Sunday, March 10, 2024

The rhythm of His grace

The Lent Project is a gift that keeps on giving. Alongside Scripture, the chosen author of the day chooses a poem, an artwork (painting or sculpture), and music to supplement and enrich the daily meditation. I had to take a pause from my daily Bible reading schedule to accommodate this enriching online devotional, which sends me email updates when new posts are available.

For March 7, Dr. Arianna Moloy writes about the ministry of love to the saints. The passages are Galatians 6:7-10 and Hebrews 6:10.
And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.

Allow me to share some quotable quotes from her meditation.
Exhaustion can cause mental overload and spiritual heaviness, resulting in a kind of chaotic weightiness making it hard to breathe.

And: 
Weariness skews perspective. Like a kind of emotional sunburn, any comment received in exhaustion lands in an overly tender and painful manner.

Dr. Moloy draws from the Bible's encouragement:
This is why Jesus’s invitation (e.g. Matthew 11:28-30) to draw near to him, receive comfort, and learn how to approach what’s before us with his guidance is such an incredible gift. The God of the universe offers to teach us the rhythm of his grace so that we might experience true rest in the very core of our being.


The "rhythm of his grace." I like that very much. In my moments of exhaustion—physical, spiritual, emotional—I should turn to Jesus' words (Matthew 11:28):

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.


The song, Your Labor Is Not in Vain” from the album Work Songs: The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Volume 1, is just wonderful. 

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Friday, March 8, 2024

Psalter

Soon, if I improve my piano skills with more lessons and more practice, I'll be able to play the songs in The Genevan Psalter, compiled by Michael E. Owens.  The metrical psalter (also called The Huguenot Psalter) was originally created under the supervision of John Calvin. If you know me, you probably know I'm a huge fan of this Reformed hero. The Institutes of the Christian Religion is one of my favorite books of all time. I read the book in Kindle, during my long, humid, sweaty MRT commutes to the Philippine General Hospital from Mandaluyong.

The melodies were all composed between 1539 and 1562 in Geneva, Switzerland, at the request of John Calvin, for use with French metrical translations. No melodies have been added or removed since that time. Many have appeared in several forms, often rhythmically altered. They have been harmonized many times, in many ways, and have been often used without harmony. They have been sung with many different lyrics in several languages. Until the mid-1800s, they were widely used on the continent of Europe, the British Isles, and the New World. They are still used in some churches in Canada and Europe and Australia.

Currently, I'm working my way through Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata (first movement). Ma'am Deb gave me two hymns to practice on: Holy Holy Holy and It Is Well With My Soul.

Rediscovering music has led me to appreciate all kinds of music. I'm now subscribed to the amazing podcast, The Open Ears Project, "in which people share the classical track that means the most to them and why." I particularly liked the episode in which musician Damien Sneed "reflects on how playing Liszt’s Étude No 3, 'Un Sospiro,' for both his biological and adoptive mothers allowed him to finally loosen his grip around ideas of adoption, rejection and acceptance."

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Wednesday, March 6, 2024

The mornings were always ours

Dr. Lorgia García Peña's My Father’s Quiet Love Speaks Louder Than Words is moving. 
When I was younger, he’d show his care and complicity by bringing me toasted peanuts or fixing my toys. Later, he’d slip out at the crack of dawn to clean my filthy car and fill up the tank before every trip back to Boston. My favorite moments were Papi and me in the kitchen, eating roasted batata with warm café con leche, talking politics and history before the rest of the household stirred. The mornings were always ours.

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Monday, March 4, 2024

Hiraeth

Yesterday's Sunday preaching was on the spiritual riches of believers in Christ. Today's devotional takes me to Ephesians 3:14-21, in which Paul prays that the church be able to grasp the all-too wonderful concept of the love of Christ. My reading also includes a poem by Wendell Berry which evokes to me the incomparable feeling of contentment. 

All goes back to the earth,
and so I do not desire
pride of excess or power,
but the contentments made
by men who have had little:
the fisherman's silence
receiving the river's grace,
the gardener's musing on rows.
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Sunday, March 3, 2024

"In our most mundane experiences, the God for whom we yearn is the same who gives us the grace to seek Him"

Sunday morning reading:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God (Romans 12:1-2).

And an excerpt from a poem by Brett Foster (Longing, Lenten):
The restless energy finally settles
as I pass the mirror. I peer into it.
My nose touches glass. Not much left,
already effaced, not even a cross
to speak of. A smudge. A few black soot stains
like pin points on the forehead. The rest
of the blessed ash has vanished to a grey
amorphousness, to symbolize... not much.
Except a wish for those hallowed moments
to be followed by sustaining confidence.

Jonathan Diaz's meditation (emphasis mine):
Foster gives weight to our yearning, pitting it against the “listless weight” which the spirit rejects. This yearning requires us to approach God in full awareness of our lack and spiritual poverty. Our devotion is imperfect, awkward, and, perhaps as a result, more earnest. It is in this same attitude that we present our bodies—imperfect and awkward—as living sacrifices. Of course, we also present them as holy. But that holiness is not the result of our own righteousness, just as our prayer is not the result of our own enlightenment. Because of course, it is “by the mercies of God” that the Apostle commands us to offer our sacrifice. Even—maybe especially—in our most mundane experiences, the God for whom we yearn is the same who gives us the grace to seek Him.

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Photo by Nanay, taken in Antique.

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Saturday, March 2, 2024

Two-way learning

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Learning is two-way. After lectures, I invite my students to ask questions. They signal a form of curiosity, if not comfort, that my students can come to me with things they're fascinated with or puzzled about. 

Yesterday, after my morning summary lecture on genomic technology and carcinogenesis inspired by Siddharta Mukherjee's All the Carcinogens We Cannot See in The New Yorker—an interesting title which plays around with Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See—my students asked questions. 

The first was about HeLa cells, a cell line derived from then-31-year old African American Henrietta Lacks who had cervical cancer. What is the specific mutation in HeLa? I said I didn't know exactly and I'd get back to them. (Active telomerase and aberrant chromosome structures are what I learned from my after-lecture readings.) I also told my students that there's a book (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot) and a movie.

The second was about whales and why they do not develop cancers more frequently than humans. The idea is that the more cells the organism has, the higher the chances of mutations to occur, and therefore the greater the chance of carcinogenesis. I heard about Peto's Paradox for the first time. It describes the "lack of correlation between body size and cancer risk." My first reaction to my student was, "Can you spell that out for me?" And my student, holding the microphone close to his mouth, spelled "Peto" for me. My second reaction: I said I loved whales. I'm truly fascinated by them. There's Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who escaped captivity and became a global celebrity. And there's the study on whale sounds using artificial intelligence. Those were totally unrelated responses, but my students seemed to like them. 

Preparing lectures is my excuse to unite my reading interests. Everything seems so connected.

After the plenary, I was tasked to stand as proctor as my students answered their problem set—a 30-item multiple choice exam. I roamed around the lecture hall. A hundred percent of the students I approached either blushed or smiled at me as I looked at their papers at the moment they were shading their answers.

(In the photo: Sir John and Ma'am Jean, staff members of the College of Medicine, helping me with my proctoring duties.)

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Sunday, February 25, 2024

After decades of friendship, her friends still can't get it right

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Nanay celebrated her birthday last night with her high school class. The dinner was at Uncle Puli's house in Banga. 

A poster named her Dra. Shirley Cathedral, with the "h," a common mistake that happens to all my family members. 

Happy birthday, mother dear! We praise God for your life! 

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Saturday, February 24, 2024

The past is another country

Thomas Mallon writes about nostalgia in the November 2023 issue of The New Yorker. As he concludes, he writes (emphasis mine):
Nostalgia goes even deeper than that, so deep that one wonders if it isn’t a neurological condition, something fundamental and immune to the vagaries of history. As people begin living beyond their Biblical allotment of seventy years, they experience the first exaggerated panics over forgetting a name or a date, which is usually remedied by a Google search. But then comes the growing realization that short-term memory has nothing like the staying power of the long-term variety. Mentally, the seven ages of man speed up their full-circling, until the past’s sovereignty over the present is complete. The further along one gets, the more one understands that the past is indeed another country, and that, moreover, it is home. Long-term memory’s domination of short may be a hardwired consolation that nature and biology have mercifully installed in us. 


Nostalgia is what I feel when I see children playing in the street, running around, getting dirty, still indifferent to the pleasures of day time naps. It is what I also feel when I drive past quiet streets lined by trees and greenery. 

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Friday, February 23, 2024

Piano and teaching

One of my favorite blogs is owned by the writer and professor, Alan Jacobs. As a teacher myself, I learn so much from him. On the first day of his Christian Renaissance of the Twentieth Century course, he played for his students "a few minutes of the first movement of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto."

He writes:
So one of the things I am doing in this class, and will be trying in other classes, is to get my students to spend five minutes listening to music. I forbid digital devices in my classes, so they just have their books and notebooks in front of them — they can of course be distracted from the music, but it’s not automatic, not easy. If listening is the path of least resistance, then maybe they’ll listen. I’ve started with five minutes, but I hope to work our way up to longer pieces. My dream — and alas, it is but a dream — is, one Holy Week, to sit together with my students and listen to the single 70-minute movement that is Arvo Pärt’s Passio.

This fascinates me. Playing music in class. I remember my neurology professor, Dr. Leonard Pascual, telling stories about playing the piano at the BSLR, the entire med school class jamming in songs. The BSLR was demolished a few years ago. Whatever happened to the old upright piano? 

I'm barely able to play the piano for myself—let alone for an audience. Each week, I carve a special hour for lessons with Ma'am Deb, my gracious teacher. My current piece is Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Maybe I can find a way to squeeze the piece in my introduction to my lectures of gene transcription.

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"I" and "E" confusion

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Untitled Spotted at a hospital parking lot, Koronadal, South Cotabato.

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Sunday, February 18, 2024

Our neighborhood

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After a late lunch, my cousin Hannah and I saw our Marbel neighbors, Uncle Ephraim and Auntie Eden, having a date in Gensan. They insisted we join them, but said we said, "Bag-o lang gid kami tapos kaon." Uncle Ephraim was in an accident that needed some stitches a few days ago, but other than that, his brain was clear of traumatic injuries. He was well enough to travel to Gensan to have a belated Valentine's date with his wife. 

“When I go to any place, whether it’s a neighborhood or country, the thing I’m most interested in finding out is how well people are treating each other on so many levels.”

Growing up in a quiet neighborhood is one of my life's great blessings. Our neighbors are, well, neighborly. When we were kids, Auntie Elsie and Uncle Boy would invite us in their home to play with their family computer. Auntie Norma would make us polvoron and see that we were properly fed, after we played patintero or pitiw on the street. Auntie Lingling would bring us fruit and cut flowers after her trip to the farm. Auntie Eden would alert us that someone was snooping around the house while we were away. 

A few days ago, as I was backing the pick up out of the garage (it had no back camera, which explained my tachycardia), Uncle Ephraim offered to be my driver, to which I said, "Di ta ka afford, Kol." 

He said, "Libre lang, Dok!" Retired, he had time on his hands.

Since I became a doctor, they've been calling me "Dok," a practice I'd normally dismiss with ,"Lance na lang, Kol," but they say it with neighborly pride, so I no longer pushed back. 

This also explains why I prefer to be called uncle, or angkol, instead of the more generic Tagalog term, tito, by my friend's kids. Angkol gives me a feeling of warmth and tenderness and familiarity. 

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Saturday, February 17, 2024

Somewhere in Antique

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Taken by Nanay on her trip to Antique with high school friends.

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The late magazines

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My copies—printed copies—of The New Yorker arrive at the most unpredictable times, usually a few months late. Last year, the magazine's marketing campaign captured my attention. I'd be given a few months of free subscription plus a free tote bag, the email said—a foretaste of the riches of the magazine's years of exemplary journalism and short stories—after which I would be charged an annual fee. By the time the free subscription ended, I had only received three copies, all of them arriving together at once through the ever-reliable PhilPost. At which point I forgot to discontinue the free subscription, and PayPal had already charged me for a year. The tardiness of their arrival does not, in any way, diminish my enjoyment of them. It is like observing the night sky from a rural farm: the light you're seeing is many light-years away, from stars so far out in the galaxies that had emitted such visual energies from before you were born. 

The magazines are stacked—I would not use the term, "displayed"—on a table in the living room. Although guests are welcome to them, they hardly ever notice the magazines. They are more entranced by Paul's needy approaches—our aspin believes he needs to welcome all guests by smelling their crotches, hoping to be rewarded by a prolonged and gentle belly rub—or by my mother's plants, which Nanay describes as unruly, at which point she would invoke the name of Michael, her gardener. "Tawagi na si Michael. Ipa-trim na ang hilamon," she would say. 

On this cool February morning, I read Eren Overbey's Point Blank, which was about his father's murder in Turkey. Then I read Rachel Aviv's profile of Joyce Carol Oates. Mornings are the moments when my head is clearest; those are also the times when I make to-do lists on a whim, half of which I never accomplish, such as finally making time to read Oates' novel I bought from the now-closed Booksale at KCC Gensan—a cultural tragedy. It was the only truly decent bookstore in the region.  What struck me the most from the profile is this line where Rachel Aviv quotes Oates saying that reading is "the greatest pleasure of civilization." I looked up and saw that the sun had not yet risen and that I was in no rush, suspending the cares of what was looking like a long day ahead. My heart was grateful. 

It was then that I remembered that my tote bag has never arrived—or hasn't arrived yet. You never really know how things work at PhilPost.

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Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Bumps and scratches

All of my sedan's scratches and bumps trace their origins in parking lots. 

The first damage was sustained in a hospital parking lot in 2021, when I eased the car into an open space. Having only driven my car for less than a week, my mind was calibrating and learning the critical concept of clearance, that practiced instinct of whether the Honda Civic would fit nicely in a space. The scratch on my car's right underside (after years of driving, I still haven't figured out a car's anatomy) I continue to attribute to my fault entirely, though I could make the argument that it could be due to poor architecture. I went home defeated. There's no feeling like scratching a brand new car and realizing it is damaged goods. My brother Sean, the more deft driver, said, "Kagamay ah! Tinguba lang ang pagpakay-o. Magasgasan pa na liwat." He then laughed, dismissing my complaint as a regular phenomenon of driving.

The second was in a mall. We were parked nicely on the first floor of the parking building. My cousin Hannah and I had fried chicken at Army Navy right after New Year's, in 2023. As we savored for lunch one of the best fastfood chicken in the world—and Chickenjoy is not even close—we returned to the parking lot and saw a commotion. The security guard was bent, looking at my car, while calling someone over the radio. "Imoha ni nga sakyanan, Sir?" he asked. I said yes. He pointed out a scratch in the bumper. I wouldn't even notice it if he hadn't pointed it out. The vehicle that did the damage was a red pick up truck. The CCTV had it recorded. But the driver ran away. At the police station, where we issued our statement, the police officer said, "Ah, hit-and-run." The car was hit; the driver ran away. I had no energy in me to chase after the irresponsible driver. We recovered the plate number from the footage—the erring car has been on several incidents. My car insurance covered the repair. The parts came two months later. 

The third was in another hospital parking lot, just a week ago. I was parked in my usual space. Backing up, a van scratched the bumper. The doctor-colleague who owned the van apologized profusely and said she'd cover the repair. I said, "It happens to the best of us." I meant it. But I also meant myself when I said "us." The car will get repaired today. I will have to leave it in the shop for 3-4 days. 

There is a sense in which scratching and bumping other people's cars in parking lots is better in the passive than in the active tense. This I should call to mind as I drive our family's pick up while I await the completion of repairs. 

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Sunday, February 11, 2024

Sunday morning with rain, Hermes Baby, and the Bible

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Feb 11, 2024, 6 am

Morning rain. The neighborhood looks gloomy. Even Paul, who is normally excited to begin his walk, looks sleepy, as if he'd had an all-nighter. In the corner of the living room, I read my Bible. My reading guide takes me to Exodus, where Moses receives the instructions from God. Moses, once an unwilling servant, is transformed by his meeting with God, Who speaks to him as a friend. The people rebel and sacrifice to idols. The passages display the supreme holiness of God and the wickedness of man. It also highlights the lovingkindness of God. God wants His people separate from the world. To distinguish them from the pagan peoples of the other lands, God instructs them through Moses to observe feasts and celebrations. The instructions are detailed. Feasts will force them to remember, as they are prone to forget.

My other reading takes me to Philippians, written by the great apostle Paul who is, scholars believe, in prison. Philippians is a joyful letter. One can rejoice despite difficult circumstances. To rejoice is a command. Paul reminds the growing and persecuted church to look over and beyond the present circumstances, and to praise God. There is rejoicing in the acknowledgment that in Christ, the Christian has everything. Paul calls all things—perhaps including his excellent education, his impeccable track record as a Pharisee, and his many other achievements, including the details of his pedigree—rubbish compared to the surpassing knowledge of knowing Christ Jesus as his Lord.

What else, truly, do I need when I have Christ?

Have a blessed Sunday. I write this using my Hermes Bay portable typewriter, which is delightful!

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Saturday, February 10, 2024

Jonathan Safran Foer's Here I Am

Untitled Aimless wandering in the mall brought me to National Bookstore. I headed to the corner of damaged books that would probably never find a home where they would be read and enjoyed. There I saw Jonathan Safran Foer's Here I Am in tatters. The front cover was partly ripped apart, but the pages smelled good. I got it for Php 151, on 80% discount. It's excellent writing about a Jewish-American family that's breaking apart, but in a super funny way. This came out many years after the author's last novel, which was also brilliant. This guy could write!

My tsundoku is growing. Worse (but not really), the number of books I have started but haven't finished is increasing. There's Manu Avenida's short story collection, Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries, Stephen King's Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three, Henry David Thoreau's The Journal (NYRB edition), Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass, and Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies. I hope to finish all these books before the year ends.

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Flowers in the neighborhood

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Friday, February 9, 2024

The research adviser!

Consultation with Group 4

I usually meet with my research advisees on Friday nights, via Zoom, while wearing pajamas. Two groups asked me to advise them in their clinical research topics. They're wonderful. These meetings last for no more than 30 minutes. Much of the work happens in Google Docs, where I make suggestions for line edits. They approve my suggestions, address my comments, and, hopefully give me some pushbacks, too. Ellaine's group sent me a strong first draft of their research proposal, which delighted me. The group has been hard at work. I can confirm it because there are always new edits in the live document. 

During the Zoom session, I'd ask a group member to summarize the key points of these meetings, since it's easy to lose track of the edits that had been agreed upon. Nurhana, of Group 4, emailed me an update recently, and I was pleasantly surprised that my photo was included. Nakapangbalay na and ready to hit the hay after the Zoom call. 

If I don't show up in parties, this is what I'm probably doing. Or maybe I'm just watching Apple TV's Slow Horses, which is apparently a book series!

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Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Scrubs

Just this week, I saw two doctors wearing scrubs, which looked great on them. In both instances, the scrubs were made by Figs, a company made popular by social media. Their pants were tapered at the ankles. I complimented them. 

As I walked away in both instances, I remember that one time when wearing a "scrub suit" thrilled me. It was like buying my first stethoscope, a ritual of imbibing the proverbial doctor's life. I bought my scrubs from stores near UP Manila. They were cheaper. Now, I've sworn them away. The v-neckline creates an optical illusion of a deep cleavage.

I like to wear a pair of jeans and a shirt. Now I'm partial to wearing rubber shoes or sneakers. Also, I bring my backpack everywhere now. 

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Friday, January 26, 2024

Shirt slogan of the lady in the motorcycle

The couple that fart together stay together.

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