Apr 9, 2011 | Life Reflections
This entry is to commemorate my father’s passing two years ago.
The day after my father passed away, it was determined that I would be the one to find and select the specific location where we would have his burial. So I went with a representative from a cemetery and a few of my father’s relatives.
I didn’t like the cemetery representative; I thought she was obnoxious and rude. Alas, I was stuck with her. She showed me a few options in their complex, which was comprised of several ‘gardens’ with different themes, and I could weigh the various layouts, views, etc. Meaning, not all spots were made equal. Traditionally, the Chinese cares much about giving a proper, even grandeur burial, rooted perhaps in ancestor worship. Of course I do not subscribe to that, but I saw this task as my last chance to do the best I could for my father’s honor. I felt like it was upon me to ensure that this last tribute to him would be proper and honorable.
As we went from place to place I felt the weight of the decision dawned on my entire being. I was faced with some trade-offs. There was a garden named “Sabbath” – what a proper name for a place of rest. My father died on the Sabbath day too. This garden was beautiful and it seemed like the perfect place. I thought, yea, he would like this. However, this particular spot was definitely above our budget.. The other sites were nice, although they did not strike me that much. I had to select one out of those and because I felt like they were not as special, I really wanted to drive down the cost. If we couldn’t get the “Sabbath” spot, at least maybe my success could be monetary. Inside, I was very conflicted with what decisions to make, and in the midst of this, suddenly I realized how much I missed my father. My mind kept saying, if he was here, he would know exactly what to do..
Mind you this process also involved me getting insulted by some comments that the representative made and snapping at her. At one point I couldn’t deal with her anymore and broke down. My father’s relatives had to educate her why the things that she said were offensive to the culture and to the family, which she should have known given the context of her work. They told her to stop saying those things because they hurt.
I couldn’t drive the price as low as I wanted. I ended up with a selection, although I didn’t know if I felt completely satisfied with it. Given the whole situation, a soup of emotions just flooded over me. I was literally sobbing all the way back and almost for the rest of the day. I felt like the lady insulted my father and my family, and I was angry at her; I felt like I failed my task – as the eldest, I was supposed to do this well; I questioned whether I did the right thing, whether my father would have approved and been happy with my decision; and I missed him because I knew if he was alive, even if I didn’t make the best decision and was disappointed in myself, he would have comforted me and said it was okay.
I came back to the funeral home and told my mother I couldn’t get the price lower, which was really a message loaded with my self-disappointment, and she said it was okay; we would give the best for my father. I signed the deal and the papers with the representative. I did eventually apologized to her and vice versa, although that didn’t change my opinion that she was a bad salesperson. It was ironic, but the piece of land where my father would be buried was now to be purchased under my name. Legally, that piece of ‘property’ belonged to me, and that would be so for as long as life on earth would last. Personally, I felt a weird and profound connection between my father and myself as his eldest daughter in this situation; a connection that is tinged with one word – responsibility.
I don’t think I have recounted this experience to a single soul. Alas, some things are too hard to communicate verbally. Besides, it’s been two years…
Sometimes I think about the many decisions in life that my father wouldn’t have a say in. There are many things for which I actually would want his counsel and opinions, and I have no clue what his thoughts would be because no similar situation had come up before and I simply had not asked. But I am not without counsel and I am not Fatherless, so there is no need to despair.
Time heals. It really does. But even more than that, God heals. I can testify to the healing power of the balm of Gilead, and the Lord has ministered to me tremendously the past two years. I don’t know if I can say I’m over it 100%, since there are times when it’s just simply hard, like when unexpected things come up that triggered memories. And I don’t know whether I will ever get over it 100%. But perhaps that’s okay, so as to remind me that this world is not my home.
—
Here’s a video clip that I made last year: Tribute
Mar 29, 2011 | Thinking Better
When you observe the things of nature, certain principles of existence just emerge out of the system. I’ve been spending some time being wondered by nature and natural systems through various means – different reading materials, documentaries, other montage of pictures, photo journals, actually being outdoors, etc. – and it’s been very instructive. I highly recommend the activity.
One of the striking things that, to me, is ubiquitous in nature is the multiplicity of function of any single entity or living being. The natural system is so intricately and intelligently designed that any one aspect in the bio-network serves more than one purpose. The trees in the forest are not just carbon sinks and oxygen suppliers for the earth, they also serve as water retainer, participating in the natural water purification system, as bird sanctuaries, as food, as soil stabilizer – physically and chemically, among many others that I’m still not aware of.
When one portion is removed, the equilibrium is disrupted and you end up with an imbalanced system. So when a species is endangered because of human activity, for example, a whole ecological web is in actuality imperiled because others depend on that species as food source or supplier of other services (e.g., cleaning, leftovers, etc). The natural system is so elegantly integrated that often, we only learn the truth about seemingly unconnected things after we disrupt them. The good news is that nature is so robust that it can tolerate a certain degree of disruptions, both natural and human – I’ll reflect on nature’s robustness in another entry. Yet when it comes to humans, foolish extremes are not an impossibility.
This type of integrated, versatile design, stands in stark contrast with some human designs. A lot of the times, humans are so one-tracked minded that when we design things, the product only serves one goal. Usually that single track purpose is commercial (read: money). The problems with this kind of mindset are the following: one, it is highly inefficient/wasteful, since the opportunity costs to this mindset are products that could actually serve multiple purposes, and two, it is usually extremely disruptive since it pushes for this one (economic) goal at the expense of all other ‘unimportant’ factors.
A classic example is plastic. In nature, things work in cycles. When the cycle is complete, there will essentially be no or little waste. Only humans can design something that is once-through and disposable like plastic. It is basically a one-way conversion from resource to waste, with no large-scale mechanism in place to convert the waste back into a resource. Yes, there’s some recycling with plastic these days, but the portion of recycled plastic is very, very small compared to the waste. In fact, it’s not a true recycle anyway because plastic degrades, meaning that when you re-process plastic, what you end up is a lower level plastic; you don’t get the same plastic quality with the original materials (unlike glass). These wastes get shipped to some islands in third world countries somewhere, and these days many fishes and birds swallow plastic bits into their bellies. It turns out that plastic does break down, not in a way that biomaterials disintegrate, but into smaller pieces. These bits can be imperceptibly small (but still plastic), and when they enter the animals’ digestive system, they chemically react and release toxins that kill the animals.
Our lives now revolve around plastic – it’s hard to imagine life without it. But here’s the thing – our need for plastic is artificial. Life existed before plastic, but plastic changed the world. It turns out though, that the design, even with all the uses of plastic today, is not versatile enough. Apparently the inventor(s) who no doubt earned a lot of money, was not enough of a global thinker to think of non-human members of the earth, or of the earth itself.
But not all human designs are bad. Coincidentally there are those who come up with brilliant ideas to use resources sustainably, because they try to work with nature. I’m a big fan of the Veta la Palma story (read here) <– must read!
As an engineer in training, I want my design to be more like the nature story than the plastic story. There’s just simple brilliance with this versatility and integration that I wish we as human beings would imitate more, to be wide-minded and arrive at far more efficient and creative designs. I want to imitate the works of the ultimate Designer.
Mar 17, 2011 | Faith, Reading Life
This is the first of the Genesis Timeline and Genealogies series. Read the second here.
How many of you, when you read Genesis 5, are just itching to draw a timeline? I love Bible genealogies, and so when I read the numbers in Genesis 5, the data are calling out to me to analyze them. The antediluvian timeline really is fascinating, and there are a lot of lessons to be gleaned from it.
The Patriarchs’ Lives
When I was younger, I’d read the chapter and because of the way it’s written, I got the impression that these people lived back-to-back, i.e., one dies before the another starts his life. For example:
“And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, and after his image; and called his name Seth: And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters: And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died. And Seth lived an hundred and five years, and begat Enos: And Seth lived after he begat Enos eight hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daughters: And all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years: and he died. And Enos lived ninety years, and begat Cainan.” Gen 5:3-9
Because it would describe a complete life of a person first before going to the next, the overlap is not as highlighted. But in fact, the overlap is quite remarkable, because the reality is that Adam didn’t die in verse 5; he was still alive when Lamech was born in verse 25! These overlaps paint a different picture of life back then, and here’s my version of the antediluvian timeline.
This means that Genesis 5 can also be written in the following way:
Adam lived 130 years and begat Seth.
When Adam was 235, Seth begat Enos.
When Adam was 325, Enos begat Cainan.
When Adam was 395, Cainan begat Mahalaleel.
When Adam was 460, Mahalaleel begat Jared.
When Adam was 622, Jared begat Enoch.
When Adam was 687, Enoch begat Methuselah.
When Adam was 874, Methuselah begat Lamech.
When Lamech was 56, Adam died.
All the days that Adam lived were 930 years.
That’s 9 generations living at one point for 56 years!!
Here are some points of observations from the timeline:
- Of the 10 antediluvian patriarchs, Methuselah lived the longest. He died the same year as the Flood.
- Methuselah was also the first patriarch to see a son died. All the other patriarchs died before their sons.
- Methuselah’s son, Lamech, died 5 years before the Flood (i.e., he did not die because of the Flood. God showed kindness to him and laid him to rest).
- Lamech was the most short-lived patriarch out of the 10. He died at 777. Interesting number.
- Lamech was also the only patriarch to be recorded to prophesy in Genesis 5 when he named his son, Noah. “And he called his name Noah [which means rest or comfort], saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed.” Gen 5:29. It sounds like he was weary of some toil – perhaps preaching to the people around him about righteousness and God.
- All 10 patriarchs saw the deprivation of mankind in their lifetime.
- Methuselah saw all the patriarchs from Adam (except Enoch and Noah) died.
- Enoch was taken up to heaven at year count 987.
- Seth was still alive when Enoch was taken up to heaven – he was 857 years old.
- This means that everyone from Seth to Lamech was around when Enoch was taken up to heaven.
- This also means that only Adam had died when this happened, meaning that everyone only saw one death, and the next big thing was Enoch’s translation. What encouragement! Adam had to leave Eden, but just 57 years after he died, someone in the 7th generation made it back to heaven. It’s a message of hope to humanity.
- Noah was born 14 years after Enoch’s translation.
- The chapter before records the genealogy of Cain. It does not, however, contain markings of time (i.e., no age, no date of birth). The way that we can tell time is through the lineage of the righteous.
If you have any additional observations, feel free to comment!
P.S. If you want the Excel file I used to create the image, let me know and I can email it to you.
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