On happiness and leopard print flats

Today, Chica Villarta, Daniel Velasco, Rae Esteban, Adrian Bernardo and I reported on The Peaceful Sea, the third chapter of Timothy Radcliffe's book, What Is The Point of Being A Christian?. We did really well and I think everyone enjoyed the report, at least if we base it on Prof. Rosana's comments and our classmates' feedback, especially the activity we had which involved having everyone write down what makes them happy on slips of paper and picking out two between report segments. We chose six and they each received a bar of chocolate (I bought them hurriedly on my way to the bathroom after I presented my segment. Haha!) .I'm incredibly proud of my groupmates! Everyone really stepped up during last night's brainstorming session and they held the crowd's attention well. We were all in yellow because the report's on happiness (and everyone knows how I feel about yellow).

We got really interesting answers on the slips of paper: trance music, vanilla ice cream, parental approval, shopping, shoes, video games, anime, lollipops, rain, fencing. The best answer had to be Nick Padilla's: surfing, photography, skateboarding, film making and seeing his parents smile because they're proud of him. When we picked out his answer, Chica and I were going, "Who is he? He's into everything!" Good job!

There was a bit of light-hearted teasing after the class that made us all laugh, thanks to Prof. Rosana, so we ended the class on a really high note. We were all...happy--which was the point of the discussion anyway!

I have no class tomorrow so this was a good way to jumpstart my (long) weekend!

The Reasonability of Unreasonability

Ken Abante, one of nicest people I know (I swear, the guy's a walking ray of sunshine. He has a ready smile for everyone and has a heart as big as all outdoors. The day Ken isn't optimistic about the state of the world is the day we should all come to terms with the fact that the human race is doomed and cry ourselves to sleep. Haha.), wrote this a while back (I was reading What Is The Point of Being a Christian? by Tim Radcliffe for my Theology class under Prof. Rosana and I was reminded of this):

Christianity is unreasonable because it begs you to believe in something that you don't understand -- a God which cannot be described or explained. This statement makes sense: why would you believe in something that you cannot comprehend?

But if you think about it, it's the only reasonable thing to believe in. Why would you believe in a God which you can totally box in, limit into and level with the realms of limited, imperfect human reason? That would make the all-powerful God, imperfect.

The complexity and incomprehensibility of God is therefore a tenacious proof of His existence, and is not at all contradictory to His Power.

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I can never claim to be religious but I admire people who are, for as long as they don't try to impose their beliefs on others. It takes a lot to cling to something so intangible, especially when you have skeptics like me who privilege logic above all else. What I've always appreciated about Jesuit education is its attempt to reconcile reason and faith. In some cases, it's not apparent or effective but it's a relief to know that a blind adherence to Christianity is not required of me despite my choice of university and background.