Walking beside a King

Ascribe to the Lord, O might ones,

ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.

Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;

worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness. 

The voice of the Lord is over the waters;

the God of glory thunders,

the Lord thunders over the mighty waters.

The voice of the Lord is powerful;

the voice of the Lord is majestic.

The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;

the Lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon.

He makes Lebanon skip like a calf, 

Sirion like a young wild ox.

The voice of the Lord strikes 

with flashes of lightning.

The voice of the Lord shakes the desert,

the Lord shakes the Desert of Kadesh.

The voice of the Lord twists the oaks

and strips the forests bare.

And in his temple all cry, "Glory!"

The Lord sits enthroned over the flood;

the Lord is enthroned as King forever.

The Lord gives strength to his people;

the Lord blesses his people with peace.

Psalm 29

This psalm accompanied me through the four surreal days on Mt Rinjani as the voice of the Lord rang out far and near. Psalm 29 came alive, literally, for I glimpsed the power of God the Creator.

There were glimpses of beauty - the fog was like a curtain that opened and closed as we made an intense ascend, hiding behind it the show of our lives. We were camping at the crater rim, completely fogged out and unable to see a thing beyond our camp site. But when the fog eventually cleared, oh goodness... the sight to behold was insane. We saw the lake - beautiful and blue, while volcanoes stood guard around it.

If we do not see it, does it not exist? None of the three of us could have known or imagined the beauty behind the fog for all that we could see had been white light. But it is He who knows what awaits the patient when the veil is lifted.

It was a rather foggy and steep descent into the crater lake the second morning, and I was thankful that we could still see much of the path we were going. But there were moments when the fog cleared, and all I could do was stop and gape.  Tall, huge rolling mountains stood grandly just beside us, its earthly hues basking in the gold of the morning sunlight. No photograph nor words will ever capture its immensity.

It was majestic and glorious, beautiful and strong; dark strips that lined its sides bore marks of its fury and passion. Yet it was so full of wisdom, tenderness, abundance and love. As we trekked alongside these mountains, I knew I was in the presence of a great King even though I could barely grasp the immensity of it all. And the only thing I could do then was to lift my heart up and worship the Lord Almighty.


When we descended and camped at the crater lake, we got a good view of the 'New Mountain' in the middle of Rinjani's crater lake that formed during an eruption just ten years ago. The new mountain looked right out of a destruction scene from an Armageddon war movie. Almost completely barren and dark, it was a stark contrast to the other mountains that surrounded it. But we know that in decades and centuries to come, the new mountain will behold the same kind of beauty that we were standing on because of that very same devastating material that had spewed out of its spout. This juxtaposition tells a story of renewal out of destruction, which is the thing I love most about volcanoes.

Notes from Biting the Bamboo

Despite of the insane pace of work the past year, there have been opportunities to grab a few good reads intermittently. Most memorably, I wrote to an author and received a reply! Totally unexpected and honoured.

Wish I could write about all the reads, but I'll just log briefly about the most recent one.

It was national day and our students' investiture, and the school aptly invited Dr Tan Lai Yong as our guest of honour. It was such a great choice for a speaker to inspire the girls, teachers and parents. He is a medical doctor who, together with his family, humbly served the rural Yunnan community for 18 years, setting up clinics and equipping village doctors. I'm writing about him because his perspective of his work there and life back in Singapore left an impression. It was a given that I was going to buy his book to read more about his experiences in Yunnan.

Biting the Bamboo is a collection of anecdotes from the years his family had spent with the communities there. I appreciated the honest recount of the sweet memories, successes, dilemmas, challenges and setbacks faced - sometimes with no resolution. and that's reality.

As an educator, I was deeply impressed by the way he constantly worked to adapt his urban medical expertise to the rural context. He is ingenious and creative in designing curriculum to train village doctors who were almost illiterate. His vision and work consisted of so many things going in tandem - rendering medical treatment, empowering village doctors and equipping clinics, building friendships, developing communities through small entrepreneurial projects, conserving and enhancing the environment. It's really insightful because he understood both the bigger picture and the intricacies of how all of the above are connected in the communities' lifestyles. They are all part of the parcel of developing medical accessibility in the rural highlands.

Dr Tan quoted these wise words of the ancient philosopher as a reflection of his desire and vision.

Go to the people, live among them.
Learn from them. Love them.
Start with what they know; build on what they have.
But (for) the best leaders, when their task is accomplished,
their work is done, the people will remark,
"We have done it ourselves."

- Lao Tze


But beyond the lessons learnt from his work with the community, something else left a very deep impression on me.
This wedding prayer of him and his wife was found on the dedication page of his book (which was dedicated to his wife who gave up an academic career to join him in Yunnan).

"Two things I ask of you, O LORD; do not refuse me before I die:
Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
and say, 'Who is the LORD?'
Or I may become poor and steal, 
and so dishonour the name of my God."

(Proverbs 30:7)

Set thinking by A Rocha

Just four months into teaching a subject that I really love, the reality of constraints posed by our curriculum and the lack of time have set in squarely in my face. It is pretty astonishing how quickly I got disinterested in the physical geography I was bringing into the classroom. I'd gotten so disgruntled and bored by the content that I saw it as a hindrance more than a tool to relating with my students. All the complaints and struggles often lamented by experienced teachers were beginning to surface in my own classroom life. I now feel foolish for being so naive as to have judged them for not trying hard enough. It is tough keeping a sense of amazement going.

Moreover, it became clear to me that I struggled not simply with the must-knows of a physical geography curriculum, but also with values education and problem-based learning classes that deal with general environmental issues. These issues have been a raging topic of concern and discussion (that is sadly also commodified). It is clear how crucial and important they are, given the amount of resources governments, non-profit and profit organizations alike have poured into them.

However, I have to admit that the onslaught of environmental issues I've been hearing about for more than half my lifetime have degenerated to a mere cliche. Don't get me wrong - I'm not cold towards environmental needs. In fact, I understand the weight of our environmental problems, and I do my part to reduce personal consumption and waste. I know that there is something urgent about this all. Yet, the unsettling thing is that no matter how hard I tried to muster a drop of passion, I couldn't find anything that struck a deep and genuine chord. It is one thing to find something interesting, but another to have a drive and be actively engaged with it.

My desire is for the latter, which is the reason for the huge discomfort towards my own attitude. I don't know whether this desire is born out of my identity has a geographer and a teacher of our environment. And it isn't that I am not trying to get there.

At this juncture, I'm more than thankful for a break in normal curriculum classes (examinations are here!) that allow me some space to rethink my attitude towards the geography content, my vision as a geography teacher to hundreds of students, and my personal relationship with our environment.

A friend bought me a book "God Doesn't Do Waste" by Dave Bookless (quite certain this author's had a mountain of jokes on the irony of his surname) a week ago and this cannot be any more timely. I saw a glimpse of God's heart toward His creation and its caretakers. It broadened my understanding of God's redemptive purposes and critiqued my man-centered belief about Creation.

God loves His creation and all that is in it. He loves every plant and animal - on land or in the deep sea, whether known or unknown to man - as much as He loves us.  His redemption for all doesn't stop at the redemption of desolate human souls, but also the redemption of our desolate wastelands... restoring it to its original glory as it was when Adam and Eve first saw the earth.

When Adam and Eve were first placed in the perfect garden of Eden, they were created in relation with God's creation of wildlife, to tend and to care for it. Stewards, that's what we are.

Beyond saving our planet for the future sustainability of human life - to meet our needs and lifestyles, a heart for the environment and a desire for conservation and restoration is so pertinent to Christian life is because of its intrinsic value to God - whether or not they have souls. He loves them.

Practically, it provides for us in uncountable ways - you can't think of anything that didn't originate form a natural material. Spiritually, our natural world is God's way of revealing his reality and power to human souls. I hadn't realized that God pours His love into everything He touches. I'd forgotten the sanctity that extends to everything that originates from God. Reading about the Bookless family's journey has reminded me of how God often uses the natural world to speak to me. He'd used it first to ignite a hunger for something deeper and beyond what my eyes could grasp; He'd used it as a firm declaration of His existence as a Creator God when I was searching and confused; He uses it time and time again as a reflection of His beauty, stirring an inexplicable sense of praise and wonder.

Our misuse has destroyed this sanctity.

The Bookless family and the A Rocha vision have also modeled how a godly care and love for the environment can be put into a practical reality. There are a few lessons that can be drawn from their experience:

Firstly, we have to do something about the disconnect between our lives and nature. When we lose this contact, it is an impoverishment that extends spiritually.

Secondly, environmental care can hardly work as a table-top exercise. It has to be practiced and lived out. A hands-on and really tangible engagement with environmental care is crucial.

Thirdly, it would be great as a community-based engagement. If environmental care is something to be practiced, ur own backyards would be a great place to start. Doing this at the scale of a local community or even smaller would be very relevant.

Fourthly, it is a great opportunity for people to come into direct contact with God and develop a sense of wonder through his Creation (human and non-human!)

There are many many more lessons, but this is where I'd like to start. It has set me thinking - what can I do in my own communities - at home, at church and in school? It was God's purpose to have me as a geography teacher in my school today. What is it that He wants me to do with the reach that He's placed me in with a few hundred students passing through my geography classroom each week.

This is a time to start pressing in for a renewed vision and for tangible ways to transform our geography classroom into one that engages the teacher and students with the environment beyond its four walls. And mostly importantly, to invite God into every nook and crook of classroom life.