Monday, May 31, 2010
Monday Prayer
Father, I cast my cares to you, for you daily bear my burdens. I find rest, knowing you calm the storms of my soul. Allow me not to be torn apart by the responsibility of who I have to be and the limitations of who I really am.
A Chance
What if I had taken a chance
On a stolen glance
A love perchance
A three-month romance
Maybe if I had taken a chance
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Content, Satisfied
Contentment find a home in me
I have enough
Satisfaction stay permanently
I have been filled
I have enough
Satisfaction stay permanently
I have been filled
Divided
A tale of two cities
On two sides of a gorge
Is my heart divided
into day and night
Divided is my love
Divided is my passion
Divided I lay
In this restless pit
On two sides of a gorge
Is my heart divided
into day and night
Divided is my love
Divided is my passion
Divided I lay
In this restless pit
Thursday, May 20, 2010
The Dying Art of Thinking
Got this from my friend Mark Baretto. It's by Ravi Zacharias, one of my favorite writers. I highly recommend that you read this.
The Dying Art of Thinking
The 17th-century French philosopher Rene Descartes (pronounced Day-Kart) is best known for his dictum, "I think, therefore, I am." A cynic may well quip that Descartes actually put des cart before des horse, because all he could have legitimately deduced was, "I think, therefore, thinking exists." I do not intend to defend or counter Cartesian philosophy; I only wish to underscore that thinking has much to do with life and certainty.
One of the tragic casualties of our age has been that of the contemplative life—a life that thinks, thinks things through, and more particularly, thinks God's thoughts after Him.
A person sitting at his desk and staring out of the window would never be assumed to be working. No! Thinking is not equated with work. Yet, had Newton under his tree, or Archimedes in his bathtub bought into that prejudice, some natural laws would still be up in the air, or buried under an immovable rock. Pascal's Pensees, a work that has inspired millions, would have never been penned.
The Bible places supreme value in the thought life. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he," Solomon wrote. Jesus asserted that sin's gravity lay in the idea itself, not just the act. Paul admonished the church at Philippi to have the mind of Christ, and to the same people he wrote, "Whatever is true . . . pure . . . if there be any virtue . . . think on these things."
The follower of Christ must demonstrate to the world what it is not just to think, but to think justly. But how does one manage this in a culture where progress is determined by pace and defined by quantity?
What is even more destructive is that the greatest demand comes from neither speed nor quantity, but rather from the assumption that silence is inimical to life.
The radio in the car, Muzak in the elevator, and the symphony entertaining the "on hold" callers add up as impediments to personal reflection. In effect, the mind is denied the privilege of living with itself even briefly, and is crowded with outside impulses to cope with aloneness.
Aldous Huxley's indictment, "Most of one's life . . . is one prolonged effort to prevent thinking", seems frightfully true. The price paid for this scenario has been devastating. T. S. Eliot observed:
"Where is the life we have lost in the living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information ?
The cycles of heaven in twenty centuries
bring us farther from God and nearer to dust."
Is there a remedy? May I make some suggestions for personal and corporate benefit?
Study God's Word
Nothing ranks higher for mental discipline than a planned and systematic study of God's Word, from whence life's parameters and values are planted in the mind. Paul, who loved his books and parchments, affirmed the priority of Scripture: "Do not go beyond what is written." Psalm 119 promises that God's statutes keep us from being double-minded.
Read Great Books
The English-speaking world is endowed with a wealth of books. But much contemporary literature comes perilously close to a promiscuous religion with an appeal for the "feel better" syndrome, rather than the impetus to "go deeper."
Read authors who stretch you and introduce you to other writings as well. Great writers stimulate your capacity to think beyond their ideas, spawning fresh insights and extensions of your own. Good reading is indispensable to impartation of truth. An expenditure of words without the income of ideas leads to conceptual bankruptcy.
Challenge the Mind
The church as a whole, and thepulpit in particular, must challenge the mind of this generation, else we betray our trust. The average young person today actually surrenders the intellect to the world, presuming Christianity to be bereft of it. Many a pulpit has succumbed to the lie that anything intellectual cannot be spiritual or exciting.
Thankfully there are exceptions. When living in England, our family attended a church pastored by Roy Clements, one of the finest preachers in the western world. Every Sunday at two morning services he preached a one-hour sermon to a packed auditorium.
Cambridge, being rife with skepticism, demanded a meticulous defense of each sermon text from the assaults of liberalism. An introduction of a technical nature would take up to 15 minutes of his time before he entered into the heart of his message.
I mention this to say one thing. When we were leaving Cambridge, Nathan, who was nine years old, declared the preaching of Roy Clements to be one of his fondest memories. Even as a little boy he had learned that when the mind is rightly approached, it filters down to the heart. The matter I share here has far-reaching implications. We do a disservice to our youth by not crediting them with the capacity to think. We cannot leave this uncorrected.
This is our first issue of Just Thinking. It is our hope that this newsletter will challenge your mind and stir your heart. After all, it is not that I think, therefore, I am, but rather, the Great I Am has asked us to think, and therefore, we must. And we must serve Him with all our minds.
The Dying Art of Thinking
The 17th-century French philosopher Rene Descartes (pronounced Day-Kart) is best known for his dictum, "I think, therefore, I am." A cynic may well quip that Descartes actually put des cart before des horse, because all he could have legitimately deduced was, "I think, therefore, thinking exists." I do not intend to defend or counter Cartesian philosophy; I only wish to underscore that thinking has much to do with life and certainty.
One of the tragic casualties of our age has been that of the contemplative life—a life that thinks, thinks things through, and more particularly, thinks God's thoughts after Him.
A person sitting at his desk and staring out of the window would never be assumed to be working. No! Thinking is not equated with work. Yet, had Newton under his tree, or Archimedes in his bathtub bought into that prejudice, some natural laws would still be up in the air, or buried under an immovable rock. Pascal's Pensees, a work that has inspired millions, would have never been penned.
The Bible places supreme value in the thought life. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he," Solomon wrote. Jesus asserted that sin's gravity lay in the idea itself, not just the act. Paul admonished the church at Philippi to have the mind of Christ, and to the same people he wrote, "Whatever is true . . . pure . . . if there be any virtue . . . think on these things."
The follower of Christ must demonstrate to the world what it is not just to think, but to think justly. But how does one manage this in a culture where progress is determined by pace and defined by quantity?
What is even more destructive is that the greatest demand comes from neither speed nor quantity, but rather from the assumption that silence is inimical to life.
The radio in the car, Muzak in the elevator, and the symphony entertaining the "on hold" callers add up as impediments to personal reflection. In effect, the mind is denied the privilege of living with itself even briefly, and is crowded with outside impulses to cope with aloneness.
Aldous Huxley's indictment, "Most of one's life . . . is one prolonged effort to prevent thinking", seems frightfully true. The price paid for this scenario has been devastating. T. S. Eliot observed:
"Where is the life we have lost in the living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information ?
The cycles of heaven in twenty centuries
bring us farther from God and nearer to dust."
Is there a remedy? May I make some suggestions for personal and corporate benefit?
Study God's Word
Nothing ranks higher for mental discipline than a planned and systematic study of God's Word, from whence life's parameters and values are planted in the mind. Paul, who loved his books and parchments, affirmed the priority of Scripture: "Do not go beyond what is written." Psalm 119 promises that God's statutes keep us from being double-minded.
Read Great Books
The English-speaking world is endowed with a wealth of books. But much contemporary literature comes perilously close to a promiscuous religion with an appeal for the "feel better" syndrome, rather than the impetus to "go deeper."
Read authors who stretch you and introduce you to other writings as well. Great writers stimulate your capacity to think beyond their ideas, spawning fresh insights and extensions of your own. Good reading is indispensable to impartation of truth. An expenditure of words without the income of ideas leads to conceptual bankruptcy.
Challenge the Mind
The church as a whole, and thepulpit in particular, must challenge the mind of this generation, else we betray our trust. The average young person today actually surrenders the intellect to the world, presuming Christianity to be bereft of it. Many a pulpit has succumbed to the lie that anything intellectual cannot be spiritual or exciting.
Thankfully there are exceptions. When living in England, our family attended a church pastored by Roy Clements, one of the finest preachers in the western world. Every Sunday at two morning services he preached a one-hour sermon to a packed auditorium.
Cambridge, being rife with skepticism, demanded a meticulous defense of each sermon text from the assaults of liberalism. An introduction of a technical nature would take up to 15 minutes of his time before he entered into the heart of his message.
I mention this to say one thing. When we were leaving Cambridge, Nathan, who was nine years old, declared the preaching of Roy Clements to be one of his fondest memories. Even as a little boy he had learned that when the mind is rightly approached, it filters down to the heart. The matter I share here has far-reaching implications. We do a disservice to our youth by not crediting them with the capacity to think. We cannot leave this uncorrected.
This is our first issue of Just Thinking. It is our hope that this newsletter will challenge your mind and stir your heart. After all, it is not that I think, therefore, I am, but rather, the Great I Am has asked us to think, and therefore, we must. And we must serve Him with all our minds.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Lessons by Francisco "Butch" Bautista
"As a long-time collector of sunsets, cool breezes, and walks on the beach, I readily identified with what my friend was saying."
- Butch Bautista
Sometimes when we look at the dysfunctions of society, we see a lot that could have been addressed earlier if we were just fathered better. And since not everyone of us is born with fathering fathers, we should seek spiritual fathers and mentors. I'm glad my own father has pointed me to different people to learn what he could never teach me.
Tito Butch Bautista emailed this to me December of last year. I am very very very grateful to God for Tito Butch because of all the things I've received because of this friendship. I remember one time when he bluntly told me to focus and to stop chasing every opportunity that comes my way.
I've improved a little in that area - though I am getting better. I need a lot of improving in a lot of areas.
This next lesson though I took to heart, and I've made it my goal to live simply.
Lessons by Francisco "Butch" Bautista
"Some of the best things are blindingly simple, and they're usually based on truths."
Advertising man Dave Droga's statement summarizes how I have lived my life, and how I try to live the rest of it.
No-frills living starts with basic belief. A priest accidentally led me to God. It was my first confession: I was six, braving a mandatory Catholic rite of passage. I had barely memorized the ritual prayers, so I mumbled in nervous supplication at the confession booth. Suddenly the huge priest stormed out of his sacred cubicle and bellowed in my face. "Go home," he was red, "and come back when you have memorized the prayers." My heart stopped.
I remember thinking why I had to memorize words to talk to God. I asked myself how the same prayers said over and over again could erase my sins. And I was so scared to go back to the man in the box. I decided to talk to God directly. I prayed at bedtime. I talked to God in church during mass which I continued to attend with the family, or anytime I wanted to ask for something.
I asked for few things. Some were as childish as a gold medal in a high school contest, some were big things like healing and long life for my parents, protection from accidents for the whole family. But I remember all of them were heard, and granted. As my batting average grew, my tolerance for the superfluous shrunk. I was getting results talking to God directly, so why memorize names of saints, their birthdays, their specialties, and similar stuff? Why even go to mass?
Growing up I found that if I focused on one or two things I really enjoyed, I could be good at it. School work was a breeze because I loved to read and write papers anyway, and I didn't care about grades. I tried the violin, guitar, drawing, basketball and tennis, even boxing gloves and a speedball my father gave me but gave up because I was lousy at them. So I kept things simple. My car, of course, was a VW Beetle, then a Toyota Corolla. I had only one girl friend and married her after a year; she's still my wife after 42 years. Sure, problems mushroomed along the way, but I stuck to the main point: Keep it simple.
People who can facebook, paint toenails, listen to rock, and do homework while texting amaze me. I am essentially a one-at-a-time person. Multitasking confounds me. Can we really do everything? Some people can, though, and I admire them.
I have long ago given up on pleasing everyone. Is it even possible, or worth it? Can we be
everything to every one? Any one?
"Believe," we are told many times, "and you will have eternal life." Can it be that easy? Some of us still doubt.
I also learned something about accumulating stuff.
When a good friend decided to consolidate his homes in Manila, Hong Kong, and San Francisco into one residence, the clutter he collected through years of living in three houses could have filled a small Home Depot. He had beds, tv sets, refrigerators, stoves, appliances, pans and cutlery, furniture, tons of clothing and shoes for four seasons, golf and fishing gear, hundreds of books, many of them same titles purchased from airports throughout the world, thousands of tools, gadgets, artifacts and other remnants of profuse spending. He had retired in his mid-forties and was planning to build the rest of his life around golf and fishing in Malaysia, New Zealand, or the Caribbean.
Amid this wealth of confusion, he told me, "You know one thing I discovered? Only a few things really matter to me: a couple of shirts, two pairs of jeans and my Swiss army knife." This from someone who had everything.
As a long-time collector of sunsets, cool breezes, and walks on the beach, I readily identified with what my friend was saying.
"I know. I've always lived like that," I said. "I have nothing, so I simplify."
It is blindingly simple. All we need is an audience of One. Jesus distilled a dam of 613 rules into two drops of living water.When you get down to the basics, nothing could be more basic.
- Butch Bautista
Sometimes when we look at the dysfunctions of society, we see a lot that could have been addressed earlier if we were just fathered better. And since not everyone of us is born with fathering fathers, we should seek spiritual fathers and mentors. I'm glad my own father has pointed me to different people to learn what he could never teach me.
Tito Butch Bautista emailed this to me December of last year. I am very very very grateful to God for Tito Butch because of all the things I've received because of this friendship. I remember one time when he bluntly told me to focus and to stop chasing every opportunity that comes my way.
I've improved a little in that area - though I am getting better. I need a lot of improving in a lot of areas.
This next lesson though I took to heart, and I've made it my goal to live simply.
Lessons by Francisco "Butch" Bautista
"Some of the best things are blindingly simple, and they're usually based on truths."
Advertising man Dave Droga's statement summarizes how I have lived my life, and how I try to live the rest of it.
No-frills living starts with basic belief. A priest accidentally led me to God. It was my first confession: I was six, braving a mandatory Catholic rite of passage. I had barely memorized the ritual prayers, so I mumbled in nervous supplication at the confession booth. Suddenly the huge priest stormed out of his sacred cubicle and bellowed in my face. "Go home," he was red, "and come back when you have memorized the prayers." My heart stopped.
I remember thinking why I had to memorize words to talk to God. I asked myself how the same prayers said over and over again could erase my sins. And I was so scared to go back to the man in the box. I decided to talk to God directly. I prayed at bedtime. I talked to God in church during mass which I continued to attend with the family, or anytime I wanted to ask for something.
I asked for few things. Some were as childish as a gold medal in a high school contest, some were big things like healing and long life for my parents, protection from accidents for the whole family. But I remember all of them were heard, and granted. As my batting average grew, my tolerance for the superfluous shrunk. I was getting results talking to God directly, so why memorize names of saints, their birthdays, their specialties, and similar stuff? Why even go to mass?
Growing up I found that if I focused on one or two things I really enjoyed, I could be good at it. School work was a breeze because I loved to read and write papers anyway, and I didn't care about grades. I tried the violin, guitar, drawing, basketball and tennis, even boxing gloves and a speedball my father gave me but gave up because I was lousy at them. So I kept things simple. My car, of course, was a VW Beetle, then a Toyota Corolla. I had only one girl friend and married her after a year; she's still my wife after 42 years. Sure, problems mushroomed along the way, but I stuck to the main point: Keep it simple.
People who can facebook, paint toenails, listen to rock, and do homework while texting amaze me. I am essentially a one-at-a-time person. Multitasking confounds me. Can we really do everything? Some people can, though, and I admire them.
I have long ago given up on pleasing everyone. Is it even possible, or worth it? Can we be
everything to every one? Any one?
"Believe," we are told many times, "and you will have eternal life." Can it be that easy? Some of us still doubt.
I also learned something about accumulating stuff.
When a good friend decided to consolidate his homes in Manila, Hong Kong, and San Francisco into one residence, the clutter he collected through years of living in three houses could have filled a small Home Depot. He had beds, tv sets, refrigerators, stoves, appliances, pans and cutlery, furniture, tons of clothing and shoes for four seasons, golf and fishing gear, hundreds of books, many of them same titles purchased from airports throughout the world, thousands of tools, gadgets, artifacts and other remnants of profuse spending. He had retired in his mid-forties and was planning to build the rest of his life around golf and fishing in Malaysia, New Zealand, or the Caribbean.
Amid this wealth of confusion, he told me, "You know one thing I discovered? Only a few things really matter to me: a couple of shirts, two pairs of jeans and my Swiss army knife." This from someone who had everything.
As a long-time collector of sunsets, cool breezes, and walks on the beach, I readily identified with what my friend was saying.
"I know. I've always lived like that," I said. "I have nothing, so I simplify."
It is blindingly simple. All we need is an audience of One. Jesus distilled a dam of 613 rules into two drops of living water.When you get down to the basics, nothing could be more basic.
Monday, May 17, 2010
You're the Highlight of My Day
Pardon my intrusion
Have you found the smile you lost?
Stolen by your fears
How's your day so far?
I'm hoping things are well with you
As I wonder where you are
Have you found the smile you lost?
Stolen by your fears
Radiance waiting to shine once more
But before you go away
Beneath never-ending tears
I can't do a thing to make things better
I can't do a thing to make things better
I can't move the mountains you face
I can't make the storms die down
And I can't run your race
But before you go away
I would like to say
You're the color in my gray
You're the highlight of my day
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Dreams & Nightmares
When I close my eyes to sleep, my sight opens to another world. Here everything is brighter, and bigger, and possible, and incredible, and significant, and every amazing adjective you can think of. But it can also be darker here, with giants that loom larger, and cliffs more perilous. Here you can feel the collective weight of all the people you've let down and failed, condemned, and hurt. My fears are magnified here, personified in the faces of people and demons.
Should I lie awake safely away from my fears but defaulted of my dreams?
Friday, May 14, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Friday, May 7, 2010
Thursday, May 6, 2010
May 6, 2010
Light begins to stream through the gaps of my curtains, drawing bright lines on the wooden floor. When you look closely you'll see little particles dancing within their beams. They're flying, no, floating, actually, they're falling. I may not see the sun rise every morning, the view's blocked from my bed, but the proof of day is unmistakably clear, even if the proof is a few bars.
We don't need to see the sun rise to know that darkness has fled, we only need to see the light.
We don't need to feel the sun's heat to believe, there's comfort in its warmth.
And those bars are not a cage. They're proof that night has ended because day has come.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Conversation With a Barbie Doll
I told her to put an "RT" before her name because there was nothing original about her.
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