comma

It kinda feels wrong to post this, because it's not even my own haha. But I sent a photo of Miao to ChatGPT and asked it to write a poem: 

curled like a comma

in the middle of a sentence

the day forgot to finish

you sleep—

soft-spilled across a woven world

of quiet greens and borrowed light

patches of earth and sun

rest on your back

as if the sky practiced painting

and left you as its masterpiece

your paws, half-tucked dreams

your whiskers, still as held breath

what do you chase

in that small, secret country

behind your closed eyes?

here, time loosens—

and even the air

learns to be gentle

so i will not wake you

little keeper of peace

little proof

that rest

is a kind of grace

watermelon lychee

 

while i eat 

my watermelon lychee ice-cream

the sky tastes the same

pink cotton candy 

against the blue

a moment shared 

with two other souls

"God paints the sky," 

i taste it again

Love beyond reason

 Just sharing some excerpts from the book Love Beyond Reason (Moving God's love from your Head to your Heart):

1. It may be a very bad thing that I needed God to die for me, but it's a wonderful thing that God thinks I'm worth dying for. 

2. The main place you do the work of God is as you go along. It doesn't have to be in high-profile, important positions. It will happen, if it happens at all, in the routine, unspectacular corners of your life. As you go along. (Jesus noticed a blind man as he was walking along). 

3. What is the work of God? It is simply to see what Jesus would see if he were looking through my eyes, and respond as he would respond. 

4. The first task in spiritual life,..is simply this: to pay attention to God. This is challenging enough, considering the difficulty we have paying attention to anyone. Add to that the challenge of attending to a holy, mysterious, invisible God, and always our sin will attempt to distract us. We all have a kind of spiritual attention deficit disorder. 

5. "But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother.." Weaning means learning to live in stillness with unfulfilled desires. 

6. If you want to do the work of God, pay attention to people. Notice them. Especially notice the people nobody else notices..God has numbered every hair. If one falls out, He notices. When we live in the love of God, we begin to pay attention to people the way God pays attention to us.

7. One of the most important diagnostic questions I can ask myself is "Am I becoming more or less approachable?" How available am I to the people in my little world? Can my spouse say anything to me? Do I sometimes pause to put a hand on the shoulder of the people I work with, just to let them know I'm glad they're there? Am I getting better at listening to people without judging them? 

8. Be so filled with the life of Jesus that in touching the world, instead of its infecting us, we infect it..those who have been touched by Jesus have gone out spreading germs. Little joy germs, faith germs, belief bacteria. 

9. The Bible says the place where God's unswerving commitment to justice and God's undying longing to forgive meet is the cross. The cross is the declaration of God's hatred of sin and all the damage sin does. The cross is the declaration of God's love for sinners and his insatiable appetite to redeem them.

10. God's hope is that we will stop searching for infinite satisfaction from finite objects. His hope is that frustration will once more cause the prodigal son to stop rooting around in the pit trough and return to the father. Frustration in this sense is a kind of gift. It is one of the forms God's love takes for people who might otherwise throw their lives away on trivial pursuits. 

11. Any time you see a bird nibble some seeds you ate watching Love himself at work. Every time you wake up, think a thought, enjoy a meal, these are not random occurrences. They are Post-It notes of love that the Father keeps attaching to all creation, in the hopes that someone will read them.

orange, black and white

 

I saw this litter of cats while walking in Bukit Bintang this morning. Sent a photo to a friend, and she noticed how all the kittens had different colours. 

Then I asked ChatGPT to explain to me the genetics of cat fur colours. Since our Miao back home is a Calico, I also asked why she has this defined line running down the middle of the back of her head, with orange and black on each side. Surely there was something that had left/right thingy happening in the genes during embryo formation?

Anyway, in conclusion, ChatGPT gave me a diagram briefly explaining the genetics: 

God's design! We haven't even touched on tabby/striped patterns and how those come about. Wow!

Last photo that Mummy just sent after I also told her the above: 

Take your time to admire it. 

blue tears

this has got to be one of the most magical nights of my life ✨✨✨ seeing 蓝眼泪 (blue tears) for the first time in my life! 

It's "dinoflagellate algae/bioluminescent plankton that emit a brilliant blue glow" found on coasts.

it wasn't part of the Pangkor itinerary but I suddenly thought of it and Googled, and found out that Pangkor was one of the spots in Malaysia to experience this phenomenon. 

Asked the lady at the zhuchar restaurant we were having dinner at, and she gave some tips: 

1. Go somewhere dark

2. "Disturb" the sand at the beach

MaPa and I got so excited when we saw the first one. Actually if you've ever seen 1000x more of them further out at sea / at certain locations, what we saw tonight was probably nothing special at all. But for us, we were still filled with awe. In that moment, I thought: this is like an analogy of earth and new creation. Our fallen earth can amaze us at times, but it is nothing when compared to the perfect, infinitely & indescribably better new heaven & new earth. Any good I experience on earth now is only a sneak preview of the future, just like how the blue stars we saw tonight are only a speck of an entire Milky Way out at sea. (it did feel like I was holding stars in my palm). 

P.S: core memory unlocked: squatting on the beach with Pa, staring at the ground, waiting to catch a glimpse of blue tears, swiping at the sand with our hands, interjected with "aiyooo!" "这边有两个!"

P.P.S: I first knew about blue tears from my childhood comic 哥妹俩. 

P.P.S: I must admit that what I said about the comparison between my life on earth now and the future in heaven is something that's more believed in my head than in my heart.

birdie

Mum rescued a zebra dove with a broken wing (and bitten by our Meow) few days ago.

ChatGPT said that cat bites are lethal to birds and needs a vet (but Mum isn't willing to go that far for a dove, who knows, the vet might not to. So ChatGPT said to just help it be calm in a dark place before it goes naturally. I FB messaged SPCA to try my luck, they also said 'just leave it be.'

Following ChatGPT advice, we fed it millet and water. I made a tissue paper nest, and covered its tiny cage with newspaper. Next couple of days, birdie was moving, alert and pooping. 

Everything was looking hopeful. ChatGPT was happy to receive the news too.

On Easter Sunday, Mum announced: "birdie died". She cleared away everything before I could see it. 

My first thought was: Christ is alive, but birdie has died.

I guess, one might turn it around: birdie has died, but Christ is alive.