Work not for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you, for on him God has set his seal of approval. (🌕)

words

⬆️ = to GOD (YOU / YOUR / I / ME) from mii ( u / your / i )

Out of my first rest, let the first work spring forth.

Out of the space of sleepy silence, that brief morning interlude, let intercourse ensue between YOU and i.

Out of fear and Egypt, let me walk boldly up to YOUR throne.

Out of slumber let power proceed in word and work un-sundered.

➡️ = to other thous from mii

Out of our gnawing projections, base-ful or base-less, let us remember, and let it stand alone, that we are made in image of God, albeit broken by our slavery to sin – past or present.

Out of the forgetting of darkness and evil, we remember what is good. We re-member it – let it flow in our members for God first – in mind and in body.

Out of a past filled with good-works and evil-works, we remain made in YOUR image, broken by the evil-works of ourselves and others. For evil-work is unwork – for it degrades, it destroys, it steals what is good. Work is good, and evil is the undoing of that work, the usurpation and corruption that leads to, not a vacuum, but a world of unplanned action filled with pain, agony, tears, crying, and suffering. Evil is not nothingness – there is only holy nothingness amidst the glories of work, as there is a Sabbath amidst the six days of word-ful creation. But there is vacuity that results from evil, there is an emptiness, because it is work hollowed out, a bone with all its marrow sucked out, ready to shatter into a thousand pieces. Those pieces than pierce the soul, and remains embedded until The Healer is called upon. That desperate cry of everyone who finds God – who is also found by God – the order doesn’t matter because they are one – amidst their painful realisation of their desire for The One who has given them existence. Sin is the result of desire twisted, promised a fulfillment, and then, desire left unsatisfied and even more wanting. It may have the appearance of good, or shed that facade in shameless parade, but it always leaves the soul bereft, cheated. Its promises are never truly kept, and it leaves in its wake thoughts that seek to conform to its new reality, its twisted, corrupted reality.

Out of the distant land, once children of the devil, we are now the children of God. No longer lost, no longer believing that we are owned by the world, with all its crudeness, harshness, and shallow determinism, but owned, accompanied, taught, and protected by our Father. The one who formed us in the womb.

⬆️

So walk with us, Father of Lights.

Now walk with mii, The Three God, YOU who is One.

Walk with me in the desert to the Promised Land. Lead me in the desert, in the midst of the sandstorms of uncertainty. Feed me with manna, manna which i did not work for, food that which my hands do not cultivate. Give me manna, as i work for the food that endures to eternal life, the relationships that empowers all the things i do. For i have no physical vineyard as of yet, only the garden of my heart, the garden of my soul.

With YOUR pillar of cloud, shield me from the scorching sun of my sin, defend me from it.

With YOUR pillar of fire, lead me in darkness. For without a job, and without a church, i am wandering, and it is bitter. But i do have – for YOU have given – a family, a family of eight, including me, like Noah (but unlike Noah, for the women are blood sisters, not wives). And yet i do have a job, and i do have a church.

For all work is work, unpaid or paid, simple or complex, seen or unseen by human eyes, direct or indirect in its effect on creation and those who live in it. As long as it is restorative and bears the intention of restoration, it is work. Or if it maintains what is good, consistent with the mind set on goodness, it is also work. Or if it takes advantage of a once-hidden opportunity to connect and nurture, it is work. From the rubbing of the plate with a sponge to the pulling out of the weed sapling amongst the stubble, from the dialogue over assignment between student and stranger to the tapping of keys to articulate thoughts, it is all work. Even work, without a purpose in mind, is still work. It is aimless work, but that need not be a negative thing, something that detracts from the work. But the fullness of work is realised with purpose, is known in action, with others for others.

Here is the essence of work. It is done with the other, for others (🌕🌕). It is done with God, for others. It is done with the Three God, for their kingdom and righteousness’ sake.

It will be dry, but the fountains of my heart are unplugged and flowing. There is, however, much cleaning to do. There is dirt to clean, there is sin to uproot.

⬇️ = to mii from God

If u don’t want to do good for yourself – if u don’t want to sleep and wake up early for yourself – if u find it heavy, do it for ME first. Love ME for eight hours of your day – the day I have give u – with a good sleep habit. Love ME with all your time. It’s the best for ME, for you, and for others.

📕a book 📘

That we may write in heaven that most will not bother reading except us. It will be called The Radical Presence of God.

work

i weeded the garden, typed this post – working for the food that endures to eternal life – and washed and dried the dishes. 🌕🌕🌕 was indirectly highlighting my sin of laziness, from day 28 of September from “New Morning Mercies”. Abrasive, but he ‘s got me.

credits

🌕 John the Apostle

🌕🌕 Bill Heatley

🌕🌕🌕 Paul Tripp

I like just thinking of the basic units of language. Words. Then drawing distinctions between them, and playing them against each other, as I draw out the thoughts they birth in my mind, and as I listen to the hum of The Spirit (🌕) in the background.

Word

Often I hear of making “wise” choices, when they are really the cultural norm, the perceived “safe” choices. “Wise” is just used to disguise the fact that everyone in my cultural circle does it (mine is an Asian, migrant, first generation bubble in Australian society), and the outcomes – what we reap – are seen to be good and upright. If it’s hard, and requires sacrifices, it’s worth these outcomes.

Nothing wrong so far, right? Let’s dig into a few of the details.

Get a degree (or a few more) to get into a line of work that has regular need (e.g. Doctoring is always needed because there are always sick people. Teaching is always needed because there will always be schools), get a few years into my career, find a wife/husband, have kids … the list goes on till … retire, go on a few holidays, not be able to go on a few holidays because I am too old … then die.

This is the narrative I am familiar with, very much so. It is what I see played out in the blood family, and also in the spiritual family.

But is that all? Is this what a “wise” life looks like? Is that really all I want to do in this short existence? Do I just “settle” for this narrative?

Sure, it’s hard to live out this narrative, but apparently its the only way to happiness, to satisfaction, to … heaven on earth?

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that working hard with our hands and heads, intimately walking through life with another human being, waking to little kids at midnight, are not good. Hell, I haven’t even tasted most of it yet! I cannot know fully without experience! I will not rest till I have known!

After all …

Sweet is the sleep of a labourer, whether he eats little or much! 🌕🌕

And …

Thou has ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; though hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck. 🌕🌕🌕

And …

Children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.

🌕🌕🌕🌕

But the burning question is “Is this the totality of my dreams? Of people I have not met, or people I have yet to take care of? What of now, when a wife and children are remote, and if despair is allowed to enter in, not even a possibility for the wretch that despair calls me?”

Surely there must be more. There must be a grander vision, a more dramatic dream, that INCLUDES the things and thous I mention, but include much more.

Maybe the other questions is “Is living the “wise” life, as defined by my culture, the only way to achieving these dreams? Is it possible that the way to life – as I desire it – is not constrained to only one way? That as long as I am with God in both word and work, that I can make it an adventure, an epic journey, to reaching these goals of eros and more living images of God? Is it even possible that the sequentiality – as culturally prescribed – is a mere description.

Perhaps, I can have it all from the beginning? Achievement and acceptance? That they need not be sectioned off in time?

“Unwise” the past says. “Foolish” the past says.

I just want to be free.

As free as Adam was in the Garden, before he failed in his leadership of Eve, and let her lead him to sin. Before all that crap happened (which i easily could replicate. i am not better than Adam).

Rose. I am still alive and growing in awareness. Thorn. I spent 3 hours playing games, leaving my soul unsatisfied. Bud. I will find joys in my preparation work to tutor physics. I will taste freedom in my work.

WORK

I watched “I, Frankstein” with the question “What did he learn?”, played Cookie Run Kingdom and DragonHeir: silent gods against my conscience, weeded the front yard weeds, cleaned the house, hung the clothing, violined my violin, brainstormed physics notes, read Christian Overman. Still financially leaching off my parents as a twenty seven year old. I rightfully am ashamed off being a burden to my parents. It’s nearly a year (two days away) from the time I officially quit the PhD.

I have a simple plan, and a lot of work to do. But first, the tiny habits to practice my faithfulness with a little. Hopefully there are pieces of freedom here.

Credits

May not relate to what I write, but may just be the books I am chewing on at the moment. I will use 🌑 to indicate that I just read it, and 🌕 when it’s in connection – even the most minute – with what I write. I don’t use distinctions between different authors in the books of the Bible I quote from – call it convenience, slobbishness, laziness, misinformation – call it what you want. I just need a name down, a singular name associated with the book I associate it with.

🌑Christian Overman

🌕 John the Apostle

🌕🌕 Kohelet

🌕🌕🌕 Solomon the King

🌕🌕🌕🌕 David the King

Greetings, netizens of Earth.

WORDS

I have been trying to avoid thinking, except when it is set upon a task I am doing. Overthinking causes me mental pain, like how overusing a muscle causes me physical pain.

My mental pain is a tightness in my head.

361 days since I quit the training program, and I don’t want to flounder from overthinking.

I finally putting down a plan for my life, mapping out a career plan for the first time in twenty seven years of my existence on Earth.

There is a tension when I remember that I have surrendered my life to Jesus. So I might say “my life” but I don’t really want to live a purely willful existence.

I want the dance. That dynamical movement with The Spirit. I don’t want it to just be the random opportunities and my meaningful choices. I want The Spirit to fling doors open, but I refuse. I want to knock on doors profusely, but The Spirit keeps them barred.

But I do want to explore, I want to wander, I want to walk with The Spirit, regardless of the trajectory – career-wise or career-foolish it may be.

I want my calling to crystallise. It’s clearer than before. God knew me before I was even formed in the womb. God ordained me for … something, even before I came out of my mother’s womb.

561 days since I recognised my deep need for God to help me – and subsequently asked for help, many a time. “Pray to God with my arms open” (🌕) … with someone made in the same image, at a different time, I raised up my arms to the sky.

WORKS

I gave up trying to do a daily routine. But I do have list of habits. Playing violin, pulling weeds, cleaning the house, editing my dad’s writing … stuff like dat. Atomic habits (🌕🌕) … aye, I haven’t even read the book once. Keeps me going, even though I am still being a burden to them.

The question “What if this is my last day on Earth?” helps too. Keeps me focused on the work, the work that will continue into eternity.

TOJESUS

I got rose-bud-thorn from someone I once knew (🌕🌕🌕), someone who I deeply and continue to respect.

🌹Rose: You have given me a warm bed, roof, more food than i need, and clean clothes. One pant with a hole on the left leg, one pant with a hole on the right leg, and one pant with no holes on either.

🩸Thorn: I am twenty-seven and an utter financial burden to my parents for over a year. Have a big debt with the government hanging over my head.

🌱Bud: I have a plan. I never had a plan wandering in physics for over eight years. A year ago, after quitting the PhD program, I didn’t have a plan, either (I did have wild ideas, but they went all over the place). I reckon I am called to teach, and continue the work of my physics and maths high-school teacher. Inside or outside school – either way, or both. But before that, before going back to school, I will stock up on the tech abilities, so I can build some epic demos for my students. And if I can explain complex stuff to kids, I can explain complex stuff to adults, and do some patent attorneying. It’s not perfect, but some plan is worlds better than no plan.

It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.

(🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕)

🌹Thank you, Jesus, for YOUR salvation gift to me. i could survive, even thrive, in this Shabbatical i didn’t earn. Thank you for YOUR wisdom and creativity, and I have something planned I couldn’t do a year ago. I want to continue searching for YOUR kingdom, YOUR righteousness, YOUR glory, YOUR freedom first. Can you help me? (🌕🌕🌕🌕)

CREDITS

I rather not explain myself, but I realised the essential thing about referencing, the soul of it all, is the person. Yes, there are reasons for including the rest of the details. But for the bewildered soul, for times of trial, we stick to the basics. The name is all there is.

🌕 NF

🌕🌕 James Clear

🌕🌕🌕 חַנָּה

🌕🌕🌕🌕 Elderly lady on the train

🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕 Rollo May

ANGELS

😈 No girl would want to be with a guy as irresponsible as you. It’s okay to be dirt poor in terms of possessions, but you are poor of diligence. Even worse, you lack ambition, and it shows in how slow things are going for you. You ain’ t sacrificing enough. Sacrifice more sleep, more time with family, more everything. Bums don’t get girls, and definitely don’t get married. Too bad.

😈😈 You didn’t invest enough time in this post. It’s rough. It’s easy to see that you don’t care for quality as much as you care for quantity. This ‘you might die tonight’ is counterproductive. I sound like a reasonable demon, don’t I?

😈😈😈 If people read your old posts, they will realise what a shitty person you are. You better delete the past to look better in front of your readers. Otherwise no one will want to read a crazy man’s post, the scribblings of someone who has lost his mind.

😇 You can change for the better. You can taste more freedom in this existence. And you are changing for the better.

Note: VainGlory is a rather self-aware title of a MOBA game.

Words

There are many passages of God’s words that can attest to the hidden vanity of hard work, the unexpected hollowness that follows even great achievement. Is the hard work itself, the great achievement, thus, bad? No. It is good (Well, mostly. For nothing is so simply put into words in a sin-infected, sin-encroached world. To lay out the details of work, as good as it was made in the beginning, the occupation of the majority of our lives, is another topic. I dare not call great achievement ungood. It was made to be good by the source of all good. The only ungood is the misguided expectations we cultivate about it).

So why is it vacuous? It is the reasons that lies behind the work. The whys that flow from our hearts, from our deep-seated desires, even if hidden from ourselves they may be. And that flow is often polluted by the wrong reasons, the compromised connections between what we think will satisfy us, will give our souls rest, and what we truly desire. In that sense, even reason is confounded. Reason can only flow from what we know (🌕).

However much of the truth we know, reason follows. However much are the lies in our psyche, reason also follows, crookedly.

Here is a compromised connection, albeit a heavily reinforced one. The walls will not fall so easily around this deep-rooted, entrenched idea. Every moment, somewhere on earth, it is being reinforced. Perhaps it is seen as an ultimate salvation, the only way, the only way one knows how. If this is you, I dare not snatch it from you if I did not have better, more life-giving, more freedom-centric choice.

So what is the why? To save oneself to love. To be seen, heard, served, taken care of, accepted. And to do it in kind to the other. And this undulates, a never ending spiral of reciprocating love. A love that will sustain through work, through play, through rest. A love that will see us through both easy and hard times – especially the hard. For the hard times are the ones we fear if we are alone. A kind of eternal love, which given time, will allow us to be truly, utterly known. We want to be known, as much as we want to know others. This is a genesis (🌕🌕🌕) desire of ours. So for this, we gain the prestige and power of fame, wealth, and influence. Great achievement is our only salvation.

Here is one great expectation (🌕🌕) of great achievement – that one would finally receive the love one so desires. That, satisfied with love, the soul will finally be at rest.

That is one great expectation of great achievement that will fail. And when it does, one would feel so certainly (not the fickle kind of feeling) that one has truly lost one’s life. To trade one’s soul for great achievement leaves one’s soul – not body – lifeless. To use a baser analogy, one’s soul is left spiritually penniless. It is an unseen agony, because it is not a destitution of the body, of the seen reality, of the physical realm.

Thus, to get all this achievement, all this glory, for the purposes of meeting the needs of one’s soul, the thirst for the soul’s rest, ends in failure.

It is glory, but in vain, because there are deeper, beyond skin-deep, desires that are not met. Glory, but vain. Vainglory.

🩸work💧

That was me. Oldest child and son in a large family, Bible study leader, PhD candidate. I thought it was enough for my soul to be satisfied.

But no.

I hated myself. I hated myself already even, rejected myself utterly, even before the first and last girl of my life rejected me as well. With reckless abandon I hated myself. All my achievements meant nothing in the tsunami of my own self-hatred.

Self-hatred for all the years I wasted on games and pornography. Those years will never come back. I could have been earning lots of money, racked up plenty of work experience, not have a debt. But no. I had squandered so much, and the regret was finally pouring. i was completely overwhelmed. I could have chosen a less academic track, I could have … it is an endless flow once the tap of regret is turned on.

Rightfully, she ran from a man who would not, who could not accept himself, let alone accept other people.

And so my self-hatred bore down onto me, and so I found myself asking, memorably, genuinely, with all my heart. Arms outstretched to the heavens (the physical heavens, lest you consider me a believer of the old man who sits in the clouds),

“Help me”

It was a pipsqueak of a phrase, uttered from a bed of tears, through a croaky mouth bent with grief.

That was 588 days ago. That is why I write here. Hope came himself. That is why I don’t want to kill myself anymore.

Disclaimer: When i title the last section as “work” i don’t necessarily mean my own work. God works, and HIS works can manifest in our individual lives, lives that are slowly interwoven – if we let HIM, and as HE wills – into the fabric of HIS eternal, global body. HIS eternal and global church. HIS eternal and global family. my life is like a thread in a vast, exquisite tapestry – HIS tapestry of history.

🌕 credits 🌕

🌕 C.S. Lewis

🌕🌕 Charles Dickens

🌕🌕🌕 Moses of the Old Testament

😈 imaginary demon comments😈

#anonguy0127: Heh, this guy is using inclusive language. Don’t say “we” when you don’t know me! (woo, dat rhymed).

#hardworker6991: Huh, sounds like a bum’s excuses for not working hard. Only bums will listen to this bum. This guy definitely lives in his parent’s basement.

#sweatyangel312: Chitty-chitty chat-chat. As if we, the global citizenry, needed another KAI to talk. Hope PO will send you someplace else. (Listen to this track guys, from Kung-Fu Panda 3. Its sick. Makes pooping epic.)

#repentantdemon3456: He’s a keyboard warrior, we are keyboard warriors. Lets care for our own beams first, bros.

What I think is more than what I write. But writing helps to encapsulate my thinking, allowing me to revisit and rewrite a vehicle of ideas – “my” ideas. In hopes that my ideas can find connection with others who meet this vehicle. But since I do not share what I think in audio or in conversation, I must settle and master the symbolic way.

What I do – my work – is more than what I write about it. For in writing I might deceive myself about my own work, its integrity as it relates to my self. But also, in writing, I can expand the extent of my work with creativity.

Hence word in writ, and work in writ. What I think, how I see things transpire, is shoehorned into a written piece. What I do I reflect upon through these magical symbols on a page (dangerously reductionistic, I know). This will be my basic format going forward.

word in writ

I want to recognise that many of my old posts can be quite depraved in imagination and thinking. The quality and coherence of my past blogs fluctuate a ton, devolving into mad tangents about just words at some times, and at other times, being militantly rigid about quoting and referencing my sources of inspirations. It’s like my mind would evolve in its sanity, then devolve back into insanity later.

It’s a hot mess.

And I would suggest to those who read my rants. Be careful, be discerning, and feel free to laugh as hard as you will – in a genuine manner. I can get strangely passionate about certain things for a time – but for only a time.

I have the beginnings of realising this – I am a wishy-washy person.

Hence the inconsistency of my writing prose, the frequency of my posts, and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

As if the word “etcetera” was a magic word that conjures up the exact list of the unwritten words in your mind as they appeared in my mind.

work in writ

It is 352 days since I started this mad Shabbatical, the integrity of its meaning stripped by my vain attempts to find achievement and acceptance in all the wrong places. It is in the haze of mid-afternoon when I wrote this, after depriving myself – hating myself – of sleep for two nights in the role, playing digital games on PC and mobile. Achieving emptily, to no satisfaction, but a mad, unhealthy, soul-crushing, heart-numbing, prolonged act. “Hell and destruction are never full. So is the eyes of man.” as I read today with my church mate, who I have not divulged completely about my life so far. For my life is filled with death, and I am rightly ashamed.

The fig leaves are my very few instances (6-7 in a year) of applying for a job, my monolith task of writing up a personal textbook for the local syllabus for high school physics, and my inconsistent help with the household chores.

Off to get more fig leaves. Better not be poison-ivy leave again. I have done that too many a time. “Remember, and let me go” I would say to myself.

a nobody out

#format #figleaves #poisonivyleaves #word