Someone said to me, âBrian, you are ambitious.â I donât know if I would consider ambition as one of my qualities. But I do believe in answering our callings. We only have one shot at life so I t…
Here’s a blogpost by my Pastor on ambitions vs callings. I have yet to share the meaning behind my blog’s theme: A Two Talent Journey. But in Jesus’s parable in Matther 25:14-30 he contrasts different life motivations. Fear, he condemns, and while ambition seems to be the upright path, I believe he condemns that too. There’s another motivation to life. Pastor Brian Chan touches on this distinction.
6 hours ago
Still there. Every morning.
The following has nothing to do with me, but has everything to do with the poor, the downtrodden, the abandoned. Â I feel a conviction to share this. First, please watch the following video. Â I woul…
I returned home on May 1st and I’ll be home till August when I start at Keck School of Medicine. This year has been … well, no matter how corny it sounds, … indescribable. I don’t know if I could ever convey my experiences this year to anyone who hasn’t experienced them themselves.
So in the meantime, I thought I’d share some other posts by a friend, Harrison, I met in Gallup, NM. I followed him to San Francisco to work with the Missionaries of Charity’s AIDS Hospice called “Gift of Love”. I know I will never be the same after last month. Embedded in the title is a link to Harrison’s blog for a post that dives into some of the things that I was learning. Things that just messed with my life and are turning the world upside-down!
2 days ago -
1
April 27th, 2013
Beach Day with “Gift of Love”
Still processing what I learned from the Mother Teresa Sisters in San Francisco
Golden Gate Park
Each Sunday the Sisters pass out donuts and coffee to the homeless young adults. Once a month they hold an outdoor Mass for the men and women there. It’s such a funny contrast to see these Mother Teresa Sisters in their Indian saries talking with these young hippy individuals. Some of them are high, a few are run-away teens, and all are trying so desperately to get away from the pain that follows them inside.
To realize that physical pain is never just physical pain, but the body’s expression of the pain in our souls. Wow! I will never look at a minor cold the same way. Not as a passing annoyance, but a reminder of sin and an active sharing in Christ’s suffering on the cross: a shimmer of my baptism of water past and foreshadowing of my baptism of death to come so that I might awaken to the reality of new life in Christ Jesus. Thank you Dr. Moscati. Thank you Mother Teresa. Thank you Missionaries of Charity. Thank you Harrison. Thank you God.
Santa Monica #homelessness
kankeiganai:
tallypants:
lolamayfab:
emmadelosnardos:
awesomefrench:
Mont Saint-Michel, France
Reminder to self:
Somewhere on this beautiful blue planet of ours, there is a fairy-tale castle on the middle of an island that you can walk to during low tide.
I went to this castle twice - once as a child and then again as an adult. It lost none of its fairytale charm and if you ever get a chance to go there, leave yourself enough time to explore…
I was here during the summer! It’s a really amazing place. I didn’t have half as much time as I’d have liked to take a million reference photos look around though, so I’m hoping to go back again some time soon.
this place is amazing <3 I’ve been here!
What would lead people to make this?
Comparison is the modern day poison that we all drink. ”Comparisononly does one of two things. It either tears someone down or invalidly inflates another ego.” Don’t drink the Kool Aid.
Comparison has no place in the Kingdom
My USC Philosophy Professor and mentor Dallas Willard passed away this morning. I can’t believe he is gone and will miss him dearly. He played a fundamental role in my undergraduate years and also showed me through his word and life that faith and truth are compatible and not mutually exclusive. I’ve read one of his best books called “Renovation of the Heart” which I recommend to all Christians and have several other books by him in my queue.
-
Interestingly, in the three classes I took with Dr. Willard he never once mentioned a word about his faith. Yet, he did go out of his way in every class to study Socrates and the Socratic method and commitment of pursuing Truth. He never told or hinted to his students what he thought the truth was, but he hounded both those with and without faith to stay committed to truth.
-
I think he feared that the post-modern youth would lose their bearing on truth and so if there was anything he told us to remember from any of our classes it was to stay committed to aligning our beliefs with reality in a reflective, dialogical, humble, honest and critical Socratic manner. As the shoe fits the foot, he taught me to shape my beliefs around reality and facts and not wishful thinking, ignorance, dogmatism, skepticism, politics, or social pressures.
-
He was that one and only professor I knew who gave us his home phone number the weekend before finals so we could call him with last-minute questions on the material. Although, honestly, his lectures did put me to sleep sometimes, I enjoyed every one of them and will miss this great man. Thank you for everything!
-
“What kind of person am I? I’m happy to have a mistaken idea of mine proved wrong, and I’m happy to prove someone else’s mistaken ideas wrong, I’m certainly not less happy if I’m proved wrong than if I’ve proved someone else wrong, because, as I see it, I’ve got the best of it: there’s nothing worse than the state which I’ve been saved from, so that’s better for me than saving someone else. You see, there’s nothing worse for a person, in my opinion, than holding mistaken views about the matters we’re discussing at the moment.” -Socrates “Gorgias”
