The Inklings

Throughout my life, I have been very much misunderstood and under-appreciated, and have longed to be known by a group of friends and appreciated for who I am, not what I appeared to be. After years of trying, I have given up the idea of having these kind of friends and learned to be content with having one true friend - my wife.

C. S. Lewis didn’t have a spouse until late in his life, and I suppose one of the reasons why he was not anxious to get a wife was that he had a group of kindred-spirited friends. Together they took walks in the woods and had long, spirited conversation in the pubs - far more enjoyable than having a nagging wife who constantly demanded his attention. I often wonder how in the world he managed to find so many like-minded friends in a small circle, yet I have so much trouble even finding one in a big crowd.

That was why I was puzzled by my fellow blog king, who told me that his most recent date’s conversation was way too serious for him to handle. He even blogged on how he disliked serious conversations, and took some measure to avoid having them. It baffles me because I always thought that in order for us to have serious relationships, we must have serious conversations. In fact, if we have any depth in our thinking at all, even our light conversations should have some seriousness to them. I can’t image how much fun the Inklings (C.S. Lewis’ crowd) had when they held their battle of the wits. We can't hardly criticize them for having “serious conversation,” can we?

Soul-mating

Hsu, the pioneer of Chinese free verse and the son of a banker who was Cambridge educated, once wrote: “I am seeking for my one true soul mate in the vast sea of humanity. I will be fortunate if I find her; if not, that will be my fate.” He thought he had found his true love in a young actress, but their relationship soured rather quickly after he divorced his wife and married her. Hsu died in a horrific airplane crash in his mid-thirties, but his story of soul-mating remains. I was once an admirer of the poet and spent a lot of time searching for my one and only in my youth and finally came to realize that one’s so-called soul mate is not discovered through laborious searching; it is made through persistent effort.

With effort, we may make a soul mate out of almost anyone. If soul-mates are found, then millions of people throughout the older generations were deprived of this good fortune, for their mates were chosen for them. But that simply wasn’t the case, for many of them created soul-mates out of spouses whom they hardly knew when they tied the knot, yet their marriages turned out to be quite enjoyable because of the effort they put into the cultivation of their relationship.

Physical attraction between the sexes isn’t self-sustaining and we are doomed to failure if that’s the sole instrument we employ to prop up our relationship with our mates. When we age, it will become secondary and our primary need for love and friendship will emerge; a relationship will inevitably collapse if these elements are absent. Therefore we should consider soul-mating of primary importance in our relationships and spend time and effort cultivating it. There is no need, as a matter of fact, for us to exhaust all our energy searching for a soul-mate that may or may not exist, we just have to determine to make soul-mates out of the ones we now have, or the ones we will meet someday, either by design or by chance.

Wisdom

“Jews demand miraculous signs and Greek look for wisdom…”
1 Co 1:22

I am a poet, but I don’t always understand my poetry. I have said a lot, yet I didn’t always know what I was trying to say. In fact, I oftentimes make a simple issue complicated intentionally and confuse my readers with unusual images and metaphors.

That’s not a wise thing to do at all. I raise my poetic tone so high that very few people can harmonize with me (曲高和寡.) Such isn’t the case with the Lord Jesus at all. He lowers himself to the lowest level until we can reach it and bring us up to where he desires us to be.

The Sophists in the city of Athens mocked the apostle Paul when he mentioned the resurrection of the dead. It was such foolishness to them that they didn’t bother to listen. Why was it foolish to the wise and the educated? Because most commoners during that time believed in some sort of resurrection and afterlife.

People with common sense are wiser than the sophists who seek wisdom far and wide.

“I sought for him in the crowd thousands of times, yet he was standing right there in the shade when I happened to turn my head,” wrote an ancient poet. Years may be wasted until we finally come to realize what we have been seeking all over the world has always been in our vicinity, within our grasp. “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart,” says the Scripture. If it is really so, our heart is the right place to where we should turn to find wisdom.

God speaks through our minds and hearts, and it’s crucial that we listen to both. Our minds often complicate and confuse, but our hearts simplify and clarify. On the lengthy journey of our search for wisdom, we may need to make a short cut by traveling from our heads to our hearts.

What did the Stoics and the Epicureans find in their arduous search for wisdom? Didn’t they find out the truth that most people have known by instinct? People can either endure or enjoy in this life and at the end they all die. Life is hard and we just have to learn to cope the best we can. Isn’t this common sense? But things are entirely different if we bring God into the equation. We don’t gain wisdom by way of speculation or meditation; we can only attain it by listening to God’s revelation. We can think so hard, but we can never escape from ourselves. How can we outthink ourselves? No matter how far and wide the Monkey King leaps, he is still within the palm of the Buddha's hand. We ourselves are the boundary by which we have been confined, and only through the leap of faith can we free ourselves from the confinement. The Greeks mocked Paul, and lost a precious opportunity to find the wisdom they had been seeking.

Miracles

“Jews demand miraculous signs and Greek look for wisdom…”
1 Co 1:22

If we see things right, everything is miraculous; but if we take all things as random, nothing is out of the ordinary. Miracles are in the eye of the beholder.

My birth was a miracle, and my life has been miraculous and will continue to be until the day I die, and what will transpire after I depart from my body will be the greatest miracle of them all.

They were surrounded by miracles, yet the Jews still demanded more miraculous signs. How many signs from above did they have to witness before they came to the realization that all things are in fact miraculous.

The blind regaining their sight is truly miraculous, but the fact that I am able to see is even more miraculous. The things we do routinely that we have deemed ordinary will never become extraordinary until we are no longer able to do them.

I used to play tennis in the noonday sun and wintry cold, but now I am not motivated to play even in perfect weather. It was nothing short of miracle that I was able to run and jump, and to hit a small yellow ball repeatedly for hours. Youth is indeed quite miraculous, yet we seem to take it for granted until we age.

It’s miraculous that we are alive, isn’t it? Yet we continue to demand the Lord to show us more miracles. To live is supernatural; to die is natural. We live in a supernatural world without knowing it, let alone appreciating it.

I haven’t been sick for years, but I begin to grumble the moment I become slightly ill and pray for a miracle of instant healing. The miracles that we demand from the Lord aren’t the thousands of them that we have clearly seen; they are the very ones that we haven’t seen, the ones that are truly out of the ordinary.

“Lord, I can never thank you enough for what you have done for me and my family thus far and I don’t dare to ask for more. Even if you don’t do anything for me from now on, I will forever be grateful for what you have done on my behalf in the past,” I prayed this prayer in one of the darkest moments of my life when I realized that the evil one was tempting me to become bitter about God’s inaction and casting doubt in my weary heart about God’s grace and mercy.

I have seen enough in my life to never demand for more.

Michael's Match Day

Kathy and I got up real early and drove for two hours to Amarillo to celebrate Michael’s biggest day in his young career in medicine. “Dad, come at about 9:30,” Michael called, sounded pretty serious by his standards. He is usually pretty laid back and doesn’t usually take things that seriously. I knew he was a bit uptight over this whole matching thing. He’s been working too hard over the three plus years not to take it seriously. His future career as a physician would be determined by a computer program designed by NRMP, matching him with the residency programs with which he had interviewed over the last few months. He interviewed with 17 places total and ranked 12 of them.

We knew by Monday that he had matched with an EM residency, but had no idea which one among the twelve. The truth would be revealed at 12 Eastern Time when all the fourth year medical students nationwide would open up their envelopes and find out where they would spend their next three to five years, receiving their specialty training, ranging from family medicine to orthopedic surgery.

We arrived at Michael’s house at about 10 and Michael was about ready to go. He looked pretty calm but I knew he was getting quite anxious inside. He has been working very hard toward his goal of becoming an EM doctor and in an hour or so he would harvest the first fruit of his labor. Kathy and I were feeling nervous for him, because we didn’t want him to be disappointed by not getting his top choices. People were gathering in a classroom when we arrived and, after a brief photo session we moved to a larger room and a big brown envelope was handed to each student. At 11 o’clock everyone opened up their envelopes in unison. I looked away while Michael was opening up his, for I didn’t want to see his expression of disappointment in case the result was less than desirable.

“Wow, double wows,” I said with disbelief when I looked at the paper that spelled out the place where he would receive his medical training for the next three years. I had checked almost all the programs Michael interviewed over the months, but I failed to look at the one with which he matched. It was indeed a big surprise.

Shang Shr Berry

Red berries are native to the South
In the spring a few branches stretch out.
I suggest you pick them more often
With them your deep longing for her to express.

-An old Chinese poem

Next time you write a love letter to your girl friend, enclose a red berry, telling her how much you long for her. You may have to explain to her what the red berry means to Chinese people so that she won’t think it’s some sort of candy and eat it. “Shang Shr” means “missing” or “longing” in Chinese. Just a pointer from the world-renown Dating Guru.

Grace

“I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Co 1:4

“Do I see Christ in them when I see the people sitting next to me in the pews?” This is the question we need to ask ourselves.

Instead of beholding the purity and perfection of Christ Jesus, we may see all the warps and wrinkles in our brothers and sisters and start to wonder perhaps we should be somewhere else on Sunday morning.

“Do I see Christ in me when I look at myself?” This is perhaps a more important question for us to address than the previous one. What we see in a mirror is a man who has been vexed by sin and is struggling to get a hold of himself, a man who needs to muster every ounce of his energy to get up in the morning and has to drag his feet just to move slowly through the day. Is this the man you see when you look at yourself?

Can I thank the Lord for myself? This is a difficult thing to do for some of us, isn’t it?

Some people may have an easier time doing it than others, but there are things in all of us with which we are not pleased, things both within and without ourselves that remind us of Adam’s fall, things that sometimes make us feel that we shouldn’t have been born, things that made old Job curse his birthday and caused his foolish wife to say: “curse God and die.”

I used to try to hide my crooked teeth by keeping my mouth closed when I smiled. It’s indeed a small thing for people who have straight teeth, but it’s a big deal for me. What do I see when I look into a mirror? My flat nose and crooked teeth. I have learned to identify myself by my perceived physical and mental flaws and, no matter how hard I try, I still feel the same way about myself. The fancy name for this type of infirmity is: inferiority complex.

“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” Do I see Christ in me? Maybe I should. Do I see Christ in people who sit next to me in the pew? Maybe I should.

We thank the Lord for who we are and for our fellow Christians for who they are because of God’s grace, not because of our own or their merit. People’s great merit only causes their neighbors to become jealous, but divine grace makes people give thanks and praise to God.

Never a single time have I offered thanks to God for my crooked teeth; never once have I praised the Lord for my less than perfect personality. Maybe I haven’t really seen Christ in me.

“How can Christ make his abode in this pile of dung, this awful filth?” we wonder.

Christ sank to the lowest of the low to bring us up to the highest of the high. Who we were didn’t surprise him a bit, so who we will be should not surprise us. Because of his grace, Christ in us isn’t an illusion at all; it’s reality. Therefore we must make an effort to see Christ in them when we look at our fellow Christians and, more importantly, let us see Christ in us when we look at ourselves and gradually, we may even start to enjoy looking at ourselves.