Light rain

Rainy mornings on Sundays are the best. 

It is a light rain, gently massaging the earth to wakefulness, but the relative darkness makes it hard for creatures like Paul to emerge out of their sleep. But I’ve been awake since 1 am. I squeezed in a few hours of naps, but my sleep was light that I could remember my dreams and even manipulate how they’d turn out. Dreaming is watching an original film for free. A good, satisfying, and restful sleep is one of God’s great gifts and clearly one of the most underrated pleasures of life. I wonder what our dog dreams about.

At 6 am, when everyone at home is awake, and Manong had just brewed a fresh batch of coffee, I play “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” on the piano. I’m reminded of the sorrows of the world.

My mother’s uncle died yesterday due to complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He was a smoker until weeks ago; his children never fell short of warning him against the dangers of cigarettes, but he lived a full life. He was a kind father to my mother’s cousins.

The wife of my lolo’s dearest friend, whose family now takes care of our farm in Surallah, is in serious condition in the hospital: a big stroke and a severe kind of pneumonia.

A friend in church just learned his wife has a large mass in the mediastinum; she is due for a biopsy to confirm the presence of malignancy.

The song goes:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus 

Look full in His wonderful face

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim

In the light of His glory and grace.

Where else can we turn to but the heavens? The precious promises of God, His enduring and abiding love—they are rays of sunshine to the heart and soul.

*  *  *













Comments

  1. UnknownTue Jul 08, 05:43:00 PM GMT+8

    aww, Paul has a rug to sleep on. living his best life
    awake since 1am! hope you get better sleep if that's not by choice. using a sleep mask has helped my sleep tremendously. wondering if a weighted blanket would help even more but it's just way too hot for that sort of thing

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Afternoons at home

Image
Rare are the afternoons when I have idle time for myself. But yesterday was something else. There arrived an unexpected blessing—a pocket of sweet time when I had nothing to do.   As soon I parked the car, I greeted my mother in her room, interrupting her Netflix viewing. I headed out to the living room. The sun was glorious but not scathing. Photographers call the late tropical afternoons the golden hour. I went back to my desk to grab the camera, whose existence I only recall when I travel.  I jolted Paul from his nap. "Dali na!" I said. He yawned, stretched, and trailed me. After three years, we've figured out his body language. He was waiting for a treat, a belly rub, or some play time that involves an old tennis ball—or all of the above. "Hulat lang, Paul, ha?" I speak to him like I would to a three-year old. Nanay's small garden is a place of tranquility. You'd hear birds chirping. You'd see nests on top of the tree. They must feel saf...
Keep Reading

Life happened

Image
I know. I don’t post here as often as I should. When I do, I hardly write anything at all. I post fillers: random photos of my daily grind; quotations from books and articles I like to commit to memory; summaries of my meditations; epiphanies and random links to miscellaneous items I hope to return to but don’t. When I scroll through my blog history, I’m surprised that I’d posted about a film I would have otherwise forgotten if I hadn’t written about it in the recent past. In the early days of this blog I wrote many entries each month. There were years when I’d post something daily. It was fun. Updating blogger.com was enmeshed in my routine as toothbrushing; my day wouldn’t be complete without it. And then I gradually skipped it. The short of it is: life happened. And the internet became a dangerous place. I became more mature and private, relishing the absence of web footprint, while the world—including my circle of family, friends, and acquaintances—was only discovering the joys ...
Keep Reading

Once upon an island

Image
May 30, my parents’ wedding anniversary, a date on the calendar we still celebrate, seven years after Tatay has passed on. In my mind—in my family’s mind—Tatay’s memory is alive. We speak about him, in random circumstances. Over dinner, for example. And my faith tells me: he is alive, in the fellowship of saints in heaven, laughing and singing and feasting and supremely enjoying the presence of God. I imagine him looking down, saying, “Dali na kamo diri. Kadugay sa inyo.” But the last days of May found us in a plane, from General Santos, with a brief stopover to Manila that would take us to Busuanga. If you’d spotted us at NAIA, you would have noticed Manong and me, holding on to our mother in laughter, provoking her with random comments that got her riled up; or, more correctly, she holding on to us, complaining about her eyeglasses that still give her trouble with depth perception. She is adorable. She is getting older. We make most of our time to take her aro...
Keep Reading