Of books, billiards, and barbeques

Of books…
Been going through the book Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth with Richard over the past year, with a break in the middle while he was off at Davis. I personally finished reading it last year, and re-reading chapters again just reinforces what an excellent book this is. “God’s grace is free, but it is not cheap” – Bonhoeffer.

When Jesus says, “I have come so that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10b), that full life that is promised is not simply dropped in our laps. Discipleship and living a life of spiritual discipline isn’t easy – practicing meditation, prayer, study, solitude, simplicity, fasting, and so on so forth takes training and practice. The reward, however, is a more immanent and rich experience of God through the indwelling Holy Spirit. I wish I’d had the opportunity to read this book back when I first accepted Christ, because in my opinion, outside of the Bible, it might be the best handbook/guide out there to following hard after God. I highly recommend it.

Been reading a few short stories from Tolstoy each night before going to bed. In these tales, mostly about peasant folk, he brings up some interesting ideas and scenarios regarding spirituality and life (hence the title of the collection, Divine and Human). One story in particular that has stuck in mind – a mother loses her toddler son to a disease, and in her grief, wonders aloud why God would take her innocent son from her. An angel appears and says (paraphrased), “Do not be sad that your son has been taken at such an early age. While you grieve now, you do not know what he could have been.” Then the angel shows the mother a vision of an alternate future where her son is all grown up, a drunkard and a pervert. Then the vision fades, and the angel says, “It is better that we take him now, while he is yet innocent.” Fascinating idea for a story – without even getting into destiny, I think it also underscored the combination of pride and fear that parents must have in raising their children, since they play such a large role in influencing the child to choose the right path.

Borrowed The Lord of the Rings from Andrew N last night with the plan of trying to finish it again before Return of the King comes out in December. I really oughta just buy my own copy.

… billiards…
Saturday night after Ted’s farewell dinner, hitched a ride with the Miyais up to Emeryville for Pam’s belated birthday celebration. We went to the pool hall near the Emery Bay mall complex. Even though my family has a pool table at home, I haven’t really played in a long, long time – probably over a year. The novelty wears off since it’s not all that much fun to play by yourself. Anyhow, we played a few games and I stunk it up. That’s okay though… got the chance to catch up with Pam, Andy, Danny, JLau, and Spoon.

… and barbeques
Sunday evening after helping Byron move out of his place (gonna miss that apartment), a bunch of us headed over to Disneyland- er, I mean the Lins’ (Joe and Jean) house for a bbq. It’s a big house. Anyway, we were treated to chicken, ribs, shish kebabs, kalbi, bulgogi, hot links, the works. I made my mom’s corn salad. Had fresh lychee for the first time (till Sunday, I knew it as “that Chinese candy”). For dessert, we had a plethora of stuff and I think I probably had one of everything – except for the lactose-free (not kidding) ice cream. The fruit/whipped cream/cake trifle spurred conversations about the memorable Friends episode where Rachel makes it but screws up the recipe (“Tastes like FEET!”). Discussed grilling techniques with George and Joe, caught up with Jeff, Mike, and Charles, and had a stimulating conversation about whether cursing is a sin with Byron, Karen, Tomio, Andrew N, Jerry, and Eric.

The latter was sparked by the topic of Tony Campolo using the following line to make a point when speaking to Christians at conferences and such: “You don’t give a s*** about the fact that x number of poor people are dying every day. In fact, you care more about the fact I just said s*** than you do about those people.”

My opinion? I think cursing is, for the most part, a social construct (as Eric put it). Depending on your context, a curse in one country may be totally accepted in another. For example, “bloody” is a strong curse in England, but here it doesn’t mean a thing (apologies to any possible English readers of this thing). I believe Scripture is quire clear in defining sin not necessarily in specific ways, but describing anything that is apart from God or demeaning to God. When someone exclaims, “Jee-zus!” in disgust, they demean God’s name. This is true cursing.

That being said, there aren’t very many occasions where you absolutely need a curse word (four letters or otherwise) to describe something or express yourself. Why not just stay away from them altogether?

Random
I was reading the latest issue of Slam magazine during lunchtime today, and came across an article about current Milwaukee Buck guard/forward Desmond Mason, who won the slam dunk title two seasons ago before the Warriors’ Jason Richardson won the last two. That sparked a memory from a couple of months ago when I brought the tape of this year’s slam dunk contest to a potluck dinner and popped it in while people were eating. The guys naturally got into it, with exclamations of disbelief and spontaneous cheering, while a few of the girls got interested enough that they listened to us describing the degree of difficulty, angle, hops, etc. Then it dawned on us – the slam dunk contest was the male equivalent of watching figure skating. Once we mentioned this analogy, all the girls nodded knowingly.

I think we’ve also determined that pro wrestling is the male equivalent to soap operas. I’m sure there are other parallels but they’re not coming to mind at the moment.