2025 Cambodia And Vietnam: Ta Prohm (IV)

 Walking through this temple then and looking at these pictures now, I am minded of the brevity of life.

Thousands doubtless laboured to build this place.  Thousands lived here, worked here, played here, schemed here.  The vastness of human emotions and experience was live out in this place.

Now, there is nothing but the silent fallen stone, which speaks not at all of what it has seen, and the trees that have overgrown it, late comers that did not know the temple and its inhabitants in their glory.

Hundreds of years hence, will this be our own legacy too?

2025 Cambodia And Vietnam: Ta Prohm (III)

 Although crowded with visitors when we went, one can imagine the eerie silence and solitude in centuries past when the temple was all but forgotten and only the trees, birds, and animals remembered.

This was enough of a "what people think an abandoned temple should look like" place that it was used in the 2001 movie Tomb Raider.  As a result, it is sometimes known as The Tomb Raider Temple.

Travel In The Near Abroad: A Visit To New Home

 

Last week, as may have been readily apparent from my horribly formatted post yesterday (and for which I do apologize; the bug is apparently deeper than I could fix on my phone or my computer upon my return), I was traveling in the Near Abroad - in this case, to New Home.

The visit itself had been planned for some months, a two day seminar followed by a quick visit to Old Home.  But fate - in the form of a typhoon - intervened:  my Headmaster and my Sensei were unable to leave Japan.

I thought about canceling the trip but this development happened on Tuesday and I was scheduled to leave Wednesday.  Making a change in the program seemed like too much effort at that point.

All is well in New Home.

The house is pretty much as I remember it.  Poppy the Brave (seen above) was very happy to see me and we took several walks around our old neighborhood.  The weather there has been much wetter and cooler than average, which made walking almost pleasant.

I did end up going to a class at my old dojo.  It was nice to see my former fellow students and train under my former Sensei.  They are in a new facility now.  It was odd to realize this was the first location that I had never trained in since the dojo started.

I also had the opportunity to go by the rabbit shelter I had volunteered at for so long.  They are always happy to see me, and it is good to see how the shelter is doing.  It did make me miss volunteering there; I have not connected in the same way with the rabbit shelters locally.

The shelter, it seems, has yet to find a new TB, general handyman and changer of air filters extraordinaire.

Friday, I had the pleasure and luxury of actually playing tourist in a place I lived for many years

The day started with a lovely breakfast with Nighean Dhonn (Lemon Poppy-seed French toast, seen above).  We then picked up The Fiancé and headed into town, where we went to two museums, one which I had visited many years ago which The Fiancé had never visited and one which all three of us had never visited.  The weather was overcast and a bit muggy, but walkable.  We greatly enjoyed out time there.

We had an early dinner - BBQ (pictured below).  It has been a good long while - since the move, really - since I have had actual BBQ.  

I was up and out early Saturday morning.

The oddest feeling I felt over the course of my three days there was a profound sense of homesickness.

This might surprise my long time readers, seeing as how I often found myself at odds with some things (largely, the weather of course). And yet, I left with a feeling both that I missed large aspects of being there and yes, there is a world in which I could see us retiring back there.

Part of that is driven by the fact that I easily fit back into the people and activities I had done before, if only briefly.  Part of that is driven by the fact that likely that will be where Nighean Dhonn and The Fiancé make their long term home (and quite likely, the most likely to have grandchildren).  Part of it is, financially, it would make a lot of sense to be there with a paid off home and much lower taxes.  

But I wonder if part of it is the sale of The Ranch.

I think it is reasonable to say that I had fixated on being in a single place - The Ranch - so long that it had come to crowd out any other possibilities.  Now that the possibility is gone beyond reach, other possibilities present themselves.

The fact that I felt homesick a bit surprised me; if you remember from this past Christmas, I very much felt like a stranger in a house that was formerly mine (well, technically still is). What changed?  If nothing else, the fact that one door closed - for good.

It does leave the future open for some possibilities I had not anticipated.  It is good to know that one can still be pleasantly surprised, even in the midst of life transitions.

A Year Of Kindness (XXII): Make Their Day

 

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The more I ponder kindness and look for quotes and thoughts on it, the more that I find that I am realizing the seeming ordinariness of it.

Yes, of course there are extravagant gestures of kindness (the Cross being the biggest ever, of course).  And yet, extravagant gestures are very often a one time sort of event.

Most kindness is the sort of thing I can practice every day.  It really can be the simplest of gestures:   A smile.  Holding the door.  Giving a small gift to someone for no reason.  Listening to someone who needs to talk.  

It is odd to me that I think about such things as a sort of choice:  Should I do this?  Could I do this?

Sometimes it is an inconvenience.  Sometimes it is something that costs us something.  But given that kindness is something that I as a Christian am a beneficiary of from God, why do I even ask the question?  If I have the opportunity to make someone's day better, should I not always take it?

I suspect - sadly - my unwillingness to do so reveal more about me and my own self centeredness.

If by doing an act of kindness I can make someone else's day, I should being doing it.  Full stop.

After all, life is hard.  By kindness I can at least make it a bit better, even if for a short time.

Neither Sin Nor Stupidity

 

On the whole, much of my life I have been more stupid than smart.

Part of that comes from being someone that has learned to be a people pleaser. One either tries to please people through entertainment or adventurous wildness (sometimes known as bad decisions) or follow along when bad decisions were being made.

I would love to say that this is a "thing that I gave up when I was young", but that would be a lie.  Maybe I made less stupid decisions as I got older, but they did not really stop as they should how.  

They have now, perhaps, finally slowed to a trickle.

Swap in the word "Sin" there for "Stupid", and often times you would not be off the mark.

And yet.

And yet, neither my sin nor my stupidity keeps God from loving me.

If it is true of me, it is true of anyone.

The Idols We Build For Ourselves

 This past week in the sermon, our pastor was speaking to a thought in James 1:  5-8:  

"If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given him.  But let him as in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.  For that person must not supposed that a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways, will receive anything from the Lord." (RSV)

The idea of doubt in these passages (from my pastor) in the Greek is nota lack of confidence, but a dividing of ourselves - in this case between God and the world.  When we "doubt" in the Greek, we are splitting our loyalty and commitment - thus when James speaks of asking in faith, it is that we are asking God to help us in how we serve and understand Him, not in worshipping the world.  

When we are double-minded, we ask God to help us worship something else.  And He is repelled by it.

How, my pastor suggested, do we overcome this kind of disloyalty.  By smashing the idol, the thing that we are worshipping instead.  He suggested asking the question:  "Where do I find value, comfort, and power?  Whatever that is, that is the idol."

I sat for a long time Sunday with that thought.  To be honest, I am still sitting with it.

---

If I allow myself to ponder the idea of where I find value, comfort and power (outside of God) I find two sets of things, small and large.

The small ones are sorts of things that likely qualify as sins:  greed, lust, gluttony, laziness.  The sorts of things that have bedeviled me to the point that I scarcely think about them as idols - "It is a feature, not a bug" I say to myself as I confront my sin for the thousandth time.

It is not, of course.  It is a sin that needs to be dealt with.  But those are small idols; there are bigger ones.

My biggest:  The image of how I want to be perceived in life.

---

In going through this round of the small group I am leading, I was able to go back and revisit my testimony (as much as it is one).  What became more clear as I edited it was how much I invest in images that I believe will make me feel competent, capable, successful, and beloved in the eyes of others.

Every persona or image I have sought to invest my life in - hopeless romantic, performer, Christian leader, entrepreneur, author, Christian leader (Round two), business executive, now wise leader - each and every one of these, at its core, is the elevation of me and my own life.  

Every time one of these personas failed me, I smoothly transitioned to another without missing a beat.  Every time, those thoughts and visions of "This is it.  This is who I am.  This is the way to me being seen as all the things I want (and believe) I should be seen as." influenced how I acted and interacted with others, and ultimately with God.

It is not that any of those things is necessarily bad.  But I sought to find my value, comfort, and power in them instead of God.  Therein lies the rub.

---

I have tried, over the course of this week, to begin smashing that great idol:  confessing that it is an idol, finding those things in my life that enable those thoughts and removing them, working to abandon in small ways (bigger ones later) the behaviours and thoughts that enable them.

I asked God about what I was to do instead on my morning walks.  He spoke to me clearly in those questions:  Humble yourself.  Become a servant.  Be about My business and see what I will do in your life.

Honest to goodness, it feels like dying.  But perhaps this is the lesson that I need to be reminded of:  the true dying to self and rising up, filled no longer with myself but with Christ and Him crucified.

A Year Of Haiku (XXI): Petalworks

 

Purple and Orange,

exploding without the "boom":

quiet petalworks.

2025 Cambodia And Vietnam: Ta Prohm (II)

 After the fall of the Khmer Empire in the 15th Century A.D., Ta Prohm was abandoned.  The jungle moved back in and the years took a toll on the structure.

In the early 20th Century as decisions were made on the restoration of such things, the decision was made to stabilize the temple but leave it largely as it was without restoration.  It now sits, surrounded and infiltrated by trees, their roots draping over the stones like the coils of an anaconda.

The temple, even in its current ruined state, is remarkable.

2025 Cambodia And Vietnam: Ta Prohm (I)

 Meanwhile, back in Cambodia....

After our visit to Bayon Wat (here, here, here, and here) and The Terrace of The Elephants, we head next to Ta Prohm.

Ta Prohm ("The Temple of Brahma, The Ancestor") was initiated in A.D. 1186 by King Jayavarman VII (the builder of Bayon Wat).  The temple was built in honour of his mother.

The temple is entirely made of dry mortared stone.

At one time, the bridge would have covered a shallow pond or lake.

At the peak of its grandeur, the temple had 12,500 people living here with 80,000 living in the surrounding villages to support it. It was recorded as a richly endowed temple.  It was abandoned in the 15th Century A.D. as part of the fall of the Khmer Empire. 

Not Knowing Everything

 

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One of the attractive things about a blog is that one shares what information one wants to.

For some, that is a daily sort of communication - perhaps about things that are going on but just as possibly about things in general.  For others, this can be a more periodic discussion of things as they occur.  For some, it is about events far and wide.  For others, it is about things that are going on closer to home.

But in almost every case, it is a limited flow of information, discussion by choice.  Likely it does not include everything that is going on in their lives, just a small subsection of it.

Compare this with our Media/Social Media world.

For some, everything becomes a thing which must be revealed to the world.  Day by day, occasionally hour by hour - as soon as something happens and sometimes as much as something happens, it gets dropped out into the Media-sphere for consumption.

In a way, this seems to reflect how many have become:  needing to know everything at all times, they take to constantly being "jacked in" (to steal a phrase from William Gibson), earbuds in the ear and cell phone in hand, watching and listening to the latest update from people all over the world.

Like a blog, however, I remember a different time.

I think it is fair to say - at least for me - that prior to the InterWeb, I did not know what was going on with everyone. Personal sorts of news were limited to conversations in person or by phone or to letters.  Scenes of meals or sights far aboard were transmitted via physical pictures or by those now oddest of things, slides.

We did not know everything about everyone.  In fact, I suspect that at that time the idea of knowing so much would have shocked us: Why do we need to know this?  Why am I so consumed about the lives and issues of others?

Now, of course, the question would be "Why are you not consumed about the lives and issues of others?"

I have not been able to completely abandon social media - my family uses it as a communication tool - but my visits to everything except Insta-Pic have rapidly dwindled.  In a way, it can be a bit of shock when I go to The Book of Face and read about things that have occurred in people's lives, sometimes sad or tragic things.  There is no other way now, it seems, to communicate about such things.

Do I miss being this much out of the know?  Not really; I can barely keep track of the friends I do have in real physical life and the few that are far away, let alone people that are far and away that I have never met.

It does make me question though:  if we suddenly all just started having to mind our own business and not know everything that is going on everywhere with everyone, would that be such a bad thing?