Thursday, January 27, 2022
So the new year is here and it's been bloody for me. Lol. Literally! In mid-December I went for my operation to remove the sebaceous cyst permanently since it grew again in November. Finally got rid of the damn thing. What a relief, and what a nuisance that such a small thing could be so painful. Bleeding and leaking for so long. The doctor let me take a picture of the painful little thing, lol.
Plus I just sliced my finger with a steak knife the other day. The waifu and I were preparing garlic bread, and the remainder of the baguette we had was a week old, so it was even harder than usual. I was slicing it diagonally with the steak knife since prior experience had shown it to be the most efficient at cutting the baguette, amongst all the knives we had. The last portion at the end was really thick and hard, so I held it at an awkward angle and used a lot of force, slicing my finger when it slipped. Yeah, it bled pretty bad. A big gash across my index finger. So now Onion has to patch up my surgical wound plus the gash on my finger. Yeah, just call her nurse Onion already, lmao. Thank you my love.
Last year felt like a slightly better rehash of 2020 (ignoring the crazy virality of the omicron variant). We moved to hybrid services for church, and then right before Christmas we went back into purely virtual services again. Oh, and since it's finally public information, the search committee's recommendation of our minister was approved by the church! We'll be welcoming Karen Dale as our reverend in March. Finally. Quite an experience to be a part of something like this.
Also since we raised up some money for upgrades to the AV system in the church, I've stopped my duties of handling the camera and am now sharing duties with handling the Zoom services with Brandon, first with the hybrid church services and then because of the lockdown again, online. I learnt pretty quickly and I've done it decently so far. Kudos to Brandon for getting a bunch of volunteers to help do a mock service so I could do things just as a normal service would, and it really helped a lot!
2021 was also a more reflective year, considering all the mass graves of residential school kids, and the part the United Church of Canada played decades ago. I'd come back to Canada after 17 years, and joined the United Church denomination after having dealt with the problems of Malaysia and Singapore for the better part of almost 20 years. It's interesting to see the other kind of unique problems Canada has, as opposed to Malaysia and Singapore, and the similar issues the urban areas face. Plus, they were all former British colonies, so hey! I've always lived in the British Empire. Pfft.
Also, had another virtual iBridge camp. I think it was somewhat bittersweet as it meant I could join again and catch up with all the Malaysian Christians there, but at the same time that meant that the pandemic was still going on bad enough they couldn't host it in person. I ended up in a group called Elpis, and we won the games! So now our names will be immortalized in a paddle that keeps records of all the groups that have won over the years, lmao. I mostly joined the sessions that fit my timezone, so I missed quite a bit in the Malaysian afternoons. The one session I wanted to attend was about an Ask Anything session, where we could all ask our difficult questions and the 2 panelists would answer. Mine were:
1) Is an immoral action considered moral if God commands or condones it? For example, in Numbers 31, God tells Moses to take vengeance on the Midianites, and Moses himself tells the Israelites to slaughter all males and non-virgin women, but to keep the virgin women for themselves. It sounds awfully similar to the Taliban in Afghanistan.
2) If an uncertain, questioning Christian actively seeks God, reading the Bible, spiritual books, historical and scholarly research and can't seem to be convinced on the existence of a God, would it be dishonest to keep believing even when they don't truly do? Or would it be more intellectually honest to be an agnostic? Considering God can see all.
They lacked time on the session itself, so my questions weren't answered, but thankfully, Jared managed to get them answered the next day by one of the panelists. He was honest enough that the first question was a troubling one that still made him uncomfortable, with the implications. But considering the knowledge he knew of God in other areas, was okay with the fact that God is righteous, even if he's unsure about these Old Testament atrocities, while he answered thoughtfully about the second question, that it would be dishonest to force yourself to believe if you didn't, but hoped that the person would seek, pray and understand more to know God. I didn't expect perfect answers that would completely answer my questions, but I thought these were reasonable, honest responses.
Speaking of my Malaysian friends, Jee Kit from my cellgroup in Collective messaged me asking about Zoe. It's funny because after everyone knew that Zoe and I were (Canadian) siblings, people always asked me where she was in small talk. Like, the hell do I know? I'm her brother, not her butler. I found out that people were also asking her where I was half the time, which was hilarious when we found out that people were asking us the same thing. And funny enough, it was him asking where she was very often, and now that I'm back in Canada, he's still asking! Lmao. Damn, can't get a break. I answered him in detail about her situation, at least, the stuff I was aware about since she's estranged herself from the entire family as she does. He took his own sweet time to reply, I thought he was going to ignore me after reading the response. But yeah he said thanks and hoped we were fine. Pfft. Reminds me why I was pissed off with the cellgroup all those years ago. They didn't care about me as a person and individual, just to get things done and find out answers they had. Hmmm. I should write about that soon. Document it since it's been a few years and have had time to think about it. Also no one reads the blog anymore so it'd be safer to put in names. I've reread some old blog posts where I had to hide names 'cause people were still reading blogs then, to protect identities and prevent hurt feelings. And in some cases I've forgotten who I bitched about! Lmao.
Oh, to end it, the waifu and I had our anniversary a few weeks before the Christmas lockdown. We spent it at La Fenice again since they gave us a $20 gift card, and we really liked the place. Had a lovely meal with Onion romantically enjoying the great food they had. Plus, we drove there! So nice to drive to our anniversary place instead of cycling and taking buses. Ah, the privilege.
Chronicled
5:22 PM