Deadpoet’s Cave

It’s been a bit of a mini-whirlwind the past few days. Tuesday night, I played
squash. There’s this social squash thing on every Tuesday night. Anthony said ‘for beginners’. If the people we saw playing that night were beginners, I’m foetal.

Anthony, Felicia, Deanna and I turned up. Initially, the coach paired us up. Then he split all of us, letting us try playing other people who were there. The coach (Gary) is quite good at assessing your proficiency. I got paired with Ashley, who made me run around the court like I never have before.

I was having so much fun, I didn’t really notice that I had sprained my ankle until I was home.

Early next morning, met Adrian L in the city. We went to the Charles Dickens Pub along Collins St to watch Juve vs Man U. Damn, it was a great morning. Haven’t felt like that after a United match for a long time. Guess I’m spoilt by their success.

Met Jason for lunch that afternoon. Also found out my old landlord is more devious than I thought. She’s really evading taxes big time. Shall I blow the whistle? Well, I’ll see how I feel after the weekend retreat for the committee. I didn’t have much time to bother with her the rest of this week anyway.

Wednesday evening, watched the Melbourne Tigers vs Cairns Taipans. Basketball at the State Netball and Hockey Centre at Royal Park. It was quite entertaining, and the atmosphere was good for a small crowd.

Got pissed off at one of the Straits Times Forum page writers. Some “Beyond Condo Sub-committee” of the Remaking Singapore Thingy. Well, considering that I had other things to do, and that I had two letters rejected by ST already, I decided not to rant and rave this time.

Thursday: spent most of the day at Union Lawn promoting COSDU. “Promoting” = “Sitting down at the table waiting for people to approach”. Went for dinner with a few of the COSDU people and had coffee at Lin’contro (how DO you spell that?). Of course, we spent as much time finding for a place to hang out as we did at the place itself. Ok, that’s exaggerated, but we spend ages deciding where to eat and where to chill. Some things never change.

Had an interesting conversation about religion and faith with Michelle and Felicia.

Helped out at the COSDU table again this morning, the weather has been Jekyll & Hyde.

Anyway, to end off this entry, this is what I wrote to Felicia in response to something she wrote in her blog about the Pope:

———-

Food for thought indeed but personally, I disagree.

Popes are very much human, and they do make mistakes. Infallibility aside it really doesn’t take much digging to find corrupt or errorneous Popes.

If this happens again in the future, do we just blindly follow?

This is where faith comes in - Your personal relationship with God.

Faith is personal. Religion is the outward expression of your faith. The problems with most people is that they get caught up with all the rules and regulations.

That’s what the Pharisees were doing in Jesus’ time. They were caught up with the rules. And this is where, ’til this day, there is division among people: ‘cos all of us have a different interpretation of the rules (and insist on highlighting differences).

Our insistence of the Pope’s supreme authority is ironically ALSO a cause for divison.

So how?

I believe God is beyond petty divisions between different denominations of Christians and different religions too. We believe in the Church because our faith has lead us there. Each religion is a system of belief, not belief itself.

At the end of the day, everyone would be better off if they did practise the simple sayings in the respective texts of their religion. “Love thy enemy” - if only we could practice what we preach, both as individuals and as a Church.

———-

No doubt there will be people who disagree with me.

• Alison’s Wedding
• Resolutions
• Hip Hoppin’ Bloggin’ MPs
• Where I go, fires seem to follow