On Confusion and finding the address of God

I haven´t been blogging for a while, as my rants lately have too much desperate tone. I just kept them in my black Moleskine. I am in a pretty bad shape mentally due to the pressure of not having a day-job.

Today I feel slightly better, after being tortured since a few days ago about which path I should take. Concentrating on own project? Take any job offered by the agent? Back to education? I keep on thinking until my head hurts and my hands become cold. I also cried. Our financial situation, although still alright, shows that we need to be careful. I have quit working in cafes.

But tonight I received a help from above. I read an intriguing tweet from an Indonesian artist I considered as a sufi. The fact the he understands science make me like him even more. He said (freely translated):

"The address of money is God. People are struggling to find money while they have no idea what is money's address."

This is similar to what my friend has said, someone I considered as being on a good way to his spiritual enlightenment. So we need to find God first if we want to have money. We have to find God first .... yes! Matthew 6:33.

"Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well".  "All these things" here refers to food and clothes mentioned in earlier verses.

How do I find the kingdom of God? I don't believe that merely doing charity and praying will bring me to there. I believe that we need to find the purpose of our life and walk through it. It is something that I have forgotten amidst the stress. And also I believe that the way to the kingdom of God depends on our situation.

Sign #1: The head of the passage is, "Do Not Worry". Ha! This fits my situation. I have been worrying too much these days that it brings me apart from God. And Sign #2: As the artist-sufi often said, "if you worry, you insult God". Jesus said similar thing.

And Sign #3 is that suddenly I am reminded about Ignatian Spirituality. According to this teaching, God is actual and plays role in our daily struggle. Ignatian Spirituality emphasizes discernment of spirits which is the ability to distinguish all elements of the "motions of the soul": thoughts, imaginations, emotions, inclinations, desires, feelings, repulsions, and attractions.

Spiritual discernment of spirits involves becoming sensitive to these movements, reflecting on them, and understanding where they come from and where they lead us.

My conclusions of today:
My way to the kingdom of God is by stopping to be worry. Meditation helps to let the Universe work with me. It also helps me in discernment of spirits. Small achievements help to stay optimistic. My small achievement is my daily writing on this blog, every night after Lrrr goes to sleep.

(I might also do the Spiritual Exercise. I can buy the app for it but I am rather reluctant to practice spirituality via my cellphone. I feel that gadget screen does not combine with soul-searching.)

Good night, and I wish peace and clarity of mind for you.

Finding God in a strange church

Observing how people struggle to find their gods turns out to be my favorite hobby. Years ago, I wrote in the Indonesian students mailing list the things people do to find their own gods, like by being member of a church located in another city, or changing the denomination. I say 'god' without capital G as I believe what we are looking is our own personal god, not the God as written in the holy scriptures, but the one who speaks personally to us.

Last Sunday, I had the urge to see my own god. I felt weak and depressed after the talk I had before with some friends, which can be summarized to "why haven't you find a job at the moment, after being unemployed for so many months". Because yes, I have been asking myself too. There is no job out there yet worth selling my time to explore myself and to perform the experiments with Lrrr. That is it.

So I woke up early (for a Sunday morning) and biked to the Catholic church in the city. And alas - it was locked. The priest must be on vacation again, and they forgot to put the announcement on the door, again. What to do? In normal situations I would have gone home or spend the afternoon in a cafe, reading a book. But I desperately needed my god, so I entered the only church that was open at the moment, a Christian church called "City Life Church". From outside, it looks like the regular Protestant church, with some ushers standing outside with "You're welcome" printed on their t-shirts.

Inside, the band was playing worship songs with many Jesus' in the text. This is also typical Protestant: beside saying how great is Jesus, the song lyrics do not say anything much. However, the gesture of the singer, asking people to stand up and rejoice for Jesus, as He has risen and He wanted to be with us ... it was enough for me to make my eyes water. Oh, how I needed Him to speak softly to me and say that everything will be fine, that I am loved!

I deduced that City Life Church is a Christian church without a particular denomination, based on the songs (only about Jesus) and the attendees. There were many immigrants there, including me. We were people that do not fit into the normal Dutch churches. For me, it is easy to enter a Catholic church and feels a bit at home, but I cannot imagine a Somalian asylum seeker entering the Dutch Reform Church. The guy next to me had an Arabic Bible, and I could not believe that he is a Protestant. Probably Coptic or some other very old Christian. To gather people from various streams, the church needs to be as neutral and basic as possible, hence the Jesus-only text.

After the worship, the young pastor came to the stage for the sermon. The sermon was about going out and spread the good news, like how Jesus talked to the Samaritan woman. Then the praying - well, they pray for people who needs jobs and who struggle with their relationships. Very modern, isn't it? I liked this part. This is a part that I missed from Catholic church, the ability to react to nowadays problems. The pastor said, Jesus is working on giving you a right place, so that you not only can earn money but also be a blessing for the people around you. Hey, I like this! My eyes started to water again. So maybe that's why it is very difficult for us to find jobs: we need a good place.

And that was it. There was no confession, no communion, even no Our Father. Basic, I told you.

My thirst for god was fulfilled. Thank you, City Life Church! Hope lost souls like me can always find your door. That being said, I would prefer my Catholic church whenever possible. I missed the silence, the opportunity to have intimate talks with The Transcendent, the rituals. I am not a puritan, so for me church is not the matter of keeping it strictly by the book, but to connect with the spiritual me, the part of me that has grown from years of singing Gregorian songs and chanting Hail Mary.

(Back home, they adapted the Javanese tunes into the hymns. This was even better as I can connect the Javanese-me and the Catholic-me.)

But when the Catholic church close their doors, I know where I could turn to.

I am saving the ocean

I have to write this now, before it is over, before I forget.

I am a volunteer for a really cool project called The Ocean Cleanup. You can google it. It has a website but it is still under construction. This project plans to clean the ocean from floating plastic debris. They have performed a feasibility reports that includes two trips to the Pacific Ocean and a massive computational modelling. The feasibility reports will used to attract sponsors for the real action of cleaning up.

The report, written by 20+ authors, need to be compiled, edited, and cleaned from all the comments before they are read for typesetting. I am one of the editors who are doing this job. There are several other volunteers who work with me right now, spread in both sides of the Pacific. The original plan was that I would stay for one week in Delft, and the print-ready version would be ready at the end of the week. But from the first day I knew that it was impossible, and this is my fourth week of editing. At the end of this week, the book will be ready. Really.

It was a great experience. It also gave me a chance to learn about myself. I was really happy when they said that I could come to Delft, and I have never felt so happy about work for a long time. So I learned that the goal, the reason behind a job is very important for me, much more important than money. For a week, I shared a house with an interesting guy with lots of experience. He is in the "start-over business". I read his books about urban shamanism, and I realized that I did not accept myself completely which might be one cause of my hay fever. He also told me how several homeopathic ways to reduce my symptoms, based on his own experience. Oh, and he said that allergy is partially psychosomatic. He might be true.

And I learned about my way of working. I am really analytic, and I cannot handle a combination of work and intensive communication in one time. A limited communication, suits better to me as it allows me to finish one job before moving to another. So give me something difficult to do and leave me alone. I also have a very sharp eye on details, and I need to learn to prioritize. It hurts me that the references are not done properly, although I chose to say nothing as the priority is to get the book printed on time, as promo-tours are already scheduled.

Having a day job is nice as I had an excuse not to think about the dishes and laundry. However, the house was really abandoned and more house chores was needed in the weekend after I returned.

What project would I be doing after this? I don't know. But right now I am grateful for the chance I have, that my situation allows me to work on this important project. 

Being jobless has its advantages! This reminds me of the Paulo Coelho and his interpreter, Yao, begging for change in Moskow, as told in The Aleph. Yao said that beggars purify the city because it gave people the chance to share their wealth and to show kindness. The jobless volunteer for projects that will  allow the wealthy people to contribute to the better world. We, the jobless people doing volunteer works, we are the beggars of the capitalistic world, and we are purifying the Earth.

Another thing worth remembering. My Delft week was the Holy Week, Semana Santa, and last year I was in Rome with my parents and Lrrr. We had a White Thursday mass with the newly crowned pope. This White Thursday I had a mass in Delft. Masses in the Netherlands were normally really boring, but here the choir was good and the priest had a good preach. He talked about Father van der Lugt who was killed in Syria after years of being a carer for the people in Homs. He also talked about Pope Francis, who in a recent audience with five teenagers said that he was an authoritarian but that was a mistake he has learned from. We are not suppose to point others and saying that we are better than them. We are here to serve.

I had a feeling that I was supposed to be there. It feels alright.

I kept on biting

In the Dutch language there is an idiom "doorbijten", which literally means to bite through. It is a metaphor for someone who keeps on fighting regardless of the bad situation he/she is having. I like to translate is as "to keep on biting".

This idiom came into my mind about one and half years ago. After my PhD contract was ended, I decided to take the job as a project engineer. My experiments were finished but a lot of major corrections on the draft still needed to be done. But my professor had many other overdue students, and there was no sign that he would have time to check my papers soon.

So I took the job. I had to commute with public transportation as I haven't got my driving license yet. The route is: bus + train + train + bike. It took two hours and a fifteen minutes for one trip. It was tough. I was exhausted. It was cold and the days were gloomy. My memories of those days are of me sitting in the train. It was dark outside. I was trying to do a bit of work on my tiny laptop. Waiting for the train in the cold was unpleasant so whenever possible I would look for a shop and entered it. (Some shops forbid people from doing this).

At home, I still tried to write for unless one hour with the help of energy drink and hot tea. The endless supply of hot tea was the one keeping me moving.

I kept on moving. I "kept on biting". It seemed hard and impossible, but I didn't want to let my thesis go.

Another clear memory was the news about the suicides done by two teenagers by jumping on the train. They were bullied and could not take it anymore.Suicides happen frequently in the Dutch railways and are the main reasons for delays. Normally, I will be annoyed by those who were so inconsiderate to make other people to suffer from their weakness, but this time I understood that.

At the moment, what I was really hoping is that somebody would come to me and ask if anything is alright with me. And I will tell him the burden of my thesis and my job. He should be a stranger, a nice person who appears out of thin air, someone unburdened.

He never appeared. Eventually my thesis is finished, I get my driving license, I quit my job. Lrrr and I haven't reached the ideal life we desire, but I (and him) kept on making progress, one at a time. And we have each other.


PS. I am wondering if those with a very mild depression would benefit from a warm and unburdened conversation, offered by people who are just being kind but without any responsibility whatsoever toward the sufferers.