Gifts of mystery

I cannot believe how incredibly fast the days have flown by. We are almost at the end of the Easter season.

It has truly been a season of new life for me - new ways of looking at and living out life which have presented real challenge lately.

For I found that I was spending more time feeling guilty about the things I had not been able to accomplish, things that I had wanted to do but had not physically or mentally been up to carrying out.

There are so many things on my to-do list, which seems to be growing longer faster than there are items scratched out from it.

I feel so out of control - one big disorganized mess and I am driving myself crazy, spiralling downward into complete chaos.

In the meantime, my body is protesting against my compulsive need to do everything, be everywhere at the same time and be all things to all people.

And so I have recently declared a sanity check and decided that I need to love myself a little more and affirm myself for being a good person. Go easy on myself.

Thus I have begun to look at the things I have accomplished, and which are usually dismissed as part and parcel of the daily grind of life and hence overlooked and unremarked.

Like how I cooked a delicious dinner tonight for Mum, my friend B. and myself and we had a good time. Everyone enjoyed the meal. The soup was rich in flavour, the mussel salad refreshingly piquant and the ginger chicken with mushroom was yummy.

So what if I didn't manage to mop the floor as I intended to today. I did sweep the floor. Yes, that deserves special mention.

During today's mass, Fr. Romeo remarked that we were given two gifts by God - one was love and the other was the Holy Spirit.

Love, not in the dreamy, romance novel kind of way, but a sacrificial act of love, and one that unleashes a redemptive force.

Just as Jesus' love for us was strong, concrete and dear, so too do we make His presence real in our lives when we act out of love.

The other gift that lives and moves deep within us is the Paraclete or the Holy Spirit. It vivifies and animates us, guiding us to engage others and life through action.

If we are Spirit-led, then we will receive the gifts and fruit of the Spirit, chief among which are wisdom, faithfulness, joy and peace, all great things to have.

Fr. Romeo called these two gifts mysterious for much as we try to wrap our brains around them, we can never understand them fully. We can only receive and appreciate, and in turn, give back.

If I rely on these two gifts, and the other gifts I have received as an individual to act in life, then I am good to go.

Go do what I can, on a daily basis, thanking the Creator for all things completed successfully and all things left unaccomplished.

The price of passion

Last Friday evening, JC, an old school-mate and good gal pal picked me up in her chauffeured-driven Bimmer and bought me dinner. We both had a great time catching up, sipping limoncello and wine, and dining on deliciously prepared Italian cuisine.

Her driver dropped me off after dinner and I walked up to my flat and into my room feeling distinctly blue.

There are aspects of my previous life that I miss at times. I miss dining out in ritzy restaurants on a whim. I miss travelling on business class. I miss taking off to exotic destinations or going on dive trips whenever I feel like it. I miss being able to buy something frivolous without batting an eyelid at the mind-boggling cost.

I DO mourn the loss of those fat paychecks and what I could do with them from time to time, even as I am grateful for the generosity of friends.

Don't get me wrong, I love my life the way it is now for I do NOT miss the stress, the inability to find meaning in what I did at work, the overwhelming despair I felt from being a square peg trying to fit into a round hole, and the battering my self-esteem and self-worth took as I struggled to fit into an environment I found absurd.

I was living a life without passion and it was truly a meaningless existence, made interesting and bearable only by the pleasures that the financial spoils afforded.

Would I go back to such a life? The answer is a definite no.

Would I do it again, that is to walk away from my previous life knowing what I know now about the opportunity cost of such a decision? It's a resounding YES!

For the decision was not so much motivated by fear or an act of cowardice, but by love, a new-found passion - for Jesus.

There is a saying by Lao Tzu: "Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; loving someone deeply gives you courage."

This revelation of love in my life gave me both strength and courage to "leave the boat" and "walk on water", to choose a radical approach in life by submitting my will in all things to the Father (remember I am an "all or nothing" kinda gal).

There has never been an easier or a more difficult decision in my life. While I've experienced great joy and gained much, I have also suffered great loss and grieved tremendously.

What makes it all worthwhile is how fulfilled I am in this living, spousal relationship I have with Jesus.

Yes, I can just hear my friend, PC, say how I've been brain-washed or "psychoed" myself into thinking this way for how can it be possible to have an intimate relationship with a man who walked this earth over 2,000 years ago?

To paraphrase the angel Gabriel: "All things are possible with God."

Even as I experienced desolation last Friday evening, He spoke to me comfortingly and prophetically in the gospel of the day, words that were again echoed during Sunday mass two days later (see John 14) and at the Shaping Progress talk that ICPE's Woman to Woman ministry organized at CANA that afternoon.

There is a price to pay for passion, Jesus paid for it with His life as he sought to do the will of His Father.

If I choose spiritual progress, to become more and more like Him, then I, too, must be willing and able to pay the price.

Albert Camus said: "A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing."

I hope to spare nothing in pursuing my passion for "the Way and the Truth and the Life" every day.

WONDER child

WONDER
I am. A girl child.
A luminous rosebud of femininity.
Tender-hearted and fragile
But resilient to the core.
I drink in the world in wide-eyed wonder
Loving – to the last atom of my being.
I giggle. I skip. I whoop. I glide.
Pure delight unto myself and others.
I’m on a magical, never-ending ride.
I slumber in the safe haven of my rainbow-tinted world.

DESPAIR
I am. A girl child.
A shrinking, prickly touch-me-not.
Afraid, ashamed and all alone
I’m crippled to the core.
In my broken, dank, dark world
I am malodorous, reeking despair through every pore.
I wail. I thrash. I scream. I slash.
A hateful creature - unloved by all.
Find me in the bowels of misery
Where I am tormented by my own existence hourly.

I am that girl child
Residing inside a woman preciously knitted
Sometimes light-hearted, sometimes brooding.
She is a cocktail of experience-shaken perception and emotion
A multi-flavoured mix of wonder and despair.
She doesn’t know it but she has the power to change the world
In a single heartbeat.
If only she would let me out to play
To be comforted and healed
By my Father’s warm and gentle hands
So that in time I become more wonder than despair
And hand in hand we can sing in resonant accord.

By Jackie Pau 2008

In John Bradshaw's Home Coming Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child, he identifies the wonder child as having these natural traits:

Wonder
Optimism
Naivete
Dependence
Emotions
Resilience
Free play
Uniqueness
Love

Golden jubilee

Last night I accompanied Mum to a wedding anniversary celebration. Old friends of my parents who have attained what is increasingly rare as time goes by - 50 years of marriage and still going strong.

It was great to see them surrounded by children, grand-children and friends, celebrating the cumulation of their lives together as husband and wife. What a special evening!

Biblically, 50 is the number of jubilee or celebration, a time of deliverance and rest, and, of grace as it is the perfect consummation of time.

Fifty days after Jesus was resurrected, the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples in the upper room and thus the gift of the Spirit was given to humankind on Pentecost.

So which ever way you slice it, 50 is a powerful number and cause for celebration.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the feast last night (and paying today for over-indulging), there was much to digest from last Sunday's gospel reading of the apostles' meeting of Jesus on the road to Emmaus.

As Fr. Renckens explained, we do not have the readings from the Bible before the Eucharist just to make mass longer, rather it is by listening to the word of God and by opening our hearts and minds to receive Him that we may truly be transformed by our faith during the Eucharistic celebration.

Through this transformation, we are then better able to emulate Christ and reflect His love in our actions in our daily lives.

Just as our bodies require food every day to function well, so do our minds and hearts require the bread of life a.k.a. Jesus, through prayer, especially through meditating on Scripture, to maintain healthy spiritual lives.

In Matthew's gospel. Jesus responded to temptation brought on by hunger resulting from 40 days of fasting with this: "One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God."

I hope to spend these 50 days of the Easter season feasting on God's words and arriving at Pentecost in a suitable mood of jubilation.

All or nothing

I come from a family of people who are extremist in thinking. It's either in or out, a resounding yes or an emphatic no, all or nothing. And when it comes to major decisions, there is no room for compromise.

And once you put "your hand to the plow", there is no turning back, no regrets. Die, die, must go all the way.

It hasn't won me any popularity contests and I've been accused of being hard-nosed, stubborn and unyielding, to which I reply simply, "I just know what I want out of life so why should I settle for less when only the best will do?"

So I have chosen to follow Christ and the church His death gave birth to, founded by Peter, the apostle He tasked with being the shepherd of His flock.

This means following the teachings of the Church , not just selectively adopting the teachings that sit easy with me but the whole enchilada: teachings on the dignity of the human person, the respect for all life, whether it be in the womb or non-human and the sanctity of family and marriage.

Upholding age-old traditions and teachings in the modern world may seem anachronistic, ridiculous even, but having lived my life both ways, I find that "keeping to the rules" of the Church have given me the freedom and space to be the unique individual that I was created to be and to be happy, at peace with myself.

While I have always tried to be non-judgmental about the life choices of friends and family members, loving them unconditionally, I hold myself to a standard that not many of them understand or appreciate.

Certainly a standard I hope they will one day adopt, but it's not one I expect them to adhere to unwillingly even though I do happen to think that it is the way, the truth and the life. (That's the other thing about my family, we always think we are right...because we are. Hah!)

I spent a long time going down the road of compromise that led to many dead ends. So now that I've found the narrow path, uncomfortable it may be at times to tread, it is the road I've chosen to travel on and I am very focused on keeping to the path. No detours allowed.

For the thing about compromise is this, it opens the door a crack and before you know it, you have rationalized your way to a wide-open door of confusion and pain, much like Pandora's box*.

We all know there is no such thing as a little bit wrong and two wrongs definitely do not make a right, so don't even go there.

I do admit it gets tiring and disheartening at times, having to explain my views and being misunderstood by loved ones, but I will not go back to living in fear, or have my freedom circumscribed by what people or society think of me.

Anyway, whatever I have to face in life pales in comparison to what Jesus had to - rejection of his identity, hatred born of fear and an excruciating death for loving (and healing) people the way He did.

When I think of how much Jesus loved and loves me - at all cost - as His follower, I can only follow the advice of the prophet Samuel to "serve him, faithfully with all your heart; for consider what great things he has done for you."

Alleluia. Amen.


* In Greek mythology, Pandora's curiosity led to her opening the box (or jar) that contained all the evils of mankind and hope, and thus she let loose all evil in the world but still kept hope captive inside the container.

A new reality

I love Easter. I love going for morning mass, reliving the mystery of Christ's resurrection and singing exuberant Easter hymns.

I love receiving chocolate or decorated eggs and I love celebrating the newness of life and all the promise that comes with it.

The feasting that usually comes with the season is reason to celebrate as well

Easter is for me a season of grace.

While there will always be scattered throughout life, periods of pure joy, utter contentment and immeasurable pleasure - times of grace - our lives remain grounded in reality. A reality that includes hurt, loss, conflict, violence, suffering, pain, sickness and death.

Moments of grace, what I call God-reality, are also opportunities to perceive and acknowledge the presence of God in our lives every day, and His manifold and unique blessings. Some of them so small that they are often overlooked as we go chasing after the BIG moments.

We each have an in-built survival instinct to avoid pain and avoid getting hurt, but that should not lead us to escape from the reality of life in its routine, mundane existence and the challenges that it presents.

To live only for pleasure, going from one high to the next, dismissing everything else in between as insignificant and irrelevant.

Or worse, relying on substances, people and activity to run away from what is undesirable in life, creating a make-believe world, editing out all the unsavoury, unwanted bits.

Real life can be painful and downright difficult, hard to make sense of at times, but we should never be defeated by it nor should we go into denial and stay there, buffered by a substance-induced fog.

Instead we can learn to live in the reality of life, relying on Jesus (who is the ultimate model of courage and sacrificial love) for the strength and wisdom to embrace the experience and use it to transform us into more human and humane beings.

God never promised a life without suffering, but if we trust in Him, then we will be given what is necessary to grab adversity by the horns and deal with it in a constructive, life-enriching manner.

So seek Him in all things and allow Him to transform reality into something new, making each day an Easter experience.