magic

姊妹從迪士尼盡興歸來，晚膳之際不忘向我展示那為「獎勵自己」而買的毛巾……
「嘩，好靚喎！」
「係呀，我買嗰陣係一舊壓縮咗嘅「餅」，跟住我「monk」開佢，佢就鬆ｄ，然後洗完就變番條毛巾喇。」
（我口快快）「嗯，乜你唔知個玩法係將佢成舊掉落水然後睇佢自地散開架咩？」
（笑）「吓？係咩？唔怪得佢個面寫住係magic啦！」
「D magic咪比你破壞晒囉……」（繼續笑）

晚禱之時，想起這樁小事，有所感悟。有時候，人心裡有很多驕傲、苦毒、鬱結、不滿，不知不覺就成了條壓縮的毛巾；有的想盡辦法「自行鬆綁」，這也是徒然；唯有完全浸在祂的愛裡，讓每一寸都因吸了這活水而飽滿，才能展現內藏的那幅美麗圖畫。

我，常常「手痕」企圖自行鬆綁。

「不要效法這個世界，只要心意更新而變化，叫你們察驗何為神的善良、純全、可喜悅的旨意。」
羅馬書12:2

「心意更新而變化」，即transformation。記得柏堅曾說，transformation和reformation的分別，在於前者有dying（依我理解是與基督同死的dying），而後者沒有。我把這和「魔法毛巾」連在一起思想，就更明白那種由內而外、從心而發的改變與自行鬆綁是何等不同。

我，能否看到他、她、它還沒有被釋放的美麗？

也許我可以，若我學會體驗祢愛的魔法。
May your magic work in me,
unimpededly.

trance

it was a normal humid afternoon like all the others; a thick greyish layer of air hanging low, people muddling through the noisy streets with eyes fixed on the tip of their shoes; you knew, or had the slightest desire to know, none of the strangers you rubbed sholders with. i swam through the vicous sluggishness of blue monday and found a spot away from the sliding doors of the train, then i began to flip open the pages. i heard a sound of silence.

precisely put, i was sucked into this void of silence, a blackhold of all sounds and distractions; i was beamed into another world.

it was my olfactory nerves that first discovered the scent of the new surroundings; a fishy, moldy smell like that before a great storm. the air was still dense and heavy, but the budging crowd was gone, i was all alone in the inner-chamber of a castle (or a prison perhaps). distant thunders penerated the stagnate air. but soon i was aware of a pattern behind the sound, like someone leaping in fixed intervals; and as each "thunder" grew in strength and volume i realized those were no thunders but footsteps of something gigantic, something that was coming my way.

"Man has learnt to cope with all questions of importance without recourse to God as a working hypothesis, so what we call "God" is being more and more edged out of life".

"what if one day they (these ultimate questiosn) no longer exist as such, if they too can be answered without "God"?"

"Bonhoeffer is not prepared to find a category for Christ... His question about Christ is never, 'How?', but always, 'Who?'..."

with each approaching thunder-like footstep the ground shook, and a chunk of the castle/prison where i dwelled fell and was broken into pieces. rubbles began to pile up at my feet and i could no longer stand still amidst the earthquake. each step of this giant shook my world to the core.

finishing the last sentence of the preface, i closed the book. i was at the same old metro station again, squeezed between countless wanderers in this 'open prison', feeling a little surreal.

i think this semester would be quite interesting.

now reading:

anticipation, and more --- on〈Das Parfum〉

"It was not especially difficult for him to stay awake and wait, despite his weariness. He loved this waiting. He had also loved it with the twenty-four other girls, for it was not a dull waiting-till-it's-over, not even a yearning, expectant waiting, but an atendant, purposeful, in a certain sense active waiting. Something was happening while you waited. The most essential thing was happening. And even if he himself was doing nothing, it was happening through him nevertheless... He had never felt so fine in all his life, so peaceful, so steady, so whole and at one with himself..."

if taken out of the context, this passage from 〈Das Parfum〉 described precisely what 'active waiting' had meant to convey. passion was the one word conjured up as i read through this almost demonic passage of Grenouille the sociopath. it was petrifying to see passion's evil twin if you ask me.

Other passages that spoke to me in Süskind's book:

"talent means next to nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything."

(while Süskind seemed to loath such saying, i saw it as a self-reminder)

"Ordours have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions or will. The persuasive power of an odour cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally. There is no remedy for it."

(couldn't help thinking about the power of the Holy Spirit as i read this...*grin*)

"He could do all that, if only he wanted to. He possessed the power. He held it in his hand. A power stronger than the power of money or the power of terror or the power of death: the invincible power to command the love of mankind. There was only one thing that power could not do: it could not make him able to smell himself. And though his perfume might allow him to appear before the world as a god -- if he could not smell himself and thus never know who he was, to hell with it, with the world, with himself, with his perfume."

(this is Grenouille's death warrant, a sad realization of his self-unknowing. throughout the novel Süskind reminded his readers his villain's inability to comprehend the concept of God. i've never imagined such thing possible, but to simply assume its possibility gave me the chills... afterall, love is a gift indeed. and sometimes the joy of an average, un-talented being is more to be treasured than the riches of the world.)


related post: murder --- on〈Das Parfum〉

murder --- on〈Das Parfum〉

"She was so frozen with terror at the sight of him that he had plenty of time to put his hands to her throat. She did not attempt to cry out, did not budge, did not make the least motion to defend herself. He, in turn, did not look at her, did not see her delicate, freckled face, her red lips, her large sparkling green eyes, keeping his eyes closed tight as he strangled her, for he had only one concern -- not to lose the least trace of her scent."　--- Patrick Süskind, 〈Das Parfum〉

Soon another Feast came around and Jesus was back in Jerusalem.

Near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there was a pool, in Hebrew called Bethesda, with five alcoves. Hundreds of sick people—blind, crippled, paralyzed—were in these alcoves. One man had been an invalid there for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him stretched out by the pool and knew how long he had been there, he said, "Do you want to get well?"

The sick man said, "Sir, when the water is stirred, I don't have anybody to put me in the pool. By the time I get there, somebody else is already in."

Jesus said, "Get up, take your bedroll, start walking." The man was healed on the spot. He picked up his bedroll and walked off.

That day happened to be the Sabbath. The Jews stopped the healed man and said, "It's the Sabbath. You can't carry your bedroll around. It's against the rules."
-- John 5:1-10

看不到
就是看不到瘸腿的起來行走了
只看到安息日的律法

我們忘記了失而復得的雀躍
被重重圍困在「敬虔」的囹圄
就像〈香水〉中Grenouille這冷血殺手一樣
"He, in turn, did not look at her... for he had only one concern
-- not to lose the least trace of her scent"

當我們拒絕看他們的臉孔
掠奪他們「是人」的權利
我們就是殺人犯
"You can't carry your bedroll around. It's against the rules."


Lord, have mercy on us.

the Great Divorce

throughout the years i've developed a habit of tagging passages in a book that speak to me while reading. i usually type them out and save them in a file afterwards. it's my way of dialoging with the authors.

the quotes may seem quite discrete and 'out of nowhere', that's why they're my notes and not yours =P. i hope you're not satisfied with these dialogues to a point that you eventually pick up and read for yourself.

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Don't you remember on earth --- there were things too hot to touch with your finger but you could drink them all right? Shame is like that. If you will accept it --- if you will drink the cup to the bottom --- you will find it very nourishing: but try to do anything else with it and it scalds. (what a nice analogy on 'shame'.)

They say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say "We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven," and the Lost, "We were always in Hell." And both will speak truly.

(his stance against "No future bliss can make up for it," for sure reminded me of Paul's comments on love, that "it keeps no record of wrongs". i used to find that impossible to believe; some hurts can never by wipped away; but little did i know that love, instead of wipping away, heals. and by perceiving our deeds as processes Lewis saved us from the dualism that separates an act and its consequences, a good slap on the face even for the great Constantine.)

There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself...as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist! There have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ. Man! Ye see it in smaller matters. Did ye never know a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed copies had lost the power to read them? Or an organizer of charities that had lost all love for the poor? It is the subtlest of all the snares. (points can't be clearer)

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "They will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.

(yes, i do see the underlying theological preference, Lewis is quite unlikely a Calvinist on the topic of predestination. but a great quote nonetheless: "there are only two kinds of people in the end", that indeed is the case)

Those that hate goodness are sometimes nearer than those that know nothing at all about it and think they have it already. (thanks for the slap on the face. ouch, but i will remember to stay close to You, Lord.)

Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him...They sink lower --- become interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations. (to know about God v.s. to walk with God)

No natural feelings are high or low, holy or unholy, in themselves. They are all holy when God's hand is on the rein. They all go bad when they set up on their own and make themselves into false gods...And yet all loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies and itchings that it contains, if rolled into one singe experience and put into the scale against the least moment of the joy that is felt by the least in Heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all. Bad cannot succeed even in being bad as truly as good is good. (i had the thought but never the articulation to put into words, thx Lewis!)

For every attempt to see the shape of eternity except through the lens of Time destroys your knowledge of Freedom. Witness the doctrine of Predestination which shows (truly enough) that eternal reality is not waiting for a future in which to be real; but at the price of removing Freedom which is the deeper truth of the two. And wouldn’t Universalism do the same? Ye cannot know eternal reality by a definition. Time itself, and all acts and events that fill Time, are the definition, and it must be lived. (an elboration of his stance on Predestination, now i see his point better, though i still don't understand, quite frankly)

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one of the things i like about C.S.Lewis is his creative approach on 'hard issues' like theology. when the topics become too complicated and ideas hard to convey, telling a story might just be your best shot. and Lewis always does it beautifully. a piece of reader's response to share with you (to tell you the truth i don't really expect anyone would read the whole thing....*grin*...keke)

began composing on aug21, 08, finished today =P


related post: souvenirs of Hell