Reflection #9: The Incarnation of God

After viewing "The Nativity Story", analyzing your chosen Christmas carol, and reading Philippians 2:1-7, reflect on the meaning of Christmas....

The christmas carol that I have chosen is "silent night". The lyrics as a whole from it signifies a huge event, the birth of Jesus especially the verse, "Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth". In "The Nativity Story", Mary gave birth to Jesus by God's power. She was however already betrothed to a man, Joseph. The angel appeared in Joseph's dream saying that the child in Mary's womb was conceived by the Holy Spirit and that he is the son of God. And when Mary eventually gives birth to him, he must name Him "Jesus" which also means Saviour, as He will save His people from their sins. Being aware of this, Joseph accompanied her on a journey to Bethelehem where she ended up giving birth after so much pain she had to go through. Shepherds were all there to visit Jesus's birth. They were one of the first people who acknowledge the importance of Jesus's birth. The Persians also known as the wise men from the east also came to Bethlehem bringing along gifts to see Him born as the king of Jews.

What was really significant is that God came to the world  himself born as a human form instead of appearing in power. He rather make himself a true man and live among everyone else. This could be because if God came to the world as a living man just like everyone else, He will be able to connect or communicate better with His people. I also believe that not only this but God can also experience the human's life and His creation if he started his life off in a human form. He can also lead and teach His people taking the right journey through life. This is also an equal advantage as everyone will still worship Him as equally as if He was still God if the people know that He is born as a human. 

This is why to celebrate this significant event, christmas is celebrated every year. 

Reflection #8 Islam: Two Perspectives

Find where Islamic religious beliefs intersect with current events. Research a Western news source on the story and summarize the article from that perspective, adding the article link to your OP. Then, using Google search, site: (country code) research the same story from an Islamic country's perspective, again, adding the web link to your site. Compare and contrast both articles, noting differences in actual facts, or the role that Islam played in the story.

ARTICLE #1
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/10/lebanon-veil-jobless-discrimination-ad-student-islam-position.html  (from Los Angelos Times)

This article is called " Islamic hijab not welcome in Beirut offices, says frustrated job-seeker". With the law that Islamic religion has set for the Muslims women to wear headscarves have caused many difficulties. A 21 year-old, Lubna, have not been able to get a job at Beirut companies as they have a problem with her being veiled. She was rejected from most of her job interviews.

ARTICLE #2 is from Indonesia's perspective:

http://www.dakotavoice.com/2009/02/sharia-law-overtaking-indonesia/
This article is called "Sharia Law Overtaking Indonesia". This article has stated that more than 15 regencies in 16 of the 32 provinces in Indonesia that practices the Islamic religion have passed laws linked to Sharia. This have been an issue because with the Sharia inspired laws which include both Muslim and non-muslim women to wear headscarves. Female students who do not wear headscarves will be suspended from school. All of these issues have caused unhappiness towards many of the Indonesians. 

Both of these two articles shows the different attitudes towards the Sharia law from two different countries. The law that is focused within these two articles from these countries is the wearing of headscarves. In Indonesia, most women wear headscarves but they do not feel the need to especially by non-muslims. However in Beirut, women follows the Islamic law and faith but suffers from the views of others within our society. Both articles based on just one religious practice which is for muslim women to wear headscarves but yet different countries have different views of their own religion. It is always up to people to believe in their own faiths.

Personal Commemoration- Reflection #7

  The event that I am looking forward to commemorate is my graduation which is just about 7 months away from now.This event will be very important to me because it indicates the end of my high school education and it gets me all ready to soon go off to college and be a much better independent learner. Not only this, it will also allow me to realise I am a grown up especially by the age of 18 now and have to soon live on my own without my parents by my side.

   To commemorate this event, I would like to celebrate it by hosting a party maybe at my house whereby I will invite my good friends from SFS to celebrate it with me. To make this event even more memorable, I will encourage my friends to bring along their graduation robes and any other significant memorable items that they have to celebrate our friendship.The purpose of this is I want to arrange a time during the party whereby we can do something similar like a campfire session so everyone will sit in a circle and chat about anything. We might even end up sharing secrets and talk about each other's wonderful memories. This is a good thing because after this celebration day, we will all probably be off to different places in the world and this is indeed going to be upsetting. This may also be the only chance that we can actually express each other's thoughts and feelings so there can be times that we might end up crying or even laughing. I will allow them to wear any clothing they want to the party but I will encourage them to wear their graduation robes at the end of the party so we can all have a group picture together. For food, it won't really matter as much as long as we are all happy and enjoying our times together.  Of course, I will celebrate this event with my family too.

  Because graduation is a really important and wonderful event to commerate in my life, I will hope to be able to have a picture that I can always bring along with me everywhere I go to signify my love for all of my friends and family. I personally think that photos are the best way to keep memories alive forever.

Reflection #6 : The Morality of Greek Myth's

The character in the Greek Myth that I performed in class was one of the nymphs in "The Origins of the Seasons":

This story explains the origin of the seasons like the death of plants in the winter and their rebirth in spring.What happened in the story was that Persephone, the beautiful daughter of Zeus and Demeter was abducted to the underworld by Hades. Demeter who was the Goddess of the earth, was heartbroken and crops withered and it just felt like winter. At last, Hades was persuaded by Hermes (sent by Zeus) to surrender Persephone to her mother. Soon, spring and summer seasons were back when flowers bloomed and living things looked normal again.

I think that the moral of this story is the action of greed but in return with love. This behaviour or action of greed is seen to be natural in the human world. What this story has potrayed from this moral is that one will do anything to get what they want. From this, Hades wants Persephone and steals her away.This is an action of greed and selfishness. This is considered a wrong behaviour. With love on the other hand, we can see when the story progresses the nature of beauty of the feeling to love. With Demeter, she was totally heartbroken when her daughter is gone missing. Because of this strong affection she has for her daughter causes misery to the world. This clearly have indentified the power of love in influencing others.I personally think that because of the power of love one has, i clarified this sense of love to be naturally beautiful.

Again throughout this story, we see that Demeter shows her strong affection for her daughter. She is heartbroken and sad when she heard that Persephone is missing and because of this strong feeling that she has, she affected the change of season. Flowers stop blooming and plants starts withering and this is a clear representation of an upset atmosphere being clarified as winter. But when Demeter and Persephone gets reunited, we can see the changes of seasons to a happier moment. Spring is back and life begins again as plant grow and flowers unfold and young animals are born. The world seems so much better this way. But because of this event, it indentifies the type of life mystery. Personally, I will answer this question in a sense that as a human myself, I do not know God well neither do I know their power and their strengths. After reading and learning deeper about this story, I realized how Gods in general also have the natural feelings and emotions just like we humans do. Often I have always thought that the feel for greed and revenge is a wrong feeling and action to encounter in our life. And from what I learnt before is that, greed is clarified to be one of the sins that humans make. But because of this story, I have realized that Gods also can encounter such situations and feelings around them just like what Hades feel. This then helps me to understand the connection of God to our world. From this story when Demeter was sad, it places a negative impact on living things like how plants starts to wither. This is clearly a feeling that Demeter has shown to the world due to sudden change of seasons. Change of seasons is although by nature it is sometimes controlled by God's doings. Humans can possibly think of this event occuring with connection to God. From my own understanding, what I have said above are mysteries that this myth attempt to answer for myself. I also think that these are what the story itself has taught me in general.

An important virtue for the Greek's just by reading this story would be conducting right action and mind and to demonstrate moral exellence.

Reflection #5 Bongwonsa Temple and Nature Walk

I have different perspectives about the life truths which I will use my experience from the hike to explain why I thought this way. I was inspired by many things as I was making my way to the temple. The path even though was to reach the temple,it seems just like a way to get the anwers about life truths. This is because of how I felt during the hike. Personally, I felt that pathway was not comfortable to walk on. I kept asking myself how far left were we from reaching the temple. I linked this experience by connecting it to the religious side of view whereby this is an example of how people can seek life truths. We must find these answers by ourselves. These questions cannot be answered unless we try to get them. It was about 35 minutes hike for us from school to the temple and there were tricky times on the slopes and pathways. My mind told me that I should not give up and try my best not to complain about those rocks I dislike as they are not easy to walk on. At the moment when I had that thought, it gives me an idea of how reaching enlightment or attaining nirvana is not easy because challenges will be met. People seek for life truths because they have questions that they cannot answer. Answers to what we don't know about the nature and even life cannot be answered by just searching it up on the net or asking others but we ought to experience them. In tha way, we will slowly learn ourselves the truths. This is what I personally think.

Taoism believes in the idea of nature. The world is evolved around nature. What really strikes me about the idea of the power of nature when I visited the temple was the fact that I saw plants or trees which seemed to have existed for a long time. They have not been chopped down or even thrown away. So I thought to myself why is that? I then start to believe how these people should have worshipped nature. The fact that they do not want to remove them is because they felt that they cannot ever be replaced. Nature existed even longer before us. It is natural for all of us to think that if something is not alive anymore, we won't find them useful or full of meanings anymore. To some people, this is not the case. For me personally, nature is part of life. We should appreciate nature because through nature, we get to experience lots of things and gain knowledge, even just simple little things. 

Reflection #4: Buddhist Meditation

When I started the silent mediation at a place where I wasn't being disturbed at, I felt it quite suprising how different it was from the meditating activity I did in MRE class. Using the breathing process where i took deep breaths in and out and closing my eyes, I started to be able to concentrate and be focused. As I closed my eyes, I do not see anything so this helped me to gain better concentration on the spot. At this moment, many things came up to my mind. And what I have realised was that, the most thoughts and images that I had in my mind are all family related.I guess the reason why is because family means a lot in my life. Maybe the truth to my life is the relationships and bonds with my family. This is because while I was in the meditating process, the family images started to all refresh in my mind, together with the past memories. I thought about my 3 grandparents especially and there was a definite change of my mood and feelings. I started to have a deep sense of guilt that I wasn't able to go to any of their funerals due to the fact that I stayed so far away from Indonesia and because of school, I couldn't fly back just for them.To be honest, I really cannot believe how I felt throughout the 20 minutes of meditation because there were times when I felt happy and there were times when I felt upset. It's not just about the right concentration for me but there was a strong change of feeling and my mood too which I find very unusual. Not only those, but throughout the whole time when my eyes were fully shut, they never stopped blinking and my eyes just felt like it had to tremble which I find very hard to control. However what amazes me is what I see through closing my eyes wasn't just nothing. I could see some shades of white lights at times. I was thinking that this had to do with the fact that I'm a buddhist. I was actually meditating! That's why I could see lines.Overall, this mediation process was really effective especially I never expected I had so much thing going on during the meditating process.It was also different than when I did meditating in class because when we did it, there were too much influence from other peers and distractions that unable me to control my mind.

Reflection #3- Gandhi: Hindu and Activist

Gandhi was a man who made his country proud and had became one of the most well-known figure of the world. It can be seen throughout the whole movie that Gandhi faith all along was Hinduism. Hinduism is the most tolerant of all religions and they believe in more than one God. Throughout the movie, it can be seen that Gandhi is motivated by a strong religious view where he thinks God treats everyone equally and that all religions should be accepted. During the protests, Gandhi told them that he is not just a Hindu but also Muslim and Christian. Gandhi had sacrificed himself by fasting when the Hindus and Muslims were rioting. He said that he will stop fasting when they promised not to harm or kill each other. This has shown that Gandhi believes that all religions should live peacefully and killing is definitely not the best solution.  

The quote that I have chosen is ‘“A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.”I personally believe that this quote has described Gandhi’s actions throughout the movie. I also strongly agree especially with the last line of this quote that said“ it was a perfect act”. It can be seen how Gandhi has stressed non-violence act or protests really strongly. Because of this, he has gain a lot of respect from his people. We can see how many people have supported Gandhi’s action and have respected his actions by hearing what Gandhi has to say and putting faith in him. Gandhi had sacrificed himself so much for the sake of others. In the end, Gandhi was killed. The split between the Hindus and Muslims into Pakistan and India and trying to keep the country united was impossible at that time. The tragedy that happened to Gandhi has caused grief from many people but because of his acts and sacrifice of trying to gain independence for his country, he became a famous man in history.