This week I played one of the greatest video games ever made. It's called Journey, and if you have a PS3, you owe it to yourself to experience this work of art! I can't really say anything about it except that for reasons I can't explain, I was overwhelmed with all kinds of emotions playing it - calmness, fear, sadness, and then joy, beautiful joy. At the end, I wanted to cry, but I couldn't tell if it was because I was sad or happy. Suffice to say, I don't think I've ever felt emotions that powerful in any other type of media. Kung Fu Panda 2 was a close second.
Listen to this awesome piece of music for a glimpse at beauty..
Congratulations to Scott and Joon for getting married! Even though their ceremony had to be changed somewhat due to unexpected rain, it was still a festive time.
This wedding is special because it marks the first time in which I got to sing at someone's ceremony. I'm so honored to have been part of their wedding and although I was freaking out about it the previous days, it actually went really well with no ghastly mess ups. I have my great support and singing partner Teresa to thank. She was so good at providing comfort and cues and tips to lessen the anxiety. And also medication helped haha.
Anyway I'm glad I'm able to have all these experiences that I can add to having an interesting life, and the best part is that most of my God given talents have all been able to be used to bless others. There's nothing more I could ask for.
So for Lent I decided to give up a couple things that I tend to enjoy doing. I know you're technically only supposed to give one thing up but since I never really did it some other years I decided to make up for it by doing a couple this year. Among them are using a cell phone inappropriately while driving, and not listening to music to fill in space. I thought with the extra time that I would have I'd be able to focus more on doing godly things like praying, and relying on Him more when I'm stressed instead of going into my own little hideout.
Unfortunately, this has really turned out to be harder than I thought. Since I LOVE music in my life and I find it to be extremely stress relieving, it's been really hard to find an avenue to let off some steam. And for some reason the past 2 weeks at work have been really stressful. So in the morning during my commute I actually am praying more for myself and my patients and other things, but for some reason it's really hard to destress asking God to to help me out (and I realize that music is probably a gift that's given TO relieve stress but, yeah, hard to explain).
It's also hard because I'm playing at my friend's wedding next weekend and well, not listening to music makes it really hard to practice. So I decided to at least give myself that, being able to listen to the songs that I'm playing. Luckily, my friends reminded me that on Sundays you're allowed to take a break so, yes, on Sunday I listen to music all day long!!!
Anyways, just about three more weeks of this and we'll see if I have grown at all or anything. I'm hoping to give up permanently the bad habit of cell phone use in my car!
A couple weeks ago my church had a sermon on biblical womanhood, and basically asserted that women are allowed and should be able to serve in positions of leadership. The overall message was that just like everybody else, women should also submit to God and follow His lead in order to be the best person they can be. I didn't have any qualms with the message and I'm all for women teaching and asserting their God given talents. But part of the message really irked me, and that was the part where the speaker wanted to rule out some contentious passages in the Bible on women and their roles. This is because there are a few passages that mention women and basically states that they are not allowed to speak or lead a man and all that stuff. While I presume that there must have been some context to it, I just got pretty pissed at the speaker's explanations. He basically said that, in that section of the Bible, it isn't meant to be taken literally, and should be read in the context of the situation. He went as far as to say that Paul states in those letters to greet each other with Holy kisses, and of course that's something that would NEVER happen literally. Then he went on to say something like well, it's really only mentioned a couple times in the bible so, we should really just look at the overall positive message of women in the bible. I have nothing against that. But then I realized it just exposed the extremely two-faced rationalization that churches can have in interpreting the Bible. Because if you used any of those reasons to question what it says about homosexuality, they would say that those reasons are invalid. For some reason, it's always literal. You can't think there might be a background context. Even though there's only a few passages (concerning the old laws) about it, those two or three sentences spell it out. Wtf? That's freaking messed up. I hate that my church can support women in positions of power given those explanations yet still say homosexuality is a sin. I'm sorry but you can't have it both ways. It's either both or neither. And you better fire all those women on staff. So who gets to judge what's literal and what's contextual? And the whole Holy kiss thing being not literal? Just because Americans don't greet each other with kisses, doesn't mean other cultures don't. It has nothing to do with masculinity just because in America people do man hugs. And who gets to reason how many passages makes a point relevant or not? Ugh. I was and still am a little disturbed by this. But maybe I just don't have to deep knowledge of how to read the Bible to understand the difference. But the fact that people have misinterpreted racism and slavery in the past over these supposedly immovable words concerns me. There should at least have been much better explanations. In the end, Paul does say there is neither man nor woman, slave nor free, Jew nor gentile, because we are all united in the body of christ. I hope I hear that the next time there's a sermon on homosexuality.
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