James Whong

Jesus in the Carols

The Song i have chosen is a song named "Christmas means love" by The Soul Stirrers. This song was made and released during the 1940's and was written by one of the founders of the group. The song "Christmas means love" is talking about the the 25th day of December in which Jesus Christ was born, so forth continues to talk about how Jesus showed everyone love. Later the singer claims that "to me Christmas means love". The lyrics the singer is singing in this song are related to the bibles words because they talk about the holy day of when Jesus was born and how he showed everyone true love.

In this song Jesus Christ is called just Jesus, no other names. The song tells us that Lord Jesus was born and after that very moment Jesus gave us true love and this further more helped the singer realize to him that Christmas means love since Jesus brought love to everyone.

I have the video on my phone and i dont know how to put it on this blog Ms James.

My Shema

I believe there is a God and only one true God. I believe God exists but i do not follow or pray to him.  Throughout my life i have gone to many christian schools and they always told me God would bring you salvation and give you strength in tough times but when things got tough for me once i prayed nothing really changed so over time i began to change my perspective of God. I began to think there is a God but i just didn't follow him. These experiences in my life changed my views of God. I remember God as a spectator. He created the whole world and he is just watching his work unfold on itself. I have never seen or experienced anything that would lead to the fact that God helped me with my perils. 

Shema: For me God is a creator and he stands by on neutral perspectives. He doesn't pick a side to anyone but to keep things balanced. I do not think that God is a person to worship and to follow but to acknowledge him and to know that he exists. My relationship with God is on a neutral stand point. We both know each other but i dont worship him and he doesn't get involved in my life.

Reflection on Meditation and the Temple

The past lesson we interacted without selves and challenged ourselves to a new form of meditation. Ms gave us a sheet to fill out and to reference or experiences on this meditation. One of the few factors that made meditation difficult for me was i had so much things in my mind like upcoming tests and projects that i couldn't clear my head fully for proper concentration on meditation. While i was confronted with this problem i tried to think of something that always kept my mind calm like the image of the ocean. Surprisingly it worked and for a minute or too i was fully connected with my inner self and was able to meditation properly. One thing whilst i was meditation i learned was that even thought i can be easily distracted i can be totally focused on something. Before attending MRE i always thought of religion as religion and nothing more but once i began to learn more about religion like Buddhism, i learned a whole new world from another aspect.

Buddhism was thriving in the temple Bongwonsa when we went there. There were couple of buildings dedicated to certain aspects of the religion. There was this one temple called 3000 Buda temple and this temple literally had 3000 golden statues of former Buddhists. I was very astonished of first how many statues there were and second how this religious has spread through temples like this and really impacts the local people and people who visit these places. People come and go to the temple to either meditate or to visit a lost family member or friend. After seeing family members praying for their lost members i really saw how religion could effect so many people and also how Buddhism has spread to so many places like this temple and gave people hope and assurance. From this experience i really changed my view on religion. Now i give respect to anyone who is deeply religious. I think i have found a new insight to religion. I really enjoyed going to the temple and wish to go another day.

Reflection on Gandhi

Recently i have watched the movie in our MRE class about Gandhi's life. I was very shocked that such a person could go through many unbelieveable hardships in order to spread his beliefs to his country. I truly respect a man who would stop at nothing to share his beliefs and fight for his own people. In the movie it showed the life oh Gandhi before he became so well known. It showed how Gandhi a simple lawyer released that something had to be done to India because the British was taking to much control and rights from the people of India. 

What i found really amazing is that Gandhi who was a dedicated husband and a father stood up for the people of India and started to spread throughout India that the British had no right of taking over India. He started to make public speeches to gain India's attention than started to protest to gather even more followers for his journey to unravel the grip on India from the British. After all his effort he has succeeded in his goal to bring peace to India but sadly in the midst of his success he was killed. This event didn't change the outcome of Gandhi's hard work. After his death people were even more inspired to make his dream into reality. I truly believe Gandhi is a great person and i also believe that the movie did a splendid job of portraying this. 

On Tuesday fellow class mates and myself went down to the gym in order to some yoga. I have never experienced yoga before so i was not sure if i was excited or nervous. I have seen my mother do yoga before and it seemed like it put some strain into the body but brought peace into her mind. My mother always told me to have an open mind so i took her advice and gotten an open mind for yoga. When we started on yoga i was surprised on how the effects started to kick in immediately. I felt so calm and also very relieved since all the stains in my muscles were all stretched from the yoga. In result my mental and physical parts of my body were very much relieved. I wouldn't mind doing yoga another time because it really helped me to loosen up from this tight school life that i have ahead of me.

Some people don't know what they are

What we do know is that they protect their creators

Watching about the open sea

Dug into massive craters

Protect us from foreign invaders

Give us rain and crops

Mighty eyes seeing all that is just

Essential for survival

People fearing death from all sources

Made for the comfort of the people

Representing the culture of the past tribes

Essential for survival

James Whong