Late for my Plane

I am usually very late for everything.... and now for the first time, this belate-ness get over the broad...

For the first time, I am too late to broad on my plane.

It costs me the price of another 15hr-direct flight ticket!!!!!!!!!!!! Which is a lot to me!!!

I am already calculating how many dancing lessons or what that I can cut as a repay....


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Dear David,

I really thank you very much for the reading of the VINE!!!

I have been thinking a lot these days about it.. I might very well get deeper into the vine of God but I missed the chance, or I have overlooked, or not treasuring the occassion, and trying to stand up on my own feet.

Stand into the shoes, stick into , plung into the trunk of Life... I am still pondering about it, about my block, and the temptations around me that divert me dangerously.


I should really take this as a lesson, and regret about not pulling up myself together to complete my tasks before I go on a trip...

xxxxx----******-------xxxxxx


Praying to God..I speak more on the phone these days than openning my heart to Him. Sometimes I don't know if I am already talking with him, and whether I am subtly receiving messages from him. I tend to seek for concrete responses from real person in front of me... and in a way, this is providing a bigger cover to me to hide behind, and not really get naked in front of myself.

no energy

HI David,
Thanks for your information on nano-MRI machines.....exciting news indeed.
Though not many groups can afford that.

no mood really to work on so many things at the same time....

The mental health business... I don't know if it is getting anywhere.... I hope it can really help people.

My own crisis...want to rest and get away into new grounds...rather than staying at the same place.

Yes, waiting is not denial, it is just waiting. As I get my head into working, it doesn't feel so much like waiting.

Looking at my crisis, it is fire everywhere.... I kind of feel low energy to fight the fire, and I sit and see it spread....very horrible...

low low low energy...............

it has been 5 days?

Oh... David,

It has been five days since I last published???? I thought that I discovered about Jung's Answer to Job like the day before yesterday... as I am still in the middle of searching for his books in libraries, but have to stop because I have to do my "job" first...

I guess I may need to publish quite few.... as my big big deadline is end of Jan 09. I really hope and pray that I can made it to hand in whatever I haven't done so in 2008.... regarding homework and work....

Thank you so much for your prayer support.... I have been in contemplation and have got enlightenment from my Lord in the past few days regarding my pain.

Thank you for this verse:
De 7:13
"He will love you and bless you and multiply you; He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase of your herd and the young of your flock, in the land which He swore to your forefathers to give you. "

I am really struggling so hard and lost sight of my divine call, and nearly can't move on... I have to hang on to it, and face all the unfinished work and enjoy completing them by end of Jan 09.

I have to keep it up!!

By the way, how did you find that photo?????? Really shocked!

Wish you and your wife a rejuvenating year in your church and in Christ!

our culture relentlessly seduce us to emptiness and disconnection from God

Dearest David,

What you said is soooooooooooo succinctly true!

Allow me to quote you and share with many Christians and non-Christians here:

"What I have learned (at considerable personal cost) about being disconnected from God is that this division is always the result of my looking to the world for purpose rather than our Creator. Inevitably, after some consternation, I awaken to the reality that our cultural compasses are perpetually disorienting.

Contemporary culture relentlessly encourages us, even seduces us, to irrevocably link our identity to its trappings -- what we do, what we have, who we're with, and he like. But all of these connections are temporal. In the end, if we take our bearings from the culture around us, we are destined to experience emptiness, which it then offers to fill with various distractions and forms of sedation."

I have to say, you put it in words my deepest worry and sadness....

Let me keep praying...

Pray for my German Oral Exam today!

Hi Hi....

Very very nervous...I hope my German vocabulary are still with me.. after some last minute revision.

I have been catching up with my Thai today and the whole of tonight. I hope I am doing fine.

I know I can catch up with my Thai reading and comprehension as the Thai vocabulary are not too difficult. I may have to do more revision on my oral later on, right before my Thai Oral.

But Now I have to focus again on my German. It is my last chance of studying it seriously. I guess I have to live on whatever level I have now in the coming years, as I really don't have any chance of learning more.

What about you?

Would you pray for me? I have my German Oral Exam in 16 hrs.

I have to revise the related vocabulary: environment protection, food, weather, travelling, family & relationships, aging, employment and emigration. Some basic present, and past tense.

Please help me.

I have not been working on my other areas in these few days...

Help me to concentrate and to use the remaining time sensibly.
I also have to have a realistic picture of my limitations and capabilities.

Best regards.

Hopes!

Hi P & E,

My therapy of hope! I want to buy a copy too, if you see this book in HK! It definately helped me through the trough of sadness and tells me LOVE HOPES!!!

Paul's Song of Love elaborated by Rev Smedes:

"Gradually the parents let go of their hearts' demand that she
be different from what she is. They let the conditional demand for change melt into unconditional acceptance of what is .

Love hopes in a new way.

This totally accepting love brings hope, not for a miracle of healing, but for the miracle of joy, which is the miracle of gratitude.

This love brings hope that life is good, that it has point and meaning, and that the future ahead is one which we can walk into expectantly. In love we learn to expect to be surprised by God and joy - along with pain. Love is the power of a new hope that can co-exist with pain.

Hope fails when love is a demand instead of a gift.

Agapic love lets things and people be, and in the gift of letting things and people be, love becomes a power that creates a hope that will not disappoint
us."

(Quotes from L. B. Smedes (1979) Love within Limits, Ch12).
Rev. LB. Smedes : Love within limits: realizing selfless love in a selfish world. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1979. Rev. Smedes was a retired minister in the Christian Reformed Church, a former ethics professor at Fuller Theological Seminary.

~~~~~~~~
Love Hopes All Things

LOVE IS THE POWER of hope. As long as a person loves, he is able to hope. Love keeps us hopeful, in all situations, against all evi­dence. On the human level hope keeps love alive. When such hope is lost, love eventually goes with it. To be hopeful is to face the future with some gladness, some thankfulness, some sense that the present is worth liv­ing because we expect the future to bring what we deeply desire.

For Paul, however, hope has an added dimension beyond desire and even expectancy. Hope is certainty. He speaks of "a hope [that] does not disappoint us" (Romans 5:5)

The promise of Christ is that he is our hope. This hope cannot fail
because Christ will not and cannot fail. This is why Christian hope is often symbolized by an anchor, "a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul" (He­brews 6:19).

Hope in Christian experience means: "I am sure as I face the
future." Now we should note that this is true "because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit" (Romans 5:5).

Love is the power behind the hope that" does not disappoint us." Love stimulates the certainty of Christian hope.

Hope at its deepest is not focused on particulars.

At its core hope looks beyond a solution for a problem, an escape from pain, for assurance from
God that life has point and meaning in spite of disease, problems, and pain. Hope looks to the promise of the final victory of Jesus Christ over all that hurts and kills. Love breeds this hope in both the person loved and the loving person.

Love gives hope to the person loved.

Caring is a form of love, and to know you are being truly cared for is to know you are being loved. When a person knows he is loved, he has hope. This does not mean that he will expect a cure for his cancer, but he is given courage to feel that life is good and that to­morrow is God's gift of the future. Perhaps through the touch of human care the patient may discover anew the saving love of Christ, the Lord treating him as a pre­cious person.

And perhaps his hope will focus beyond this life on unending life with God. Love has given the power to hope that life can be worth living in the midst of problems.


Love gives hope to the loving person.

If we love the world we are compelled to hope for its redemption. The experience of God's love gives us a deep but paradoxical discontent with the way things are. The paradox in love's discon­tent is that we rejoice in our world as it is. We are glad to be in and of this world.

Love sees possibilities that apathy and indifference cannot see. Driven by self-giving love to seek a happier personhood for another, we are able to hear signals in the other person that hint of a will to change. Love keeps us open to possibilities within the loved one.

How can love keep a person hoping while a relentless hammering of disappointments beats at his life?

Only if it becomes a love that gives without demanding a return on love's investment.
The first test of agapic love is whether it can give the gift of freedom.

Love is a power to let selfish hopes die .

Hope fails when love is a demand instead of a gift. Agapic love lets things and people be, and in the gift of letting things and people be, love becomes a power that creates a hope that will not disappoint us.

______________________________________________________________________
Summary from Rev. LB. Smedes : "Love within limits: realizing selfless love in a selfish world". Chapter 12. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1979. Rev. Smedes was a retired minister in the Christian Reformed Church, a former ethics professor at Fuller Theological Seminary. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_B._Smedes

Christian-based PsyD Internships in Washington or Boston

Does anybody know how competitive and what is it like for Christian-based Internship programs in Washington or in Boston??

I am doing a PsyD (Doctorate in Clinical Psychology) program from California off-shore. That means I do all the coursework and placements in my locality, in China, and then I do my internships (pre-doctoral and post-doctoral) and licensure exam in US. It is a very innovative & controversial program, certainly no one has heard of it, I believe.

I am the first-intake of this program, and no body really knows what'd happen to us, and whether we'd get to the stage for licensure exams... Our program is quite certain that they'd get California pre-doctoral internships for us. As they are the largest PsyD-producing institute in California, and they have connections to take in bilingual Psychologists. As all of us are Bilinguals or Trilinguals, so getting an internships that serve Chinese in California is kind of easy for them. And, only a few of us would like to go to US to get the US license, anyway... People can earn much more here than in US, for most of my classmates, they are professionals already here...and so being a Clin Psy in US doesn't sound too attractive.

But I like the well-established CP system, psychological service in US. Very much advanced than that in my hometown. And there is a long history of Christian integration of Psychology and theology, pastoral counselling here in US than anywhere in the world, and not to say my hometown.

Therefore, I want to get Christian-based internships. OR internships at Psychiatry Department in an university (like medical school), as I can then go on with my brain imaging research. I am not sure which way I should go. I haven't discerned that from God..yet.

Language concerns
I have been working with an Irish-boss in an English-speaking research team in univ. for 7yrs or so. Therefore, I am fluent in English, but with a Chinese accent and mostly British pronounciations. I can serve both Chinese or English-speaking people. I am able to do simple conversation in Thai, but don't think I can make it up to the standard of carrying out a psychological assessment in Thai, but in Chinese and English, absolutely no problem.

Where do you think I can get information regarding Christian-based PsyD Pre-doctoral Internships in US (esp Washington & Boston?)

I would like to learn from experience of students participating or those who know people who are doing such Christian-based PsyD or PhD in Clin Psy in US!!!

I can download information from the official websites, but I know NO ONE who can share his/her experience with me ah...

Any personal referral?????

Thanks Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!