Seek and Ye shall find

I started thinking about the canon as in the canon of the biblical books when one of my non-Christian friends started asking about what constituted the books of the bible and how do we know they're true? I also started thinking about it as some of my Catholic friends were also around the same time asking me to explain why things like the Da Vinci Code are not the truth. My general reaction to the latter has been to fall off the chair laughing and tell them that I find it so obviously false that I cannot believe people can be this gullible. That naturally did not go down well.

At such moments, I'm inclined to remember the scene in Mel Gibson's the Passion, when Pontius Pilate's wife looks at Pilate when he askes of her, "What is Truth?" and she says to him, if you cannot recognise it, then I cannot tell you what it is. (parapharse). That's a reaction I tend to agree with but of course that sheds my hapless questioners no light.
I do have to say though that I was more impressed by my non-Christian friend than my Catholic friends in this respect. He showed a greater desire, a greater willingness to work to find the truth and I am very sure that it is he who will be rewarded with the truth first. If we have this hunger, Christ Himself will find us, after all, did He not promise, Seek and Ye shall Find.

Nevertheless, in order to avoid further criticism of my intellectual hubris, and to respond more sensitively to the requests of my friends to write this all down, I start here with the notion of canonicity.

The Greek word, kanon, originally meant a straight rod, or bar, used for measuring. The metaphorical meaning building on that literal meaning, indicated a measure, a standard. Occasionaly it also simply meant series, or list. It is in these two sense of the word that the "canon" of the bible is used. Nowadays, in Roman Catholic usage, it is used to denote the list of books belonging to the bible. And these books are sacred and inspired by God as opposed to other holy writings or other writings of the time.

Closing question: how is it these books in the bible are recognised as holy and inspired by God and not others, like the Gospel of James, or Judas?

Death the Reaper

Death is the great leveller, the one who comes to take us away to a better place, but to face the journey into the unknown is not always easy and the death of those whom we know always makes us pause.

Death's shadow is hanging over my uncle's mother and took one of my former bosses just last week. Her death was a shock to all who had worked with her as she'd died of stomach cancer but had told very few people. She was a 40-something year old woman with three children and normally a fighter, vibrant and full of life.

It made me treasure the place I used to work in even more when I saw the reactions of all the people who'd worked with her. Several of them flew up to Penang, Malaysia to attend the wake and of course brought contributions for the funeral with them from all of us.

It was a moment to pause and take stock of life, to wonder if we'd been present enough to each other in our daily lives, and to whether we'd loved each other enough while we still could.

Maybe these moments will change our lives maybe not, but I think for many of us, we were touched by her life, the joy of her presence, both at times when we may have been annoyed with her and those times when we were inspired by her. It made me reflect that very often, the most precious gift we can give to each other is simply our presence and our love. And at death, nothing is more precious than the sharing of grief through our presence. That's what it all really starts and ends with, our presence, and in gathering this we share life, love and joy.

I hope for me that such events continues to inspire me to be more aware of how much I need to appreciate all the moments, both the highlights as well as the ordinary moments I get to share with each of the people I know in this life.

There are none so Blind as those who will not See, Deaf as those who will not Hear

So it's over, Singapore's elections have returned the status quo.

The best thing about the elections to me was that the best piece of political satire turned up in podcast form and it's the funniest thing I've heard in years. It's the famous no bak chor mee which you can find on www.mrbrown.com

The hard thing for me this elections is seeing how little people think about the election process and about politics in general. It's the 20-something year old tertiary educated students who are my friends who don't even know what a by election is that scare me, and it's the ones who think, oh, just so long as I have a roof over my head and stay out of trouble, that's what counts. It's the 30-something year old ones who doesn't want to talk about politics or money because they think it's "dirty" and that it's much better to meditate on other things, it's the ones who are scared of any change at all...they're grateful for walkovers so they don't have to think about it. These are the ones that scare me. The ones that know what they're doing, regardless of whom they vote for don't get me worried, I always figure, well at least you made your choice knowingly. It's the ones who insist on remaining politically immature, who refuse to grow who scare me most. They're the proverbial frog who gets cooked as the temperature of the water is increased degree by degree. The warm comfort of the pot will be their death.

But, and there's a big but, there incredible number of blogs and of persistantly non political podcasts that have turned up is heartening. The democratisation of information has indeed begun to be felt on these political shores.