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Showing posts from March, 2024

Quiet contemplation on Easter Sunday

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I enjoy the Holy Week to the same degree, if not more, as I do Christmas. These holidays, whose schedules are not explicitly mentioned in Scripture—a fact that dissuades other Christians from celebrating them at all—bookmark key events in the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ. Secular calendars designate them as national holidays. And rightly so. For who, in his right mind, would open cafés during this time, especially on Good Friday, when the inhabitants of the city are at home, recuperating from and avoiding the summer heat, or in church, deep in prayer and contemplation? There is a season for every activity under heaven. So goes a line from Ecclesiastes, written by the wise King Solomon, who, when asked by God what gift he would like to receive, chose wisdom over riches and long life. This rule, or reminder, if not fatherly wisdom, has encouraged my choice of quiet contemplation and prayer and the reading of books these past days. The harsher alternative would be to resume regular...

Prague, for the first time

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I took this in 2017, during winter. I rested my feet after hours of wandering aimlessly. I remember that all I wanted then was to experience the city. My budget was limited. I was in residency. That visit to Prague was largely unplanned, something I decided to do on a whim after a staying a few days in Vienna for a conference.  When I travel, I have a vague sense of what to I want to do each day. I do not follow strict itineraries, as tour groups do. I remember visiting a bookstore near Vltava River before stopping to behold this view of ducks. Czech Republic was magical, the land of castles I'd normally see in films.  I suppose these ducks would be dead by now, roasted or boiled or fried, dipped in gravy, with goulash on the side.

The rhythm of His grace

The Lent Project is a gift that keeps on giving. Alongside Scripture, the chosen author of the day chooses a poem, an artwork (painting or sculpture), and music to supplement and enrich the daily meditation. I had to take a pause from my daily Bible reading schedule to accommodate this enriching online devotional, which sends me email updates when new posts are available. For March 7, Dr. Arianna Moloy writes about the ministry of love to the saints . The passages are Galatians 6:7-10 and Hebrews 6:10. And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. Allow me to share some quotable quotes from her meditation. Exhaustion can cause mental overload and spiritual heaviness, resulting in a kind of chaotic weightiness making it hard to breathe. And:  Weariness skews perspective. Like a kind of emotional sunburn, any comment received in exhaustion lands in an overly tender and painful manner. Dr. Moloy draws from the Bible's encouragemen...

Psalter

Soon, if I improve my piano skills with more lessons and more practice, I'll be able to play the songs in The Genevan Psalter, compiled by Michael E. Owens .  The metrical psalter (also called The Huguenot Psalter ) was originally created under the supervision of John Calvin . If you know me, you probably know I'm a huge fan of this Reformed hero. The Institutes of the Christian Religion is one of my favorite books of all time. I read the book in Kindle, during my long, humid, sweaty MRT commutes to the Philippine General Hospital from Mandaluyong. The melodies were all composed between 1539 and 1562 in Geneva, Switzerland, at the request of John Calvin, for use with French metrical translations. No melodies have been added or removed since that time. Many have appeared in several forms, often rhythmically altered. They have been harmonized many times, in many ways, and have been often used without harmony. They have been sung with many different lyrics in several languages. U...

The mornings were always ours

Dr. Lorgia García Peña's My Father’s Quiet Love Speaks Louder Than Words is moving.  When I was younger, he’d show his care and complicity by bringing me toasted peanuts or fixing my toys. Later, he’d slip out at the crack of dawn to clean my filthy car and fill up the tank before every trip back to Boston. My favorite moments were Papi and me in the kitchen, eating roasted batata with warm café con leche, talking politics and history before the rest of the household stirred. The mornings were always ours.

Hiraeth

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Yesterday's Sunday preaching was on the spiritual riches of believers in Christ. Today's devotional takes me to Ephesians 3:14-21, in which Paul prays that the church be able to grasp the all-too wonderful concept of the love of Christ. My reading also includes a poem by Wendell Berry which evokes to me the incomparable feeling of contentment.  All goes back to the earth, and so I do not desire pride of excess or power, but the contentments made by men who have had little: the fisherman's silence receiving the river's grace, the gardener's musing on rows.

"In our most mundane experiences, the God for whom we yearn is the same who gives us the grace to seek Him"

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Sunday morning reading: I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God (Romans 12:1-2). And an excerpt from a  poem by Brett Foster (Longing, Lenten) : The restless energy finally settles as I pass the mirror. I peer into it. My nose touches glass. Not much left, already effaced, not even a cross to speak of. A smudge. A few black soot stains like pin points on the forehead. The rest of the blessed ash has vanished to a grey amorphousness, to symbolize... not much. Except a wish for those hallowed moments to be followed by sustaining confidence. Jonathan Diaz's meditation (emphasis mine): Foster gives weight to our yearning, pitting it against the “listless weight” which the spirit rejects. This yearning...

Two-way learning

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Learning is two-way. After lectures, I invite my students to ask questions. They signal a form of curiosity, if not comfort, that my students can come to me with things they're fascinated with or puzzled about.  Yesterday, after my morning summary lecture on genomic technology and carcinogenesis inspired by  Siddharta Mukherjee's All the Carcinogens We Cannot See  in The New Yorker—an interesting title which plays around with Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See —my students asked questions.  The first was about HeLa cells, a cell line derived from then-31-year old African American Henrietta Lacks who had cervical cance r. What is the specific mutation in HeLa? I said I didn't know exactly and I'd get back to them. (Active telomerase and aberrant chromosome structures are what I learned from my after-lecture readings.) I also told my students that there's a book ( The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot ) and a movie . The second was about ...