yonder.

So it goes, Billy Pilgrim.

We've returned from a spectacular few days of rest & relaxation in Nasugbu, Batangas - swimming in coves on the South China Sea (squid! giant clam! Nemo & Dora!), well fed & well rested. Today, we're off to Sacred Heart Novitiate & Retreat House in Novaliches to enter into our monthlong (32 days, actually) silent Spiritual Exercises. We will enter into "the great silence" tomorrow eve after dinner, and remain there until November 27th.

What to expect, you ask? Quite simply & honestly, I dunno. But something has become quite clear in my prayer these past weeks leading up to the long retreat.

Elementary, dear Watson.

During his July visit to Brazil, Pope Francis said the following regarding us as Church:

...we have forgotten the language of simplicity & import an intellectualism foreign to our people. Without the grammar of simplicity, the church loses the very conditions which make it possible to fish for God in the deep waters of his mystery.

The grammar of simplicity so as to fish for God in the deep waters of his mystery. So beautiful... and so true. If such a statement is true for us collectively as Church, then it must hold true individually, for you, for me. Simplicity.

The alternative (to which I am, on occasion, prone) is to complicate it all with my own baggage, my own disarray. But even there, in the midst of my own self-imposed chaos & unholy mess , God is at at work. As Ignatius writes to Francis Borgia (then Duke of Gandia)

...the more I see myself, the more I see myself as an obstacle to God's work. And this consideration brings me the greatest & sweetest consolation, because I realize that God in his loveliness works so many good things through me...

My own obstacle... as yet another haven for God to abide in.

Keep it simple.

Prayers.

Peace.



O then, weary then why
When the thing we freely forfeit is kept with fonder a care,
Fonder a care kept than we could have kept it, kept
Far with fonder a care (and we, we should have lost it) finer, fonder
A care kept. - Where kept? Do tell us where kept, where -
Yonder. - What high as that! We follow, now we follow. - Yonder, yes
yonder, yonder,
Yonder.

(Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo)

creature (dis)comforts. (Navotas Pt. II)

Bayside, Barangay Daanhari, Navotas.

A few day ago we as Church celebrated & remembered the great 16th c. theologian & mystic St. Teresa of Avila, who famously stated that

...more tears are shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers.

Indeed, indeed. Be careful what you pray for - you're gonna get it. And it ain't gonna be on your own terms, brother & sisters. Somebody else is in charge of the gig.

If you recall (or simply cursor down), a few weeks ago I passionately & piously mentioned Ignatius' words regarding himself during his conversation at Manresa in which he saw God

dealing with him(self) in the same way as a schoolteacher deals with a child, teaching him....

Ignatius understood himself in the schoolteacher-child simile by stating that God dealt with him in such a way possibly

on account of his courseness or his dense intelligence...

File me under the latter, my friends.

So... a few rather important lessons learnt by this not-quite humble schoolchild during my brief stay in Navotas:

1. Always, ALWAYS, remember to zip up your toiletry bag - no matter how briefly it may opened. Otherwise, there is a VERY strong possibility that when reaching into it mere minutes later to grab a razor, a cockroach the size of an eggplant may lovingly lumber up your arm (yes, such cockroaches lumber, not scurry).
2. There is indeed an expression that crosses a rat's face just moments before it tumbles from the wooden beam a metre above the mat upon which you're resting and lands on your chest. I cannot say precisely the emotion behind the expression is (fear? delight?), but it's quite an expression. Ditto for the landing. For all parties involved.

I can read your minds right now. Fish-outta-water American Jesuit finds himself absolutley uncomfortable with the heat, crowds, language barrier (I had ONE PHRASE in Tagalog under my belt upon entering Navotas), novel bathing conditions, and now creatures in rather too-close-for-comfort settings. 

Waaaaaaa.

I mention all of this not to elicit your pity, nor simply for your amusement (tho' that may indeed be a bonus gift). Stay with me.

What I would come to realize is that all of this displeasure & discomfort was quite external, superficial. It spoke to something moving deeper within me. Something far more disconcerting & uncomfortable.

And it was this: I had absolutely no control over anything that was going on around me. I was feeling powerless.

Add to this equation my two host families, the Bohols and the Pugays. Both families unconditionally provided everything for me - from the best (if not only) private sleeping situation, to a seemingly ceaseless flow of food (made more disconcerting given mighty financial struggles), to (in spite of the language barricade) extraordinary companionship.

The feelings of powerlessness only deepened. I was unable to help anybody, to fix any situation. The only ministry I was capable of was to just be present.

And THAT, dear friends, was the grace that was emerging. To recognize myself, however minutely & fleetingly, poor & humble amidst the poor & humble.

A sliver of what my families & friends in Navotas experience each day.

And THAT, dear friends, is solidarity with the poor - a well-worn term so often misunderstood. Solidarity is not simply acknowledging the poor, nor is it even walking close to/with the poor. It is unity with, deep & authentic relationship, with all men & women, but especially the powerless. It is, in Egide van Broeckhoven's words (yes, he continues on this journey with me) the

...deep experience of impotence, as a mark of solidarity.

It's acknowledging that, in the words of Esprel (cousin to my first host mother Nora), we are all Lazaro (check out Luke 16:19-31). We are all impotent, helpless, forlorn. And loved.

So... Day Two in Navotas... it had been so hot that even Satan had taken the day off. I had been consuming large quantities to water so as to stay hydrated. Cut to 2:30 a.m. in my tiny little sleeping loft in the Bohol home. Drinking that much water has certain biological results. I  soon realize that rolling over & waiting 'til morning to use the comfort room (the term for bathroom here in the Philippines) was NOT gonna happen, I angrily get up, made my way down the ladder and quietly stepped over three generations of the Bohol family (eight members sleeping in the 15' x 10' single room home - I'm up in the tiny loft where Abby, Joel & four-moth-old A.C. usually sleep). Having accomplished my task, I step out of the comfort room and BAM, manage to slam my noggin on the cinderblock corner of the doorway. Muffling any maledictions while mopping blood from my forehead, I quietly step over Abby, Joel and A.C. again... only to glance down to see baby A.C. wide awake, staring up at me.

A.C. (four months), Bohol family home, Barangay San Roque, Navotas.

Totally dependent. Totally helpless. Completely powerless on her own.

And those eyes burning with that wonder & awe.

And smiling. In the midst of the dependence, the impotence, the powerlessness.

While by NO MEANS romanticizing economic poverty, nor equating my miniscule experience of feel powerless to the crushing realities, there is (as previously mentioned) paradoxically an incredible dignity, wonder, awe... in the midst of it all. Stemming, I maintain, from a certain honesty & transparency that may come with feeling impotent to what goes on around you. Spiritual freedom, even.

Yet along with the honesty, transparency that may be afforded to being poor in spirit, there is also the invitation to unabashed delight & elation. JOY, even.

You just need to find the right excuse for a raucous bacchanal.

Like a religious feast...

It begins: Fatima festival, Barangay Daanghari, Navotas.

Hey Joe! (Navotas Pt. I: the context)

"My nine friends in the Lord arrived here from Paris in mid January.  All are Masters of Arts and well versed in theology: four are from Spain, two from France, two from Savoy and one Portuguese.  They came braving the wars and the biting cold of winter, and on arrival they settled in two hospitals to serve the sick and the poor in the lowliest tasks, those most contrary to nature."  

(from a letter of Ignatius to Juan de Verdolay, sent from Venice 24july1537) 

Those most contrary to nature. And so it was with my own nine friends in the Lord 476 years later as we arrived in Navotas on 30sept2013. Yet before getting to the heart of the matter, gentle reader, a few introductory words (and images) regarding my experience of Navotas & my modus operandi herein.

Simply Google the term Navotas & you can read any number of eloquent treatises on demographics, geography, socioeconomic conditions, poverty, the causes, potential solutions, systematic theological discourses, etc. regarding the city. My aim here is (hopefully) is something rather different.

You may be wondering what I was anticipating prior to heading off to Navotas to live with my families there. As previously mentioned, I've been revisiting the slender volume of Egide Van Broeckhoven, SJ's journals - A Friend to All Men: The Diary of a Worker Priest. Prior to departing, I happened upon Egide's own reasoning for desiring to write down his experiences working in the Brussels factories from August 1965 until his death (a fatal accident in a factory) on December 28, 1967. Egide writes that his aim is to write down

...what God is doing in me and not what I am doing.

Yes. This became my prayer in the days leading up to leaving for Navotas (and, subsequently, my desired approach to writing this all down here) - to receive the grace to enter into the experiences vis a vis what God is doing in me & those around me, rather than simply reporting/reporting/reflecting upon what I was doing.

I know myself well enough. When the story starts with me, it becomes nothing but muddled obstacle. It's easier to start with what God is doing.

And if I am to merely reporting what happened to me, I run the risk of placing myself as mere observer & reporter. Worst case, I create an I and them scenario - thus keeping the experience at arm's length (and, even worse, objectifying those around me as mere subjects for my spiritual travelogue).

So we arrived that Monday in Navotas.

The key came rather early on (a grace - unquestionably not my own doing). That astoundingly stifling afternoon I walked along Abenida Leongson in Cuatro (the neighborhood in the barangay of San Roque). Amid the first cries of "Hey Joe!" (a carryover from the days of U.S. military presence in the Philippines, it's the standard greeting for anyone who "looks American"), I felt bulldozed - by the sun & the heat & the dogs & the tricycles & the stench from the fish sauce factory along with thick exhaust fumes commingled with the savory smell of meat cooking & the garbage & the roosters & building upon building & so many jeepneys & noise & humidity & the staggering stream of people...

Absolute bedlam. Full-on chaos.

But... in spite of it all, an absolutely exquisite, luminous chaos.

A magnificent bedlam.

(an aside - these sorts of seeming paradoxes would pile up during my brief days in Navotas - beauty in the midst of chaos, grace in the midst of structural evil, incredible dignity in the midst of poverty.)

But how could it all seem so exquisite & luminous & magnificent? It all seemed so incredibly messy, tumultuous.

And that's when it hit me, with the very same suddenness & force as all the din & chaos that first afternoon in Navotas...

Beauty & luminosity is in the flesh & blood.

Magnificence & grandeur in the humanity.

It all comes down to one fundamental: relationship.

wonder & awe: Fiesta of Our Lady of Fatima
Barangay Daanghari, Navotas

It's all about the Incarnation.

I recalled the first meditation in Week Two of the Spiritual Exercises, in which Ignatius invites the retreatant to gaze & reflect, from the perspective of the Trinity, upon the world:

...men and women being born and being laid to rest, some getting married and others getting divorced, the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the happy and the sad, so many people aimless, despairing, hateful, and killing, so many undernourished, sick, and dying, so many struggling with life and blind to any meaning. With God, I can hear people laughing and crying, some shouting and screaming, some praying, others cursing.

life & death as neighbors: Navotas Municipal Cemetery, home to an
estimated 6000 homeless living in a shantytown amongst & atop the tombs
Barangay San Jose, Navotas

But then, then, the real kicker...

The leap of divine joy: God knows that the time has come when the mystery of salvation, hidden from the beginning of the world, will shine into human darkness and confusion. It is as if I can hear the Divine Persons saying, “Let us work the redemption of the whole human race; let us respond to the groaning of all creation.”

The leap of divine joy. Joy. That first afternoon in Cuatro I was just as dumbfounded by a God who desired & chose to become human - to mix it up with our painfully messy humanity in a spirit of joy & love - as I was by the staggering scene around me.

The pieces were fitting together. In theory, at least.

The invitation here, the grace to be prayed & begged for, was for friendship with those around me. To allow myself to enter fully into it all. To embrace my own incarnation & that of those around me.

Egide again: the mystical depths of friendship.

What I was desiring as I prayed to recognize what God was doing in me & around me was to enter fully, authentically, without any baggage, into the relationships around me with the people in Navotas. Not to figure them out, not to fix their problems, not to minister to them.

Just to be.

croons like King Cole: Ruben, Bohol family home
Barangay San Roque, Navotas

As the Word joyfully leapt to be with us, so I prayed to be joyfully & fully with the people around me.

And God never disappoints.

It would merely be a matter of my embracing the experiences in light of this. And lest ye think I'm turning this into a lovefest in which I skip merrily through a field of gilly flowers, be patient.

I would go into all of this, in my most self-focused moments, kicking & screaming.
I would recoil upon meeting uninvited guests even Francis of Assisi might have a tough go with loving.

More to come, my friends.

PAX.