More literature

"Every time I tried to display my innermost desires – a wish to be morally good – I met with contempt and scorn, and as soon as I gave in to base desires I was praised and encouraged." Tolstoy in Confessions

"For in the end what are we, who are convinced that suicide is obligatory and yet cannot resolve to commit it, other than the weakest, the most inconsistent and, speaking frankly, the most stupid of people, making such a song and dance with our banalities?" Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

"I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will be still the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I shall still go on scolding her for my own terror, and being remorseful for it; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall still go on praying; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it." Levin in Anna Karenina

Labels: Quotation

One thing that stands

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 Cor 13:4-8, &13

This love Paul speaks of is slow to lose patience - it looks for a way of being constructive. It is not possessive, remembering the object of love is a gift. Love is not anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance. Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. Love is not touchy, believing that love is the bottom of any treatment or action. Love gives the benefit of the doubt. If the doubt persists, react in love. Love does not keep account of evil or gloat over wickedness, it is glad with all good when truth prevails. Love knows no limits of its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope.

It can outlast anything. It is in fact, one thing that still stands when all else has fallen. If I stand, let me stand on the promise that Love will pull me through.

Labels: Love and Friendship

I wish

A lot of times I wish for someone to just say this. "I will just shut up and give you a hug."

Labels: Christian Living, Love and Friendship

Papa

After the major row with Papa yesterday, questions I asked myself. Am I self-righteous? Am I delusional? Am I devoid of love? Am I judgemental? Am I selfish?. I felt that ever since I converted, things just turned out sour and unhappy between me and Pa. The remembered oaths I ejaculated yesterday make me cringe. How could I promise to comply to him just for the sake of complying? I used to genuinely proclaim that I fret nothing except Papa, that I care for nothing in comparison with Papa, that I love him better than myself. that, no! I should never love anybody better than Papa. My affection for him was the chief sentiment in my heart. I trusted him simply because he was my Pa and Pa did not tell falsehoods. Pa has been so good. My thoughts and feelings regarding this matter are in entangled mass. I do not know anymore what is false and what is true.

Labels: Christian Living, Love and Friendship

Losing the dearest

I can bear to lose anything from this life. But how can I with my own Papa?

Labels: Love and Friendship

Losing and gaining

Compromise is not an option. The truth was, I was unwilling to stand alone. Every man is called separately, and must follow alone. But I was frightened of solitude, afraid to lose their devoted affection. I have lost so many, those I stubbornly tried to hold on and they went. But God help me. As I pursue ones that last. And as He gives them. May this be my only cry, that God's children will find God, whatever the cost is.

Labels: Christian Living

Sweetness

What are little girls made of.
Girls are made of sugar and spice.
Everything sweet, and everything nice.
Girls are ruffles, bonnets, and bows.
Dimpled smiles and dancing toes.
They're tears and giggles, dolls and curls.
That's how it is with little girls.

Labels: Pictures

Reconciled

Labels: Christian Living, Love and Friendship

First Step

Reading 'Real Love', Greg Baer, M.D currently. Pray that I could see the visions He allows me to see through His eyes. Thanks to I.S too. =)

Labels: Love and Friendship

Do

Labels: Christian Living

Sovereignity and Freewill

Labels: Christian Living

Know by faith

Labels: Christian Living

Gratitude

For going this far, for taking me from whatever stage I am, I thank God for Y.R.

Labels: Love and Friendship

Discipleship

Today I am making a more concrete and real step as a believer. Grateful for Y.R. for willing to be a mentor.

Labels: Love and Friendship

Experience

The question is on the balance between the free, open-ended and expressive work, and the attention to the acquisition of knowlegde, discipline and experience.

"Personal: Feel. A new perspective; Direct: Use of parallel facts or systems in understanding: Abstraction, Concretization, Visualisation; Symbolic: Identification with some other objects, shaking self free; Fantasy: Suspension of sense of credulity, exploration temporarily the seemingly fantastic or impossible."

With naivity and lack of experience, one can thus be more creative. =P

"They can make breakthroughs because they don't yet know that it can be done." Lecturer.

Who to be loved

"You are a dog in a manger, Cathy. You desire no one to be loved but yourself." Isabella Linton in Wuthering Heights

Labels: Quotation

Envy

"Edgar is sulky, because I'm glad of a thing that does not interest him. He affirmed that I was cruel and selfish for wishing to talk when he was so sick and sleepy. He always contrives to be sick at the least cross! I gave a few commendation to Healthcliff, and he, either for a head-ache or a pang of envy, began to cry. It is human nature. But does it not show great weakness?" Catherine Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights

Labels: Quotation

Learning

"..not exactly from seeing one set of faces, and one series of actions, from year's end to year's end, but I have gone through sharp discipline which has taught me wisdom; and then, I have read more than one could fancy." Nelly in Wuthering Heights.

Labels: Quotation

Thinking

Genuine thinking is always a process possessing direction. What happens when, now and then, thinking forges ahead?

Labels: Miscellaneous

A need

Design is action to change in some way. Decisions cannot be avoided or even delayed without likelihood of unfortunate consequences. A designer has no liberties to concentrate exclusively on issues which seem most attractive, and so the central skill is the ability to rapidly become fascinated by problems previously unheard of. It is to get on and make the best out of a bad job - often a matter of compromise on the basis of inadequate information and yet, no excuse for mistakes or failures on those grounds.

Labels: Design

Prescriptive

Designers do not deal with questions of what is, how, and why, but rather with what might be, could be, and should be. Seen to create the future, the process deserves not just ethical, but also moral scrunity.

Labels: Design

Inevitably subjective

Complete objectivity demands dispassionate detachment. Designers being human beings find it hard to remain either dispassionate or detached about their work. Indeed designers are often aggressively defensive and possessive about their solutions.

Labels: Design

Solving and finding problems

Problems and solutions emerge together rather than one following logically upon the other. The process is thus less linear but rather more argumentative. Designers create problems as they find solutions.

Labels: Design

Imperfection

Design invariably involves compromise. Just how trade-offs and compromises are made remains a matter of skilled judgement. There are thus no optimal solutions and the best test of most design is still to wait, to subject it to the test of time. Design solutions can never be perfect, and they are often more criticised than created. Designers must accept that they will almost invariably appear wrong in some ways to some people.

Labels: Design

Statement

The short term response to an uncertain future is to build in obsolescence.

Labels: Miscellaneous, Statement

Acts

"Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty." A.F.

Labels: Quotation

Fool

Foolishness. This parting is not for forever.

Labels: Love and Friendship

Learning

"I will say, let the years instruct you. This is to hope and yet not wish, to believe and yet not eagerly grasping or searching, to wait and yet not to be patiently anticipating, to love and yet not despair. Not apathy, nor languor. This, maybe, is contentment. Maybe. But let the years instruct me. We are not beyond our own time or our wisdom." L.R.

"For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this I believe that unless I believe, I should not understand." St. Anselm of Canterbury

Labels: Quotation

End of design

Part of the definition of a design problem is the level of detail which requires attention. How then do we find the end of a design problem? Is it not possible to go on involved in more and more detail? Indeed this is so, there is no natural end to the process. There is no way getting beyond doubt when a problem has been solved. Designers simply stop designing either when they run out of time or when, in their judgement, it is not worth pursuing the matter further.

One of the skills is in knowing when to stop.

Labels: Design

Lost

I became more and more anxious lest I be trapped in a process which I did not fully understand and ultimately led without a choice to a conclusion which I would know in my heart of hearts I did not agree with.

Labels: Christian Living

Design is an act of faith

Design is the performing of a very complicated act of faith. Designers discover much more about the problem as they critically evaluate their own solutions. It seems that the next minute they would discover a solution. Yet it is clear to both of them that the end was still far, far off, and that the hardest and most complicated part is only just the beginning.

The journey of faith needs to begin. Do what faith would do.

Labels: Design

Events

"Every utterance is an event, and no two events are precisely alike. The extreme view, therefore, is that no word ever means the same thing twice." Louis B. Salomon

Labels: Quotation

Fancy

I have tired of life, likely. But I could fancy a love for life in words almost possible. =P

Labels: Christian Living

Pity

"A pity, that one can be so hard to please. So many friends, and so few cares. Yet can't make self - content!" Nelly in Wuthering Heights

Labels: Quotation

Heart knows

"...yet you have not told me whether I'm right."
"Perfectly right! if people be right to marry only for the present, for pleasing others, with no one's objections, and soon you will escape from a disorderly, comfortless home into a wealthy, respectable one. All seems smooth and easy - what is the obstacle? Now let's hear what you are unhappy about."
"Here! and here!" replied Catherine, one hand on the forehead, the other on her breast, "In whichever place the soul lives - in my soul, and in my heart, I'm convinced I'm wrong!"

Nelly and Catherine Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights

Labels: Quotation

Originality

"There is, it seems to us, at best, only a limited value in the knowledge derived from experience. The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsified, for the pattern itself is new in every moment, and every moment is a new and shocking, valuation of all we have been." T S Elliot in East Coker

Labels: Quotation

Method

"She can't do Substraction," said the White Queen. "Can you do a Division? Divide a loaf by a knife - what's the answer to that?" "I suppose - Alice was beginning, but the Red Queen answered for her, "Bread-and-butter ofcourse." Lewis Carroll in Alice through the Looking Glass

Labels: Quotation

A good heart

"A good heart will help you to a bonny face, ...a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly." Nelly in Wuthering Heights

Labels: Quotation