A Night With Father Antoine

23rd April, 2010 - A Friday.

We were all tired, having come from a long, tiring week of either school or work. Instead of dragging ourselves to the Upper Room (which, recently, is never open on time, causing Erica to go hunting for the caretaker of keys), we dragged ourselves to a little place called CAYC for a talk about adoration, targeted at our age groups.Of course, I was complaining about having to attend a boring talk about the wonders of kneeling down and adoring the Blessed Sacrament. I mean, after a long week of school, that was not really how i wanted to start of my weekend.

So, grudgingly, reluctantly, with many a temptation to just go home, I go to CAYC. And I sit. And I listen. And I even take down notes.

In summary, this is what Father Antoine said (in my own words, of course):

-Technology vs. God

In today's society, many of us cannot function without our handphones or computers. Here's a wake-up call to think about. False Idols. What does "idol" sound like? Being idle! Standing still, not progressing, not growing, not moving. If we are all the time, attached to one screen or another, where is the time to look at God? When do we spend with God? Of course, in mass! But honestly now, let me ask you a question. If i were to go through your mP3 right now, how many of us have religious songs in them? Do they outnumber the secular songs? If i were to check your phone, how many of us have the Bible application in it?

Father's point was we spend so much time on the material objects of this world. We say we'd die without the almighty facebook, or we can't live without our precious handphones. And yes, society has evolved so that the internet and handphones play a vital role in our day-to-day interaction. It was a big wake-up call when the other day, I brought my laptop to school and all my friends were sitting in a circle, laptops on. Instead of talking face-to-face, we were talking on facebook. Strange? It honestly makes me wonder if human interaction will cease to exist altogether in the future. If that happens, how will we know how to adore, how will we pray? There isn't a button n your keyboard that says "Prayer". Nor is there an application of it for any handphone, to my knowledge.

The sad thing about it is, we are, if you will, slaves to technology. We feel the need to have it around 24/7. Even when we sleep. To be fair, in the faced-paced world of today, we do need our handphones. We need to respond fast, simply because the phrase 'time and tide waits for no man' is just too true.

This is why the Garden of Gethsemane in IHM is such a - dare i say it? - Eden. It is open and waiting. Sure, it does close, because like every human, Jesus needs to sleep so tomorrow he can be on display in Gethsemane again for you. The point is, he is there, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. There, time ceases to exist (unless you have your handphone in your pocket and it starts buzzing incessantly or Greg happens to be taking a *ahem* snooze). It is peaceful, it is serene. It is safe. It is, in short, a sanctuary from the helter-skelter world that we live in today.

In lieu of bidding adieu, I shall show you a short dialogue i wrote during the talk.
GOD: My child, have you loved me?
Me: Uhm... Well, you've seen my life.
GOD: My child, have you loved me?
Me: Uhm... Yeah.
GOD: What's with the 'uhm'?
St. Peter: God, her life checks out, she didn't even own an iPhone. She can pass through
Me: YAY! *passes through pearly gates*
GOD: *takes out iPhone* Okay, the next person is some guy named Johnny Depp.
Me: WHAT?? Can I stay out here a little longer?? PLEASE?!?!

Cheers!!
AllyBONG

Camp Daniel Reflection

Day 1

The camp started at about 6 with dinner, before that we were all in the office introducing ourselves, to be honest, I was really surprised that there were only eight people at the camp, I expected about ten times that number actually. We then proceeded to have dinner at 7, dinner was a real eye opener with one of the campers(Jonathan)eating 3 plates of food. After dinner we had ice breakers, we played captains’ ball, but sitting down and with balloons, after like five minutes, we’d expended our supply of balloons and had to move on to the next game, which was ‘I have’ the exact opposite of the commonly played game ‘I never’. It was a great way to start the camp and get to know everyone. We then had a session on the first chapter of the book of Daniel. We watched a short animated clip that portrayed the scenes in Daniel 1, shortly after we did a reflection on the text. It was really interesting to see the breakdown of the book of Daniel and learning from the many strong traits that were prevalent in Daniel, for example his strong faith in God and his courage to stand up against authority to defend his faith.

Day 2

We started the day with morning prayer in the chapel, through the day we had three major events, of which I am unable to recall the order, but as follows:

1) An altar call

2) A trip to the Botanical Gardens

3) The surrendering at the cross

1-The altar call was really a unique experience as we were told to go up to the portrait of Jesus and light a candle, at the same time we could offer up to his our prayers and our needs, we were also encouraged to just surrender ourselves to God and let him lead us in our lives instead of following the plans that we have made for ourselves and expecting the future to be as we foresaw.

2-We went to the Botanical Gardens in the morning, all of us were expecting a simple reflecting to be done inside the Botanical Gardens, however, after doing a short reading on Daniel 4, we were given an hour to do our own reflections, we were told to walk around the Botanical Gardens, looking for a tree and drawing it out so that we could compare ourselves to and also write out why we found ourselves similar to the tree. It was really amazing how each of us were actually really able to relate to a specific tree and notice the goodness and flaws in the tree that were really identical to us. After the reflection was a picnic lunch beside one of the lakes, it was really nice as we had our meal while we were surrounded by nature and lush greenery.

3-The surrendering at the cross was really touching, we were once again encouraged to surrender our lives to God and let him decide what were we supposed to do with our lives, I was really deeply touched as I went up to the cross and prayed, after praying at the cross I felt significantly lighter, as if a huge burden was lifted off me. The experience is really hard to describe though.

Day 3

Once again we started the day with a morning prayer in the chapel, we then had a really interesting task, we were asked to see God in every small thing in life, so we split up and started to clean up the entire CAYC, I did the raking, I learnt that it is extremely tiring to try to rake on the road, after awhile I decided to just start picking up the leaves by hand. Thankfully the rest of the chores like cleaning the windows and trimming the hedge were completed much faster and the rest of the people came over to help with the “raking”.

After doing the chores we were all pretty much exhausted, but we still managed to enjoy a really good game of captains’ ball, played with a real ball this time, we ended the game with a draw and just twenty minutes of fast-paced sport had seemed like hours. After rushing into the showers, we prepared to go to the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd for mass before setting off for a prayer walk in town with our own small groups. The prayer walk after the mass was really interesting as I walked around CHIJMES, Shaw House and Borders. When you walk in the middle of Orchard road with the thought of prayer and wanting to just observe without talking to your friends and having tons of other distractions, you tend to see a lot more and also realize the pollution that is present within our society. We prayer-walked in Orchard with the intention of praying for the people around and looking out for the many common modern “idols” that are present in our lives today. Many of us do not realize but simple things such as shopping, advertisements, money are all common idols. We also realized that the ethics that companies have are decreasing rapidly. This point came across really strongly as we saw many advertisements with scantily clad women plastered over the entire area, portraying women as objects and commodities. After finishing the prayer walk, we were all really exhausted from all the walking and were back in CAYC for our shared reflection of what we experienced during the prayer walk, after which many of us wanted to stay in for another night and just leave in the morning because it was already approximately 11.30pm at that point in time, sadly we were not allowed to stay and broke camp with an arrangement to meet up on the coming Friday for a get-together and a talk.

The camp on a whole was a really fresh experience for me as I have never been to a camp that focused so much on spirituality and conversion before, usually camps just have plenty of games and team bonding activities, I left the CAYC with a tired but at the same time changed and refreshed mind.

Michael Soh