Uncanny Philosophy–Uncanny Philosophy

How God changes the heart…

September 4th, 2009 The author

I know I was supposed to write about Love in my last entry, but I think I will shelf that for sometime, got other things to write about

We just recently finished our annual Youth camp over the weekend and there was something that took me by surprise. You see, one of my colleagues had actually joined the camp, and I didn’t really know it. In fact I never did think that this colleague of mine, or any of my colleagues for that matter would be interested in God and spirituality

Afterall, these kinda things were usually meant for hopeless cases, those simple-minded peasants who didn’t know how to control their own destiny

Given, the nature of my company’s employees, I had never expected that she would actually be interested in such things. I guess in part it’s also due to previous experience where I once approached a colleague of mine who was attending RCIA whether he would be interested in joining our youth group and because the response was not so encouraging, I kinda deduced that most working people would not be interested.

Afterall, who in their right mind would blow off their Friday nights and weekends to attend church activities?

And so you could imagine the look in my face when I saw her.

What on….

“Hey Prash, so where do I park and register?” she quipped me

“Umm…what are you doing here?” I asked, with my low-tone voice

“Huh?”

“Yeah you can just park there and there!” I rapidly replied as I quickly snapped out of my astonishment look and begin pointing around.

And so, as the camp progressed, I kept a close eye on her, and I could see that she was transformed by the end of the whole camp session. She even went up to give her testimony, sharing with the audiance on how this camp has being meaningful to her.

I just sat there and wondered how on earth a person like this, (she was my senior by the way), could be so engrossed and impacted by such a camp. I mean fine, maybe I thought it was just one of those ‘feeling high’ things ; you’re all pumped up to serve God and be as close to him and His people as possible.

5 days have already gone, and I still get text messages from her saying how impactful the camp has been. While I’m still trying to grapple with it, I think perhaps what I’m really experiecing is a real-live testimony that God can indeed change hearts. Ever since attending the camp, it seems like my friend has obtained a new lease of life. It’s as though she can somehow ‘breath’ again ; it’s as though she has found new hope in the midst of this calamity world.

While she’s going through her own discovery, I guess I’m discovering mine, and the discovery is simply this – God can change people, and when he does, you’re never the same. Perhaps God is using my colleague as a real testimony that He can transcend beyond corporate walls and career-minded successful people. Of course I have read such stories of God doing so, but never had I come across something like this. Never had I seen a colleague, or for that matter any colleague be so impacted by God.

To me, this is just a testimony, to show and prove that God’s love can penetrate through hearts. It’s a testimony proving that ‘Our hearts will not rest till it rests in God” . It’s a testimony proving that “Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all else will be added unto you”.

It may not have happened to me, but through my friend, God has worked another miracle in my life.

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you ; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” – Ezekil 36:26

“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, behold he is of a new creature; the old things have passed away and new things have come” – 2 Cor 5:17

Posted in Church, God, Love, Uncanny Philosophy, me | 1 Comment »

Thoughts on Happiness – Part 1

June 28th, 2009 The author

I was just about to leave the main Yahoo site when something interesting caught my attention. The title read : Happiness – 3 amazing tips from the world’s oldest study

The article was an interesting read and the findings somewhat fascinated and reaffirmed my previous held beliefs on happiness (Don’t take life too seriously for example). I’ve always been interested in ‘the pursuit of happiness’ simply because I like being happy. I love the emotions and positive feelings that are associated with happiness. It’s a “duh!” statement I know, but I am still writing it down because that’s what I believe and like so much about happiness.

I guess maybe to a certain degree, the reason for this is simply because I grew up in a not-so-happy home where fights and arguments were cyclical and had their seasonal operation. It wasn’t that my parents were bad or anything, or that either one had developed a family-breaking habit. The problem was rather (as I adult I see this a little clearer now) that old problems that were raised in the past were just swept under the carpet. Forgive and move-on was my dad’s modus operandi when it came to fights and arguments.

However mum was the kind of person who needed to talk it out – something dad was crappy at. Dad didn’t like to hear things out and things would end up just being swept under the carpet rather than being dealt with in a healthy manner. So naturally over time, whenever a volcano would errupt, it would be more devastating than the previous, because the previous unsettled lava would come out with the current erruption.

Hence, that’s why the first tip this article recommends is to have a healthy outlet to let out your negative feelings. Pent-up feelings may be masochistic and manly, but its determining to the mind and body. Whenever I visit my local pastor to talk about mum’s death and how I’m coping with it, he will always encourage me to “cry it out” and just “let it out” and I would do so unbashfully in his room while he just sits there empathizing with my sorrow and struggle. But I feel better after that, I feel light and with his encouragement I’m able to carry on.

So yeah, having a healthy outlet is good for the soul.

Thoughts on sex…revisted (Part 1)

May 18th, 2009 The author

I wrote my first ‘public’ opinionated piece on pornography here. If you read the comments relating to the article, you would have probably gone with ‘What the heck are you thinking man?’

I know this, because those were the same words I used as I critiqued my own work before setting off to write this piece. I’m not going to even dive and talk about that article because, frankly I was obviously naive and immature when I wrote that and I now know better the detrimental effects of porn.

As a growing young man who is deeply rooted (at least most of the time) on his catholic faith, I found that the Church did have an answer to sex and all the elements attached to it. I once attended a conference which talked about sex and the catholich church.Some of you may remember it as I blogged about it sometime back. It was enlightening as I was seeing the church’s stance on sex for the first time. No more ‘what does this christian contemporary writer’ think crap. This was the hard truth about sex from the Pope himself.

Although I blogged about how the conference changed my life, and brought about my 2nd conversion, sad to say, I gave into temptation within weeks after that conference.

My problem I concluded was simply because I did not internalize it, both from heart and mind. The problem with me is that for me to believe something, especially if it revolves around something intangible and personnel, I need both my mind and my heart. If I believe with my mind, I feel the words are dead to me. If I believe with my heart, I feel there is no meaning to what I’m doing (i.e – doing for the sake of doing without reason).

For this reason I found it hard to believe in the Theology of the body, Pope John Paul’s answer to the world on human sexuality and marriage. I felt I lacked either the intellectual will to understand it, or somehow I didn’t have the grace to internalize it in my heart. Either way it sucked and I didn’t care much about it.

Until I discovered the relationship between faith and reasoning. And who again wrote about faith and reason? JP II himself. It is this teaching by the Holy Father that made me believe again in some of the church’s teachings…