on the shortness of life

Maybe I'm naive, but life is short, you know? I mean, someday we're not gonna be here. And if that's the case, I want to spend the time that I have doing something that makes my heart race.

~ Troy Gable, in "The Great Buck Howard"

on rulers >< servants

“You know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them. But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

~ Christ the Lord, as per Mark 10:42-45

why Jesus prayed may they all be One

Should I be afraid? Jesus wondered.

I answered. ''Not if you are who I think you are.'' I raised my voice. ''You should listen too. You'll learn something.''

In response there was a harsh growl close to where we lay; the room was filled with a fetid odor. A wave of cold terror struck Jesus in the chest.

His body trembled, but he felt my hand on his shoulder. ''Steady. Ignore him, and listen. You already know that God is everywhere. But you haven't take the next step, which is why you wandered the face of the earth until you found me. I am here to give you the knowledge that will provide the final release. If God is everywhere, he is in you. If he is in you, then you are everywhere. Do you understand?''

Jesus trembled as if struck by a terrible fit, my words had struck deep. He no longer heard me speaking, but someone did. The voice of God had been absent for many months. Now it returned again, only this time it was also Jesus's voice, the two so blended that they couldn't be told apart.

"You cannot change the world as long as you are a person. As one man, you will never escape the war between good and evil."

At this the intruder growled menacingly, and Jesus saw two eyes glowing red in the dark. But the threat was useless. The voice continued.

"Only someone who knows the reality between good and evil can know me. I am in all things, without division. This Satan wants you to believe that he rules a place where I am not. But even he is made of God."

The glowing red eyes darted closed, and when they were directly over Jesus, they shot fire. The voice went on, "The Adversary doesn't want anyone to know this, because it would destroy his power. He can hardly admit it to himself. If he is God, the war between us comes to an end, and he thrives on war."

Suddenly the intruder emitted a deafening shriek. The walls of the hut shook. Tears rolled down Jesus's cheeks. I whispered close his ear. ''The final stroke must come from you. It can never be taught, only discovered within. Keep listening.''

Jesus regained control with difficulty. The voice waited and then it said, ''Only someone who can see the demons as part of God is free. Good and evil dissolve. The veil drops away, and all you see is divine light - inside, outside, everywhere. The sight of a rotting corpse becomes as blessed as a rainbow. There is no reality but the light, and you are that light. Your soul is the world's soul. In your resurrection will be the resurrection of the world.''

°°Deepak Chopra - Jesus A Story of Enlightenment (fragments from)°°

mah playlist.....music's never been so yumm....!

1. Mr. Hudson ft. Kanye West - Supernova
Let me be your supernova before you make the biggest mistake of your life, just give me the chance to get it right


2. The Virgins - Rich Girls
We'll walk around prentending we're all grown up....is that the way I see the world?

3. Backstreet Boys - Straight Through My Heart (Soldier Down)
I can't be hit, I just can't escape this love

4. Katy Perry - Waking Up In Vegas
Don't call your mother cause now we're partners in crime

5. Cobra Starship ft. Leighton Meester - Good Girls Gone Bad
You heard that I was trouble but you couldn't resist...


6. David Cook - Come Back To Me
You say you gotta go and find yourself
You say that you're becoming someone else
Don't recognize the face in the mirror looking back at you

You say you're leaving as you look away
I know there's really nothing left to say
Just know I'm here whenever you need me I'll wait for you

So I'll let you go, I'll set you free
And when you've seen what you need to see
When you find you, come back to me

Take your time, I won't go anywhere
Picture you with the wind in your hair
I'll keep your things right where you left them
I'll be here for you

And I hope you find everything that you need
I'll be right here waiting to see
You find you, come back to me

I can't get close if you're not there
I can't get inside if there's no soul there
I can't face you, I can't save you
It's something you'll have to do

So I hope you find everything that you need
I'll be right here waiting to see
When you find you, come back to me

7. Mika - We Are Golden
Waking up in the midday sun, what's to live for?

8. Parachute - She Is Love
(lyrics are kinda shabby but I like the song anyway)

9. Jack's Mannequin - La La Lie
Guess what? I'm done

10. Train - Hey, Soul Sister
Your sweet moonbeam, the smell of you in every single dream I dream
I knew when we collided, you're the one I have decided who's one of my kind

11. Hellogoodbye - When We First Met
As I kept track of every haircut that we ever had I could, I could see how long it had been

from Leverage last night....

" I don't see why you need to chase the past."
~Sophie Devereaux to Eliot

so this is what everybody's talking about, but nobody really knows....

“Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it. This, as has already been said, is why Christ the Redeemer “fully reveals man to himself”. If we may use the expression, this is the human dimension of the mystery of the Redemption. In this dimension man finds again the greatness, dignity and value that belong to his humanity. In the mystery of the Redemption man becomes newly “expressed” and, in a way, is newly created. He is newly created! “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus”. The man who wishes to understand himself thoroughly-and not just in accordance with immediate, partial, often superficial, and even illusory standards and measures of his being-he must with his unrest, uncertainty and even his weakness and sinfulness, with his life and death, draw near to Christ. He must, so to speak, enter into him with all his own self, he must “appropriate” and assimilate the whole of the reality of the Incarnation and Redemption in order to find himself. If this profound process takes place within him, he then bears fruit not only of adoration of God but also of deep wonder at himself. How precious must man be in the eyes of the Creator, if he “gained so great a Redeemer”, and if God “gave his only Son “in order that man ’should not perish but have eternal life’.”

–From Pope John Paul II’s Encyclical Redemptio Hominis, #10.

The Traveler God

"Mack, the world system is what it is. Institutions, systems, ideologies, and all the vain, futile efforts of humanity that go with them are everywhere, and interaction with all of it is unavoidable. But I can give you freedom to overcome any system of power in which you find yourself, be it religious, economic, social, or political. You will grow in the freedom to be inside or outside all kinds of systems and to move freely between and among them. Together, you and I can be in it and not of it."

"But so many of the people I care about seem to be both in it and of it!" Mack was thinking of his friends, church people who had expressed love to him and his family. He knew they loved had expressed love to him and hisfamily. He knew they loved Jesus, but were also sold out to religious activity and patriotism.

"Mack, I love them. And you wrongly judge many of them. For those who are both in it and of it, we must find ways to love and serve them, don't you think?" asked Jesus. "Remember, the people who know me are the ones who are free to live and love without any agenda."

"Is that what it means to be a Christian?" It sounded kind of stupid as Mack said it, but it was how he was trying to sum everything up in his mind.

"Who said anything about being a Christian? I'm not a Christian."

The idea struck Mack as odd and unexpected and he couldn't keep himself from grinning. "No, I suppose you aren't."

They arrived at the door of the workshop. Again Jesus stopped. "Those who love me come from every system that exists. They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims, Democrats, Republicans and many who don't vote or are not part of any Sunday morning or religious institutions. I have followers who were murderers and many who were self-righteous. Some are bankers and bookies, Americans and Iraqis, Jews and Palestinians. I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, into my brothers and sisters, into my Beloved."

"Does that mean," asked Mack, "that all roads will lead to you?"

"Not at all," smiled Jesus as he reached for the door handle to the shop. "Most roads don't lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you."

~ William P. Young, The Shack, Chapter 12

fragment of an exist journal #2

Jan 29
23.50

God: Say a prayer.
Gracia: Love, may you dwell within all our hearts.
God, smiling: It is fulfilled.

Then he bows down
and gives up His Spirit.

Christ the Lord - The Road to Cana

Random quotes from the book.

Christ: "Manusia menghina apa yang tidak mampu mereka raih. Mereka menderita karena sangat menginginkannya."

Christ: "I AM for the world."
Gracie: "O Lord, I'm in love with the world. It gave me a place to be."

"Thus the Lord's voice presents not within the wind.
The Lord's voice presents not within sands, sun nor stars.
It is inside of me.
For long I have known who I really AM - I AM the LORD,
and I have chosen to not knowing it.
Now I know what it means to become a man
who also knows that he IS the LORD."

Christ to Simon Peter: "Nothing should be the same again. Don't expect the other way around."

remind me again please...

I am in this world living the present.
Any good thing that I can do,
or any happiness that I can bring to others,
please tell me.
Don’t let me put things off or forget,
because I shall never live this moment again.

(Henry Drummond The Supreme Gift, [1851-1897])

on Laskar Pelangi - a humble review

It all begun with a dream. 10 kids - despite their parents' humble background as marginalised residents of a once glorious island of Belitong, who deprived their access to the island's very own abundant resources of coil - wanted to be more than just coil workers as most of their parents were. So they went to the least expensive primary school (I even thought that they paid no tuition fee afterall!) on the island, SD Muhammadiyah.

It wasn't with no difficulties at all. To them, the then so-called Laskar Pelangi (The Rainbow Army, literally), 10 is a magic number indeed. It is the minimum number of students a school should accomodate, so it wouldn't be closed down. (In the movie) The Rainbow Army itself is the last batch of the school. Despite the minimum number of students, and minimum number of teachers (only 3! One which then moved to another school, and the other one - the principal - passed away. So in the end the Army only had 1 teacher left), and minimum standard of buildings and books and chalks and uniforms and money and and and and.....the kids' will to study failed to fade.

The movie showed a lot of lost to the Army: Ikal (one of the main characters) lost his first love, the resignation of one of their teachers, their principal's death, and the most lost...Lintang, the smartest of all (a genius by nature, Ikal said), who never minded cycling back and forth to the school for 70km everyday, had to drop out from school after his father lost in the sea; the same day he brought the school a big winning on a local academic competition against the most favorite school on the island. Lintang had no mother, and he was the eldest of 4, his siblings were all girls....so the tragic path was clear to him and to all his friends and beloved teacher: he had to be the man of the family - when he was only 10.

A big lost indeed.

Although the movie showed only two significant winnings of the Army (1 in an Independence Day Festival, the other was the academic competition Lintang had won for the school), it highlighted the most winning of all: dreams do come true, when you're true to it. Lintang passed on his zeal in studying to his daughter, while Ikal fought for Lintang's dream also: to go to Paris, the most beautiful city of all, where scholars breathed it's inspiring air and drink its intoxicating wine of knowledge.

So Ikal went to Sorbonne for his masteral, then a few years after he went back to the country, wrote the story of the Rainbow Army.

This is a true story.

This could be your story too.

So see the movie. Or buy the book.

one more for a new day!

You need not pretend you are strong
should not always prove that all is well,
must not worry about what others think
cry if necessary
it is good to cry until no tears are left
(for only then will you smile again)
~ Mitsuo Aida (1924-1998)

...read more

mini feed

The Beggar and the Monk

A monk was meditating in the desert when a beggar came up to him and said:
"I need to eat".
The monk – who was almost reaching the point of perfect harmony with the spiritual world – did not answer.
"I need to eat", insisted the beggar.
"Go to the town and ask someone else. Can’t you see that you are bothering me? I am trying to communicate with the angels”.

"God placed himself lower than men, washed their feet, gave His life, and no-one recognized Him", the beggar replied.
"He who says he loves God – who does not see – and forgets his brother - who does – is lying".

And the beggar turned into an angel.
"What a pity, you almost made it", he remarked before leaving.