Still Wandering

Alissa, Soo Tian, David and Tee Ming have all put up entries here over the past week. I suppose it is my turn now.

I've been very busy adjusting to the life of a (substitute) Biology teacher in school, and haven't had much time to actually sit and read and write and think, short of sending two letters to friends in NS: Yen Mii in Bentong, Pahang, and Wei-Xun in Mersing, Johor.

One theme that keeps recurring in my life lately is Discipleship. As I mentioned on my blog, I bought Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship but haven't had time to read it yet. The only book I'm reading at the moment is A Room Called Remember, a collection of Frederick Buechner's uncollected essays.

I don't know if it's just a phase--actually, everything is more or less a phase since life is so short--but I seem to be wandering once again. While Alissa and Ming have set forth their New Year resolutions, I've only resolved up to 31st December 2006. This year is, so far, just an adventure in which I'm taking each day as it comes--no long-term plans whatsoever. Yet.

Maybe I've just been too busy. Or maybe this is the way I want to live for now. Just wandering and enjoying all that life has to throw at me.

There was a time when almost everything I wrote was of a reflective, theological nature. I think that was in 2004, on the now defunct mBlog. Then by the end of that year I had switched over to Blogger. Also, there was TM Squared. The last two years saw a gradual increase in photoblogging, with theology being somewhat more sporadic. And now, I somehow feel it's time to give my brain a little more headroom.

When I decided to be more reserved at d'NA Stage 3, Michael said he didn't think that was the way I was supposed to be. That is true; I still enjoy conversation and discussion, but not so much the 'weighty' and 'meaty' stuff as I used to. The recent trip to Seremban is a case in point ('case in point'... is this the right phrase?); those present would likely testify that it was a somewhat different Ben in Seremban.

Or perhaps nothing has really changed, and I'm just the same. Everything is just the same. I don't really know. Even familiar surroundings can feel alien at times, and there is always something familiar about even the most foreign of environments.

Frederick Buechner wrote in his preface to A Room Called Remember, "Even at our most believing, I think, we have our serious reservations just as even at our most unbelieving we tend to cast a wistful glance over our shoulders."

I am somewhere in between, neither at my most believing nor most unbelieving, which probably means I have serious reservations and cast wistful glances in a more or less balanced amount and intensity. Which, I suppose, makes me some sort of disciple, some sort of follower; never quite sure what on earth or in heaven or in hell I am doing on this road, but too hopeful to leave it.

Let us listen, let us hear. Akouo.