I'm not an achiever, I am a receiver

Thought for the day: Be a receiver, not an achiever – if it’s* already done, why reinvent the wheel? {*It – whatever you want it to be!}


1 Corinthians 1:30 states “God has united you with Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made him to be wisdom itself. Christ made us right with God; he made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin.” Righteous

My understanding is that Jesus is my wisdom, He makes me blameless before God (righteous), He makes me one with God (holy) and took away my sins ~ past, present and future (redeemed). Why do we keep trying to acquire wisdom, holiness, righteousness and redemption without Jesus?

Jude 1:24 ~ Now all glory to God, who is able to keep you from falling away and will bring you with great joy into his glorious presence without a single fault.

He is able to keep us from falling, He is able to bring us great joy. Do you know how liberating it is to know there is Someone greater who loves you and is completely willing and able to help you? Stop trying to achieve it, just receive it!

Man ~ Machines making money

Ro on Work and Money

It is no secret that work is the bane of my existence :) I am thankful to have a job, however I do not believe that so much time should be spent making money. I think we need a soul revolution. Here are a few people who agree with me:

Dalai Lama

German artist Martin Zobel 

sings about the sad situation ~ we have become like machines making money

(shout out to Nycrophone for introducing this artist)

The Cure

(Thanks to Linda for her thought-provoking blog)

Face your fears

I got home around 6:30 PM and quickly settled in to read an email that I had been anticipating. The e-mail was not disturbing because I was told something that I did not know, but because it confirmed something I already knew ~ that I hoped was not true or had changed. So what did I do? Sleep. I admit that sleep as a coping mechanism is not ideal but it sure beats drowning my problems into a bottle or glass of alcohol. No judgment :)

The shocking thing I realized is.... not only was the e-mail still there when I woke up but so was the problem! OK fine, it wasn't shocking but I decided that I needed to face my fear. I responded to the email very transparently and I felt a huge relief for a few reasons:
- I was honest with the recipient
- I was honest with myself
- I had a clearer understanding of the problem and the solution
- I realized that I lived as if life were an emergency and it's truly not

QT with Dru and Linda

After work, Dru and I met up for an evening at MOMA and dinner. MOMA was closed so we walked over to 9th Ave restaurant strip and decided on Southern cuisine at Delta Grill. We had a very inspiring conversation as I caught up on his life.

After dinner, I went to visit Linda. On the way, I spoke to my parents and was amused by my father's expected humor. As usual, we had a great time, what was meant to be a 30 minute visit turned into two hours and at 11pm, a very tired Ro walked three blocks home.

2/3 - Work :( | Priya :) | Church :)

Today was by far, potentially the second worse day of my current career. Nothing major happened, but a number of minor things happened including blame shifts, unsupportive management and my vacation request to attend a wedding being denied. It was also the last day on a project I worked on for the past few months. I was counting down the minutes to 5:30 PM. Immediately as the clock turned, Ro made like Elvis and left the building.

And then I met up with Priya. The first word that comes to mind when I think of Priya is sage. She is filled with little gems of wisdom. She always sheds a new perspective on situations. We were supposed to meet the previous week but we had to take a literal rain check. We met up very briefly because we were both operating on the NY agenda with back to back engagements but we wanted to see each other for how long we could spare. Now that I think about it, I hope I didn't drain her because I walked in feeling like crap and left feeling inspired. Where did all that energy go?

After we parted, I went to refuel. I am like a car who goes to church to fill up on fuel. The message was very encouraging. A guest speaker from Colorado, Pastor John Bevere taught a message on Daniel, the fear of the Lord and focused on the truism "getting wisdom is the principle thing"

The EARTH without art is just eh

Prior to today, I always thought that

You know, art just makes everything so much better, and so less “eh”/ “blah”

My company recently invested in a series of paintings. As I walked around yesterday, I glanced in an attempt to “appreciate art” and I was not intrigued by any of them. I had various thoughts from “my niece could have painted that” to “I don’t even know what I am looking at!” am I going to be one of those people who pretend to appreciate art? I actually enjoy going to some museums, I think the art was just really bad! Watch this funny clip from Pete Holmes about going to museums (special thanks to Daniel for putting me on to this vid!)

Ro learns French

My friend Linda speaks French fluently, came to visit me today and I told her that I wanted her to sing a song with me because I was pretty confident that I was butchering the pronunciation.

Enjoy the French-English translation of “Helene je m’appelle Helene”

We get to this line:

And she sings “je vujtrais” but I sing “je vudray”. I promptly stop the video to inquire where she saw a “t” in the word “voudrais”. She explains to me how it should be pronounced. I guess the best explanation is when you have a dry cough and you are inflicted with excess phlegm that you need to eliminate.




Linda: voudrais
Ro: voudrais
Linda: keep saying it, you will get it
Ro: voudrais
Linda: let me say it again, it will come
Ro: what are all these words in the future, what do you mean “it will come?” It came! I am saying it (in my head, not only am I saying exactly what she is saying but I am probably saying it better!)

She blurts out laughing and I insist that she watches the video below of the Friends episode of Phoebe trying to teach Joey how to speak French - must watch (special thanks to Daniel for showing me this clip!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yJ_HrZImWQ