A New Beginning

Dear friends,

TM Squared (Phase 2) officially kicked-off on Monday, 13 June 2005. Our itinerary is something like this:

1) Eugene Peterson's The Wisdom of Each Other
- A series of 'ad lib' blogs, in which we're free to explore the book any way we want

2) Canonical Wisdom Books of the Old Testament
- A journey through Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon
- Reading a psalm a day to save time and preclude mundaneness

3) Apocryphal Wisdom Books of the period between the OT and NT
- Including books like Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus

4) Wisdom of other cultures and religions
- May include Greek, Egyptian, Chinese, Indian and Persian sources

The deadline is the first day of d'NA Stage III, sometime in early December.

I'm presently down with chickenpox, so I'll have plenty of time to write the first few entries this week.

For those of you who joined us last year, welcome back and I hope this year won't be any less exciting. And we welcome those of you who are new, having been led here by either one of our blogs, or those of our friends.

Finally, in response to Soo Tian's previous entry, I did learn a lot, grasping more of Truth, and learning eventually (only a few weeks ago) that "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," which is one thing to agree with, and another to truly internalise.

Perhaps that is what our adventure this time is about: connecting with our hearts, and having them beat in time with God's. Learning, as Soo Tian loves to say, to yield to the 'unforced rhythms of grace' (something from The Message). Being in some ways less analytical, and more eager to come to wisdom in humility, at the feet of Jesus.

We thank God for his grace that has brought us so far, and we look forward to the great days to come. I am sure it will be an experience made only more interesting by the fact that Soo Tian will be writing half of it from the other side of the world, when he goes to the USA to study.

Here's to Wisdom, and our (at most) meagre exploration of it,

Ben