Book excerpt #5 : Vanishing Acts

• You can’t exist in the world without leaving a piece of yourself behind. There are concrete paths, like bills and receipts and appointment calendars and promises you’ve made to others. There are microscopic clues, like fingerprints, that stay invisible unless you know how to look for them. But even in the absence of any of this, there’s scent. We live in a cloud that moves with us, everywhere we go. the whole time we shed skin cells – forty thousand per minute – that rise on currents up our legs and under our chins.
• When people we love makes choices, we don’t always understand them. But we go on loving them, just the same. It isn’t a matter of comprehension. It’s forgiveness.
• It turns out that what’s important is not everything that you’ve accumulated all these years, but those few things you can carry with you.
• You cannot hate someone until you know what it might be like loving them.
• We do all kinds of things to safeguard ourselves: lie to the people we love; split hairs to justify out actions; take punishment instead of waiting for it to be given to you.
• If you want to know someone’s story, they have to tell it out loud. But every time, the telling is a little bit different, it’s new.
• Maybe knowing where you belong is not equal to knowing who you are.
• Memories aren’t stored in the heart or the head or even the soul, but in the spaces between any given two people.
• Sometimes, when you don’t ask questions, it’s not because you’re afraid that someone will lie to your face. It’s because you’re afraid they’ll tell you the truth.
• We say it all the time – how we’d give up anything for someone we love – but I wonder, when push comes to shove, who’d truly step up to the line.
• When you spend your life running by design, you may go far, but you rarely let yourself get close to anyone.

Journey to God: Grow in Christ-likeness

Growing is a command. It is not a suggestion and it is not something we can do alone effectively.
we should not stop growing after we’ve trusted Jesus to be our Savior and Lord for the moment we stop moving forward, we fall. Growing and transformation in Christ-likeness is the ultimate goal of Christian life. Growth is not about how long one has been a Christian or if he memorized all the verses in the Bible. It is becoming like Christ. It is God’s will to transform us into Christ-likeness

We grow in Christ-likeness through small groups. Because the truth is people needs people and that we are made for relationships. Jesus gave us example of being in a small group when he appointed the 12 Apostles. He then trained and transform them to preach the good news. They grew in Christ-likeness nad impacted the world up until today.

May we start to practice how to love, to motivate, to support, to trust, to pray more and grow through our small groups / Households.

…June 29th

This is it! Tomorrow would be my last day here in the office. And I’m really sad 😦 partly because I’ll bid goodbye to those friends I’ve been with for 3 years now. Ang hirap hirap, they say never say goodbye, just see you around.. pero knowing hindi mo na makaksama yung mga taong naging malaking parte ng buhay mo that’s make the parting ways sobrang sad.. Hayz.. 😦

One of my friends sends this poem for the last time:

May Darating

may darating
habang sinusunod mo ang
daang tinapakan niya
di ka makaiiwas..
kukuyugin ka ng mga
alaalang pinagsaluhan,
pasasayahin ka kunwari
ngunit iiwan namang luhaan
sa bingit ng hangin

at sa gabi kung tapos
na ang mga pantasyang
katabi mo siya
at kayakap nang mahigpit
hahapdi na naman ang
katotohanang
hindi siya lubos na naging iyo,
na nakisalo lang ang puso
sa nakaw na pagkakataong
di naman kayang baguhin
kahit ng tapat na pag-ibig mo

kung minahal mo siya ng labis
at ikaw naman’y minahal niya rin
kahit sandali
ngunit sa huli nga’y nasaktan
may darating din
na para sa iyo
hihilumin ang sugat na iniwan
ng pag-asam sa kanya
tatakpan ng pagmamahal
ang bawat sakit
at di siya bibigo sa pangako
at di ka na makikihati pa
at di na muling maiiwang nag iisa.

Journey To God: Apprehended by God

Never choose to be a worker; but when once God has put His call on you, woe be to you if you turn to the right hand or to the left. We are not here to work for God because we have chosen to do so, but because God has apprehended us. There is never any thought of – “Oh, well, I am not fitted for this.” What we are to preach is determined by God, not by our own natural inclinations. Let’s keep our soul steadfastly related to God, and let’s remember that we are called not to bear testimony only, but to preach the Gospel. Every Christian must testify, but when it comes to the call to preach, there must be agonizing grip of God’s hand on you, your life is the grip of God for that one thing. How many of us are held like that?

Never water down the word of God, preach it in its undiluted sternness; there must be unflinching loyalty to the word of God; but when you come to personal dealing with your fellow-men, remember who you are — not a special being made up in heaven, but a sinner saved by grace.

There’s a rainbow always after the rain

Rainbow Panorama by Brandon Godfrey

Oh look, there is a rainbow! by Nicolas Valentin
Wishing by omarrun

Rainbow at Lovers Point by David Atkeson

Rainbow Reflection by 2minutes

The lull before the storm by ExeDave

Book Excerpt # 4

Paulo Coelho’s  “Eleven Minutes”

“Some books makes us dream, others bring us face to face with reality, but what matters most to the author is the honesty with which a book is written.”

• When we meet someone and fall in love, we have a sense that the whole universe is on our side.. And yet, if something goes wrong, there is nothing left! No herons, no distant music. How is it possible for the beauty that was there only minutes before to vanish so quickly?
• Life moves very fast. It rushes from the heaven to hell in a matter of seconds.
• It is not enough just to have a great love in your life, you must make sure that everyone knows what a desirable person you are.
• Making mistakes is just a part of life.
• Sometimes you get second chance and it’s best to accept the gifts the world offers you.
• If I must be faithful to someone or something, the I have to first if all, to be faithful to myself. If I’m looking for true love, I first have to get the mediocre loves out of my system. The little experience of life I’ve had has taught me that no one owns anythings, that everything is an illusion – and that applies to material as well spiritual things.
• Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever finally comes to realize that nothing really belongs to them.
• It’s best to live as if today we’re the first (or last) day of my life.
• Most people in search of excitement, but that once it starts, they are terrified and want to stop.
• Life is as fast, dizzying game; life is a parachute jump; it’s taking chances, falling over and getting up again; its mountaineering; it’s wanting to get to the very top of yourself  and to feel angry and dissatisfied when you don’t manage it.
• It is not time that changes man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone’s mind is love.
• Love was undoubtedly one of the things capable of changing a person’s whole life, from the moment to the next. But there was the other side of the coin, the second thing that could make a human being take a totally course from the one he or she planned; and that was called despair.
• That’s what the world is like: people talk as if they knew everything, but if you dare ask a question, they don’t know anything.
• We live in a vale of tears, we can have all the dreams we like, but life is hard, implacable, sad.
• Only the strong survive.
• Human beings can withstand a week without water, two weeks without food, many years of homelessness, but not loneliness. It is the worst of all tortures, the worst of all sufferings.
• Freedom only exist when love is present. The person who gives him or herself wholly, the person who feels freest, is the person who loves most wholeheartedly.
• In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each of us responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone for what we feel.
• There is always a right moment to stop something.
• Passion sends us signals that guide as through our lives and it is up to us to interpret those signs.
• Love is not to be found in someone else, but in ourselves; we simply awaken it. But in order to do that, we need the other person. The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with.
• No one wants their life thrown into chaos.
• Others surrender themselves without second thought, hoping to find in passion the solutions to all their problems. They make the other person responsible for their possible unhappiness. They are either euphoric because something marvelous has happened, or depressed because something unexpected has just ruined everything.

A “yes” for SFC FreSH

Last night, My heads and I had a one on one.. At ayun, kinakabahan nga ako. I even asked A to say a little prayer for me, kasi hindi ko alam bakit bigla nila ako gusto makausap. At ayun nga (isa pang ayun nga..) they’re asking me to be a CH for SFC FreSH! at wah! di ako nakasagot.. At first I was like ranting and whining about my partner.. pero as we go on, medyo nandun na yung usapan mission areas.. naeexcite na ko, tas biglang step up? wah! Funny thing is, I’m thinking of stepping down na nga, kasi sabi ko di ko na kaya, busy na ko, gusto ko mag-aral ulit, etc etc. At alas! God is giving me another task.. Wala pang nakakaalam, I still have to talk to Lala and the unit has some re-structuring to do, kasi nga nadagdagan na ang unit.

I really hope that things will work out this time and this is really what God wants me to do.. Dami pa dapat i-discern but I know with Gods help and grace, I can do this 🙂

Like what Fr. Walter Vilamiel told us when he talked about Baptismal Priesthood (which made me think again of what I wanna really do with my life. Hehe):

“there are no coincidences.. everything happens for a reason.”

At sabi pa nya: Like what Socrates and Nietzche said:

” Know thyself; become who you are.”