"People need stories more than bread itself. They tell us how to live, and why." - the storyteller from Hallmark's Arabian Nights

This morning, instead of listening to the Pastor preach on a Sunday, I decided to attend the Sunday school. The Sunday school was located in a rented movie house. I sat there watching about a hundred kids, toddlers to their near teens, listening keenly to a teacher. She was enthusiastically telling her “teletubby” version of bible stories. She keeps repeating words over and over again to put emphasis on the lessons. From time to time, she mentions words like “grace” and “mercy”, which was foreign to me until I was in my high school.

During a lull, the children started going around in their own way. Some of them were running to and fro, inside and around the theater. Others were crawling behind the seats, trying to hide from their teacher and from other kids as if it would mean their life or death if found. Some just sat there, eating cookies, completely detached from what is happening around them.

Similary, adults often act in almost the same manner, completely frenzied, mostly nonchalant about the trouble going around in society. We thread on our own, indifferent about others, for as long as we have our “cookies.”

We live in a disarrayed society we try so hard to control. This sometimes result in an orderly or organized chaos, or to put in the other way around, in a chaotic order. Perhaps our only difference from them is our years of existence? The dangerous and sad thing about it is when we commit the mistake of equating age to maturity.

"Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life." - Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770-1827)

What a long day it was. In the morning, we had to practice songs for the church service tomorrow. By afternoon, we had to practice for the choir's songs for the anniversarry on August. By the early weeks of August, we shall have to practice daily, after office in order to learn the songs. To serve is costly. And that cost sometimes bring people into conflict against their own schedule and against relationship towards others. The ministry, although it has its so called "glamour" certainly requires devotion of one's time. And when someone is unable to manage his time, that is when conflict comes in... and the pressure and tension builds up.

It is quite ironic that in a christian ministry devoted to music, it is so difficult to get people into harmony.