A Very Sad Accident

She’s one of the more visible elderly in the neighborhood. We address her as “Nanay”. Her grandchildren detest her too often for being too strict when it comes to home time (kids nowadays are certainly too assertive for the older generation). Living by the roadside of a residential area congested by slow-moving vehicles especially in the afternoon, yesterday, she did her maternal role again of keeping watch over the romping and running kids, her grandchildren included. She’s 83, her skin loosened by years of mothering, her gait surely no longer the quickness of a blogger’s fingers. In that cramped corner of ours where we hang out to chat with one another, a road accident is less likely to happen though not an impossibility. But it happened to Nanay, yesterday at twilight when time summons us to slow down, time when even the quickest of impulses and the clearest of eyesights need the assistance of a lamppost. She tumbled from her chair, the back of her head hit the floor, bleeding profusely. The kids almost sideswiped. We have to rush her to the nearest hospital, about half-a-kilometer away only. Anger poured out all over the place. A mother of 4, learning to drive a motorcycle without license caused the now speech-impaired Nanay her suffering at the ICU. Almost everyone feels relieved to hear the news the mother and another rider are now behind bars. Not necessarily me. My heart and prayer goes out for both families. This is one unnecessary and avoidable suffering had those in the noontime of their lives were more discerning before driving. I’m simply sad enough to bring Nanay and the mother into the open space of God’s comfort and healing.

Be careful…

Anthony de Mello: Silence and the Belief in Spiritual Consumption

The Jesuit Anthony de Mello, who died at the age of 57 of a cardiac arrest and at the height of his  popularity as a spiritual writer, was our mealtime reading back during our novitiate year. Shortly after meal, a reader stands before his novitiate community and reads one story or parable from his books including The Song of the Bird and The Prayer of the Frog. One can only read one story at a time if one has to avoid spiritual indigestion, or dialogue the most with those parables. One page for every story that often occupies only a quarter of a page’s space. The wordless space is as important as the worded wisdom. Remember Psalm 19?

The heavens keep telling the wonders of God,
and the skies declare what he has done.
Each day informs the following day;
each night announces to the next.
They don’t speak a word,
and there is never the sound of a voice.
Yet their message reaches all the earth,
and it travels around the world.

(Contemporary English Version)

At that time, i saw de Mello more as a creative storyteller than actually a threat to our fossilized spiritual belief systems. For example, typical of the Eastern, Indian man in him, he “ran the race” i would say of promoting Awareness of the Sacred within, both a wordless and worded act that is exploratory in itself. But to explore is often to set aside for a while beliefs written in stones because a belief system is just that – a limited human response to the initiative of the Spirit who is uncontainable. Or Unknowable as de Mello would often emphasize:

The disciples were full of questions about God. Said the master, ‘God is the Unknown and the Unknowable. Every statement about him, every answer to your questions, is a distortion of the truth.’

The disciples were bewildered. ‘Then why do you speak about him at all?’

‘Why does the bird sing?’ said the master. ‘Not because it has a statement, but because it has a song.’

I hardly hear about de Mello around. A good thing actually if he’s been read in the silent corners of homes and seminaries, turning him less into a publicized commodity and celebrity, a sign against the way “vineyard churches” and their ministers in the US for example are too conscious over New York Times’ bestsellers’ rankings. But if de Mello’s wisdom is popularly avoided because they are too threatening to our belief system, i guess he would still end up both smiling and a little sad. His quips were right on:

“It is a great mystery that though the human heart longs for Truth, in which alone it finds liberation and delight, the first reaction of human beings to Truth is one of hostility and fear.”

In the face of cut-and-dried catechism, the emphasis on the unknowability of God would perhaps be too much. In the face of the dominant human screams of “Hallelujahs” and “Praise the Lord,” the Silence of god would perhaps be too much.

Let’s bring one ray of the Truth to the marketplace of spiritual books. I rarely go to the mall without dropping by a bookstore. Yesterday, i found 2 treasures from 2 intellectual giants of our time. Their books were on 50% discount. One is the new book Cosmos and Psyche by Richard Tarnas, and the other, Integral Spirituality by Ken Wilber. Richard Tarnas is a lucid writer and thinker and anyone interested in the cultural history of the West and the brilliance and madness of its evolving intellectual legacy should read his thick and monumental book The Passion of the Western Mind. Those interested in philosophy should go beyond the comfort and market mode of Sophie’s World! The book was spiritual reading to me to appreciate the author by email. Cosmos and Psyche is the sequel.

Ken Wilber as most of us know is a popular name and i assume is also widely read. The thing is i haven’t read any of Wilber’s books. I only glanced at scenes of his thoughts through the works of Benedictine monk Fr. Thomas Keating. And at this point, i feel i don’t need to buy and read both even if i have the resources. Both books are grand and ambitious in its syntheses on perspectives about the cosmos, the human psyche, and the spiritual realms that we trod on. But the thing is i am contented with the packet of readings at hand and my favorite blogs and sites and venturing into something grand a human undertaking would be out of the line of my focus and priorities (at least at present). The decision what to buy and what not to buy is often guided by de Mello who once described spirituality as going to the market, look at the items on sale to know and decide which item one does not need. Books are only examples. Malls have a lot to teach, too.

The Best Book on Prayer I’ve Read

It came upon me quite insignificantly, as a footnote in Ravenwilderness blog. The first time i read it, i bypassed it. The second time around, it caught my attention where the writer Maggie Ross left a short note: “the best book on prayer written in the last 200 years.” I know Maggie is no marketing type; she is the unassuming author of 4 books on contemplative spirituality (I’m sure she would object to the adjective before “spirituality” for true spirituality is grounded on a contemplative silent gaze on God as she has been practicing and preaching. For her, it’s not as if contemplation is one item on bargain in the stack of spiritual market. It is the very root of prayer and human activity. No midnight sale, no discount!)

So i virtually pried into the book, trying to know more about the author as my desire to have it grows. The next unexpected thing i know is receiving a new copy (instead of the used one i expected) from my mentor Michael in DC after asking it from him.

I browsed through its pages, aware that this is one book i have to go back over and over. Then i dropped a note of compliment for Fr. Martin Laird, OSA, the author of the book i’m talking about: Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation. He responded so kindly.

Fr. Martin is an Augustinian priest and associate professor at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. In this book, every reader will gather Fr. Martin’s learned attempt of bringing the wisdom of the “old masters in prayer” like Eckhart and Julian of Norwich into a language and style so fresh and more than delightful to read to be consoling. It is one book of beautiful prose and immense depth on prayer a serious beginner or someone advanced in prayer must not miss. Praying families, individuals, seminaries, and religious communities will be greatly enriched by this rare treasure published by the Oxford University Press (2006). Atheists and agnostics can take care of themselves after once they read it. It’s Oxford U press, baby! Here are more acclaim for the book from Amazon:

• “This is a beautifully written book. The language is profound, poetic, and free of worn cliches. It has obviously grown out of a life of study, erudition, and personal prayer.” –Worship
• “Into the Silent Land by Martin Laird is a wonderful introduction to the subject of contemplation. It has a vitality and relevance that are gripping. Contemplative books are often dry, but I found this a page-turner.” –Church Times
• “In a world hungering for practical spiritual direction on how to manage distractions, moods, bodily posture, breathing, suffering, illness, addiction, and dying, Laird’s book stands out as a treasure to share with anyone who is seeking greater wisdom and peace. He provides us with an eminently accessible doorway into the land of God’s loving silence.” –Horizons
• “Larid’s book defines how to sink back in God’s ground physically with breathing, mentally with “prayer words,” and spiritually with interior surrender. Through anecdote, Scripture, and classic wisdom, Laird illuminates a Christian path into the silent land. An able guide, he makes the trip more than worth the journey.” –Christianity Today
• “This book is different. There are plenty of books on contemplation that feel rather tired–either wordy and labored or unhelpfully smooth and idealistic. But this is sharp, deep, with no clichés, no psychobabble and no short cuts. Its honesty is bracing, its vision utterly clear; it is a rare treasure.”–Rowan Williams, The Archbishop of Canterbury
• “Often they say ‘you learn how to swim by swimming’ but a good coach or swimming manual is essential. Equally, we could say ‘you learn how to be contemplative by contemplating’ and a good guide or mentor is necessary. Into the Silent Land is just that. I tried it and it works. Try it.”–Archbishop Desmond Tutu, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize
• “This is a beautifully written book. The language is profound, poetic, and free of worn clichés. It has obviously grown out of a life of study, erudition and personal prayer.”–Worship
• “Into the Silent Land is a beautiful and deeply consoling book, a reminder that prayer is both real and fundamentally simple. Not since Thomas Merton’s Contemplative Prayer have I encountered a guide to contemplation this wise and compelling.”–Douglas Burton-Christie, author of The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism
• “With wisdom born of a life of prayer and study, Martin Laird invites us out of distraction and into the silent land where God is waiting. Taking the realities of affliction, fear and failure seriously, Laird offers an approach to contemplative life that is within reach of us all.” –Stephanie Paulsell, author of Honoring the Body: Meditations on a Christian Practice
• “Martin Laird’s book is a compelling introduction to contemplative prayer. He draws on insights from the Eastern Orthodox tradition of the Jesus Prayer, from the Western Carmelite tradition, from poets and novelists and from his own experience as retreat director and confessor. In the silent land, our wounds become radiant sources of compassion.”–Andrew Louth, author of The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys
• “Into the Silent Land reflects a happy combination of wide learning, authentic spiritual experience, and clear jargon-free prose. This work should be of inestimable value for anyone interested in the Christian contemplative tradition of prayer.”–Lawrence S. Cunningham, author of Thomas Merton and the Monastic Vision

Thank you Maggie, Michael and Martin for the “gift”. Now, it’s time to keep sitting into silence…

(I took a photo of my book but can’t find the USB connector. Amazon has a different photo but the one by OUP here is what I got.)

 

Amazing Grace: The Power of Being Unknown and Alone

Note: This will be my last post as i take off for at least a 15-day hiatus from blogging. I just need to focus on something, dive deeper into Silence and an ancient practice called Lectio Divina plus other reading tasks. The internet abounds with introductory materials about the practice. For those who had glanced at some books about the practice but do not have access to it at the same time, Michael Casey, an Australian Trappist monk wrote an edifying and scholarly article you can download here.

I read both Catholic and non-Catholic books and other reading materials. It helps my soul. It expands my imagination and understanding over the religious landscape i engage with. Back in the US, i used to lead ecumenical worships as a layperson among Episcopalians, Disciples of Christs, Presbyterians, Baptists, Church of God, Quaker, Jewish and Catholic audience. It helped my soul. It enriched my love and understanding of the People of God. It’s one of America’s laudable subculture of personal creativity and freedom to explore with one’s faith, telling any serious faith-seeker that the language of liturgy, or one’s full participation with it, is too abundant and open as Nature to leave entirely and in a restrictive way to the few ordained. If you are closely in touched with Mother Nature and its landscape including the inner one, chances are you will find the liturgy either boring depending on certain conditions, or an event to look forward to. Rituals and liturgy, said scholar Lane Belden, are primarily not learned; they are Earth-taught. If, by being close-minded, i do not allow myself into awe by the grandeur of Mt. Makiling enough to thank God, then the problem is not the grandeur but the human ego, the closed mind. Same with the Bread and Wine, Nature’s son and daughter, Nature’s grandeur!

Right on my desk are 3 “American books”:

• The Fifties Spiritual Marketplace: American Religion in a Decade of Conflict which tells of the American religious landscape of the 50s largely occupied by “Beat” Zen, UFO, Thomas Merton, Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung and overflowing churches
• American History Before 1877
• and the famous Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Stowe

It helps my soul. It expands my imagination and understanding not only of the American religious landscape but also where i am. Consider this encounter:

Newly met friend: Hey Brother, how are you? How’s work?
Moi: I’m just happy biking my way to work everyday Brother, back and forth safely.
Friend: Alleluia! Praise the Lord! Amen! Alleluia! Looks like you got a new tire for your bike?
Moi: Yup. Just replaced it the other day.
Friend: Alleluia! Praise the Lord! Amen! Alleluia! Brother, can i ask you something?
Moi: Sure.
Friend: Are you saved?

Long conversation followed.

Catholic as this country is, one only needs to tune in to GMA 7 at 6:30 AM and watch charismatic preacher Eddie Villanueva shouting with verses after verses to sense the growing diversity.  We all know that Protestantism began with Martin Luther ages ago. Along with this information, Roman Catholics especially carry a lot of biases against this “other side” of Christianity – literalists, poor liturgies, less intellectual depth, too dispersed to look after the common good, etc. I grew up with some of these biases, largely due in my suspicion to the “Catholic rule” in this country. But now that i take solitude with some degree of seriousness, i have to re-assess my thinking for example over the Catholic timeless theme of community. I suspect Catholic believers in this country do not lack this sense of community. There is a profusion of this – in Simbang Gabi and Lenten observances, in fiestas and family celebrations. More so in liturgies, one could sense a repetitious uniformity bordering on conformism. Repetition itself is not the problem; it is perpetual subjection to it at the expense of self-exploration, creativity and active participation. As if by attending masses, all one has to do is delegate to the presider one’s inner, Nature-given, symbolic life made more visual by the presence of the Bread and Wine, by my own body.

I suspect it is this passive conformism that defies inner change, the basis of national transformation. An authentic liturgy is humbling (and therefore transforming) not in the Lenten self-flagellating manner but a kind of humility that brings one to awe almost similar but beyond a blossoming sunflower bringing one to some “wow” moments. I am learning that awe is experienced only alongside a growing time for solitude, in being alone with God even if it entails painfully groping in the dark with one’s wound or wounds. Solitude entails loneliness, the thing most of us would like to avoid. But it is a more meaningful loneliness sometimes. I give you an example of a life-changing solitude, one that has a more ecumenical appeal in it being perhaps the most popular religious song ever. If you are not familiar with the song Amazing Grace and its genesis, then, you will learn a lot from these couple of vids i am inserting. It was out of a life-changing solitary moment that a white slave trader named John Newton, while transporting slaves aboard a ship buffeted by a storm, came to know God whose name is Amazing Grace. I love these clips.

I cried with this preacher’s version of the song while learning a lot. You may also want to find out who is behind the title of this post, the Unknown.

One Amazing Grace. One true worship. One changed heart. Many blessed. It can begin with me, the change i so desire for this country. And it can begin in a true worship or liturgy that begins in solitude, in being honestly alone with God.

New Year “by another route”

“And having been warned not to return to Herod, they departed for their country by another route.” Mt. 2:12

Two things described as well my Advent and Christmas: sleep-deprived and overfed.

I don’t admit i’m getting insomnia, only sleep interruptions sometimes at midnight, but mostly around 3AM all the way to the hour-and-a-half away Simbang Gabi. But i suspect this is less of the dawn masses chain effect. It is more of the brain’s traffic during the day more activated by a pre-bed practice of mental silence. I’m finding out an hour of pre-bed mental silence is really interfering my sleep. A nighttime recollection may sound ideal a good centering of the spooks of activities of the day. But i recall an article i read years ago and slowly concede to its practical truth on how silence in its varied forms including Christian meditation or yoga becomes an impediment to an early, smooth slumber. Silence simply but deeply activates the mind.

It’s worthwhile to hear your experience in so far as pre-bed mental silence is concerned if you are into the practice, mindful that every experience is unique even if laden with commonalities we can resonate with.

So, one new-year-by-another-route i will pursue is to keep the practice of mental silence but not as a springboard to bed. Cursory reading, be they Scriptural or otherwise, or a pillow fight with Mommy and son will still close my waking hours. Beyond my knowledge, silence still works its way into my sleeping time even after a pillow fight.

Another new-year-by-another-route resolve relates to food. i admit i was overfed this season more from the generosity of others. To temper the season’s lavishness, i opted for dried fish during one lunch. The whole afternoon until midnight, i got so grouchy and restless, wanting to know what demon had been whipped up. Aha – that tempting salty dried fish (Eve is my mother, remember) scrambled my BP! It’s appalling how a couple of dried fish could terribly alter my biochemistry and mood, piquant enough for me to make pact for my health this year: avoid the imagination of it as a carinderia dish. Or simply avoid it this year.

Today is Epiphany Sunday. Or simply Manifestation Sunday of the Light who is God. Through the magi by a guiding star from the east towards the House of Bread otherwise known as Bethlehem.

Herod was freaking out. He doesn’t want to give up his kingly power, much more to the weakness of a mere child. He was obstinate about it, like people in power familiar to us. It makes me muse whether he really had a happy childhood because probably, all he sauntered with were power-grabbers.

So the magi said “No” to the Herodian ploy, not an easy thing by the way. “And so they departed for their country by another route.” Scripture scholars could suggest lifelong conversion of the magi as the deeper meaning of “another route”.

It may be so. Their “another route” could also be mine or yours. But i suspect only at the price of not taking for granted those small guiding stars unvarnished as sitting in calming and sometimes boring silence. Or pillow fights. Or dried fish signal.

Got fresh salmon, anyone?

——
Photo credit: Valley Views

Thank you for 2009! Welcome 2010

2009. What a year, a wacky one for me in a more painful topsy-turvy emotional way. Around May, I was absent from work for more than a week, an emotional fallout from work-related stress. Never was there a year when i got sick this long. By the last quarter of this year, i picked myself up again and pretty much, my biking activities have helped my stamina and immune system. I skimmed my personal journal today: entries were tug-of-war of emotional meandering and a sense of a growing solitude. It is filled with quotes from Scriptures, vignettes of family escapades, and an in-depth look at Desert Spirituality. If i am to remember 2009 with a sense of gratitude, it is these 2 things: those little dark corners of my being exposed into the light, needing some growing up but resistant enough to get sick at times, and the rediscovery of Silence that solitary writer Maggie Ross had “gifted” me with.

Ironically, it was still a beautiful year. What’s coming ahead is still veiled before my knowledge. Time to bring on the faith again, one more year, one day at a time. Like author Henri Nouwen, i hope that Silence will continue to guard the fire within, keep it focused.

I hope yours is one read through the eyes of faith, telling you: it’s always a safe one, gentler than the previous, regardless of any circumstance because all time is under Him.

Happy New Year to you and to your loved ones!

quasi

Romancing Into Christmas

Simbang Gabi is over. But i still feel the carry-over energy of the multitude. Or is it the sleep deprivation hanging out a bit? Both could be true. The other night, i was alone again in the same ground used to be noisily swarmed by young churchgoers. Silence was there except that their 9 days physical presence seems to linger invisibly, jolting gently the stillness of the place. It’s akin to being home alone, the house just emptied by traveling kin – one feels their trails.

It wasn’t hard to notice, the young faces, the adolescents who brimmed the ground – some simply loitering or smoking or gripping hands with their BFF, others in their serious religious observance. Commonly, they came by cliques. The youthful eagerness for Simbang Gabi has never changed since my teenage days, it only grows more populous. Before and beside me, even the voices behind me and the barkadahan guffawing of the priest-admonished “Good morning” – i picked them up in-between as opinion-free as i can. A smoke-belching churchgoer is the least one could expect unless smoking is part of a ritual like American Indians do. But perhaps, even a smoking teener has some messages to preach beyond the pulpit.

And so are warmed, tangled hands.  (wink)

For 8 days, i was in my casual pair of Spartan slippers. Most of those days, i was standing not because i was often late but young lovers and “frats” often outdone me with their quicker impulses. And with their bling-blings, their exuberance, their communal though cliquish mentality. They were there less for the Advent motive to wait for Christmas but more to group and exchange fives and gobble puto bumbong. But they keep me thinking: this country is getting younger and more people poorer. Is this country going to harness their potentials and youthful energy beyond singing competitions and fantasizing professional basketball much like India turning their high school students into budding computer geeks? So much talents lurk behind those guffawing and too sacred at the core to turn them into politicians’ personal capital.

For one thing, they were quite at home praying beyond the perimeter of the church building. It is telling – how they want to belong and to equally celebrate our symbolic lives in liturgy. But does our liturgy connect with their evolving cultural languages including the languages of their fertile bodies? Or their lack thereof of “silent fluency” or dwindling disability to read nonverbal cues thanks to texting? It struck me the first day the presider laid out the sermon outline for the 9-day pre-dawn masses: the 7 capital sins and the bodyguards of the venial ones. For all the subtleties and beauties and terrors of waiting that are so essential in our spiritual walk and Advent offers, why hammer young churchgoers just out from bed with mortal sins for 9 days? One theologian puts it bluntly: we Roman Catholics are overfed with the theology of sin we often miss the point, dreading God with all the shame and guilt we could muster.

And the point: God really wants to get intimate with me and my loved ones, more intimate than those warmed, tangled hands during Simbang Gabi. God’s desire was turned into Christmas. It’s happening everyday and beyond those youthful romance we see in church grounds (wink).

The True Meaning of Christmas

The dark void and loneliness, the emptiness and longing for depth that turn into noise and clutter around…

Never has God been so filling it with a presence so intimate as Christmas…

It’s only a matter of believing and listening in silence, both with the spoken and unspoken affection of Him for the whole creation like you and me and the crickets who sing at night…

Now, every cell of my being counts.

There’s no way drowning the truth in noise that i am loved unconditionally for the color of my skin or my language or my standing in the global economy.

Thank You God, for Christmas!

Merry Christmas to you dear readers!