Let the Wine of Friendship Never Run Dry

Soul friend

Life is a mystery.  To be wholesome, we must remain truthful to our vulnerable complexity.  We need to hold the interior and the exterior, visible and invisible, known and unknown, temporal and eternal, ancient and new, together.  To be holy is to be natural.  

This is pure wisdom I am reading as I plunge into a book, entitlted in English - "Spiritual Friend".  Be a spiritual friend to oneself and know not to separate the human from the divine.   Herein is the basic theme given in its introduction.  

As we enter a third wave of the pandemic here, being accompanied yet again by the cessation of public masses, I approach this time, as before, as a spiritual time, as a retreat.  Being the third wave, I must say I am better prepared and so readily take up my chosen companion.   

The worse thing for me during this time would be to simply see it as time off, to let loss of purpose rule the day, and so, close myself off from the world.  That path would be self-defeating, the easy way out for me.  Rather this time is a concrete reminder that busyness is not what matters and that there are more important things in life than completing tasks.  We are so much more.  We are not what we do.  More basic, what we do gives expression to who we are.    

So be a spiritual friend to oneself.  As Shakespeare named it in Hamlet, "To thine own self be true".  As they sing so passionately in Les Miserables, "Let the wine of friendship never run dry".  

Deja Vu

The Third Wave

Here we go again.  I am coming to appreciate what a pandemic means.  My key lesson is that respect, responsibility and solidarity are three focal words that sum up how to live a life that is good, wholesome and healthy for myself and for the rest of humanity.  Just follow this three-point golden rule for relating with self, neighbour and the planet, and all will be okay.  When you don't, our world loses its balance and there is trouble.  

On the street today, I had a frightening experience that made me ask myself - Why don't we ever learn?  The scene is while I am walking along, I become aware of a person behind me with a bad cough.  So I moved to the side and what I then saw appalled me.  The person was coughing and coughing, and on entering his home, he ripped off his mask and just threw it down onto the footpath.  How could you?  What does that say about how you see and treat other people?      

As a result of such irresponsible behaviour of the few, we are seeing the rise of the third wave of the pandemic in Thailand.  Actions have consequences.  This is not rocket science.  This is what we learn in kindergarten when we run away with another kid's teddy bear.  There are big problems.  

This pandemic is teaching us over again how to be decent human beings and how to look after each other and our planet.  For the sake of the good of all, it is like Mother Nature is offering us a universal lesson in how to live together.  

In NGO world. I hear ones talk that this is a time for retreat, to stand back and reflect on what sort of world we want, to re-group.  Then we come back to build the world back better and on surer foundations.  

Yes, it is time to go back to the desert to rebuild and nourish our basic relationships with God, self and others. As Pope Francis says, we prepare not for an era of change but for the change of an era.  Whether we like it or not,  God is being kind in showing us a way to continue transforming our world into the Reign of God, a world of the Resurrection. 

Resurrexit sicu dixit. 

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!! 

No, to those back home, I am not mad for this week sees Thai New Year or Songkran.  It is New Year in Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and here.  Well sadly, we know the present story of the tragedy that is unfolding in Myanmar.  We pray for and with them.  

Here, this is traditionally the time when Thais go home to their families or go on holidays and, of course, play huge water fights out in the streets.  Of course, due to the pandemic, this is not the same sort of festival this year, while many have still gone home.   This festive season is doubly not the same this year with the third wave of the virus impinging onThailand, and it is a wave driven by a new variant which spreads quicker and is more dangerous.  

This has seen a cloud cover any festivities and has dampened the general festive mood.  So I was wondering what to share this week as I neither wanted to be overcome with a sense of doom and gloom, nor just be bright and cheery within the present context of the harsh reality being faced by us in Thailand.   The former approach gets us nowhere as life has to go on no matter what.  The latter is just out of touch and insensitive, failing to acknowledge the real suffering of the people.  

Then the answer was given to me, literally into my hnads, on my way to work this morning.  Every morning, I walk past a food, street vendor near to the Bishops" Conference.  Every morning, we exchange friendly greetings.  This morning, he stopped me and gave me some rice and a piece of his fried chicken from his business, telling me in his cheery way that today is his birthday and so he was sharing his birthday with me.  How kind!  I wished him a cheery Happy Birthday.  

He gave me what I want to share this week.  People's kindness is enduring and lifts us up.  Such kindness is a powerful act for givng hope.  Hope is real no matter.  It is seen in such simple acts of human kindness.  Out of such kindness rises my greeting.

No matter what, Happy New Year!

Fried chicken and sticky rice gieven to me by the birthday boy.

 

Hope Never Dies

 “Expressing an artistic and symbolic reminder of the inevitability of death.  We see death in a negative light, but we fail to see the good in it.  To live like we’re young, to do good while we can.  We overwhelm ourselves with fear of the future so that we forget to embrace the present. 

 My work represents the eternal struggle and monotony of life.  What appears to be depicted as a blessing, yet a curse.  Areas of refinement and lack of it suggest purgatorial state for change. 

 ‘Trust the wait.  Embrace the uncertainty. Enjoy the beauty of becoming. When nothing is certain, everything is possible.’ – Mandy Hale”

 At that already named school exhibit of art, yet another piece captured my attention, entitled "Rebirth".  These were the words of the young artist, describing her piece, that I particularly admired. 

Her words spoke powerfully to me about Easter.  Savor her words, drink in her message.  Easter is a mystery which we can only ever ponder and live as best we can in the midst of an often harsh reality, but a reality that nonetheless reflects beauty, the beauty of God.  Life is a mystery; life is a paradox. 

 Let us savour the Assumption Cathedral choir singing Handel's Hallelujah Chorus for this Easter at church.  Listen and drink in the message.  

Let us sing Alleluia forever and so live out our hopes, not our woes,  

"We are an Easter People and Alleluia is our song." (S. Augustine)