A Father's love

Earlier today, I was standing next to a family in an MRT train on my way home from work. I noticed that the father kept raising his left hand towards his daughter's face, and she persisted in pushing his hand away. I took a closer look and realised that her face was very close to a backpack carried by another passenger. Her father probably wanted to protect her face from any injury caused by the backpack should the train suddenly jerk or the male passenger lose his footing. His daughter seemed irritated and annoyed by his hand being so close to her face.

This led me to think about the times when God was trying to protect me from harm and I, like the daughter in the train, kept pushing Him away. Only on hindsight did I realise that God had His reasons for putting His hand so close to my face.

Metaphorsmic

I really enjoyed this excerpt from Gogol's St. John's Eve:

My late grandfather's aunt used to say - and you know it's easier for a woman to kiss the devil, meaning no offense, than to call another woman a beauty - that the Cossack girl's plump cheeks were as fresh and bright as the first pink poppy when, having washed itself in God's dew, it glows, spreads its petals, and preens itself before the just-risen sun; that her eyebrows were like the black cords our girls now buy to hang crosses and ducats on from the Muscovites who go peddling with their boxes in our villages, arched evenly as if looking into her bright eyes; that her little mouth, at the sight of which the young men back then licked their lips, seemed to have been created for chanting nightingale songs; that her hair, black as the raven's wing and soft as young flax (at the time our girls did not yet wear braids with bright-coloured ribbons twined in them), fell in curly locks on her gold-embroidered jacket.

Reflection at lunch

"Evening" (G.K. Chesterton)

Here dies another day
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world round me;
And with tomorrow begins another,
Why am I allowed two?

My reading journey continues with Orthodoxy by G.K.Chesterton and The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol (new translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky).

In Philip Yancey's foreword to Orthodoxy, he referred to this poem, which to me encapsulated Chesterton's gratitude and humility towards Jesus.

It also reminded me to be thankful for every day of my life because every day is a gift from God. I am alive not because I will it so, but because God blesses and preserves my every breath.

A different kind of toon

Fahrenheit 451

I popped into Borders with my nephew today. His parents told him that he could buy only one book, so he went around the children's section diligently, checking out books and gasping at their prices before settling on a book called Small Steps, the sequel to Holes.

As for me, I went around and bought four books: Other Colors (Orhan Pamuk), M is for Magic (Neil Gaiman), An Ode Less Travelled (Stephen Fry), and The Making of a Poem (Mark Strand and Eavan Boland). Recently, I told myself that if I were to step into a bookstore, I could buy only books by authors that I hadn't read before. Unfortunately, this proved harder to carry out than I expected. I already have books of the first three authors listed above.

I came back home too late to get a haircut and so I decided to read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Just finished it and probably finished it too fast. This book was written in 1953, and its message is still as important now as it was then. I think it's best summed up by this saying:

Where they burn books, they will end up burning human beings, too.
- German poet Heinrich Heine

The book has this excerpt which I like a lot because it paints an encouraging picture of humankind:
"But that's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and worth the doing."

And of course, given my recent interest in poetry, I was delighted to come across a beautiful old poem, Dover Beach, written in 1867 by Martin Arnold, a part of which was recited by Montag the firefighter in the Bradbury book:

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.