Nature's best

I've always loved nature. Whether it's the womb-like experience of floating in the ocean, looking up into a sky adorned with fluffy white clouds that form and re-form shapes, allowing my imagination to run amok in the atmosphere.

Or the sense of adventure that overcomes me, as I wander around the garden on a sunny afternoon: prodding the millipedes and watching them curl up lazily into balls, tracing the random flight of a graceful, honey-coloured butterfly, or sucking on the slender tube-like base of a vermilion ixora flower to draw out its sweet nectar.

I'm always amazed at the fine detail captured in the design of a dragonfly, a balsam seed pod or a fern frond - how God's creations are all so 'wonderfully made'.

But the place where my soul is most at peace is Hawaii. The beauty of the islands strike a chord deep within. Its rugged, green peaks set against a backdrop of deep blue skies and sea. The scents of plumeria and tuberose mingling sweetly, as doves coo in response to the ocean's rhythmic roar.

Here is where my spirits soar, and my inner child can come out to roam wild. He speaks to me on the breeze, in every glorious sunrise and sunset. I am restored, made new, by the celebration of life that surrounds me.

The nature of love
Nature at its best is love
Lavished so gloriously, it’s quite divine
Like an ‘Io1 aloft a sultry updraft
Or a humpback breaching the sapphire Pacific
Dolphins spinning songs of aloha2 nearby
It’s majestic, just joyous
Sweet

Because of You, I’m alive
Enrapt, inside a pikake3 rainbow
Tasting eternity in the wind-kissed Ko’olaus4
Riding the Pipeline5 that hugs the North Shore
Weaving richly coloured leis6 of memories
It’s mystical, mostly magical
Unreal

Heaven in the here and now
Is where my heart resides
In the trees that dance a gentle hula
As friendly trade winds embrace the glowing sky
Awash in sunset pinks and golds
It’s magnificent, amazingly awesome
Nō ka ‘oi7

1 Hawaiian hawk, Buteo Solitarius
2 Hawaiian for hello or goodbye when used as a greeting; a sense of hospitality and care; a combination of love, joy, harmony, affection, gentleness, compassion, humility, generosity and patience
3 Hawaiian name for jasmine
4 A mountain range on Oahu, Hawaii
5 Banzai Pipeline is the beautiful tubed surfing break found at the immensely popular surfing site, Ehukai Beach Park, on the North Shore of Oahu
6 Hawaiian for flower garland
7 Hawaiian for the best, number one and superior

by Jackie Pau, June 7, 2006

Father's Day retrospective

It was Father's Day, this Sunday past. While Dad is not here with my family to celebrate the day, I know he is celebrating with us in spirit. I used to think that death is the end of the road, a parting of ways. No longer. My relationship with my father is alive and well. He lives on in my memory, and in my DNA. Who I am, how I live my life, decisions I make each day - he is present in my every thought and action.

I like to think that his human failings died along with his physical body and he left behind his spirit. His true self. What is uniquely him - his great charm and intelligence, his passion for justice and equality, his compassion for the weak and disdvantaged, his incredible drive and pursuit of excellence, his unending generosity, his uncompromising integrity, his deep love for family and friends, and his simple faith in God.

When I attended a talk last month by Fr. Laurence Freeman on how dying is an art, I found myself thinking of Dad when Fr. Laurence said that there is a grace given by those who are dying, and that the grace continues to impact those left behind, after the person has departed. It's so true! How my father submitted the lung cancer and its attendant attacks on his body to the Lord's will convicted me.

At the time, the concept of redemptive suffering was alien to me, but I saw my father transfigured by his suffering, through his faith in Jesus. As a caregiver, it was a time of horror and sadness, yet, one filled with many healing graces, and incredibly beautiful to experience.

My earthly father brought me back to Abba, my heavenly Father. It's a priceless legacy, beyond the riches of this world, that segues directly into the priceless legacy Jesus left us in Corpus Christi, the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, which coincidentally falls on the same day.

As I reflect on Jesus' gift of Himself, His body and blood in the sacrament of the Eucharist, I thank Dad, and my heavenly Father, for giving me this faith, by virtue of my birth, and my father's act of dying well. And I am filled with gratitude. I thank you, Lord, for Dad, the consummate perfectionist, right to the very end.

TRIBUTE
Unresolved feelings
Of molten anger,
Shards of hurt,
Irrepressible regret,
Deep, bittersweet love.

Now you are gone, I can never express,
All that is tucked within my heart's recess.

But healing begins_
Amniotic warm,
Firefly bright,
An ineffable caress,
The spirit afresh.

You will always be the best part of me,
By His grace and will, thus it's meant to be.

by Jackie Pau, Oct 9, 2004