Hi everyone! Not too much to report here, but I'm enjoying some time off in Dhaka and thought I'd write. I have the Guest House to myself this week, and that's kind of nice!
Of course, people might assume (as I had) that I'd be lonely or depressed or whatever being alone during Christmas, but it's actually been quite nice. I think the MCC retreat we had in Goa, India two weeks ago really helped set the stage for a calm, peaceful Christmas time. If you've never had a "calm, peaceful" Christmas, then you should try one overseas sometime. In Bangladesh, they recognize Christmas and even take some days off work for it, but it's certainly not the big brouhaha of the US.
I had to look up "brouhaha" just now - I want to keep this blog thing as academically pleasing as possible. I had spelled it broo-hah-hah, which is how you say it. But according to Dictionary.com, the correct spelling is brouhaha, which is possibly a corruption from the Hebrew for "blessed is he who comes (in the name of the Lord)". If so, that would make Christmastime an especially apt moment to experience a Brouhaha, I guess, but I'm enjoying my quiet one nonetheless. For those of you who like words, brouhaha's synonymic cousins are "hullabaloo" and "hubbub"! Use one of them today!!
So in Goa, I felt challenged by God to read one of the Gospels straight through this Christmas. So on Christmas Eve this year, in roughly 2 sittings, I read the Gospel of John. It probably only took a couple of hours, and it gave me a different view reading it straight through like that. One trick I used, in case anyone takes this on as a challenge, was to go by the page numbers for goals rather than by chapters. So in my Bible, John is something like page 73 to page 93, so I decided to read the 1st ten pages in one sitting and then the last ten pages in another. Excellent, excellent, excellent! I don't think I've ever read one of the Gospels straight through. Anyway, here are my main insights:
- Jesus is miraculous! a superhero! incredible!
- Jesus says he is "from Above" many times, thus affirming his Deity
- Jesus is right hard on the religious leaders of His day, calling them at one point "sons of the Devil"
- Jesus says several times that He didn't come to judge the world.
- Jesus says several times that if we ask the Father something in Jesus' name, then it will be granted to us.
This last one troubles me. Frankly, I've tried it and it doesn't seem to work. Which either means that I'm not asking according to "His name" or that He meant something else, or... I don't know.
Anyway, this reading through a book of the Bible in one sitting is an excellent exercise that I would highly recommend. And it takes no longer than watching a movie or 2 hours of "reality" tv. (Have some coffee ready, though, just in case you get a little sleepy.)
On a lighter note, my mom was talking about her Roast Beef w/ trimmings the other day, and my mouth began to water, as it always does. She has the BEST roast beef meal in the entire world!! (It's a fact - it's on the Internet now...) Anyway, I've been without red meat (mostly) for almost 3 months now, so I could almost taste and smell that Roast Beef (I capitalize it when referring to my Mom's Roast Beef, rather than just anyone's old roast beef).
For my own special Christmas lunch, I decided to throw in two packets of Ramen noodles instead of just one. Oh boy!!
The other exciting thing that happened to me over the last week was that on the 23rd I decided to go for a WALK to New Market, the biggest outdoor/indoor market in the country, rather than merely getting a rickshaw or CNG. I had been sitting around the Guest House a lot, and I wanted to get some exercise. New Market is about 5 km (3.1 miles) away, so I set off w/ my best tennis shoes on! (Actually, these are badminton shoes, but they're the closest thing I've got.) So about an hour later, I'm looking around for any sign that I might be close to it, past it, whatever. I had been there once by car (you'll remember the "green dart incident" in the toy store?), so I thought I'd recognize the flyover pedestrian bridge at least. Well, all the flyover pedestrian bridges didn't look quite right, and finally I started asking people. They invariably nodded their heads behind me, so I figured I'd passed it. Well, you can probably guess what had happened. I had set out in exactly the wrong direction and walked 5 km out of town rather than towards town!! So finally i just had to pay a rickshaw driver to take me there. The shopping trip was fruitful, however, as I still had time to buy a hat, a belt, and a pair of scissors. And eat.
Well, that's really all I have for now, so toodle-loo... (this one derives from a French expression for "see you later", so it's not actually English at all, but it's so cute...)
