Thanks, Dad

I do not (and might never) consider myself handy, certainly not as handy as my Dad. But tonight, I was genuinely surprised and I can only thank my Dad for what he has taught me over the years whenever I helped him around the house.
Tonight, my friend Liz and I assembled an awesome kitchen cart. [...]

Tree of Life

This comes from Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning:
This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. “I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard,” she told me. “In my former life I was spoiled [...]

From “The Prophet”

And if you would know God be not therefore a solver of riddles.
Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children.
And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain.
You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and [...]

Updatus Colossus

Sync and Wholeness in Adult Life
It’s already been a week since I set foot outside FitzRandolph Gate (all graduation pics are here). As are many things in life , the experience was relatively anti-climactic and lackluster, but not insignificant. After all, I am now officially outside the Orange Bubble. Adult life has begun, and whether [...]

Try SoulPancake

I commend to you Rainn Wilson’s brainchild SoulPancake, a great forum and space for discussion and rumination of morality, philosophy, spirituality, and the like. Here is Rainn’s description:
We want to make discussions about Spirituality, Creativity, and Philosophy cool again. Were they ever cool? I have no idea. But it seems like a good idea. We [...]

Being human…

Rarely–or at least less often than I would like–do I feel that the lyrics of an artist give the listener a glimpse into the artist’s internal struggle with the thick,  tough tangles of life. But I think that The Killers’ frontman Brandon Flowers allows us more than a fleeting glance. He offers a strange but [...]

Remember, Re-live

We human beings in the 21st century are blessed to have technologies that in many cases elegantly unpack the workings of our mental lives. Of course, memory research has been center stage for decades, but only recently have the tools of neuroscience empirically addressed long-held theories about how the brain encodes, stores, and retrieves our [...]

inizia l’italiano!

To inaugurate my formal study of Italian, which begins today at 10am, I purchased a great CD called “Italian Musical Odyssey.” It showcases syncretistic folk music from all across Italy and Sicily. One of my favorite songs so far on the CD–simple but very sweet–is called La Torinese.
Viva l’italia!

Love of the unseen

If you’re on the Princeton campus and you find yourself walking through an archway in McCosh Hall, stop to notice the following inscription:
Here we were taught[--]by men and gothic towers[--]democracy and faith and righteousness and love of unseen things that do not die.
-Herbert Edward Mierow ‘14

cold play, hot cognition

Lights will guide you home,
and ignite your bones (Ez 37:3-5),
and I will try to fix you (Phil. 1:6).
-Fix You, Coldplay

these words resounded, strong and hard, when i came to faith (which, incidentally, was also when coldplay’s x&y album was released). truly, God’s Spirit or “breath” has a deep power to “ignite bones” and [...]