Keep On Calling

I've begun a morning routine with a special friend.

What we do is have our Verse of the Day - which I pick from my bottle called "Vital Life" - and we reflect on it. Anyone who fails to send a reflection gets a fine of P100. We assigned no particular time; we're OK as long as it is in the morning.

Today, this is what I got from the bottle: "You are forgiving and good, O Lord, abounding in love to all who call to you." - Psalm 86:5. As practiced, I took a photo of it and sent it to him.

"It's about God's mercy and love," he messaged. He always goes first. "I was told that the unforgivable sin is not believing in God's forgiveness. My priest said that God loves us even if we are a bit of a joke."

I sent him a big thumbs up, and typed. "Yes. Hahaha." I was thinking, OK. Thanks for that, Lord, because You know, I am actually a big joke.

I was holding Fr. Thomas Green's Darkness in the Marketplace that time, planning to read it. After long days of spiritual dryness, I felt a yearning. A different kind of yearning. For God. And I had to do something about it.

I set the book aside. Now, it was my turn.

"As for me..." I was typing, "I feel spiritually dry most days. I guess it's because I feel sinful. I feel like I do things which I know God won't like." I sent.

Lately, I've been adjusting to heaps of things - family, career, future plans, relationships. I felt like I was not doing most things right. A lot has changed, and I found myself rarely in best disposition.

"But this morning feels different..." I added.

"How so?" he asked.

"'...abounding in love to all who call to you,'" I quoted then, "You know, I pray to God even when I do not feel Him. I know the problem is with me. But this morning, I realized that God's approach to me now is quiet intimacy."

Somehow, I felt that the dryness made my intimacy with Him painful yet more precious to me than before - so precious that I wanted to keep it unsaid, unknown by most people. As much as possible, I just wanted it to be shown in the way I walk, talk, or just be, lest I felt like I would be ruining its true essence.

"I realized that my spirituality does not actually stop from getting deeper, maybe?" I continued, "That there is progress when you keep on praying even when you don't feel Him because somehow, it's like you saying and proving that God is real. That His existence is not based on feelings. He exists even when I do not feel Him." I was internalizing it more as I wrote it.

"It's true," I concluded, "that God's love is abounding to all who call to Him. No matter how sinful you feel you are...just keep on calling, keep on calling, keep on calling. And He'll come to You with outstretched hands."

I guess God likes this morning routine, too.

When It Paints Sense

Most days, we do not understand. The rest of the days, we try to make sense of the little we can understand.

This is one of the rest of the days.

I remember the afternoon I painted vines in my room's walls. The green swirled in every direction, playful yet gentle. Dots of red made roses. I nursed a haven in my mind, and all I wanted then was to make it alive. So I transformed my room into a work of art.

Each day, I would hold a paintbrush or a pen. Classic music played on my laptop whilst I stormed the white sheet with colors or different shades of black. I would tape my best pieces to the wall. It embellished my walls until it turned into a sort of gallery.

It was beautiful.

I was ecstatic, drowning in the abstract. I resigned from my full-time job then, and I was satisfied with the little I was earning with my part-time job and writing gigs. I held my time in my hands. I had enough money for myself. Just for myself.

Until I was told that I was drowning myself in the abstract, probably, to weasel out life.
That hurt. A lot. Suddenly, my awe melted and all I wanted then was to lay my hands on each of the paintings. Destroy them, perhaps. Career-wise, I was fumbling in the dark. Quarter life crisis, as they described it. I was lost. I wasn't happy.

Today is very different.

Life's no longer vines and roses. Now, I live not in a world I painted, but in a painted world. I am drowned in the concrete - in the real, in the truth, in both sheer ugly and beauty. I stand here, alone with my eyes and hands. Alone with God, the Great Painter.

God tells me that I should grow up, and leave the worlds I invented. God tells me to live and turn the abstract to concrete, the mind to hands, the ideas to things. God tells me that I may be what I behold...but I am, too, what I hold.

Most days, I do not understand.

But thank God, this is one of the rest of the days.