check this email my friend sent me....i wonder if it's still funny without the context..it's hilarious if you ask me. it's sort tapping off of my dreams of baseball (before the blog) i shared with him and this other person last night.
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Man it sucks to be me! Ah, I just got
to have faith...just gotta have faith". Man, I hate
that song by george michael- the guy from WHAM!! what
kind of name is that! More like WHAMMO!! Yeah, I still
remember those commercials they did for those
frisbees, where the guys are all playing and smiling
with their feathered hair, tube socks up to their
knees, Le Tigre shirts, and shorts three sizes too
small. Man, it sucks to be them even more! Blog on
that for a while! You dig me g-man?
You feel me, dawg? You baseball dreamer? Yeah, last
night while we were walking back to our cars, we were
talking about what kind of cool name we could give you
to go with your cool career. "...and here comes Gary
Leong stepping up to the plate. He's been on a hot
streak as of late, batting avg .451. Here's the pitch
and he connects! Whoa, got it good! And it's going
back -back, way back! And it's outta here! Gary hit
the LEEONG ball again!!! Boy, he came and delivered
sending that ball the LEOONG way home!!!" Yeah! blog
that too!
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So while walking out of this boba place, I noticed an asian baseball player on the cover of AsianWeek. Anything to do with baseball, especially an asian player is worth looking into. The image on the cover triggers dreams of yesteryears when my consuming desire was to become a professional baseball player. In fact, I still have dreams about becoming one, but I am perhaps more realistic and discerning, that bar a direct encounter and calling from God, I'm not meant to be in the Big League.
Baseball triggers not only the dreams, but also the overall feelings and conditions when life was simple and innocent. Life has indeed become more complicated and confusing. I've become a complex person who longs and values simplicity - the years when all cared and thought about was baseball.
Why was life simple? There was no thinking involved. All I knew was what I did. I loved baseball, so I played it. Athletics refer to this innocent desire as "the love for the game." Money, respect, and fame were non-existent factors. Children played for the fullness of the sport. It's the communication of joy, satisfactory, and peace you received when you watch a kid throw a football through the center of a tire, a son play catch with his father, and a boy heave a basketball half the size of height toward a rusty iron hoop as seemingly high as a skyscraper.
If I were allowed to wish, it honestly would be to remain at that state all the days of my life. Playing baseball pretty much drowns out everything, even those of apparent importance. It's both good and bad. It allows me to live in the bliss and fulfillment of baseball, but at the same time, shelters me from the reality of life with its associated trials and difficulties.
There's something about sports. Perhaps it's the sense of nostalgia, where memories affect the present, and give rise to dreams for the future. With the exception of living in a dream - outside of reality - I hope heaven is something like this baseball hope, at least may some of it be redeemable.
BTW, there's one statement in the magazine that I love. It is a little bit of tangent. While describing Kaz Matsui, they said, "he's got a rifle arm to seal the deal." I love that comment. For all you guys who call me " shooter", a nickname I didn't choose, you can change it to "The Rifle or "The Deal".
gear
They say the eyes are the window to the soul. For those special moments, I do agree with that statement. It's weird how we use heart, but in the Hebrew OT, they refer more to the abdomen area, the bowels/intestines of a person. Ignoring the negative association with these areas, I think the OT reference makes more sense. When I am moved or gripped by something, it's not so much the area near the heart as below the stomach - the ummp and essence of feelings or grunts originated.
So I watched The Passion of the Christ last night with a person from my workplace. I could barely take the violence and brutality. What am I saying? I couldn't barely?I couldn't take it period. I grabbed my cheek, grimaced, and closed my eyes several times. Admittedly, I can't take gory movies involving knives, blunt objects, and blood. Good thing my friend wasn't a very masculine and macho type of person. But hey, I'm pretty much a stupid masculine jock when it comes to sports. I `m just a wuss when it comes to movies.
As I watched, I thought about how the movie would be received by a non-believer. Unless you have some understanding of gospel, even specifics, the movie may seem aimlessly gloomy. This is especially amplified with the vivid depiction of the torturing and scourging. To the world, these last twelve hours point more to death and foolishness than life and truth. But to those who understand, in both the head and the bowels :), these twelve hours; His death is the window to heaven - a spiritual reality behind this physical reality. It's a fuller and narrower reality, consumed with God's passion for His name and His love for the lost; a reality where Christ serves not only as a window to it, but also where He is the reality - He is the truth!
For me, the movie also affirms salvation truly is a gift and act of God. How can anybody besides God shift a person's conclusion of Christ's death as something seemingly foolishness to something convincingly wise? And to do so, where a person's response is free yet must be prompted by some greater power?
So I also got a chance to sit in some classes at Regent College. One class dealt with the re-evangelism of world; meaning to reach out to areas that once pledge their allegiance and faith to the Lord. It was pretty interesting, as the Prof talked about the look and qualities of an evangelistic/missionary church. I enjoyed it lot, as he supported it well with a biblical example of a healthy/outward church.
I also sat in a Systematic Theology Overview course. It was being taught by JI Packer, the "Knowing God" author. Though he was physically fragile, his mind was ever sharp and witty. The class started off by singing a Doxology, followed by a prayer from one of the students. While singing, I observed Mr.Packer, and was very encouraged by the apparent quiet, yet deep passion for the Lord. His personal and reverent understanding of the Lord is reflected in this quiet passion, where singing to the Lord is alway new, always fresh. Oh how I hope to be like that in my twilight years, where the Lord never becomes old/stale, but would be as refreshing as when I first believe, yet full and deep from a lifetime of experiences in walking with Him.
I enjoyed the content of that day's class. He talked about the issue or theology of sin. I vividly remember some things he talked about in regards to the psychology of sin, and nature of walking with the Lord.
With the psychology of sin, it goes something like this:
when man comes into existence, there are three burning questions he has:
who am i?
where am i?
what am i'm suppose to do?
Isn't that simple yet profound? It address identity, location (or reality), and purpose.
The nature of walking with God comes from Calvin Institute and goes something like this:
The knowledge of man and God grow together.
He elaborate by saying that as man grow to know the God, His holiness, His goodness, His gracious, His gentleness....Man also know how sinful he is and how much he needs God. Gosh, isn't that so true?
Actually, I was thinking about something like this recently. There are many folks who know a lot about God. Unfortunately, some of them subconsciously get big heads about it. Well, I guess none of us are without fault in this area. One of the observations I make with seminary professors is whether they are somewhat proud or whether they are humble. While visiting DTS, I admittedly noticed that though these profs know so much about God, they are very humble people with deep convictions. Though I may not agree with their perspective of things all the time, I admire their humility and deep reverence for God and His word. So my thought correlating with this observation is that as I grow in knowledge of God, a true understanding of it is not found so much in my ability to exegete or preach it as in character change - it ought to humble me. That is, a deep understanding of God shows me how little I do know about Him because of how great and vast He is, and how low and unwise I am. This contrast produces a understanding of a constant need for Him, followed by a appreciation of His salvation and grace.
gear
It’s Sunday, my third day in Canada. Friday and Saturday were spent at Whistler, tackling both Blackcomb and Whistler mountains. Overall, it’s the best snowboarding I’ve experienced. Though the weather was gloomy for the two days, it didn’t take away from the thick snow base and long runs. Unlike Tahoe, Thomas and I couldn’t even last the entire day. The challenging runs took its toll on us. The highlight of skiing had to be the ??? run. We went down a steep bowl on the backside. But the run was pure powder. Everytime I fell, I probably went into 2 ft of fluffy snow.
Oh yes, the most embarrassing moment had to be my three attempts at the T-bar. For those who don’t know, T-bars are used where lifts can’t be used or lifts haven’t been designed and built for certain parts of the mountains. Instead of sitting on a lift, you attach the T-bar to your body, where it pulls you along on either your skies or snowboard. Since you are riding your board up the hill, you need to make sure you maintain both balance and direction. Since I didn’t have the stomp pad in the correct location, I didn’t have a secure place to plant my back foot; which is used to leverage the board in steering. Thomas went first and had no trouble riding up the slope. On my first try, I placed the bar between my crouch (what you’re suppose to do with snowboarders) and was immediately pulled by it. Since I didn’t have any leverage, I started to waggle back and forth, and eventually lost my balance and forced to let go. Frustrated and embarrassed, I had to climb up from a pit and make way back to the line. At this point, I was psychologically damaged because of the public embarrassment from not only the ppl in line, but also from the T-bar attendant. (you sorta of have to be cool on a snowboard and falling from the T-bar isn’t cool.) The second time around, I stepped into the receiving box, and was immediately taken off balance as I caught an edge and couldn’t put the T-bar in the right place. At this point, I was sitting on the board, desperately trying to reorient myself while I was pulled up the slope. A possible parallel is water skiing where a skier is dragged along the surface of the water with her body instead of the skies; or a stunt man hanging onto a rope that is attached to a moving car. Well, the whole line was witnessing my effort, and began cheering for me. While trying to standup, I became completely destabilized and again had to let go of the rope rather than cause the whole T-bar to stop. When I let go, the crowd empathized with my valiant and failed attempts – “aahh…go try!” If the first attempt erected a psychological bump, this last one transformed it to a wall. I climbed up out of the pit, and just stood there at the end of the line, steering at the T-bar, afraid to face the T-bar attendant for a third time. Throughout this experience, Thomas watched from above. He eventually came down, and told me that he witnessed some person falling off the T-bar and hoped it wasn’t me. Encouraged once more, though very psychologically damaged, I gave it one more try. The strategy this third time would involve placing my foot in the binding instead of the poorly placed stomped pad. Thomas told me to relax and just put the foot in the binding. In place once more, I got so nervous that I couldn’t get my foot in the binding. As I panicked, two T-bars passed by, and both the ppl lined up and T-bar attendant showed their impatient…how soon they forgot my prior attempts – no compassion. As the third T-bar approached, I fortunately got my foot in the binding and was quickly whist away from the hostile crowd. Now having leverage, I was able to stabilize myself and get up the mountain. I did use a maddening grip on the bar, holding onto it like life and death; death was having to get in line for fourth time and face that T-bar attendant – totally uncool! I tell ya…I can say one thing about advance skiers/snowboarders, they either cheer you on when you make a great effort or yell at you if hold them up. No much difference between them and fair weather fans.
I’m sitting at the SF airport waiting for my Vancouver flight, which is 30 minutes delayed. I was pretty excited to find that Wi-Fi is offered throughout the airport. But to my dismay, you have to pay for access outside of the controlling company – tmobile. Since I work as a system administrator, I figure I could circumvent the virtual authoritarian borders. However, hacking isn’t my forte. My job involves setting up servers with security in place to frustrate hackers. I’m by no means a bona fide hacker. My only trick is to ssh into another machine, and display a web browser from it. No success. I’m stuck behind this reverse firewall. In spite, I booted into the Linux side of my laptop, and purposely scanned the gateway to see which ports were open. My attempt was thwarted by rejection of pings. I could be a little more maliciously with my scans, but I figure there was no real purpose outside of frustration.
Oh wells, I don’t need the Internet to blog. Hmm, it’s weird that when I have thoughts to jot down, I don’t have time to do it, and when I have time to do it, I no longer have the thoughts to do it with. I mean, I have thoughts, but it doesn’t quite flow. In these instances, blogging becomes a bit forced – manufactured inspiration. Alright, let me get warmed up. La-la..wa-wa…ba-ba…what the heck? Yeah …yeah…yeah…everybody get your hand in the air and wave it like you don’t care….do you feel it…yeah….yeah…feel the beat ya…..what the heck? There was a man name Jack, who had a cat name Black. You see Jack loved cats because ….what the heck? Rubbish, I tell you…….