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I was invited to attend the marriage series workshop today by june last week after she came to know about me sharing of what she wrote on her blog on this. Being receptive, I accepted the invitation. Funny to say, I still a buddhist after experiencing buddhism in Pri (Maha Bodhi) and Christ in Sec (GMSS) school. I have learned so much about the buddhist school of thoughts and am still learning about them. It always good to experience other religion to have a balanced view in life, I thought. Going there early on a beautiful sunday morning isn’t easy.(Had been lazing in bed for many sundays already). Well, I made it there anyway. I did sense a bit of awkwardness as we had not seen each other after Chris and Tabitha’s wedding in Jan.Could have just freaked out, but we will get by, I thought.

          June started off by warning me about how things will go when it starts as it’s just like a concert. They sang modern pop Christ songs (she has a lovely voice too) as I would call them for now with lively beats and slowly you can sense the whole crowd’s energy level raising and raising.

      To balance things, the singers brought the emotions down with heart touching songs where it brought back memories of difficult times that I went through and survived by sheer faith in the divine. I also was reminded of someone telling me that she experienced a lady who believed that her husband will change and come back to her by praying faithfully. (Was it june??).Well, in the end, he came back and they are happily married again.

            These may just be the stories and things people see and experience to bring them closer to a specific religion. However(Not that I experienced a lot)for various religions, I had seen people sharing how the light (may it be God or Guanyin) appeared to save them when they thought the world had just collasped in front of them. I personally had an experience where I had no answer to a career dilemna. I put my faith in Guanyin and asked for answers. I picked the road she/he directed me to and here I am, as an officer serving the nation. After two years in office, I am seeing how things are going in my old unit if I had stayed on. It’s just so amazing how fate unfolds. I was emotionally charged there and then with that song they were singing, but being brought up as a no-tears  man, I didn’t drop a few tears like what the lovely woman was doing beside me.

Among the few happenings there today ,the singer Sun was back and she made an appearance today( Hm…what a lovely concidence). She shared on how she yearned to be back today as just an ordinary follower. She just wanted to be her, a follower embracing the Lord and receiving the teachings that is shared every session. I also realised why people liked to attend this particular church. The pastors appeared human and the sense of community spirit are really evident. People don’t feel put down weaklings and positive vibes are just so infectious. ( Remember that one negative comment needs 16 positive comments to balance things out..so think before you speak)

The next happening was the sharing of the few pointers on love and marriage. There were a few guidelines to follow to ensure love don’t die down after marriage. In a nutshell, I feel we just have to accept two things. 1)The journey is a sine waveform full of ups and downs(too much studying already)and 2) "happily ever after" is quite impossible unless you happen to be a fairytale character. You have to work together for things to work out.

Looking at current things now, it will be likely that I may have a Christian wife after all.(Nope, June’s taken, so it’s not her,people). I’m okay with attending church with her as it’s all about compromising and understanding each other. This session will prepare me better in accepting a Christian wife.

I guess the last memorable thing was seeing the soft side of a person I perceived as bubbly and lively. She dried her tears a few times throughout the singing part, but I guess it’s theraptic for her and there maybe some things that touched her till now. Yes, she can be such a feminie lady alrite.

To sum up, I had enjoyed today’s teachings and will look forward to joining the cellgroup and sun sessions when time permits.I have promised that it won’t be the last time I’m joining them.Even though, I hold on to my own conviction to be a buddhist, I’m still happy to receive teachings from the bible.  People, be open minded, and behold the learnings that unfold.

After turning 27 on thurs and a number of gatherings with my friends, I finally have time to sit down and write some reflections of the year that had just past me. The more memorable things that happened were entering the facilitation world, experiencing new things and people, finally get the "CEO" to know what my section is doing through infamous incidents and maturing a bit as a leader. Looking ahead, I see many opportunities out there to contribute back to community by facilitating in public-related issues discussions, even potential work offers now (yes, I don’t mind getting paid for now), becoming the first few to be locally certified as facilitators, picking the "one" out of the crowd and taking the relationship further, moving on as an leader and experiencing new things in life. It’s really becoming so exciting that I somewhat like everywhere. I do realise that i’m having too much on my hands now. I even have church introduced to me to start going to somehow.(It deserved a full column on the experience, so I putting it down on the next blog). It seems to me that everything is falling in place for me. My best friend had cautioned me tonite that I have to start picking focus if not, I will lose focus. To start with, I will get back to my books as my tests are coming in one week time and also start training up for 42.195km once again( too busy handling work till kinda lost touch)…..To a wonderful year ahead!!!!

Here’s something I read on my friend’s blog today which I felt it’s good to share.

"1 Corinthians 13:4-7
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Isn’t this definition of Love very true? Its really all encompassing. It just reminds me that whenever we have problems in relationships with people (may be friends, family, colleagues or partner), we should always go back to this definition - when we say we love, cherish and care for the people in our lives - are we living up to our love for them?" -June(2006)

I personally felt very heartwarming and timely as,of late, some problems are slowly creeping up into the team I’m currently leading now.I’m actually begining to lose some patience with the team I’m leading now as there’s some internal conflicts going on. They are not doing the team a favor by using small issues to pick on the opposing sides.

While I’m not a Christian nor a staunch Buddhist, I think sometimes putting the faith in the divine one to help out instills a certain kind of positive energy in us to drive us through these times. Before reading this, I was actually planning to flare up on them tomorrow. I guess with patience and counselling, I can still win them over to work as a team.  There’s always light at the end of the tunnel. Hope you all learn something today about love like what I did…Cheers.

         I had the privilege of attending the annual IAF conference for the past 3 days. I was so amazed by how international things were in facilitation and how much I have learned from the delegates. The skills, the way of drawing charts, the special tools they DIY and lastly, the culture differences we had from them. Of course, there were many S’poreans among the 250 people as we were the hosts. However, they too came from so many different walks of life. Teresa Norton from HK left a particular deep impression as she had the X-factor in her that leads people to follow her through ( she had an actress background).She was just fabulous.

          People were commenting there were so many people from the civil service and I had to kept repeating our stand towards facilitation. We are realising the power of harnessing the wisdom of the group.Of course, I am the few small fries among the senior officers and some paid scant attention too as I’m just so insignificant to them.

         Anyway, back to my topic, I actually felt so shy during one of the sessions where they were teaching us balancing acts in TWOs, THREEs and combined efforts. I had not held any lady’s hands since that time I had a short relationship of 1 month 5 years ago. My lady friend decided to partner me for the exercises.At that moment, I had to grip and hold on tight in each other’s arms to seek balance in various positions. I can’t bring myself to tell my friend what was the problem when we encountered some difficulties in the intial positions. It’s quite embarrassing to tell her all this stuff after all. We acknowledged that I was the problem though. It got better along the way when I started to all that comfortable with the group we had at hand with the human prymaids we were making in bigger group size.

            I was shocked by how strongly people felt towards some world events like 9/11, Bush’s way of leadership,etc… You can sense their strong disapprovement, their sadness and some of them had teary eyes. I guess what I see on TV can be so real when I saw what I saw ‘Live’ there. S’poreans are in generally amicable people, so I never really saw these kind of expressions till the last 3 days. In life, they certainly fought for some causes and I sense the storms they weathered throughout the years.

           The dust had settled now and it’s back to the normal life I lead. I had somehow saw and experience the world in a way through the interaction.I now know how New Yorkers are like, how some countries view US people and how much more I had to learn before I can fully call myself a facilitator. It had been a long week but enriching myself made it all so worthwhile.