Better than starlight

It's the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, commonly known as the "Mid-Autumn Festival". Traditionally, this is an annual celebration for the Chinese (and many other cultures): a time for family reunions, sipping tea outdoors, taking a lantern-lit stroll around the neighbourhood. A time to admire the splendour of a glimmering, perfectly round moon and reflect on the metaphor of wholeness in family and community.

Far as I am from my family, I'm glad it doesn't take a celebration like this to have me looking upwards. I love staring at the sky at night, any night. Growing up in an increasingly smoggy city near the Equator, I didn't get to see the moon and stars as clearly as I do now. It's made me appreciate every twinkle, twinkle I see from these not-so-little celestial bodies.

Image by Mirko Harnisch

"It occured to me then, and I said it to Paul, that there is something God made that is better than starlight. What is it? he asked me. It's you, man, I said. Me? he asked. You, I said, you know, friends, people, it's beautiful, really, that we don't have to be alone." -- Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts

I couldn't think of a better quote to go with this occasion. I have so much "better than starlight" in my life, I could take on a power grid.

Thank you, my family (blood, ketchup or otherwise) and friends, for shining.

Finding faith

There are times when I hesitate to say the words, "I'm a Christian," or to respond in the affirmative when people ask, "Are you Christian?"

It isn't because I'm not a Christian. The thing is, I don't know if I am. At least, not by your definition, or that of the person asking the question. Of course, definitions can be inaccurate and outright wrong, but most of the time even the most off-base of impressions is born in reality.

Christians are hypocrites. They say one thing and do another.

Christians are judgemental, always telling you that you're a sinner and you need to repent. Who are they to judge?

Christians are no fun. They keep quoting that book of theirs with all the weird numbers and rules.

Christians are people who've left their brains at the door before walking into church... and never claimed them back. That's why they have to ask their pastors everything; they can't do any of their own thinking.

You begin to see, don't you, why I prefer to ask, "What do you think 'Christian' means?" before answering the first question?

In my book, "Christian" used to mean any or all of these:

1. [n] person who behaves one way in front of church friends, and another when alone at home with family;
2. [n] person who is constantly nagging you to believe in what he believes, threatening you with hell if you don't;
3. [adj] behaviour and social pattern involving strange, outdated language and severely limited music;
4. [adj] chronic tone-deafness and lack of basic rhythmical ability, usually and unfortunately accompanied by the presence of one or more tambourines;
   
5. [adj] hypocrisy demonstrated in the practice of saying one thing and doing the opposite.

I'm sure you could add to that list. Please do, if you want. My blog is bloodbath-free. Or email/message me if you don't want to say it in public.

As for my list... what changed my definition and impression of the "Christian"?

There were a few equally significant factors: loving friends who accepted me unconditionally, didn't give hell threats and listened to much better music; reading dozens of books that combined to give me a more balanced and truthful perspective; gradually separating myself from the culture and people who'd given me my first, poisoned tastes of the beautiful faith that is finally mine.

But I would have to say the main thing that has changed the meaning of the word "Christian" in my mind is Christ.

See, most of the people I talk to hear "Christian" and they see church, a building in an industrial estate with inadequate parking facilities.

Or think of a cross hanging around someone's neck. (Someone who may have been very nasty to you while at the same time insisting that you needed to go to church.) A stale brown book in peeling bonded leather. Memories of a service someone may have dragged you to once, where you couldn't pick out a single word of plain English amidst all the "thees" and "thou shalts", chapter and verse numbers. Little plastic buckets being handed around while people dropped money in.

And I just want to say, those things aren't Christianity. Before anyone gets indignant and starts picking up stones (yes, reactivity and short fuses are also common defining factors I've heard), I'm not saying they're unrelated to Christianity. I'm saying they aren't Christianity, in the same way the clothes that you're wearing right now aren't you. They're external and changeable. Things you can put on and take off without losing your thoughts, personality, habits and preferences. Although the taking off might cause you to lose some friends... or make new ones, depending on certain factors.

I'm sorry if church and all things "Christian" have left you with a bad taste in your mouth and you never want to hear about it again.

I am sincerely sorry. I mean that both in the "I'm apologising" way, and in the way people express their sympathy, as in "I'm sorry you missed your flight", "I'm sorry you lost the match" or "I'm sorry you didn't get to taste that batch of brownies before I finished it"... oh wait, that last one is an apology.

I'm sorry because I've been in the same boat. In some areas, I still am in that boat -- the one where my view of what the faith really is, what its central figure truly looks like, is being obscured by external frivolities.

I can't really say that I have found faith, as much as that it's found me. Like the sharp, deep breaths you take when first let outdoors from a stuffy old bus with broken air-conditioning, I am delighted to find that the clothes (so to speak) can come off and the person stays the same. That everything I have ever loved and cringed to see limited by "Christianity" is made even more alive in the presence of unbiased truth. That I no longer have to keep my "happy face" on just so that people can feel comfortable in their approximations of "church". That I can be the same person on Tuesday afternoon as I am on Sunday morning. That I can hold on to my brain, thank you very much, and even pray at the same time.

By the way, I mean it. Please email me your thoughts. All things kept confidential. It's the counselling training done it; I'm good with secrets.

Shelter

Buy our chocolate! Save the world!

Image by Salina Hainzl. For illustrative purposes only; I have no idea what brand these blocks are.

But they're making me long for one of Willy Wonka's reach-through-the-screen-and-grab-it contrivances.

Have you seen the posters accompanying the display shelves for a certain Big Brand of chocolate lately?

A grinning, headscarfed woman with a basket, surrounded by a field of green plants. Below that, a sparkling blurb on how Big Brand's signature chocolate product is now Fair Trade certified.

"By buying [Big Brand's Big Chocolate Product] you can help guarantee a better deal for Third World Producers," gushes the copy. Evidently, they want to get across that the money you spend on this one chocolate product that has the Fair Trade mark on it will go towards helping Nature Girl and her family, and we all love the thought of helping others, don't we?

Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of the poster before it got covered with the Next Big Thing in pillar advertising so I can't quote it verbatim. But I remember that it mentioned better schooling, housing and living conditions.

Of course, the Fair Trade certification applies only to this one product, which is essentially plain milk chocolate bars. Do you see the double-speak in action here? If they manage to convince me that purchasing their plain milk chocolate has an altruistic benefit, then they've also succeeded in convincing me that all of their other products do not offer a better deal to Third World producers, because not a single one of those other products -- which, by the way, probably sell much better than plain old boring milk chocolate -- has the Fair Trade seal.

Dear Big Brand, you cannot draw my attention to the poor working and living conditions of cocoa plantation workers one moment and then, in the next, expect me to become magically unaware of them when looking at your other chocolate products.

The Fair Trade movement has been accused of selling out to big money and making it too easy for major manufacturers to exploit loopholes in the production line, so that in the end they're still turning a huge profit buying large amounts of non-Fair Trade raw material -- but get to enjoy the public kudos of electing a Fair Trade "poster product" to proudly bear the movement's stamp.

With advertising campaigns like this one out there, it isn't hard to see why such accusations exist.

That nameless warp

I've tried to write this post, or one like it, for weeks. The words run into themselves, the paragraphs turn into miniature treatises on the importance of treasuring life, and I end up giving up in disgust for what feels like pretentious, worthless words.

The last Monday of June, I had a routine workload discussion with my boss and referred offhand to our office manager -- something about asking her for help the next time she was in the office. She was, in addition to managing the office, the database software guru and general go-to person. The sort who was always On Top Of Everything, the type you'd resent if it weren't for the fact that she was nice.

His face, which I realise I have come to file next to my definition of "British deadpan", instantly fell. "You didn't know?" he said, and in that moment I felt something in existence change. You know what I'm referring to? That nameless warp or blip that occurs neither in the temperature, nor the ambient noise, nor the light, when you are being given some unfortunate news. A change that you can't describe or quantify, and yet for just that briefest of times it's as obvious (and odoriferous) as the elephant in the room.

What I "didn't know" due to my not working at this office full-time, and which my boss proceeded to tell me, was that she'd been behaving strangely at work the preceding week, and they'd finally persuaded her to go to the doctor. NOW, not when this onslaught of conferences had ended. No, not this weekend. NOW.

And it turned out, there was a reason for her increasing forgetfulness of the past few weeks. For the usually sharp-minded database manager to have needed hourly prompting to complete the simplest of tasks. For the woman who knew the entire company's operations by heart to have to be told what day it was.

Brain tumour, my boss said. Surgery, away from work, not sure how long, wish her the best, will update you. I nodded and went back to work. Every now and then there would be a staff briefing about her progress -- or, more accurately, the progress of the tumour that was rampaging its way through her consciousness, her wit and, eventually, her life.

It was at the end of June that she was last at work, keying in photocopier access codes and hiding her big stapler from the stationery imps that seem to plague offices around the world. The end of June.

It's now the end of August. And they'll be burying her Friday, four days after she slipped away quietly in the hospice bed where her family had resignedly installed her. How much can change, even when we think we're on top of everything.

I am thankful that I made, and have for the most part fulfilled, a commitment years ago to live a life of purpose and integrity. Not necessarily a life of no mistakes, but certainly one of little regret. Because we never know, do we, when and how we'll next experience the warp?

Quiet

Loathed to loaf (the story of a papaya made good)

I'd felt a bit silly spending so much on the papaya. But the cashier had already weighed it, rung it up and bagged it, and it had been such a very long time since I'd last tasted papaya.

I felt a little sillier, and quite a bit more annoyed, when over a week later I gave up on the fruit ever ripening beyond its evenly yellow-skinned state and cut into it. Although the flesh was pleasantly tender, yielding easily to the knife I'd finally got around to sharpening, it was an unappetising yellow and mostly tasteless, except for a hint -- say, about 12 per cent -- of the papaya flavour I'd grown up to expect.

What to do? I don't go around throwing food in the bin just because I don't like it, even if it's cheap. And in this land that still considers papaya an "exotic" fruit, it was not cheap. So to the bin it definitely would not go.

But neither do I force myself to swallow unpalatable food just to prove a point.

So, in summary, I had two problems to solve:

1) How not to throw a perfectly good (but perfectly unenjoyable) papaya out

2) How to make myself enjoy the papaya experience more

The papaya redeemed itself for so disappointing me in its raw form. Mashed and mixed with butter, eggs, flour and sugar, baked to a crisp brown on top, it was delicious.

Especially when sliced thick, pan-fried, and crowned with a dollop of ricotta.

Some mistakes are expensive. Few are irredeemable.

With the right interventions, some are very tasty.

Kangaroo Three Ways: Three

Meatballs meatballs meatballs!

More accurately, since these are more flat than spherical...

Patties patties patties! No, that just sounds wrong. I'll stick with meatballs. I've lovingly nicknamed them my "Off-key Meatballs" -- because they're a little flat.

I don't understand why making meatballs has such a calming effect on me. From chopping the vegetables to mixing the meat by hand and forming it into non-uniform shapes, the whole process seems to lower my heart rate and take my blood pressure from mildly hypotensive to "Get thee to a salt lick!". Perhaps instead of searching for individual clients, I should start a relaxation class based on food preparation.

If I were the same person but with a lot more time and kitchen space, I would have baked tiny, yeasty sesame rolls so that I could have mini roo burgers instead of serving them "naked" with slaw. The sad, winter-stunted tomatoes I've been seeing around are even the right size for small burgers.

Kangaroo Three Ways: Two

Stir-fried with chilli and basil, substiting roo for the chicken in this recipe.

The reason for the three ways being that at the moment, kangaroo mince is only available in 1kg packs, and I don't like the texture of meat that's been frozen raw so I have to cook it before freezing. And I find the notion of preparing a kilo of the same meat in the same way, to be consumed by one person, rather frightening. In my mind I could see my freezer rack stacked high with boxes of bolognaise, and in another frame, could see myself eating it day after day after day, far into the horizon: on rice, on pasta, on toast with chunks of mozarella broken over it -- an illegitimate pizza, wrapped in shortcrust pastry and finished with a crimped semicircular edge, like the confused offspring resulting from a liaison between pastizzi and curry puff. Day in and day out I'd be eating the same thing in only marginally different ways, and it would only be a matter of time before I began to see monotony as a good thing. Horrors.

I was a little disappointed when I tasted it: based on the way the chilli fumes were making my eyes water as I stirred, I had been gleefully expecting a furious, full-bodied kick of spice. Instead, I tasted sweetness first; basil second; and only then did the chilli weakly saunter in, like some clueless partygoer who'd been the first to RSVP but forgot to turn up on the day. I'll just double the chilli the next time, and hopefully then my head will detach itself at first bite. How else is spicy food satisfying than when it makes you feel you might never be able to form a full sentence again?

And why am I even cooking kangaroo?

I guess I'll eventually talk about that. Right now, it's enough that I'm managing both the cooking and the eating.

Kangaroo Three Ways: One

"Bolognese" sauce (the inverted commas are the product of a paranoid mind that imagines some hefty Italian food purist asking me through gritted teeth, "What do you mean bolognese? That's no bolognese..." Said Italian food purist might even be thwacking filled cannoli menacingly in his open, ham-sized palm as the teeth remain gritted) on brown rice, um, "risotto" (see earlier paranthesis about purpose of inverted commas): a hearty, warm lunch in the sometimes not-so-hearty, not-so-warm office.

Is it a bad sign for my writing, that the paranthesis in this blog post is longer than the actual text?