brr...!

Holy frigid winds in the Middle East! What is this craziness that is snow in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon--even northern parts of Saudi Arabia? Apparently, what the Israeli prime minister calls "the storm of the century" responsible for this chaos is named Alexa. I wonder if anybody will take that for their new baby's namesake. Once again, my family has the dubious honor of experiencing a record-breaking winter in the ME, complete with the second consecutive year of our heating system not working. Petra is now sneezing and coughing and fighting with me about wiping her snot. When I went to comfort Declan as he cried in his bed last night, I touched his hands and it felt like ice. Today I dredged up the thickest child-sized comforter I could find in our furnished apartment and readied it for Declan's bedtime.

Concerns, prayers, and research into clothes donations for the Syrian refugees living out of tents all along the Syrian border. Twenty thousand homes in Israel have been without power, many for three days and still counting. Magen David Adom medics and volunteers have been working for literally days without relief replacements because no one else could get through. People are sharing food, baking and cooking for others in greater need. The Israeli Army has sent in armored tanks into Jerusalem; the last time that's happened was in 1967 during a war. Neighborhoods are conserving power through a concerted door-to-door effort through the sacrifice of people without babies to go without power so that families with infants could warm one room in their house and prevent more children from collapsing from hypothermia.

When I was in Germany, fighting with the kids to put on the layered clothing system with our puny Israeli-weather gears every single time we need to venture outdoors, I'd thought, "Can't wait to return to Israel and warmer weather!" The rain, wind, ice, COLD that hit us in the face when we staggered out of Ben Gurion Airport at 2:30am was a real shocker.

May God protect all those who are still in the thick of it. Even in the midst of all this, the war in Syria continues, Hamas just fired a couple of rockets from Gaza into Israel, shots resulting in one death were exchanged along the Lebanon-Israel border... In the midst of all the Christmas messages from my Christian friends, I really wonder: When will there truly be peace and goodwill towards men?

In Bielefeld, Germany, a few days before the University closed campus down due to a storm with winds up to 100km/hr. Still felt warmer than currently in Israel though, given the near-perfect insulation of German buildings and the complete lack of in buildings here.

crib notes #1

I have decided that, yes, I will start learning Italian in earnest. Italy is a worthy country in which to vacation, and would hopefully be the country of choice specifically for our family's vacationing purposes. I would still not want to live there as an ordinary resident. People there are too relaxed for me.

First time in Germany. It's like a future utopia/dreamland. I met some students studying from China at the Universtat Bielefeld, where I am right now. It must be like dying and going to heaven, living standard-wise. It's so difficult for me to wrap my mind around the fact that this beautiful country with such an impressive culture of environmental-loving, strong work ethics, excellence and efficiency in seemingly everything they do and have could have such a dark history in the not-so-distant past.

Also, Chomsky is wrong to say that anti-Semitism as we understood it no longer exists. Maybe not in the US, but several incidents during my current travels in Europe due simply to my connection to Israel have made me painfully aware of this.

Too busy taking care of the children every day to write more for now. Hopefully I'll be able to reflect more in writing later.

third b-day

I feel like I kind of failed today at celebrating Declan's third birthday. It's certainly a lot more low-key than his first birthday, which was a huge party in China with trivia games and the Chinese traditional task to determine Declan's aptitude. I made a slideshow with music and everything. Then, on his second birthday, I cooked for three hours to host a dinner party in the midst of rockets firing back and forth between Gaza and Israel. Our friends checked on the latest siren status in Tel Aviv while waiting for another friend who's scheduled to arrive by train from there, and the neighbors dropped by mid-dinner to give us our key to the bomb shelter.

Declan's third birthday consisted of his usual going into the Technion with Daniel. Being expats, we're a little out of the loop on the usual gan birthday traditions that I kind of enacted with Declan's Hebrew mommy-and-me group last year. Father and son came home an hour earlier than usual in order to catch an hour or so of playing with our friend Helen's four kids at their apartment. Then Declan chose a really crappy-tasting cake from a convenience store on the way home, and we shared it with our neighbors who also have a boy around Declan's age. I don't think anyone took pictures.

I did, earlier in the day, go to Merkaz Horev and bought a bunch of things that Declan might be interested in. I was on the fence about them being birthday presents or part of a travel kit for our flight to Europe, then purely out of feeling tired and angry about something and not through a logical process, decided that it's a travel kit. I've never been a very craft-y person, and so rarely got Declan anything much to play and make believe with outside of open-ended containers. Now that he's officially three years old, maybe I'll try harder to provide opportunities for making art. The travel kit could be a good start.

And Declan wasn't completely sans birthday present. Instead of an English-tiled Bananagrams I finally found, which would have cost 109 shekels i.e. three times the price Amazon charges, I got Declan and Joshua (Helen's youngest son, who'll be turning three also but next week) each a riding stick with horse head. They had fun galloping around indoors and then fighting over the dark-colored horse versus the caramel-colored one at parting time.

So, pretty uneventful third birthday for Declan. Lazy ima.

Right after I took this picture, Declan yelled, "No!" and ran away

this weekend was a good one

Hanging out with Mark, who caught the train up from Tel Aviv, and Daniel bringing home some shepherd's pie he'd ordered from The Duke as part of dinner with Mark while I stayed home to watch over the sleeping baby...

Debating past midnight regarding social issues, like in university and grad school...

Efficiently completing the usual Friday run to the organic shuk, supermarket, and pharmacy (plus the post office this time), even though it did make us 50 minutes late for the free live concert by the Oy Division down at the Turkish Market. By the time we got there, the band was just wrapping up their last song. But I ended up supporting a local artisan and got two headbands for myself and a birthday gift for Sarah...

Discovering that coffee tastes fantastic with the addition of sweetened condensed milk...

Agreeing to Daniel's suggestion of driving the car to Kehilat HaCarmel and actually having a really satisfying visit to the Messianic congregation. I think it's because I went in the spirit of just wondering if God will be there and not expecting much of anybody including myself. The baby fell asleep towards the tail end of the song worship portion, so I got to listen to the interesting sermon without any distractions. Declan had fun playing with Anna's kids and I got to catch up a little bit with her as well. Daniel and I also discovered the craftsmanship of Kerem Creations, which is a really neat endeavor...

Making a quick lunch out of pasta dressed with an improvised sauce composed of avocado, garlic, dill, cilantro, green onion, tuna, and olive oil in the food processor, with lemon, sesame oil, salt, and pepper to taste...

Taking a nice late afternoon walk down Moriyah Street with Declan in the Ergo and Petra in the Beco...

Seeing a (live!) sheep overlooking traffic from a third floor mirpeset / a W.C. sign with the stick figure person barfing into an abstract toilet / a Chinaman statue made of china and a 1700s-style clock in the window display of an antique shop / a real ticket to a June 1942 concert of the Palestine Orchestra in Haifa as part of the table decor at Cafe Brussels / Recognizing the Hebrew for Cafe Brussels, which was hosting a secondhand clothing sale...

Paying five shekels for a perfect summer skirt and twelve shekels for a one-shoulder clingy black dressy shirt, plus being gifted with a free random sheet of Chinese character tattoos...

Playing in the dusk and eventual darkness at the small play area on the route halfway home, with Petra cackling every time she saw her brother and Declan yelling happily, "Again!" after he held Petra in his lap and Daniel helped them both slide safely down from the one play set...

Reading several stories with Declan after making a vegetable curry eaten over coconut rice for dinner...

And now I'm staying up way too late and it looks to be a busy week starting tomorrow until we leave for Italy next weekend, so I best be heading to bed. Daniel thinks my major illness this past week might be polio (since Israel stepped up an OPV campaign after detecting the virus in the water supply this past summer). If so, I better get more sleep.

and now...

Back in Israel.

A part of me is already missing Taiwan, another part of me is very happy to be back. Life in Israel now is my family's "real life" -- although one never really gets a break as a parent of very young children, Taiwan still had a vacation-esque feel to it the whole time I was there because of the convenience and family support. I never cooked a single meal in the entire two months we were there. I washed utensils, like, four times.

We are in our new apartment, which is now the archetype of my Perfect Family Apartment. It's the perfect size, the perfect layout, the perfect view... I need to organize and unpack everything still, but once I can, I'll include some pictures here for posterity.

Now, to unpack. Petra's been sick for quite a while now, and so as long as she's awake, I get very little done aside from holding her so she wouldn't wail and/or scream angrily at my neglectful agenda of, say, feeding myself, among other things. She just took two fussy hours to go down for a nap that she sorely needs, and I must seize this momentary freedom.

state of my soul (if i have one)

So these couple of days have been pretty tumultuous for me, psychological/mentally. I guess that's what happens when one struggles with the metaphysics of reality. At a bit of a logical impasse, thinking so much and hard that my reasoning was undergoing that phenomenon of when one stares at a word for too long that the word disintegrates into weird squiggles, I posed a query on FB. It does more good for me to sift through the reasoning of others when I know how consistently it fits with how they really live their lives.

Here are a few new thoughts that've surfaced which I don't want to forget:

1. I used to nod in agreement at the account of Peter replying Jesus after the latter asked if Peter was going to turn away from him too, as the first large batch of hangers-on took off upon Jesus' first difficult-to-swallow preaching (according to the New Testament). Peter replied, "Where else are we to go?" Basically saying there is nothing else worth living for or gives hope in life other than Jesus (or religion, for people who I feel are more ensconced in church culture than actual worship of Jesus as their messiah). Actually, once I'm willing to risk being egregiously and nauseatingly rude to a Creator that I doubt exists, I can think of a lot of things outside of religion that make life worth living. Things like the joy of self-awareness, of knowing one is alive which no other animal seems to be able to appreciate. Things like art, music, and the ability to be amazed by different cultures and caring for other people. If the truth is that we are all just super-evolved animals who have achieved abstract thought as the advantage we have over all other species right now, and after we die, there truly is nothing but decay and from dust to dust -- I am really quite all right with that. Better a short life lived in clarity and truth and acceptance--perhaps deeper cherished appreciation due to its fleeting nature--of such mortality than a...still short life lived with the illusion/false promise of something more--at best, and worse, choices made based on that imagination which called for unnecessary sacrifices.

The question, of course, remains: which is real?

2. I used to discount emotions and personal experiences as potential evidence for the existence (or lack thereof) of a good God. I want to follow God because he actually exists, not because it "makes me feel better"... and yet, I'm starting to see how any claims to historical record seem complete contestable. If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has taught me nothing else, it has shown me how vehemently people argue over history that happened a mere 60 or 70 years ago (if not closer to present-day) with wildly different accounts. How could anyone then say that things that had happened 2000 years ago were somehow more accurately relayed? This is not to say that history is unimportant--it absolutely is our best hope at arriving at objective truth. But even the accounting and remembrance/retelling of history is easily distorted, so after all is said and done, emotions and personal experiences could be just as important, as clues to the truth.

3. There's very little point in bashing/looking down on anybody's basis for faith or interpretations of emotions and personal experiences for why they do or don't believe. A lot of my friends who bothered to reply my FB query mostly provided evidence in the categories of (a) personal life history, (b) fulfillment of prophecies, (c) how nature works, (d) the accuracy of the Bible. The implication of thought #2 is that, for whatever reasons, some of us are more "blessed" with the right data/life circumstance or line of thinking towards the objective truth. In that case, it's more luck than a will of critical thinking or intellectual prowess. Therefore, there might be worth in sharing your personal data/logic but there's very little point in banging people over the head with it since that betrays a belief that somehow the other person just doesn't get the right answer like you have. Because you're so much smarter/purer at heart/more homey with God, right?

4. At the same time, it *is* important to settle this question of whether God exists or not in order to live accordingly because (a) if God doesn't exist, but I keep talking with him, waiting for him to respond, and make life decisions based on what I think he thinks--what a waste of my time and life! and (b) if God does exist, but I go on my merry way day-to-day with no acknowledgment or appreciation of him, it doesn't matter how good I try to live my life, in the end I remain an ungrateful beast who thinks less of my maker than dirt. So there's that...

5. At this point in my wrestling, I am of the mind that God might/most likely exist (because of the wonderful, amazing, beautiful way nature works). In which case, I need to figure out my relationship to him. But something I've noticed in these few days of my not praying during a momentary crisis but bucking down and relying on the resources already at my disposal is a sense of freedom. I was less frustrated because I wasn't praying and waiting for rescue or an answer that's less obvious than to my liking. It was a bit scary to feel like everything's on me and whatever happens depends on what I make of it, but it's empowering too and made me do things (like taking the kids on a long, convoluted trip to the harbor, or sucking out thick mucous from a very unhappy/fighting mad Petra's sinus without flinching) that I normally just prayed hard about and then delegated for Daniel to handle. Daniel pointed out that maybe this shows that, despite my heretical mindset, my current modus operandi is actually a lot closer to the truth of how God (if he exists) wants me to live my life. And I wonder if more Christians would be less apathetic/complacent about the injustices and suffering in the world if they "trust" God a little less. I've also stopped fantasizing about killing myself, because it's very possible that this life is the only existence I've got. Chances are God (if he exists) would not be displeased by this, my new desire to keep living.

Clearly thought #5 needs a lot more reflection and further development. This is just where I am now, right now.

breaking up with the flying spaghetti monster

As of today, if anyone asks me: "Are you a Christian?" My answer would be: "No."

Three people asked me today if I were going to church in the morning. I said no.

I wouldn't consider myself an atheist, nor an agnostic. If we must label things, I guess you could call me a skeptic. I find atheism to be just a flip side of organized religiosity, full of smug certainty over things that are only attainable through totally subjectively determined faith. I find agnosticism too intellectually and morally lazy, like choosing non-movement as a motion.

But to then say, based on my choices, that I'll go with the most optimistic, fun-loving, Pollyanna option just because I'm culturally inclined to do so seems a bit disingenuous too.

If I believe God exists, I would be a Christian out of all the religions. The problem now is: I no longer believe.

I might suspect, from time to time, out of habit. When the baby started wracking up thick phlegmy coughs and cried out in pain in between these fits today, I caught myself starting to pray. Habits, empty habits.

And I'm starting to understand other people's annoyance with religious people's attempts to convert/interest them. In parts manipulative, in parts poorly reasoned. Lots of false dichotomies.