Our anniversary

One Funny morning...

the last couple of months before joshua left... we often had a rather amusing morning.

I'm having hard time sleeping at night so my sweet husband will let me stay in bed a little longer but sometimes i extend sleep a little longer than his grace period so josh job is to wake me up and he can really so be creative in how to wake me... so my morning can go from waking up with kisses to waking up to a bed shaking or someone jumping on bed...

but one morning was different... no kisses, no pulling, no bright lights, no shaking and jumping... i wake up by my self and when i opened my eyes here is what greeted me that morning...


little bears looking at me... (joshua wasn't in the room that time) so i was a bit surprised how did the bears get there. Of course no one will do that except my husband... i was laughing so hard that morning.

a little background about the tebby bear joke... one day i was with josh on bed. Josh is working and I'm trying to put a new SIM card on my cellphone, it took me awhile to figure out how to open the phone so i placed the SIM card just beside but when i was about to put it on the phone the SIM was no where to be found. We look all over the room and couldn't find it. It was only the two of us and teddy on the bed. Josh didn't get it because he's busy working so we conclude that it was the teddy who got it. Until now we haven't found the SIM card, it's really a mistery to us. So our joke is that all the bears in the house are schemers and plotting to overtake us and that they move when we are not looking.

Some happenings in naga.

last week was a very busy week for the catholic community here in Naga. It's the festival of their patron. This festival is the biggest marian festival in the Philippines so this is really being taken seriously by the people of Naga. But of course to some it is a source of annoyance.

Some People really don't get the point of their own festival(aside from the more obvious points missed in the Bible). So during the festival that supposed to honor their patron saint, there are street parties with people making so much noise, music that is not edifying and has nothing to do with what they are celebrating, and dj shouting "hey people in the house, make some more nosie" as if the heart pounding noise that they are making is not yet enough and fire some firecrackers at 2:30 in the morning!. And then there are overflowing of achoholic drinks and of course some people just drink in gusto and get drunk (so some go to masses the next day with hang over from last night drinking sessions), then there are all these street vendors that blocks the traffic and people littering all around. By the way, our place is in with in the main celebrating area so we are witness to these perrenial activity.

Im not maligning or something, it's not only me that observes these umpleasant happening even the catholic bishop is againts all this. But this has become the tradition and this tradition degenerates... What is really the essence of this festival? Do all the people attending it knows what they are celebrating or they are just there for the fun and profit they can get out of the feista. Just like celebration of Christmas, most people are missing the point...


from the inside of our church, you need to excuse yourself going inside the gate because vendors are blocking the driveway.

The street becomes a market overnight. You can find all sorts of stuff on sale...

We are in the coner of the street going to the Basilica where the patron is.
The sides of our church was occupied by vendors (without even asking permission from the church)

Symbols

I've been spending a lot of time recently studying the covenants and sacraments... two aspects of Christian theology that seem rather connected and which I feel have layers of meaning that I've never really understood. I find it interesting that when God makes covenants with people and this relationship is intended to remain for future generations there is a sign, something tangible, physical, involving the senses and not just any sign... the sign is involved in the relationship. When the rain comes down and all creation sees the bow in the clouds it is a reminder of a promise to not flood the earth again, when Abraham is promised a great nation with a prosperous future, the anatomical element most involved in that process is marked. But the really interesting ones to me are the sabbath and the Lord's supper. The sabbath seems to be both the sign and the expected resolution. The Jews are to take part in a restful celebration which only the prosperous, at peace, and landed could really be expected to have. In an agricultural society you don't take days off during peak periods unless you already have more than you need. And the idea of taking a year off is totally absurd. Only a nation with incredible prosperity could allow everyone to take a year off. And so they take a day off to experience by faith a taste of what they are promised. The Lords supper is even more complex... complex because there are so many symbols at work in upper room meal that it is like a venn diagram of Hebrew theology. The night before the passover is when the people remember the blood of the lamb presented to the angel of death as a model of substitutionary atonement, Jesus then says that the cup is the new covenant in my blood, inaugurating the new covenant promised in Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel where a law written on people's hearts, the Holy Spirit indwelling, God dealing with the individual rather than the nation and personal forgiveness will be the relationship. But what does the symbol have to do with the relationship? The way that sacrifices worked in the Old Testament was commonly that of a shared meal between the individual, the community and God. In the same way, this is intended to place focus on the new community, a community of even more complete access and community with God through Jesus, the once for all sacrifice, and through that a community with people called out from every tongue and tribe and nation. Since the sacrifice of Christ ends the need for other sacrifices and inaugurates a new mode of relationship the symbol of a meal, the most communal point in both Ancient Near Eastern Custom as well as Greco-Roman culture (and in most other cultures in the world) so the symbol appropriately points to the nature of the covenant.