Random Thoughts: Life in General

Life After Flushing

Before I moved from New York City in 1996 I lived in a section or neighborhood of the borough of Queens in New York City called Elmhurst; however, because of the zip code on my address the US post office placed me in an area called Flushing. I guess the US mail considers Elmhurst to be part of Flushing since the two neighborhoods are adjacent.

I was born and raised in New York City. I grew up in Brooklyn. I lived in every borough of New York City except Staten Island. I lived there for a large part of my life. I thought I would never leave. I even thought I would die there. I had thought about leaving but at the time I couldn't imagine moving and living elsewhere. I traveled to other places but none of them were anything like New York City with the possible exception of Hong Kong. Some friends and family had told me that I could never live anywhere else. They couldn't imagine living anywhere else. It had everything. Some of them said it would be crazy for me to live outside of New York City. They said I'd never survive outside of New York City.

But then circumstances took me to Boston. I lived there for about 9 years. It turned out that it wasn't all that different from New York City but there were some things that are different like the subway system not being availabe 24 hours or not having a good kosher deli that serves a great pastrami sandwich for example but those are minor inconveniences.

In 2005 I journeyed across the North American continent to go to Alaska, Juneau to be exact, a small town in the southeast panhandle. I've been in Juneau for over 3 years. I thought I would be commuting to work in a dogsled every day but that turned out to be not the case. People told me I was even crazier to go there but so far things have worked out fine.

Having lived outside of New York City for over 12 years proved all my New York friends who thought I couldn't do it wrong. There are some things that I do miss about New York City like my family, the various cuisines and food, 24 hour access to many things, the culture and a few others. What I don't miss about New York are the 6 times I got mugged (twice at gunpoint), the 3 times my family's home was burglarized, the uncounted times my car was broken into, the horrible traffic (actually Boston was worse) and just the hectic and stressful lifestyle that New York City demands (most New Yorkers have a love hate relationship with the city.) Ever since I came to Juneau I notice that I didn't have to stand in line as much.

...ktlam...

April 26, 2009

Politics & Religion

I have come to realize time and time again that the famous cartoonist Charles M. Schulz was right. There are 3 things you should never discuss with people; politics, religion and the Great Pumpkin!

Random Thoughts: My Religious Life or Lack Thereof... II

What Is Religion?


I often hear that Christianity is not a religion but a relationship especially from those who are "Born-again" Christians or what is nowadays referred to as Evangelicals or Fundamentalists. It is a relationship with God. You repent of your sins and develop a relationship with Jesus Christ, go through a transformative change, become a different person and live a new lifestyle, but most of all you are on a road to be with God in heaven. The biblical reference often cited for this is from one of the letters of Paul to the Corinthians where he says:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
II Corinthians 5:17, NIV

It was supposed to be different from other religions or even other forms of Christianity like Roman Catholicism or Episcopalian because you are not following any set rules and regulations or performing any kind of rituals. For a long time I believed this even before I became a Christian because when I observed my Catholic or Jewish friends during my high school days that's what it looked like to me. They were following some rule like don't eat pork or some ritual like counting rosary beads and what not. Back then I dismissed it all as superstition.

Later on in college I learned in my comparative religion class that religion is defined as a system of beliefs. A very academic and dispassionate view; therefore, not personally meaningful to me other than merely just another data point on the graph of my education.

One evening I was watching TV and I listened to an interview with a Muslim. He said that Islam was not simply a religion but a way of life. He also said that it was a relationship with God, not any god but the true God. In his case it was Allah. He also said that there was more to it than just simply following a set bunch of rules. At this point I did a double take and I said to myself "Hold on a second, isn't that what Christians say?"

It was at this point that the question was raised in my mind of "What is religion?" What is it really? Can anyone answer this? I had always found the subject of religion interesting to read about. I had read a great deal about it but I was never really sure I truly understood what the religious experience was all about. Having an intellectual understanding of something is not the same as experiencing it. But even experiencing it wasn't enough. Some of the religious services or ceremonies I've attended don't really give you a complete picture.

When I first attended church I don't think I knew what religion was. I met some people I liked and they became sort of a surrogate family for me. Some of whom have become my lifelong friends. I became a Christian partly because of them. I was impressed with their kindness, morality and ethics. I wanted to be with these people but also because I wanted to become part of something that was bigger than myself so I gave my life to Jesus thus becoming a Christian and joined the church. I became religious. But in recent years I have drifted away from this partly because of personal reasons but more so because I did not see the difference in the particular brand of Christianity I was following versus other religious or spiritual ways. There are those who seem to emphasize being spiritual over being religious which I found attractive but still somewhat limited.

I have since then started a process of re-examining my religious or spiritual life and it is still on-going. In my personal research I have come to realize that religion is much more complicated and problematic than I had realized. Throughout history it has done a great deal of good but it has also done a lot of bad. There are those who thrive in it and can't live without and then there are those who are perfectly happy without it.

I think I have a better understanding of what religion or the religious experience is now than in the past but I still have many questions in this area and I am still seeking.


...ktlam...

April 22, 2009

Random Thoughts: My Religious Life or Lack Thereof... I

Early Beginnings - My first encounter with God.


When I was a child I didn't really follow any particular form of religion. I grew up in basically a non-religious family. The closest thing to religion for us were the Chinese traditional rituals that my father would practice every year or from time to time. Most notable were the visits to the cemetary to see the grave of a dead relative. I remember standing in front of the gravestone chanting and bowing. The fun part was eating all the food that we brought and shooting off the fireworks. As I got older I dismissed these rituals as superstitions. My mother on the other hand didn't seem to follow anything in particular. She thought my father's rituals were silly. She did take us children to a Buddhist temple once at the invitation of a friend.

My first encounter with God, sort of speak, came when I was in the 5th or perhaps the 4th grade of my elementary school days. I attended Public School 191 back in Brooklyn, NY at the time. My younger brother Ray became good friends with a black or African-American kid named Anthony Platt. They were in the same class together at school. On the weekends they would hang out and play together. Sometimes I'd accompany them. Anthony would invite us up to his house and meet his family. We got to know each other pretty well.

Eventually we found out that Anthony attended church and believed in God. He told as all about God and how God controlled everything. Most notably he mentioned that God would punish people for doing bad things. From that point on everytime I hurt myself in some way like stub my toe or cut myself Anthony said that I was being punished by God for something I did that was wrong or bad. Both my brother and I did not believe him and we told him so but he was adamant in his belief. We thought his belief in God was no different than believing in Santa Claus which we didn't believe in either. My brother and I were probably two of the few kids in school that didn't believe in Santa Claus mainly because we didn't celebrate Christmas. According to my father this was mainly because we were Chinese and most Chinese people didn't celebrate Christmas (actually I suspect it was a ruse so he could avoid having to buy us presents.) That was one thing we had in common with the Jewish kids but there weren't many at the school we attended.

I eventually capitulated and said there might be a God but my brother did not give in. I did it mainly to stay on good terms with Anthony not because I believed it. I still hung out with Anthony because even though I didn't agree with him I thought he was a nice guy. My brother on the other hand stopped hanging out with him. After elementary school we lost contact with him because we'd gone on to different junior high schools. We never saw Anthony again.

After that I didn't think much about it until high school, for the most part I was primarily an atheist. As far as I was concerned religion was something other people did. I thought most religion whether it was Christianity or Judaism or whatever was nothing more than superstition; however, in high school I encountered two very powerful and influential forms of Christianity, Roman Catholicism and Evangelical Protestantism. My life was about to change in a dramatic way, but that's a long and very drawn-out story for another time.

..ktlam..

April, 15, 2009