得這麼大，如果早一些是這樣我們就可以上山玩平底雪橇(tobogganing)了！」我望著他說：「如果你不怕冷我們現在可以上山玩。」他知道我並非在吹牛。和兒女一同隔岸觀火的父親大有人在，願意與他們一起投身火海的傻瓜是唯美的浪漫。我是傻瓜（太太聽到我和兒子的對話後立即肯定我的身分）。親愛的兒子，其實我跟您一般的年輕，縱使肉身一天一天無可奈何地衰弱，我的心靈卻會逆水行舟地倒個頭來朝著您的方向成長。您的童真是我的模仿對象，我也希望自己今天的活著是您洞察生命奧祕的一個指標。一天當您長大，在自己的網誌上回望童年的時候，我希望您所記起的老爸並不會是一個常常只會把您放在溫度適宜的SUV內排隊放烏煙過美國買平奶入平油未老先衰的男人，您的歲月痕跡也不會是隨著俗世洪流飄蕩的悶劇（我最怕看如快餐店漢堡包套餐，若出一轍的網誌）。今天我們一同為未來著色。

還記得自己在大學畢業後，曾經向天父作出一個很幼稚的祈求，我說：「如果你賜給我一份穩定安逸的工作的話，我今生別無所求。」這好像人以為浪漫是可以刻意製造出來的客觀環境，只要抓緊片刻雪花般的幻象就是得著了生命的全部，又好像兒子扭計買玩具，聲言只要得著眼前的至寶便終身無慾無求，短視和無知地忽略了生命是在乎經歷。我喜歡和兒女一同用雙手製造玩具，過程中我們真正認識了對方，分享了成功也共同承擔了失敗，一起走出一條獨特、屬於自己的路，抗衡世俗的同化和物慾的專橫，活出生命力的實在。如果世上真有一件至寶的玩具，它並不會令人無慾無求，而是童真對生命無了無休的好奇和渴望。

今天室內的溫暖是恩典，也可以是咒詛。我望向窗外的漫天風雪，面前回家的路還有一大段要走。

Sharing

2011-02-26T08:53:00.000-08:00

"Today's digital social network is a trap. Today's cult of the social, peddled by an unholy alliance of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and communitarian idealists, is rooted in a misunderstanding of the human condition. The truth is that we aren't naturally social beings. Instead, as Vermeer reminds us in The Woman in Blue, human happiness is really about being left alone."

"Sharing is a Trap" by Andrew Keen

Going Blind

2011-02-23T07:26:00.000-08:00

Too busy to write lately. Alright, that's a lie. I am never too busy to write. It's just that I don't want to face the computer anymore after work. Too bad not much reading done in the past week either. Sore eyes from staring at the computer at work. If we all go by the way the world commands us to use our eyes, very soon we will all go blind, literally and figuratively, individually and collectively.

"A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy." Edward P. Morgan

Anyone who says he has only one life to live must not know how to read a book. I shall resume my double life soon. Tonight.

Sweater Day and Reading Week

2011-02-17T21:11:00.000-08:00

Today is National Sweater Day. But for my family, everyday in winter is a sweater day. We believe in a sustainable environment and a manageable heating bill. We believe in common sense and human strength. We believe in good habits and maintaining them.

This is also the Reading Week for my kids' school. Reading is like breathing. I don't know why we need to make a week out of it.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant

2011-02-16T21:58:00.000-08:00

As I was reading again the Book of Job, a book of poetry and opera, I thought about Emily Dickinson's famous poem Tell all the Truth but tell it slant.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—

Truth is revealed not as a set of constitutional dicta but through conversation. What does the poem mean? I am too busy to write; so allow me to steal from Gradesaver, as all good students should :)

"This poem opens with a directive to the reader, which seems to frame the poem as instructions for writing poetry. Dickinson says to only tell the truth, and to tell all of the truth (“Tell all the truth”), but to come at it from an angle, not directly (“but tell it slant –“). “Success” in presenting the truth only comes when it is done circuitously (“Success in Circuit lies”).

This is because, Dickinson says, the surprising quality of the truth (“The Truth’s superb surprise”) is too overpowering for people’s weak perceptions (“Too bright for our infirm Delight”), thus they either would not understand it or would be overwhelmed by it. Thus, as the magnificent but fearful lightning is explained to children, to lessen their fear and awe (“As Lightning to the Children eased / With explanation kind”), so to should people be presented with indirect presentations of the truth, before they can see the truth itself (“The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind –“).

Dickinson is highly interested in truth throughout her poems; it is a theme that she returns to repeatedly. Even in those poems where she does not deal with it directly, it is still there as an aim of the poem—to find and tell the truth about whatever that poem’s subject might be. Thus, “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant –,“ can really be seen as her overarching philosophy on poetry; her own, and her recommendations to others for their poems.

This poem makes the assumption that the poet knows the truth, but makes an active choice to hold it back, to “tell it slant,” so as not to dazzle the sensitive reader. In Dickinson’s poems, however, it seems more likely that her circuitous paths to the truth, returning to the same themes again and again, from different perspectives, with different metaphors, coming to different conclusions, are not so much to protect the reader from the pure light of the truth, but are because this is how she discovers it.

For her, the circuitous path is a circling round the truth in an attempt to find it and to guide others to it. This, then, makes the process of discovering and displaying the truth one and the same. Her paths lead her gradually to the core kernel of the truth, and the reader follows along that same path with her, which allows for a much fuller ultimate understanding of the truth than if Dickinson were to just tell it directly.

This poem, even if it is not only dealing with poetry, but any process of truth-telling, places poetry on a higher plane than other forms of art or communication. For poetry, whether it is Dickinson’s own or anyone’s, embodies this process exactly. Metaphors, allusions, imagery, and all the tricks of the poetic trade serve to present the truth to the reader without just saying it point blank. They are the “slant.” And this poem specifically embodies this, using multiple metaphors (truth as light, instructing or truth telling as physical travel), images, and a predominant rhyme scheme."

The Truth must dazzle gradually, or every man be blind. If we could only experience more of such revelation of truth in movies and songs and writings and poetry...

Most Romantic Movies

2011-02-13T21:27:00.000-08:00

Valentine's is coming tomorrow. So here is my pick, or should I say are my picks of the most romantic movies I have ever seen. Trust me. I have watched many romance. Probably way too many. But even then, it is the easiest job to pick Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise and Before Sunset as the most romantic movies I have watched.

If you don't know anything about them, then please don't let anyone tell you anything about them before watching. In fact, I would strongly suggest you to just trust me and don't even look at the following trailers. But I know, trailers, we love them. We need to be convinced that a movie is worth our time.

I've watched both...maybe 15 to 20 times? For a guy who insists on making every second of his life counts, you can say I think they worth my time. Without movies like these, I'd have given up on movies a long time ago already.

Up on the Roof

2011-02-13T07:57:00.000-08:00

I can't remember when my profile picture (at the right-->) was taken. Maybe 5 years ago? It's a picture of me fixing my roof. And I am still doing it this morning. Oh, the joy and pain of taking care of your sanctuary.

What can you do but to humor yourself with a song?

When this old world starts getting me down
And people are just too much for me to face
I climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space
On the roof, it's peaceful as can be
And there the world below can't bother me
Let me tell you now

When I come home feelin' tired and beat
I go up where the air is fresh and sweet (up on the roof)
I get away from the hustling crowd
And all that rat-race noise down in the street (up on the roof)
On the roof, the only place I know
Where you just have to wish to make it so
Let's go up on the roof (up on the roof)

At night the stars put on a show for free
And, darling, you can share it all with me

I keep a-tellin' you

Right smack dab in the middle of town
I've found a paradise that's trouble proof (up on the roof)
And if this world starts getting you down
There's room enough for two
Up on the roof (up on the roof)
Up on the roo-oo-oof (up on the roof)
Oh, come on, baby (up on the roof)
Oh, come on, honey (up on the roof)
Everything is all right (up on the roof)

Looking for Space

2011-02-10T07:34:00.000-08:00

Heck of a busy week. On loan to a different department at work to learn something new. How I wish I can be on loan to live, say, a farmer's life and relish the joy and endure the pain of a pair of callus-laden hands.

No time to write. So here is my favorite John Denver song.

On the road of experience, I'm trying to find my own way.
Sometimes I wish that I could fly away
When I think that I'm moving, suddently things stand still
I'm afraid 'cause I think they always will

And I'm looking for space
And to find out who I am
And I'm looking to know and understand
It's a sweet, sweet dream
Sometimes I'm almost there
Sometimes I fly like an eagle
And sometimes I'm deep in despair

All alone in the universe, sometimes that's how it seems
I get lost in the sadness and the screams
Then I look in the center, suddently everything's clear
I find myself in the sunshine and my dreams

And I'm looking for space
And to find out who I am
And I'm looking to know and understand
It's a sweet, sweet dream
Sometimes I'm almost there
Sometimes I fly like an eagle
And sometimes I'm deep in despair

On the road of experience, join in the living day
if there's an answer, it's just that it's just that way

When you're looking for space
And to find out who you are
When you're looking to try and reach the stars
It's a sweet, sweet sweet dream
Sometimes I'm almost there
Sometimes I fly like an eagle
But sometimes I'm deep in despair
Sometimes I fly like an eagle,
like an eagle
I go flying flying

A Heart of Gold (Pun Intended)

2011-02-07T22:17:00.000-08:00

Tonight I showed my kids Gold Rush, possibly Chaplin's best movie, definitely one of the best movies ever made. At the end my daughter asked, "So does Georgia love the Tramp?" I replied, "It is a question for you to answer." The more precise question is: Would Georgia love the Tramp in spite of his socioeconomic status? Is a heart of gold ever free from the bondage of a heart after gold? Chaplin lets this question stay in the offscreen space. What a matchless genius Chaplin is, and Gold Rush is a movie that, on a scale of 100 stars, I would bestow it with all 100 with no reservation.

Butterfly Effect

2011-02-06T22:10:00.000-08:00

Tonight when I was cleaning up after a big family dinner, I kept thinking about butterflies. It was only about an hour into it that I started to trace back the origin of my reverie.

First, my littlest nephew (not counting the other possible one still in a womb) wore a pair of heart-shaped red eyeglasses he got from my kids' toy box.

Then I thought about Stanley Kubrick's Lolita, for Lolita wears such a pair of glasses as well. The movie is, of course, based on Vladimir Nabokov's infamous novel of the same name, and is considered one of the best novels of the 20th century. This is the opening of the book, and, to me, the best opening to a novel I have ever read:

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

Wow. Anyone who has a passion for language know this is a dream come true. Lo. Lee. Ta.

But how about the movie? Would Nabokov consider Kubrick's film a masterpiece or a butchery of his book? Um...but aren't all of Kubrick's movie almost always simultaneously a masterpiece and a butchery of something?

Anyway, other than being a master storyteller, Nabokov was also a self-taught lepidopterist, a person who studies and collects butterflies, and he has a theory on butterfly evolution that was dismissed at the time he envisioned it but has since been vindicated. Einstein once said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." It takes a good artist to be a great scientist. My son told me yesterday that when he grows up he wants to be a "movie director scientist". Right on, I said.

So that's how I spent my night thinking about butterflies. And don't they have a name for such a phenomenon of one thing leading to another? Oh, yes, The Butterfly Effect.

Success Is Failure Turned Inside Out

2011-02-05T08:15:00.000-08:00

My manager told me yesterday that I will succeed in everything I do. Thanks, I replied. I take his compliment for what it is, because I know it is true. I'd be stupid to take it as a guarantee of no failure, for it's not a prophesy. And it is not a mere well wish, for it has nothing to do with only hoping. It is a declaration of intention and the according action to do what it takes to create a reality. Passion is the only fuel I run on.

I memorized the following poem during one university summer of door-to-door salesmanship, carrying a 30 lbs book bag under the scorching Ontario sun, walking 13.5 hours a day for months and shedding countless drops of tear. This poem has since become part of me, as has the memory of driving all the way across Canada, doors slamming on my face, a car running over my delivery bike (that I got for $5 from a client just for asking), the peanut butter and jam sandwich lunch I fixed myself everyday, and the joy of paying off my student loan precisely on the day I left UBC.

The version I've memorized is a bit different. I changed all the You to I.

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest, if you must, but don't you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about,
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don't give up though the pace seems slow--
You may succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than,
It seems to a faint and faltering man,
Often the struggler has given up,
When he might have captured the victor's cup,
And he learned too late when the night slipped down,
How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out--
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far,
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit--
It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.

- Author unknown

P.S. Just came back from my son's soccer game. He is a timid soul. Today is a game of David vs. Goliath, his team being David. David won, but my son was hardly part of David's success. The sight of the taller opponents put a fear in his heart, and the fear ate his soul. For 60 mins he did everything to avoid getting hurt, and he knew that I knew he was cheating a victory that his teammates paid a price for. And he knew that I wasn't happy about it. I despise quitting; he knows all along. But still, he couldn't help but to run away from his difficulty. He ran in circles and "did nothing" as he himself admitted. It is his nature to run away. I must find a way to challenge him without disheartening his spirit. On his last shift, I said to him, "Show me what you have. This is your last chance. It's redemption time." He enjoys theatrics such as lines like these, and so do I. Then he proceeded to confront a much bigger opponent and manage a breakaway that almost resulted in a goal. When we were running home after the game, I asked him, "How big is Goliath?" He looked at the sky. "And how big is David?" I asked again and pointed to his slim body. He smiled. "And who got killed at the end?" He muttered with a sly smirk, "Goliath." His team won 3-2, but that's not the point. You could win a game but still lose. It is a loss for my son today, and he knows. "Let's try again next week. I will learn with you."