the 28th

The difference between a young person and an old person is that the old person knows he's young.

playing dead

Today the sky is beautiful. Bright sunshine sparkled through my room and onto my face at 7 this morning. I was all scrunged up in a tiny ball because of the cold night. The warm massage was welcomed.

DH and I both wanted to go to the library, but it was still closed for another half hour. We went to the pagoda. Saw a little insect with a black body and a red head. Funny looking thing, just keeping guard right in the middle of the step leading to the pagoda. I bent down to examine it a bit. DH's sandal inched ever closer to its little black body. The sandal touched it, and it toppled over.

"Ha ha!" I exclaimed, "DH, you know what? The insect's playing dead!" DH looked at it and said in a solemn voice, "No, it IS dead..." "Noooooo! They always do this, so that we will lose our curiosity and go away. Then they'll flip over again, and scurry back home."

We both sat down and opened our books. He was reading a Beginner's English book, I had my Bible and journal open. Five minutes later, I peered over at the toppled insect. And there it remained. Only now, it looked almost dried up. The legs were all curled rigidly over its body, in a rigor mortis way, if there is such a thing for insects.

"Oh," I let out. DH looked up. "You're right, it IS dead. Must've been dead for a while, and you just knocked it over with your sandal."

With the typhoon and the wet weather recently, we've had our share of dead insects on campus, and live ones too, especially mosquitoes. I had a preying mantis on my door frame for two days. It went from the side frame to the top one, and finally teetered on the doorknob. So I challenged my right of entry with a broom. Boy, did it fight fiercely, even after it was being transported by the bristles to the balcony. Then there were the two green-leaved insects. Their bodies were like two fresh green spring leaves stuck together, complete with all the intricate veins found on leaves. Absolutely stunning, but they certainly weren't camouflaged against our beige tiled floor. Both of these insects had lost one of their back jumping legs.

DH went over to the insect. "Aiyawwe. Too bad." Dead as dead can be. And we both went back to our readings.

The clock struck nine--time to pack up for the library.

DH gave a whoop, and pointed to the wall. There was our red-headed black insect, merrily making its way up the white pillar of the pagoda. I whooped too! Boy, we were both fooled, even when we knew insects played dead when threatened! We laughed and kept looking at the little beetle mosying non-chalantly up the stuccoed paint. Incredible!

It's good to be outsmarted occasionally by God's one inch creatures!

Oh yeah, and guess what happened yesterday? I ate Italian spaghetti bolognaise with green chopsticks. Just thought I'd share that too.

hilltop cross

There's something about a big cross on a hill that moves the soul. There are two big crosses here at LTS. One in the seminary, one in the retreat centre. I was astounded by their monolithic whiteness when I first visited the seminary, but now, after 8 months of walking up the 121 stone steps to reach the campus marked by this cross, I've grown blinded to its testimony.

I discovered another majestic big cross recently on my travels in Italy. I was on a bus, winding around the hill road from Sorrento to Positano, deep in thought and mulling over the events of recent days. And there before my glazed eyes rose the familiar crossed beams of ancient Roman torture. It was the only structure on the flat mountain top which the next turn of the road brought to view. It was a lonely structure, on a lonely hilltop raised on vertical rocky cliffs. The columned plateau of vertical rocks jutted out like a sore limestone thumb. And the cross was right at the edge, overlooking past the severe drop to the gentle lush valleys dotted with bright scarlet shingles and white-washed walls. The villages and towns were lively with lights and colours, vibrant with music and laughter. And they covered the gentle valley like happy cobblestones on a giant's path.

I'm not sure when the cross on the hilltop was constructed. Had it been there for centuries? For a millenium? Was it placed there for special commemoration? Did a saint die in that area? Was it a symbol of the townsfolks' allegiance to their Christian heritage? Did it witness all the ups and downs of the towns' happenings? The perennial tufts of yellow zucchini blossoms and clusters of baby green figs? The ebb and flow of the Mediterranean tide that brought livelihood in the dancing nets of fishermen? How many generations of newly christened babies grew, married, lived and died under the persistent gaze of the cross? I have no answers to these questions.

The cross stands as witness, not only to life all around it, but to itself--a symbol of an eternal truth for anyone who dares to believe its message. The cross testifies to the unchanging in the midst of constant change. And for those who believe, the truth is astounding, powerful enough to shatter all falsities in life, powerful enough to re-invent life itself, and eliminate death and its smell wherever it is in the world. Yet, with all that power, it chooses to be just a cross on a hilltop...to be gazed at, wondered at, laughed at, and perhaps to leave behind. So much power yet in such humble vestments.

I looked at it, and kept searching for it after every bend, to see if I could catch a glimpse from some other angle. From all angles, the cross remained the cross. No surprises. Just two beams juxtaposed in acute angles. Nothing fancy. Is it all real, what happened 2000 years ago? It seemed so banal, this structure. The world seems so bad, people so fallen, even (dare I say especially?) people bearing the sign of the cross, and evidences of a good God seem only convincingly real in the imagination. Tears brim. Sometimes it's easier not to believe. And even then, the cross holds to its duty of silence--a brutal silence for one who wants an audible answer... but perhaps with a welcome within, when one listens to the silence:

a gentle welcome to come to the foot of the cross,
and a generous invitation to see majestic humility for myself.