celebrate

it didn't hit me until a full two days after my birthday that this was a pretty big one. i will never be a twenty something year-old again. i may even have to check the next age bracket now when i'm filling out forms. i've been on this planet for almost THREE WHOLE decades. i suppose compared to a tortoise or a sequoia, thirty years isn't much to brag about, but it just seems so old when i still feel like an awkward, moody teenager on the inside most of the time. :)

getting old, though, is definitely more fun when you have good friends to celebrate with! and celebrate we did. viv, a september sister, and i decided to co-host a big birthday bash together with theme "shanghai glam." we held it at a fabulous wine bar (JWOW) and felt the love from about 70 of our friends.

the birthday girls

celebrations are always wonderful. but i suppose if i've learned anything from these three decades on earth, it is to be thankful in feast or famine. to fully savor and enjoy each day as it is given, to enter the disappointments as well as the joys with a constant heart. to remember past goodness and always hope in future grace. may it ever be so this year, let my heart be constant...

from one of my favorite hymns, the lyrics that best sum up my current state of heart and mind:

Haste thee on from grace to glory,
Armed by faith, and winged by prayer.
Heaven’s eternal days before thee,
God’s own hand shall guide us there.
Soon shall close thy earthly mission,
Soon shall pass thy pilgrim days,
Hope shall change to glad fruition,
Faith to sight, and prayer to praise.

thankful, ever thankful.


cups of coffee: 2 1/2

mood: blissful

my-o-pia

we have such a propensity to be myopic. easily entangled in the trappings of daily life, our vision often extends only as far as the here-and-now, our focus constantly shifting back to the narrow field right before us, barely past the tip of our nose, and we plod forward earnestly with blinders on. how the i's, me's and my's resound louder than any other inclinations or pleas in our life. utterly absorbed.

i wish rising above circumstances were somehow easier. like in 'charlie and the chocolate factory' when charlie and his uncle sneak sips from willy wonka's fizzy concoction, discovering the carbonation enabled them to rise up effortlessly. what a delight....well, until they got dangerously close to the fans above.

i am happy. i can say those three words with a healthy serving of surety. i am happy with my work, my life in shanghai, my friends and sense of community....the list goes on.
yet.
i am always looking for more, riding bouts of ennui and dissatisfaction, wanting and wishing for the intangible and indescribable.

i suppose that's the tension of life, isn't it? caught between the rooted and the nomadic lives, feeling both satisfied and insatiable. the cries of "my cup overrunneth" juxtaposed with "how long, o Lord?"
the here but not yet.

sigh. a little perspective, please.....

cups of coffee: 3

mood: floaty

restoration

i've always wondered what patients who awake from long comas must feel....the disorientation, the strangeness of time lost and the simultaneous feeling of time standing still. the newness of a different world than what one's eyes last laid upon. echoes of a familiar life. perhaps the desire to disconnect and re-engage at the same time.

all speculation on my part, of course.

i returned to shanghai a week and a half ago after a one-month absence. still readjusting to the changes that have occurred in what i believed to be a short period of time...

meditating on the theme of restoration lately. working out the definition and reality of restoration, what it means to be truly restored in mind, body and spirit. to be living in wholeness even as we experience the brokenness of a fallen world daily.

i purchased a compilation of prayers from augustine's confessions over the summer and it's been a daily source of fodder for my mind and soul. his prayers are so heartfelt and articulate, straight to the substance without the fluff. i love it. here's one of my favorites:

be not vain, my soul,
and take care that the ear of your heart
be not deafened by the din of your vanity.
you too must listen to the selfsame Word who calls you back,
and there find a place of imperturbable quiet,
where love is never forsaken unless it chooses to forsake.
see, those things go their way that others may succeed them,
and that whole may exist comprised of all its parts,
though a lowly whole indeed.
"but I," says the Word of God,
"shall I depart to any place?"
fix your dwelling there, my soul,
lay up there for safe-keeping whatever you have thence received,
if only because you are weary of deceits.
entrust to Truth whatever of truth is in you, and you will lose nothing;
your rotten flesh will flower anew,
all your diseases will be healed,
all your labile elements will be restored and bound fast to you;
they will not drag you with them in their own collapse,
but will stand firm with you and abide,
binding you to the ever-stable, abiding God.

cups of coffee: 3

mood: quiet, quiet

soul-full

my soul, mind and definitely stomach are full after an amazing trip to nyc....so much to digest (literally) but for now, happy to just soak and simmer.

some of my favorite images from my summer in the states thus far:






and of course.... :)


cups of coffee: 2

mood: laaaaaaazy

it's time.

after 3 years and 21 days of venting, recounting, musing and spewing on xanga, i've decided it's time for a change. farewell, xanga. hello, blogger.

more to come. but for now, just settling in and trying to learn this new neighborhood.