Free Gift of the Sky

When I feel worried or sad, I often look up at the sky. Somehow it makes me feel the sense of freedom and everlasting love, a glimpse of eternity. To me, it seems as though God has created the sky just to remind us something that is far beyond this world. The nature of the sky, the weather, the sun, the moon, and the stars seem to represent the immutable truth of life that we ofen forget but it is always there.

Have you ever stood on a cliff at sunset and look at the endless open sky? Its vastness seems to speak of a particular kind of freedom that the soul is longing for. It also reminds us of the kind of love that is immeasurable and never-ending. The sky is something that we can only gaze and imagine, yet can never grasp how big, how wide it actually is.

The sky and the weather also represent an uncontrollable force, something so big and so powerful. Human invent advanced technology and all kinds of wonderful devices and systems, yet we cannot stop the storm, cannot stop the rain, cannot control the shape of the clouds, and cannot tell the thunder and lightenings to go away. We can only try to predict the weather and adjust our plans to it. We can choose to love it or hate it. We can choose to be grumpy and complain on a rainy day for it is so wet and so inconvenient to go out and commute to work, or we can choose to be happy for the fresh and cool air that come with the rain, enjoy the soothing sound of raindrops falling on the roof, savor the pleasant smell of the Earth, and smile to the beautiful rainbow that appears afterward. We can choose to be scared of thunder or we can choose to look at it with awe and amazement. The same with life, we can choose to detest the pain and sufferrings that come with it, or we can choose to embrace both happiness and sorrow, both ups and downs of the road, as splendid gifts that life offers to us.

The sun, to me, is the symbol of God himself. Whenever I look out the window at dawn or at dusk and saw the sun looking back at me, I couldn't help but stare, smile, and feel so grateful, so loved. The sun is the reassurance the no matter what, God loves us. Whether you are a sinner or a saint, tomorrow when you wake up, the same sun will shine on you as much as it shines one everyone else. Black, white, rich, poor, beautiful, ugly, big, small...and any other human qualities of a person do not matter at all. God loves us unconditionally. All human, as well as other living beings on Earth, receive the gift of warmth and light from the sun that sustain their existance. Without the sun, we cannot exist. Without God, what will be of us? The sad thing is...a lot of us forget how lucky we are that the sun is still shining up there. We often forget the fact that if one day the sun disappears, we will not be able to survive at all. Everyday God is taking care of us but we are so busy that we don't recognize His hand.

The moon and the stars, the gentle guiding light of the night time, can also tell us something important about life as well. We don't see them when the day is bright, but we will see them only at night...the darker the night, the brighter their light will seem to us. Isn't life also that way? We can discover the hidden truth that lies beneath everything only when life is hard and dark. Eternal love of God can be felt deep within us when we are in deepest despair but we choose to look up.

Thank you, dear God, for the sky and everything in it that remind us of You, and the reason why we are here after all.

Addiction, moderation, and total refrainment

I think people are diverse in the ability to resist getting addicted to something. Some people are naturally know how to balance things and how to moderately enjoy the pleasure of life. Some, on the opposite, are easily getting tempted and addicted to worldly desires, whether it is something as simple as food and drink or television show, or something far more serious like drugs.

Moderation is always the best way to live one's life. But for the people in the second group, myself included, the effort to go moderately with things that brings a lot of pleasure can fail miserably. I notice that if I plan to watch a favorite TV show moderately, I would end up spending the whole two hours glued to the front of TV and waste even more time searching for more of it in Youtube. The effort to buy less bottles of Oishi green tea didn't seem to work either. The best way for me is to totally refrain from things that I easily get addicted to, although it means that I have to watch very little television or not at all, or no bottled green tea for the whole month. You see, this method doesn't work with everyone. My best friend and my mother play online games everday but they don't go crazy on it or getting obssessed with it the way I do with TV and bottled green tea. They can easily take moderation with their hobbies.

Nevertheless, I still believe that moderation is still the best, if one is able to hang on to it. And I still hope that one day, when I'm off my obssessive mood and able to gain more control of myself, I will try to step closer to the line of moderation. But for now, I will have to choose between indulging myself with my favorite soap-opera which results in the waste of my time and the ruin of my planned schedules, or totally refrain from it for a while to gain back the balance that I have lost, and move my life into the right direction.

I am working on this kind of silly addiction one by one. If it works then I will try it with other things as well. 

So, if sometimes I act like an ascetic....it's just that I'm very weak, not that I'm pious or religious or anything like that.

Angels walking among us

I once read a book that say there are angels walking among human on Earth, and they look just like us. And I remember an event that happened not so long ago.

I was walking on the pavement where there are a lot of vendors selling things. There was an old Chinese-looking man carrying scrubbing sponges for sale walking toward my direction. He looked so old. I felt sorry for him that he still had to work hard at this age, instead of resting at home. It would not hurt to have some scrubbing sponges for spare, so I asked to buy a few from him. The old man carefully picked up the sponges and handed to me. He picked up a small plastic bag, trying to open it so that I can put the sponges in but he carried so many goods on his hands and arms. So I took the plastic bag from him and said that I could easily do it myself. I hurriedly open the plastic bag but I clumsily keep dropping the mouth of the bag, and then at that moment the old man said kindly,
                  "slowly, take your time, you don't need to rush at all." 

Logically, the words should mean that I don't need to hurriedly open that bag. But somehow my heart listened to it, not just my ears, and my heart knew that he meant another thing. The words of the old man was a wisdom for my life at that moment. He told me to slow things down, not rushing from one thing to another. There was so much kindness, so much love and light, coming from him with his words. It was like a teacher talking to a student or a grandfather talking to a grandchild. It was very strange the way your heart can listen and capture the true message. The heart and soul seem to have ways of their own, and maybe in spirit world, we don't use language like the way we do on Earth, maybe a heart can speak to a heart, a soul can speak directly to a soul, no language barrier in between.

I managed to open the bag and put the sponges in. I smiled and said thank you to the old man. He nodded his head and walked away.

I don't know if he was an angel or just a very wise old man. But somehow he successfully taught me something important on that day.