father and son

This is a beach scene i saw during my short stay at Paradiso Beach Resort, Pulupandan, Philippines.

i don’t know why, but painting this scene comforted me..  somehow it was for me a quiet assurance that in the midst of all the chaos & complexities of life, some things remain unchanged.. untouched.. uncomplicated..

Like the sun hugging the horizon.

Like the love of a father for his child.

life’s pauses

“How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust, unburnish’d, do not to shine in use,
Life piled on life
Were all too little,
and of one to meLittle remains”.
(from Tennyson’s “Ulysses”)

 A s a philosphy of life and living, the above lines certianly can’t be beat. TO live a full life and a useful one has been the theme of many a writer’s work. Only cowards shy away from looking life straight in the face and accepting whatever it has to mete out to you.

I had always prided myself on trying to live by these favorite lines of mine. I had always though i succeeded in making every phase of my life, whatever it brought, a more welcome and greater challenge on my resourcefulness than the previous phase. But this time last year, i was so steeped in loneliness and self-pity that i did not think a pause was “dull”. I did not even think it good enough. I wanted a full stop. Period. I though that even to breathe was too much of a painful effort.

But thank God for the many chores of daily existence that clamor for attention. Chores that heretofore i had looked on with disdain as too trivial for me to even think about. These, i believed in the arrogance of my youth, in the “lustihead of my powers “, were not the stuff that Ulysses had in mind. These are not what he meant by the high adventures of life and living, adventures that need the “burnish’ed shining sword ” of action.

Tonight, as i look back on the past year, i realize that indeed we cannot pause, “make an end”. There are too many things that one has to do from day to day. Hold the baby on one’s lap while her mother is in the kitchen; kiss better a three-year-old’s bump on the forehead; walk the dog out; listen to a friend’s rants and raves on the phone, or even just sit drowsily and watch the lazy afternoon slipping quitely by. All these, prosaic and ordinary things that Elizabeth Barrett Browning had in mind of “everyday’s most quiet need by sun and candleligth “, must be done. Someone must do them and maybe there is nobody else but oneself.

To know that one is needed for any reason whatsoever, even just for being oneself and being there, is the most healing though that can fill the spirit. Also, conversely, we must make it known that we need others. That the other whom that we need must be made to know how much we need him. Perhaps he too will feel this healing of the spirit. It seems we can never get done with life and living. No matter if of one’s last lifetime little remain; we always say, “A little while i fain would linger yet “, for is it not so that we all have “promises to keep”, and “miles to go before i sleep “.

my 8 realities

1 God loves me because of who God is, not because of anything i did or didn’t do.

2 Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift. Small miracles happen to ordinary people day by ordinary day. There is a grace in knowing what might have been but wasn’t, and blessing in living a day when nothing special happens but life just works.

3 burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. i don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special.

4 my job won’t take care of me when i am sick or helpless. My family and friends will. No amount of work or money can keep me from them.

5 Whenever I am asked if i could do a particular task, I just tell ‘em “Certainly!”. Then I get busy finding out how to do it.

6 i always try to see the good and the beautiful in everything and everyone. When i can’t, i just close my eyes because it is only then that i can really see.

7 those who matter don’t judge me… those who judge me, don’t matter.

8 i am beautiful. i am needed. I am blessed. i am loved.

dawned

I woke up to this beautiful dawn in Guimaras. All the world faded away as i watch God at work with one of his masterpieces, and i sit in awe and wonder at the realization that the GOD who made all these majestic works, is also THE god who made me.

I am one of His masterpieces.

How cool is that?

…hugged

took this photo (using my low resolution cameraphone) from the 4th floor of the Riverside Medical Center while my niece, Althea, was sleeping with a 40 degree fever in her hospital bed.

Somehow, it gives me a feeling of peace.. and certainty..

That no matter what we do.. No matter what happens.. God is always there, watching over us.

Taking care of us.