2011, 2017

Book Report: Surprised by Hope

debs/ November 20, 2017

I read N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope for Sunday School earlier this year and compiled some thoughts on it.

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The “Human Colossus” seems to goes through cycles of construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction. I and more aware, now, that even within the larger arcs of these cycles (large enough to have fancy names like “modernism”, “postmodernism”, etc.), there are phases of micro-construction, micro-deconstruction, and micro-reconstruction. I view Surprised by Hope as N.T. Wright’s attempt to reexamine and deconstruct some conceptual fallacies that the Christian community has become comfortable, and then reconstruct them. Wright reconstructs our understanding of Resurrection, Baptism, Eucharist, temple, prayer, marriage, scripture, evangelism, justice, hell, love, etc. as “signposts” pointing to new creation and the Kingdom that new creation will be subject to. I’ll comment on some of these in the following paragraphs.

1811, 2017

4 days in Munich

debs/ November 18, 2017

Tourism posts are boring.

Every (western) city has the same building, per chance, with different architecture (Which we have already established that I don’t care about). Every city has some permutation of a transportation system. Every city has parks. Maybe some attraction that’s actually unique to the city, those are often over-crowded and swarming with tourists. In short, travelling to cities is pretty much my bane, but I would love for a chance to live in a non-Toronto city.

That said, this post is going to be one of those tourism posts. Slightly modified by the conference aspect, but mostly touristy none-the-less. Still, I feel like I need to give this leg of my trip some attention. After all, the conference is the reason I get to come here in the first place!

I promise, dear reader, this is the most boring post of the trip. Not necessarily because I was bored, far from it! I just don’t think it’ll be very interesting for you to read.

Enough dilly dallying, lads. Let us commence.

0211, 2017

18 hours in Reykjavik

debs/ November 2, 2017

My 2+ months time away from home began with a 1 day stopover in Reykjavik, Iceland on the way to Munich for a conference. I was waaay excited.

I landed around 6:20 at Keflavik Airport on a Sunday morning and took a bus to Reykjavik. It was a beautiful day and looking out at the purple-coloured weeds springing up from an apparent wasteland on the way to the city was absolutely stunning. At June 25, I was there in prime “midnight sun” season and the sun was already bright like noon!

As Reykjavik is pretty small, I decided to go on a leisurely walk to explore the city. There is absolutely no better way to know a city intimately than tracing its features on foot (that is, if you, like me, refuse to make talking to strangers a thing you’d do casually). Below, is the route I took to maximize exposure to attractions I expected to be most interested in:

2910, 2017

Europe 2017 (Teaser)

debs/ October 29, 2017

Long story short, the culmination of my master’s, besides the thesis defense, was a 10 minute talk I gave at a 4 day conference in Munich this summer. My professor, admirably adventurous and opportunistic himself, encouraged me to take advantage of the lab-paid flight to travel before and after the conference (and, honestly, he fully supported traveling during the conference too). I ended up maximizing this opportunity by extending the 10 minute talk within a 4 day conference to a 70 day adventure that included: two layovers in Iceland (on the way there and back), the conference in Munich (of course), hiking in the Alps, traveling in Scandinavia, and realizing a dream of mine to go WWOOFing (in Norway-“the-happiest-place-on-earth”, no less)!

I am super grateful to my professor for suggesting and encouraging me to extend my trip. Otherwise, I would have flown home right after the conference for the following stupid reasons (and why those reasons were stupid):

2710, 2017

Quiet

debs/ October 27, 2017

“The words of the wise heard in quiet are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools.” – Ecclesiastes 9:17

“Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.” – Proverbs 17:28

Both insecurity and dignity manifest themselves as quietness.

Quiet confidence is more attractive than loud confidence.
Quietness without confidence is self-interested, self-conscious.
Confidence without quietness is self-interested, self-promoting.
One with quiet confidence has the capacity to consider another:
security in One’s identity yields mental capacity to consider another;
silence yields physical capacity to hear The Other.

Activism is most admirable complemented with quiet activism.
The loudest activism is paramount when One advocates for another,
thereafter, One ought to assume quiet activism as a way of life.
Quiet activism is living with integrity.
Quiet activism is living in the world as if the world is already as it ought to be:
not locking your bike because the world ought not to need locks at all.
Quiet activism is turning the other cheek.

Back in the day, I desired to replace my awkwardness with charisma.
These days, I desire to transform my awkward silence to comfortable silence.

2310, 2017

Agrotechnooptimism

debs/ October 23, 2017

The techno-optimism in agrotechnology makes me a little queezy.

At first, the image of the vertical gardens of produce grown in abandoned urban spaces seems like such an attractive idea. One can only imagine how I fawned when my eager mind saw a possible union between community-based agriculture, environmental conscientiousness, and engineering.

1810, 2017

Salutations!

debs/ October 18, 2017

“Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral.” – Frank Lloyd Wright

If the internet is dark and damp room, then this website is a little nest I’ve made in the back-rightmost corner of that room.

I’ve made this nest at an interesting time. See, I am in a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. Long long ago, when chickens had teeth, I was under the impression that work is mostly neutral, generally apolitical, and probably minimally oppressive. And so I spent my life up until now studying to find work I love doing. Two diplomas later, I’ve learned that nothing is neutral, nothing is apolitical, and that work I thought I would love doing is, by default, complicit in systems of oppression. Too bad it took putting all my eggs in the wrong basket to come to this conclusion.

Being neither trained nor competent to do work that might actually be worth doing, is it still possible to scratch out a living doing something that isn’t detrimental to the earth or the life on it? Or will I just chicken out and help some rich guy get richer? For now, I am incubating this little piece of the web and hoping that by brooding over it (read: flailing like a headless chicken) an idea will hatch… one that my bird brain hasn’t the imagination to dream of on its own. This, I pray.

Oh, why hello there, dear Reader. Why do you look as though you are walking on eggshells? Feel free to eavesdrop, snoop around, and make yourselves at home, but please take off your shoes before you come in. Afterall, the little segments of coloured yarn and meticulously placed twigs that form this nest were lovingly salvaged; only the softest and colourfullest yarn, only the twigs that most resemble dragons’ whiskers (well, to me at least) were selected. Welcome.