I am me

By PA Escalante

Geneva 13.12.2023

I am me
A bag of contradictions
But has harmony
trying to be as authentic as possible
a lot of love to give
but no one in particular to dote
I pray in God's time
I'll have what He wants to give me
A love sublime
That fills my heart and soul combined
a love so true that worships Him
powerful beyond sorrows and beyond pain
worth the sacrifice and woe

Full of love, peace and joy

I pray for a great love
a love he has stored for me
I claim it
for this me ...
a creation of Him
who is Love incarnate

Calling ...

It's hard to know what's your purpose in life. Some people know exactly what they wanted to be from such a young age. But for me, I wanted to be a doctor. But it was not to be. I realised that I might have not had the personality for it. 

But as I write and even reading the chapeau to my blog, I am a writer. I would always feel a certain rush and sometimes when what I write is inspired, I feel goosebumps and my heart races. It's a wonderful feeling because in that moment, you know what you're supposed to do. 

So, I am a writer but I don't yet have any published books. I am praying that I will get the inspiration to write one. I already have an outline and the material for an autobiography but it's not yet edited. So, I pray that I will get inspiration soon to write some more or edit that one. 

Knowing what to do or knowing your purpose starts with a call. What are you drawn to? What are you happy doing? What would you do for free? These are questions that are usually asked when you are discerning. I still ask these questions over and over again. But what I ask more often is: God, what do you want me to do for you? How can I use my talents to glorify you? 

Recently, I received a call from a distressed friend. I listened. I offered advice where it was warranted and when asked but mostly I listened. This is also something I feel I was called to do. I can be a chatterbox but I can also listen. During my travels, I am usually approached by strangers and they start telling me their life stories. I find it amazing. Even if sometimes I feel like asking them, "Why are you telling me all this?" I never do. I know they just need to get it off their chest. 

So, I don't know what God really wants me to do with my life but I hope in answering His "calls", I can be of service to Him and my neighbours. 

What are you called to or what are you drawn to? What is your purpose? May God grant you the answer as He guides you. 

Pruning

The hardest part of being a gardener is the time for pruning. Sometimes, as a gardener we don't want to cut our plants or branches because we feel it will hurt the plant. At least that is how it was for me. But having read and watched so many videos on the importance of pruning, I see that it is a necessary hurt to be inflicted. It comes from a place of good intention not a bad one. 

Just like with God. I've read the passages where Jesus speaks in parables of how the gardener cuts off dead branches or unproductive branches and prunes the productive ones. The cutting off of the branches puts back the energy or allocates the energy of the plant to a place where it should produce new growth. Without pruning, there can be no new growth. And with pruning, the growth comes back with a vigour because it sends a signal to the plant to push out new growth without the hassle of unproductive branches sucking the energy of the plant. 

As with life, there are certain things that need to be counted as dead branches. Chapters that need closing, habits that need dropping and just a general letting go. It is not to say that those branches were useless but that they had run their course and the plant needs to concentrate on new growth in a new area of its life. Take for example a currant bush. It only produces fruit on the new growth. So, the old branches where last season's fruits hung should be cut back completely. This lets the plant concentrate its energy on producing more fruit on the new branches. Without the pruning, you will end up with a bush with not much fruit. 

Sometimes, we need to focus our energy on what produces fruit in our lives. What is it that makes your life worth living? What would you focus your energy on that would give you back all the effort you put into it? What would make you happy? 

These are questions that cannot be answered now but take a moment to look at your "tree". Where am I growing the most? Where am I bearing fruit? What branch should I cut off? 

As a gardener, I look at my plants daily and see how they are growing. It is in this space of reflection that allows me see what needs to be done next. But the space must exist where one can reflect. In life, this may be the time of prayer. Prayer is not an ATM machine where you can ask God for favours. It is a space where you take stock of what has happened in the day and look back at all the blessings, challenges and opportunities for growth. It is a time to ask God "How can I glorify you with what I have? What needs pruning, what needs cutting? Where should I grow next?" Prayer is the space where pruning happens. It is in prayer that we learn to lift up to God the areas of our life that needs to be reviewed and whether indeed they should be cut or pruned. 

I hope this Sunday, where in some countries the Feast of Ascension is celebrated, we can lift up our prayers to God and ask Him to prune us so that we can grow more vigorously and produce more fruit that will glorify Him. 

Surrendering to Your will ... reflection on Discipleship

I was asked to meditate on discipleship. What is it to be your disciple? First, you called. You called us by name. It was up to us to respond to You. We responded to Your call yet we were still unsure where You will take us. We follow and we observe. We see that you are setting an example. You love with mercy and You forgive without hesitation. You heal without cost and You glorify Your father.

 

We walk with You along the road. You walk with us. Are we accompanying You or are You accompanying us? You said to be a leader, we have to serve and that there is no greater gift than to give one’s life for a friend. We do not understand all that You are saying but we are drawn to You because You are life eternal. You are the water that never dries up, You are the love that never asks anything in return. You are the compassion that each needs. You are the servant leader we long to be.

 

So what is it like to walk with you on the dirt roads? What is it like to follow You? It is a wonderful experience filled with awe and admiration as well as challenges. You healed the paralytic, You cured the leper, You asked us to feed the multitude, not by our hands, but by the readiness to do Your will. To be your disciple is to be obedient to Your will. It is to follow the inner stirrings of our hearts with the still small voice that You call us with. To be Your disciple means to listen, to listen to that voice that tells us to love without boundaries and to be compassionate as You are compassionate. To walk on the dirt roads is to acknowledge our unworthiness and by walking with You, we are cleansed. Eventually, we will be cleansed by Your blood but we have yet to get there.

 

Now, we are just talking about following You. You do not force us. You called us and we answered for ourselves. What does it mean to follow You? It means to share in Your experiences, in Your sufferings, in Your joys, in Your moments of desolation and Your moments of consolation. Following You is imitating Your way, being gentle yet firm, never compromising on the will of Your Father. Following You is walking the path of love, the love that is greater than ourselves. It is the journey to finding ourselves in Your eyes. Who are we for You and how beautiful we are. You called us because we were imperfect. You called us not because we could do something for You but because by Your love our lives will be the testament of how Your transformative love can change us. We were fishermen, we were sinners, we were tax collectors, we were prostitutes. We were all unclean like the lepers and we were all paralysed by our own sins, yet You called us. You called us so we could receive Your love and so we can pass it on. You called us so that we may touch each other’s lives as You have touched us.

 

You answered, “only through prayer” can that affliction be healed. So, we lift up in prayer our affliction and we lift up in prayer Your will, that it may be done in our lives as Your disciples. Like You prayed in Gethsemane, “Your will be done.”

Believe in you

These past few days I have been quite emotional and rather nostalgic. As I read Path to Wholeness, there was a passage that emphasized the role teachers play in the lives of students and how they can make or break a child. I had also been hearing a resounding message in the readings about believing in the God of the impossible. I remember my encouraging teachers and trying to see what they saw in me.

 

I came from a violent home because my father was an alcoholic. My mother was a public figure and we had to protect our family’s reputation. So, we didn’t speak about the home in public nor did we discuss the violence that happened there. One didn’t simply wash dirty linen in public. We had to portray a picture of a normal family.

 

Aside from my faith, I took refuge in schoolwork. Because I got good grades, I received affirmation from peers and teachers alike. But I remember particular teachers that made me feel like I was someone and that I mattered. The first teacher I remember was a nun in my elementary school in Chicago, I was a new student and I couldn’t speak English very well. So, I had to sit with her for a couple of weeks. As she taught me, she said, “I’m sure you know this” and from those words, I felt confident and I began to understand. When she met with my parents, she only had praises for me and the belief that I could be integrated into my normal grade with no problems. I had some stumbling blocks but, in the end, English was my favourite subject and I excelled in Spelling too. I even won the school Spelling bee and received my first Walkman. Throughout my stay in the school, I was a consistent honour roll student. This was because one teacher showed me that I could do it. What a difference one teacher can make.

 

The next “teacher” I had was the school registrar of my high school in Abu Dhabi. She was my bandurria teacher in fact and not an actual teacher in my school albeit being the school registrar at the same time. She took all my adolescent angst and received them with love. She would invite me to tea parties after bandurria practice and we had amazing conversations although she always said that I could talk in front of a mirror. What she didn’t know was that I couldn’t speak so freely with anyone else. I was a bit shy with others but with her I could talk about any topic under the sun. She also told me that smiling suited me. That was the start of the transformation of my becoming a smiley person. I looked at myself in the mirror and indeed I looked grim when I didn’t smile and that I didn’t look half bad smiling. So I did. Her belief in me as a good person and not the angsty teenager I portrayed opened my heart to receive love from other people. She made me feel that I could be loved. So, I believed that I was loveable.

 

Another instrumental teacher was my Economics (Social Studies) teacher who believed that I should join an essay writing contest. I didn’t even know I could write. He saw something I didn’t see, and he made me believe that I could write. He made me write about being a migrant and my experience as a migrant child. The theme of the essay was “The Filipino in me”. It was the first essay contest I ever joined, and I won third place in my category. I couldn’t believe it when I received the letter, some money and I got a trophy too. So, that was a turning point in my life. I had initially wanted to be a doctor but instead I took to the letters and finished a course in journalism in University with honours. Had these teachers not taken time to appreciate and show me that I was not who I thought I was – someone who couldn’t do anything nor excel at anything, I would have stayed an angry person filled with regret or hatred.

 

So as I read the readings of how people believed in Jesus, I remembered these teachers who had faith in their students’ capabilities. I am not comparing myself with Jesus of course. I am emphasizing the fact that He is the God of the impossible. For all the things I thought were impossible to me, He used these teachers to show me that I can believe in myself, that with their help, I can overcome my own disbelief in me.

And so I wanted to say thank you to these wonderful people who took time to plant a seed of hope in a student who had so much doubt and lacked self-confidence. If it weren’t for them, I would not be who I am today.

 

So I thank all the teachers out there (special mention to my best friends Jam Hernandez Doyle and Janis Yu) who make and made a difference in their students’ lives by seeing their hidden gifts and bringing it to life, by being loving to the hurting students who may be suffering from their personal lives and for the hope that they bring to every student and letting them believe in themselves because all it takes is one person to believe.

 

Of course, I also thank God because He put these people in my life. He knew what I needed and He believed in me first. I thank God for believing in all of us that we are worthy of His dying on the Cross because we are special to Him. I hope as you read my little reflection, you too will stop in your disbelief and believe in yourself – that you are worthy and you are special and that you matter because God believes in you.

 

From Year of Mercy to Year of Peace

For the first time in three years, I was able to celebrate Christmas and New Year in my native land. One of the advantages of coming home is going to our neighbourhood parish which is only a 7-minute walk from the house.

On Christmas day, the priest recounted an anecdote about the many traditions we hold in our families to celebrate the Feast of the Nativity of Christ. One of the more common tradition we have is the giving of gifts. The priest told of his experience with his 5-year-old granddaughter who handed out the gifts to all the family members and then lingered around the tree. She looked under and over looking for something until the priest-grandfather asked, "What are you looking for?" the little girl answered "I'm looking for the gift for Jesus. It's His birthday." Dumbfounded, the priest held this in his heart until today - 10 years on. I heard this message. 

Sometimes, we are so preoccupied about asking for gifts from above that we forget to give the gift we can to Jesus who lovingly gave His life for us. The priest continues to say what gift we could give to Him: FORGIVENESS. 

The year 2016 was the Year of Mercy and all catholics were called to be merciful to one another. 

This new year 2017 was declared the Year of Peace. 

The priest in his homily speaks of our lack of contentment from the blessings we receive. We forget to have a treasuring heart or a thankful heart for all the blessings we receive because we concentrate on what is not there. 

He goes on to tell a story of a grandmother who sat on the beach praying while watching over her grandson when a tsunami hit and the sea engulfed the boy. The grandmother admonished God saying "But I pray everyday, I say the novena. How can you do this to me? How can you take my grandson?" Then another tsunami hit and brought back the boy. She then said "He had a cap on when he left, now he doesn't."

The priest emphasized that we are often like that. Instead of being thankful for what is there, we look for what is not there. 

Going back to the message of Christmas, we are called to give the gift of forgiveness to one another as a sign of mercy and testament of God's unconditional love to us. In this New Year we are called to take this mercy and to extend a hand of peace to our neighbour and to be instruments of God's peace and to have a treasuring heart. To have peace in our lives, we must have peace in ourselves. To have peace, we must be happy with what God has given us and to see the blessing in everything. 

Aptly, the New Year's mass ended with the song "Let there be peace on earth" which ends "and let it begin with me". 

So this new year, may we be instruments of peace in our daily lives, be it at work or at home. 

Happy New Year to you and your family. May God bless you. 

Pause. Press. Play.

The week started out like a normal week. So ... I thought. I was about to take a flight out of London after visiting my cousin. As I left London, the sky cried like there was no tomorrow. My cousin said I took the sun away. My nieces started crying too and my nephew was sad. So much water around. So much that even the fuel of the plane I was on had water in it. So the flight was cancelled.

PAUSE.

One of the lessons of that weekend was to take a moment ... a moment to pray. So, in the midst of the cancelled flight a thought entered my mind. A day for a life. What is a day compared to a saved life. The pilot had announced how dangerous it would have been to fly with water in the fuel. It would have been disastrous. Instead, we spent hours in queues going back through immigration, getting rebooked at the flight transfer desk, waiting for the bus to the hotel, getting our rooms, getting our vouchers. It seemed like endless waiting. Sometimes, life seems to not move forward or there are so many hindering circumstances but really, it's just a time to pause. To reflect. To pray.

PRESS.

While spending some time in Swindon with my cousin, she had reminded me of the importance of prayer. But not just any prayer but a prayer that "pestered God". The reading for this Saturday was about the judge that gave into the demands of the widow lest she strike him down with her persistence. So, in our prayer we should ... PRESS on ... to keep asking God day and night for our heart's desires. Yes, He knows what we want before we even ask but just like the widow, wouldn't God give to us what we ask for if we persist in prayer, if we press on?

I had been putting off a certain work-related talk because I thought it was not necessary but God knew how important it was to get it off my chest and He made a way for it to happen. I believe it was because of prayer, prayers offered for me by dear friends.

Two friends also went on retreat this week. I was blessed to receive the messages of God through them, even if vicariously. I heard Him loud and clear.

One friend's retreat spoke of Jesus' first miracle - the Wedding at Cana. Just like the empty vessels that was to receive the water turned into wine, we are called to invite Jesus to come into our lives especially when we feel empty. Sometimes, we need to be empty so that God can fill our emptiness. Just like the servants who were asked to fill the vessels, we are also called to do what God says. And finally, we are called to act.

On the second day of the retreat, the message was forgiveness - to be forgiven, feel forgiven and be forgiving. The example was that of the paralytic who was lowered from the roof. As God forgives, we must also give of that forgiveness so lovingly given. This theme tied in with another friend's retreat where she was asked to carry a stone for a whole day and then leave it at the foot of the Cross so that Jesus may take it away. We often hold on to the stones in our lives weighing us down because we think we are not worthy of forgiveness. God calls us to let go and to let God.

On the third day of the retreat was the Last Supper. Before partaking of the bread, Jesus in humility washes the feet of the disciples and in this humble act we see the greatness of God. We are called to be servant-leaders and to heed the example of Jesus' humility as we serve and lead others.

The fourth day of the retreat, the theme was the value that God gives to each and everyone. Jesus cured a hunchbacked lady on the Sabbath in a synagogue. In a time when women had no value, a sick woman was considered a nobody. Jesus gave her the value that she thought she didn't or couldn't have. With Jesus, we have boundless worth and value even if we think we are worthless.

PLAY.

It's all good to pause and press but we also have to act - to press the "Play" button, so to speak. We need to act. It is not enough to pause, to pray and to pester God, it is also important to act. Just like the servants who did what Jesus asked them to do, we are to do God's will in our lives, however difficult.

I remember my cousin's voice saying, "Do something". It's not enough to pray.

One of my actions is to write about the message I received so I can also share what I learned. I hope that I gave justice to my friends as they relayed to me the message of God.

One of my commitment to action is to serve at church. I am part of a music ministry. I am a happy musician playing the guitar in the background and when I get asked to sing, I feel like having a heart attack. I sang one song today and it went well. Although I missed the entrance to my second verse, it still went well. God has given me a voice, good enough to sing, so I faced my fears and sang. It was a way of giving back and to act.

Today, I also met my mentee who I will be walking with, in faith, for the next six months. It seems like a daunting task but I feel very honoured to be able to accompany a confirmandi, a candidate for confirmation, with her faith walk. I often feel unworthy to accompany anyone with their faith as I too struggle with mine but I feel it is God's way of keeping me in line, to share of God's goodness and blessings because He has given me so much.

To play is also a call to ACTION ... (Act like Christ To Invite Others Near). We are also called to be God's disciples, a human representation of God on earth so that we can invite others to Him.

So the message of the week was pause, press and play. Pause to pray, pray in persistence and play to perform what God intends for us.