Posted by David Hiran Watson in About Me, Friends.
Tags: friendship, future plans, podcast, technology, Youtube
I reconnected with my friend Candace today over BBM (Blackberry Messenger). I haven’t hung out with her in 2 years, and during that time have chatted only a few times. So I really enjoyed reconnecting.
It’s neat how she was also thinking of me, and how we hadn’t talked in a while. I see this as a movement of God, when the same thought occurs in two different people at the same time.
I also realize that I and my friends are now in a stage of life where I’m going to have to rely on the phone, texts, Facebook, and other forms of social media to stay connected. Of course I’ll have to balance face-to-face contact with technological-based contact.
On a side note: I am hoping to blog more. I have also uploaded my first video to Youtube and am planning to share more through Youtube, podcasts, vlogs, etc. Of course how much and often all this gets done remains to be seen 
.
DH
Posted by David Hiran Watson in Friends.
My friend Chris was back in town for this past week. It was good to see him. He and his wife Alice are in Vancouver but planning to move to China to live there. They are doing so as professionals through a ministry with a desire to share the love of Christ.
It’s really neat how God has led them and is still leading them. Father, keep them safe in the palm of Your hand. Amen.
Posted by David Hiran Watson in Everyday Life, People, Random Thoughts, Relationships.
Everyone is different. I was thinking about that just now while reading and responding to Greg’s comment to my previous post. Actually I’ve had this thought before.
Specifically, everyone has a different view of the world. Everyone reacts and acts differently. Everyone is just different – even those who are supposed to be cut from the same tree!
So perhaps it’s no surprise when you ask for support, or share something of yourself, another person will (more often than not) respond in a way you weren’t expecting or even hoping. Perhaps they’ll respond the EXACT opposite of how you would’ve responded!
I think this is one aspect of people and relationships I never realised when I was younger. As such, this is one of those things you learn as you mature that has most surprised me. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised.
So what do we share with our loved ones if they are most likely to respond not as we wanted or even hoped?
DH
Posted by David Hiran Watson in Marriage, Social Media, Social Networking.
Tags: blogging, blogosphere, love, Marriage, New York Times, Social Media, Social Networking
Check out this article about a blogger who fell in love with one of her commenters, and they are planning to get married.
I’ve heard about couples getting married in MMPORPGs (Massive Multi-Player Online Role Playing Game), such as Everquest or World Of Warcraft. It usually happens along these lines: the two players meet each other through the game and initially chat through the game while having their characters complete game tasks together. Eventually the players decide to meet up offline and love blooms resulting in marriage. Apparently on Everquest there are even couples whose characters are married in the game as well as they – the players themselves – are married in real life!
Coming back to the article, I have to say that this is intriguing. In one sense, I’m not the least bit surprised this situation arose, but instead perhaps surprised it hasn’t happened sooner. I find it interesting that some other major bloggers have negative reactions to this. In fact, I like the way the article is written – as a modern day peasant-and-bourgeousie situation in the blogosphere. I wonder if these nay-sayers do, even sub-consciously, see themselves as above their commenters?
For me, all of this comes down to one thing we need to remember: people will use whatever they can to meet a life-partner. Let me rephrase that to something more pithy. Love knows no boundaries and will blossom in whatever soil it is given. As long as a medium allows some level of human interaction, that medium can be used to meet your future spouse/partner/significant other. And nobody should be surprised at that. Now I wonder if the various social media and social networking sites have been used as matchmaking tools?
DH
Posted by David Hiran Watson in Daily Life-Walk, Faith, God, People, Relationships, Social Justice.
Tags: God, Jesus Christ, Kenny Luck, The Irreligious Christ, The Meeting House
So, as I wrote in Ways to deliberate, yesterday I had a book study on Dream: Have You Caught God’s Vision? (here’s the Amazon link). The chapter we covered is called The Velvet Touch, and talks about the people we tend to shy away from, and the subjects of inclusion and exclusion. While the book is geared toward men, this chapter applies to all people, and challenges the reader to look at how and why Jesus was so inclusive in who He associated with and ministered to.
The fact is that Jesus was EXTREMELY counter-cultural to the establishment of His day. I think that is something as Christians we tend to forget, for we have become used to the wedding of church and state that occurred for many decades and (I think) is still ingrained in western Christendom’s psyche. Perhaps the degree of ingraining is lessening, but we still do not en masse view Jesus’ message the way the 1st century Jews and early Christians would have.
Some of the things we tossed about during the discussion were the types of people each of us tends to shy away from, and also the various reasons why we exclude. Reasons such as: a focus on a person’s inabilities as oppose to his/her abilities; a failure to look beyond the external and see that person as a person – someone who has hopes and dreams and likes and dislikes and a personality; fear of rejection or judgment from others if we’re seen associating with this person; and the list goes on.
A couple of points of hope we ended on were that firstly, recognising the tendency to exclude within us is the first step to changing (think Step 1 in a 12-step AA program). Secondly, our responsibility is not to just recognise when we are being exclusive, but when others around us are, and even point it out to them. This should be done in love and with gentleness, but should sometimes be done nonetheless. The person who is excluding another may not even realise they are doing so, and may appreciate it being pointed out to them in a supportive way.
DH
PS. I may post some more on the idea of Jesus being counter-cultural. If you’re interested in hearing more, and especially if you’ve never heard Jesus being described that way, check out The Meeting House and specifically the sermon series The Irreligious Christ by teaching pastor Bruxy Cavey.
Posted by David Hiran Watson in About Me, Daily Life-Walk, God, Relationships.
Tags: About Me, God, my blog
I’m not sure what to write yet…I think at times I just like typing – it’s very soothing for me. I think I know what I’ll write on – the book study I was a part of today. But first, that initial sentence might seem a strange way to start a post, and you might be wondering why I did not just delete that sentence once I knew what to write on? I think the answer to that is partially related to who I am and what this blog is to/for me.
For those who know me, I am someone who hides aspects of myself, and will open those areas up only when I feel completely comfortable. I suppose we are all like that to some degree or another. For myself, mostly because I have felt burned in the past when sharing and expressing certain areas of who I am and my personality, I tend to express those areas only when I am by myself or around individuals/small groups I feel safe in. You could say I have been operating under the “once bitten, twice shy” principle in these areas.
When I started this blog, I wanted to use it to express myself. I quickly came to a point where I was filtering in my mind what I would post on, and that filter was set to only allow subjects that did not ‘expose’ those aspects of myself I wanted to hide. I believe I mentioned something to this affect in a previous post, but I have consciously decided that I don’t want to intentionally filter out those aspects of myself, both in my posts and (more and more as I’m able to by God’s grace) in life interaction.
This is my lengthy way of saying that the initial sentence is tied to one of those aspects. In particular, it is one of the ways I walk with God. I will talk out and express what I am feeling or thinking as part of the decision-making process. For example, if God tells me to go to a location, and I do, I will usually say out loud, “Ok Lord, what now?”. Or if I am in the middle of an activity and I get hungry, I might say out loud, “I’m starting to feel hungry; should I go eat something?”, and deliberate from that question. The point is that I, for some reason, feel more comfortable to deliberate out loud even if it means saying out loud all the thoughts and feelings going through me, akin to a running commentary.
So I don’t have time now to post on the book study – have my church’s worship team practice. I will try and write about the study later tonight or tomorrow.
DH
Posted by David Hiran Watson in God, People, Relationships.
Tags: crying, Psalm 23, Relationships, spilled milk
Why do some people cry over spilled milk? I mean that in the figurative sense, but it is very frustrating! Instead of responding with the recognition that it is a trivial thing, and that the milk can be replaced, these people insist on putting the milk above – as in more important than – the person who spilled the milk. WHY?!?!
I suppose one possibility is a sense of insecurity within that person who is doing the crying. This would be akin to one of the reasons why some people horde: growing up they developed a sense of insecurity and fear of going without, so they horde as a security blanket. Coming back to the spilled milk people, what is just as frustrating is trying to tell the person who is crying that it’s not a big deal. I usually receive responses of justification as to why it’s not bad that they are crying over spilled milk. The frustrating part is trying to make them see that I’m not berating them for caring about spilled milk. Whether the spilling was accidental or not, you still have X amount of money ‘down the drain’. But that doesn’t justify putting spilled milk at a higher priority level than a human being. It doesn’t justify indirectly giving the spiller a message that they shouldn’t, even accidentally, spill milk.
This also doesn’t make sense as a Christian, and especially when all the parties involved are Christians. God has promised to be our security, to take care of us. The famous Psalm 23, which both Christians and non-Christians know, speaks of that very promise. Yet, if the Lord is our Shepherd, then why are afraid of ‘wasting’ inconsequential things? Don’t get me wrong – for those whom that cup of milk was their last cup, the milk wasn’t so inconsequential an item. Yet, even in that case, I think that people should have more worth on each of our internal lists of what we hold dear than milk (or any other material object for that matter).
DH
