meal for a poor

Just saw of quote attributed to Albert Einstein (likely from Einstein by Walter Isaacson. 2007)

"I am enthralled by the lunimous figure of the Nazarene. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of the phrase-mongers, however artful... No one can read the gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life."

After I saw this quote, I started to look for writings about this quote. The first piece of information found was an article Isaacson wrote for TIME megazine. This is a great quote with a lot of deep meaning behind it, however, what intrigues the most was a little side story about a weekly with a poor medical student.

When Einstain was 10, he modified an old Judism tradition and invited a poor medical student for diner weekly. This student, Max Talmud, provided the intelectual stimulation that exposed Einstein as a mathematical genius. This was a crucial piece of the puzzle to Einstein's intellectual development. I have always heard of his late language developemnt during childhood, but have not heard about how he started on his road to become an intellectual giant.

This little story is a great example of how a good deed leads to great rewards. However, I couldn't help wondering out load: how many parents would let a ten-year old invite a college kids to dinner every week nowadays?

Luk 9:48 Whosoever shall receive this child in my name receiveth me: and whosoever shall receive me receiveth him that sent me"

Christmas Day?

It is Christmas time. In the US, this means packed shopping malls, holiday parties and Christmas songs everywhere one goes. No matter whether you get into this holiday groove or not, most people seem to have a jolly good time. However, there are always a few people with some sort of acts to grind; here are some silly comments about the dispute over the exact date of Christmas.

Someone named Mike sent a long message to our small group at Google. It includes a long list of items suggesting the birthday of Christ can not be December 25th. This got me quite curious. Not knowing enough about the Jewish traditions and history around that time, I only can find out what others are saying about this. Wow, was I surprised as what I found on the web. Here are three of them that seem to have reasonably sound arguments.

1. Christmas - Was Jesus Really Born on December 25th? by John Parsons: Give two possible dates based on the Jewish tradition of priestly services, one during the feast of Sukkot and the other during late December. The author has a note to the article saying “Personally, I am persuaded that Yeshua was conceived around Chanukah and born during Sukkot (in other words, I think that Zacharias heard from Gabriel during his first course of service at the Temple). And since Christmas occurs close to Chanukah, I consider it to be a valid time to remember the Incarnation of the LORD Jesus and to rejoice with others over the miracle of the love of God for us all. Among other things, that means that my family celebrates both Chanukah and Christmas!”
2. Date and Origin of Christmas (Christian Resource Center, Bermuda): Quote Francis X. Weiser, Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs(p60) as saying “The early Christians, who attributed to Christ not only the title (Kyrios) but also many other honours that the pagans paid to their "divine" emperors, naturally felt inclined to honour the birth of the Saviour. In most places the commemoration of Christ’s birth was included in the Feast of the Epiphany (Manifestations) on January 6, one of the oldest annual feasts. Soon after the end of the last great persecution, about the year 330, the Church in Rome definitely assigned December 25 for the celebration of the birth of Christ.”
3. The Real Story of Christmas by Lawrence Kelemen (Judaism online): List various date historically assigned as Jesus’ birthday and also origins of some of the Christmas traditions. Here is a quote, “In the 4th century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it. Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians.”

Guess the crazy Mike does have some valid points, the date of December 25th is not exactly purely based on the Scripture because the Scripture does not give an exact date. In addition the implicit complaint about the paganism in the so-called holiday tradition, especially the US version is valid to a large extend, -- many of us are way too engrossed in materialistic indulgence. Clearly, we don’t kill a unsuspecting victim after a week of indulgence like they did in Roman times, but the the indulgence itself does the killing for us. After the holidays, many more people suffer from mounting debts for all the fancy gifts, the extra weight gained because of overeating, and the stress of partying. These things probably kill more than what Romans did.

One can argue about the exact date, but one thing is clear we do need a time to celebrate the birth of Christ. The original idea of instituting Christmas to celebrate Christ’s birth and to displace the pagan rituals seems to be as relevant today as in that time long ago.

Isa 9:6 For unto us a child is born

Poetry Award

I was all stressed out about an impending deadline when I came into the office on Monday, but was very amused to find a large envelope with the following poetry award certificate inside



What a surprise! The first question come to mind is "did I actual write
this poem?" Apparently, I did.



This must be from a few months back. A far as I could remember, I clicked on some advertisement, presumably from poetry.com, that asked to enter something but I had no way to get rid of the advertisement other than enterying something. I did the only thing that I could do at that moment.

Just when I was about to think that I was such a genius poet, I noticed there were more pages in the same envelope. One of them asked me to send in $49.99 to have my peom framed and another one asked me to send in $29.99 to have it recorded on to a CD. Oh, well, guess, now I know the real reason behind the award.

Job 15:31 Let not him that is
deceived trust in vanity: for vanity shall be his recompense.

What I am thankful for this year

"Make lists of things for which you're grateful in your life." While I was trying to find something to listen in a car, I heard this brief statement. Since this is the Thanksgiving holiday, it seems to be the perfect time for me to make such a list. I will start from the things of immediate concern to those with broader consequences.

I am very grateful that I can see the end of the tunnel for the work that seemed to consume endless hours during the last couple of weeks. The work requires a program to handle some searching operations on a toroidal mesh used to simulate magnetic confinement for nuclear fusion (more background information about the project). This program contains some intricate computation involving the coordinates on the torus. It has been causing headache also because I am running against a deadline to present the results at a progress meeting. Well, I saw the end of the tunnel in the afternoon of the Thanksgiving day. As I am writing this piece, my laptop is humming away to crack through the suit of tests to verify the correctness of the program. This thing has prevented me from making any planes for this weekend in advance, now I can at least see the end of it -- what a relief.

Talking about work, I am grateful that I have a job. Ever since graduating from college, I was able to support myself through various jobs, except for a brief period of under-employment during grad school. I still remember the horror I felt. Thank God that I don't have to feel like that today. More importantly, I get to work with decent people, colleagues who care about our work and bosses who care about employees. I am also very happy that this job has brought me a roof over my head, cars to drive us around, and all the strange gadgets that I could not image when I was growing up.

I am grateful for my family. I thank my parents for taking good care of my kids. I used to be ashamed to admit this because it seemed to be not the American thing to do. The fact is that having the grandparents watching the kids is definitely better than having strangers watching them. That is good enough for me! I am very grateful that the kids are doing fine in school. Their school was closed for a few days earlier in the week so the teachers can have one-on-one meetings with the parents. I am very happy to hear both of their teachers saying good things about them. They can be naughty like all kids do sometimes, but they are on the right trajectories, which is what really counts.

I am grateful for the California sun shine. I spent many years in Midwestern states. After I moved to California to this current job, I often complained about not having a white Christmas. Recently, I have learned to enjoy the sun shine and even learned to live with the threat of earthquake. A friend of mine has a relative who works on earthquake prediction, once in a while he give me a sneak peek at the charts measuring the tectonic stresses and share with me the odds of coming earthquakes. Goodness gracious, nothing serious has come yet. I truly thank God for this peaceful year in California.

Col 3:15 be ye thankful.

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• "Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others." - Marcus Cicero
  
  
• Here are some writings on the connection between happiness and gratitude:
  
  • It All Starts With Gratitude
    
  • You are happier by being grateful
    
  • Giving thanks year round leads to better health, perspective
    
  
  
• A self-test of gratitude