after the euphoria...

things are never quite what it seems...to be able to maintain a critical distance towards our interests, our hopes and desires, this seems to be the real challenge in the aftermath of March 8th 2008...

like most people...i was euphoric, almost gobsmacked by the electoral outcome...never would i have imagined that the ruling coalition would lose 5 states to the opposition, and the infamous two-thirds majority finally denied, not since that legendary year of 1969...but then May 13 happened, and as they say, the rest was history...history that we continually refuse to face up as a nation, as people negotiating a common identity in a shared space called 'malaysia'.

i remember remarking to friends that denying the 2/3rds majority, and actually achieving it, would be greater than malaysia winning the world cup! i used to think, there is a bigger chance for our country to do that, being world champions (which is absolutely wishful-thinking and delusory), than seeing the hegemonic political stranglehold being broken for the very first time in our 50 years as a nation...guess i was pleasantly surprised and proven wrong...the lesson is clear. one can never predict anything when it comes to social movements and political groundswells...they defy our best analysis and past experiences...

now a new challenge arises both for BN and Pakatan Rakyat...i begin to see that our trust as citizens can never be in any particular party or personality, no matter how strongly we feel attached to them, whether on the basis of rational choice or pure sentimentality. the first week of parliament has been disappointing...perhaps these are teething problems for an emerging democracy, the beginnings of greater participation from the common man...

but my fear is that the common man loses his ability to criticize, without fear or favour, either coalition...to be able to struggle for the malaysia 'yet to come', where justice meets those who are currently marginalised...and a better kind of peace, not built on violence or supported by oppressive and authoritarian powers...that is the higher or transcendental goal for all malaysians...

our uniqueness and differing perspectives, our particular ethnicities, religious affiliations or interest groups, must fight against the forces of banality and expediency, that phenomenon of 'levelling down'...the development of 'substantive' individuality and 'qualitative' subjectivity in our personal lives, the working through of the depths of tragedy and self-identity, must never be sacrificed for the sake of political parties, political solutions, or ultimately for the sake of the nation state.

once has to ask a more fundamental question, 'What is the state or government for?'...surely it can't be for its own sake...or when politicians from either side wax lyrical about programmes and agendas that are proposed for the sake of the Rakyat...is it just rhetoric, masquerading partisan politics in its base ambitions of wresting the reins of state power from another group...

perhaps we should start, taking the cue from sages of old, Aristotle or even that old farmer from Kentucky, Wendell Berry, by asking questions like 'What are people for?'...i am sure these seemingly unconventional starting points would yield results almost unheard of in the daily political discourse covered by our press and forums that major in MPs switching coalitions, price hikes, and big foots in parliament...

the malaysian project will always defer its own completion, as long as there are citizens whose hopes and dreams defy the present labels, policies and racial stereotypes...the concepts of 'barisan nasional', 'pakatan rakyat', 'melayu', 'cina', 'india', 'lain-lain', and countless other terms, are not natural and as such metaphysical 'givens'...they all have a beginning, at a certain point in our history (depending on our self-interested re-tellings), and therefore belies their temporality and constructed natures...there is hope yet for their passing and whittling away from our national psyche and self-understanding.

the makings/unmakings of a nation...march 8th 2008...a new chapter begins...but the saga continues...

the people, the rakyat, will inevitably write their own history...which begs the question, 'who are these people? what are they like? what made them act they way they did? what had they hoped for? what kind of government did they ask for?...' history will be their judge, when the actors have long disappeared...

we truly deserve the kind of government we have...at least that's true, in the aftermath of march 8th 2008.

walk on

this captures that eternal dialectic so well; a human being, in search of enlightenment...existing...suffering; and the earth, the trees, as old as time, immoveable, oblivious; and yet, they are the same... the union of man and the nature he struggles with...

i once heard a woman say this, 'you are selfish. you think you can change me the way you want. but i'm like the world... i can never change...'

we all want to change the world; perhaps we got it all wrong... it is the world that changes...even us. it was here, before me, and here it will remain, long after i'm gone. to be able to see, to perceive both being and non-being...

and finally to accept, yes just accept...both our significance, and our temporality in the world...this is the way, and this is the path...

...

if i can only write...the possibilities are endless, and yet the outcome is one...the inevitability of what is, and that's exactly what it is right now...to be lost and yet strangely found, or better, to be found out

to see all of one's flaws, laid out, given a thousand elaborations, investing them with lies...do you see me? forever vanquished...almost an afterthought, time will have its way with me

to be pushed, to be extended, to be hanged and quartered, distributed like ash in the wind...is there beauty still, to be hung onto, like an orphaned child pleading for a return, for reunion...

it is the fracture, it is the loss, it is the impassible void...at the center of everything...life, the universe, and that one true love...

...the emergent crowd are elitist 'name-droppers', spouting jargon for the initiated, while the rest are left out...

surprises can be good...they can be disconcerting...even painful or hurtful sometimes. conversations can leave us with all kinds of feelings... one moment we can be full of excitement, anticipation... the next, we can be in the doldrums, depressed...

listening to stories...stories about people, can be that way too... we can be full of awe, admiration for all the goodness or kindnesses we hear about... the next, utterly lost for words when we hear about the ugly, the depraved...

tonite, i had such a feeling... because of a conversation i had with a friend... a conversation about our lives...and then about the people in our lives...names...those we esteem, and also those who disappoint... i was uncomfortable... he asked hard questions... i was implicated by his claims... 'am i really a part of the problem he was railing about?' i wanted to defend the group i was aligned with... but seriously... perhaps he's got a point... self-critique is a rare commodity in our day... it sure stung like hell!!! (for a moment, i felt like an American patriot told by an Al-Qaeda member that i was the real terrorist, after all... utterly unthinkable... and yet the anger that was aroused in me proves his very point...)

inevitably, god and spirituality came up, in the dirt of our perplexing, disappointed lives..."i am but a little breath..." i couldnt have felt our fragility more pointedly, in the silences that punctuate our speech...

where is god in all this? the future seems indifferent to both of us... perhaps it's the very open-endedness of our lives, the sense that all CANNOT be resolved... no easy resolutions before apparent disputes...

i was thinking today...perhaps if i had one more SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE... the kind that Aquinas had...that which terminated all the SUMMAS he gave to the church... then, perhaps...maybe... i would be happier...

oh unassuming conversation... never would i expect you to tear down those lofty dreams of mine...bring me down to earth... i can never be another 'meister eckhart'... another 'miroslav volf'... or a 'john milbank'...

names...they are all just names... concepts...'emergent'...'postmodernity'... 'theology'... 'politics'... they are all just concepts...

but God... that which we cannot conceive, we must LEARN to pass over in silence...

it is surely the hardest part of all...

...of God's spies...

Rowan Williams quoting Brian McLaren in a speech he gave at a Christian-Muslim Forum... That's a pretty potent combination...

"It’s easy to talk about these things abstractly so I’ll end by quoting to you a story I came across recently from a most unlikely quarter. The book I’m reading from is an excellent book by Brian McLaren, an American Evangelical, pastor of a large independent church in the Washington DC area. The sort of Christian pastor who arouses a certain amount of anxiety in the breasts both of Muslims and of more liberal Christians, not to say columnists in some of our newspapers. The book is entitled, though, ‘A Generous Orthodoxy’ and it has a long and extraordinarily moving chapter on his approach to people of other faiths. Towards the end of this chapter McLaren quotes from another writer from the same background telling a little story about an encounter in the Washington DC area not long after September 11th. One day my daughter saw a woman walking towards us covered in a veil and asked the inevitable ‘What’s that, Mummy?’ ‘Emma,’ I answered, ‘that lady is a Muslim from a faraway place and she dresses like that and covers her head with a veil because she loves God. That is how their people show they love God’. My daughter considered these words, she stared at the woman who passed us, she pointed at the woman and then pointed at my hair and further quizzed ‘Mummy, do you love God?’ ‘Yes’, I said, ‘I do; you and I are Christians and Christian ladies show their love for God by going to church, eating the bread and drinking the wine, serving the poor and giving to those in need. We don’t wear veils but we do love God’.

After this Emma took every opportunity to point to Muslim women during our shopping trips and telling me ‘Mummy, she loves God’. One day we were getting out of our car in our driveway at the same time as our Pakistani neighbours. Emma saw the mother beautifully veiled and pointed at her and shouted ‘Look Mummy – she loves God’. My neighbour was surprised, I told her what I had told her what I had taught Emma about Muslim ladies loving God, while she held back tears this near stranger hugged me saying, ‘I wish all Americans would teach their children so, the world would be better’.

That perhaps is – as simply as that – what we have to teach; that, perhaps, is what the Muslim Christian Forum by the Grace of God can achieve, thank you for being with us this evening."

the memory that stays with me most, from my brief meetings with these two sages of the faith, was the depth of their spirituality and ( i struggle for a better word...) godliness... yes, being in their presence, is to be in the thrall of 'godliness'...

here's the rest of Dr. Williams' speech.

...faith is not the sum of historical proofs...it is so much more...

 

"Christianity is not based on a historical truth; rather, it
offers us a (historical) narrative and says: now believe! But
not, believe this narrative with the belief appropriate to a
historical narrative, rather: believe, through thick and thin,
which you can only do as the result of a life. Here you have a
narrative, don't take the same attitude to it as you take to
other historical narratives! Make a quite different place in your
life for it. - There is nothing paradoxical about that!"
- Ludwig Wittgenstein (1937)

...in the final analysis, grounding our faith on objectivity and historicity may be utterly irrelevant...faith in Christ calls for passionate inwardness..."the result of a life..." loving, enduring, suffering...

cryptic
nascent
emphatic
tragic
miscellaneous...

all life is miscellaneous
all life is peripheral
the peripathetic crawl
the incandescent struggle

mourning with a human face
i settle..
yes…i settle
make amends
with you…

the dead follows me
they are alive
yes..they keep me alive

i might be wrong
i may have been wrong
all this while
for a long, long time…
yes, i could be all wrong

imitation
constant imitation
a gospel of sufferings
to renounce a little
to give away our all

to turn myself around…
to live on a different plane…
repentance
imagining things
i can’t think of
now

inwardness
makes me yours
you do not speak
at a distance
you address
me…
directly…

the flight of passion
i have only tears
dried out
limitations
all around

episodic memory
i smile
i say
“i remember…
i remember your face…”

...he is the voice of postmodern rock...and he looks darn cool too...

watch thom yorke perform 'arpeggi'... it is an experience...