Sivin's 34th... and some thoughts on Eliot

Happy 34th Birthday, Sivin!

A sampling of the food at the Bangsar Lutheran Church (a.k.a. The Father's House) today. There were roti canai, yow char kwai, egg sandwiches and kerepek pisang to name a few. Of course, being a birthday celebration of sorts, there were two cakes: chocolate and carrot. Yum yum!


Meet the male skirt-wearer himself: Soo Tian! This time around, he mixed some of the longan herbal drink (in the pot) with Ribena (in the plastic dispenser). And Denise, you thought I was weird...


Of course, it was wonderful to meet up with the Halames. From left; Mynn, Halame, Wan Ching and baby Zjern.

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Paul, a young minister whom Sivin met recently at the Lausanne Conference at Port Dickson, preached at The Father's House this morning. He hails from Bangalore in southern India, but has been resident in the United Kingdom for a while.

He spoke on the clash between tradition and the necessity of life, preaching from Matthew 12:1-14. I'd like to share a story he told towards the end of his sermon:

The year is 1992. An Australian missionary couple works with lepers in India. Now it must be understood that the caste system is still very much the dominant societal framework in the country. There are four castes, and a special group of people so lowly that they are outside the caste; they are, literally, 'outcasts'. But the lepers are below even these outcasts, and have special territories marked out for them: that's how low they are.

Obviously, the Hindus/Indians weren't happy with the work the missionaries were doing, having contact with the lepers and all. So one night, when the husband was driving his sons (aged seven and nine) in their Jeep outside the village, some of the Indians set the Jeep on fire, and stood guard so they couldn't escape. His wife, Gladys, and daughter, were in the lepers' village.

The moral of the story: choosing life over tradition is costly business. Jesus chose life; it cost him his. If we choose to lead the life that is truly life, it will cost us everything we have as well. Are we ready?

I tell you that one greater than the temple is here. If you had known what these words mean, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath."

Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, they asked him, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?"

He said to them, "If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath."

Then he said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.

--Matthew 12:6-14 (NIV)

Another question: are we in the habit of dedicating at least a day each week to God, a day to spend time with the Lord of the Sabbath?

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Soo Tian told me recently that he's studying T.S. Eliot's poem 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' as part of his ICPU (International Canadian Pre-U) course.

This is one of those poems whose opening lines really jump at you:

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a petient etherized upon a table...

Of course, it doesn't jump at everyone, at least not always in a friendly way. C.S. Lewis wrote these words in his poem 'A Confession':

I am so coarse, the things the poets see
Are obstinately invisible to me.
For twenty years I've stared my level best
To see if evening -- any evening -- would suggest
A patient etherized upon a table;
In vain. I simply wasn't able.

But reading Eliot's poem this time around brought another portion of the piece to my attention. Some two-fifths into the poem, I stumbled upon these four powerful lines that kept repeating themselves in my head over the last 24 hours:

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

"Do I dare disturb the universe?" These words are painted on a wall in one of the classrooms in the ISKL (International School of Kuala Lumpur).

There's something resonant about those lines, something typical of Eliot...