Birthday Reflections

Today I am another year older at 67.

I’ve realized that as I grow older, I have become more keenly attuned not only to the quickness of time, but also to the shortness of life. And so today I just want to take stock of my life and write down my thoughts and whatever comes to my mind.

I think it was the novelist Morris West who suggested that once you reach a certain age, there should be only one phrase left in your vocabulary: Thank-you!.

As a start, I want to say then that I am very thankful to the good Lord for what I am and where I am now. I could not have asked God for more especially when I look back where I came from and when I see myself as an insecure teenager with an uncertain future some 50 years ago in San Jose. But God has been faithful to me through the years despite my frequent lapses. I have been so much blessed.

Looking back, do I have any regrets? Not my major decisions like entering the seminary, leaving the priesthood, and getting married. But maybe the minor ones like my career or job movements in the early years of my married life and my mistakes in parenting. But, in general, if given a chance, I would still live my life the same way I did. Because looking back I know I have learned my life’s greatest lessons from my mistakes especially the painful ones.

But that is past. Today I want to dwell in the present and savor the moment.

Today I remember and thank my loved ones and say I am very happy just being a husband to my wife Thelma, father to my children and children-in-law, and grandfather to Nicole. For me, my family is my main source of joy right now and everything else that I do is secondary to my roles as husband, father, and grandfather.

Today I also remember in a special prayerful way my late parents, Domingo and Paz, simple and ordinary people who have given me my life’s roots and wings. This is my simple way of thanking and honoring them for raising me up the way they knew best.

Today, I want to remember too the people other than my family who have touched my life while accompanying me in my journey – special friends, mentors, advisers who have invested part of themselves in me that I may grow not only in wisdom but also in spirit. I thank them for the gift of love and friendship that have made a difference in my life.

Today as I look towards the future, I want to claim this journal entry for January 8 (Enough Light for the Next Step) from my favorite spiritual writer, Henri J. M. Nouwen in his book “Bread for the Journey”:

“Often we want to be able to see into the future. We say, ‘How will next year be for me? Where will I be five or ten years from now?’ There are no answers to these questions. Mostly we have just enough light to see the next step: what we have to do in the coming hour or the following day. The art of living is to enjoy what we can see and not complain about what remains in the dark. When we are able to take the next step that follows, we can walk through life with joy and be surprised at how far we go. Let’s rejoice in the little light we carry and not ask for the great beam that would take all the shadows away.”

Yes, we all need just “enough light for the next step”.

I remember my doctor telling me after my successful by-pass surgery in April 2007: “You are good for at least another 10 years”. Come to think of it, who knows? But you know what? I would love to see his prediction fulfilled for me to see all my children settled in life, to spoil my grandchildren, and to fly a kite again!

Barack Obama on Fathering

There are many things that can be said about Barack Obama, the incoming President of the United States – a leader, a dreamer, a visionary, etc., but none interests me more than Barack Obama as a father. Perhaps my passion for issues on fathering (see my June 2008 posts on fatherhood, fathering, and all about fathers) has something to do with it. Thus, I get excited when a world leader in the stature of Barack Obama talks about fatherhood issues.

I found two sources of President Obama’s thoughts on fathering. One is his Father’s Day speech last June 2008 at the Apostolic Church in Chicago. And the other which is most recent is his publicized letter to his two daughters, Malia and Sasha.
Talking tough, Obama starts his Father’s Day speech by talking about an American (or maybe even world-wide) phenomenon -- “father hunger”. He says “too many fathers are missing – missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it…

For sure, we need government to help us, but “we also need families to raise our children. We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child – it’s the courage to raise one.”

The new President knows whereof he speaks. He grew up without a father. His father left him and his mother when Barack was two years old. In later years he would feel this father hunger within and would go on some kind of a spiritual journey to know more about his father, traveling all the way to Kenya, his father’s birthplace. He writes about all this in his book “Dreams from my Father”.

Barack ends the part on father hunger and its toll on him by saying “So I resolved many years ago that it was my obligation to break the cycle – that if I could be anything in life, I would be a good father to my girls; that if I could give them anything, I would give them that rock – that foundation – on which to build their lives. And that would be the greatest gift I could offer”.

The last part of his speech ends with a couple of guidelines for fathers – setting an example of excellence for our children, passing on the value of empathy, and finally passing on the “greatest gift we can pass on to our children – and that is the gift of hope. I’m not talking about an idle hope that’s little more than blind optimism or willful ignorance of the problems we face. I’m talking about hope as that spirit inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better is waiting for us if we’re willing to work for it and fight for it. If we are willing to believe”.

Less than a year later since that Father’s Day speech, Barack Obama expresses the same sentiments as a father in a touching letter to his daughters a week prior to assuming the role of the most powerful man in the world. Below is the letter in full.



“Dear Malia and Sasha,

I know that you’ve both had a lot of fun these last two years on the campaign trail, going to picnics and parades and state fairs, eating all sorts of junk food your mother and I probably shouldn’t have let you have. But I also know that it hasn’t always been easy for you and Mom, and that as excited as you both are about that new puppy, it doesn’t make up for all the time we’ve been apart. I know how much I’ve missed these past two years, and today I want to tell you a little more about why I decided to take our family on this journey.

When I was a young man, I thought life was all about me-about how I’d make my way in the world, become successful, and get the things I want. But then the two of you came into my world with all your curiosity and mischief and those smiles that never fail to fill my heart and light up my day. And suddenly, all my big plans for myself didn’t seem so important anymore. I soon found that the greatest joy in my life was the joy I saw in yours. And I realized that my own life wouldn’t count for much unless I was able to ensure that you had every opportunity for happiness and fulfillment in yours. In the end, girls, that’s why I ran for President: because of what I want for you and for every child in this nation.

I want all our children to go to schools worthy of their potential-schools that challenge them, inspire them, and instill in them a sense of wonder about the world around them. I want them to have the chance to go to college-even if their parents aren’t rich. And I want them to get good jobs: jobs that pay well and give them benefits like health care, jobs that let them spend time with their own kids and retire with dignity.

I want us to push the boundaries of discovery so that you’ll live to see new technologies and inventions that improve our lives and make our planet cleaner and safer. And I want us to push our own human boundaries to reach beyond the divides of race and region, gender and religion that keep us from seeing the best in each other.
Sometimes we have to send our young men and women into war and other dangerous situations to protect our country-but when we do, I want to make sure that it is only for a very good reason, that we try our best to settle our differences with others peacefully, and that we do everything possible to keep our servicemen and women safe. And I want every child to understand that the blessings these brave Americans fight for are not free-that with the great privilege of being a citizen of this nation comes great responsibility.

That was the lesson your grandmother tried to teach me when I was your age, reading me the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence and telling me about the men and women who marched for equality because they believed those words put to paper two centuries ago should mean something.

She helped me understand that America is great not because it is perfect but because it can always be made better-and that the unfinished work of perfecting our union falls to each of us. It’s a charge we pass on to our children, coming closer with each new generation to what we know America should be.

I hope both of you will take up that work, righting the wrongs that you see and working to give others the chances you’ve had. Not just because you have an obligation to give something back to this country that has given our family so much-although you do have that obligation. But because you have an obligation to yourself. Because it is only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential.

These are the things I want for you-to grow up in a world with no limits on your dreams and no achievements beyond your reach, and to grow into compassionate, committed women who will help build that world. And I want every child to have the same chances to learn and dream and grow and thrive that you girls have. That’s why I’ve taken our family on this great adventure.

I am so proud of both of you. I love you more than you can ever know. And I am grateful every day for your patience, poise, grace, and humor as we prepare to start our new life together in the White House.

Love,

Dad”

I am sure Barack Obama realizes as he begins his term that he won’t be President of the United States forever. But he will always be a father.

“THE SHACK”: Man’s quest and God’s Epiphany

We celebrated last Sunday the feast of Epiphany. Contrary to what many Catholics and other Christians believe, the feast of Epiphany has less to do with the Three Kings who came and visited the Christ child after a long search. Rather it has more to do with God’s manifestation to all of mankind represented by the Magi (who may not be Kings nor were they three in number). It is more concerned with God’s revelation and response to the question at that time whether He came only for the Jews, the chosen people of the Old Testament, or for everyone including you and me.

The timeliness of this feast and its meaning struck me because of a book that was given to me also last Sunday by my youngest daughter Dani Mae who had just read it. The book is “The Shack” by William P. Young, a book that is described by some as a Christian novel.

You see, the book is actually about God’s epiphany, God’s manifestation and revelation to Mack, the main protagonist in the story. God’s epiphany to Mack, however, is in reality a response to Mack’s prior quest for answers and his search for meaning. Just like the Magi who went on a journey to resolve the question whether the baby born of a virgin in a manger was the true savior.

The story’s plot is simple. Mack comes from a traditional hard-working Irish-American family that had settled somewhere in the Midwest where he was born. His father is an odd combination of an externally religious church-elder and a closet alcoholic who beats his wife and children when drunk. The regular beatings the young Mack get from his father drove Mack to leave home at the early age of 13 but not before he caused the death of his father by poisoning his drinks. He roamed the world and ended up studying Philosophy and Theology in a seminary. He apparently left the seminary before ordination to the ministry, went back to the States and married a wonderful woman named Nan. The union produced five children, of whom, at the time of the story, only three were left with him and Nan. The older two have finished college and were either working or in graduate school. Of the three left, two are teenagers while the last one, Missy, a latecomer, is only 6 years old. Mack’s ordinary life took a tragic turn when Missy mysteriously disappeared while she was with Mack and her two younger siblings in a summer camp. The search for Missy ended in what they call “the shack” where traces of evidence pointing to Missy’s death were present, but not her body. Missy’s disappearance triggered what Mack describes a “The Great Sadness” in his life that went on for three years, until he received an invitation from God to go to “the shack” through a note that he found in his mailbox. He accepted the invitation and for a weekend Mack had the rare chance to meet God face to face. What happened during that weekend comprises the bulk of the book.

We are told that the main author (Young) wrote this book only for his children and was not meant initially for publication. Encouraged by those who had read it first, Young and his friends re-wrote it and even established a private publishing company after the story was rejected by the big publishers. The result? It has stayed in the New York Times’ bestseller list for quite some time now. It has also spawned some kind of a controversy among Christians and non-Christians alike. “Sola scriptura” conservatives criticize it as deviating widely from orthodoxy, while others hail it as “phenomenal”, “life-changing”, and even describe it as having “the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ did for his”.

I must confess that I do not understand what the big fuss is all about. The theme of God manifesting himself to man has been depicted in a lot of cinematic and literary vehicles in the past most recent of which are “Evan the Almighty” and “Bruce Almighty”. The Bible itself is filled with stories of God appearing to man in various forms in order to deliver a message or to answer a question. Thus, I read the book at first mainly because I wanted to be able to answer Dani Mae’s questions. But a funny thing happened to me after reading the book a second time. I realized then that the book’s message was also meant for me after all. Mostly to affirm what I personally believe in -- God’s willingness to talk to us and the universal human desire to experience God’s embrace and to hear God tell us of His fondness for each one of us; the Fatherhood of God and his unconditional love for all of us; the absence of true fathering and its impact on our children; the healing effect of forgiving and being forgiven; and the importance of being over doing. I believe too that God’s epiphany goes on in our lives. But we have to open our eyes to see. Like the Magi, we must remember that our God is always the God of surprises as He was on that first Christmas scene where the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes is a King and the Mother is a virgin.

A final note. I am still not sure whether this has anything to do with God’s epiphany or not. But as the year 2009 began last Thursday, I woke up without pain for the first time after three months of suffering from my spinal stenosis (my version of Macks’s “The Great Sadness”). Then on Sunday, on the feast of Epiphany, I walked to church for mass without my cane !