He is risen!

Pope Francis's Easter homily.
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If i'm not careful, i'm gonna become a fangirl.
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Happy Easter, everyone!
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Dear Brothers and Sisters,
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1. In the Gospel of this radiant night of the Easter Vigil, we first meet the women who go the tomb of Jesus with spices to anoint his body (cf. Lk 24:1-3). They go to perform an act of compassion, a traditional act of affection and love for a dear departed person, just as we would. They had followed Jesus, they had listened to his words, they had felt understood by him in their dignity and they had accompanied him to the very end, to Calvary and to the moment when he was taken down from the cross. We can imagine their feelings as they make their way to the tomb: a certain sadness, sorrow that Jesus had left them, he had died, his life had come to an end. Life would now go on as before. Yet the women continued to feel love, the love for Jesus which now led them to his tomb. But at this point, something completely new and unexpected happens, something which upsets their hearts and their plans, something which will upset their whole life: they see the stone removed from before the tomb, they draw near and they do not find the Lord’s body. It is an event which leaves them perplexed, hesitant, full of questions: “What happened?”, “What is the meaning of all this?” (cf. Lk 24:4). Doesn’t the same thing also happen to us when something completely new occurs in our everyday life? We stop short, we don’t understand, we don’t know what to do. Newness often makes us fearful, including the newness which God brings us, the newness which God asks of us. We are like the Apostles in the Gospel: often we would prefer to hold on to our own security, to stand in front of a tomb, to think about someone who has died, someone who ultimately lives on only as a memory, like the great historical figures from the past. We are afraid of God’s surprises; we are afraid of God’s surprises! He always surprises us!
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Dear brothers and sisters, let us not be closed to the newness that God wants to bring into our lives! Are we often weary, disheartened and sad? Do we feel weighed down by our sins? Do we think that we won’t be able to cope? Let us not close our hearts, let us not lose confidence, let us never give up: there are no situations which God cannot change, there is no sin which he cannot forgive if only we open ourselves to him.
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2. But let us return to the Gospel, to the women, and take one step further. They find the tomb empty, the body of Jesus is not there, something new has happened, but all this still doesn’t tell them anything certain: it raises questions; it leaves them confused, without offering an answer. And suddenly there are two men in dazzling clothes who say: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; but has risen” (Lk 24:5-6). What was a simple act, done surely out of love – going to the tomb – has now turned into an event, a truly life-changing event. Nothing remains as it was before, not only in the lives of those women, but also in our own lives and in the history of mankind. Jesus is not dead, he has risen, he is alive! He does not simply return to life; rather, he is life itself, because he is the Son of God, the living God (cf. Num 14:21-28; Deut 5:26; Josh 3:10). Jesus no longer belongs to the past, but lives in the present and is projected towards the future; he is the everlasting “today” of God. This is how the newness of God appears to the women, the disciples and all of us: as victory over sin, evil and death, over everything that crushes life and makes it seem less human. And this is a message meant for me and for you, dear sister, dear brother. How often does Love have to tell us: Why do you look for the living among the dead? Our daily problems and worries can wrap us up in ourselves, in sadness and bitterness… and that is where death is. That is not the place to look for the One who is alive!
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Let the risen Jesus enter your life, welcome him as a friend, with trust: he is life! If up till now you have kept him at a distance, step forward. He will receive you with open arms. If you have been indifferent, take a risk: you won’t be disappointed. If following him seems difficult, don’t be afraid, trust him, be confident that he is close to you, he is with you and he will give you the peace you are looking for and the strength to live as he would have you do.
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3. There is one last little element that I would like to emphasize in the Gospel for this Easter Vigil. The women encounter the newness of God. Jesus has risen, he is alive! But faced with empty tomb and the two men in brilliant clothes, their first reaction is one of fear: “they were terrified and bowed their faced to the ground”, Saint Luke tells us – they didn’t even have courage to look. But when they hear the message of the Resurrection, they accept it in faith. And the two men in dazzling clothes tell them something of crucial importance: “Remember what he told you when he was still in Galilee… And they remembered his words” (Lk 24:6,8). They are asked to remember their encounter with Jesus, to remember his words, his actions, his life; and it is precisely this loving remembrance of their experience with the Master that enables the women to master their fear and to bring the message of the Resurrection to the Apostles and all the others (cf. Lk 24:9). To remember what God has done and continues to do for me, for us, to remember the road we have travelled; this is what opens our hearts to hope for the future. May we learn to remember everything that God has done in our lives.
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On this radiant night, let us invoke the intercession of the Virgin Mary, who treasured all these events in her heart (cf. Lk 2:19,51) and ask the Lord to give us a share in his Resurrection. May he open us to the newness that transforms. May he make us men and women capable of remembering all that he has done in our own lives and in the history of our world. May he help us to feel his presence as the one who is alive and at work in our midst. And may he teach us each day not to look among the dead for the Living One. Amen.
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on good friday

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The Uses of Sorrow .
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(In my sleep I dreamed this poem) .
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Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
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It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
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(Mary Oliver)
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surreal

How unreal life must have seemed to the apostles. Did they look back on everything they had been through, on the life of faith, at the end of it all, and wonder, How the heck did THIS become my life???
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absolutely non-frivolous idea that will make the world a better place #498602

Such a waste -- all these wonderful title-ideas i keep getting, for novels i know i will never write, simply because i don't / can't do fiction. They really should allow writers to patent ideas the same way inventors patent their inventions. i would patent my title-ideas and sell them off to people whom i feel will be able to make something good of them. Someday one of them might even win a Booker.
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camus

Finally got round to reading Camus. The Outsider -- my first European existentialist novel. [Actually, that's probably not strictly accurate -- i suspect the first European existentialist novel i read was probably Barabbas, by Pär Lagerkvist. It's just that, despite his Nobel, Lagerkvist never quite made it to the list of great existentialist writers. i probably would never have read him if not for that chance discovery of his book in a library book-bin -- no one i've spoken to had ever read his work before i raved about it to them. Maybe his being Scandinavian (and therefore somewhat removed from the centres of literary power...) has something to do with it...]
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Back to The Outsider. i really like it. Though the nature of the liking is different from the last time i really liked a novel, in 2010: Home, by Marilynne Robinson. That novel got me depressed for a few days after reading it -- it was just so sad. i think the way i like the Camus may be closer to the way i liked Barabbas, or even Coetzee's Life & Times of Michael K, which is one of those books which works on your consciousness like a slow-release vitamin C tablet: bit by bit, with infinite patience. i appreciated those two novels and felt that they were saying some very profound things about the human condition, but they weren't heartbreaking in the same way Home is. Maybe heartbreak only comes with broken or troubled relationships like the ones in Home -- but the protagonists in Barabbas, Michael K, and The Outsider are loners, and alone. The feeling is not the same.
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i'll need time to think about The Outsider. Suffice to say, though, that i was talking with another lit-teacher friend about it a few weeks back -- she was disturbed by Meursault's inability (or refusal?) to pretend. i guess she found it hard to imagine a world without polite pretences. i hadn't read the novel yet at that point, but i could see where she's coming from. At the same time, i felt, even then, that i'd probably end up sympathising or even empathising with that frighteningly austere loyalty to the truth. i like the way Camus put it in the 'Afterword' -- that Meursault's defining characteristic is that he 'refuses to lie. Lying is not only saying what isn't true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels.'
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i also have this theory that a lot of what really happens in the novel, a lot of what's really important -- happens not in the 'main' narrative, but in the little side-stories we're given along the way -- Meursault's encounters with minor characters like Raymond, like Salamano, his observations of the world around him, of life in prison. i love the sensory detail in Camus's writing -- the way he has made his protagonist see the world. Something to think about, when i read the book again.
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old trees

Walking home today, i remember the old trees that used to line the avenue where i live. i can still recall them so clearly: deep-grooved trunks overgrown with moss and ferns; seeds spinning in the wind, white wings like helicopter blades; delicate pink and white flowers carpetting the entire road in the after-rain quiet. i miss those trees, towering above the houses. They gave shade to the whole neighbourhood. Looking out from my bedroom window, i used to see dark, dense foliage criss-crossed with sturdy branches. It's all gone, now.
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i've tried to find the name of those trees online -- they're either mempat trees or trumpet trees, but there's not enough information available to know for sure.
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so much depends

It's World Poetry Day. Here's a poem that i now love. It's simple, quiet, perfectly poised -- things i've learnt to appreciate over the years.
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The Red Wheelbarrow
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so much depends
upon
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a red wheel
barrow
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glazed with rain
water
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beside the white
chickens.
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(William Carlos Williams)
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save the earth

Grumpy Writer: People should only write and publish what's truly necessary.
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Friend of Grumpy Writer: Well, a lot of books aren't really necessary...
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Grumpy Writer: Good -- let's save the trees!
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Friend of Grumpy Writer: There's always e-publishing...
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Grumpy Writer: Yeah, well, we can save on coal, or fossil fuels...
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prospero's island

It's embarrassing -- those books, plays or movies that everyone loves and you just don't get. i've got a few of those -- Wuthering Heights, for example, which i never wrapped my mind round despite reading it three times over seven years; Great Expectations, which i could never get through despite having read the opening chapter, also three times, also over seven years. (Edit: Waitaminit. Great Expectations -- i've read more than the opening chapter; in fact i think i've read a third of the novel, the same third, three times. But the opening chapter is the only bit i remember. It's good. Really good.) After a while, you think, perhaps there's just something in these works that you just resist, for whatever reason. And let it go at that.
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Shakespeare's The Tempest has always occupied a rather strange place in my reading universe. i could understand it at an intellectual level, and i could see why it is great art; but i just never got it at the gut level. Until today, that is. i was talking to a friend about the new workplace. Explaining how it works, explaining the way it seems like a little island where everything is different from how things are outside. And that's when it hit me: that's Prospero's island. With its visionary-maverick-control-freak sorcerer, ruling over his little empire, where everything bows to his every whim, where he makes the rules and theoretically should get to break them as well. And things go well on his island -- it is a place of beauty, of sweet music and gorgeous fantasies, where evil is contained and things are engineered towards the good, which of course is defined by Prospero himself.
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Sounds familiar? To date, i've worked in two such organisations -- and enjoyed the experience immensely. i guess it helps if the governing vision is one you believe in. And i live on an island that used to be run like that, too -- though i can't say for sure if it still is. Funny that i never saw all this.


[Edit:  22 March 2013

Hmm. Thinking again about this -- i may need to take some of this back. The 2 workplaces with the Prospero-like leaders were very different in nature. The second, i can appreciate with my mind. But my heart is with the first one. It's a pity it doesn't exist anymore.]
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words, words, words...

It's just suddenly occurred to me that writing poems about silence is a contradiction in terms. No wonder i can't find any.
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something new under the sun

It's so human -- to place too much hope on the new when it seems to be an improvement on the old. That said, however, i must say i was happy when Obama was elected President 5 years ago. It seemed then that America was saying something new, something sincere, about equality, about opportunity, about moving on from the past and making a fresh start. And despite everything that has (inevitably) happened since then to temper that initial optimism, i still believe that the hope was not misdirected. There was just too much of it for one man to bear.
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And now, one of the oldest institutions in the world has a new leader -- unexpectedly a Jesuit, and maybe-not-so-unexpectedly, from Latin America. Listening to the news streaming in from the Vatican, it's hard not to feel an irresistable happiness at the kind of person Pope Francis seems to be from all he has said and done so far, and the implications this will have for the Church. There's something about the spirit of that first homily that brings joy to the heart. i hope he will stay true to these ideals and values. i hope he will be well-received by those he's working with. i hope the world will be kind to him.
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"We need to come out of ourselves and head for the periphery. We need to avoid the spiritual sickness of a Church that is wrapped up in its own world: when a Church becomes like this, it grows sick... It is true that going out onto the street implies the risk of accidents happening, as they would to any ordinary man or woman. But if the Church stays wrapped up in itself, it will age... And if I had to choose between a wounded Church that goes out onto the streets and a sick withdrawn Church, I would definitely choose the first one.”

- Jorge Mario Cardinal Bergoglio, S.J.
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new old poet

Re-reading Arthur Yap, or rather, reading him for the first time, because i've only looked in the past without really reading. ('2 mothers in an hdb playground' doesn't quite count.) What a subtle intelligence, such gentle wit, and oh, so very delicately-sharp his observations. i've always known he was a good writer -- all the writers i most respect like his poetry. But now i want to type out everything in the space of city trees and fill this blog with his writing. And i admit i love the riddling, elusive quality of his work -- the fact that i can't quite figure it out, draws me in even more.
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But for the moment, these 2 poems will have to do. One, about art -- its value and its limitations (what is it about poets? forever thinking about art, its value and its limitations...); and the other, a quietly-cherishing love poem for his longtime partner to whom the entire collection is dedicated.


Edit: several hours later

Ok. It's a disgrace, that i've never read his work properly before. Surely he must have been Singapore's best poet. HM's so lucky, to have had him as a mentor.
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Edit 2: even more hours later
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Ok. i take that back. "Singapore's best poet"? Where would that leave... the rest of them, whom i also love? Cannot lah. "One of Singapore's best poets", i think, is better.
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a scroll painting
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the mountains are hazy with timeless passivity
sprawling monotonously in the left-hand corner
while clouds diffuse and fill the entire top half
before bumping daintily into a bright red parakeet
perched suicide-like on a beautifully gnarled branch
arched by the weight of fruit and one ripe peach
hung a motionless inch from the gaping beak
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here is transient beauty
caught in permanence
but of what avail is such perpetual unattainment?
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i know the stupid bird can never eat the stupid peach
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your goodness
for Keith
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your goodness, i sometimes light
my anger with, is what you have. no one
can burn it away; it is not for my discussion.
i know, near you, i myself feel good.
& this is enough for me, my friend.
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this is a life-time friendship; the poem
is short, inadequate &, except for a word,
totally redundant.
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(Arthur Yap, the space of city trees: selected poems)
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intuition 1, inertia 0

It's been a good day.
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thy presence my light

Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art,
Thou my best thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.
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Be Thou my wisdom, and Thou my true word;
i ever with Thee, and Thou with me Lord;
Thou my great Father, and i Thy true son.
Thou in me dwelling, and i with Thee one.
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crisps / chips

Because there's been far, far too little frivolity on this blog lately, may i present:
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The salt & vinegar taste test.
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Blame it on the almost-empty jar of salt-and-vinegar chips (crisps?... i suspect they were Lays, not Walkers...) in the workplace staff pantry, and the fact that the chocolate-covered McVities which had been my first-choice snack-food had already been eaten by someone else by the time i needed a snack. So i'm now craving salt-and-vinegar crisps / chips, and i'm wondering which brand to buy: Walkers, Lays, or (as a friend suggested) Kettle. So the thought came to me that i should try all three. Watch this space for taste test results!
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balance

Exhausted. The weekend was crazy, because i chose to make it so. Lesson learnt. This coming weekend will be better. In the meantime, God help me...
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butler-esque

So much hue and cry over so many things on this little island: the White Paper, the latest Budget, the place (or non-place) of literature on the school curriculum, etc etc. And here i am, looking at all of it, reading the furore on FB and in the media, and feeling, together with Rhett Butler:
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"Frankly, my dear, i don't give a damn."
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sunlight on the garden

i've always liked the title of this poem by Louis MacNeice -- but that's as far as the liking goes. XW loves it: quotes it all the time. And i must say that this is one of the rare occasions when our tastes in writing diverge. i'm not sure what exactly it is that turns me away from it, despite its aesthetic elegance. Maybe it's the bits about 'pardon', or the lack thereof: such a cold cold world, if pardon cannot be begged for, is not expected, if hearts keep getting hardened anew. Somehow this poem feels like the taste of cold steel in the mouth, unrelenting and hard.
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An altogether different kind of sunlight on the garden, though -- time spent with old friends. i've said this a thousand times, but i'll say it again: i am so, so, so grateful for the gals i met in London. It's been almost half a lifetime; for the last 9 years, we've never all lived in the same country at the same time. We've met up together as a group i think twice or maybe three times in the last 8 years. Today was the latest. It's always so good to meet up. Even when there's so little time. It's impossible -- there's no way we can truly share what's happening in our lives in the few hours we have together; and we've all accepted that long ago. But it's just so good -- to know that we're friends; to know that we all know each other virtually inside-out; to know that we've each made choices that are in some ways so unconventional compared to the majority of our peers; to know that we're in some ways so similar yet in other ways so dramatically different; and in all of this, to feel accepted, cared for, and free to be ourselves. i don't know what i'd do without them.
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wanting to be right

Had a discussion with a friend about Japan's war record. Or rather, Japan's post-war record, its repeated denials of the atrocities committed by the Japanese army in WW2.
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i've always felt very strongly about this. Partly because i grew up listening to war stories. Stories of unimaginable cruelty -- babies tossed in the air and bayoneted as they fell, innocent thousands rounded up, brought to the beaches of Changi and Sentosa, shot, and left to die. And that was just what happened here in Singapore. The Japanese army under Emperor Hirohito did similar, or worse, things elsewhere, in China, in Korea. These things are not easily forgotten. And when there is a continued refusal to own up, take responsibility, apologise, it becomes even harder than ever to let the past go.
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Until now, no one has ever challenged my indignation at Japan's lack of humility in refusing to admit its fault. When i talk about this with my Singaporean friends (not that this happens very often... but when it does happen), the feeling is unanimous: Why won't they just own up and apologise? It seems very simple, very black-and-white: we were wronged, and we deserve an apology.
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But i think it goes deeper than just a strongly-held personal opinion about Singapore's national history. It's also got to do with a sense that wrongs cannot go unaccounted for. It's not about wanting punishment for the people who commit that wrong. If that was all it were about, then the two atomic bombs would have been punishment enough (or more than enough... how can these things even be measured and quantified, anyway?). But personally, i wish that Hiroshima and Nagasaki had never happened. i have nothing against Japan's phenomenal post-war success; when the earthquake-tsunami-nuclear-plant disaster of March 2011 happened, all of Singapore rallied together to help in one way or another. We had nothing but the deepest sympathy for the Japanese people. It's not about wanting revenge.
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It's not about wanting compensation, either. Maybe i can say this because i was not personally affected by the war, and neither were my family. Maybe people who lost loved ones, or whose hopes and futures were destroyed in some way, will feel differently. But Japan has compensated, financially, for the war. If it were about the money, everything would be fine and dandy. It's not about the money.
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It's about wanting an admission of fault. Yes, that was what I did. I was wrong. I shouldn't have done that. I am sorry. Yet, this one thing has been withheld over the years -- and from the perspective of the victim countries, this just seems pig-headed, unreasonable, and arrogant. All we want is an admission of how our predecessors were made to suffer, an acknowledgement of our perspective, heck, our past, our stories, our voices, our existence. Because who are we, without the stories that we carry with us? Who are we, if not for the lives that are embodied in these stories?
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In the last two years or so, i've been thinking about how conflict happens. And it's been interesting -- the whole 'Japan dynamic' seems to replay itself, over and over again, in all kinds of ordinary day-to-day conflicts. Someone offends Someone-Else -- whether intentionally or not. Someone-Else gets upset, wants an apology, sometimes even demands one. It is not given. But Someone tries to compensate by doing something nice for Someone-Else -- it can be anything: buying a gift, doing a favour, whatever. Sometimes the value of that compensation vastly exceeds the cost of that initial offence -- a glowing recommendation for a job, for example, to make up for a deeply-cutting insult made on the basis of false premises; or a series of determined kindnesses to atone for a single act of violence carried out in a moment of anger. But with no apology given, Someone-Else continues to feel aggrieved -- there is a rupture in the relationship, sometimes for a long, long time, perhaps (who knows?) forever. Sometimes, Someone ends up getting punished for that initial offence -- not by Someone-Else, but by circumstances, by life. And it is hard for Someone-Else not to feel that somehow, that punishment is deserved, which really ought to balance things out in the grand karmic scheme of things and cancel the original fault -- and yet, when no apology is given, the initial fault is still hard to forgive.

i believe in apologising when i know i've done something wrong. It's a fundamental value for me, and even if my track record is not altogether perfect, i do try as best as i can, and i try to apply this principle with everyone i interact with, even my students, and other people i have authority over. Not exactly a very 'Asian' thing to do -- we're so conscious of hierarchy and 'saving face', it's ridiculous. Maybe it's because i get so irritated when people in authority over me do not apologise for their mistakes, so i try to do unto others etc etc. But that probably also explains why i find it so hard to forgive people when they do not apologise. They can try to make up for the fault in a thousand ways -- heck, honestly, i think they could even offer me a million dollars in compensation and throw in a summer house in Norway, but if that "Sorry" is not forthcoming, i'd find it very hard to let go. Conversely, once the apology is made, everything is forgiven. No million dollars needed -- yes, i'm cheap that way.
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It can get pretty ridiculous, if we think about it objectively and rationally. We all make mistakes, and we all have different ways of dealing with it. Maybe some people just don't see the act of apology as important. After all, what is a simple "sorry" when set next to, for example, a sincere effort to make amends by being nice to the person you've wronged, or, for that matter, a million dollars in compensation. i think what really lies at the heart of this, is a deeply-entrenched desire to be seen as right. To be acknowledged as right by the other person, and to have the other person admit to being wrong. Which is a problem if the other person sees the matter in a different light from me. We're so often always right in our own eyes......
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i've discovered that the only solution for all of this, is Love. Cheesy, but so profoundly true. Love for the other person is the only thing that can soften my heart, make me relent enough to let go of a hurt, and, even more fundamentally, to let go of the desire to be right, and to be seen as right. Which gets rather uncomfortable, really, because in all honesty i do not love all people in that radical agape way. Some people i just love more than others.
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Now this is where a pastor would say, we are to love everyone the way God loves us. And forgive everyone as we have been forgiven. That we are to remember that we are all sinners, and have no right to cast the first stone. That we are to take out the beam in our own eyes first, before trying to take the splinter out of our brother's eye. i used to think i believed in that, so very very fervently. It is why, for example, i've always found it difficult to be really angry at students who do stuff like not doing their assignments, etc, the way some of my colleagues seem to do. (Either that, or they just do a very good job of faking it.) i remember too well my own student days. But it's a different matter when i think that the wrongdoing is something i myself would never commit, or when i feel that i have been genuinely hurt in some way that really matters. That's when the Self really starts crying out for vindication. And when that cry sounds so much, so deceptively much, like a cry for justice, it is very difficult to let go of the desire to be right, and to be acknowledged as right. It is very difficult not to become a self-righteous prick.
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i remember my first explicit encounter with the concept of "wanting to be right" -- that is, the first time i heard this human desire named (and blamed) out loud. It was in Morocco -- on that memorable backpacking trip in university with M and A. Memorable for so many reasons: because it's a beautiful country, because the people were so hospitable, because we did crazy things like accept offers of cross-country car-rides from almost-strangers who could easily have kidnapped us and sold us to some international human-trafficking ring (... or so i've been told by everyone i told this story to...), because the night sky in the Sahara is a blanket of stars, because i've never tasted mint tea like that anywhere else since, because sitting on the dirt floor of a mud-hut in a mountain village makes couscous and tagine taste ten thousand times better than eating the same food, probably better-cooked, in a posh restaurant somewhere in globalised Singapore. But it was also memorable because the three of us so did not get along. Or rather, M and A did not get along -- and i was stuck in the middle trying to make peace, and failing miserably.
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Somewhere in the middle of the trip (or was it towards the end? i can't remember...), M told me, with a distraught look on her face, "I've realised that I always want to be right." And i remember thinking at the time two things: first, that it was true; and second, that i couldn't see what was wrong with it. Wasn't it only natural, to want to be right? Sure, it was what caused the conflicts between us to escalate and last longer than they had to, but i really couldn't see why M was getting so upset over this realisation. It seemed like such a very, very small thing.
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i can't remember if things got better after that for our group. They must have -- maybe we quarrelled less; but my sense of things is that the disagreements continued all the way to the last day of the trip. i think that M and A were just fundamentally very different people with very different values -- there was no way they would have seen things eye to eye. But i think the conflicts did at least go underground, simmering beneath the surface, instead of exploding the way they did at the start of the trip. Still, that realisation about wanting to be right must have made a difference. i can't see how it could have been otherwise.
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Because of course, now that i am so many years older and wiser, i can see M's wisdom. She has always been wiser than me (and thank God for that!). Wanting to be right -- it's the root of all human conflict. It's pride, of course, to use the old-fashioned word, the first of the seven deadly sins, the one that, in the Biblical accounts, got us kicked out of Eden, and Lucifer kicked out of heaven. No small thing at all.
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i'm glad, no, more than glad, profoundly grateful, to have friends who will call me out on things when i go wrong. i've been worrying about this desire to be right as well... which is why this particular conversation was so timely; but it's been so mixed up with so many other feelings, and i probably did need someone to point things out to me, because i couldn't see clearly for myself. It's so hard, when wanting to be right gets mixed up with a sense of (self)-righteous indignation at injustice and wrong. And, like what happened in Morocco, i guess that being able to see a problem is really just the first step. The acting on it, the heart-change, will take longer.
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Thankfully, God is a patient God, and doesn't expect instant change, and gives grace aplenty. The grace of mercy, and also, the grace that is redemption, the grace that changes the heart. Which is more grace than we can ever give, even to ourselves.
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