Hugs

I could do with a big, huge, I-am-never-going-to-let-go-even-if-you-fear-awkwardness kind of hug. There are hugs and there are hugs. Awkward side hugs, hugs with only one person kissing, the full, frontal-grab hug, the macho back-pat hug, the back-rub, the hey-look-our-noses-fit-into-our-shoulders hug... hugs at different angles... When you know someone is coming over to hug you, you switch into alert either welcomingly or with a mental uh-oh (you know what's coming: contaaaaaaact!) and bend over with gently bent arms to be ready. At this point, you and the other hugger have both completed similar preparatory manoeuvres and are at a 135 from the feet. This is the bum-sticking-out hug. There's the you-can-cry-if-you-want-to-I'm-holding-you hug.

That's the kind I want today.

Pastry and punctuation?

Well, I just felt like alliteration. Since my last post, I HAVE HAD a dosai... scrumptiousness. Not quite Woodlands or amma's standards, but who's complaining? Also, baked an intensely chocolate fudge cake for the housemates last night - SLUURRRP.

There was something I'd been asking about for a time - a yes/no answer. Today from God (and Facebook!) I've decided to consider it a 'no'. Sigh. That's what I came to log.

I don't know if I can carry it off this term. So much to do and so much more expected of me than I have done. I am scared. I am unable. I am trying. I have God. And that is that. Some more healing in the family recently - God loves them so much. And I am so glad that I have this crazy family whose craziness fits (mostly) perfectly with mine!

In my breaks, I'm reading Lynne Truss's apparently popular book - Eats (,) Shoots and Leaves. Makes me laugh out loud! Not that I agree on all points but she's growing on me. JW thinks it's geeky - eeerrm, well. Have you read it?

Dosais and other things

When somewhere between your stomach and your throat, it feels like some internal organ is being rolled up into the kind of dosai your mum makes when you haven't got time for a plate with chutney on it... you assume, without any respect to physiological facts, that it's your heart. And you sort of know which specific, inexplicable things might have that effect.

I have a list - somewhere on Facebook. But I'm blogging now about something that is not on that list. Not in detail anyway. Children.

This is not a long blog; this is an exercise to help me remember if I should look at this again in some distant future. There's something about adopting children that has that sit-up-on-the-end-of-your-seat-take-quick-shallow-breaths effect, I think. I try not to grin and I try not to cry. This might be why I'm writing, because something has to come out somewhere. Recently when I thought I might be at a loose end with my life, I was thinking about social work or missions... They aren't different except politically. If Christ lives in you, He goes with you into whatever grimy context you choose to enter. And whether you preach or don't, Christ still calls you to be His ambassador in an Isaiah 61 kind of way. No? But I noticed I was choosing the mission based on where I could serve children or young people.

My parents tried to adopt a child. Although I had prayed before for a sister, I remember praying at the time not for a younger sister but just to be able to adopt. God, even if you don't allow us to open our family just now, please please please let me able to adopt children when I'm older. Lots of them.

Weird. But my picture is so beautiful, I don't want to let it go. I am single. My parental units might be too old to take on the challenge of providing a family from scratch to wide-eyed, little strangers. I see how all this sounds strange. But humour me and think about it. Socio-economics, ethnicity and history would not give them a 'family-ness'. But it would be. Sort of like God's church.

Colour

Do you think some of us run away from intensity? Father, forgive me.

I know I have been away for some time - I have had a rollercoaster ride of a few months! And boy, do I mean that. I had supervisor problems - race, being one of them. I have learnt that people everywhere can be racist and not. I have learnt that I have a lot to learn - at least in so far as blinder-ing myself to what others do and don't do that strikes me as so wrong. And I've also become a lot humbler in thinking that I am not above certain emotions...

I am so mad when people say 'I want a black/white guy' or 'International students are not as intellectually capable'... People, that second sentence is a whole story but not for here and now! I went through years of being mad at members of extended (and not so extended) family being caste/colour/race-prejudice-ridden. White people aren't different. I'm saying white because, in post-colonial India, they used to be the other. Political correctness is all very well, and I love us all, but for the purpose of this blog, can I just call us by our colours? I am brown. There are shades of us. And black and olive and white. It gets me somewhere deep inside and twists my gut in a pre-sick feeling when I hear it being called 'our culture' - when what they mean is our race/nationality.

Are we really that different?

We're loving whatever our colour. We're racist whatever our colour.

I had an interesting class this morning. One student called another 'not Chinese deep inside your heart' because she had learned English at a young age and so 'was corrupted by Western culture'. Another crime was watching 'Western' movies and listening to the music.

I hurt. She hurt, but she was the bigger person. It hurts. And the more you hurt, the more you grow. Why must this be?

Running

It just feels like I have been running after myself. Sometimes away from myself too. Trying to catch a shadow that is somewhere inexplicably behind the light. Maybe I should let go of me... Deal with the new image - let it make its own shadow. And then I can start to run after what I used to run for.

En espanol

He decidido blogar en espanol tambien. Necessito practicar y puede ser que alguien podran entender! Perdone por que no se si escribo correctamente! Y mi espanol es muy confuso... Si es hispanico o hable espanol, perdoneme por favor ;) No he estudido espanol. Estudie por dos meses - dos horas a la semana! Pero he vivido en una casa de algunas latinas... Lo aprendi alli, pienso...

Es sobre esta decision que quiero escribir. No tengo nada mas para decir, en verdad - jeje! Y por otra parte (si, consulte el diccionario para esta exprecion! :o ), estoy encansada hoy.

La manana es la quinceanera de Julia. Mi primero. No se lo que debo usar - ball gown, silk dress, o fancy top with trousers. Necessito llamar Paola para investigar!

Suene con los angelitos, amigos xx

More pet hates...

This is making me laugh - I don't feel particularly resentful and yet my past two posts have been along the same lines!

So the world according to me would have no cliques or cliquiness! (Yes, I coined a word and I've got a perfect right ;) )

I teach. And like the majority of the rest of the world, I have been in high school. And college. And other places where community is built from a grassroots level. And I detest it when one student (or two or ten) is left out of a spotlight-stealing group. I actually go one step further and feel my hackles rising even when no one is left out (particularly) but there is a preference for certain types of people... There is a difference but a difference which, to me, means very little in principle.

I think, somehow, I always hated it. I've been both 'popular' and 'not-popular' - I've actually never been unpopular. Funnily enough, when I was rather in the not-so-popular group that I actually won a school election (which was pretty big in the day!). But I hate it when people get labelled without seeking out the label. For example, in the school I teach, one student is considered of lesser ability. By the students, I mean. Another is considered unfriendly. But the reason behind both isn't because of anything they've done... it's more because of what they've not done.

I could easily shoot myself in the foot here - because leaving some things unsaid or undone is just as bad as an error of commission. But with people in social situations, you never know whether something is because they don't want to or because they don't know how/because they do it differently. GIVE them the benefit of the doubt.

If you don't know how, take a year off and teach English or any other foreign language in several far-off lands ... NOW, for goodness' sake!

Ten Most Annoying Things People Do

1. When people pronounce your name wrong... Why is it so hard to say the k/sh cluster together??? You can say words like 'dictionary' and 'action'. You can say it! Grrr.

2. 'Where did you learn your English?' - Get over it. Colonisation happened.

3. Being so assured in your theology or atheology that you begin to think any rationality is evil :P

4. Hair. In the wrong places. Particularly someone else's ;)

5. People who constantly disagree - by habit. Ugh.

6. Bad grammar. Spelling. Yuck... Hehe, I'm an English teacher so I don't get to say that often ;)

7. Half-smiles. I don't mean when people smile when they want to really cry on your shoulder, or when they're broken in worship and still smile. I mean when people smile when they don't want to. Gggrr again!

8. The person whose dramatic love life is for everyone to sympathise with.

9. Complete ignorance of other cultures, ways of thinking, points of view. You don't have to agree, but you have to know.
Why? Because... *looks wildly about for answer* because I say so and it's rather pointless in conversation if one doesn't.

10. Assuming stuff instead of admitting you don't know!


I PROBABLY DO ALL OF THE ABOVE AND AM EVEN MORE INNOVATIVELY ANNOYING. But that doesn't make it all any better ;)... Okay, well, except for no 6 - I treat my grammar well, thank you very much ;)

Ecce, Dominus

I'm starting afresh. Not life - I mean, I do that pretty frequently so it doesn't deserve an announcement... ; ) but this blog is a second attempt. One in which I will stick more closely to my own rules for blogging.

My blogging may still be a three-cornered conversation but -

I will not seek people I know (i.e. friends or family INR) to read this blog. If they find it, they find it... I'm depending on this policy as a sort of filter : P (heh!)

I will have no deadlines on blogging. It's an exercise for the soul - but part of a larger training routine! So some days I suspect it will be blogging. Other days it could just as well be music or listening... really listening.

Because through all of this, you have one of those precious, not-so-rare moments when he looks at you, in your muddy clothes and grimy face and messed-up hair - and he simply does a double-take and goes: WOW.

This morning I shared the word - on the God who is the resurrection. We studied its centrality to history and our lives. : ) One of the things we came up with was that God didn't just design you before you were born and say it was good. And then 'rest on the Sabbath'. He gets a good look at me pretty much every sordid day - and his reaction still is: You are so gorgeous.

You see, I'm not just in love with a Man who loved me so much he died for me. I'm in love with a God who did just that and lives so we can belong everyday. And lives so my foolishly inept attempts at loving back are made whole by his love. So that my extensive creativity at being able to fail will never keep him from me.

And in that 'WOW' moment, I know my sin is gone. And I know He's alive.

I guess that's what my blogging is for. I'm happy to have those 'WOW' moments alone or in community. I know there will be times I long for more readership. But I don't think I know how to get it, and I'm not going to try. But maybe, maybe there will be some times together when we look at him and at each other... and say Ecce, Dominus... and be lost in his beauty. And all of a sudden, the father will turn around and pick up his child and say: You, you are beautiful!

Maybe you and I can share just one moment like that. One laughing moment when we know he's alive because his beauty is in us.

Happy Valentine's Day!