Sometime ago, I learnt to distinguish between devotional times and devotional living. The writer who made this clear to me was Sally Clarkson, homeschooling  mother , writer and women’s groups’ speaker. She wrote that we are to ever live before God- being conscious of His presence as we go about our daily activities of working, cleaning, interacting with colleagues at the office and driving on the roads.  Another Singaporean pastor put it succinctly when he mentioned that “doing devotions” aren’t imperative to the Christian life.  What we need to return to, he mused, is  a life that is consciously lived out in God’s presence.

The autobiographical work, Nine Jewels, is a book that tells of such devotional living.  The writer tells her tale of a childhood in politically stressful times in Indonesia and of her coming of age as a young girl who hears God’s call to service. She writes about  the transplantation from her beloved homeland with its familiar smells, sounds and close-knit community to the Discipleship Training Centre in Singapore.  She writes about  her journey as a pastor’s wife, mother of two daughters and her work as Bible translator, speaker and writer.

God is depicted as the One who is sovereign over all events, weaving His purpose into her life through the ordinary rather than the dramatic. In this sense, this book is every person’s story, because the same God also works into the ordinariness of our lives to bring about his purpose for us- conformity to the image of His Son.  At the same time, Nine Jewels is Lydia’s Story as she describes in rich detail the unfolding of her journey from child to girl to woman. Her voice, at once both traditionally Asian and modern, gentle and powerful,  speaks of the loss of a  mother, the fierce love of a father who defies tradition and social pressure when he sends a daughter to college,  the birth pangs of a nation emerging from colonialism and her personal journey for belonging and for identity as a woman.

The writer employs the motif of jewelry to narrate her tale.  You can almost picture her holding each article up before you as she unravels her tale much like in the oral tradition of Asian storytelling. Each piece of jewelry is like a memorial stone, remembering a beloved  and marking a life-changing .

The narrative is held together by themes of identity and family.   Her father’s poignant reminder to her when she tells him that she has to leave their home to pursue to Singapore is to follow “the voice which is calling you” but also that she must remember where her homeland lies. Lydia writes of her father who reared his children with his mother-in-law when her mother dies, defied social mores by bringing his daughter to deep-sea fishing expeditions and football matches and who adamantly withstood the disapproval of relatives when  he sent his daughter to college.    She writes of her marriage to a deeply thoughtful man and of motherhood that came with much anticipation and joy.

The writer’s love for her homeland resounds in her detailed descriptions of her motherland.  She recounts the historical turmoil of post-colonial Indonesia: skirmishes with government soldiers ferreting communist guerrillas,  a failed coup and  violence against the Chinese. Her observations are interspersed with more personal  portraits of daily life as seen through the eyes of a  Javanese-Chinese child: watching Papa cut glass sheets,  grandmother’s medicine shop that smelt like a curry house, offering fruits and tea  to  her deceased mother on All Souls’ Day, kopitiams where locals discussed politics.

She also writes of loneliness that came with frequent relocations as a pastor’s wife.  In times  of loneliness, we are often tempted to plunge into a circus of activities to keep ourselves entertained and occupied. The writer suggests something quite the opposite. Let God  change the “seeds of loneliness” to  “positive aloneness”, exhorts Lydia.

In the preface to her book, Lydia writes that Nine Jewels was birthed from her desire to pass a legacy on to her own two daughters who were born and grew up in Malaysia.  “Though my homeland is foreign to them, I want them to feel the pulse of the nation. Its people, its struggles and its customs shaped the person I am, “she writes.  This book is indeed a legacy, not only to her daughters, but to every Christian who  is intent on seeing God’s hand in each bend in the road, in each dark thread and dry season. Without sermonizing, the writer ‘s story tells of a God who can be trusted with both the big and the small, the dramatic and the mundane. All of life is hallowed when we live deliberately before Him.

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I wish that someone would buy this book for me.  I read McMinn’s  “Growing Strong Daughters” some time back and gained a new perspective on how we can condition our daughters to the ways of the world when we could be nurturing them to be the unique strong individuals that God has created them to be.

McMinn  (professor of sociology at George Fox University in Oregon ) doesn’t dance around the feminist-vs- SAHM tree(haven’t we had enough of that?), but clears the underbrush and helps us see the path . This book is for women who are bent on being, well, women.

Women’s discourse has long been held up against the communication patterns of men, often as inferior or in the case of the r-feminist-superior. In both cases however, women’s discourse is seen as the Other -significant no doubt, as postmodern pc-ness would have it be.   But why be an Other? Why not just BE ?

I overheard several  women sometime back in church, extolling the virtues of  “the objectivity of men’s minds” versus the subjectiveness of women’s thinking  i.e.mushy minds.  This line of thinking shows ignorance of the power of women’s discourse : the sustaining of cultural heritage through storytelling,  the perpetuation fo medicinal knowledge through culinary traditions, the art of community-making in post-industrial age urban spaces.  Women’s discourse with the richness of  personal narratives is so much a part of our lives. Furthermore the division between objectivity and subjectivity is farcical : how can one tell the difference between the two without imposing one’s personal and therefore subjective opinion upon that division?

If objectivity means being empirical, there’s still that niggling problem of the interpretation of “soft” sociological data.

McMinn validates the way women are made and discusses debates on men-women differences .The conclusion? She suggests that we are different in some ways and similar in some ways.  That comes as no surprise. Yet what is new in what McMinn is saying is that we shouldn’t even be thinking in terms of raising our daughters to be career women or homemakers who stay at home.  Each woman and girl has her God-  gift -whether it be sewing gorgeous clothes or pushing the buttons in corporations or blazing the race tracks. As mothers, our delight is in nurturing her to be that person God has meant her to be.

Do  we train our girls to “maximize their potential”  at the cost of family ? McMinn cites the examples of strong women who choose to stay at home to raise her children nad are accused of wasting their talents; of strong women who go to work in order to feed their families and of strong women who have to do a bit of both in order to keep their families afloat.  In short, she goes to the very heart of the SAHM-vs.-working mom debate :  does our motivation stem from  selfishness  or by that desire to use our gifts for others, for family.

She writes about the pressures young girls face due to  media and society that tell them how they should look, dress and behave.  We mothers have to be that rock, to be their strength and by being strong, help them wade through the bombardment of information and propaganda. A woman can’t do that if she’s not even sure of who God has meant her  to be.

This is great news. I’m just so glad that I don’t have to force her to wear either a dress or denim trousers. Clothes maketh not the woman. So what does? She draws on Scriptures to answer that question. So , go read.

Oh, and about that first book?  Buy it.

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After a frazzling start to the year, I am ready to spend the rest of my days baking cookies and sewing. It won’t matter that the cookies I bake may not turn out (to be cookies) or that the product of my labour of love with needle and thread will be mainly buttons and perhaps, if courage should arise within, a handkerchief.

I think I would like to spend the next few months  not running around and being quiet. In fact, I sense the call of the wild within (and without, thanks to our mongrel pooch )to return to the writing life – not that I had much of one, but, sigh, one can be inventive.

Incidentally, I found this portion of a lengthy article entitled “The best advice for writers?” , quite amusing. It should make your dinner in your contented tummy do acrobatic tricks of sorts:
“Once a commitment to writing is made it can be a long time before a person starts writing anything of quality and, as a consequence, young writers often spend years escaping into other people’s fiction in lieu of writing themselves. Then, magically, they might develop a talent for expressing their ideas in language; their ideas might not be any good, but the practice of constructing sentences around those ideas becomes far less painful. At this point, a writer might start writing more and more each day, and reading a little less.”

Painful is THE word to describe my efforts at writing – book reviews, movie reviews, THIS blog- for the past few years. I suppose this is what they call “writers’  block”.  Or “writers’ edifice” in my case.

For instance, at this very moment I am supposed to finish a book review of a wonderful book, and send it to my editor before the end of next week, and here I am – here, doing this, and not focusing on what I should be doing. In short, I am distracted. In approximately 1 hour and 27 minutes , my whole lot of happiness will come chugging home joyfully in the car, thinking that mom has completed her work and will be free to enjoy the week end with her beloveds.

I think I just reminded myself to stay on task. Well, read the rest of the advice to writers here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/mar/02/best-advice-writers-read#start-of-comments

Ta. da.

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A sheaf of wind. The Waterhorse Suite. Children’s voices playing. Quiet.

I live for such days!!

We’re done with the pre-Christmas flurry of carolling, gatherings, performances and gifts. Is Christmas ever complete without these? I suppose so. Several Christmases back, all we could manage were home-made gifts for each other and a Christmas tree the size of an upturned shoe-box. And snippets of carols from here and there.
It was a very quiet Christmas at home then.

This year was another thing altogether. It’s interesting how the same tradition, celebrated differently at different times, can be as profoundly meaningful. This year, we’ve been carolling -twice- and gone for two parties, attended a ballet performance (in which Dd8 danced) , drank endless rounds of non-alcoholic beverages at two mini-school reunions and picnicked at a park with a handful of little kids and their moms. We’ve not had much time to reflect on the meaning of Christmas, I’m afraid, or rather, I’ve not spent the Advent season guiding my kids in daily slotted meditative thoughts of why we celebrate Christmas.
Should I feel guilty? I do, a little. However, I wouldn’t have done it differently though. So have I become shallow and callous in my treatment of Christmas?

I’d like to think that the frenzied rounds of meeting various people who have affected my life at various stages, have been good for my family. It’s as if to say, ” Look, here are my friends and people I’ve met along the way. Sure, we’ve disagreed and made up, left for faraway shores and reunited, bumped into each other here and there. Here they are. Isn’t it wonderful how diverse God has made us. What do you think?” Laughter. Belch, belch, sing, dance- “Hark the Herald angels sing”.

Now we’re getting ready to go home to see the folks. Dad-in-law all alone in his house with his orchard of cili-padi, curry leaves and lime plants. Grandaunts all alone in their once-was-homes with their tv sets and blue-red plastic stringed lazy-chairs. Mom and dad growing old with brother who’s not little any more. All that is Christmas.

We treat the remembering of God’s Word made flesh callously when we ascribe it the religious paegentry of self-righteous pious works be it grand shows of good deeds, mega-productions to “save souls” and the closetting of ourselves from those closest to us. If we forget those whose love we have received, whose lives moved us to try to be better people, then, we have forgotten how He gave up the crowd for the individual- Peter’s sick mother, the woman with the alabaster jar, the lady by the well, the children impatient to sit on his lap. We have forgotten how quietly He came.

And so, we are going home. Blessed Christmas everyone.

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I loved this song when I first heard it while watching “Joseph King of Dreams”.

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