i write to believe.

The past week has gone on with a series of stories and changing events.  One minute I'm focusing on counting machine hours and now I'm focused on understanding the creative industries that the business of my work intersects with.   In the middle of it, I try to keep up with the daily life of a faithful and miss out unfortunately on some of the things that would have increased my understanding about the mysteries of this life.  I am beginning to realize that if I want to deeply meditate on the faithful's life, it will take so much time that I need to be doing just that and not do anything else.   I easily get drawn in to things that require pondering.  It's almost an addiction.  It's like how I prefer to just read instead of go out to the mall and walk around.  How I prefer to write instead of engage with conversations that bore me.   I was participating in this Skype conversation between my uncle and my Mom this morning.  It was...

My thoughts have been locked up in my mind since Saturday.  I haven't been able to access them for some reason.  They come out in jumbled forms of feelings and glimpses of words that long to be said.  I wonder why I experience these moments of pondering the trail of ellipses after the last letter has been written.   It's a constant challenge for me.  Keeping up with the writing rhythm and my daily routine.  Goes to show that I haven't fully been able to embrace this craft as well integrated into my life.  This saddens me.  I wonder if I'll ever be able to write to my heart's content at all.  Not to mention wondering if I'll ever be able to read to my heart's content too.   The more I make myself available to the work, the more it takes me captive.  And there's not stopping it.  It ravages my day like a criminal stealing all the precious meaningful time I could use to create more purpose into each situation. ...

This post has been a long time coming. I wrote this assignment last Sunday and was able to receive props for it from Peggy, my mentor.  I've mulled over this for 2 months and ended up changing the whole thing entirely.  The writing assignment is about "walking with a poem".   Unlike the other assignment I finished last November on Yehuda Amichai's poem , the way I had to go about this one was different. Walking with a poem was supposed to get to me listen in for the details.  To try and understand the lines and the words and how the sound of the words created images for the reader.  This was difficult for me because I could not find the right voice to go into "listening" or the right "way" of listening.  It troubled me for 2 months and sent me on a writer's block again. Finally, last week felt like a breakthrough when Peggy kept on encouraging me to just  "try without trying".  To have fun with the poem.  So I did. photo cr...

This morning I ponder upon one of the meditations written by Francis Fernandez in "In Conversation with God".  I have forgotten to read yesterday's words and so I catch up on my devotion by squeezing it in today.  How apt that he quote from Escriva's "Furrow" and say,  The Lord needs strong and courageous souls who refuse to come to terms with mediocrity, but who will be able to enter all kinds of environments with a sure step. {Josemaria Escriva, The Furrow, 405} I've been constantly been entering into all kinds of environments the past few weeks.  Having decided to continue on with youth ministry has given me quite a lot of time and strength to help the younger ministers steady their walk as they sift through the ministry issues and the path they want to walk.  It's taken me from sitting with them in their musings and praying with them in their intellectual struggles to meeting with them almost everyday of the week to simply hear them out...

I'm trying to read a poem tonight and catch up on my writing assignment which has been overdue for almost 2 months.  The words evade me.  They do not connect.  Inside my mind are numerous issues.  Work-related.  All unanswered questions piled up unattended.  I struggle with the questions and the hidden reasons as to why things do not make sense.  And I wonder again if I can continue walking this way with a limp or a forced-broken-leg. I pray to God and ask for enlightenment.  I lift up the absurdity of the situation.  It's the only thing I can do.

I'm wondering how it is that I can still stand through this exhaustion.  My weariness surrounds me like a cloak.  It comes from all sides.  The quietness of peace gets stolen every now and then and I just sit still and watch it all go.  The circumstances feel like this brewing storm and I don't know where the wind will carry me.  I only follow the way.  The path.  That anchors me to the Hope that will not disappoint.   The morning bears the truth as it hears my prayer.  I find myself into another day of work and toil and hope that God will make all things new.  A time of a refreshing.  A time of breakthrough.  Still, it comes slowly.  It comes minute by minute.  It's not like a big gust of wind that ruffles the leaves and shakes the trees.  No.  It creeps like a tiny bird on the grass.  It whispers like the sunrise.  It passess by like a cloud unnoticed.