A Heart of Faith

I love love this picture: the pose, the lighting and the absence of colour. I know people must think that I like these photographs because of the subject itself, but really I have a greater appreciation for the way it was photographed.

Don't have any Boston images uploaded yet so....
Edited: I wrote parts of this a few days ago and now I'm just finishing it


An image from a lovely series of photographs featuring the korean hanbok in a simple clean layout. Come to think of it, the colour scheme and lighting looks really similar to the Matsuyama pic above. :S


A bakery three minutes walking distance from our bed and breakfast

So my friend and I decided to go to Boston for a couple of days to get away from the city. Well her intentions were to see more trees, relax and to take a break from the crazy life as Manhattanites. I, on the other hand, just wanted to see Boston and take advantage of the fact that I lived close to other cities in other states. So we took the Fung Wah bus ($15 one way, baby! I love the Chinese XD) and stayed at this really cute 19th century red brick building (yes our room was covered in flowery wallpaper). We only had a full day there so we ran around looking at Harvard (not impressive: Columbia Uni here is even prettier), Harvard Square (omg the most awesome store full of knick knacks and design objects... I bought $100 worth of souvenirs for people including a $16 patisserie tour guide of Paris for 'research purposes' XD), ate the most delectable Florentine cookies from Cardullo, went to Quincey Market (quite boring), browsed around Arlington, dined on seafood at the historic Union Landmark restaurant and dessert at Finale. But the best thing about this trip for me was getting to talk to my friend; we sat at TeaLuxe, a tea cafe, for an hour talking about our struggles as Christians and our struggles as Christian designer seeking to find meaning in what we create.

Personally the trip was less about the things we saw; I wasn't really impressed by Boston though it is a very nice city to just relax in. I wasn't expecting it, but God really did speak to me those two days I was there. The first night I was waiting for my hair to dry, so I cracked open the Gideon bible that they left inside the night table drawer and came across these verses:

Philippians 4:6-9.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

8Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 9Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

The first paragraph cut right into me. And the PEACE of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. I was relying on myself, through my own effort, to draw friends closer to me when in fact I had totally forgotten to ask God to sanctify them and to do as He pleases with them. I was doing the exact opposite of what the verses instructed. And I was miserable. That night I felt a huge burden lift from my shoulders; feeling a sense of peace that someone greater was in control of my relationships and not I.

Secondly, God spoke through my friend to convict me of my struggles to love people whom I resisted loving.
To be honest, it's been hard to love my roommate.
The past couple of years have not exactly been easy yet I have failed to voice out my concerns, just pushing them aside, hoping it would fix itself. Although the majority of the time I pretend I don't care what happens on the other side of the room, I know that we are intrinsically bound together in a way because we live in the same 300sq foot space. But the past year I've felt very hurt by her including a few trust issues and because she chose to spend all her time with her boyfriend, putting all her efforts into nurturing that relationship and basically disappeared on me. And what did I do? I focused on building friendships that had nothing to do with her; to show her that I didn't need her.
And now that it has ended, I felt though I had to be supportive in her loneliness, the bitterness that I had against her was still there and still quite strong.
You see, we used to do a lot of things together: rainboot painting party, watch movies, go shopping, have afternoon tea, and explore new york city. Virtually all that has disappeared: I rarely hang out with her and we rarely speak as friends.
Do I really care that those things are now nonexistent? Not really. I've learned to become independent in a sense where I don't feel like I really need her to have fun. However I cannot call this place a home because I feel estranged from her. It really feels like I'm living with a vaguely acquainted stranger. Moreover when I returned from Boston her mom, when her daughter was in the bathroom, in her limited english said this to me, "Thank you for letting me stay. Please please take care of my Bonnie. She's very depressed."
I said I would with a smile, but knew it would take more than "yes" and a grin to do so. But that really was the icing on the cake: I felt for her mother.

God convicted me of all this; my friend urged me to try to love her despite all that she has done in the past. On the flip side, she did not realize how difficult it was to love the unlovable until she shared with me her struggles with her relationship with a particular leader at church. And suddenly she discovered loving others was harder than it was to say. I think we both, sitting in front of the Boston Public Library that evening, realized what we had to do.
But I cannot do this alone. The sermon on Sunday also convicted me. Here are my sermon notes:

The Danger of the Debtor's Ethic
WHAT EMPOWERS US TO LIVE THIS CHRISTIAN LIFE? WHAT FUELS YOUR WALK WITH GOD?

Lie: Power of Christian living is through thanksgiving and gratitude.
-we forget to be thankful so it is hard to get rid of the temptation when it arrives.

A. Danger of Debtor's Ethic: owing God something, earning faith through works. This is a subtle form of self reliance.

B. Faith should be the basis of our obedience.
FAITH should be the fuel which runs our Christian life NOT gratitude and thanksgiving. The following verses talk about acts derived from faith (or lack of) rather than gratitude.
1 Thess 1:3
Galations 5:6
Matt 6:30

C. God cannot be served for He doesn't need us. We need Him.
He doesn't need our acts of service or praise but He wants it.

His message was borderline blasphemous at times: he told us how he was sad to see so many tired Christians serving out of a gratitude of nothing who did their devos and prayers diligently in order to give to God (despite the fact that they probably felt as if they were doing all the giving and none of the receiving). Who was Jesus most harsh on? The Pharisees: the ones who were perceived to be the most religious of them all. What has God done for you? How can you praise and say words of thanksgiving to a God who has done nothing for you? Or in his words he said "How do you glorify a person if he has done nothing for you? You glorify an NBA star when he makes the winning three pointer, you glorify a firefighter when he saves you from the burning house. So how do you glorify God? You glorify God when you allow Him to deliver you, save you and love you." Too often we rely on ourselves to give, to give, to give and we have learned to expect nothing in return, but deep down in the hearts of the most earnest Christians, we need to be given something back. So what do we do? We try and try to be filled through the fruits of our own labour, hoping that would ignite the gratitude within us to allow us to get closer to God. The Christian life isn't one of paying back, the Christian life is one of getting more. GETTING AND RECEIVING MORE not GIVING. Yeah, as you can see, one can perceive this as borderline blasphemous. In faith, we ask God because we are the ones who need him, not vice versa (1 Peter 4:11). Gratitude is no the primary stimuls of the Christian life. If it is, then you're going to get tired fast.

That sermon hit me square in the face: I was giving, without receiving resulting in my stress and anxiety in people. I was tired, I was frustrated, I was stressed, I was dry. I now ask God to fill me with His love because I know I cannot love my roommate on my own. But I pray that the love of God will overflow in my own heart so that I can love her despite all the hurt that's built up these past couple of years. It's a paradigm shift: I expect God to give me more because I now know that people cannot give you what you seek. I sought for steadfast relationships, people that would realize your earnestness in loving and accepting them and reciprocate, when in fact I realized that at times they will never try as hard as you do thus leaving me high and dry. My heart was tired of trying to love, trying to reach out to people. Perhaps I was nourishing them by my own effort, but I was tired.
I became the tired Christian running on fuel of gratitude and human effort. Looking back at my testimony through my blog entries of these past two years have been a testament to this exhaustion. I know all this may sound really apparent and many of you must be thinking "duh, I realized this a long time ago" but the peace that I now feel transcends all the words I use to try to describe the ways in which God has convicted me this past week.

God, love me, let me see it, and let me be able to love others. Give me the faith to trust in all that You are. Let faith be the fuel that runs my walk with You. Amen
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So, three of my friends and I are gonna see Wicked! I saw it once already but I think it's worth watching again. :D
Sunday was a tiring one: church, went to eat burgers with two of the Canadians, went to Starbucks and talked over coffee, bought musical tickets, went to one of the guy's house to wait for Betty and roomie to come over to film our friend's audition tape to get into the Vancouver School of Film (didn't show up) and then went to Basta Pasta for a Canadian Thanksgiving dinner (which they all liked!). There was a mix up and we had an extra guest whom they couldn't accomodate for so he had to find another place to go and eat at (we felt so bad) and then we all met up to have Red Mango (for the 100000x time). Since they had not filmed the audition tape, six of them came over to my place until 1:30am to film. I was exhausted.

Side note: On Saturday, my friend told me that Armani Exchange was having a sale so him and his two roomies and I went shopping... and hooray this hoodie that was initially $98 went on sale for $70 with an additional 30% off making it $45! It's rare to see something that I like go on sale that quickly. Yea yea. At Kenneth Cole I spotted this awesome silk tie with a trompe l'oeil painted on it. You know the back of the time is the edge of the fabric, with a couple of stitches and reveals part of the lining at the bottom... well they painted the back of the time on the front of the tie. It was so clever I bought it and two of the other guys also bought skinny ties. HAHAH. Needless to say, I was thoroughly amused.

Anyway, yesterday (Monday), the Canadians (plus one) got together inbetween classes and met up at Bryant Park where we bought onigiri, bento and japanese pastries at a nearby japanese cafe and sat at the park to have lunch together. It was nice to sit and relax there in each other's company for a couple of hours before class. Friggin nice weather. :D

Ok time for class. I did illustrations of my previous collection this week: as in I selected 8/25 outfits and did a more detailed study of those. Mb I'll post it up later. But class!