no continuing city

So my friendly neighbourhood stationery store -- the one i've been buying most of my stationery from for, gosh, almost 20 years (?), has closed down. They've been closed for about a month, but since they're tucked into a corner that i don't pass by very often except to buy stationery, i didn't find out until a few days ago.
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So much to think about recently. The way this country is going, the bloody weather (getting worse and worse -- it's a long-term pattern, and i think it's irreversible), the way the world is going for goodness sakes -- and in the midst of all this, where life is going for me. It's all in little bits and pieces -- not in a bad way, just in a way that i haven't yet been able to fit together and figure out. Maybe i never will. Life isn't always coherent.
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But all this is really making me wish i could just take some time off work (again) and just sit down and write. Just had a really thought-provoking gathering with some fellow writers-who-are-Christians yesterday, and it was such a ... relief (?) to hear some of them say that in order to write, they need extended time away, a space to be quiet and shut out the world around them. i'm like that too -- but you hear so much about those writers who make themselves write for 1 hour every day ... i've tried that; it just doesn't work for me. (Blogging is an entirely different kind of writing altogether, and doesn't count.) The extended time, the quiet space, is important. The only thing i'd add to that is that "a space to be quiet" doesn't necessarily have to be a physical space. It can be a state of mind, too -- and firstly, teaching is not in general a profession that is conducive to a quiet state of mind (is any job conducive to that?), and secondly, my state of mind has just not been very quiet lately.
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Anyway, i just had a brief online convo with an anti-Christian Lit friend about Christianity -- he was thinking about how horrible Christianity is because Christians say things like "Thank God" when good things happen to people -- which he feels invalidates the suffering that other people undergo. So, because we sometimes talk about these things, i explained my theory about how people who think that way are just generally not thinking very deeply about the Christian faith -- because ultimately, it's a faith that is concerned with the state of our souls. Logically speaking, whatever happens in this world isn't of ultimate importance -- success or failure, good health or bad health, suffering or comfort. What matters is eternity.
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"For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come." That's always been one of my favourite verses in the Bible. As my friend pointed out, it would make a fantastic epigraph for my collected writings about Singapore. In fact, heck, come to think of it, it'd make a marvellous title. (Collected writings! Haha. Clearly, i need to make time to get to it, as JL said to me once.)
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