WE have just heard a senator-judge lambasting a party of an impeachment proceeding with the shrill question full of daggers, “What were you thinking?” We may have different reactions to that incident, but one good thing it did was to remind me we have to be very careful with what and how we are thinking.
We have been taking this duty for granted, and so we are also reaping the just deserts—shallow, one-sided thoughts, biases, disorder, chaos, crisis, animosity, etc. We need to be more aware of this duty of taking care of our thinking.
When I interview young students, I can easily see the awkwardness of their thinking, full of self-consciousness, fallacies and all forms of illogic. Even their insincerity can be obvious. But all this is very understandable and is just a challenge to be faced.
But considering the older, supposedly mature people can be more distressing. I also often see twisted reasoning, sharply distorted by prejudices and all sorts of rash judgments, if not outright hatred, anger, envy, pride and arrogance.
Our thoughts and ideas are a powerful tool we have at hand. Being spiritual, they are poised to the infinite, its scope and range almost boundless. With them, we can carry the whole world within us. They can bring us to the essence of things, not just the externals and appearances, and even to the spirit and ethos that animate persons and events.
They are our way of reacting to whatever, and of building things. They are what make us human, distinct from the other creatures. They are a product of our intelligence and will, of our understanding of things and our freedom.
As such, they reflect reality and they also help construct reality. The drama in life takes place first in our mind before it is acted out. The kind of life and world depends to a large extent to the kind of thoughts we have.
Our thoughts carry a bagful of elements—impressions and perceptions, intentions and desires, concepts, judgments and reasoning, etc. I wonder if we are aware of these things and the grave responsibility we have to doing them properly.
Truth is we have the duty to make our thoughts conform to what is true, good and beautiful, what is fair, what love demands. We just cannot allow our thoughts to go anywhere and to depend on just anything. We just cannot allow them to tackle material realities only. We have to use them as much as possible to the fullest of their potentials.
Thus, they have to be properly guided and exercised, correctly sourced and inspired, suitably directed, purified and, in fact, pumped in with as much goodness as we can.
They have to be engaged with their proper objects, and ultimately and somehow constantly, they have to spring and end in God who is the author, pattern and end of what is true, good and beautiful, of what us just and fair.
We have to be wary of stray and capricious thoughts, or thoughts that are just at the mercy of our feelings or physical and biological conditions, or simply first and raw impressions.
Sad to say, this phenomenon is rampant, and hardly anything is done to correct it. People just feel free to think in any way, considering such practice as an expression of their personal freedom. So they just follow their instincts, and the trends and fads around, until they fall into addictions and even to insanity.
Insanity is not when one stops thinking. An insane person can think a lot, but so wrongly he can be detached from the most elementary level of reality.
We should not rely simply on common sense, because while it is always with us and is also useful, it cannot go deep enough to capture the real state of whatever issue or concern we may have at hand. We need to think more deeply and thoroughly.
Ideally, our thinking should always be accompanied by an abiding presence of God. We need to feel that presence, and our attitude should always be an eagerness to do what God may prompt us to think, judge, reason or act. In short, our thinking should be at the same time a kind of prayer, even if we are tackling mundane things.
When we think with God, we can have what St. James said about wisdom. We would have thoughts that are “chaste, then peaceable, modest, easy to be persuaded, consenting to the good, full of mercy and good fruits, without judging, without dissimulation.” (3,17)
Monday, March 5, 2012
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Vocation can come in stealth
MAKING waves now in Hollywood is a documentary that features a former starlet who paired before and even kissed Elvis Presley (remember him?) and who is now a nun. I must say I’m not old enough to know this lady. Dolores Hart is the name and her before-and-after pictures indeed show similarities and the welcome differences.
When I mentioned this to some friends, they kidded me by saying that it would have been more fantastic if the lady involved was a James Bond girl. To which I replied, not to discount that possibility, since God can make a saint in anyone of us no matter how sinful we may be. He can write straight with crooked lines.
To be sure, everyone of us has a vocation. God calls all of us to be with him. He invites us to share his life and his work. We are all co-operators of his abiding providence. That’s why we are told that we have to “listen to him.” He always intervenes in our life. We just have to learn how to hear him and work with him.
This is what vocation is all about—living and working with God. Everyone’s vocation has been forged from all eternity, and we too have been wired for that. That’s why we have been created with intelligence and will. We can and should enter into a living relation with God.
Thus, it behooves all of us to develop a sense of vocation in our life. We need to exert the effort to know God and his will more and more by praying, meditating on the gospel and his doctrine, now taught by the Church, fulfilling the usual duties we have which are part of God’s will, etc.
But he can give some special vocation to some people precisely for some special purpose that would be good not only for the persons concerned but also and mainly for the whole Church.
Some are called to be apostles, teachers, priests, religious persons, or just committed laymen who seriously look for personal sanctity and work actively in the apostolate right in the middle of the world. We just have to accept what is given to us, and start appreciating the eternal and supernatural significance of the vocation.
God can manifest this vocation to us in some dramatic way, often involving drastic changes in the recipients. God can enter into our lives and make his will more felt by us in some special way. Though we cannot help it, we should try our best not to be surprised by these possibilities.
Consider St. Paul, St. Augustine, the apostles themselves, and the patriarchs and prophets like Abraham, Moses, Jonas, Jeremiah, etc. Consider St. Edith Stein, and our very own St. Lorenzo Ruiz and the soon-to-be-canonized Blessed Pedro Calungsod.
Their stories are full of drama and suspense. St. Paul received his vocation while on a mad campaign to arrest the early Christians. St. Augustine, though gifted intellectually, had a colourful past. The apostles were mainly simple people, mostly fishermen.
St. Edith was an intelligent Jewish agnostic before her conversion. And our own Filipino saints, present and future, were catechists doing some domestic work for some priests. All had their defects, and sins, and yet they became and are great saints.
Nothing is impossible with God, and with our trust and faith in him, we can also do what is impossible with God.
We have to feel at home with the idea, nay, the truth that all of us have a vocation. Let’s not play blind and deaf. God’s call is actually quite loud enough. And when we are given a special vocation, let’s not be afraid, but rather go for it at full throttle.
Ok, we may hesitate at first, we can have doubts, but if we are honest, we will soon see there’s nothing to be afraid about. God takes care of everything. All he needs is that we trust him, that we have faith in him, and that we try our best to cooperate.
Like death, this special vocation can come like a thief in the night. Whatever may our past, everything will be put right if there’s something in our past that is not quite right. The truth also is that even our mistakes and sins in the past and even in the present and future, if handled well, can turn out to be good sources and occasions of goodness.
So, there’s really no big problem. If there’s any, it’s usually just in our mind, when we don’t trust God enough.
When I mentioned this to some friends, they kidded me by saying that it would have been more fantastic if the lady involved was a James Bond girl. To which I replied, not to discount that possibility, since God can make a saint in anyone of us no matter how sinful we may be. He can write straight with crooked lines.
To be sure, everyone of us has a vocation. God calls all of us to be with him. He invites us to share his life and his work. We are all co-operators of his abiding providence. That’s why we are told that we have to “listen to him.” He always intervenes in our life. We just have to learn how to hear him and work with him.
This is what vocation is all about—living and working with God. Everyone’s vocation has been forged from all eternity, and we too have been wired for that. That’s why we have been created with intelligence and will. We can and should enter into a living relation with God.
Thus, it behooves all of us to develop a sense of vocation in our life. We need to exert the effort to know God and his will more and more by praying, meditating on the gospel and his doctrine, now taught by the Church, fulfilling the usual duties we have which are part of God’s will, etc.
But he can give some special vocation to some people precisely for some special purpose that would be good not only for the persons concerned but also and mainly for the whole Church.
Some are called to be apostles, teachers, priests, religious persons, or just committed laymen who seriously look for personal sanctity and work actively in the apostolate right in the middle of the world. We just have to accept what is given to us, and start appreciating the eternal and supernatural significance of the vocation.
God can manifest this vocation to us in some dramatic way, often involving drastic changes in the recipients. God can enter into our lives and make his will more felt by us in some special way. Though we cannot help it, we should try our best not to be surprised by these possibilities.
Consider St. Paul, St. Augustine, the apostles themselves, and the patriarchs and prophets like Abraham, Moses, Jonas, Jeremiah, etc. Consider St. Edith Stein, and our very own St. Lorenzo Ruiz and the soon-to-be-canonized Blessed Pedro Calungsod.
Their stories are full of drama and suspense. St. Paul received his vocation while on a mad campaign to arrest the early Christians. St. Augustine, though gifted intellectually, had a colourful past. The apostles were mainly simple people, mostly fishermen.
St. Edith was an intelligent Jewish agnostic before her conversion. And our own Filipino saints, present and future, were catechists doing some domestic work for some priests. All had their defects, and sins, and yet they became and are great saints.
Nothing is impossible with God, and with our trust and faith in him, we can also do what is impossible with God.
We have to feel at home with the idea, nay, the truth that all of us have a vocation. Let’s not play blind and deaf. God’s call is actually quite loud enough. And when we are given a special vocation, let’s not be afraid, but rather go for it at full throttle.
Ok, we may hesitate at first, we can have doubts, but if we are honest, we will soon see there’s nothing to be afraid about. God takes care of everything. All he needs is that we trust him, that we have faith in him, and that we try our best to cooperate.
Like death, this special vocation can come like a thief in the night. Whatever may our past, everything will be put right if there’s something in our past that is not quite right. The truth also is that even our mistakes and sins in the past and even in the present and future, if handled well, can turn out to be good sources and occasions of goodness.
So, there’s really no big problem. If there’s any, it’s usually just in our mind, when we don’t trust God enough.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
The play of life
GAMES, sports, playtime, fun, jokes always play an important part of our life. We need to give them some serious scrutiny to see that everything is done properly.
We often take them for granted, and thus we often fail to imbue them with the proper spirit and purpose, and so we get their bad, even disastrous effects, instead of their great potentials for our own good.
Playing is a human necessity. It comes spontaneously to children. Their sense of wonder and discovery, plus their bursting reserve of fresh energy, just make them do it. They enjoy it tremendously, and their learning and growing processes get tied up with fun. They don’t even realize they have learned and grown so much just by playing.
Every time I see children play, I can’t help but get amused and deeply moved as I see the joy visibly printed on their faces and the many invisible but somehow discernible good things taking place in their inchoate, rudimentary life.
When playing, children are sowing the seeds of many virtues and good values that will serve them well all throughout life—friendship, teamwork, sociability, respect for others, flexibility, etc. Let’s hope that they continue to nourish these virtues and values all throughout their life.
That’s why we, adults, need to play too. For one, play makes us rest and relax from our usual work. It refreshes us and makes us recover our good spirit. It helps us fill up our free time. It can even have a cathartic effect, since it frees the mind and heart from whatever tension and worry we may have.
It has tremendous powers to dissolve or sublimate our anxieties and preoccupations. It helps us to move on, extricating us from any dead-end we can get into. It’s always good that we incorporate play in our daily schedule. Yes, we have to pray, but we also need to play, otherwise we can get rigid.
Playing helps us avoid getting confined to our own world. It always connects us with others, and therefore checks our tendency to be overly introverted and self-absorbed. It helps us fight against idleness and the many temptations that usually come with a stagnant mind.
That’s why we need to see to it that our play should always involve others. We have to be wary of playing by ourselves, a phenomenon that’s getting more common because of our new technologies that favor and encourage it. We have to fight against this trend that’s afflicting a great number of the population, especially the young.
Playing is a great teacher in the proper and healthy sense of competition. It enhances one’s performance in work and any endeavor. We need this to get ahead, to progress and develop personally and socially. A man with no sense of competition often lags behind in life.
Playing also teaches us to cope with any fate that can come to us—whether we go up and get rich or we go down and become poor. This is important, because life is full of things beyond our control. And yet in spite of that reality, we still can manage to keep our dignity and afford to be cheerful and optimistic, whether we win or lose.
It’s good not only to our physical health but also to our mental health. In fact, it is also good to our spiritual and moral health. A playful and sporty person tends to get into easy and abiding relation with God and with others. It makes him open, transparent, likeable.
Whatever defects we have are easily softened when we are sport. Being playful and gamey gives charm to a person. That’s why I have seen many men who otherwise are not attractive physically managing to have great appeal to women simply because of being sporty.
We just have to make sure that we imbue our sports, games and play with the proper spirit. The danger often comes in the area of professional sports where things can tend to be done to extreme. It’s as if winning is the be-all and end-all of life.
Sports and games are meant mainly for fun. Winning is just secondary. We can always learn good things from them if we do and pursue them with the proper dispositions.
We should do them always in the context of charity, and never simply self-affirmation and assertion. We have to learn to convert them into prayer, playing them in God’s presence, and ever mindful of the conditions of the others. They should never occasion hatred, anger and envy.
We often take them for granted, and thus we often fail to imbue them with the proper spirit and purpose, and so we get their bad, even disastrous effects, instead of their great potentials for our own good.
Playing is a human necessity. It comes spontaneously to children. Their sense of wonder and discovery, plus their bursting reserve of fresh energy, just make them do it. They enjoy it tremendously, and their learning and growing processes get tied up with fun. They don’t even realize they have learned and grown so much just by playing.
Every time I see children play, I can’t help but get amused and deeply moved as I see the joy visibly printed on their faces and the many invisible but somehow discernible good things taking place in their inchoate, rudimentary life.
When playing, children are sowing the seeds of many virtues and good values that will serve them well all throughout life—friendship, teamwork, sociability, respect for others, flexibility, etc. Let’s hope that they continue to nourish these virtues and values all throughout their life.
That’s why we, adults, need to play too. For one, play makes us rest and relax from our usual work. It refreshes us and makes us recover our good spirit. It helps us fill up our free time. It can even have a cathartic effect, since it frees the mind and heart from whatever tension and worry we may have.
It has tremendous powers to dissolve or sublimate our anxieties and preoccupations. It helps us to move on, extricating us from any dead-end we can get into. It’s always good that we incorporate play in our daily schedule. Yes, we have to pray, but we also need to play, otherwise we can get rigid.
Playing helps us avoid getting confined to our own world. It always connects us with others, and therefore checks our tendency to be overly introverted and self-absorbed. It helps us fight against idleness and the many temptations that usually come with a stagnant mind.
That’s why we need to see to it that our play should always involve others. We have to be wary of playing by ourselves, a phenomenon that’s getting more common because of our new technologies that favor and encourage it. We have to fight against this trend that’s afflicting a great number of the population, especially the young.
Playing is a great teacher in the proper and healthy sense of competition. It enhances one’s performance in work and any endeavor. We need this to get ahead, to progress and develop personally and socially. A man with no sense of competition often lags behind in life.
Playing also teaches us to cope with any fate that can come to us—whether we go up and get rich or we go down and become poor. This is important, because life is full of things beyond our control. And yet in spite of that reality, we still can manage to keep our dignity and afford to be cheerful and optimistic, whether we win or lose.
It’s good not only to our physical health but also to our mental health. In fact, it is also good to our spiritual and moral health. A playful and sporty person tends to get into easy and abiding relation with God and with others. It makes him open, transparent, likeable.
Whatever defects we have are easily softened when we are sport. Being playful and gamey gives charm to a person. That’s why I have seen many men who otherwise are not attractive physically managing to have great appeal to women simply because of being sporty.
We just have to make sure that we imbue our sports, games and play with the proper spirit. The danger often comes in the area of professional sports where things can tend to be done to extreme. It’s as if winning is the be-all and end-all of life.
Sports and games are meant mainly for fun. Winning is just secondary. We can always learn good things from them if we do and pursue them with the proper dispositions.
We should do them always in the context of charity, and never simply self-affirmation and assertion. We have to learn to convert them into prayer, playing them in God’s presence, and ever mindful of the conditions of the others. They should never occasion hatred, anger and envy.
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