Sunday, May 20, 2007

A Pinky Promise

Today is the World Communication Day and its theme is “Children, and the challenge of education in a media world.”

I was watching this 2004 Korean film “Windstruck.” The girl (Jeon Ji-hyeon of “My Sassy Girl”) asks the boy why children promise something to each other while entwining their pinkies and say: “Pinky promise.”

She then tells him the story: “Long time ago there was this beautiful princess who had to choose a prince to marry. She folds her four fingers and lets out only her little finger (pinky). She then goes to each of her prince suitors and asks him what finger she was holding out. Finally one prince got it right when he too holds out and raises his pinky. The two then unite their pinkys for their matrimony.

But after the Princess had gotten married with this prince, they later had to part for he had to go for the crusades (war). And so he makes a pinky promise to his beloved that he shall return. On the 49th day after his disappearance, a man in tattered clothes appears at the palace. And in front of the princess, he holds out his pinky. It was the prince. He came back, but only to realize he came back as a ghost and only for that day. Still the heavens made sure that the prince had kept his promise to his beloved, even after death.”

Today during Mass of the Ascension we remembered Your going up to heaven to Your heavenly Father. You too made a “pinky promise” – that you will not leave us orphans and that you will send the Holy Spirit to stay with us and remind us of You.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

The Road Not Taken

When I was in High School, I fell in love with a poem that gave me a paradigm shift in my life:

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."


Here's the full text of the Robert Frost poem "The Road Not Taken":
(please click on the picture)


You said it Yourself that life is like a road (Mt. 7:13-14).
There are wide, flat and easy highways... where traveling is a breeze.
And then there are the least trodden, long and winding, narrow ones too... where traveling is difficult.
But the latter leads to life.