Reviewing 2014

Reading a friend's comments on 2014 on Facebook I have to concur, this year has been a pretty challenging one. I have felt stretched way beyond my capabilities. I have struggled through some truly rough patches emotionally and physically. I feel I have failed in so many ways. At times, I have felt like a total zero in every area of my life.

In attempting to publish my first book I have experienced the height of frustration and I have been plagued immeasurably by insecurity. I have gone from panic attack to panic attack (I will still have them until I break even I am guessing).

Although I have been told ever since I was a young girl that I should write a book, that I am a good writer; although I have said I will write a book for, oh, the last 15 years or so, I have not done anything about it until now. And it has been terrifying beyond belief.

What if my writing really sucks? What if the book won't sell? What if I fall flat on my face? What was I thinking? Seriously? These are questions that have been circling around inside my consciousness for more than 24 months now, since this whole process began.

So why put myself through all this? The answer is simple. Writing is one of my giftings in life and I need to acknowledge it and utilize it fully if I am to inhabit the skin God put me in well. Who said being Christian is cushy?

To be a true follower of Christ entails not just cultivating virtues but developing all aspects of my personhood, nurturing my innate gifts and talents are chief. Complete receptivity of my gifts involves discipline, practice, constant learning, doggedness, and an unwavering focus on giving glory back to God who first gave me not just those gifts, but life itself. And I DO want to give Him glory in all I do.

Apart from the book thing, 2014 has been a difficult year for it has been painful, even excruciating, for many people I care for and call friends. It is hard to walk with them and not be affected by the darkness that envelopes them. More so when the best I can do is lend a listening ear. This has been a Herculean task for me at times for I am so not patient. Blast you Saint Paul for saying love is patient and kind.

Before you think my 2014 was a total sob fest, it was not. It contains some of the highest points in my life. Taking my Covenant as an ICPE Mission Companion and having a community of loving brothers and sisters in my life has been utterly amazing and awesome. I feel as if I am cradled in the hands of God through the faith of my brothers and sisters. They have helped me be a better person by inspiring me with their goodness and their love. Thank you my community - each one of you, individually and collectively in your families, has been a special gift to me this year.

More recently, I have been blessed by the ICPE Mission Philippines community during reverse carolling. It is always a joy to be able to live as part of the community; to work, laugh and pray together. What a privilege! Thank you Albert, Esther, Gemma and Joan. Missed you much, Jitka.

The other special thing about reverse carolling besides all I have written about previously is meeting and working with new and old friends. It has been such a blast and I had a great time. Angie and Jon, your music-making skills blow me away. My gratitude to Angie, Carolyn, Clare, Datina, Jeanny and Jon for making reverse carolling so joyous. Ad, Ams and Maize, you know you bring me joy all the time.

I had the opportunity to visit Hawaii early in the year and it was a very special time. Not only did I get to see the titan arum in bloom or the Hōkūleʻa about to set sail on her worldwide voyage, I was there for Saint Damien's feast day and the changing of the seasons - everything was unplanned which made it all the more special. I had time and space to pray, connect with old friends and reconnect with myself. Those weeks away clarified for me the way I should walk and gave me strength to face the rest of the year.

As a Friend of Gardens By The Bay, I have had the opportunity to visit the Gardens many times this year. Every visit has yielded beauty, not just the beauty of nature, but the joy of shared interests and companionship with my beloved mother. Our walks have been healthy and life-giving. I treasure them all in my heart.

If I were to use one word to encapsulate my experiences in 2014, it would be encounter. Learning about the significance of personal encounters (with, through and in the Lord) in Evangelii Gaudium and then seeing how personal encounters have worked powerfully in my life.  Life truly is about encountering people, strangers and family alike. I see that more clearly each day. Hence I give thanks for my Woman to Woman Ministry sisters, my parish community, my clients, my friends, my family, and all those people I have met throughout this year.

Most of all, I am grateful for all my encounters with Jesus. I may not have been faithful all the time, but He certainly was. He has guided me and protected me through all the storms and rejoiced with me in all the glorious, sunshiny days. He has been with me every day through the year, wherever I went, whoever I met, whether I acknowledged His presence or not. So I end the year knowing I can never be as faithful and loving as Jesus, yet knowing I will not stop trying even though all I can bring as a gift He would appreciate is a humble, contrite and grateful heart.

I look forward to the new year knowing that many things will come to fruition then. Goodbye 2014 and hello 2015.   

Try a little tenderness

What is my hope this Christmas, having seen what material poverty can be like up close in the Philippines, and living in Singapore where I am surrounded by countless people who are emotionally and spiritually bankrupt?

We are a people living in darkness (remembering the slain children in Pakistan), and yet, Isaiah prophesied: The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined.

My hope, and the hope of the world, is this light, Jesus, or Emmanuel, God is with us. He was born into our world to bring the light of new life, joy, hope and most of all, salvation. Do I welcome the Infant Jesus with open heart and arms? Do I hear the real message of Christmas?

I really like the homily of Pope Francis at this year's Christmas Eve mass:

The message that everyone was expecting, that everyone was searching for in the depths of their souls, was none other than the tenderness of God: God who looks upon us with eyes full of love, who accepts our poverty, God who is in love with our smallness.

The pope asks us to reflect: Do I allow myself to be taken up by God, to be embraced by him, or do I prevent him from drawing close?  “But I am searching for the Lord” – we could respond. Nevertheless, what is most important is not seeking him, but rather allowing him to find me and caress me with tenderness. The question put to us simply by the Infant’s presence is: do I allow God to love me?

I found what Pope Francis said insightful. Often I cannot accept my own smallness, my own poverty, so I ignore it or shove it away, I project it onto others, I do everything I can except deal with it in a constructive manner. In so doing, I lose an opportunity to grow in love and joy. I fail to meet Jesus where I am, and where He stands, next to me, inviting me to experience my humanity.

As the pope pointed out: ...do we have the courage to welcome with tenderness the difficulties and problems of those who are near to us, or do we prefer impersonal solutions, perhaps effective but devoid of the warmth of the Gospel? How much the world needs tenderness today!

We are all in great need of tenderness. It is so easy to grow hard and grasping in a competitive, capitalistic environment where cash is king. It is seductive to buy into an individualistic and consumeristic lifestyle, thinking only of our own needs. The easier option is to medicate our discomfort, pain and hurt away, to numb ourselves so that we can forget about striving to be better people, and to make the world a brighter place. Too much work involved there.

Christmas is the answer to tapping into our inner tenderness. God who loved the world so much that He sent us His only son who was born a tiny baby in a manger.

The Christian response cannot be different from God’s response to our smallness. Life must be met with goodness, with meekness. When we realize that God is in love with our smallness, that he made himself small in order to better encounter us, we cannot help but open our hearts to him, and beseech him: “Lord, help me to be like you, give me the grace of tenderness in the most difficult circumstances of life, give me the grace of closeness in the face of every need, of meekness in every conflict”.

My hope this Christmas, and all the days of my life, is in God, who believes in me and loves me; God who understands my smallness and loves me even more because of it; God who became man and showed me how I can live as a woman of faith, tenderly. I can only stand in silent awe at the manger, and paraphrase the words of Matt Redman's song Endless Hallelujah:

And I will worship, worship
Forever in Your presence I will sing
I will worship, worship You
And endless hallelujah to the King.

Prepping for Christmas

It is hard to wrap my brains around Christmas having landed in Singapore last Thursday evening physically exhausted from reverse carolling in the Philippines, and still recovering from a mild bout of flu.

What makes it worse is the sudden spike in social activities: starting from Friday evening drinks at E's, Saturday's mad whirl of teaching, grocery shopping, attending an art exhibition* before catching the Dim Sum Dollies' matinee, and finally dining with three generations of relatives from Melbourne. Always nice to meet the young uns.

Today I was up at the crack of dawn to cook, teach (a client whom I love and make time for even on Sundays) and attend morning mass (lector duty), before rushing home to continue cooking lunch. Thanks to E for the Chilean cab sauv, it made for a brilliant beef bourguignon, just right for my brother's celebratory birthday luncheon.

Next I have to get my spring cleaning efforts into gear and maybe think of Christmas decorations that I have woefully neglected for years. Then there is more menu planning and cooking: family Christmas lunch, Christmas dinner potluck with my community of Companions...

In the midst of all this Martha-ish activity, it is so easy to forget about preparing my heart to make room for the Christ child to be born. I really like what I learned in my last days in ICPE Mission Philippines, to pray before any endeavour and to keep offering my intentions in any activity, be it cooking or cleaning. Prayer really imbues every action with love and elevates it.

Seeing as the final week of Advent is focused on love, this practice is a great one. It can be difficult to live out my choice of love, day after day, minute after minute, but I must persist, since love is what adds substance and tone to my world. Just as Mother Mary made the choice to say yes to great foreseeable sorrow in the Annunciation, I would like to follow her in making that initial choice, and to staying faithful to it in my daily life, as she did in hers.

The key to Mary's commitment to love was her openness and obedience to the movement of the Holy Spirit in her life. This kept her intentions pure even when she could not comprehend situations or circumstances in her limited human capacity. If only my faith is as tensile and robust as hers.

And for the times I struggle, today's O antiphon is a good one:

O Rising Dawn, Radiance of the Light eternal and Sun of Justice: come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. 

I hope to enjoy these last days of Advent spending some of it in silence, reflecting on the birth in the manger that culminates in death on the cross and giving thanks for the sacrifices of love of all those who have gone before me. And in the flurry of activity I engage in, to offer up each activity mindfully, and with quiet love.

* Great to see you, Alvin. Love the new book.

To see Alvin Mark Tan's wonderful works of art, go to https://www.facebook.com/alvinmarktan?ref=br_rs

Surviving reverse carolling

It was fitting to end Reverse Carolling the day before Gaudete Sunday, the third week of Advent that exhorts us to rejoice.

Reverse carolling is always tough for the needs of those we meet cry out loudly for justice. No human being should live in such squalor be it the squatters area by the creek in New Manila, in Bagong Silang or in Salaban, but especially in Montalban where people are dumped there and forgotten, amidst the mountains of garbage they live on and around.

The stench of poverty, neglect and decay was suffocating, disturbing and greatly depressing. It was extremely hard to sing about having a merry Christmas when the hovels that pass off as homes are so frighteningly fragile and makeshift, hardly weather-proof and prone to flooding.

How could I assure the widow in Manoc Creek who is paralysed from the waist down that Jesus will take care of her? What comfort can I offer the woman with two young children in Salaban, whose husband has run off with another woman two weeks ago, leaving her to live off the kindness of her neighbours?

I am numb for it is easier to bury the horror deep down than to spiral into hopelessness and a darkness that promises to engulf my being completely if I let it.

Ultimately I know I cannot see the radical change I would like to see tomorrow or any time soon, but that should not stop me from trying, for every little bit I do helps (I remind myself of the starfish story - of how it made a great difference to the one starfish that was offered aid - when I feel helpless).

Reverse carolling is more than just about giving out food hampers to alleviate the hunger of the families we visited for two, maybe three days; it is about uniting with them in prayer and sharing in their poverty. It is about respecting their personhood and meeting Jesus in them, rather than fulfilling the lofty aspiration of bringing Jesus to them. It is about the unitive us as we unite in our faith, and not the divisive them and us.

The joy of the Gospel, the Good News, which I have experienced in a very real way is not something that should be kept to myself; it must be proclaimed to all, even to those who may find it hard to rejoice in their present circumstances.

In good times and in bad times, Jesus is with us, loving us and caring for us. We may not always recognize this truth and often, we forget it, but this reality, when we encounter it, is what gives us the hope and inner strength to live our lives joyously and with gratitude, even if our world is falling down around our ears

Reverse carolling is an opportunity for both the givers and the receivers to embrace this truth and allow Christ to permeate our hearts, thoughts and actions. It is one big grace moment to surrender our wills to God's will and be His channels of love, to live out the call found in Isaiah 61:

The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor,
to heal the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives
and release to the prisoners,
to announce a year of favor from the LORD
and a day of vindication by our God.

As Isaiah goes on to proclaim:

I rejoice heartily in the LORD,
in my God is the joy of my soul;
for he has clothed me with a robe of salvation
and wrapped me in a mantle of justice,
like a bridegroom adorned with a diadem,
like a bride bedecked with her jewels.
As the earth brings forth its plants,
and a garden makes its growth spring up,
so will the Lord GOD make justice and praise
spring up before all the nations.

This Advent promise of joy can be ours, especially when we stop focusing on our own personal desires and rise to the challenge of loving our neighbour by treating him or her as a beloved brother or sister. We must make the sacrifice of time and energy to reach out to those who are not as fortunate as we are, for in giving, we will undeniably receive true joy ourselves.

Christmas is the time we celebrate the greatest gift that has been bestowed on us, God become man in the infant Jesus. In order to travel to that point of celebration and lay gifts worthy of the new-born baby who will sacrifice His life for you and me, may the remaining days of Advent be ones where I continue to stay awake as I travel toward the manger where He will lay.

As I leave the Philippines in a few days, I will take home the invitation He has placed in my heart, to continue to grow closer to Him, to trust Him and to love Him with the simple, wholehearted love of a little child.

Reverse carolling has shown me how small my faith is for it took a Super Typhoon that He transformed into a tropical storm to show me how much He loves us all and how much He wanted us reverse carollers to go out and do what we came to do: to love His people and show them how much He loves them.      

Power made perfect

Whenever one thinks of perfect days it is usually spent in some form of sybaritic pursuit. I just had two perfect days engaged in reverse carolling where I actually experienced what Saint Paul said to the Corinthians about Christ's power made perfect in weakness.

Tropical Storm (former Super Typhoon) Ruby or Hagupit has hit the Philippines and yet the weather in Tagaytay yesterday was perfect for clambering around the steep slopes of Bagong Silang laden with heavy Christmas hampers. The sun was out although it was cloudy and the temperature was pleasantly cool. God gave us incredible weather to accomplish what we set out to do, which was to give out 50 food hampers. All we could do before was pray for the blessing of good weather and He granted it beautifully.

I was in a small team of four carollers but we worked well together even though we were strangers when we began. We had two wonderful guides, Ate Rebecca and Ate Bet, who took us around to the chosen homes and helped us carry the hampers. The children, as always, followed us from house to house and sang enthusiastically to make up for the lack of numbers, and the families we visited were open to our efforts in sharing God's love with them.

Our efforts to help the poor may seem futile for what can one lousy hamper of food and a few Christmas carols accomplish? Even our prayers, while earnest, were grossly inadequate. And yet it is precisely in the poverty of our actions that God's power could be manifested, and it was.

I felt a solidarity, a kinship, with the families I met for in praying with them and for them, I knew that God would take care of them as He does me. I merely needed to be his imperfect, limited but sincere instrument to remind them of His love for them. My desire in reverse carolling is to share my own experience of God's love with those I meet and I like to think we all managed to do that yesterday collectively as we fanned out over the hillside carolling.

This morning we threw a Christmas party for 55 children using the grounds of the Missionaries of Charity sisters and it was again a good day for a party which included outdoor games. God again granted us sunshine, and once more we worked together in one spirit to bring some fun and laughter into the lives of these children who live in the slums of Kavisayaan.

Drawing on God's inspiration, Joan and the rest of the ICPE missionaries in the Philippines (Gemma, Esther and Albert), threw an amazing party for the children. The programme was immensely enjoyed by the children. The mime, The Gift, was extremely well received. We could all feel God's presence with us throughout the morning, for again, everything ran like clockwork and the joy the children demonstrated was infectious.

The children also displayed a childlike, fervent faith that touched all our hearts and reminded us that God truly does shower an abundance of love on his beloved little ones. We just need to trust Him and be open to experiencing His love.

There is still a week left to go, but if these last two days are any indication of what is to come, I look forward to the days ahead. They will not be easy for Montalban is especially tough going physically and emotionally, but if I submit my weaknesses and fears to God, I know I will be able to stand back and be awed by His power made perfect in all of us; how He moves in and through us. His glory will shine out, as it did these last two days, over all who dwell in darkness. Nothing could be more perfect than that.