The new year and Cambodia

New Years will always have a bittersweet aftertaste.

How about a bit of math: 2011-2007 = 4. Four years ago on January 1, my Pop died. And now New Years is a bit different. It's a particular reflective time of year but a bit melancholy. I read a lot of my old diary entries to see where I've been and how I've changed. At the beginning to 2010, I was both terrified and thrilled for the new year.

January 1, 2010 - Today is the first day of 2010. Today, three years ago, Pop died. This is the year I will graduate. This is the year I will become a legal adult. This is an important year of change. While I'm excited, I'm also frightened beyond belief. I can't believe it's come to this point already. It still seems like I'm back in sixth grade making a list of everything I'm afraid

of happening... never wanting to grow put. Look at me. I'm grown up.

My writing habits neatly cut this past year into three parts. My first diary begins on December

31, 2009 and continues quite regularly until April 7, 2010. Where it abruptly cuts off.

(Left: First diary)

I began this blog on April 18, 2010 but it is quite devoid of personal details. Blogging became a regular habit throughout the months of April and May.

Then I received another journal. I began writing in this diary on June 1, 2010 and still continue to do so.

(Right: Second diary)

Interestingly enough this division accurately reflects my past year.

This year I'm starting off with several themes or ideas in my head:

John 8:1-11 - But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?"They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they keep on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin let him be the first to throw a stone at her." Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"

"No one, sir," she said.

"Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."

Mistakes are always made, one way or another. It's easy to feel like everyone blames you for what's happened in the past. Or that everyone has condemned you, similar to the story of the adulterous woman. But there's one who doesn't condemn you. Doesn't condemn me. And He is the only one who really matters in the long run.

"Imagine" by John Lennon

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one

I'm going to Cambodia in March. Recently watched The Killing Fields. I loved that they used this song at the very end of the movie. One glimmer of hope after ultimate tragedy. Imagine peace.

"Cambodia. To many westerners it seemed a paradise. Another world, a secret world. But the war in neighboring Vietnam burst its borders, and the fighting soon spread to neutral Cambodia. In 1973 I went to cover this side-show struggle as a foreign correspondent of the New York Times. It was there, in the war-torn country side amidst the fighting between government troops and the Khmer-Rouge guerrillas, that I met my guide and interpreter, Dith Pran, a man who was to change my life in a country I grew to love and pity." - The Killing Fields

Dith Pran and Sydney Schanberg

Of course I have some random New Year's resolutions. Silly little things:

1. Do not make any decisions that could affect other people's lives between the hours of 9:00 pm and 6:00 am.
2. Sleep more. Yes, that paper may not be finished but staying up late is not going to make it any better.
3. At some point, save enough money to partially sponsor a child from Foundation For His Ministries.
4. Run a marathon
5. Read lots of Russian literature: finish The Brothers Karamazov and read War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Resurrection (all by Leo Tolstoy) and The Idiot, Notes from Underground, The Gambler, and The Double by Fyodor Dostoevsky. We'll see how this goes.

But those are more trivial matters.

So here's to forgiveness, imagination, peace and Cambodia. And a new year.