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Showing posts from June, 2018

Encountering Difference: New Lens (and Meatball Soup Noodles)

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 These days I have been spending a significant amount of time and effort learning Tagalog, the language commonly used here in Manila. I enjoy learning a new language, even though the process of learning can be quite frustrating. I often find myself now wanting to say something, but by the time I form the sentence in my head three minutes later, the conversation has already moved on! You also have to be prepared to play the fool when learning a new language. Inevitably you will at some point find yourself saying something embarrassing. When I was still learning Indonesian two years ago in Indonesia, I was asked to read an announcement in a church group meeting about the activities at an upcoming seminar. There was to be a community service project. But by dint of dropping an “s” at the end of a word, I announced instead, “There will be meatball soup noodles!” Despite the inevitable embarrassment, the rewards that come from learning a new language definitely outweigh the occasi...

Compassion and Challenge: Twin Faces of Growth?

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In 2014, I moved to the Philippines, where I lived for little over a year. That wasn't the first time I had lived out of my native Singapore, but it was the first time I had done so in a country with a language and culture so different from my own. I couldn't have anticipated how much of a shock it would be for me to leave all that was familiar and find myself in strange territory. Someone explained to me then that what I was experiencing was a loss of power: the power I had had in my own country that came from being able to communicate in my own language, knowing how to get around, being plugged into networks of shared meaning, having a good job and the self-respect that came from it, the support of loved ones, etc. ... For a while I wondered, as I tried to pick up the pieces, what was left of me when all of that had been stripped away. I knew in theory that I was deeply loved for who I was and not for what I could do... But it was a long time before I started to really un...

Opening a Door: Nuns, Star Wars, and Unanswered Questions

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Who are you, and what is this blog for? I think I owe it to you all – who are considering investing time in reading this – to try to answer that. As I was wondering how to do that, another question that I am often asked popped into mind. This one goes,  “Why did you decide to become a nun?”  The two are related, really. Yes, I am a Catholic sister in a society called the Faithful Companions of Jesus (FCJ). I don’t often like to use the word “nun” when people where I come from (Singapore) ask what I do. Technically, “nun” means someone who lives a cloistered life in a monastery, (which I do not); and “sister” means someone who also takes religious vows but actively ministers outside the convent (which I do). But to most people (and in common parlance) all Catholic religious women are “nuns”. So when I try to describe myself as a “sister” to the non-Catholics who make up most of my acquaintance, usually after a bit of confusion people end up saying anyway: “You mean you’...