Why reverse carolling?

What would you say if I said reverse carolling? Will you have to sing carols in reverse? Or will the people living in the homes visited sing to the carollers instead?

I will be a reverse caroller this coming December when I go up to the Philippines to participate in ICPE Mission Philippines' Christmas initiative taking place from the 13th to 16th December.

Reverse carolling is a termed coined by ICPE Mission Philippines for their Christmas outreach. In the Philippines, it is common practice to give the carollers who visit your home a small cash gift for their efforts. However, the families that we will be visiting would not be able to do so.

So instead we will serenade them and leave behind the gift of a Christmas food hamper that will enable them to celebrate the birth of Christ with joy and full stomachs.

This will be the second time I am participating in this and I am looking forward to it for we will not only be visiting families living in the dumpsite around Montalban, but also disadvantaged families living in Tagaytay over four days.

I chose to do this this year for I know the Mission desperately needs muscle (each hamper weighs a ton, well, pretty much when you've been walking with two for a while) and it's been over a year since my surgery so I should be able to lift hampers this December.

We leave early morning after loading up the van with heavily laden hampers. When we arrive, we each take two hampers and break up into groups to visit the houses which are typically made of wood, corrugated metal sheets or cardboard and are cramped and dark. Many have no doors save for a cloth nailed to the top of the doorway that drops down to cover the doorway.

Before we leave the family with one Christmas food hamper, we will have prayed with them and sung Christmas carols to them.

The thing that struck me most the first time I got involved was how grateful they were that their presence was acknowledged by another.

A simple smile seemed to transcend the language barrier and make their day brighter.

So if you are looking for something meaningful to do this Christmas, give reverse carolling a try. You will get to stay in ICPE Mission Philippines' mission house in Tagaytay which is pleasantly cool.

If you are unable to take time off during December, a donation would be equally meaningful for SGD5,000 must be raised to defray the cost of 300 food hampers. 

Go to http://icpephilippines.blogspot.com/2011/09/normal-0-false-false-false-en-sg-x-none.html to see how you can get involved in this.

What better way to enter the spirit of Christmas than to give a gift from the heart that benefits many? And that's why reverse carolling.

What He wants

The body is intelligent. When muscles are tight, the body will automatically compensate such that you will accomplish what you want to do, except your muscles will not be working collectively in a balanced manner and you will not be properly aligned even though you think you are.

Over time, the compensatory movement will create a muscle imbalance that may eventually cause an injury or impact the skeletal structure negatively.

Likewise, our mind can play tricks on us when we deal with trauma, unpleasant truths or our own voracious need for love.

Sometimes, the lies we tell ourselves are a necessary self-defence mechanism in order we survive, however the danger is if we remain in the lie and perpetuate unhealthy patterns of behaviour that we cannot see and shake off.

When it comes to love, we all have this propensity to behave in ways that demonstrate a tenacious compulsion to fashion relationships that feed our own inordinate needs and desires.

We are unable to see or act with true self-giving love, that is, to love in a way that is objectively good for the other person and not what WE THINK is good for the other or our own self, with no expectation or hidden agenda.

It's usually a little (or a lot) self-serving for we are often unable to love in a way that is free of self-interest, or salutary for ourselves.

We grasp. We bend over backwards. We get enmeshed. We over-compensate. We rationalize co-dependent or abusive relationships, and our own and others' toxic behaviour.

We manipulate. We obfuscate. We isolate ourselves. We lose truth in our lives, and consequently we lose our way; we lose self-awareness and even our sense of self.

Last Friday evening we talked about marriage, and love - how love should be prophetic and liturgical.

We agreed that the marriages we saw around us that were successful were those where the couple was centred on God and His plan for them. It's all about what He wants, not what he or she wants.

The same holds true for those of us who are single, or more precisely, for everyone.

Within each of us is the call to love and be loved, but how we answer the call makes all the difference between a love that is life-giving or poisonous.

As Father Bernard Lonergan states, "Heirs of original sin, people come into the world as divided creatures, gifted with the love of God, being in love with God, but victimized by ignorance and concupiscence."

Because of original sin, we will tend toward sin and we will sin. It's inescapable. But we can minimize sin, just as we can train our bodies to proper recruitment of muscles and better postural alignment.

Through the continued effort of hard work: educating ourselves, shedding our ignorance by looking for a more edifying way of living life; and acknowledging shortcomings yet being willing to effect change.

An additional way to cultivate wisdom involves daily examen consciousness or self-reflection,  regular time spent in prayer, meditating on Scripture and persistent journalling (patterns of behaviour can be seen more clearly over a period of time).

For as JPII proposes, we are made to spend time in solitude in order to discover how we can enrich our relationship with God by hanging out with Him, and consequently to be fed emotionally and spiritually, growing in wisdom.

Seek counsel from wise and mature spiritual guides, or listen to the opinions of trusted friends. I even consider remarks made by people who are not life-giving for a hint of truth may lurk in the midst of malice.

Journeying with a community of like-minded, committed Christians has also made the difference for me. By being honest and open with those who love me and want what's best for me, I am able to cast light on my secret, shameful weaknesses and move forward into transformational strength.

When we aspire to love as Christ loved, and loves, we love prophetically, reflecting His love to others.

We are able to share the truth of friendship* with love and sensitivity; remain compassionate and patient in the face of blind obstinacy; and uphold a high moral standard with humility and without being judgemental.

We love liturgically when we praise the Lord in all situations, in all things. When we worship with the exuberance and joy of Psalm 148.

This means elevating the unpleasant, mundane and dreary by imbuing a sense of caring pride into all we do. Not only by doing small things with great love but by keeping faith and finding blessings even in disaster.

Releasing tight muscle and harmful "love" behaviour are equally painful and difficult but there is hope when we attempt to love with JPII's "original nakedness"; with vulnerability and openness that is untainted by fear, distortion and subterfuge.

Whether it's peers, friends, spouses, parents, siblings or children, let us ask God today to purify the love we receive and give in all our relationships, and restore them to wholesomeness.

* A. echoed Bernard Cooke on friendship: "Human friendship is the most basic sacrament of God's saving presence among us".

Family benefits

Human beings are social by nature. This means that there is a given pattern of human design that we all feel called to fulfil; and which if we ignored would mean that a dimension of our humanity would remain undeveloped.*

Only in society, interacting closely with other people, can we fully develop as persons.

The first stratum of society we are all exposed to is our own families. Therefore our first training ground in learning to become human is within the family - as child, sibling, grandchild, niece or nephew, cousin, and even aunt or uncle in big, extended families.

As we enter school, we develop friendships with our peers and we find mentors in our teachers. And when we transition into adulthood, we become colleagues, employees, managers or employers - and citizens.

To complete the circle, we eventually become spouses and parents ourselves.

At every stage of our life, we can weave in and out of various social circles of our own choosing. And yet, we can never lose the familial relationships established in our childhood even if we deny their existence, finding them lacking and onerous.

I found this great quote by Father Granados, my TOB lecturer in Melbourne, that proposes JPII's TOB is, "not just about sexuality, but about the truth of love as the foundation of the person’s dignity and the meaning of reality; and about the family as the place where the person finds himself and his way towards happiness."

It is in our families that we learn how to be patient, kind, forgiving, honest, generous, caring and all the other qualities that define a person as good or a decent human being. It is where we first learn how to love.

Upon my return from studying abroad, I found living at home quite impossible for I was used to living my life without the restriction of obligation and the tension of family dynamics.

I was dismayed for I found myself regressing into this grouchy, crazy person when I thought I had become a fairly amiable and collected woman.

In learning how to live in the pressure cooker of dysfunctional and broken relationships, how to deal with hateful situations, I had to face up to my own flaws and deficiencies, resolve my own demons in order to fashion my own happiness within the parameters of the family structure.

Reality can bite, especially the reality of unhappy family situations and ridiculous relatives, but I wouldn't trade mine in for each one has helped lick me into shape: I am a better person because of them.

So if you want to grow spiritually and emotionally, you don't have to travel far. Just learn to love your family at close range and you will get there.

After all if we don't strive for harmony within our own backyards how can we hope to broker world peace?

* From course notes of the social justice module of Personal Compass.

REDEEMED CREATION

Inscribed in my body is the desire
To love and be loved. It burns in my heart,
Soul and mind an insatiable fire
That can only be slaked when I'm a part
Of He who made me - in deep communion.
The world spins a candy floss existence
Spurning solitude and naked union.
Until I turn from its sly insistence,
I can't fathom my reason for being,
Getting lost in isms so unseeing.
Eschewing the Beatific Vision
Leaves me with a meagre sense of mission.
But redemption of my sexuality
Can be the grace of my mortality.

LISTEN
I know you've known me all my life, while I
but recently tasted the sweet pleasure
of your presence that I truly treasure.
I can't help but want more of you, yet I
get distracted so easily, a curse I
can't seem to shake: spiritual ADD.
Most attempts at prayer are mere parody.
A litany of needs and wants that I
recite swiftly with no real conviction.
How do I invoke this gripping passion?
Breathe and live your commitment and vision,
Experience love as more than a notion.
Is it in the silence you sought constantly?
Perhaps I could learn to listen as keenly.

Life compass

Last Friday evening we were discussing how difficult it was to put into practice what we have learned from our study of TOB.

What if the people around us did not believe as we did, especially the people whom we loved?

How do we "preach" the good news of TOB, living as we do in a world that idealizes a very one-dimensional understanding of love and promotes instant gratification of sexual lust?

A. reminded us the TOB is like a new lens we are invited to view life through and in using this lens more and more, we will make personal choices based on the clarity of truth that will eventually affect those around us.

The way we carry ourselves - how we think and how we act - will bear witness to our beliefs and spread the message of self-donating love, rather than through any conscious effort to change minds and hearts.

TOB as a way of life is an invitation to self-awareness, to a more incisive understanding of our own human design and nature that enables us to realize the desires of our heart and in turn, to be happily fulfilled.

We are all born to transcendence, to become more than what we are now; to grow spiritually and find the real meaning of our individual lives as it is lived interwoven with the lives of those we love and live with.

I agree with my W2W sisters that it is tough. Living and breathing TOB does involve a process of multiple transformations that takes time and hard sacrifice initially. As with anything else in life, practice makes perfect.

I just attended a class last night and the topic was work: it is part of the nature of man that we have to "toil" in order to be fed. So why should it be any different for spiritual food?

Being proficient at anything takes hard work, but there will come a time where it becomes easier and things will be a cruise.

One of the fears of living honestly or with integrity is that no one else is doing the same so you will be a loser by choosing to live differently. To misquote Luke, is losing such a bad thing if we lose the world by find ourselves?

Plus, there will be others who think like we do, we just have to be bold enough to be upfront and let the light of truth shine from our hearts and this beam will find the glow of others' truth beams and blaze a unified brightness that will light up the darkness, making night day.

Having bought the TOB message and lived it for a couple of years now, I no longer struggle as hard as I did previously. There is a payoff:

I like that I am no longer confused or unsure of myself but am growing more confidently in my sexuality as woman.

I know I have much to offer to the world and I enjoy what I am already giving.

I look forward eagerly to becoming more and giving more even though I know there will be times I will bemoan the "painful toil".

Above all things, if I defer to the Captain of my ship to tack my course, I know I will weather even the fiercest storms and TOB is a trusty compass that the Captain has bestowed on me to help me navigate through life.

Try it.

Turning the other cheek

It is no accident that the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 disaster should fall on a Sunday where the readings are on the practice of forgiveness.

Can we forgive the destruction and death wrought 10 years ago that was so unthinkably devastating?

We are told that resentment and anger are "foul things, and both are found with the sinner" in Ecclesiasticus. The writer further reminds us that if we wish to be forgiven ourselves, we must choose to forgive others. For God always forgives, His covenant with us a sign of His unending mercy

While Saint Paul reminds the Romans that "the life and death of each of us has its influence on others" and to therefore "live for the Lord" and "die for the Lord", for we "belong" to Him.

Finally Jesus himself tells Peter that we must forgive not seven but seventy-seven times. In other words, always.

This teaching on forgiveness is hard to swallow and even more difficult to carry out when we come face to face with evil or suffering.

In instances of extreme evil or destruction, whether natural (today is also the six-month anniversary of the tsunami that devastated Japan) or human-induced, we even question the existence of God, which interestingly enough is what convinces Aquinas that God exists.

God does not cause evil directly but He allows evil in order to bring good from it.

We are created good (being created in His image) and by virtue of this goodness, the human spirit has the capacity to triumph over evil.

The human capacity to love, to hope and to believe is infinite. This is what propels us forward: to pick up the pieces and rebuild something good out of what evil has reduced to rubble.

To go beyond fear, despair, bitterness and anger; to find healing and to find a way to live with peace and inner joy.

To forgive is to find new life by letting go of the past and not let it control our future actions in ways that diminish us.

It invites us to define how suffering has changed us and to discover how we can rise above our suffering and ourselves: to make limoncello out of lemons.

In the Linns' book Don't Forgive Too Soon Extending the Two Hands That Heal, they offer an enlightening interpretation of what Jesus means when He tells us to "turn the other cheek" (Matthew 5:38-42).

Rather than accepting violence submissively, turning your other cheek signals that you are "reclaiming your dignity" and communicating "that you refuse to be humiliated". How so?

In ancient times, the left hand was reserved for unclean tasks. Hence when a master were to strike his slave, he would backhand the slave with his right hand and hit the slave on the right cheek. Backhanding people signified a position of power and superiority.

When one presents the left cheek, ass Jesus advised, the person who is striking you would have to punch you to hit you again with his right hand.

Punches are thrown only among equals so in receiving the punch of your attacker, you are saying I will not resort to your violent ways but I am equal in dignity to you.

Non-violent engagement in dealing with evil requires forgiveness which is a process the Linns see as similar to Kubler-Ross's stages of dealing with death: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

It demands of us creative ways of stopping the evil by resorting to means that communicate we will not cooperate with evil but that we are reacting in a life-giving manner that will not perpetuate violence but rapprochement.

We must never forget that evil does exist and that our lives will invariably be touched by its insidious malevolence.

We can, however, honour the past by choosing goodness, and deal with evil actively in the way Jesus exhorts us to - by turning the other cheek and saying no to oppression, hate, "dissolution and death".

Judgement calls

In today's readings we are called to speak truth into the lives of those around us, to point out their sins, for if we do not, then we will be held "accountable for their blood".

Yet we are also reminded that love is the driving force behind all the commandments and that we should nurture a love of neighbours.

A tall order for to be humbly righteous without being judgemental, truthful yet lovingly so and on top of that, to know when exactly to voice your opinion is mighty tough.

I grew up in a family of opinionated and legalistic people so to pass judgement on others is a skill that comes only too naturally to me.

On the positive side, I do have a fairly well-developed sense of right and wrong and given that I am aware of my judgemental streak, I do manage to actively censor the worst of the highly critical comments that pop into my head unbidden.

What I find humbling and highly amusing (yup, it's confirmed, He does have a bona fide sense of humour) is when I get outraged at how others behave and I turn the situation around in my mind, He often reveals to me a situation in which I have behaved in exactly the same manner.

Who am I to cast the first stone?

What I have learnt this year is that we should never judge people, just their actions. And even in this regard, we need to look a little deeper at the person's intent to make a more accurate assessment of any given situation.

The standing joke in class when we are asked to judge a situation is that the only answer we should give is, "It depends".

Plus the only conscience we need worry about (as Father David pointed out so fittingly) is our own, and that alone will keep us fully occupied for our own redemption depends on our choices in life, and you can bet your life that we will screw up no matter how "good" we are.

Having said all that, there are universal principles that govern morality: what is right and what is wrong and often we are reticent in proclaiming our belief in these principles for fear of being thought a persnickety prude. I know I am often guilty of keeping silent because of this.

It takes prudence and guts to be able to tell it like it is, yet do it in such a way that the other person is receptive to the message.

As Saint Paul said to the Romans, "Love is the fulfilling of the law", so love is supreme. This means being open to the movements of the Spirit and to let that be the guide for Jesus is always loving and never manipulative (as humans can be).

Being a good Christian is not about being popular or nice, it's about being loving, and that sometimes involves being a "watchman" or a party pooper prophet.

In order to make the right judgement call, we need to grow in wisdom, and the best place to start is with "fear of the Lord". (Proverbs 1:7a)