A love letter to all mothers

Motherhood is by nature a choice. It is a choice to go beyond yourself, to share yourself. It is a choice to accept uncertainty. It is a choice of faith. 

Not all women have the makings to be a mother. In spite of this, many of them make THAT choice. And no matter how self-serving some people think this choice is, it is by nature a selfless act. And no matter what the circumstances are or what they may eventually become, no matter how terrible or awful a mother one makes or how beautiful or horrible a life turns out to be, it does not change the fact that motherhood is a great act of self-sacrifice. It does not matter what anybody says about ANY mother and of motherhood. To sacrifice even one moment of your life for someone else, someone who may or may not know you or understand you or love you or thank you for this difficult (and it always is difficult) choice you've made, is one of the greatest acts of true heroism - one that many would never even consider doing.

TO ALL MOTHERS, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, THANK YOU. Happy Mother's Day.

The Love Bug

I can't remember a time when I wasn't ever interested in falling in love. As early as seven or eight years old, I already fancied myself in love with one of my friends' big brother. And maybe it was childish infatuation, but nevertheless I sought his attention and was blind to all his faults. Much like most adults who also claim to be in love.

At 11, I remember getting up the courage to write my first letter to a boy I've been crushing on for a year. And it wasn't a cutesy little love note either. Suffice it to say, the entire tone of that 'love letter' leaves my cheeks burning with shame even now, almost two decades later, that it's not surprising my crush ran away as quickly as his pre-adolescent feet could carry him.

At 13, oh that most tumultuous of times, I found myself in periodic fits of crying before MTV's finest love songs. In despair, my mind would cry out Why, oh why, am I still single? Damn it! I suppose it didn't help that it was around this age that I was neck-deep in romance novels written by my beloved author, Judith McNaught. At 13, I was already planning my future as a wife to some dark, smoothly intimidating yet passionate husband who's misunderstood by all, except for me, his wonderfully successful high-powered executive wife and mother to his four children (two of which were twins). It's truly a wonder why I ever thought of all these when in reality I was looking at college courses and dreaming of surviving with a career in theater arts or fine arts. How wonderfully realistic I was at 13.

At 14, I found my first lifelong friends. And my passion boiled over to encompass them all. Without meaning to, I found myself creating a small community of wakeful dead constantly fed with the chivalry and fairy tale happy endings of Judith McNaught, Julie Garwood, and Jude Devereaux. We were ravenous for sweet sentiments and panting for Prince Charming. Anyone who stood to represent the male species fell victim to our rose-tinted, honey-dripping stares -- even if they weren't actual males.

On the year I turned 18, I wrote an autobiography. Given my disposition at the time, you can well imagine how boy-crazy the entire thing sounded (and this, too -- but I'll get to the point soon). I was always very insecure about my appearance, always being teased as the fatty in the family. But in my senior year, my obsession with falling in love finally ruled over my diet and I started losing weight. How ironic, though, that instead of getting the attention that I wanted from the opposite sex, I got only the unwanted ones from the young and the restless, and the SAME sex. It is only thinking about it now, that I realize it doesn't really matter how thin I got or great my haircut was (because I had a fabulous haircut at the time, too), I could never get the attention I sought.

In grade school, I dreamed that I'd be married at 24. My mother married at a young 22, so I figured 24 would be the more appropriate age. In high school, a classmate 'foretold' that I'd have a boyfriend at a very late age, but that he'd be the one I'd marry -- at the ripe old age of 28. When I was 28, I was still single and had as yet to have a boyfriend. I prayed so very desperately for all the graces to be married by the time I was 30. I gave myself 2 whole years. 

I will be turning 30 in two weeks. I have recently had my first boyfriend, and recently broke up with him after a mere five days.

The point of this whole post is not to say how boy crazy I am really, but of how greatly I wish to fall in love and why I have never really found a partner, a man, to love. It is not for a lack of love, too. I love my family very much. I love my friends intensely. Which is why many times throughout the years, I have been asked and told how surprising it was that I have not yet found a man to love. Time and again, when I found the need to respond, my answer was that it takes two. That the question I would like answered is why I have not yet found a man to love me.

There really are a whole lot of reasons one can give for this, and it has been ever the challenge for me to just accept that God has a very good reason why I've stayed single despite knowing in my heart of hearts from the moment I became aware of my own mind, that am meant to fall in love, to love, and be loved. And I have had to remind myself often that to try and figure out God's Mind is a dangerous and foolish business not worth all the riches and the love in the world. Sometimes, I think that I finally find the contentment in my life that seems to constantly elude. But then, sometimes, I remember how discontented I was for most of my life and I start scratching that itch again. That itch from the bite of that damn love bug.

Missing Cardinal Sin

By Archbishop Socrates B. Villegas
August 31, 2011

Do you still care to remember Jaime Cardinal Sin? He passed away only six years ago. How time flies! How fast we forget! He would have been eighty three years old today. I wonder if people still remember. As for me, how can I forget? I will always remember and I still miss him.

Cardinal Sin had something to say about almost everything happening to the Church and Philippine society. He did not have to go to Luneta to be heard. Even if he whispered to the wall, society somehow caught his opinion, media was swift to publish and gossipers were quick to exaggerate.

I lived with him as his secretary for eighteen years. I lived with him longer than I lived with my own parents. He taught me. He guided me. He allowed me to care for him. I knew he cared for me as much as he cared for the millions who belonged to his flock. He knew the meaning of living a dangerous life. He knew the meaning of being ready to die to protect his beloved.

What would Cardinal Sin tell us about what is going on the country now? What would Cardinal Sin do about the situation of the Church and government now? Only Cardinal Sin can answer for Cardinal Sin and only Cardinal Sin can answer like Cardinal Sin.

As I remember him and as I knew him, I offer these conjectures of a nostalgic former secretary.

I close my eyes and imagine him in the car on our way to an engagement. I imagine him say: The real battle about the reproductive health bill is not with the legislature where the debates are ongoing and where the voting will be done. The real person to wrestle with is not the President who has sadly called the bill a priority bill. The real battle is in the minds and hearts of our youth. The youth are being misled by wrong teachings. The youth are like parched dry sponge. In their thirst, they absorb all and retain them regardless of the purity of source. I pity our youth. The Church cannot impose its right and authority in this highly pluralistic society. It must be willing to join the arena of public opinion, use new methods and approaches and even jejemon vocabulary to make the message of God convincing. It is not the duty of churchmen to lobby in government offices. Our duty is to teach Christ and only Christ. Our duty is to form people’s minds and prick consciences and let those formed consciences speak up in the plaza of public opinion. This is lay empowerment. This is youth empowerment. This is the church of the people not the church of bishops.

There is a problem deeper than the anti life and anti family bills in the legislature. The blasphemous art exhibits point to a deeper and more alarming issue. The irreverent calumny thrown at religious leaders are symptoms of deeper problems. It is due to the wrong understanding of freedom and the misplaced primacy that is laid on conscience.

After EDSA 1986, we all discovered a fresh breeze of freedom in the air. Lost liberties were restored and the freedom to express was held in high esteem. Freedom is indeed a noble human right and a sublime aspiration but it not unlimited. Freedom since EDSA 1986 has been abused, terribly abused. Freedom is not absolute. The limit of freedom is love. The exercise of freedom must make us more loving. If the use of freedom violates the freedom of another, it is licentiousness; it fails to love. That freedom is lewd and obscene.

There is no absolute freedom. Freedom has limits. Its limit is truth. When freedom violates or assails truth, it can no longer be called freedom. It is debauchery and brute arrogance.

Freedom must respect the law. Freedom without respect for law is anarchy. Laws do not restrict freedom. Laws help us to live in order. When life is orderly, freedom is also safeguarded.

Our countrymen who declare themselves Catholics because they attend Catholic liturgies but disregard the commandments of God and the precepts of the Church are gravely in error. To be a Catholic, it is not enough to pray the Catholic prayers. To say you are a Catholic, you must also live as a Catholic. It is not enough to act according to conscience. Before listening to that conscience, we must first insure that the conscience is sensitive to the laws of God. Conscience is not the ultimate tribunal. The Truth that God has taught us is the highest tribunal. That Truth is in the bible. That Truth is handed to us in the teachings of the Church.

How I miss Cardinal Sin! He taught me to cherish freedom but he also warned me not to raise it to a value more than it deserves. Freedom is one of the great gifts of God to men but the greatest gift is love. Use your freedom to be more loving because “the greatest is love”. Aim for the greatest. Freedom must recognize unchanging truths. Freedom must not enchain truth. Truth is the mother of freedom and it is the height of ingratitude to enslave your mother, isn’t it?

He taught me: Follow your conscience when it speaks but make sure the ears of that conscience are ever attuned to God. When a deaf conscience speaks, ignore that voice. That is the voice of error. Knowing what is right and what is wrong is not inborn. Conscience must be formed and molded unto Christ. The duty of conscience is to listen to its God so that it may be credible when it speaks.

The legacy of Cardinal Sin is freedom. Let us understand freedom in depth. The love of Cardinal Sin was the youth and children. He taught them well. I will honor him by loving those he loved and living as he lived and believing in what he stood for.

Falling

They make it seem like such an easy thing, finding love and falling in love. On tv everyone's just tripping all over themselves high in love, thundering with passion and twisting in desire. In books, songs, pictures, and everywhere you turn people are caught up in the business of loving.

Lies.

It isn't that easy finding love. Not at all easy, actually. Attraction, yes. Maybe. But, action and follow through are quite entirely different things.

I have searched for love. I have knocked politely at its doors, then banged and kicked, rung the bell and clawed at its walls. Love remains hidden from me. Changing costumes, rewriting lines, changing views and even breaking the rules proved useless for me. And all this unfruitful search has now led me to ask am I disabled in some way? Suffering from some rare but vicious form of love impairment that somehow makes me repulsive to love? Have I been blind all this time and not have known about it? Have I been going the wrong way or doing the wrong things?

And how long shall my search last? How long til it's time to give up? Will love find me when I finally stop moving, stop feeling? Because I am still human, though accursed. I shall soon wear out from trying and falling and failing, without being able to stop myself from continuing to try and fall and (hopefully not) and fail.

Chapter 11

"Time goes on, and your life is still there, and you have to live it. After a while you remember the good things more often than the bad. Then, gradually, the empty silent parts of you fill up with the sounds of talking and laughter again, and the jagged edges of sadness are softened by memories.

Nothing will be the same, ever...But there's a whole world waiting, still, and there are good things in it.

It was September, and time to leave the little house that had begun to seem like home...

It is hard to give up the being together with someone...

Somewhere, for (Tatay), I thought suddenly, it would be summer still, summer always."

-Lois Lowry, A Summer To Die