When Silence Speaks (Repost)

I originally thought of  naming this site, Silence Speaks which is so far the most often used tag and category I have on all my blogs.  But the words, dreams and escapes have their own meaning in my life, so they got stuck, hence the title Dreams and Escapes.

Sometimes, we wish we could change things in our lives,  but it does not work that way. Everything is destined, everything is planned. It is not just something that happens to you, in a lifetime, not even in a heartbeat.  For the past few months or so, most of the time, I’ve been alone with my thoughts, some are happy ones, some humorous, some quite fearful thoughts of what lies ahead.  Slowly, I am beginning to learn and embrace silence in my life.  I told Lovell, a close friend,  that lately I am getting bored with my own thoughts and company but I am beginning to love silence. Then he wrote back, “Ha, ha! Mongha na“.  I had a good laugh when I read that one.

I wish to share with you a few words taken from No Man Is an Islands, by Thomas Merton, who they say is arguably the most influential Catholic author of the 20th century.

Silence does not exist in our lives merely for its own sake. It is ordered to something else.  Silence is the mother of speech.  We receive Christ’s silence into our hearts when we first speak from our heart the word of faith.  Silence is the strength of our interior life.

There  must be a time of day when the man of prayer goes to pray as if it were the first time in his life he has ever prayed; when the man of resolutions puts his resolutions aside as if they had all been broken, and he learns a different wisdom; distinguishing the sun from the moon, the stars from the darkness, the sea from the dry land and the night sky from the shoulder of the hill.

There must be a time of day when the man who has to speak falls very silent, and his mind forms no more than propositions, and he ask himself: did they have a meaning?

In silence, we learn to make distinctions. those who fly silence also fly from distinctions.  They do not want to see clearly. they prefer confusion.

Slow down, befriend silence in your life.  And when the pressure of making  a living becomes greater than making a life, let silence speaks.

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Come First of May

Every time the month of  May comes, I am always reminded of the First of May song and I hum it silently in my head. There is something nice about this month, it is also the month of Mama Mary. Santacruzan procession is held in May. Santacruzan which is derived from the Spanish word Santa Cruz which means Holy Cross is a grand procession that commemorates Queen Helena’s journey. It characterizes a parade of grandly-dressed ladies representing various biblical and historical figures symbolizing virtues of faith, hope and charity.

May is considered the hottest month of the year here in our country, the height of summer months. But it also brings summer blooms, fruits in galore, frolics in the so many lovely beaches of the archipelago, picnics, evening get-together with friends or family members under the bright light of the moon.  We used to do the latter when we were kids with boiled peanuts and sweet potato while we were exchanging childhood dreams and sometimes ghost stories too which we learned from our maternal grandmother.

Remembering those years when summer meant  going with some cousins to gather firewood in the forest or bring along a bayong to use to gather duhat or java plums. Other summer fruits that are plenty are sineguelas (Spanish plum), star apples, those sweet mangoes usually grown in almost every backyard, root crops like sweet potato, peanuts or cassava.

I also remember playing tumbang preso, shatung, marbles with my three brothers, text cards we put on a shoebox, piko (hopscotch), taguan (hide and seek). The latter is usually played in the evening. These games mean it is summer to young kids when there is a two-month summer school break. Nowadays though, kids don’t need to go out from their comfort zones as long as they have those expensive gadgets to play with.

What were your summer flings?

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It’s Summer….Of Course

What is your favorite type of weather?

If you were to ask me my favorite season of the year, I prefer summer hands down. We only have two seasons here, summer and rainy season. I rather love the days between October to the days of February where we have cold days and cold nights because of the Siberian winds.

I never liked the rainy season except probably when it does not bring deadly and destructive floods in our midst. Have you noticed? All over the world, we’ve been experiencing climate change, it’s effect is quite dangerous to us, so cold for some and extremely wet and hot in the tropics.

Summer season spells different kinds of local fruits here in our country. Sometimes, it also brings surprise blooms in my small garden.

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