Tag Archives: faith

3101, 2019

Organics for the Care for our Common Home

debs/ January 31, 2019

This semester I have the opportunity to formalize some of my past year’s gardening experience by taking the Organic Master Gardener online course through Gaia College. This weekend I had the privilege of attending Guelph Organic Conference. Both activities were mutually informative and are giving me a lot to think about (so much so that I have to write about it!) and I am so grateful that my employers would sponsor my personal and professional development in these ways.

2611, 2018

Flight over Convenience Store

debs/ November 26, 2018

One of my favourite times of the year is when UofT colleges have their annual book sale.
First-Order Confession: One of my least-guilty guilty pleasures is buying old books (–I wish I’d use the library more!). Second-Order Confession: One of my more-guilty guilty pleasures is bookshelf-virtue-signalling.

To prevent the regression of my better guilty pleasures to its lesser form, I tell myself upon purchasing such books that I must read them all. I am maybe 20% successful; and even less if you include the books from last year’s book sale that I haven’t started.

This blog post will be a reflection on the dominant themes in four books of such books.

2910, 2018

For Example,

debs/ October 29, 2018

I’ve been thinking about how much I rely on examples for both functions of communication: comprehension and expression. I appreciate having examples to understand, but I fear using example to express. As I become more conscious of how I engage examples in communication, my relationship with them becomes more akin to “reverence”. Examples are powerful communication tools.

3008, 2018

Field Notes from this Season of Vegetable Growing

debs/ August 30, 2018

In the days following our high school graduation, my friends and I sat in a circle on a patch of lawn beside the school’s science wing where so many memories were made, feeling the weight of going our separate ways and savouring the last moments of normalcy. One of us suggested that we go around the circle brainstorming/imagining each others’ futures–where would so-and-so be in 10 years time? For some, we could unanimously envision specific accomplishments and lifestyles. Other futures provoked theory and debate, or teasing and banter.

My future? It drew blanks.

0204, 2018

Book Report: The Art of Loving

debs/ April 2, 2018

There is a core idea I try to live by that I couldn’t quite put into words… until this one summer afternoon some two years ago when I discovered Erich Fromm in a second-hand bookstore in Canmore. It so happens that Erich Fromm had already put into words my impressions and intuitions in his succinct little book, the Art of Loving … before even my mother was conceived.

An organized mind is a way to my heart. In this respect, The Art of Loving had me at “Table of Contents” …

1712, 2017

The Tale of Three Trees

debs/ December 17, 2017

The Tale of Three Trees was passed down to me orally, as folktales are, while roaming through the streets of GuangZhou last year. The storyteller loved and cherished this tale from childhood. The simplistic yet deep-reaching truth of the story had inspired her to write her own.

8 months laters, by the rarest of chances, that this book caught our eyes while we were visiting a flea market in Stockholm. We only saw it fitting to bring this story back to the storyteller, now a bride, as she goes forth to build a new home (and joint library collection) with her groom.

As this tale has and continues to travel with us wherever we go since that night in GuangZhou.
We hope this book, having traveled from Stockholm to Toronto, will find its resting place in Hong Kong.

… But not before adding a few words of our own 😉

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.