Father of Forgiveness

"Though I walk through hell, give me heaven in my heart" - from "Heaven in my heart"

I've been listening to the music of Neal Morse a lot on this Japan trip. Besides the usual prog rock epic tunes, he wrote many great classic slow rock. Father of Forgiveness, Oh to feel Him, Cradle to the grave as well as Heaven in my heart. Father of Forgiveness touched me most because being on the road, things are pretty mundane. There is no discipline in doing devotions. I spent more time on the internet or on the TV rather than feeding my soul with God's word even though I have the bible in my PDA and the Spurgeon's book on prayer on my bedside at every hotel. All this just made me feel like the prodigal son. Most important of all, I thought that song is a very apt prayer for some friends whom I send the song to. Here are the lyrics to verse 1 and 2 and it's chorus. Powerful stuff!

Who's that up the road?

The man who went his own way

Who wasted all his winnings

Has he come home to stay?

The son who'd lost his way

Is back among the livingLet's take it back to the beginning...

Oh, Father I've returned

I'm sorry I was wrongI feel so undeserving

After all I've doneBut I see your open eyes

And I feel your spirit rising in my chest

You're the Father of forgiveness (I've come home)

You're the Father of forgiveness

Now that we are here

And after all the tears

Father what do you want from me?

All I have is yours

I don't have much to give

But a heart that needs forgiving

The flesh is tired but the spirit's willing

Oh, Father I've returned

The one who left alone

And you give me your kingdom

And tell me it's my own

And I see your open arms

And I know that I have found my place of rest (the man's home)

In the Father of forgiveness (I've come home)

You're the Father of forgiveness

Putting on weight

This is how I look like now. I've not been home since 12th October. hehehehe... good food, O such a delightful sin!

The Financial Times

I wrote this while the crew was out shooting some "beauty shots" of some Kimchi dishes. It got so boring that I took out my PDA and began to write. What is the hottest topic in the papers now? The crash of the stock market I guess. I don't read a lot of the financial section of the Straits Times, but I did read and tried to make sense of what the whole crash was all about. I asked my trusty Ol father to explain to me and he explained everything to me in 15 mins, enough for a layman (lehman??) to understand. As I wrote this, I didn't know how to end it. So I did something that Larry Norman did in "The Great American Novel" where he ended with the words



"Don't ask me for the answers for I've only found one:

that a man leaves his darkness when he follows the Son."



Oh, I love that wordplay with "darkness" and "son" which was suppose to be "sun". Brilliant! So here is my offering. Ok, I know my ending is not original, but I had to end somewhere with something. Rite? So until I come up with something original, this is my little tribute to Larry Norman.

The news has turned very sour
It's time to change the course we've taken
The stock market took a dive
You can read it in the papers
The banks are all crumbling down
Could it be that soon a piece of bread could buy a bag of gold?
Or a one-room flat could buy you a condo?
The next day rescue arrived
The world's governments that were shaken rewakened to a new mentality
Takeover the banks that have lost it all
Buy up all the bad debts and refinance the industry
As market confidence soars
The world heave a sigh of relief
Hoping that the worse has past
They are tricked into this facade of reprieve
The changing of season is happening to the human race
The most fruitful of times will soon give way to decomposition
I'm only a soundman
What would I know
I don't have stocks or money that I should boast
If you're looking for answers to your financial crisis
I've only found one
That man must be willing lose his possessions when he follows the Son

The Right Side

I received an SMS from a friend this afternoon. She is one of those Barnabie babe kind of person who loves to e-mail or sms word of encouaragement. However today's sms was quite funny. Read it for yourself then read my comments. I'd love to know ur comments too.

Hihi :) just read an amazing testimony. A family was driving on a highway from KL to Malacca when it began to pour- visibility was bad. The Holy Spirit prompted the guy (from our church) driving to shift to the left lane. His bro in law behind him did the same. A split second later they heard a loud bang. They saw many cars smashing into each other in a row and a car spinning 360 degrees in the right lane! They realised this was caused by an accident ahead of them before they shifted lanes, which they didn't notice due to poor visibility in the downpour. They realised God had protected them as He'd promised in Psalm 91! A THOUSAND MAY FALL AT YOUR SIDE. TEN THOUSAND AT YOUR RIGHT HAND; BUT IT SHALL NOT COME NEAR YOU. Amen! :) Be greatly blessed! Listen to the HOLY SPIRIT within you and let yourself be led this weekend and the days ahead. Praise Jesus!

The use of the scriture from Psalm 91 to the above testimony made this otherwise normal testimony seems dark- worse, dark humour.

In the death of the Christian, though there is lose, it is always considered a great gain. For "precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints". Death to a Christian is a beginning of life. But death to those not in Christ is the beginning of darkness. While we must be thankful of the life that were preserved, let us also remember to mourn for those who perished.

The drummer in me

This is the last set up I did. It's the same one as the other photo I posted earlier, but this one looks better. I've been thinking about drumming a lot recently. The TOSOG project that I want to do might be renamed coz it's not all my own songs. I will be colaborating with Eve, Josh, Glenn and Sherwin for this one with me on drums. Not the usual people from church which I am very comfortable playing with, but playing with this other group of friends creates a new buzz in me and I look forward to find out what new frontiers we can go creatively.

So far the project has two genre that I am exploring. The Indie and Progressive side. With Glenn and Sherwin, it's going to be a prog rock hat for me. It's something I always want to do besides playing indie/hardcore-metal. I am sure playing with them all will make me a better drummer. There are five songs in the songlist that I'll be working with them. Here are the songlist:

1) Eve's song (Coz she wrote the riff, I came up with the words, it's in-your-face hardcore)2) Forever (something I wrote when Chia Ee was born, no lyrics yet)

3) A Principle Within (I have no music to this song yet, but I have the lyrics and rhythm to it. It's Charles Wesley "I want a principle within" screamed out screamo/ hardcore style)4) Flowers in the Sand (I originally wrote the riff to accompany the lyrics of" Scratch", but the amazing Glenn Fong transformed it to "Flowers")

5) One-sided Dice (Glenn wrote the song with some funny weird programmed drum grooves, he played it in the studio during the 2nd venture as Figtee and I played a Led Zep "Rock N Roll" inspired groove to make it rock the way it should. It's an instrumental)

6) (For one reason Glenn and I forgot the lyrics or how it sounded, but we all call it the "Tourniquet" inspired song. The opening groove is like Tourniquet's "Vanishing Lessons")

So here I am in Seoul updating this and thinking of the next course of action. The musicians I mentioned above have been informed. The next thing is to set a series of jamming sessions to complete the songs. I plan to record them by March next year, but Eve will only be hear for about 2 months, so the hardcore/indie ones might be priority. The Prog Rock ones need more touch up and practice on my part. For this reason I have a drum pad here with me in Korea. I arrived here on Sunday (12 Oct) and I have yet to touch it due to the early call time and the late nites chatting with SW online. Let's see how things turn out to be when I return to Singapore after this trip (which lasts for 30 days. It includes 21 days in Japan). My intention is to take it easy when i return home because SW will be giving birth in Dec. I hope I'll have time to jam, rest and work on some ad hoc shoots as I try to spend more time with the family, but I already sounded busy, don't I?

More updates will come... let's see how this transpires.