Joy Dare No. 16

I started this late because I got too engrossed with the workload for the first 3 weeks of the year.  I've finally decided to start yesterday.  

I'm working on some resolutions right now.  Active ones.  Real ones.  Something I can remember and do and share.  Simple ones enough to write about or snap a photo for.




Yesterday's Joy Dare called for: a gift that made you laugh, a gift that made you pray and a gift that made you quiet.  

What made me laugh yesterday was the reaction of my friend Jarro when we talked about our vocation for youth ministry.  He and I haven't been getting along for the past couple of years.  We've known each other as long as I can remember but our familiarity with each other has caused us to just focus on our differences and we've lost the purpose of why God has made us friends in the first place.  I met Jarro at the height of my work for youth ministry.  He has helped me quite a lot with understanding young people, himself included.  Being able to connect and hear him engage in a conversation about how he is reflecting about his youth ministry vocation again made me laugh because he responds with a kind of humorous anxiety.  A guy who has his stubborn frame and sometimes cocky air becomes vulnerable to the point of laughter when God taps his shoulder and says, "Come back to the fold."

What made me pray yesterday was a chat with one of my shepherds in the youth.  She shared about how she has been praying for the apostolate and seeking out God's direction.  It worries her that we are not able to fully see the purpose of why apostolates have been formed and continue to seek only our own fulfillment.  This made me pray yesterday because it sparks in me the hunger to see God work again.  In my life.  In the apostolate's life.  

At the end of the day, I found myself quietly pondering about these things.  And everything that has happened yesterday in the end has made me quiet.

I thank God for these things that redirect my life back to His path for only His path makes sense in my life.

Want to take your own Joy Dare too?  Visit Ann Voskamp's website and start listing down the gifts you receive that make you find the true joy that lasts.



holy experience

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Art and Business

Letting myself unwind for the past couple of hours after an intense dialogue with executives on business strategy and leadership philosophies.  I ran into this video.  Aside from faith, what motivates me is my passion for art or any related artistic experience.  Finding a relationship between deepening my faith and learning about how artistic experiences can help this deepening process has been an ongoing pursuit for me since I graduated from business school.   I've realized how art can help me become more grounded and reflective in anything I do which translates to almost a prayerful experience.  This helps me understand why faith is needed in pursuing any experience and in understanding the aspects that strengthen faith, I am able to keep up with my perseverance of pursuing any experience.  An elective I took up in business school called "Self-Mastery and the Arts" has convinced me how important the impact of art is in one's life.  In that study, I...
Read more

Anxious No More

Image
There are many interesting things that have been happening to me these past 3 weeks. It's been a journey out of and into another chapter of my life.  And this chapter is the chapter that makes me face that thing I want to do the most.   Write.   The stories on this page have been slow because I've been trying to discover what it is that I want to really write about and when I ask myself this question, I begin to ask myself the most important question: what am I really about?  It doesn't feel so difficult to ask now compared to before.  I'd squirm and I'd let my gaze wander off into a blank wall or I'd stiffen up and change the subject because I don't really want to dig in too deep and ask myself that because I fear the answer to that question.  I fear having to say it out loud.  I fear having to type it out here.   What am I really about?  I don't really know.   I don't really have it all figured out just yet.  It'...
Read more

Lectio Divina | A Reflection on Yehuda Amichai's "The Amen Stone"

Image
It took me a week to finally choose a poem I resonated with among the six poems I was assigned to reflect on through the ancient practice of sacred reading called  lectio divina .  The experience of being in a writing course (albeit online) has given me the liberation to explore the power of words and unearth the gift I know I've long locked within.  The gift of realizing I have the same power as well. My writing process was a painful unraveling.  I could not write immediately.  I could not catch the thought and pin it down on paper.  I tried reading other books that would get the flow of creativity going and to no avail the anxiety caught on and forced me to take a break.  So I did.  And went back on it again this weekend.  I had to recalibrate my mind for 2 hours.  Removing the residue of the business mind that forces me to constrict my definitions of life in a less human sounding voice.  I began my  meditatio  o...
Read more