Lamentation

Has it been nine years since you departed?
Funny, I could've sworn it was yesterday.
I still mourn when I think of how we parted,
It wouldn't have been if I had had my way.
The world has turned and times have changed a lot,
Yet what remains the same is you and me.
Our bond of love eternal, free from rot. 
Until we meet this life will have to be,
Devoid of a harbour that sheltered me.
The seed you planted has grown and matured.
Its blooms perfume the garden gloriously,
While all enjoy its fruit and are nurtured.
As they sit in its shade contentedly.
If only you were here yourself to see. 

Deepest desire

While reflecting on what were my deepest desires, I came across one I've sort of placed in a box and shelved for it is hard to make relevant in my single state of life: the desire for marriage and motherhood.

This desire is one I grapple with most, in terms of understanding and living out. I vacillate between frozen cluelessness and relying completely on God to unravel the mystery; to not lean on my human understanding but on His alone.

I was inspired last week by a speech Pope Benedict XVI made where he said every person is created "so that he may enter into dialogue with the Infinite," and "the aching desire for this dialogue remains in man, like a signature imprinted with fire in his soul and body by the Creator himself."

Pope Ben noted that this longing is not only in the human soul, but "even every fiber of my flesh is made to find its peace, its fulfillment in God. And this tension cannot be erased from man’s heart: even when he rejects or denies God, the thirst for the infinite that abides in man does not disappear."

I find what he says to be true and I also see my desire for marriage and motherhood as inextricably tied up with this yearning for the Infinite, the need to be in deep communion and intimacy with God.

Therefore if I live my life as vocation, gathering up all the desires of my heart placed within me by God, and offering them up as an act of faith, trusting that "God has" my "happiness at heart", then I am able to expand my vision and view my deepest desire as extremely relevant in my journey.

I need only to say and act out my yes to make this desire lodged deep within a living reality, one that touches the minds and hearts of those I meet.

Pope Ben put it best.

Everything... every relationship, every joy, as well as every difficulty, finds its ultimate meaning in being an opportunity for a relationship with the Infinite, a voice of God that continually calls to us and invites us to lift our gaze, to find the complete fulfillment of our humanity in belonging to Him.

I may never get married and I most definitely will not bear a child, but I can take this desire for marriage and motherhood and instead of living tragically with unconsummated desires, I can live with the gratitude and joy of a woman so loved that she cannot help but radiate this love to the world.

And there are days I think I succeed very well in making this desire tangible. Especially when I follow Mary's lead, the impossible can but come to fruition.

Day of rest

I had a really busy weekend so I am grateful that today is a public holiday. Waking up naturally without having to get ready to rush out the door is a most under-rated and rare pleasure.

It was so great to have time to yawn and stretch, then pick up the phone to chat with two good friends who live in different time zones - what a treat!

The Sabbath is a weekly day of rest or time of worship which we can make a beautiful act of faith by saying to the Lord, this day I give to you.

Father David called the Sabbath a duty and I completely agree with him, for a day of rest is vital for wellbeing and growth. We all need to take time to slow down, to "cease  and desist" from pursuing material goals and remember that it is in the Creator that we live, move and have our being (Acts 17:28).

As it was proclaimed so powerfully yesterday at mass in Proverbs 9:6, "Leave your folly, and walk in the ways of perception." We can only do so if we take time to reflect on our actions and the circumstances of the past week, to see where we met Jesus and where we walked past Him blindly. And how we can perhaps catch those missed opportunities in the week to come.

If we do not pause to ruminate, then we will miss the opportunity to nurture our seeds of faith and watch them unfurl tentative pale green fingers toward the sun. We may end up walking in circles, exhausted yet unable to stop walking, compelled as we are by our restless hearts.

Mindfulness and introspection, this is what a day of rest affords. It allows me to assimilate all the wonderful nuggets of wisdom I have received and see how I can apply them to my life so that I can really walk with perception.

One such nugget was a talk I attended last night by Azriel Cohen who gave the group a flavour of what Doctor Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing was about. We  were challenged to not just live in the world of intellect and emotion, but of sensation as well.

According to Doctor Stephen Porges who developed the Polyvagal Theory, our physiological state dictates our psychological experience and our range of behaviour. Thus sensation, has its own wisdom.

If we track the sensations in our body, that wisdom may even help us make decisions that save our lives as shared by Azriel Cohen in a personal experience of how he narrowly escaped death.

I know I tend to ignore the sensations in my body to its detriment so last night is a reminder that it is time to listen to my body more acutely and make wiser choices.

As dusk falls, I'm thankful for this day of simply being, of Sabbath.

Channelling Christ

My friend J recently sent me an email that shared the concept of Ubuntu. When I looked up Wikipedia*, Ubuntu means: "I am what I am because of who we all are." (a definition offered by Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee.) What I really liked was a quote Archbishop Desmond Tutu offered in a 1999 book: A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, based from a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed. Archbishop Tutu further elaborated in 2008: One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu – the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can't exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can't be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality – Ubuntu – you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole World. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity. This concept of Ubuntu is not unique and it is similar to how the ancient Hawaiians defined the Aloha Spirit, and how Christ Himself defined humanity. Jesus himself gave us a new commandment that sums up the ethos of Christianity: "Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." Simple, powerful and altogether not easy to accomplish. If we do as Jesus did, then we would be preaching the good news to the poor, binding up the broken-hearted, proclaiming freedom for captives, releasing from darkness prisoners and comforting all who mourn. (Luke 14:18) We would take the social teaching of the Catholic Church seriously which espouses human dignity, solidarity and subsidiarity. We would actively love the least of our brothers and sisters in order to show our love for Christ. We would reach out to strangers, the needy, sick and imprisoned, and not just stay within the comforting confines of our own little worlds. Edmund Burke said: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." It's quite easy to feel disassociated and become inured to the acts of violence, injustice, abuse and calamity we read about in the newspapers and therefore do nothing. Unless we begin to think that every act of injustice, abuse or indignity against any human being is an act of injustice, abuse and indignity against me, in our shared humanity. Ubuntu. Or Christ. * To read more, go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(philosophy)

Talk story

In Hawaii, when friends meet up, they will talk story. Last night, the W2W Ministry met up to share what were the favourite fairy-tales and stories of their childhood bringing new depth to the meaning of talk story.

In chapter seven of Margaret Silf's Landmarks, we are encouraged to reflect on these stories of the past in order that we get to the heart of our desiring, connecting "these deep and universal desires (and fears) to the feelings we are experiencing ourselves, in our particular circumstances."

Snow White, Rapunzel, Cinderella, Xiao Tian Tian and the Rainbow-Coloured Flower, The Little Matchgirl, The Happy Prince, the Nativity Story, Swan Lake, the story of Creation and The Fall, The Six Swans, The Ugly Duckling and stories of real life heroes... these were some of the stories that spoke to our collective hearts.

Behind each story is a desire: to be attractive, to be accepted, to be loved, to have a community of friends, to be free, to be transformed and become who I truly am, to go beyond death to life, to overcome evil, to be good and pure, to take up the cause of justice in the world, to claim a place within the story of Creation, to be pregnant with the hope of new life, to perform miracles, to be heroines, to be family, and to be seekers of what is true, good and beautiful.

These are some of the aspirations of the women in the group, ordinary women with a desire to live extraordinary lives of love and glory. Each one of us is already on the road in pursuit of our individual, unique dream, living out our deepest desires in part. And yet, how each of our stories continues is unclear.

Recognizing the patterns of our own desires and the deeper underlying roots -what we wish we were, what we wished we possessed, what we dream of doing or becoming - is good but we need to confront what Margaret Silf calls the But-Bird, the fears that prevent us from fulfilling our desires. 

The negative energies of our fears can drain the positive energies of our desires, clipping our wings and keeping the birds in our hearts earthbound. These negative inner movements or false spirits can be seen to wage "a deliberate, lifelong campaign against the fulfilment of the God-dream (our deepest desires) in us. Thus we must learn not to fall prey to these false spirits but to allow the positive movements, the good spirits, to grow in strength and purpose.

Prayer is the first step to take in discerning between the two and making the choice to follow the positive movements. To educate our desires and integrate our thinking, feeling and willing so that we will be able to moderate our decisions and move toward leading cheerful, fulfilling lives.

Frederick Buechner said, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

Whether we take a step towards or away from that place is up to us. But that's another story, best reserved for another time.

Desire deep

As I watched the closing of the London 2012 Olympic Games this morning, I know I will miss the visual feast of lithe, muscled bodies performing nigh impossible feats of physicality.

There is something incredibly beautiful about the smooth, practised movements of an athlete at her/his peak, giving the performance of her/his life with maximum focus and heart.

The lessons I draw from this penultimate sporting event are varied. Firstly I am reminded that the body is made for movement and it would serve me well to keep mine in working order by maintaining good health and physical fitness through diet and exercise.

I also like that the Games transcend socio-economic, racial and cultural boundaries, levelling the playing field so that every participant is judged purely on skill, with a fair chance at winning. The politics of real life rarely allow for such unbiased judging. If only we can apply the rules of fair play to life more often.

Watching some of the athletes interviewed on YouTube brought home to me how much discipline and sacrifice are required. Their deceptively effortless movements lure me into forgetting how many hours of gruelling practice each athlete must undergo in order to arrive at this point in competition.

The road must've been strewn with failure, obstacles, injury, pain, frustration and even despair, and yet, no matter how arduous the journey has been, not one of them gave up. Thus every athlete present at the Games is already a winner, with an attitude to match.

As Randy Pausch proclaimed in The Last Lecture: 

“The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.” 

So the Olympics is largely about dreams, chasing our dreams and attaining our deepest desires. For each Olympian, the dream leading up to the Games was clear: be good enough to qualify as a participant in the Games. At the Games itself, the dream was to win a medal and/or to break a record. To surpass themselves, and others in competition.

For the rest of us, dreams and desires are a little less defined at times, but no less important. Saint Ignatius knew the significance of dreams and desires for he himself had great dreams that were shattered by injury and led him to finally dream the dreams that God had placed within him, desiring God's desire in his life.

The tricky thing is knowing the difference between ordered and disordered desires. To be able to "distinguish between superficial wants and wishes and the desires that express God's own desire for our lives."

Living as we do in an age where advertisers and media are clamouring to convince us what our desires are (often before we even know them), it is vital to clarify what are truly the desires of our heart.

This simple differentiation in Just Call Me Lopez by Margaret Silf is apt:

"Disordered desires tend to be all about me and can make me greedy and possessive, taking what I think I want without any care for the effects on others or on creation as a whole. Ordered desires attract me toward what is life-giving, not just for me but for the greater good, and if I follow them, I not only do no harm but actually add to the greater good."

Disordered desires cannot bring true happiness for like a child that grasps selfishly at gratification, we are only momentarily satisfied, before we lust after something else, and yet another thing. The pursuit becomes an endless self-indulgent quest.

Whereas if we follow the ordered desires of our heart, we will actually be led to move out of ourselves toward self-actualization, which may not be about easy choices (just ask any Olympian) but will bring satisfaction, a sense of achievement and joy.

So it is worthwhile to examine our desires to uncover what Margaret Silf calls our root desires in Landmarks. To figure out what drives us to act and how we can actualize our gifts and talents and share them with the rest of the world.

Because our deepest desires have been planted within us by God, if we take time to spend time with Him in prayer, in contemplation, we will walk forward by God's wisdom, if not by human insight.

I'd like to share the beautiful ending of Silf's Just Call Me Lopez, which is at the heart of Ignatian spirituality:

"Trust your own story, for God is in every moment of it. Trust your own experience, for it is the raw material from which God is shaping God's Dream in you. Don't worry if you do not know who or what "God" is. Let the mystery be a mystery, and don't try to grasp it with your own understanding, or pin it down into the limits of your own memory, or manipulate it to conform to your own narrow will... God's love and grace are all you need."

Remedy for grief

When it comes to this time of the year, my thoughts turn to my father with a mix of sadness, regret and yearning. It is coming up soon to the nine-year mark since my father passed away. How time has marched on solidly.

While I have learned to live with this great loss in my life, I remember too clearly those endless days of caring for him, watching him suffer, his body grow weaker and die a little more every day.

My good friend L who just lost her sister to cancer and was one of her sister's caregivers remarked that unless you experience what cancer can do to a loved one, you cannot quite understand the magnitude of the loss someone goes through for the journey with those dying of cancer is unique in its unrelentingly onslaught of loss, in every shape, form and shade imaginable.

I said it was like being able to see the thestrals in Harry Potter's world, the winged horses that can only be seen by one who has witnessed death at least once. Not many see them and they are often feared and misunderstood.

One is transformed irrevocably by this unwelcome experience of death. You become stronger. Wiser. More resilient. The ability to get on with it instead of falling to pieces has been honed. You have plumbed the depths of bitter anger, grief and incomprehensible suffering and risen above the darkness.

Even as Time places his healing hand over these grievous wounds of loss, you are left with scars that will pain you occasionally, but can be considered badges of honour.

While all the amount of wishing cannot bring my father back for me to undo the hurts of the past and to show him the love I never got a chance to, to right all the wrongs, he is never far from me for he lives on in my memory. And he lives most assuredly in my actions.

I can still love him by righting the wrongs in my other familial relationships; by being more forgiving, loving, caring, persevering and patient with my mother and my siblings, and the rest of the clan.

I can be the generous, hospitable, responsible, charitable, dutiful and God-fearing person he was.

I can seek truth as he did, unceasingly. Be the tower of strength he was. Live with integrity and honour as he did.

This is how I combat the inevitable remnants of sadness and regret I feel. My remedy for grief is to live with more courage, more wisdom and much more heart: to love unreservedly and fearlessly.

This morning A and I were talking about how much pleasure and joy we derive from watching plants we tend flourish and bloom, and how God must experience the same mix of emotions when He sees us blossom and come into our own.

I hope that my late father who now watches over me experiences the same.

Contingency lessons

The week started with me reading Father Ronald Rolheiser's article, A Lesson in Contingency* and I experienced one such If Only situation three days later.

I was actually fortunate for I have a near-miss of Father Rolheiser's stolen briefcase in a moment of inattention just Tuesday past, but my luck ran out the next day.

In a bid to demonstrate to a client what not to do so that she would not injure herself, I got hurt instead due to a complete disregard for my own safety.  In retrospect, I could see that I did not listen to my own body on many levels, hence the accident. I thought myself immortal, impervious to harm, and thus was foolhardy due to my impatience.

Now I am woefully sorry for I am limping in pain with a hairline fracture on my big toe, while the rest of my body creaks and moans in protest.

As Father Rolheiser counsels, both perspective and patience (so not my strong suit) are needed. I was filled with bitter regret and anger initially but I am grateful that it was not worse and it "in the grand scheme of things is, in essence, a mosquito-bite." And the over three-hour wait at the A&E for an x-ray and subsequent diagnosis was definitely an exercise in patience.

I like what he goes on to say about how incidents like this are also meant to teach us to recognize and forgive contingency.

"Philosophically, contingency means that, unlike God who is self-sufficient and perfect, we live with limit and imperfection. For us, every one of us, there will be moments of inattention, carelessness, accidents, stupid impatience, and moral lapses. The philosopher, Leibnitz, famously stated that we don't live in the best of all possible universes.

"Thus, there will always be lost purses, stolen briefcases, broken heirlooms, and, much worse, tragic accidents that result in lost children and lost lives. Sometimes too there will be moments of moral carelessness that we will also bitterly regret. We aren't God. We're contingent."

As this week has proven, I am vulnerable to errors in judgement and bodily hurt. But the silver lining in this cloud of contingency has been the love and concern of many people who have offered me succour in my time of need.

For that, I thank the One who is self-sufficient and perfect as I am not.

* http://www.ronrolheiser.com/columnarchive/?id=1061

Spiritual revolution

Last Friday M emphasized why we needed to layer on our life map (we are in chapter six of Margaret Silf's Landmarks) the moods and feelings we felt as we experienced consolation and desolation in the past for emotions are among life's most powerful drivers to action or inaction.

Emotions such as fear can override reason and will and cause us to act in ways where there is a disconnect or disintegration among our reason, will and emotion, showing up a personal compass that is wonky. That old chestnut from Saint Paul about not understanding what he does - for what I want to do I do not do and what I hate I do - features hugely here.

It was interesting that she brought this up for I have been feeling very stuck in a pattern of behaviour lately and been reflecting on what I can do about it to reprogramme my self to unite both desire and action.

I realized that there was a two-year period of desolation in my late teens that even now has a huge impact on how I view myself and how I react to situations and people around me. When I experience rejection, I run away and I shut down. I get very pessimistic and I give up easily. At times, I don't even try - out of my fear of failure.

All this paralysis does is paint the labels I had placed on myself long ago in fresh neon colours that shriek words like useless, unattractive, unlikeable, ugly and unloveable, a big fat zero in life.

I forget all my accomplishments and discount all my achievements. I mistrust the affirmations I have received and I doubt my gifts and talents. The inner awkward and ineffectual teenager rules my psyche and my life.

But today I was reminded that I can change history. I can wrest control from the old me and become this powerful woman that in many way I already am, it's just that I do not know it and therefore remain stymied in the mud of self-doubt like a statue rooted to the ground.

In the Gospel today, Jesus defines working for God or doing God's work as simply believing in the one whom He has sent: Jesus himself who is the true bread that gives life to the world.

As I have consciously pledged my life to Jesus, and been living out my faith in fairly radical ways especially in these last nine years, I HAVE become that fearless, untiring pilgrim on the road - I just happen to be taking slight detours here and there...

This was revealed to me in a conversation I was having with P over coffee this afternoon for we were comparing lives and it struck me that I knew where I was going and I was very at peace with my "mission" in life, whereas he was quite miserable and clueless as to what he should do next. It took all my inner reserve not to jump up and shout at him, "Jesus is the way!" thereby startling him, but truly I am grateful for the living faith that centres me.

To get back to that life-changing moment I had this morning, it comes from the words Saint Paul uttered to the Ephesians:

Your mind must be renewed by a spiritual revolution so that you can put on the new self that has been created in God’s way, in the goodness and holiness of the truth.

Thank the Lord for the wisdom of saints, saints who may have had chequered pasts but did not let that stop them from being the great men and women they were. A greatness that comes from living in the truth of God's love and living out that truth to others.

So, here I am, faced with the opportunity of a workweek that promises me time to do the things I have not been doing. I pray for the ability to go beyond my past desolation to work on believing in myself and my abilities so that I become the person that, thus far, I have only been dreaming of becoming; to make revolution a reality.

As tomorrow is the Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, this week's intention of mine is a fitting one.