A visit with Uncle and Auntie

We call my mom’s brother Uncle and his wife Auntie - that’s with upper case U and A - like titles of royalty. Which is just fine when you know how regularly both husband and wife golf and sip tea with Sultans and political elites. They are wealthy and well-travelled, counting an artic cruise to see the aurora borealis as one of the highlights of a very full life. Their three children - my cousins - all doctors, have married and settled in the UK, making England pretty much their second home.

When we visited last weekend, I was not prepared for what I saw. It was almost one in the afternoon when Auntie greeted us at the door with a wan smile. Her gamine look once compared with Audrey Hepburn was lined and tired, although that stately poise was still there. It was her voice, almost a whisper, and her slow, measured gait that told us she hadn’t been well.

I glanced over her shoulder and saw Uncle at the table. He was hunched over an empty plate, peeling a banana with a paring knife. I placed my hand on his shoulder and bent down to catch his eyes. As I spoke he lit up momentarily, but just as quickly switched off and turned his attention back to the banana. He was blank again as the rest of us called out to him. Mum put both arms over her brother’s shoulders to say hello. Auntie told us that Uncle wouldn’t be able to hear nor recognize any one of us. Early stages of senile dementia, my brother had warned us.

“So how are you keeping, Auntie?” I asked trying to sound chirpy. She looked at me, her pause like a shroud, at once impassive yet revealing.

“Like that,” she said with a hint of a shrug.“I’m not what I used to be.”

“But you still look okay, Auntie. Do you get a lot of visitors?”

“Had a stroke, a mild stroke. Saturday Irwin’s coming back for a short visit.”

“Must be over 20 years since I last saw him. Will you all be traveling back to England then?”

“With Uncle like that? Besides it's too cold for him. When he sits, he doesn’t want to be moved. He can’t hear. The last time, we couldn’t get him to come out of the plane.”

We talked awhile before I decided to take a closer look at the house, the scene of fun and gaiety and happy reunions when Grandma was alive. Some Christmas cards have arrived early, looking forlorn among yellowed family photos. There in the hall stood the Steinway Grand Piano. Auntie said it’s out of tune and that no one played on it anymore.

I went to the front door and found it scraggy and worn, its veneer stripped. Outside, the lawn was trim but weeds were creeping up along brickwork and fences. The porch wall had buckled and a huge crack ran up one side. At the other end of the big house, brackets that held a gutter to the wall had come undone, separated by another large crack. A garden pond in the back patio was dry, its neglect betrayed by patches of mold and broken sockets where spotlights used to be.

I felt depressed in this familiar yet unfamiliar place. Time is ruthless, age its punishment. Before we left, we prayed for Uncle and Auntie. We asked that the Lord would watch over them in the autumn of their lives, that His presence would fill the spaces the fleeting years had left in their wake.

It's a jingle out there!

What’s happening?

Yesterday I had to take the LRT because my car’s being serviced for a long drive up north this weekend. I’m reading and minding my own business when my concentration was jarred by the synthesised trill of an unfamiliar melody, followed by an announcement: "Next station Kampung Baru. Nokia. Connecting People" Eh, what? Minutes later while I’m figuring out what’s with this new aural assault, here comes the alert now played like a rock guitar riff. "Next station Ampang. Nokia. Connecting People." 11 stations later it’s more like "Nokia. Annoying people."

What’s wrong with the old three-note? Is this clever, or is this clever?

Forsaken, yet obeys

You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to over-ride a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do a little over-riding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs - to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot "tempt" to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

C.S.Lewis
The Screwtape Letters

Losing the feeling

"I cannot feel God.It has been a long time since I felt him."

"How do you know it's God you feel?"

"I feel warm all over. It's overpowering and you can't really explain it. You know it's God. Usually I'd feel like crying."

" So what happened? Why don't you feel him anymore?"

"Dunno."

And do it goes. We are relational creatures after all, yearning to be embraced by something other than intellectual assent. We want it to be as real as the rush of blood, warm and tingling, like a lover's kiss. Why shouldn't God come with the smell of wild flowers, sweet and earthy? Why doesn't he sweep over our senses like a sudden blast of icy cold air on the face? Why shouldn't we feel God more? Why does he who professes to love us always hide from view?