My Grandmother's Birthday Party

Really, Sue? Really? You disappear from your blog for two weeks, and then write about your grandmother's birthday party?

Well, I asked Facebook for blog suggestions, and all I got was

1. People hate what they think is the Catholic church and
2. Your grandma's birthday party

(And later, my friend S and my mum asking for posts featuring THEM. Be careful what you wish for.)

So of course I chose the deeper, more challenging, more spiritually impacting option. Or not.

I realized yesterday that my family is kind of strange.

No offence, family (My grandmother and her siblings)

This realization hit me as my extended family, cousins, aunts, uncles sat around my grandparents' living room celebrating my grandmother's 81st birthday, and  as usual we started singing... and my cousin's new(ish) husband, D, was playing the guitar.

"Let's sing 'Why Can't My Goose'!" I said. "Yes, yes, 'Why Can't My Goose'," agreed everyone, as we looked expectantly at D, who looked confusedly back at us. I mean, who DOESN'T know that old favourite, 'Why Can't My Goose', which works best when sung in rounds, at every family gathering? This one-

Why can't my goose
Sing as well as thy goose
When I paid for my goose
Twice as much as thine?

All these years, this seemed like a normal and natural part of a family gathering. And then I heard it through my cousin-in-law's ears.

This realization was reinforced when my mom and her two sisters broke into a song, that was deceptively cheerful (with some la la las we were expected to join in) until we heard something about stilettos (knife, not shoe version) and then

With a mighty swipe I will dislocate his bally jaw! 
I'll find this bullfighter, I will, and when I catch the bounder, the blighter I'll kill.

followed by

'He shall die! He shall die! He shall die tiddly-I-ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-ti!'

I kid you not.

You want to hear this song, don't you?

Here you go:



You're welcome.

We had to quickly distract them before they embarked on the long macabre playlist of 'Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley' and 'Sweeney Todd the Barber'. Yeah, we sang these songs before Johnny Depp made macabre cool.

And then there's the old favourite: 'The Orchestra' or 'The Instrument Song'. We have enough singers in our family for this to not only work well, but for everyone to enjoy it... every time. Basically groups of people sing different parts like

'The violins are ringing with joyful singing
The violins are ringing with joyful song'

'The clarinet, the clarinet 
Goes doodle doodle doodle doodle det. 
The clarinet, the clarinet 
Goes doodle doodle doodle dat.'

'The horn, the horn, whose song is forlorn
The horn, the horn, whose song is forlorn.'

And then everyone sings their parts together. Does this sound vaguely familiar to you? Well, maybe you are a Meg Ryan chick flick fan, and you saw it in 'You've Got Mail'!


I promise you we sounded better than that.

Where did this stuff come from? For how many generations has my family been singing these songs? Are there any other families who do the same? And are any of them Indian Catholics?

Let us ponder these great questions of life.

7QT Monday: The So-Late-That-I'm-Early Edition

So it turns out Jen leaves her Seven Quick Takes Friday links open till Monday, which works perfectly for me, since I write on Mondays. Also, since I just wrote an article for something else, I don't have enough left to write a full-length REAL blog post, so seven quick takes it will be. (You know they won't really be quick, right?)

---1---

I turned 28 last week! As usual I had been thinking about it for so long before it really happened, that I almost thought I was turning 29. So here's a newsflash for those early 20-somethings who are wondering what it feels like to be so close to the big 3-0. It actually feels pretty much the same. Well, maybe there's more maturity mixed up in there, but not enough to prevent me from having a few teenage-y moments every now and again- obsessing/laughing hysterically late into the night, saying/doing awkward things, dancing in public, hiding from people and ignoring phone calls when the Introvert emerges, and other such un-adultlike behaviours.

---2---

So the day before my birthday, I celebrated with just my family. After dinner, we were doing our usual family birthday tradition of everyone honouring and praying for the birthday girl. My 4 yo niece was a little over-tired, and therefore going a little nuts. She bounced from person to person, giggled crazily over nothing and would interrupt the 'honorings' with "Deear Jesus, thank you for (giggle, giggle, giggle)". Then she looked at my mum and said "I juss can't stop laughing, Nana! I juss can't stop laughing!" Everyone was a little exasperated, but also amused. A moment later, she snapped the hairband she was playing with in half.

There was a tense moment. My mum said "NOW you'll stop laughing!" The rest of us started laughing. I promise we weren't trying to be mean, it was just irresistible. My niece's smile was wiped off her face, and there were almost tears. Suddenly I heard a tense voice break the silence. "I FORGIVE YOU, EVA!" said her 6 yo sister.

Turns out it was HER hairband that had been broken. We made sure her unprompted act of forgiveness was suitable rewarded ('The angels are rejoicing in heaven!' etc) I love that that was her first response, hard as it was.

---3---

I read/told my first Hindi story last week! Yeah, my Hindi has been getting so much better over the past few months, mostly because I've actually been using it. So I used a Hindi bible story to read to the kids. It was the story of the Prodigal son. It went pretty well... I used that wonderful maxim to get through the hard parts- 'Fake it till you make it!' ;-) Context clues helped too. I did realize the following Saturday that I maaay not have been clear enough about the point of the story, when I asked them what they learned from the story and they said, "Never leave your parents' house" and "You must obey your parents". They're probably used to that being the moral of every story.

---4---

Have I obsessed before on this blog about how mad the whole 'fairness' thing in India makes me?

How do I know this a real 'thing'?

• We have commercials, not just for 'Fair and Lovely', but also for 'Fair and Handsome' whitening creams endorsed by some of the big names in Bollywood.
• Almost all Indian movies and commercials feature actors and actresses who are probably fairer that 95% of India's population.
• I have met girls (and guys) who 'KNOW' they are unattractive because of their dark skin.
• The words 'fair' and 'attractive' are used interchangeably.
• Girls wear long sleeved coats, gloves and even socks when they are in the sun to prevent that uglifying process of getting tanned.
• To say 'You're looking much darker' to someone is the equivalent of saying 'You're looking much uglier'
• I've heard EDUCATED people who should know better affirm this worldview. Prejudices run deep.
• Whenever you look at people's wedding albums, the bride is usually layered in powder (I think?) and her complexion makes her almost unrecognizable. I suppose she just wants to look 'beautiful' for her big day.
• People have told me sympathetically "You're not THAT dark."

And my most recent observation that brought this all on-

I was looking at people's Bitstrips avatars on Facebook a couple of weeks ago (which is basically an app in which you create a cartoon version of yourself) and I realized that people's issues were showing through. In order to create your avatar, you have to go through a process of defining your face shape, nose type, hair style, and... skin colour. Yes, I know it's hard to define, I had to stare in a mirror while trying to figure out all the details. Mine came out pretty similar to me. But then I looked at everybody else's and I realized most of my India FB friends had made themselves significantly fairer than they really were. Deliberately? Or is that the way they subconsciously want to be seen?

Brown is GOOD, people! (Yeah, real quick take there.)

---5---

Okay, three actually quick takes- I really liked this blog post about what works in a blog.

Seven Things I Love About Your Blog

P.S. She's opinionated. Just like me.

---6---

Do you have a favourite word? I just found out that I've been pronouncing my favourite word wrong all these years.

So it's meLLIFluous. Not melliFLUous.

Sigh. It comes from reading a lot, and not hearing the same words in actual conversations.

Did you even know people had favourite words? And least favourite words? Well, I had a favourite word (that I couldn't pronounce) but had no idea that people actually THOUGHT about their least favourite words until my team played a getting to know each other game, and it turned out that not only do two of my team members HAVE least favourite words... they have the SAME least favourite word.

Which is 'moist'.

---7---

Lent. It's begun. It's been good so far, maybe because it began with Confession on just Day 3 of Lent (instead of scrambling to get to Confession before Good Friday). It is not an intense Lent for me, just a 'coming back to Him' in ways He has been already calling me. I also read Fr. Robert Barron's daily Lenten reflections, which are cool. Thoughtful, interesting, not too complex, and also with a clear morsel of spiritual food to chew on through the day. Sign up at lentreflections.com.

Okay, have a blessed week, peeps.

A Day in The Life

Something about Jen's 7 in 7 challenge has been making me so hungry for blogging. As usual I haven't had enough time, or when I have had the time, I haven't had the mental energy, so I didn't join in. But reading people like Jen's and Mama H's daily posts has fired me with a desire to write write write, even if I have nothing wonderful to say.

So even though I'm exhausted after a loong day, I think I'm going to write. Jen being a famous blogger, mother of six, and author of a soon to be a bestselling book, has had many people ask her for a break up of her day. I, being no one of any particular importance, have not heard that question as much. So of course I thought I would write a blog post about it. This of course is going to be long-winded and fascinating to all who read this blog.

Disclaimer: This was one of my days last week. My days look very different from one another. I work for our church, and have a very flexible schedule. At the same time, I work together with a team of Americans who live here, so we do have a weekly schedule. So there is some method to the madness.

7.00 am Wake up and make myself a cup of tea. This is harder than it sounds, because I stayed up late the previous night working on an urgent official letter. So it was more more 'stumble out of bed and blearily make a cup of tea'. Seven hours of sleep makes a grump of me.

7.20 am People start arriving for our weekly Joy of the Gospel study. This is happening at the unearthly hour of 7.30 am so that people who have regular 9 am to 6 pm jobs can make it. P.S. Why do people always come early or late, but rarely on time? Is this just India?

7.40 – 8.30 am Reading and sharing on a section of Joy of the Gospel with five team members and about five or six guests. Surprisingly Pope Francis' words invigorate and bring so much joy that I almost forget that I am sleep deprived and low on energy. Our guests, young Catholics for whom reading encyclicals or apostolic exhortations is something new, seem to be similarly affected.

"An evangelizer must never look like someone who has just come back from a funeral! Let us recover and deepen our enthusiasm, that “delightful and comforting joy of evangelizing, even when it is in tears that we must sow… And may the world of our time, which is searching, sometimes with anguish, sometimes with hope, be enabled to receive the good news not from evangelizers who are dejected, discouraged, impatient or anxious, but from ministers of the Gospel whose lives glow with fervour, who have first received the joy of Christ."

8.30 am Banana for breakfast. Shh, don't tell my mum. I have losing weight recently, and my mum never stops reminding me that 'breakfast is the main meal of the day' and that I should 'eat an egg and two fruits something something'. I compromised by forcing a banana down. If it's so important, why is breakfast always such a repulsive concept to my stomach?

8.45 to 9.45 am Liturgy of the Hours with team and two remaining guests. Our team prays morning prayer together four days of the week, and I have come to love reading the psalms, the antiphons, and especially the psalm prayers (even though we don't usually chant because I really need for us to have a chant that is not just a dreary sounding monotone).

(Now I'm just being lazy- I could easily take a picture of my own Liturgy of the Hours book instead of stealing one from the Internet)

10 am It's my day for cooking (each team member gets one day of the week) so I go in search of eggplant. Our neighbourhood store only has three, so I walk down the street and stop at two more stores. Cooking for six (including two guys) (multiplied by two meals) is a quite a different deal than cooking for two girls who are small eaters, which was my life for the previous few months. Good practice for the big family I hope to have?

One of the joys of living in India

10.30 am Start roasting eggplant for baingan bhartha (grilled eggplant). This is always fascinating, as I place the eggplant directly on the flame, until the skin is all charred and the flesh is tender. (Why do I sound like I'm talking about an animal instead of a vegetable?) Chop chillies with a plastic bag over my hand because if my skin touches the inside of a chilly, it burns for hours. I have spent some pleasant lunches with one hand stuck in a mug of water. (I am so enjoying writing these fascinating and so irrelevant pieces of information.)

11.30 am Listen to Matt Maher while cleaning coriander, and help two of my team members with Hindi-related queries. With my imperfect Hindi, it's always a pleasure to realize that I still know more than SOMEONE. (Some people like to feel important.) Resist the urge to feel like I'm wasting my time because there are other important things I should be doing. I've had some struggles with anxiety in recent months, but I have chosen to reject it (as far as I am able). I am surprisingly calmed by this repetitive and housewifely task.

12.30 pm Make chapatis, heat up leftovers, fill water from new water purifier (thank you, S), burn chapati as team member talks to me, because as I keep forgetting I CAN'T MULTITASK!

1.30 pm Lunch with team including impromptu word association game and make-up-a-story-by-each-adding-a-word game, followed by Day 6 of 33 Day Total Consecration to Mary reflection. Something new for me. Jesus is still teaching me to love His Mum, and accept her love.

2.30 to 3.30 pm Most embarrassing part of my day- read half of Nicholas Sparks ‘A Walk to Remember’, which in a moment of ditziness I put on my online library reading list. Still, I am happy with the fact that I am relaxed enough to read a book. It is a sign that my anxiety is lessening. When I am anxious, my mind is racing, my heart is racing, and I am jumping between several different tasks and accomplishing nothing. When I am at peace, I can take a break without feeling like the world is going to collapse.

3.30 to 4.30 Nap. Much needed because of the early JOG session, and previous late night. Eight and a half hours of daily sleep is what Sue needs to function normally. (I accidentally (?) typed eight and a half hours of daily prayer... the Holy Spirit?)

4.45 pm Leave on my trusty Activa for tuition class. Have many brushes with death on the streets. But that’s normal.

This is an Activa, non-Indian readers (this is also an unusually empty Indian street)

5 to 6.40 pm Tutor kids from slum. Apart from helping fifth graders with a science lesson, I struggle with patience as a six year old trouble maker does his best to drive me crazy. This involves a punishment of many written lines of ‘I will behave myself in class’ (number of lines increased when he tears out half the page that he's writing his punishment on), ‘I will not throw my pencil’ and a dramatic scene involving a missing pencil, that was 'stolen' from him and finally turns out to belong not to him, but the 'thief'. Groan.

6.50 pm Back to the house to meet team. Try to recover my composure as we leave to visit the home of a new RCIA couple. Take off with four firangs on their bicycles with me on my Activa in the lead, and another firang riding pillion, threading our way through crazy rush hour traffic. Quite the sight.

We have only met the couple briefly once, but have been invited to celebrate the Catholic fiancé’s 24th birthday. It is a more traditional Tamil Catholic family, and we are served HUGE helpings of tasty biriyani, which we eat with our hands while sitting on the floor, talk to many people that we don’t know at all, and sneakily switch off the TV so we don’t have to look at gyrating Bollywood music videos. In spite of my extreme dislike phobia of awkward social situations and my general post-tuition antisocial grumpy mood, it was a good start to a new friendship. We ended with promises for future cooking lessons, sari-draping lessons and mutual Hindi-English lessons (the girl does not speak English, and our team members are trying to learn Hindi.)

10.30 pm Back home finally, check my mail and FB, read some blogs, and crash, knowing that I have to wake up early the next morning for another early meeting.

If you were reading carefully, you will have noticed one big missing piece of my schedule. Yup, my personal prayer time took a hit that day because of the early morning. NOT an excuse, because my book-reading, FB-checking and nap-taking did not suffer likewise. I got back on track after that though. Here's a brief and funny story (because this post isn't long enough). I was avoiding prayer one morning many months ago (why do I do that?), and was scrolling through my FB newsfeed, when I saw this:

Ha ha, very subtle, Lord.

The Drama Queen in Me

So I got sick, and somehow getting sick reveals new and beautiful depths of my personality. For example, I begin to think the entire world revolves around me, and that entire world is somehow fascinated by/affected by me getting sick. In fact, I, the great mocker of drama have transformed into a full blown Drama Queen. Here are some examples of how my life has been going:

Me (this evening on finding that my fever has returned, aloud): Lord Jesus, I just want to be WELL again! I want to run, and dance, and play again!

Because I do a lot of running and playing when I’m well... not. This is after a grand total of having the flu for the past FIVE DAYS and I saw myself as Beth March pining away in her bed, her young life cut short too soon. 

Me (with great glee, to anyone who’ll listen): I have lost ANOTHER kilo! I now weigh a grand total of 46.5 kilos!

Then I run away to calculate how much that is in pounds so that the other half of the world can sympathize with me too. Then I picture myself as a frail, gaunt shadow of a woman, too weak to lift one bony hand to gesture frailly to my faithful nurse that I need another slice of banana cake. 

Me (text to my sister J): Hey, can you buy some banana cake or carrot cake on your way home from work?

Because being underweight is the same thing as having pregnancy cravings, where every family member is eager to feed you up with any random type of food your greedy heart desires. (My sister J actually came home and BAKED me a banana cake!) 

Me on Facebook: I sick and underweight. Please pray for me.

And my pathetic heart got a lot of prayers and sympathetic responses back. 

Me at the dinner table last time (high fever included): I hate life.
My family stares at me.
Me: Everything sucks.
My family: Hmm.
Me: I don’t care about anything anymore. And there are things I SHOULD care about, like praying for _____ and ______ who are struggling so much, and I don’t even remember. (The tears start falling.) By the way, the tears are totally because I’m sick.
My mum: Oh okay (reassured)

Me (checking my temperature every 15 minutes): Oh look, I now have 100.8. I love to quantify how sick I’m feeling. (I actually say that.) 

I do occasionally think about offering up my sickness, and sometimes do it, but mostly I don’t care enough. :-( Maybe sickness ISN’T my path to holiness?

Since I'm an INTJ, I did try to think why I get this way, and here's one possibility- I was one of five growing up, and whenever any of us got sick, that was when we got special attention from my mum, chicken soup, TLC, no school, homework, just storybooks and lots of laad-pyaar (pampering). So maybe that's my trained response. It's nice that I actually have my mum to keep doing this even though I've almost reached the ripe old age of 28.

Also, maybe I just like the attention.

Anyway, apparently getting sick apparently brings out the saint or the sinner in you:

St. Thérèse de Lisieux : “It's true, I suffer a great deal--but do I suffer well? That is the question.”

Sue: I suck at suffering!

The End.

P.S. Perhaps God will choose a different path for me to become holy soon?

(For some reason this post seems to call for a Hyperbole and a Half* picture. (Because my five days of flu are exactly like suffering from depression.* Not.) So here you go.)

* Warning: Some bad language in her comics.

Music Matters Part 2: An Enthusiastic Endorsement

So in my last lengthy post I wrote about why most church music drives me nuts, and how I long for something more. Thousands of readers emailed begging me to post the follow up post*, so I graciously put it together. Who am I to disappoint my adoring fans?

A few years ago I attended the most beautiful wedding I had ever witnessed. The bride and groom were both Catholic missionaries who loved the Lord. The final hymn was a song called 'Come Let Us Magnify the Lord'. As we all sang together, as I watched their radiant faces, my heart swelled within me, and I think there may have been tears and desperate attempts to save mascara.

Here was Beauty. The song was based on Psalm 34. Here's the background to the song, and the lyrics. What made it beautiful? It was not classical music. But it spoke Truth, and that truth was reflected in both the lyrics and the faces of those who sang it. The bride and groom were not gazing into each other's eyes. They were holding hands and joyfully facing God together singing both in thankfulness of how they had 'tasted and seen' as well in promise and hope that their lives would 'magnify the Lord' together. (They did and they do.)

You can listen to that song as well as three others at this link.

My family belongs to an international ecumenical Christian community called Sword of the Spirit, which has helped form my faith since I was 14. Within the community we have a brotherhood of single men called the Servants of the Word, who have composed a lot of music. They are also some of the coolest people I know.

Their music has been some of the most beautiful music I have ever heard. The recorded audio quality of the mp3s I have is not always very good. Nor are the singers all professional singers.

But.

Their music meets every criteria I put forth in my previous post. I have never felt closer to heaven as the times when I have sung and listened to their music. Quite the endorsement from critical Sue, huh?

What makes their music so special?

It is almost all based on Scripture, usually the psalms, as well as some prayers of the saints. The lyrics are rich and deep and true. They have been written by men who have a deep experience of God's love, as well as other members of the community. Their love for Him shines through the songs. I have spent time with different SOS communities who all sing their songs, and there is just SOMETHING about singing truth with love in the midst of the assembly. My heart says "YES! This!" I go deeper, higher, closer. The psalms come alive. I truly get a glimpse of heaven.

I don't know what to say that can truly describe it, except buy their music! This is the only link I could find to buy their music: Tabor House. (Rise up O Men of God, Sing a New Song to the Lord, Love Profound: Songs of Worship, In Spirit and Truth)

So many of their songs have touched me exactly when and how I needed it. These are some of my favourites-

Glory Cry the Angel Choirs

'What no man could hope for now conceived. 
Earth is raised to heaven on this eve. 
 God on earth and man in heaven, 
 Who can such a wonder fathom?'

I wish everyone could listen to this at Christmas eve to say 'THIS is what it's about!'

I Will Awake the Dawn

Awake, O harp and lyre, awake the morning!
 First light of day descends to lift my soul.
Your presence greets me, stirs me to seek Thee;
I come to do Your will.

and the way we start the Liturgy of the Hours every morning:

Open my lips oh Lord, my mouth shall sing Your praise. 

I am NOT a morning person, but this makes early mornings worth it. My family was on a holiday in Kerala last year, and we had to rise and leave one early early morn... at dawn. My dad started playing this song, and up, up, up went my heart.

Lead Me Home (audio clip)

For though my wandering heart should choose to roam, 
Your love will lead me home. 

It was for freedom that Christ has set me free. 
 How can this world stake a claim on me?

This is a beautiful a cappella song with female vocalists. This is one of the songs I keep on repeat.

I guess I should stop. There are so many that I love.

Music matters. (It's late. I can't think of any snappy or meaningful conclusion to this post.)

What Christian music do you know that lifts your heart to God? Do you any beautiful Mass hymns that you recommend? Not like I am involved in any church choir, but who knows, maybe my readers are. 

*This is a lie. I'm so excited you actually bothered to read these two posts! 

Music Matters Part 1: A Rant

So I have a problem.

((Everyone (sighing wearily) "What else is new with you, Sue?"))

Whatever. I have many (hugely important) problems, and it's my blog, so I get to talk about them here, and nobody can stop me! Except maybe bad Internet. Also that annoying Christian anti-complaining thing.

I've wanted to write this blog post for a year or so, but controlled myself because I knew it was just be all negative, without a glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel. (Oh, the suspense. What IS she talking about?)

Let's just dive into it.

I can't stand most music that I hear at church or even at most prayer meetings. Fine, non-Christians, you can leave now, because you're like, "Ha hah! Justified! I don't have to deal with that!" But everybody else, you know what I'm talking about. Or maybe you don't. Hear me out.

I go to Mass, excited to meet Jesus. And then I spent most of the one hour cringing through the music. Or I go to any kind of prayer meeting or gathering, and I almost hate music by the end. I tense up, and want to scream "MAKE IT STOP!" (But I don't.)

(Inside my head, this is me. Don't judge me, fellow parishioners.)

Why?

Well, these are some ways I might describe both the music and the lyrics of most Mass hymns and even old charismatic songs.

Jazzy. Shallow. Flowery. Theologically unsound. (Yeah, that's a phrase I use a lot.) Chirpy. Overly simplistic. Illogical. Or just plain annoying. Aesthetically painful. Overly sentimental. Wishy washy.

But that doesn't really get to the heart of it. Maybe I'm just being picky, and hard to please, which with my overly critical mind sounds like MY problem, not anyone else's.

So I began to examine what exactly I WAS looking for. I had heard about beautiful liturgies, beauty winning people over to God, God being Truth, Beauty and Goodness. But that had not been my experience of religious practice. After a lot of reading, I was won over by Truth. After reading about the saints, seeing the fruit of Mother Teresa's work in Kolkata and meeting many living saints witnessing to a GOOD God through their lives, I believed in the Goodness of God. But where was the Beauty? If God was Beauty, why didn't our music reflect that?

Goodness in action (obligatory Pope Francis picture)

I have heard hymns that were old and boring, hymns that were new and trying very hard to be 'relevant', hymns* that talked about being better people, hymns that could almost be 'let's join our hands and change the world', hymns that forced beautiful prayers into awkward arrangements, hymns in which the lyrics almost seemed to get it, but then the music was so trite and ugly that you totally missed it, hymns that just didn't. get. it. I had met or glimpsed a beautiful, breath taking, majestic God, and I wanted to touch Him, feel Him through my senses.

Here's the thing. No matter how horrible the music is, at every Mass I DO get to touch that God, whether I feel it or not. That's because I believe Jesus' words about the Eucharist in John 6. I DO meet Him. I taste Him. I eat Him. (Yes, Catholics are weird.) So why do I need special music? What does it really matter?

It matters.

I need beautiful music to help truth sink from my mind to my heart. Beautiful music can lift the veil and reveal Beauty Himself.

So this is the kind of church music I want:

• Music that will lift my heart to God. (Not music that makes my foot tap (It could be both, but not very likely))
• Music that will help me see and feel the real AWESOME God (not just a shallow hippy 'peace out' nice guy Jesus)
• Music that reminds my heart what AWE feels like (not music that reminds me of the not even subtly used secular song that they stole tune from)
• Music that fills me up even while giving me a greater hunger for intimacy for God (not makes me want to try out my jive steps)
• Music that inspires me to give myself more fully to God and people (not music that makes me say a little too convincingly 'THANKS BE TO GOD' when the priest says 'Go, the Mass is ended'.)
• Music that fills me with JOY (Not frustration or even just a vague good feeling)
• Music that helps me remember how precious the salvation that Jesus won for me is (not yeah Jesus was a good guy now let's be good people like him blah blah blah)
• Music that helps me taste a little bit of heaven, of choirs of angels singing with beauty, joy and power (not makes me feel like I'm at a lounge bar listening to a soloist croon into the mic)
• Music that helps me see Jesus (not makes me want to crane my neck with rest of the congregation to look at the choir)

Basically, I want music that puts me in touch with God.

Am I asking for too much?

No, I believe this is the point of music... especially religious music. And it is not happening in the Church in India today.

Since the rant part of this blog post got way too long, you get to hear my non-negative conclusion in Part II. (Yeah, bated breath, I hear it.)

*I use the word 'hymn' very loosely here.

Life Begins when You Meet the Man of Your Dreams

Just kidding! Of course it doesn't! (Sorry, this is not a relationship or engagement announcement.)

REAL life begins when you die.

Not really kidding, but that's not what I'm writing about today. What AM I writing about today? I have a lot of thoughts jostling about in my head, and some pressure to write SOMETHING because Monday is my day off, and the only real free time and space to write recently*.

So I was just thinking about how my early life plans were to marry early and have a bunch of kids (just to be counter-cultural, plus it sounded romantic). If I had to think about my life at almost 28 when I was 14, I would have been horrified to think that I was still single with no prospects of marriage in sight. Pretty much all my dreams of a future involved a Special Someone. Wanna hear something embarrassing? Of COURSE you do! That's why you read this blog. I used to refer to 'HIM' as 'The One'. Good grief.

But now... here I am. Now I KNOW what it feels like to be almost 28. And guess what?

It's AWESOME! I love it. Sorry about the caps. But life is great! I still think marriage is a wonderful thing, and babies are the icing on the cake, so no, I'm not into the whole 'A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle' feminist ideology.

But I've discovered that a fulfilled life is made up of more than marriage and romance. Here's a glimpse into this single girl's fulfilled life (because bullet points are awesome):

• Finding a Love that satisfies: You KNEW I was gonna talk about God, didn't you? Well, what love could be sweeter, tenderer, gentler, or more passionate than Love Himself? Okay, this is a hard one to explain because it needs to be tasted to be believed. I do recommend the book 'He and I' if you're Christian but haven't tasted the sweet intimacy of a God who is a Lover.

Sue's Life-Changing Tip for Dissatisfied Singles #1: Meet Jesus. He's everything and more your heart is hungry for. And read Jennifer Fulwiler's 'Something Other than God'.

• Companionship: I remember reading an article that said one of the struggles of single life was doing everything alone- shopping alone, cooking for yourself, coming home to an empty house. Why does that have to be the fate of the unmarried? I live with three other girls, and work with them as well as two guys. We do everything together, (except when I go hide in my Introvert Bubble every now and again) and I've never struggled with loneliness. There is a simple joy in cooking for your community, in staying up late talking, in daily prayer together, in shared jokes and even shared struggles. 

Sue's Life-Changing Tip for Dissatisfied Singles #2: Get a room mate! Or a bunch of 'em. Or find some form of Christian community, people you can share your life with. And then cook them chole bhature.

• Little dreams come true: You thought the only dreams that mattered were marriage and babies? Not true. You know how I was dreaming about owning a bookshelf? Well, first someone gave me a secondhand showcase/bookcase which was nice, and somewhere to put our books instead of the suitcase they had been lying in for a couple of months. And then... my sister J emailed me to tell me she was giving me and my housemates a gift voucher that she had won for an online furniture company, and guess what's arriving on Valentine's day to warm the cockles of this bibiliophile's heart? 

This baby:

Sue's Life-Changing Tip for Dissatisfied Singles #3: Try to remember a dream/non-essential hope/wish for your life... and make it happen... or pray for it... or make someone else's dream come true... just as satisfying.

• Hanging out with kids: One thing funner than going to a church fete is going to a church fete with a 5 year old and a 4 year old. I'm usually the one that embarrasses my family in public places, but this time I was about to hide behind the creepy giant Mickey Mouse as my 5 yo niece hugged him, pushing her face into his fat, fake belly, danced unrhythmically with him (her?), stared and shrieked and pointed at the man on stilts like he was the coolest-creepiest thing she had ever seen. I used to long for babies... and then my sister had two, and I love them to bits. They teach me to be gentle, and tender, and crazy, and and to have impromptu dance parties, and put on fake accents that have them in splits, and to do hugs and kisses even though being physically affectionate with others is still unusual for me.

Sue's Life-Changing Tip for Dissatisfied Singles #4: Find a child, any child, and make friends!

• Self-forgetful Radiance: Stop obsessing over YOUR plans and hopes and dreams and feelings and thoughts and needs and desires and crushes and hurt feelings and LOOK OUTWARDS. Yeah, I'm a fine one to talk about that on my introspective blog. But seriously, if I spent all my time introspecting on a blog, I'm pretty sure I would have discovered a foolproof recipe for a dissatisfied life. There is beauty and joy in the world, and there are people who are hungry for love in this world... and here's God's trick... He made us happiest when we are least concerned with our own happiness. Take that from one of the most naturally selfish people out there, who has been learning this lesson reluctantly over the past couple of decades.

Sue's Life-Changing Tip for Dissatisfied Singles #5: Bake somebody cookies. Or just ask someone how they're doing, and here's the catch... really listen to the answer.

Okay, way past bedtime. Go be happy, peeps.

Want to add some tips? 

*Yes, I started writing this on Monday, my day off... and then I got distracted by many other Important Things.