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Memoirs of a Five-Year Old

Memoirs of a Five-Year Old
On the Occasion of Lingkod QC's Fourth Anniversary

I met a wise old priest who taught us to treasure our memories as they are the scenes we remember because they are the ones that made the most impact in our hearts. Some of my memories might not have significance on the currentstate of the nation, but they have made my heart smile and have surfaced this month on the occasion of our branch anniversary.

I have been around Lingkod QC for five years now, even though during thatfirst year we didn't call ourselves Lingkod yet. I was by invited by Alett,my former AGL, to join a group of fellow UP Christ's Youth In Action (CYA) alumni who loved to come together to pray. It was an answered prayeractually, as being a bar reviewee, I couldn't find the time to attend prayer meetings in the existing Lingkod branches at that time, yet I had a yearning deep within me for God's love in a way I knew could only be experienced through a community.

The leaders in our campus community were the same ones who spearheaded thissmall group so I felt right at home. We sang songs, prayed aloud, and sharedburdens. It was my little piece of heaven every Friday. We celebratedbirthdays and promotions like a family. We prayed over those who wereassigned abroad (we prayed over Rocky a lot then!). We spent Fridayfellowships at Dimsum n' Dumplings for their buy-one-take-one promo and fortheir extensive choices for Lenten fare. We listened to Bobby and Rocky as they led the weekly prayer meetings and hosted the evening entertainmentthrough their alter egos, Kuya Butch and Tito Boy. We had sisters Jeng, Jeni and Ria who played in the music min and a one-woman secretariat in Mirac. We learned from personal testimonies of God's goodness to Tere, Gakky, Jun M.,Pom, and other brothers and sisters. Rommel, Tess and Liz became MusicMinisters One, Two and Three. These people taught me much of what I know nowabout building community.

Back when driving was just a dream for me, brothers Hanzel and JunMangalindan alternated in bringing me and the other sisters home. The community's unconditional love helped me survive bar failure and its consequences. At the close of 1999, Bobby led us into a period ofdiscernment about God's plans. If it were up to us, we would probably have enjoyed the familiar and the comfortable, flip-flopping as friends and lovers of prayer. God's call to become Lingkod QC became clear after a talk with Francis at McDonald's, and we tried to find out what this creature called Lingkod was.

We held our first Crossroads and CLP. We took the Way of Life talkstogether, learning the culture of Lingkod from leaders of other branches. Wehad our first Commitment Night at Sterten Rooftop. We sent three delegatesto the NLTC in 2000. We found our identity by reaching out to men and womenwho graduated from different universities and who worked in various officeswithin Metro Manila.

I remember being asked on the spot to be a DGL, and lo and behold the sisterI prayed over lost her father in a few weeks' time. That was Yves, and Iwitnessed through her the support of community through the worst kind of pain.

We noticed how talent seemed to grow on trees, with the likes of Sunday, AlanSilayan, Nik, Karreen, Ria, Mercy, and every QT being able to sing, dance,and/or play a musical instrument. Lingkod QC Exposed! was born, the firsttalents night that saw boy bands and guitar solos mixed with funny skits and sensational dances. There was something vibrant and special in the air andit was infectious! Lingkod QC continued to soar on eagle's wings.

I could detail the past years of our existence and use up your time, but everything boils down to one thing – God's Amazing Grace. Throughfour (or five) years of such seemingly insurmountable challenges in family,career, service and lovelife, we saw God's victorious right hand. We not only survived, we triumphed. Evangelistic activities increased our number. Integration Days and parties brought us closer than ever. Kapit kapatid, wesaid. We saw old members moving forward and new leaders stepping up. We were officially installed as a branch. We could not have done anything had the Lord not been there with us with every step.

The latest testimony of the Lord's faithfulness summarizes it all – the Unity Games, where we as children were made strong in Christ Jesus, and relied onGod for everything. Creativity was squeezed, relationships were tested, and our commitment was challenged yet through it all we saw our Father's love, not just for us but for the entire Lingkod in Luzon.

As the reading for today goes, "What persecutions I endured! Yet the Lordrescued me from all of them." (2 Tim 3:11b)

Happy, happy anniversary, brothers and sisters in Ang Lingkod ng Panginoon-Quezon City. May we all rejoice in Stepping Fourward to the land that God has promised us. See you tonight as we celebrate our First Friday and Anniversary Mass.

The beautiful LingkodQC 4th Anniversary Logo

An Attempt to Reflect on God's Nature

"_You act as if you do not know Me._ " I often hear this from God, spoken before I open doors with dread or after I exhaust myself from self-pity. Continually, too, I hear him whispering literal words of love to me but I ignore His voice, brushing it off as another figment of my infamously creative imagination. I have heard pain from Jesus' voice, for as I cry I feel Him crying with me, wondering why I refuse to see the Answer to all my worries - His abundant, steadfast love.

Some authors tell me that God doesn't want us to be miserable, anxious, or burdened. If we feel any of these then something must be wrong with our concept of God. I know this for a fact, that at this point I still have a distorted image of God, influenced by my stubborn fears cultivated since childhood. It's a huge blessing then that as God's servants, nay, as His friends, God reveals Himself to us. The Bible is teeming with words that define God's nature. I picked out one passage that comes up frequently during my prayer time. Psalm 103:8 says: "The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love." While listening to an a capella Jesuit music CD, I sat down this afternoon to attempt to meditate upon these qualities of the Lord, believing fully well that my attitude towards my life would change if only I would deepen my knowledge of God.

1. "The Lord is merciful." I have only begun to scratch the surface of God's merciful nature. Rick Warren, author of "The Purpose-Driven Life", says that if we had unpleasable teachers or parents while growing up, we should not think that God is like that to us. I must have related to persons in authority with fear all my life, for even with God I get panic attacks if I know that I have given in too often to my weaknesses. I act as if I don't know Him. I act as if His mercies are not new and fresh every morning. I carry so much emotional baggage, so much guilt, and I refuse to let go of them thinking I deserve punishment for giving in to temptation. Yes, I am my own judge, jury and executioner. Yet every time I run to Him for Reconciliation, I discover that the only sacrifice He asks of me is the unconditional offering of my heart, to join His waiting heart.

2. "The Lord is gracious". We all know that we should not define a word by the same word, yet when I consulted the dictionary, "gracious" is defined as "possessing divine grace". The definition seemed redundant and not as precise as I needed it to be. Perhaps there is no other way to describe grace as it is wholly attributed to God alone. In "What's So Amazing About Grace?", Philip Yancey devotes a whole book to this most wonderful of divine gifts, the root word of gracious. His is the scholarly approach, mine springs from the little that I understand of grace. What it is supposed to mean now as I munch on this verse is that the Lord possess the compassion, the graciousness, the openness that we hungry souls need. It means to me that if only I'd take a deeper look at God, I would not be afraid of Him, for I would see kindness in His eyes, and this, no matter how lazy or selfish I have been. They say a housewife is gracious if she welcomes her guests into her home with warm food and provides them with a comfortable place to sleep at night without asking for anything in return. They say a woman is gracious when, despite her pain and her burdens, she gives of herself, she loves those who hurt her and smiles as if the pain makes her joy sweeter. Perhaps when applied to God graciousness means more, infinitely more.

3. "The Lord is slow to anger". Now I would get more personal, if that were possible. For anger, I know well. I have been exposed to a lot of anger as a child, and even now in my profession. It is a feeling I have also harbored in my heart. I battle with my temper as I know I shouldn't let it consume me and make me forget who I am - a child of God. Since I come from a family with a low boiling temperature, I've always perceived God to be that way also. Yet the psalmist says that He is the opposite, that He does not anger easily. Scripture tells of how God had held back His anger towards His people even if they repeatedly turned their backs on Him and probably deserved annihilation. So in dealing with me, God does not keep a record of wrongs and He does not send down lightning to obliterate me when I disobey Him. This is not so easy for me to grasp. To me it's still an immediate action-reaction equation, forgetting that God's ways are not our ways. I still need to learn that sin does not bring about an equivalent punishment; nor does disobedience merit rebuke at all times. I see a long winding road ahead of me, marred only by my misconceptions and views of this strange yet loving God.

4. "The Lord is abounding in steadfast love". Abounding. Steadfast. Love. Honestly I cannot wrap my brain around God's love for me. Yes I speak about it and witness it, but it is not a concept that I have exhausted to the maximum. Here is the verse telling me that not only does God love me, His love is also abundant and steadfast. God's love flows like an endless fountain so that if I choose to drink from it now I could never exhaust it. God's Love is such that no matter how many times I reject Him, He would wait with open arms, like a father to a prodigal daughter. Why do you love me, Lord? Why? In one of our prayer meetings, Ted prophesied that for God, we do not need to understand His love, all we have to do is just to accept it. What often perplexes me and leads to a dead end is the nagging thought that I don't deserve to be loved personally by this Creator, Savior, Redeemer, Master, Teacher. What have I done to deserve even an iota of that fountain of love? Nothing. His Love so freely and lavishly given exists and is ours for the taking. I have walked around this Love. I have inspected it, reduced it to microscopic proportions, extrapolated on it in countless essays, and yet I am still mightily confounded by this Lover and His love for me. Again, my reflections are not new.

Several souls from agest past have already gazed at the heavens and raised these very same questions to God. I take comfort in these psalmists, saints, songwriters, priests, and friends who share my spiritual journey and who have left behind lamp posts so I don't always grope in the dark. I am so very far from knowing my God. My soul is thankful, however, for significant little insights that give me enough light for the step I am on. I close this very long reflection with another Jesuit song, with words from Psalm 139, a psalm every child of God must have sung to Him at one moment in their lives, at which time they have temporarily glimpsed who God is, and which helped them to accept what they could not understand.

You Are Near -
Music and Lyric by Dan Schutte S.J.
adapted from Psalm 139

Yahweh I know You are near
Standing always by my side
You guard me from the foe
And you lead me in ways everlasting

Lord you have searched my heart
And You know when I sit and when I stand
Your hand is upon me
Protecting me from death
Keeping me from harm

Where can I run from Your love
If I climb to the heavens You are there
If I fly to the sunrise
Or sail beyond the sea
You would still be there

You know my heart and its ways
You who formed me before I was born
In the secret of darkness
Before I saw the sun
In my mother’s womb

Marvelous to me are Your works
How profound are Your thoughts my Lord
Even if I could count them
They number as the stars
You would still be there

Don't Text While Driving

Don't text while driving. Nokia advertised about it extensively. My
parents have been reminding me about it for years. I never listened.
Well huge mistake, because I had to learn this lesson the hard way. I'm
writing this hoping that you would learn from my lesson and not have to
go through this, or to cause others to go through this.

Texting, or even talking on the phone, while driving, involves
multi-tasking. Engaging in it means that the driver is overconfident in
his/her reflexes. I happened to be guilty of it because I always
thought that if I didn't read my text messages ASAP, I would miss out on
something important. But the question is what if that important
something shocked me to the point of causing me to lose control of the
wheel? Worse, what if my reaction caused me to endanger the lives of my
passengers and those of the other vehicles around me? :-(

Last Saturday night I was driving while texting again. I usually did
this in front of a red light or during slow moving traffic only. I used
to be able to get away with it, no doubt with the help of guardian
angels, but for some particular reason/s, on that Saturday I was unable
to see that the car in front of me stopped already. I collided with
that car. I had four passengers with me; one of them hurt her finger as
she used her hand to shield her from the impact. Inside the other car
was a whole family, including a baby. Just thinking about how much
worse I could have hurt the people around me because of carelessness and
stupidity (and pride - thinking I was too important not to miss text
messages) causes me anguish right now. Everybody has the right to
berate me now because of that - my passengers, the other family that I
affected, my parents, and yes God. If only I could undo what happened,
I would. My excuse would be that I was shocked after I read about a
text message involving an emergency in our family. My mother, however,
later said that I shouldn't read text messages while driving because I
would be unable to help anyone anyway while behind the wheel. We should
always listen to our mothers, that's another lesson learned the hard
way.

My friend who hurt her finger is a lawyer, thank God she hasn't thought
of suing me yet. The family who owned the Nissan I collided with is
very gracious and understanding. I cannot thank God enough for their
graciousness. I deserved a sermon yet they showed me kindness and
compassion, after recovering from their initial shock. Other people
would not have treated me so nicely. They have made me believe in
goodness in people, even among strangers. They own The Getaway Spa
located at The Courtyard (#26 Esguerra St. formerly Bohol, South
Triangle, QC). If any of you live or work near the area, please
patronize their business. Although my insurance would cover both our
expenses, I think I would never be able to repay their kindness.

There is a lot of work to be done - had to get a leave from work today
to fix the documents for insurance. I have to get the estimates for
expenses. I have to look for a lawyer to notarize my affidavit on the
circumstances. You can all imagine the hassle. I thank God repeatedly
that no one was seriously hurt, but I know that there's a huge lesson
for me here. I hope this serves as an example to all of you my friends
who still text or use their phones while driving. Nothing is more
important than the lives entrusted to you on the road. God would take
care of whatever emergency it is that might need your attention while
you're on the road. I realized I cannot play God. I cannot do two
things at the same time. Wherever you are, be there.

This is my testimony against multi-tasking while driving.

The Faith to be Assured of Things Hoped For, for Things Yet Unseen

Blessed is the artist upon whose work several profound interpretationsare attributed. His subconscious might be responsible for injectingsome layers of messages to his conscious mind’s work, however, it ismore likely that he could have just been speaking about one thing andyet the beholders credited to his masterpiece far more than what he everhoped for.

I watched Jim Caviezel’s interview on EWTN during both its re-runstoday. In the Q & A, he was asked what the scene wherein Mary, afterseeing her Son being raised on the Cross, released two fistfuls ofstones could have meant. Jim gave his interpretation of the scene. Iwonder what Mel Gibson wanted it to symbolize.

After some thinking, I was led to another interpretation, much closer tomy own experience. In “The Passion…”, I saw Mama Mary kneeling down andclosing both hands into fistfuls of rocks while watching her Son beingnailed to the Cross. She needed something concrete to hold on to in theface of such unbelievable brutality. Despite what the angel Gabrieltold her about this Child she was to bring into this world, nothingcould have prepared her for the anguish of watching her own Son beingput to death for a crime He did not commit. Yet, when Jesus’ Cross wasraised, she released her hold from earthly explanations and put herfaith in God. She stopped looking down and started looking beyond whatwas placed before her eyes.

In Olongapo where I was born, I remember watching the Senakulo when itwas staged at the Rizal Park, but I got so bored that I begged myparents to walk me home. I was too young to appreciate all the runningon stage as well as the loud music that went with the show. My parentslater told me that the Cenaculo was usually held for two consecutivedays. I could not be persuaded to go back for the second day.

I grew up watching the prusisyon every Holy Week. In Bacoor, Cavite,where my father hails from, we were forced to watch three successiveprocessions on Good Friday. The first one was from the “Romano”, thenfrom the “Aglipay”, and last was the one from the “Montenegro”. To mylimited understanding, I could not tell the difference from the threegroups, except that I was told that we belonged to the first group andthat was where most of my relatives joined. In the processions, thestatue of the lady holding a piece of white cloth with three identicalimprints of Christ’s bloodied face was my favorite. I was told that hername was Veronica and that she had the privilege of wiping Jesus’ facewhile He was carrying His Cross. Caviteños were famous for their brassbands, one of which was named the Bandang Noveinta y Sais (written as Ipronounced it as a child), where my cousins and uncles were members.The blaring of their horns signaled the arrival of the prusisyon and wechildren had the highlight of our no-TV-no-radio vacation by rushing outof the eskinita into the main road and wriggling our way through thecrowd to get the best view of our favorite saints. I did not witnessself-flagellations and crucifixions in Bacoor. The traditions therewere relatively tame compared to what usually went on in the rest of the country on Good Friday.

When I was in college, my ate had a friend who invited our family towatch the dramatization of the Crucifixion in Cainta, Rizal. The wholetown came to watch as three men were “nailed” to the cross. I could notbear the sweltering heat of the noonday sun. I almost believed that theshow was authentic, except that the blood that spurted out of their“Jesus” was colored fuchsia. I was disappointed somehow, as Ihalf-expected to see real blood as nails through flesh and blood ran. Afterwards, my family joined my sister’s friend’s clan as they feastedon seafood and fruits. There was no red meat that day, but what we didcould not be described in any way as fasting.

As the middle girl in the family I was always the one who was made toendure the services at Church with my late aunt, while my Ate wentvisiting with other relatives and our bunso had the privilege of stayingwith our Mama wherever she was. One thing I noticed year in and yearout was that every afternoon on Good Friday, it always rained hard.Once, it even flooded near the doors of the St. Michael parish while Iwas waiting for my aunt to finish praying. I asked my Mama why italways rained on Good Friday, and she replied that it was because Godwas crying over the death of His Son.

These images from childhood flashed through my mind on my first GoodFriday after watching the inspired film, “The Passion of the Christ”. Isaw it after I had already established a personal relationship withJesus. I waited to see how they would depict my favorite scene from theprusisyon, what I eventually thought of as Veronica’s Privilege. It wasclear that I was not in Kansas anymore when I heard the name Yeshua. Ihave never heard a more sweet-sounding name. I’ve met people namedafter Jesus or Hesus, so Yeshua had a more powerful impact on me. Ipray to Yeshua and I call on His name more intimately and confidentlynow.

As I saw my Lord, Teacher, Master, Savior, and King being murdered, I,like Mary in the movie, initially grasped at human explanations for thesupreme sacrifice that our God did for our sake. My mind could notanswer WHY He did that for me, although I had revisited this questionduring the past 10 years of my walk with the Lord. I had to watch themovie a second time, and that was when I was able to let go. I openedmy balled fists and raised my palms heavenward. I did not cry as muchas my seatmates during both showings, perhaps because the violencenumbed me. In my heart, however, I knew that this was inspired,directed, produced, and starred in by Yeshua of Nazareth Himself.

I could neither give nor listen to the CLP talk “Who is Jesus Christ?”in the same way again. I could never walk nor pray The Way of the Crosspassively after this experience. I would henceforth refrain fromromanticizing Christ’s sufferings and instead focus on the reality ofHis humanity and His divinity.

I saw significant conversion experiences in my household members caused by the movie. Mel Gibson literally hit the nail right on the head withthis masterpiece. I think that no man, no matter how handsome ortalented, could achieve all these without grace. Mel, Jim, and the restof the people behind the movie could have poured their time, talent, andeffort into its making. I believe, though, that hearts such as minewere moved and lives were forever changed by it because of the power ofthe Holy Spirit in all of us, using the movie as a messenger of God’sLove. That first raindrop that fell like a giant teardrop from heavenboldly depicted the Good Friday rains that I had been used to.

Today, between 2:30 to 4:00 p.m., the heavens cried once again. Ilocked myself in my room to listen to the pounding of the rain and tomeditate on the washing away of my sins and the tearing down ofeverything in the temple that separated me from my God. It was nolonger a movie I was passively watching. I witnessed once more how theerstwhile bright April sun was hid behind dark, angry clouds thatbrought the annual cleansing rain.

I tell myself I do not need to see a movie about the Resurrection inorder for me to believe in it and to live it out. Woe to me if I lackthat much faith that God would decide to use my physical senses again inorder to wake me up to the reality of His Healing Love.

I wait for the Lord now with the certainty of a watchman. I know thatthe sun would surely rise on Easter morning, and so would He. And thisI believe to be true, too – so would I rise with Him.

Good Friday
April 9, 2004

Long Walk to Forever

Climbing to Caleruega, now imagine if I were in an all-white, flowing outfit. I'll ditch the shades and the bag then.

Sister Act

Jeb, Who Pushed Me to Go Bloggin

Titas and Luigi Last Feb

Tagaytay with Titas, Before Luigi Grew Back His Teeth

Complete Titas in Manila

The Women and the Boys