One Journey

Because there is only one me, one pilgrim, there should only be :One Journey

Check out the link. Everything else goes there.

Happy New Year.

Nothing

What's left of me, once you take away everything else?

I just realized that this blog contains the everything else I have been referring to for a long, long time.

Indeed, what is left of me once you take away everything else? I was stripped off the compromised sense of self I created in order to survive this world in the first quarter of this year and most of my posts in between have been hollow cries of the scattered self concept I mistakenly built in the last 20 years or more of my existence.

So, what's left? Nothing. Really, there is nothing.

Aside from the knowledge that I am loved, deeply and completely, and unconditionally and irrevocably by the One who created all.And yes, I am completely, totally undeserving of that love. But that does not change His love.

So, how's that?

Dying Passion

Do you wonder why you feel so restless, so discontented with life lately?

You know that for the past three years, you have been quite happy with your job, your family, your so called spiritual growth. But there is this niggling feeling, this insistent thought at the back of your mind lately.

You wonder if this niggling feeling began several months ago when your mother refused to allow you to attend that Vocation Discernment seminar you have been invited to attend. The first peace you really felt was during a retreat with the Carmelite Missionaries last summer. Then, you were quite eager to really discern if something else is in your future.

Your mother fears that you might be compelled to do something she is not ready yet. And you agree with her on that. You may not be ready for anything else.

But the realization that something inside you seem to have expanded has started you. Yes, you are still young in the faith and yes, you still have a lot to go to and yes, there is still more out there but a thought bothers: that maybe you gave up on an opportunity to grow.

There is a hunger in your heart and you try to fill it in with the pictures and facts of this one cute professing Christian who plays a mean football. You try to convince yourself that you are happy watching others live the life you feel compelled to join in.

You find yourself growing bigger than your circumstances but your insecurities, your fears and doubts, your guilt, holds you back from completely and fully expanding.

And everyday, you teach, with the lack of passion and fervor you once felt. Because something inside is eating you, killing you day by day. You go through the motions but you no longer feel anything. It's just fear, doubt and guilt now. Your favorite companions in your life.

Hanging by a Moment

What is love? What is it like?

I have never been in love but recently,  I read a Regency romance novel featuring a frumpy heroine who decided to do certain things because she, it appears, has lived a safe existence for so very long.

With the ton considering her as very definitely on the shelf, and with her very own quiet acceptance (by wearing her lace cap and sitting on the spinster's seat as the veritable wallflower), our heroine seems to have snapped out of her trance-like life when her younger sister, considered as the toast of the season, was about to marry a duke.

She made out a list of things she would do. Things that gentlemen do but ladies don't do. Her list included: kissing someone - passionately, gambling in a gentlemen's club, fencing, watching a duel, shooting a pistol, and for once, feel beautiful.

I am planning my own list to...several lists actually. Lists that don't include finishing my Master's Degree in five years, reading Shakespeare's complete works within three years, writing a young adult fantasy novel, working from morning til' night, earning a promotion and all those professionally cool things I have been hankering about.

I want to do something personal. Something different for once. Something for myself. I have no idea what those things are yet but with me falling hopelessly "in-like" with a self-professing Christian football hottie and claiming him, I think that's saying I am really going around the bend.

I need to catch up with real life...

Be Honest

You just finished writing a guide for an emodule and once more, that sad little feeling in your heart starts making itself felt again.

What is this, you wonder. Why is this here in this heart that is unencumbered by any emotional and mortal ties. What is this quiet little ticking that makes itself felt at certain moments? What is this thing that sometimes makes itself apparent with a pained little moan or a solitary tear during unguarded times?

You know you forget that when you are holding a session. You after the adrenaline rush of doing something which you believed has helped someone.

But now, what is this quiet little ticking bomb in your heart that seems to beat oh so subtly amidst the shallow beating of your heart?

You Miss It

 

Of course you know about it and of course you miss it.

For a year (or is it two now?), you missed sitting on a chair, facing another teacher, while your classmates are almos zoning out in sleepiness. But you know, deep inside, you know, how you miss it. How you utterly feel the urge to be the one to just listen and be fascinated by the things you never realized until it was pointed out to you.

 

For a time, you gave up the opportunity of sitting in a classroom because you felt compelled to work for others. It was a good and noble cause but now, you sense that restlessness driving you again. That restlessness and thirst for something sublime and something utterly profound that you are unable to grasp.

 

You miss the college halls that you once traipsed to and fro in your quest to become an educator. You miss the smell of newly bought textbooks. You miss the excessive chatter of seatmates and friends before a class begins. You miss eating that weird concoction of animal entrails with red chili in it (whatever that primitive fare is). You miss the daily hourly bus rides, the rush for jeepneys, the hush stillness of a library on a sleepy afternoon. You miss sitting on benches underneath trees.

 

You just miss the scent, the taste and the feeling of learning amidst the hallowed halls of a century old school that fostered your dreams and drove your ambitions.

A Close Encounter : RI’s GSE Program

 

It’s not something that I personally planned on applying for. In fact, I had never seriously considered applying for any scholarship abroad since I already feel quite content and happy where I am now, thank you very much.  But a mentor, one who has helped guide my career, PP Dr. Helen P. Banez of the Rotary Club of Metro Passi, convinced us to apply for the GSE program of the Rotary Club.

The Rotary Club’s Group Study Exchange program (GSE) aims to immerse a team of four young professionals, ages 21-40 years old,  to different parts of the world. For a month or so, the said team members will experience what it is like to live as professionals in that said corner of the world. True to Rotary’s ideals, the said programs aims to promote goodwill and friendship among people.

After a Club screening and interview conducted last year, the four of us were ranked and sponsored by the RCMP for further screening. Dr. Banez personally made enquiries regarding the screening process and a year later, specifically last August, she told us to be ready because we will be having an interview with a panel in order to determine the representatives for three zones of the club.

RCMP was advised to choose only two representatives and Lorena, a fellow Mobile Teacher, and I prepared to take the journey.

It was something that caught me unprepared because my mind was then on other things. But, to cut the story, I qualified for the District Screening which was conducted yesterday at Bacolod City’s O Hotel.

The RCMP provided a financial assistance of P2,500. Dr. Banez urged me to checked-in at the hotel to reduce the pressure and stress from travelling to Bacolod City.

The interview itself was a nerve wracking endeavour and the questions were intellectually crafted in such a manner as to really test the mettle of the participants. Right after I finished the interview, I did sense that I would not qualify. For one, the 14 others who qualified for the District Interview were very much in the advanced levels of their career paths. They have Master’s Degrees and Docotorate degrees under their belts. There was a practicing physician from Roxas, a CPA from Roxas too, an Administrator or something from Zamboanga, a professor of langauges from Zamboanga, and others of the same caliber. There were also several teachers who made the list.

Here is the criteria used:

20% Knowledge of Profession

20% Knowledge of Country

20% Knowledge of Rotary

10% Personality, Appearance and Attitude

10% Leadership Abilities

It was an experience that opened my eyes to a lot of things. It made me understand that I still have a lot to learn, a lot to undertake in life. Oregon was a somewhat distant dream but it has opened my eyes to realizing so much about where I am right now, what is going on with my career,how and what I am as a Filipino and how I am about as a person socially moving in the world.

Tied to your Table

You sit there, staring at the blank screen and the blinking cursor of a silly flickering purple butterfly. Beside you, in the corner table, are four pieces of coffee-stained cups. On the other end are brown enveloped containing outputs you have to check.

An unopened lesson plan book lay beside you, taunting you with the half-done plans within it. Tears threatened to fall.

You want to go out. You want to leave. You want to walk out in the sun on that bright morning.

You hear your mother shrilly demanding you go down and be a part of the raunchy household. Your sister screams in frustration. She still had her classes but she can’t leave because of the unwashed dishes.

Your brother angrily jaunts off, carelessly leaving a house that is no longer a home.

The house settles into a nice quiet. Everyone has gone. And still, there your are, on your table, before the window, the sun burning your tears as they keep falling while you keep staring at the blinking cursor that never managed to move by itself.

For Convenience’s Sake

 

Sometimes, you do things merely for convenience.

One moment, you get pressured by everything around you to commit some “white” lies and for convenience’s sake, you follow the dictates of your baser urges. You convince yourself that what you are doing is simply typical of the world. That what you are doing is actually harmless. It would hurt no one. No one would know anyway. Just you and a few persons jaded enough to understand that this is just the way we do it.

Everyone is doing it anyway! So, if everyone is doing it, that makes what we are doing right, right?

And then, you keep walking. All the lies keep piling on top of each other. Still, to cover the ugly stain in your heart, you lie more to yourself. You become immune to the lies and lying comes so easily.

It then becomes your way as well. No one knows anyway, just a few people who understand what its like.

And then, the lies cloud your senses. You no longer hear, see or feel beyond the lies you made. You no longer feel joy because you cannot feel it through the thick layer covering your body. You no longer feel anything beyond weariness, despair at having to keep up with all the façade of decent living.

And then, something happens. A Hand decides He has had enough. He plucks you out of the mire you live in, and brings you to the glaring light of day. He rubs mud on your eyes and tells you to open them . You blink. The light hurts your eyes.

He makes you face a magic mirror and you see, your scarred body, your pitifully small heart, beating faintly in your chest. You gasp in horror at the horrible monster before you. But no sound comes from your mouth. The lies, they are all reflected upon your frail, fragile form. The horror of the lies you committed astounds you.

And it all started with just one, single lie – merely for convenience’s sake…

Adoration Chapel

A moment is really made up of a whole lot of moments. Perchance, you see a person sitting before you, just staring at the nothingness before her.


Don't you find yourself wondering what actually led this person to this moment? Don't you also think that this person just might be wondering why you are here, in this isolated corner of the world where she actually hoped to be alone. You were irritated to find her there but had you not considered that she may also be irked to find you in the same place?

You two are currently at an axis where both your moments led you.It was a shared moment in a life of moments. A moment if rejection led her there, a moment of sadness led you there.

Why not strike up a conversation? But then, you wonder, maybe she would not want to be disturbed and then, do I really want to disturb myself enough to disturb her silence?So, you two keep quiet, together in that moment, in that isolated moment that a whole lot of moments led you to.

The time for you to leave comes, and you stand. But you hesitate and turn to her. You don't exactly know what moments led her here but you drop a prayer to the One who can hear, the One who knows, the One who sees our moments as if they were imprinted on rolls and rolls of films before Him: Bless her, Lord.

She looks up and smiles at you and you smile too.

It was just a moment, just a smile. But in it were the whole moments of your life.

The Pope John Paul Tower

After the orientation on the LIS, a fellow Mobile Teacher and I decided to see some of the sights in Bacolod.

Unfortunately, the two of us were utter strangers in the area and we knew nobody. But we did know that SM City Bacolod just happens to be one ride away from the Bacolod Pavillon Hotel were we were staying.

So, Rochelle and I decided to go see SM City (snickers, we did know it will become a butt of joke later). We called a cab (nope, we called a trisikad) since it would take us quite a while to walk to SM City.

We were quite surprised at SM City Bacolod. It was just ... huge. It took us awhile to walk from the South Wing to the North Wing (since National Book Store is at the North Wing) and vice versa. I just bought several books and Zagu.

I was starting to think it was a wasted trip until my eyes caught this dazzling thing across the street from SM City.

What came to mind was Hiruma's Tower of Hell in Eyeshield 21. But no, it was actually memento built to commemorate Pope John Paul II's visit in Bacolod in 1981... and what a memento it was. I am referring to the Pope John Paul II Tower, an 8-storey grandiose showcase of architectural majesty overlooking the wharf of Bacolod City (err, I think so).

You only have to pay Php 20.00 to climb up to the top. It was fun. A lot of teenagers were "hanging out" in the premises. Students only had to pay Php5.00 anyway. If I lived there, I probably would have made a habit of climbing the tower every day. It was a really nice play to think and ponder things.

Broken Fairy Tales

As a person of limited means and experience, I tried to make up for any gaps in my knowledge vault by reading too much. For more than 20 years now, I have been a very indiscriminate reader. I read anything I can get my hands on. (I stop at personal journals, unless they are my students' required outputs).

 I often get in trouble because of the stuff I read. I have made my readings my escape. I even managed to let a huge part of my life simply pass by because of my preoccupation with reading.I read too much, they say. I have grown fat, and awfully proud because I read too much...

True. Reading materials were my safety net in a crumbling world, and true, my world was crumbling. With books as foundation, what did I expect?

My family has come and gone and I only appreciated what it was like to have a complete family until I lost it. Pretty baffling huh?

Three of my grandparents passed away and I have not had a healthy and meaningful relationship because, even while visiting, I would hide with a book.Escape.

I have been preoccupied with my world, and with my self and with my fairytales that never really came true in real life.

In real life things were like this. I did not like how reality was so I escaped. And now, I have broken bits of fairy tales that will never come true anymore.

Reading was a safe adventure. You cry but you really do not get hurt, you care about the characters but you do not have to sacrifice anything to show you care. When you cannot face problems at work and at home, a book is always a good thing to escape to.

But I do not want to live life thru other peoples eyes anymore. I no longer want to smell roses thru the books, and feel the pain of heart ache thru the cries of the characters. I want to live my broken fairy tales now.

And a life beautifully lived is not focus on the self. I think I learned this one today...I want to live.

Figuring it Out

Caught in between Betty and Hosea's Wife.

Wanna go back to being "Faithful" (if I ever was)...

(Brooke Fraser mode)...

I could not seem to find the right words to express what I am going through right now. It has been a while since I left. I guess whatever supplies I had is close to depletion and I am floundering. Yes, I wanna go back but it seems I lost my map and I could not find the way back...

So in the night, I lie awake, wondering...playing songs all over again...because it's quite lonely in the silence.

She's Writing Now

She is writing now. Because she needs the money, she is going to write crappy romance novels that she no longer feels like writing.

Time Out

I am mentally spacing out so I need to back off from things for a while. I just want something to change. But I am now afraid of the words that come from me.

Worldly Heaven: Blindly Groping in the Dark

I think I have been derailed. 

When you think you understand and "see", that is when you are deluding yourself the most.

Blame me for thinking I was spiritually superior than others simply because of the strange sense of enlightenment that filled me. It was troubling then to suddenly find myself in the dark, blindly groping my way out of the muck that I stumbled upon.

Nothing helped. God seemed silent. I can no longer comprehend the meaning of the things I see and the words I read... I was just a regular lost kid in the block and no one is there to help me find my way.

But I was not faithful in His silence. I was not faithful during the test and I feel like I failed. 

I saw how sinful, and proud I am. I saw how evil my heart truly is and I cringe every time  I recall how I talk about godly things like I know everything.

I learned that I cannot trust myself. I discovered that in times of great temptation, I can easily succumb to the lures of evil. I learned how half-hearted my surrender is and I saw how truly, truly disappointing I am in God's sight (and I have a feeling that I am worst than this after all).

I have been unChristian. I have been filled with the spirit of the flesh and the pride of accomplishment thinking that the clarity and the sense that I have learned actually came from my own mind.I have been judgmental. I thought what I was doing was good...truly, out of the richness of the heart, the mouth speaks.

My heart was filled, richly, with judgment, with pride...and thus, I have spoken. I have apologized but I can never make the wrong thing right again.

And it is with deep shame and guilt that I come forward, praying for God's forgiveness, more shamed than ever in the knowledge that no matter what I do, I will be forgiven, always accepted and forgiven and loved - even in my darkest.

And I wonder now, how can I ever love Him in the way He loves me?

Lord, give me a loving heart so that I will lovingly obey all Your statutes for the rest of my life.

JESUS Centered

Change in direction. Change in course. Little by little, my little frigate is moving where it is supposed to go.
This may be the end for this blog.

The search for self has not ended. It still continues.

But it cannot be anchored upon this world any longer - and that makes this particular blog redundant. I have another blog. Check The Seeker for another kind of walk...

Detoxify Now

My life is littered with a lot of junk - stuff that don't really matter.

Sometimes, I often wonder why it's like that. I did not set out to make it like this. I used to have plans for myself. However, I am wondering if those plans matter?

What matters in life? What counts? I think I should have settles this questions a long time ago. But, it seems I have never even unearthed a single mystery of it. 

If it's all about God, then, I am a sore looser. I have a love-hate relationship with a formal religion. I don't go to Church as often as a Christian should. My prayer time is sporadic at best. But, I do have a healthy conscience and it eats at me often.

If life is all about family - then, I don't know where I am headed. I have my siblings, my mother and father and my grandparents and some cousins but my anti-social attitude turns them off a lot. During family gatherings, I am often left alone, to my own devices, probably because I make them feel uncomfortable (who wouldn't, I often feel uncomfortable around myself).

If life is all about doing something significant for your neighbors (i.e. your work/profession) - well, I am at the bottom of the food chain. But at least, I love what I am doing. I love teaching. I just need to sort out my philosophy regarding my kind of teaching. I was able to find meaning and significance in my work. All other areas of my life are working out oddly.

So, what is life all about?

I know, theoretically, you would say life is about God, about family and about doing something significant for your neighbors. At this point, I think life is really ALL about God, and our relationship with him. And now, I am seeing how pointless my existence is because He is not in the center of my life.

My life is cluttered with sin, pain, vices, regrets, hurts and anger. Deep inside, a raging animal is screaming at me to GO and DO SOMETHING. But what am I supposed to do about it? What should I go out and do when I have to fight, tooth and nail, for my own survival?

Set your priorities straight. How easy for you to say when you dump most of your priorities upon me, right? 

I know my priority. It's God above all else. I am just not doing anything about it. Because once I did, I will leave this disturbingly technical, materials and senseless world I am inhabiting right now. I can't serve two masters at the same time. I know right now I am not serving God with all I am. I have set him aside for something else. Something pointless, meaningless. So, who am I serving?

That's why I need to detoxify myself of this material, selfish, worldly things that clutter my life. But how do I go about it?

Detoxify now. But how?

Revive the Verve to Serve

with Jiezl Umayao, Mobile Teacher from Tubungan
(of course, I occupied the bigger portion of the picture)

We are currently enjoying the brain damaging exercise of radio script writing in the Five-Day Training Workshop on the Technical Production of Radio Scripts for the Radio-Based Instruction (RBI) Program of the Alternative Learning System.

Of course we are very lucky since we have the very astounding presence of Mr. Salvador Royales of Mundo Man ay Magunaw....yeah, the writer in me is really rejoicing.

I feel blessed, grateful and happy. I am writing for a cause....and for a reason not just for relief and for expression.

Uncomplicated Me

I would like to believe that I am a very uncomplicated person. Just give me my laptop, an internet connection, kuryente (xempre), a book, and food and I'm set. I can sail to the ends of the world and back, just by myself (just make sure my laptop has its 9.9GB (newly downloaded) ebooks on it plus the movies and the song...and yes, I am totally a happy camper (or sailor or whatever).

I am fairly uncomplicated.I am single. I am a teacher earning the basic teacher's salary every month. I have simple tastes in life. I am not fond of brands and labels and all that. I am your typical provinciana when it comes to stuff like fashion and style and all that.

I am uncomplicated. I don't go out often. I don't have vices (well, except for food, especially "street" food and yeah, books, of course books. I even do the spicier ones).

I am uncomplicated. I am twenty six, a certified NBSB (and yes, I planned it) and I have no plans for the future whatsoever. Aside from the oft-dreamt of cottage on top of a hill overlooking the sea...

I am uncomplicated. Hurt me and I forget it. But be kind to me and you'll forever be remembered.

I am uncomplicated. I am simply uncomplicated.

But thinking about you complicates me and I don't like it especially when I have so many complicated things to do. But I do not want memories of you and those days to fade...because they make me smile. How do you do that? I don't smile a lot, except in irony or just to be polite...but you make me smile, a lot.

You complicate me.

However,  I think, I really think,that  you are very uncomplicated yourself. You and I just ...complicate things, that's all.