a celebration of life, love and humanity…

Collective Conscience. CPE is not only a personal journey. It is also a communal one. This is one of the things that hit me last week. Breaking patterns and managing tendencies are resolutions I do not only owe myself, but others as well. Insofar as my classmates painfully journeyed with me during my processing, I owe it to them to fix my life accordingly. Insofar as I helped my classmates in their respective processing, they owe me a better take on their own lives.

Accountability! That sums it up! After CPE, I feel more than ever that I am accountable to my classmates. I am responsible, to a certain extent, for the quality of the lives they live. By pushing our naked selves to the public sphere, we are put in the spotlight. Yes, it is a burden to live with others looking after you. There is some pressure. We can’t just do anything and everything we want because we know that there are people watching. But, from a more positive perspective, it is also reassuring and heartwarming to know that there are people who sincerely and compassionately watch after my every step for me not to fall again into the manholes I have fallen into before. And if ever I do, I am affirmative that they will stretch out their hands to pull me out again, accompanying me with great concern in my standing up.

Our relationship as a class will never be the same again. We are now really and officially brothers.

Recovering Relationships. I think Rey Amora is justified in seeing me as a Three in the Enneagram, as an achiever. During my last processing, I was blessed to realize that I put priority to work more than relationships. And that has to change.

I think I got this from the corporate world! I guess there is really truth in the saying that when you work in the corporate world, its values and disvalues will really rub on you. And this is one of its side-effects. Yes, efficiency and professionalism get things done, things that are duly appreciated and valued. But in the process, I might have hurt or sidelined people’s feelings and concerns.

With the help of my classmates I saw that the key to this problem is to reinstate relationships to its proper place. To realize that relationships are as important, or even more important, than work and getting things done. Or maybe there is really no conflict. I can still be my efficient and professional self, but now more conscientious about and sensitive to its effects on relationships I value.

Living it Out. How is CPE different from the other modules in the SPFY? It gives greater stress on the application, offering a greater challenge to live out in real life the things seen and heard. “Hindi na pwede yan!” is the resounding refrain I always hear whenever I feel inclined to my identified tendencies. It is as if a mini Sr. Mercia is embedded already at the back of my mind, in the depths of my heart. In this sense, she is my newly acquired nagger-angel. And believe me, it is very effective!

Boy is it difficult! But, come to think of it, what is difficult for someone who does things out of love? Nothing. Kakayanin lahat kasi nga nagmamahal. I know why I am doing all these. I know for Who all these painful changes and sacrifices are. And I know deep in my heart that He is worth it! Thus, I have no excuses… I will never have any because it is my awesome God I am in love with…

Exhaustion! I think CPE has finally taken its toll on me. EXHAUSTED! That’s how I feel now about the week that was. I don’t know why, but somehow, my energy level for patient visitation is not as high this week compared to the previous weeks. If before I was enthusiastic about visitation, even maximizing my time in the wards, last week, I felt that my gusto was depleted leaving me to become a minimalist. Visitation has become a burden that I feel I have to drag myself to.

Given my physical health and condition, I knew that this would come sooner or later. But I am surprised that I am also exhausted emotionally and psychologically. Even though I had a good rest the previous night and a lengthy siesta, still I was not always in the mood to visit and interact with patients. I just had little energy. I can’t explain it. That is just how I felt.

Probably, there was something happening inside me that needed attention too. I needed time and space to visit, attend to and interact with my interiority. And I continue to feel it now. I guess it is an intrinsic part of the deal, a part of the journey.

This is but one month of doing ministry. Imagine doing a lifetime of it as a priest. I get exhausted just by thinking about it! My reasons for pursuing this ministry should really be more than all the exhaustion that would come my way for me to be able to sustain it, to wake up each morning and say: “Yes! Another day of ministry!” HE really should be worth it! And that I can only know and feel thru constant prayer and connection with Him who cannot be outdone in loving. To deepen my relationship with God is to eternally fan the burning coal of my love for Him—my fuel for a lifelong ministry.

Illusion! How can you say goodbye and let go of something so beautiful? Of something that has affirmed your existence as the most important reality on earth?

Easy! Just realize that it is no longer true. An illusion! A fairy tale! A dream!

Everything will crumble, yes. Your identity will break and scatter as the locus of your meaning has been nullified. But this is the only way. This is the only way one can live in the present—life as it is now—to live in reality.

No wonder, waking up in the morning is not always the best feeling in the world. Sometimes it is worse than hell. But you have to wake up because that is how the world works! That is how it was designed to work! That is how our genius and loving God designed it!

It might be helpful and doable if we refrain from making the act of waking up the focus. Probably the focus should be that it is a new day—a new day that could offer experiences just as good or even better than what yesterday has offered.

Lifestyle Check. Since Day One I have been exposed to the realities of poverty in the PGH charity wards—patients who have not taken medication for x number of days because they could no longer buy the expensive antibiotics, leaving their wounds fresh and open to infection; attendants who eat only once a day because the only money they are holding on to is less than fifty pesos just enough to get them home and mobile to source more funds; families who mortgaged their house and lot as collateral to the hospital as they could no longer pay for the enormous bills that accumulated; necessary operations postponed or cancelled because the prescribed materials and medicines could not be bought etc. etc.

But what struck me most during this past week was the 24 hour manual pumping of respirator bags by attendants to provide needed air to their patients’ lungs. I saw this in Ward 3 and later in the evening during my night duty at the ER. Wow! I was impressed by the love of the attendants for their patients. But, with the same degree, I was depressed that they could not afford at all something that was for me relatively affordable and disposable. My God! I have been introspecting since that incident about my attitude towards money and my tendency towards consumerism, materialism and food-ism. The scene was revolting and I was really put to shame. I have to review my life in the light of these realities. Some changes have to be done.

Relationship 101. I no longer know how to relate. This is what came out during my last processing. Being fixated with a particular kind of friendship, unconsciously and subtly, I was controlling or, should I say, limiting relationships according to that to which I am fixated with. I did not want to be vulnerable to the other. Everything was according to my own terms, what was convenient and easy for me, what I think and feel and not really taking into account the other’s say and what he or she brings into the relationship. It was all about me, selfish me! No wonder I feel unloved. I control and expect, forgetting that I can only be surprised and satisfied if it is freely and spontaneously given by the generous creativity of an other’s love for me. Then I harp on the constant chorus of my life: “But no one loves me. No one will ever love me because I am unlovable.” Holding on to this thesis just brings in a multitude of complications.

I just came out of a movie (which I never thought I would learn something from) and somehow could not forget a line towards the end. The girl told the guy: “Whoever said you were unworthy of love? You hide under that excuse! No wonder you are afraid to love as well!” The key to all this is just to do it. To love! Loving is one of the crafts you learn only by doing. But I should break from the paradigm I have been holding on to for almost half my life now. It no longer exists. It is a fiction of memory’s nostalgia. As Sr. Mercia often says: “Hindi na pwede! Wasakin mo yan!” And hopefully, things will fall into place when I already allow someone to be really present in my life, to affect me.

Please be there to catch me when I fall…

God’s Work. CPE has really been a grace-filled experience so far individually and as a class. We are not exactly the same persons we were when we started three weeks ago. We are also not exactly the same Baktas Class anymore. We even got better!

Personally, deeper self knowledge brings unbelievable inner peace due to radical self-acceptance resulting to potent and powerful freedom to choose and change. Interpersonally, lives have interconnected, histories and futures have intertwined.

All these could only have happened because Someone else was working on us, journeying with us. I can feel it! I can feel God’s grace at work! It is very palpable, very real! It is very powerful! Thanks be to God!