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The Real Gift

2008-11-30T14:10:00.003+08:00

Advent Season starts today. O joy! Indeed... With Advent and Christmas livens up the spirit of the gift-giving in people. Most of us anyway. And yet unfortunately, rooted that we are in such this reality of ours and running the race of mice and men, the season of Christmas and of gift-giving is so commercialized and gives the unneeded (extra) tension of just what to give one's beloved and the guy whom you've picked to give an exchange gift for the office's Christmas party.
I just dug up something that years ago, much younger and a bit less sardonic, I wrote this article with the intent of rousing others to give more and help to understand and enjoy the giving of gifts. It just might help us (and myself today ;) figure out Advent more and to be able give more. Not just in the material aspect but in the giving more of the self as well. Magis is one term that comes to mind.
May this Christmas be a more memorable and meaningful one. Merry Christmas, beloved!

The Real Gift

It is but a wonderful moment in one’s life to receive gifts from other people.

These gifts are given to us by those who care for us and those whom we care for. Ours without obligation and for the best part of course, they are free.

I hold my fondest memories of these packaged joys when they came my way on gaily held birthday parties complete with balloons and clowns and crisp Christmas morns as a young child. During these times as young, innocent children, we gazed in delight and wonder at their presence under our cheerily lit Christmas trees. The littlest ones then waited in gleeful anticipation and fantasized as to what might those various boxes and packages wrapped in such beckoning and colorful wrappers and attractive ribbons might have contained. Normally too they hoped that the largest and heaviest boxes might have their names on the Christmas gift cards taped on them and they would read them as soon they are able to read them. Turning and looking at each card each time a package was deposited there until reprimanded by our moms to leave the gift goodies alone.

In another instance, as a guest enters the door for a child’s birthday party, a greedy celebrant’s eyes snatches an anxious glance first as to what kind of gift may have been brought for him even before the youthful party guest has greeted him, “Happy birthday, there! Aren’t we eating yet?”

Our gifts of that day and age may have ranged from a toy in need of batteries, a cool, new red shirt, those indefatigable photo albums or a tacky, Simpson’s coffee mug as we got a little bit older. Whatever they may have been, they may have been welcome or not but we welcome and receive them warmly still. Those gifts have been given with the best of intentions and of course, they were free.

Free. We may want to do anything with these gifts as we may deem necessary with them depending on its use and function. Some instantaneously open them in front of the benefactor and check them up for size immediately if it’s a piece of clothing so they could request the suddenly sheepish giver to have it changed to a smaller size and color as well. Others have them stored until next year’s office Christmas bonito-bonita to be ‘recycled’, hoping that the others won’t recognize it from last year’s – or recognize his gift to have been ‘recycled’ as well.

Then there are those who keep and cherish the gifts and tokens of affection given them by their ‘significant others’ and those closest to their hearts for all time and posterity. It is this last group that have relatively, truly received their gifts.

Not everyone are as fortunate as some of us to have experienced as such gifts in their own respect, the raucous of children’s birthday parties, the warmth and joy of Christmas reunion parties with our respective families and loved ones or the intoxications infamous of some office parties. Here mostly in this country are depraved lots in various sectors of our society. Those who have barely enough to fill their own mouths for the day have in no manner have an iota of how it feels to engage in guessing games with one’s cousins of who gets the ‘most-behaved-Christmas-gift’ for the year.

But they do get their gifts inspite of their neediness in life. Gifts do not necessarily have to be material and concrete in nature to be given and such in order to be received in return. Such it is with the subjectivity of this world. A gift by most standards has to be bought or made and has to be wrapped for presentational purposes and to perhaps create an atmosphere of suspense.

In my book a gift may be anything as long as it is freely given and given in such a way that a certain amount of love was included in its ‘wrapping’ or ‘packaging’.

They receive the love of their friends, the smile to a wooing suitor from a beautiful woman or the warm greeting of a kiss by one’s spouse after a long day from work. Not a single monetary currency or even a fraction of one has been spent for it.

Strictly for free.

There are some gifts, which do require some manner of effort to be acquired. These however, needed some form of exchange before one to be ‘gifted’ with. There are ‘gift items’ offered by some commercial establishments to their customers in return for patronizing their products or services.

Gift checks are also redounding in circulation and sold so that their beneficiaries can get for themselves what they personally desire for as a gift. More importantly, these marketing contraptions give us the convenience of avoiding the aggravation of choosing gifts for others. If you are the type who always start late in the year for Christmas shopping and joins in the multitudes of nameless, faceless and heartless hordes in fighting over a triviality of which you suddenly decide looks best on your mother – you know hell what I’m talking of.

They are gifts in themselves. But are they free?

In my years of receiving gifts nothing equals as yet to this singular gift I received. It required no coupons from any supermarket or mall too. It cannot be found there or elsewhere. This is a gift like no other and can never, ever be equaled – for real. It is priceless and yet required not a centavo. My benefactor has given it especially for me long, long ago and in fact, for everyone as well.

Actually, it should be spelled Benefactor – and the ‘gift’ was so heartfully presented and in such a glorious way. The ‘gift’ was personally named for you and me long before we were born and with the ultimate best of intents. And the packaging you see, was a bloodied cross. It was two thousand years ago when the ‘gift’ was wrapped and with it, was the greatest amount of love.

This is the gift. It is truly free. Accept the gift freely and truly be free.

Beyond Words by Ben Okri

2008-11-16T02:47:00.010+08:00

Years back have I gone through this passage by Ben Okri and much was felt and gained from the experience of the rich and subtle wisdom in what it is we say and utter... and what goes beyond in the ripples of our utterances.

Long as it may be for a posting here, do take time out to digest these words and see much further beyond its subtle utterance..

Beyond Words by Ben Okri
A Secular Sermon

1
We began before words, and we will end beyond them.
It sometimes seems to me that our days are poisoned with too many words. Words said and not meant. Words said ‘and’ meant. Words divorced from feeling. Wounding words. Words that conceal. Words that reduce. Dead words.

If only words were a kind of fluid that collects in the ears, if only they turned into the visible chemical equivalent of their true value, an acid, or something curative – then we might be more careful. Words do collect in us anyway. They collect in the blood, in the soul, and either transform or poison people’s lives. Bitter or thoughtless words poured into the ears of the young have blighted many lives in advance. We all know people whose unhappy lives twist on a set of words uttered to them on a certain unforgotten day at school, in childhood, or at university.

We seem to think that words aren’t things. A bump on the head may pass away, but a cutting remark grows with the mind. But then it is possible that we know all too well the awesome power of words – which is why we use them with such deadly and accurate cruelty.

We are all wounded inside one way or other. We all carry unhappiness within us for some reason or other. Which is why we need a little gentleness and healing from one another. Healing in words, and healing beyond words. Like gestures. Warm gestures. Like friendship, which will always be a mystery. Like a smile, which someone described as the shortest distance between two people.

Yes, the highest things are beyond words.

That is probably why all art aspires to the condition of wordlessness. When literature works on you, it does so in silence, in your dreams, in your wordless moments. Good words enter you and become moods, become the quiet fabric of your being. Like music, like painting, literature too wants to transcend its primary condition and become something higher. Art wants to move into silence, into the emotional and spiritual conditions of the world. Statues become melodies, melodies become yearnings, yearnings become actions.

When things fall into words they usually descend. Words have an earthly gravity. But the best things in us are those that escape the gravity of our deaths. Art wants to pass into life, to lift it; art wants to enchant, to transform, to make life more meaningful or bearable in its own small and mysterious way. The greatest art was probably born from a profound and terrible silence – a silence out of which the greatest enigmas of our life cry: Why are we here? What is the point of it all? How can we know peace and live in joy? Why be born in order to die? Why this difficult one-way journey between the two mysteries?

Out of the wonder and agony of being come these cries and questions and the endless stream of words with which to order human life and quieten the human heart in the midst of our living and our distress.

The ages have been inundated with vast oceans of words. We have been virtually drowned in them. Words pour at us from every angle and corner. They have not brought understanding, or peace, or healing, or a sense of self-mastery, nor has the ocean of words given us the feeling that, at least in terms of tranquility, the human spirit is getting better.

At best our cry for meaning, for serenity, is answered by a greater silence, the silence that makes us seek higher reconciliation.

I think we need more of the wordless in our lives. We need more stillness, more of a sense of wonder, a feeling for the mystery of life. We need more love, more silence, more deep listening, more deep giving.

2
When the angels of the Bible spoke to human beings, did they speak in words? I don’t think so. I think the angels said nothing, but they were heard in the purest silence of the human spirit, and were understood beyond words.

On a more human scale there are many things beyond.

A mother watches her child leave home. Her heart is still. Her eyes are full of tears and prayer. That is beyond.

An old man with wrinkled hands is carrying his grandchild. With startled eyes the baby regards his grandfather. The old man, with the knowledge of Time’s sadness in his heart, and with love in his eyes, looks down at the child. The meeting of their eyes. That is beyond.

A famous writer, feeling his life coming to an end, writes these words: ‘My soul looks back and wonders – just how I got I got over.’

A young woman, standing on a shore, looks out into an immense azure sea rimmed with the silver line of the horizon. She looks out into the obscure heart of destiny, and is overwhelmed by a feeling both dark and oddly joyful. She may be thinking something like this: ‘My soul looks forward and wonders- just how am I to get across.’ That is beyond.

3
A flamenco dancer, lurking under a shadow, prepares of the terror of her dance. Somebody has wounded her with words, alluding to the fact that she has no fire, or ‘duende’. She knows she has to dance her way past her limitations, and that this may destroy her forever. She has to fail, or she has to die. I want to dwell for a little while on this dancer because, though a very secular example, she speaks very well for the power of human transcendence. I want you to imagine this frail woman. I want you to see her in deep shadow, and fear. When the music starts, she begins to dance, with ritual slowness. Then she stamps out the dampness from her soul. Then she stamps fire into her loins. She takes on a strange enchanted glow. With a dark tragic rage, shouting, she hurls her hungers, her doubts, her terrors, and her secular prayer for more light into the spaces around her. All fire and fate, she spins her enigma around us, and pulls into the awesome risk of her dance.

She is taking herself apart before our sceptical gaze.

She is disintegrating, shouting and stamping and dissolving the boundaries of her body. Soon, she becomes a wild unknown force, glowing in her death, dancing from her wound, dying in her dance.

And when she stops – strangely gigantic in her new fiery stature – she is like one who has survived the most dangerous journey of all. I can see her now as she stands shining in celebration of her own death. In the silence that follows, no one moves. The fact is that she has destroyed us all.

Why do I dwell on this dancer? I dwell on her because she represents for me the courage to go beyond ourselves. While she danced she became the dream of the freest and most creative people we had always wanted to be, in whatever it is we do. She was the sea we never ran away to, the spirit of wordless self-overcoming we never quite embrace. She destroyed us because we knew in our hearts that rarely do we rise to the higher challenges in our lives, or our work, or our humanity. She destroyed us because rarely do we love our tasks and our lives enough to die and thus be reborn into the divine gift of our hidden genius. We seldom try for that beautiful greatness brooding in the mystery of our blood.

You can say in her own way, and in that moment, that she too was a dancer to God.

That spirit of the leap into the unknown, that joyful giving of the self’s powers, that wisdom of going beyond in order to arrive here – that too is beyond words.

All art is a prayer for spiritual strength. If we could be pure dancers in spirit, we would never be afraid to love, and we would love with strength and wisdom. We would not be afraid of speech, and we would be serene with silence. We would learn to live beyond words, among the highest things. We wouldn’t need words. Our smile, our silences would be sufficient. Our creations and the beauty of our functions would be enough. Our giving would be our perpetual gift.

4
The greatest inspiration, the most sublime ideas of living that have come down to humanity come from a higher realm, a happier realm, a place of pure dreams, a heaven of blessed notions. Ideas and infinite possibilities dwell there in absolute tranquility.
Before these ideas came to us they were pure, they were silent, and their life-giving possibilities were splendid. But when they come to our earthly realm they acquire weight and words. They become less.
The sweetest notions, ideas of universal love and justice, love for one another, or intuitions of joyful creation, these are all perfect in their heavenly existences. Any artist will tell you that ideas are happier in the heaven of their conception than on the earth of their realization. We should return to pure contemplation, to sweet meditation, to the peace of silent loving, the serenity of deep faith, to the stillness of deep waters. We should sit still in our deep selves and dream good new things for humanity. We should try and make those dreams real. We should keep trying to raise higher the conditions and possibilities of this world. Then maybe one day, after much striving, we might well begin to create a world justice and a new light on this earth that could inspire a ten-second silence of wonder – even in heaven.

º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤

Ben Okri. “Birds of Heaven”. Great Britain: Phoenix (a division of Orion Books, Ltd.), 1996.

my ultimate journey

2006-02-26T04:38:00.000+08:00

Mine and yours, actually..

I have initially had had no reassurance passage for this trip. In certain respects at any rate, I have as yet not made even a single step on this journey. The sheer folly of how this sounds like is that the journey is simply towards home. In certain respects, for me to even be able to do a step on this journey is to say that I have then passed from this world and plane of existence. Ergo, my real home is not here in the here and now. Yet I have equipped myself with a compass and a guide.. And like the travails of Frodo.. I have been granted an uncanny fellowship of also unworthy companions on this odyssey.

So then, what do I use as my home now? Or in maybe posing another line - where am I? One also needs to ground oneself first and know his position relative to his world-at-large in order to move onto the desired destination.

For now, the here and now is "home."
For the here and now, there is just a multitude of issues and demons and crossroads one needs to face and overcome.
For the here and now, it's something about how God has moved (read: disturbed) this journey in this my world again tremendously.

Still, life must go certainly.. May haps with more caution now.. But it must go on with certainty. The call remains to remain in the faith always and more so especially to be true. Also it has been said, "So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead." No greater work is there than to love. And yet to love more so. And there is so much to love in this journey grace-filled.

Indeed, life must go on certainly still. In this world where I am at especially.
So it must be then, in mine and yours, actually.

Pag-aalay Sa Aking Natatangi

2006-02-16T00:46:00.000+08:00

ON this day, a most beautiful Day celebrates once more a life blessed. A life blessed unto us all and to me. And to me indeed this is a most beautiful day as also she is my beautiful Day.
When we were wed we declared to each other solemn oaths of love and prayer and the following is mine..

Inaalay ko ang aking buong pagkatao
unang-una sa Panginoon sa ating pag-iisa na ngayon.
Kinikilala ko na ikaw ang kaganapan
ng Kanyang lubos na pag-ibig din sa akin
at isasabuhay ko rin ang Kanyang pangako para sa atin.

Nasimulan na ang mga araw na mas higit pa
kitang mamahalin at sa buong panahon ay pasasalamatan
at pangangalagaan ko ang pag-ibig na dulot Niya.
Dasal ko na lubos na magyabong pa ang ating pagmamahalan.

Sa gitna ng hapis at ligaya at san man tayo maparoon
ay ako ang iyong mapagmahal na katuwang at kaibigan
at butihing ama sa ating magiging pamilya.
Igitna natin lagi si Hesus sa sentro ng ating pagsasama
at lahat ng pangamba ay ialay natin sa kanya.

Walang pangamba sa pag-ibig na ito na dulot Niya
at maging dasal ng pasasalamat ang bawat saglit ng ating pag-iisa.

And I hold to these words sacred and true to you, my dearest beloved Day. May God help us indeed for our life together in His love and care. I offer you most to Him whom gave you to me - my true gift. A true gift is said to be a great gift given so but even yet undeserved. Only God can fathom how much a true gift you are to me.. may today you have indeed a most blessed and joyful birthday, my Day.

past forward graces

2005-12-13T00:55:00.000+08:00

.
AT this moment, a few years have passed since that fateful day of that composition in the commute. changes have come and gone but not a few remain the way they are. i believe that the way i write being among those that have changed (i pray for the better) and as for the latter - i still stand in awe in thanks for how God has blest me indeed and experienced His love so. i remain thanking God for you. and even more so.
there are two things that i see as the constants of this world. change shall forever be a constant and things shall go its way as it must.
the other constant in this world is the One who made the world and the universe - God.
God is unchanging and remains true to His love of us and that in spite of our wavering selves.

panimula

2005-11-23T00:16:00.000+08:00

Celebration Of Life

Many are the wonders
Minute, big and true
The light, the water
Clouds floating by
The roads and so on
My rest and yours
An infinite list and blessing
I thank them, I thank all
I thank God so
But more than all that
I thank God for you

...
Life has been a blast. Two dozen years have gone for me. It is a wonder how much YOU have done for me, touched my life. Every encounter, no matter how fleeting or intimate, has been something. A something unquantifiable, mind you - you all are held special in my heart.

It's weird that I've originally composed this all this in an old high school Physics notebook, on my way home from work. God! What a day this has been for me, and yet I remembered suddenly, what a wonderful life pala. I've been meeting people through the years and no, I won't say it that coincidence brought you to me. Again, I reiterate, I thank you - I thank God for you.

No, my dearie, I'm not dying - yet. Well, heck, my commute to work is killing me all the same. Aren't we all going there anyway? A healthy five-year old is already on that road to death, though perhaps you and I are nearer to its end. Sorry if I had you worried a bit. I am very much quite happy and would very much like to live a little bit longer with you yet.

I am finally(!) alone to do something. Yet I'm not because you are with me still - but not to complain, k? Life is too wonderful to doze off on a long bus comute home at night. Y'know, I'm doing a lot of philosophizing a lot now in these rides. Gusto ko nga sanang ipahiwatig at ibahagi ito sa Filipino pero malimit na mapagal ang diwa mo. Madalas sa mga panahong ito nasasariwa ko ang buhay-buhay sa ganito - so I guess I'll just stick to this medium.

I am not drunk, drugged nor lovesick. In fact right now, I'm dog-tired, hungry and cramped from the awkward way of sitting on this two-seater. The "sounds" on this bus are great though, singing, "..oh it's sad to belong.." Uhuh..! I am in no way sad nor really lonely since I feel you belong, you've become, in me.. there for me, Him most of all. (See, these bus rides are way too loong..) It's rather a mystery to me why I'm doing this - but I felt you had something to it..

Two dozen years and, and in, a Jubilee Year and a bus-usually-laden-on-a-rush-hour-trip. Hey! Given the oportunity, grab it (I hogged the two seats, too). Uhhn.. what's the term? I'll get back to it later but remember - you are my, and The, inspiration for this. Ha! I'm not blaming you for my.. dizzy stream of consciousness overflowing like a train of thought derailed. Panahon ng maligayang ligalig bagâ? People are looking at me..

Crazy. Holding a crayon-infested math notebook scribbling away.. My elation for you, for the Gift that You Are for my borrowed two dozen years. Just - wala lang. No. Ecstatic is not the term..

Oh my God! Another bus Gospel precher. What is this word, este world, coming to?! But these two are rather unique, a. They're talking of "biyaya" or grace. Wow! Just what I've been talking (rather, ranting) of - gifts, grace.. biyaya! For me this boils down for me as You.

But, man oh man! I have been as of late always meeting these guys on my trips (Is this why I'm like this now?). On this traffic jam, on this Bible-ranting meleé, on this wild ride home you still keep me company. This is a pretty wild ride, I tell you. How have you been carrying on? (But what is that term again..?) Ey, it's becoming to be an interesting Bible presentation brewing up. One has got to hand it to this guy ("John 3:16! John 3:16!!.." That's a pretty hot line, mind you too). Another one (a third!) just stood up to join in in rebuttal. Whew. Now, the eyes have been graciously averted from me surely..

Life's a blast really.

I'm on my end of my trip but surely, it won't be the end of me - yet. There's a lot on my mind still. You mostly. Most, if not all, have been material enough to make me most grateful. Not to mention, entertained.

This is not a forwarded message. You are indeed its intended recipient. If you feel somehow that my letter to you would relate to your sentiments to your own friends, well, this I say to you alone and especially - make your own letter to them to send, 'k? I hope that you do extend more effort in writing to those whom have made an impression in your life than I did to you. None is less or more than the rest - no matter how fleeting or intimate the encounter.

If somehow you don't feel that this message I tried as heartfully to write, and reach to you and humbly offer so as my message(?) of love and.. wala lang(!), does not seem to touch to you personally, then I am sorry for the manner in which I did. I did originally do this on a bumpy ride on EDSA, y'know. I must've already rattled my gray stuff too much, too often. I might say that I'm sorry for you too, if you knew me even just a bit as to the lengths of and/or absurdities I'd do or have done for you.. nyahh.

Please don't mind me then. I implore you.

Nothing like a lyrical expression this. If so, it must be one from the netherwold. I call this my poetic digression.

It's just another long bus ride for you too, I guess. Well, get over it my dear, dear friend. The long and winding road of your tedious commute on life will soon finally bring you home.

God bless you all your days and keep on the right road. Get on the right trip, with the right passengers and on the right bus. Hopefully, you will get right on your destination and right on time.

And a good day (or night) to you and always..