After Mblog messed up I’m glad my young friend Ben Ong is back blogging here (and it’s always nice to be included in his post.) I’ll self-indulge a bit by quoting part of the post … simply because it’s encouraging and it sums up last night from another person’s point of view.
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Last night, I met up with Sivin, May Chin and Gareth at MPH Mid Valley, where he conducted a forum on media literacy. It was kind of Sivin’s dream topic (since the first time he’d been engaged to facilitate, a few months ago). Sadly, due to time constraints, we could only skim the surface.
But I think he found it all worth the effort when a student from HELP Institute, Chan, stayed back to ask a few questions. As it turns out, he was the very kind of person Sivin had been looking for, for a long time — a seeker in every sense of the word. The discussion leaned towards the philosophical, and reached a certain profundity where both realised it would be better to meet up again sometime to continue to conversation…
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Another delight yesterday was meeting Christopher Choong in person whom I linked a few post ago on his reflective piece as a “brethren”. He was also nice to recapture our time together here …
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It was great meeting Sivin Kit in person, not to mention in action as well.
Aside from the food, which was of course no less important (haha!), the topic on Media Literacy captured my interest because I’ve heard it mentioned by both Brian McLaren and Curtis Chang about the need for a new media to reach our postmodern generation. Then of course, I was hoping to get some tips on how to initiate meaningful conversations based on movies, moving beyond the nice, cool, interesting, boring, etc kind of remarks.
Such a pleasant surprise when my friend told me that Sivin would be the facilitator, speaking of added value eh…And such a shocking surprise to find a small group in which we were expected to participate! Thought we could slip-off as backbenchers…
Nonetheless, it was an eye opening experience. Observing the different characteristics coming into play was really something – an opiniated Indian, a Malay war-movie buff, a pro-American manager, an uncertain ‘how do we know’ lady, a seeking HELP student, and not to mention us, the ‘younger’ representatives. *grin*
Intriguing how a simple dialogue like this could generate topics such as ‘what’s right in a plural world’, Bush-Kerry debate, Nazis and the concentration camps, and some others that fell off my frail mind. Short as it was, some deeper questions in life were brought to light.
Looking forward to joining one of the emergent conversations soon!
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It’s a bit strange posting up what other people posted which included me in it 🙂 Anyway, maybe I need some “wine for my stomach” (I’m preparing my message for tomorrow and Paul’s personal words of concern to Timothy in 1 Timothy 5:23 somehow really resonates with me somehow. That’s a whole other story) Anyway, it was great to see Ben yesterday considering he’s in the midst of his final exams and a delight to meet Chris for the first time. And then of course, I’m looking forward to continue my conversations with Mr. C a very interest non-Christian who ask fabulous questions!