The sun sits still for me

February 26 – The pastoral text of Fr Reuter is this: If you stay still and quiet, you will see the strength of God in the white waves breaking over the rocks. You will see the beauty in the sunset.

Father, I’m one who can’t sit still. But at least, I have learned to look at the waves and the rocks and the sunsets and the sunrises and the smelly trash bags dangling by the gate where you have to pass through, and I have learned to accept completely what life has to offer, or prefer not to offer. I also discovered something about sunrises and sunsets – they’re lovelier to look at when you capture them in photographs. That’s when they sit still for you. The one you’re looking at is a sunrise forever.

Theory & practice of living

21 February – The pastoral text of Fr Reuter is this: When you wake each morning, it is a new day. A new life. A beautiful new adventure. 17 words that capture a beautiful attitude.

Now, I’ll try to capture the essence of those 17 in 5 words: A beautiful new adventure anyway! And then I’m going to explain it in more than 17 words:

That attitude is of surrender, acceptance, welcome, immersion, exploration, neighborliness, family-ness, wide-eyed-ness, earful-ness, heart-fullness, innocence, guilelessness, goodwill, fenceless-ness, braveheart-ness, thankfulness. It is, what else can I say, of an embrace.

That’s the theory. Now the practice:

Like not insisting that you are right even if you know you are. Anticipating a problem in the future arising from what you allowed to happen today and yet looking forward with joy anyway.

Love’s passion.

True love caught in courtship

12 February – The pastoral text of Fr Reuter is this: Courtship is sacred, because it is meant to be the thoughtful, prayerful preparation for the start of a new family. Yes, Father, including about family, but I wouldn’t mind telling anyone about the passion of true love caught in courtship. I fell in love once and heedlessly – and headlessly – and that was all I needed. That was even before the start of courtship. The first time I saw her, I said to myself, wordlessly to be sure, ‘That’s the girl.’ It wasn’t my head talking; it was my heart.

(The girl in the picture is my shot of my favorite painting of brilliant lawyer-author Tony Meer, which he showed among many others in his first one-man show at the Manila Polo Club last year; I was invited by him. See also my ‘Young At Heart. Tony Meer Paints His Loves,’ upbeloved.wordpress.com.)

She became my wife.

And I had fancied many a girl before her, and oh, to have many crushes in high school! Grace, Epay, Evelyn, Crispina – and not necessarily in that order. And many others. I was a loner, a boy from the village and not the city, and I was in love with all of them at a distance. I could do it – I had imagination. I was busy in my mind preparing to be the best writer I could be when I was older.

In fact I had had a bad, failed engagement with another girl years before – I had disengaged when I realized that I didn’t have enough love for that girl to last indefinitely. Love should be able to last indefinitely; if it has an end, you’re not 100% into it – or it’s just lovely companionship you’ve mistaken for love. Please don’t pretend true love when you know it’s not.