Moments

Certain moments bring back memories
Reviving a sense of loss, a special kind of pain
Although I've said my goodbyes long ago
Wistfulness invade my consciousness from time to time

Just like that cool autumn evening where the august moon
Hung luminous and low in the midnight velvet sky
We sit sipping tea - sharing laughter and lives
Our faces aglow in the warm candlelight

Your laughter rings out on the crisp, wintry air
As I fall cushioned by the sugar soft snow
The child in you delights and entrances mine
We play together in the afternoon sun

As we walk along the river hand in hand
The ducks glissade gracefully in the water beside us
Breathing in the colours of new life
You turn to me and smile, sunlight in your eyes

Peeping from the horizon, the sun casts a golden glow around
Bathing us in a tropical, balmy warmth
With my head resting on your shoulder
We drink in the beauty of the morning as one

While I will always love you in these snapshots past
They are but souvenirs from another lifetime
My heart now belongs to my very present lover
Who strolls with me in the garden of life



I am his beloved and his desire is for me
In his eyes I am beautiful, a constant delight
How could I not love him for his faithfulness
For cherished I will always be in his loving arms

Possibilities

There are times I wish we never met.
Then I wouldn't have known the pain of loving you
and been forced to walk away from
what wasn't meant to be, what wasn't right.
Even now, years past, my heart still sighs
At the echoes of a memory sweet
that hold me captive to its beguiling call,
While the bad times evaporate like mist on the wind
Inconsequential and overlooked.
I stilll thirst for what was, in my solitude.





Most times though I am glad that we met.
For through loving you I came to know myself,
by plumbing unknown depths and reclaiming the lost.
In giving, I received the greatest treasure
Understanding my desires, I found my way to Him.
While the past makes me who I am today,
it does not define the woman within.
His everlasting love restores my spirit
His fidelity makes me believe again
Most of all, His delight in me conjures possibilities.

Dying unto self

A. was sharing that someone asked her if it was OK to show a not-so-sunny disposition to those we met. After all, isn’t that being honest, truthful, to show off one’s true colours?

She of course replied in the negative but was scratching her head on how to substantiate her response.

While we are called to be child-like in how we entrust our lives to God, it is not an out for childish or immature behaviour.

To walk around like an emotional weather-vane, broadcasting feelings to all and sundry shows a lack of consideration for others and considerable self-absorption.

Neither is it right to take out one’s frustrations on those who are nearest and dearest to us. No shaking the crying baby or kicking the dog just because you had a bad day.

So when A. read about Mother Teresa’s inner suffering throughout her life and how MT did not let on to the world how she felt such a great sense of loss inside of her, but instead put on a face of loving and caring to all she met, she found the answer to the question asked of her.

To be able to live out one’s vocation, loving others as Jesus loves us despite our own shortcomings and personal suffering, that is to die to self. MT brings new and very rich meaning to that phrase.

Despite her personal suffering, she continued to be the little pencil in God’s hand, doing small things (that grew into huge things) with great love.

And she continued to be a woman of faith who prayed constantly – finding time to be with God even though He seemed to have abandoned her.

What St Josemaria Escriva said of Mother Mary’s fiat is true of MT's as well:

“She lived it sincerely, unstintingly, fulfilling its every consequence, but never amid fanfare, rather in the hidden and silent sacrifice of each day."

Mastering pain

Last night's episode of Grey's Anatomy featured a little girl who thought she was super-human for she could take a beating and not feel any pain.

"Punch me in the stomach," she would encourage people to whom she wanted to prove her powers.

It turned out that she had a disorder where she couldn't feel pain and had been punched in the stomach once too often for she was suffering from internal bleeding and needed an operation urgently to save her life.

From the plethora of pain killers on the market, the huge numbers of people on emotion-numbing drugs like Prozac to the culture of drugs and alcohol that have bred rampant addiction, pain is something we avoid at all costs, it would seem.

Most times, pain is the body's way of signalling something is wrong. That inner voice that tells us to “Stop. Slow down. Figure out what’s wrong and make a change,” is a form of self-protection.

Unfortunately the usual reaction today is “Make it go away now!” and the quick fix solution is usually one that treats the symptoms while ignoring the source.

Fixing the source of pain sometimes requires more pain and is usually a lengthy process that requires much effort. It’s just too much bother so most people opt for the quick fix and ignore the warning.

C.S. Lewis said: "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."

Pain has a purpose, a good one at that.

Christ Himself was not impervious to pain. When He prayed alone in the garden of Gethsemane, in His anguish, His sweat became “great drops of blood”.

He even asked His Father to remove the cup of suffering if it were the Father’s will. It was not to be removed.

However, God never leaves us to deal with pain alone. He responded to the fidelity of His son: “Then an angel from heaven appeared to him and gave him strength.” (Luke 22:43)

So if we embrace what the Lord wills in our lives, even the pain, He will supply the necessary resources to endure and to persevere, facilitating the healing and growth process.

Remaining faithful beyond reason or worldly wisdom will eventually bring us to a place of peace and inner strength.

When I experienced the loss of a relationship that meant the world to me at the time, I joked with close friends that the worst part of the pain was that I couldn’t even misbehave to seek solace or relief from the pain for I had chosen to follow Christ.

Underneath the knee-jerk reaction to embark on a destructive search for a palliative - go out and find a man, any man to validate my womanhood - I appreciated the strength I was given to work through the pain of rejection and loss in a healthy manner.

He answered my prayers by sending me angels in the form of various people who made me feel loved and I was protected from the impulses of a pain-crazed mind that would have led me to give in to neon-bright temptations and caused irreparable collateral damage.

In the time needed to walk through the fire, I gained many blessings: wisdom, resilience of spirit, great reserves of inner strength, my self-respect and a buoyant self-worth, a quiet confidence and a greater depth of compassion and empathy.

I slayed my personal demons and emerged liberated, to go forth into the sunshine again.

While I do not wish to experience such depths of pain again, I do not run away from relationships that may trigger pain of such gargantuan proportions. I continue to love life.

And I continue to be awed by His boundless love for me, a love that soothes all pain.

Essential for Christian living

“Mad-eye” Moody, the paranoid ex-auror in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has a motto: “Constant vigilance”.

He is ever-ready to do battle with the supporters of the Dark Lord, and further the cause of good in the world.

We would do well to adopt his motto for it is only too easy to be distracted and wander off the narrow path.

Following Christ is no walk in the park. First He challenges us to sell all our possessions before we follow him, as He advised the rich man in Mark’s gospel.

Then, not doing evil, keeping the commandments is not enough, no. In Matthew’s gospel, we will be judged for the omission of doing good: not helping our fellow beings in need is tantamount to rejecting Christ.

Neither can we be fearful and lazy like the servant who buried his one talent instead of making it work hard for him and multiplying it. Christianity is definitely not for the faint-hearted, those afraid of being losers.

In fact, we must be bold. Live out our faith daily. Be prepared to lay down our lives for the truth.

If you’re wondering at this point is all this worthwhile, the answer is yes. When Christ calls you by name, you will understand why saying yes is the only logical answer to issue forth from your lips.

Erh, now that I’ve gone off-tangent, let me get back to the point.

We cannot afford to be foolish like the five bridesmaids who due to their lack of planning and preparation were unable to greet the bridegroom as their lamps had extinguished.

Constant vigilance is required.

The following extract that comes from a reflection written by Fr. Steve Tynan, published in Sabbath 2007 says it all so beautifully:

“Vigilance is an essential and often forgotten aspect of our walk of faith. If we fail to be vigilant, Satan will find it very easy to infect our lives with his lies and lead us astray from the truth ...being fully grounded in the truths of our faith is the best defense against the lies of Satan.”

“It takes a lot of effort to develop a truly vigilant lifestyle that will protect us against the lies of sin. The best place is to begin with a committed prayer life. If we pray daily and truly allow God to form our hearts in His ways, we will have begun to develop a protection against temptation.

"If we further this with meditating on the Word of God in the Scriptures, we will reinforce all that the Spirit of God is teaching us in prayer.

"If we then add the Teachings of the Church to this, we will soon develop an impenetrable armor to the fiery darts and lies of Satan. The only way that the armor will be pierced is if we choose to let down our guard and allow him in.”

So stay awake. Be vigilant.

Mother saintly

I was amazed at the media brouhaha over recently published letters of Mother Teresa revealing her spiritual loneliness.

Especially the questions raised about the suitability of her sainthood in light of her inner struggles. Huh? Singlish says it best: “I catch no ball”.

How does her display of “weakness” detract from her goodness and a lifetime dedicated to bringing comfort to the poor and the dying?

Just because she experienced doubt and struggled in her faith like an ordinary person?

Conversely, I was greatly encouraged and inspired by her continued dedication, her joy and her boundless love for people despite her “dark night”.

Her crosses mark her as human, making her more endearing.

For who among us has not felt the weight of the absence of God in our lives? Or experienced the aridity of the desert?

In Matthew’s Gospel chapter 7 verse 17, he says “every good tree bears good fruit”.

The mountain of good fruit Mother Teresa produced in her lifetime proves to me that she ultimately believed in God and was graced with an inner, imperceptible core of faith.

Else she would have walked away from the abyssal darkness that surrounded her. Given into despair and quit.

Yet, what did this little Albanian nun do? Merely worked selflessly, loved generously and lived simply to the end, eschewing the trappings of wealth, power and glory.

Even if she were not a saint, she was a woman of great stature and extraordinary grace.


There is an excellent article by Elizabeth Lev commenting on the recent media storm around the published book Mother Teresa. Come Be My Light.: http://www.zenit.org/article-20371?l=english

Spiritual skinny dipping

In author Terry Brooks’s Shannara series, talismans of power are sought and used in the battle of good against evil. One such talisman is a sword.

In order for the wielder of the sword to tap into the power needed to defeat evil, he must first come face to face with the truth about the less desirable qualities of his character and have the courage to accept it. If he is unable to do so, he will perish in the battle.

Ultimately it is the unique ability of the sword of Shannara to present truth, stripped bare of all pretense, that defeats evil and restores order in the world.

To be human is to be flawed. Within each of us lies such a complexity of contradictions, an ever-swirling, changing pot of traits, quirks, dysfunctions, emotions and conscious thought that it’s hard to divorce fact from fiction, good from bad and to accept the unique blend of humanity we each are.

While we strive for perfection, we will always fall short for to be human is to be flawed.

At times I find that the more I try to be like Jesus, who is without sin, the harder it is for me to admit to the evil twin within me who is petty, resentful, covetous, dishonest, arrogant, proud, vain, bitter, greedy, angry, lazy, selfish, weak, craven…

…and yet, she is very much a part of me, alive and healthy.

Oftentimes my first instinct is to deny her existence, or to condemn and suppress her existence. Interestingly, that’s when her hold over my life becomes stronger as I am filled with either blistering anger or self-loathing.

Until I remove the fig leaf of guilt and shame and accept the truth about myself in all its unvarnished, naked glory, I tend to build walls between myself and the Father’s love and remove myself from His presence.

I take to dwelling in darkness, conquered by its blinding distortions. Like Niki Sanders in Heroes, I am imprisoned by my evil alter ego.

It takes the very humbling act of accepting my flaws, and the fractured world around me, to bring me out of the shadowy depths.

And a soupçon of courage to dive, au naturel, into the ocean of the Father’s loving compassion and mercy. To emerge cleansed and refreshed, ready to set off in a new direction.

In 2 Corinthians 12:9, “he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’"

So if you seek to be made perfect, indulge in some spiritual skinny dipping from time to time in His sea of love.