new year's resolution

Following my boyfriend's suggestion, my new year's resolution is to write something in my journal or on my blog every day, so I can keep up with my writing at least a little bit. My other new year's resolution is to get a new job, although first I have to figure out what I want to do with my life before I seriously start looking. Today our boss asked us to prepare our goals and plans for 2006 to present at the team meeting tomorrow. I was like, uh, my plan is to get the heck outta here as fast as possible. Yeah.

So I've been reading this new spiritual book series called "The Right Use of Will" (also name of the first book). I've been thinking about writing about it, because the books are very thought-provoking, but it took me two months from the reading of the first book to get myself to write anything down (that's meant to be read anyway). The concepts in these books are really quite different from what I'm used to reading in spiritual and self-help books, and its ideas are not quite easily articulated to someone else because there are layers upon layers of complexity. I am fascinated by this series, but like most of the Amazon reviews for this book, it's not something I would whole-heartedly recommend to someone else. You kind of have to be willing to look at the things in life you don't want to look at.

harry potter and the goblet of fire

Saw Harry Potter last Sunday. Wow. Just wow. It was easily the best in the series so far.

movie paradise month

It is simly inexcusable, even with my busy-ness, that I had no clue there was a new Pride & Prejudice movie out until the day it opens - today. Admittedly I first thought Keira Knightley is too pretty to be Elizabeth and Matthew MacFayden at times looks more like a Mr. Collins than a Mr. Darcy (mostly because he is not Colin Firth), but there are good reviews all over the place and it's definitely a movie to get excited about amidst the current theater offerings. I titled this post "movie paradise month" because Harry Potter comes out next weekend (woohoo!) and then Rent the weekend after (woohoo again!).

quote of the day

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear."
- Ambrose Red Moon

religion makes people do funny things

Today at work my manager was attempting to speak with one of our suppliers, an orthodox Jew living in Israel, about an urgent request for some import documents. Because my manager Mike is also Jewish (non-practicing), Daniel, the supplier, has on occasion refused to talk to or email him on certain Jewish holidays where they were forbidden to do business with other Jews. However he has no problem talking to me. Today happens to be one of those days, the last day of Sukkot (don't ask me what that is), and when my manager called Daniel, he said, "I can't talk to you right now. Hang up the phone and I'll call Diane. Don't pass the phone to her. You can listen but don't talk cause I can't respond to you."

And so I put him on the speaker phone while Mike sits next to me whispering his responses to the supplier so I can repeat them (since I wasn't kept in the loop on this issue). Of course I wasn't familiar with the terms and procedures, so I missed a word here or there and then some. After a while, the supplier was like, "don't ever become a translator for the U.N."

So the conversation ended with Daniel saying he's going to yell at Mike and beat him with a (Jewish word I didn't get). And Mike said he was going to throw dreidels at him. One of our VP's overheard the conversation and said that was one of the weirdest conference calls he's ever heard.

updates

Ok, just a few words to about the last few months since I've been too busy (and lazy) to keep my blog updated. I honestly don't remember much about July. At the beginning of August I spent a week in India with my boyfriend to visit his family. I may post more on that later since I'm at work right now, but it was an eye-opening trip to say the least. We still haven't gotten those pictures developed yet either, oy. These past seven months have been a blur because of work and dating, and lately I've been thinking of my purpose in life and working towards finding my passion. In the mean time I may be looking for a job closer to home because my traffic, now that school is in full swing, is a ridiculous (1 hour 30 minutes there and 1 hour back) waste of time.

what do babies know of god?

I'd just like to share a letter to Neale Donald Walsch from the Conversations with God Newsletter that really touched me:

Dear Neale,

How true what you said on bulletin #146 last week about babies. They come to this world fresh from the realm of God and they know nothing but love until the world teaches them the rest. It made me remember a few years back when I went shopping with my then 4-year old granddaughter. Kasey is so happy to see people and would say hello to anyone she sees. She said hello to 3 heavy set older white ladies and they just looked at her as if she said something wrong. (Kasey and I are from the Philippines.)

About a decade ago, I did some research on miracles. I have a few major miracles in my life that I've kept these many years to myself. I was afraid that when I tell it to someone and they don't believe it, it would feel like something very beautiful is sullied. And true enough when I shared it with someone whom I thought could relate I was quite disappointed. Anyway I learned that people cannot relate to anything they have not experienced. If they do not have any experience of miracle(s) in their life, they cannot relate to it.

And so I decided to do some research to find out if I am alone with this experience or if there are others out there who have experienced miracles in their lives. To my delight, I found dozens upon dozens of great miracle stories.

One of the stories I encountered is about a couple with a 3-year girl and their new baby. Their 3-year-old kept insisting that she'd like to be alone with the new baby. They would always say "No" to her because they were afraid that the 3-year-old might be jealous and might try to harm the baby. When the parents can no longer say no to their 3-year-old as she would ask each day and was quite persistent, they relented and allowed her to be with the baby but left the baby monitor so they can hear what's going on in the nursery from their kitchen. What they heard is this -- the toddler asked the baby: "Tell me about God, I am forgetting." The parents wrote to the author of the miracle book that they could not figure out what that means. Yet, for us, we all can relate to what that means having read the CwG material that you so graciously gifted the world. I just wish I could explain to that couple that this is because babies are new arrivals to Earth from God's realm.

Connie

seeds part 3: paul ferrini

I'd never heard of this guy before I attended the conference, but he was a very inspiring speaker and writer and I intend to purchase some of his books. Here's a really powerful prayer he shared with us during his keynote speech. I think it speaks for itself.

seeds part 2: Bard College

I can pinpoint the exact moment when I decided to go to this conference -- when I saw a picture of Fisher Arts Center at Bard College against a beautiful green lawn. It made my heart sing. While I was there it kept reminding me of the Disney Concert Hall, and unsurprisingly Fisher Center was designed by the same architect, Frank Gehry.

As I said before, the conference was set up in collaboration with Bard College. More specifically, the Institute of Advanced Theology at Bard. Their website can tell you about them more elegantly than I can. The founder and director, Dr. Bruce Chilton, did some keynote speeches and workshops at the conference, and he is doing some amazing work in promoting understanding between religions. The institute has done some groundbreaking study on James, the brother of Jesus, and Dr. Chilton is writing a book on the gospel according to Mary (Magdalene). I find his stuff fascinating and plan to read some of it as soon as I finish reading all the other stuff I'm planning to read. :P

I don't have many regrets, but this college makes me wish I'd done my degree here.

seeds of transformation

I just got back this past Monday from a weekend in upstate New York for the Humanity's TeamGathering, in collaboration with Bard College. This will be the first short post in a series of posts about the conference, mostly because I don't have time to write down my thoughts about it all at once :P.

The trip to New York and back was, in a word, challenging, but that was the only down side of the trip. I spent half of Friday at the airport and on the plane, and the other half trying to get to Bard College, since my train was 2 hours late due to some accident that resulted in a fatality. On the way back, my plane was late 3 1/2 hours in taking off due to bad weather. And since I was trying to conserve my vacation time, I had no time to actually visit New York City (flew into Newark, NJ) and go see a musical.

Bard College is located in Annandale-on-Hudson, which is in the Hudson River Valley right next to the river. The college sits in the midst of this unexpectedly gorgeous countryside. Everything was so lush and green; the houses were scattered and surrounded by forests. The route from the train station to the college took me through winding roads that made me nostalgic for the English countryside. What a sight for sore L.A. eyes.