Fish Ball Noodles

My aunt and I have been keeping up through WhatsApp.  She was out having lunch with some friends yesterday, probably at some food court in Singapore.  She sent me a picture of fish ball noodles and asked if I missed it.  Yes, I whatsApped her back, I miss having those flavorful noodles with those delectable fish balls!  I also asked if she remembers how my mom used to give me most of her fish balls whenever she ordered that noodle dish.  I can still see it in my mind's eye, my mother  picking up the fish balls one by one with  her chopsticks and putting them on my plate.  She would invariably say that fish balls were not her favorite or that she could have fish balls any day, and that I should enjoy them when I can.  But I knew it's because she knew how much I love fish balls.  I didn't resist her gesture of giving up her fish balls, but accepted each fish ball as coming to me shaped and packed densely with her love.

More than fish balls, I miss the fish balls that came to me from my mother's bowl.

Hear, my son, your father's instruction,
    and forsake not your mother's teaching,

for they are a graceful garland for your head
    and pendants for your neck.  

Proverbs 6:8-9

Making Absolute What God Has Left Relative

Painting by Kenneth Rowntree

"It is an error for Christians to make relative what God has made absolute.  But it is equally an error for Christians to make absolute what God has left relative." - Os Guinness

I tend to agree with Os Guinness that there is no one Christian form of politics, just as there is no one form of poetry, raising a family, running an economy, pursuing a career, or planning a retirement, etc.  He goes on to say that many ways are definitely not Christian, but no one way alone is.  Like him, I am especially wary of organizations, be they political or social, that tout that they are doing things God's way, for when they blunder, as all humans are apt to do, and let their own ego and interests come in the way and fail to serve Christ's end, they will not only damage the reputation of the church but the head of the church, the Lord Jesus.  They also have the potential of corrupting the Gospel, of shifting our focus from the absolute allegiance to Christ alone by faith and dependence on the Holy Spirit for our growth to an additional identification with "Christians" of a certain political or social persuasion. 
 

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. ⁸ But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. ⁹ As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. 

Galatians 1:6-9

A Saturday in Fall

Painting by Fairfield Porter

Fall is in the air!  The morning was crisp and overcast when we walked to the farmers' market in Lincoln Park.  Pumpkins, squash, gourds, sweet potatoes, pomegranates, apples of various varieties filled the baskets, with jugs of apple cider calling from several stands. 

The heat in the apartment kicked on in the afternoon.  The radiators banged and hissed, emanating warmth and coziness within these paneled walls.  My daughter Lauren is making dinner - the smell of chicken and potatoes roasting in the oven blended well with the inviting scent of heat, making the alcove where I am writing quite idyllic.

Here is Itzhak Pearlman playing Schubert's Serenade for this restful Saturday afternoon.

There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? 

Ecclesiastes 2:24-25

A Time to Contemplate

Fisherman's Cottage by Harald Sohlberg

So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom...Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days...Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands! (Psalm 90:12, 14, 17)

In April 2012, I was diagnosed with musK myasthenia gravis, a neuro-muscular, auto immune disorder that greatly compromised the strength of my voluntary muscles. Without treatment, I would be feeling tired and weak all the time—seeing double, having difficulty keeping my eyelids up, swallowing, walking, holding my head, speaking, and breathing.  The first symptom of double vision manifested itself in November 2011, soon to be followed by others, one after another.  In the months prior to proper diagnosis and treatment, I was quite afraid, not knowing what to expect as the muscles of my body shut down one after another.

Since the medication kicked in, I have been able to function better, some days better than others. When I am feeling well, I forget (and let those around me forget) that I have this chronic illness, and that I am artificially propped up by steroids.  I did not want MG to define me, determined to live life as normally as I had been, adamant about not letting it limit me.

Lately, however, I am beginning to question the wisdom of it all.  Yes, MG does not define me, but like it or not, it is as much a part of who I am now as my age, ethnicity, marital status, etc. As a married woman, for example, my lifestyle is different from that of a single woman in many respects. As someone living with MG, why do I think I could live life like I used to? Or worse, live life like others who are in good health?  Instead of battling my new status, I need to learn to embrace it with grace.  It will hopefully cut down on the lament and the envy. 

It is in accepting the limits that this sickness has set on me that I can begin to live life fully within its constraints.  It will not be the life I used to have as I am no longer the physically healthy me. But I can become a better me by accepting and living within my new limitations.  There will be times I will disappoint those around me, especially myself, because we live in a world that values outward accomplishment and activity, both of which will now be much curtailed for me.

Living with MG happily allows me to lead a more contemplative life. The need to close my eyes throughout the day provides me with time to think and especially to pray.  Because of my limited energy, I am now forced to eliminate or restrict unnecessary activities and concerns.  To conserve the strength of my eyes, I learn to rely more on my ears--to listen to the Bible, to books like Middlemarch read by Juliet Stevenson, to sermons by Sinclair Ferguson and Tim Keller, and to the great music of Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and Schubert.  Though my voice may sound crackly and my words garbled at times, I can still laugh (though crookedly) and jibber-jabber with family and friends (maybe not for long nor with as much wit!).

And above all, the constant need to rest assures me of time alone with my God, to come to him for love, respite, comfort, and strength...to reach up to my Heavenly Father for his warm, loving embrace throughout the day!

I say, that sounds to me like a pretty full and special way to live!
 

It's all about me!

Painting by Harald Sohlberg

"Our selfishness knows no bounds.  In more or less naïve self-love we look upon everything in our environment with which we come in contact as our agencies, as things which exist for our sakes, something for us to make use of and utilize to our own advantage. We think and act as though everything, inanimate things, plants, animals, human beings, even our own souls, were created for the purpose of bringing gratification to our selfish desires.

And we make no exception of God.

As soon as we encounter him, we immediately look upon him as another means of gaining our own ends. Natural persons in their relation to God have this one purpose more or less consciously in mind: How can I, in the best way, make use of God for my own personal advantage? How can I make him serve me best now, in the future and throughout all eternity?

Natural persons look upon prayer, too, in this light. How can I make use of prayer to the greatest possible advantage for myself? This is the reason why the natural person seldom finds that it pays to pray regularly to God. It requires too much effort, takes too much time and is on the whole impractical, for the simple reason that one even forgets to pray.

But when the same person gets into trouble in one form or another and cannot help themselves or get help from anybody else, then they think that it might pay to pray to God. They then pray to him incessantly, often crying aloud in their distress.

And when God does not put himself at their disposal immediately and answer them, they are not only surprised, but disappointed and offended, deeply offended.

Why should there be a God, if he is not at the disposal of those who need him? That God should exist for any purpose then to satisfy people's selfish desires  does not even occur to such people.

Many are they after an experience of this kind are forever done with prayer. When you cannot get what you ask for, and in times of great need even ask for imploringly, why should you pray?"       

from Prayer by Ole Hallesby
 

The above passage by Norwegian theologian, Ole Hallesby, caused me to pause.  Throughout the day, how often do I consciously or unconsciously try to manipulate other people and things, let alone God, for my own personal advantage?  Even with such a lofty endeavor as praying, I often loom big, making God small.  Not your will, O Lord, but my will be done!

Pray Earnestly

Jean Francois Millet, The Gleaners, 1857

Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” 

Matthew 9:37-38

I woke up this morning thinking of this verse and have been mulling over it since.  I am not so much dwelling on the part about the harvest being plentiful but that section on prayer.  Notice that Jesus  said "...therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest."   He did not say "...therefore go send out laborers into the harvest."  Don't you think, more often than not, that we go about our activities (especially supposedly Christian activities), planning on how things should get done, then carrying them out, and along the way quickly whispering a prayer, using it like a lucky charm so that the things we have planned will go well?  We are more inclined to plan, do and then maybe pray.  In complete reversal of what Jesus is teaching in this passage. Think about it, how many times have we heard this passage used as an endorsement to send out Christian workers, emphasizing on the sending and not even touching on the praying!

I wonder what it would be like if when I see a need or have a concern that I first pray earnestly to the Lord of the situation to send his help into the situation...to pray earnestly and patiently seek his will.  I have to admit that it would be quite hard for me to do.  Quite counter-intuitive.  But I can certainly start by praying earnestly for the Holy Spirit to work that mindset so taught by our Lord Jesus into my being.

Rooms with Books

Here are some of my favorite interiors!

Bosworth Hoedemaker

William Hefner Architecture Interiors

Homedit.com

Emily A. Clark

How to be Constantly Happy in the Lord

Painting by Claude Monet

Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. (Psalm 90:14)

The excerpt below taken from George Mueller's autobiography encourages me to start my day right. 

I saw more clearly than ever that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. . . Before this time my practice had been at least for ten years previously as a habitual thing to give myself to prayer after having dressed in the morning. Now I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the word of God and to meditation  on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, while meditating, my heart might be brought into experimental communion with the Lord. I began, therefore, to meditate on the New Testament from the beginning early in the morning. The first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessing upon his precious word, was to begin to meditate on the word of God, searching as it were into every verse to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of the public ministry of the word; not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon; but for the sake of obtaining food for my soul.

The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication; so that though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer. When thus I have been for a while making confession or intercession or supplication or have given thanks, I go on to the next words or verse, turning all, as I go on, into prayer for myself or others, as the word may lead to it; but still continually keeping before me that food for my soul as the object of my meditation.

The result of this is that there is always a good deal of confession, thanksgiving,  supplication, or intercession mingled with my meditation and that my inner man almost invariably is almost sensibly nourished and strengthened and that by breakfast time, with rare exceptions, I am in a peaceful if not a happy state of heart.

Now that God has taught me this point, it is as plain to me as anything that the first thing the child of God has to do morning by morning is to obtain food for the inner man. As the outward man is not fit for work for any length of time, except we take food, and as this is one of the first things we do in the morning, so it should be with the inner man. We should take food for that, as everyone must allow. Now what is the food for the inner man? Not prayer, but the word of God; and here again, not the simple reading of the word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts.

By the blessing of God I ascribe to this mode the help and strength which I have had to pass in peace through deeper trials in various ways than I have ever had before; and after having now above forty years tried this way, I can most fully, in the fear of God, commend it. How different when the soul is refreshed and made happy early in the morning, from what it is when, without spiritual preparation, the service, the trials, and the temptations of the day come upon one!

Goodbye

Singapore Desserts by Lauren Monaco

My youngest will be moving to Singapore tomorrow for work!  I wept for my mother each time I left Singapore.  Now I weep for my daughter as she gets ready to leave for Singapore. Life sometimes feels like a series of goodbyes that never ends!

As I remember your tears, I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy.

2 Timothy 1:4 

A Tribute

Vermeer's The Concert, 1665

Our very dear friend Lois Nielson died two weeks ago.  She was 91.  She lived such a full and abundant life, committing herself unreservedly to her calling, touching so many with her love and dedication that despite the advanced age, it still felt like an untimely death to all who knew her.  She was musically and pedagogically gifted (training pianists for 71 of her 91 years, including our daughter Kathryn), possessed of a brilliant and curious mind, a sharp eye for things beautiful, and a magnanimous heart that beat passionately for her family, friends, students...and above all her God.

She was a woman who exuded beauty, and her memorial service aptly captured that beauty.  Hers was the kind of beauty that I can only describe as transcendent.  It is because she (and her memorial service) pointed to the ultimate Beauty, her Lord Jesus Christ.  The music at her memorial service lifted hearts heavenward, the eulogies and Scripture readings moved the mourners to seek more urgently the God who had  transformed her into the incredible, unforgettable woman that she was; it was a most suitable tribute to how she lived her life.  In death, as in life, Lois Nielson pointed and gave praise to her Lord and Redeemer!

Here is  Alex McDonald playing Chopin Nocturne in C Minor, Op. 48, No. 1.  Alex was a student of Mrs. Nielson, a 2014 Van Cliburn Competition finalist; he lovingly performed this transcendent piece at her memorial service.

I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. 

John 10: 10b

One thing have I asked of the Lord,
    that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
    all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord
    and to inquire in his temple.

Psalm 27:4 

Class of 2014

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. . . . It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that gives value to survival.”  - CS Lewis

Our youngest graduated from Northwestern a week ago.  We had a lovely time celebrating.  The university did a fantastic job with the general commencement, the individual school convocations, and receptions. We even enjoyed listening to the commencement speeches, the main address being delivered by Ricardo Muti, renowned conductor and music director of the Chicago Symphony.  He was amiable and funny at times, encouraging the graduates to make connections on a more personal basis.  I detect a thread running through the various talks from Muti, to President Shapiro, to Weinberg convocation speaker Daniel Pink, of spurring the graduates on to cherish and maintain personal connections.  These young people have grown up in the digital age, where "friends" are made through Facebook and "conversations" reduced to phrases by texting.

We are delighted that our daughter, though savvy of the ways of social media, has made many real and lasting friendships in her four years at Northwestern, the old-fashioned way.  We got to meet many of these friends.  She and her friends organized cookouts and get-togethers during commencement week for the families to get to know them.  We so enjoyed meeting these young people -- all of them warm, sincere, thoughtful and unpretentious -- which speaks well of our child.

I hope our daughter and her friends will not only strive to keep up their friendships but make the effort to establish new ones as they enter the next phase of their lives.  Friendship, after all, borrowing CS Lewis' sentiment, is what will give value to all that they venture out to do.

No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.

John 15:16 

Happy Valentine's Day!

 Illustration by Lauren Monaco

My daughter had been playing Chinese music to commemorate Chinese New Year the past two weeks.  She reminded me of this love song that was one of my mother's favorites.

To commemorate Valentine's Day, here's Teresa Tang singing The Moon Represents My Heart.

Happy Lunar New Year!

Painting by Xu Beihong

I am a few days late in sending my greetings for the year of the horse, the first day of the New Year being January 31.  But technically we have 15 days to celebrate the new year.  So, I am late, but not too late.

I came across this short Singapore film this morning, The Reunion Dinner, which follows a boy through three stages of his life as he celebrates the reunion dinner on Chinese New Year's Eve with his family.  I find it quite delightful. It also brings back memories of how my family celebrated the new year in Singapore.  Though the differences are many between the film's family and mine, the sentiments remain curiously similar.  I remember how as a youngster, I would look forward to wearing the pyjamas my grandmother lovingly sewed for all her grandchildren to be worn on New Year's Eve, to the elaborate meal, to the family gathering, and of course the ang-pows!  The film especially evokes memories of the love and pride my father had for me and my family.  It makes me miss my parents immensely.

Here's the link to The Reunion Dinner.  In the film, you will also catch a glimpse of Singapore through the decades and hear the Chinese dialect, Hokkien, which was my family's dialect as well.  Enjoy!