What does love look like?

What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.

-St. Augustine

Ergo, I have seen love. We have seen love.
Let us hasten to the poor and needy, those who are unwanted.
Let us not be blind to those who are experiencing misery.
Let us not be deaf to the sighs and sorrows.

It's not new when we hear that the self is becoming the center of life.
When selfishness is becoming a virtue to replace love.
Because of the fear that people may not love us in return.
Because of our insecurities, we choose to love ourselves.
It's true that it's difficult to trust other people and that we have to be cautious.
But we have seen and experienced love.
We could still see people who are not afraid to love.
Love still thrives even in the midst of anger and selfishness.

Love created love. Love is to be shared, it was never created to be kept all by ourselves.
Man's humanity lies in the fact that he has the ability to love.
This is what makes man different from any other creature.
For man to truly express his humanity and therefore to truly live, he has to love.
I share the same belief that love is something we do not learn, it is
already inside us, we have the choice of either letting it sleep until we die or waking it up. If we choose to just let it sleep, we could be dead even before we die. When we choose to wake it up, we are choosing to live for it is the very core of this life.

Deus caritas est. Not because we love but because He has loved us first.

respect

i am quoting from a text conversation with a friend, dated 12 January 2005. i went through my notes of philosophical conversations last weekend after attempting to organize my room and i found this one:

"we're all significantly different beings. what may calm your heart may not calm mine.
what may be noise to you may be music to me.
but would it mean that it's not God who's calming my heart?
or singing me that peaceful music?
God doesn't speak in one voice alone.
He can be every voice you can ever hear.
if only you can admit that you do not know everything.
then you can hear Him and learn with your heart."

this was part of our discussion about religious differences. i found these words to be worth pondering upon. i've observed that we could actually be judgmental about other people without looking at ourselves. especially when we see people who belong to different religions. we tend to think that the path we're walking on is the only path and the things we believe should also be the things that other people should believe. we tend to think that we're way better than others in terms of what we believe. respect. this is a word that is continuously losing its sense, it's perhaps dying. when people would just choose to close their minds. missing the very Truth. we choose to be deaf and blind to what other people believe. we fail to see or even fail to hear what they're doing and what they are saying. war isn't really far from possible if our minds are closed.we begin to judge people according to what they believe basing it from what we believe. if it happens that we don't believe the same things or see things the same way they do, we suddenly conclude that they are wrong, that they are committing terrible mistakes. the other day, a good friend told me that discussions that would include God isn't worth discussing at all. my friend must have learned that all it does is cause trouble that could ruin relationships. i think it's a wise observation. respect, as i see it, is not similar to apathy. respect is far from it, respect isn't being indifferent. it's the awareness of other people's beliefs or views whether we agree or not. it's simply seen or experienced when we listen to what other people say or when other people listen to what we are saying. it's when we treat other people how they're supposed to be treated. in the midst of religious or cultural differences, we have the universal concept of respect.

ennui

i remember when i was just ten years old. i woke up one morning and realized i am alive and it made me feel very lonely. i woke from a very deep slumber. i still remember that morning so vividly, the deep green stencil (leaves) on the wall and the rusty ceiling with cobwebs. i didn't know what time was it, for i didn't care much about time, i was too young to care or even worry about time. i was just learning how to read time. my time, to tell you the truth, was composed of my parents, they were the ones who told me what and when to do things. they were the stuff my time was made of.
let me go back to that morning. the room was bright, the windows were open. i listened to the sound of the fan. the moment i opened my eyes, i just stared at the ceiling, thinking about God was optional, i didn't think it was required. elementary years. all i knew then was that God was someone we always discussed in our religion class. i really didn't know much. and i didn't know that i didn't know much. knowing was something i didn't know at that age. my parents just sent me to school. and i was, to be honest, too lazy to go to school. it was something i found unnecessary. life was going to school five days a week and playing (upon parents' consent) on weekends.
that morning. i didn't know what day it was, but i'm quite sure it wasn't a weekday. my parents didn't wake me up to tell me that i had to go to school. it was a day i should be happy about but i wasn't. it made me really lonely. it must be because i realized that rest was just saturday and sunday. and the 'not-so-good' days start from monday to friday. i didn't know that the society made these schools, where children could stay and 'learn' while their parents work. i was probably too lazy that time, and i don't know if i still am. school made me think that life could be so boring. it wasn't my concept of living and enjoying life.
this morning i was thinking about that morning, almost fourteen years ago. what would have happened if i rejected attending school? everything would be different from what is happening now. i have a clear notion of time. i somehow learned how to plan. i'm living my life independently. obedience isn't bad after all. and boredom, as i saw it before, could be fun sometimes. and i was never really wrong when i trusted my parents.
for the times i believed that they have made me suffer, i ask for pardon.

evol

a good friend observed that the word 'love' is often mentioned almost in every entry on this blog and said it's becoming trite. i asked my friend, 'do you easily get tired of the words you often see or hear?' and answered 'it's something i never really thought of, probably, probably not'. which leads me to another question, are there words that we really never get tired of using, seeing or hearing?
maybe i could replace the word 'love' with 'evol' so that it would always have the same freshness and would never run dry. but the emotion would never be the same again, one would have to rationalize the concept of 'evol' as something similar to that of 'love'. it's never easy to introduce new words, but it's something one could always do, what is more difficult is to introduce new meanings, new sense. reflecting about that comment made me think that we could really get tired of words, reading or hearing the same things again and again. our lives are, in a way, dictated by words and the meaning attached to them. most people i know want to see or hear something new. life for them, has become monotonous. some have tried to be creative enough so that they could cope with monotony. thinking of what could make a day different from the other, be it an activity or a change in one's lifestyle. but some people i've met would, and i'm amazed by this, still use the same old words but give out a really good smile, a very happy disposition in life.
i'm wondering how they could maintain the freshness of the same old words they've been using since they were born. they don't experience any monotony. every time you see and hear them speak, you could see it in their eyes, the awe and the life. they didn't need to create new words, they never got tired of the same old words. they speak as if it's their first time to use those old words. enthusiasm, that's what i always see in these people. i believe newness is something we could get from within... it's not what we always see or hear but how we see or hear. if we choose to let the words fade or not. it's never really difficult if inside us is someone who would always have the awe, the ability to wonder even in the midst of 'monotony'.
evol is creative. it makes all things new.

absolute uncertainty

There are only three sorts of people: those who have found God and serve him; those who are busy seeking him and have not found him; those who live without either seeking or finding him. The first are reasonable and happy, the last are foolish and unhappy, those in the middle are unhappy and reasonable.

-Blaise Pascal

(My personal reflection brought me to the mystery of prayer and the life of prayer. This is perhaps the first time I will be talking about God, I would just like to make it clear that I have no intention of preaching or even contradicting others, as I respect people of different faith or beliefs. If you have queries or other interesting ideas, feel free to ask or tell me.)

Prayer, as I see it, is simply a dialogue with God. It may sound really easy, but it's not. Back in elementary and even high school, prayers were verbally recited as far as one's memory could go, they were words which one had to memorize (out of force if i may say), these words sounded really holy and they were to be said seriously, they were words i really didn't understand, i just recited them for me to show how obedient I was to the teachers, whom I thought never committed any sin and were too clean to teach us how to pray. I never really knew the true value of prayer. Come university life, I joined a religious community and became inactive for two years, went back and served as its head. I would say that my spiritual life grew in the university parish, it was when I prayed with my eyes closed, talking to God. I didn't really care if he was listening or not, I just talked to him and tried listening to him sometimes. Just last year, that's two years after my stay in the university, I was rationalizing if I really needed to pray, I kept on asking to whom am I praying to? If he is really there, does he answer my prayers or is it just me deciding if I'll work and get what I'm praying and what I prayed for? It's not easy to believe someone I do not see or even feel the presence of. It's not easy to pray if the mind is full of uncertainty. I was simply claiming that I could live without praying, and yes, I tried it myself, I tried not to pray or even rejected prayer as something senseless or even useless. I could sleep peacefully without praying, I did that for about three months, and during those times, it wasn't really peaceful and I wasn't really happy with what I was doing. I tried praying again, and I have to say it's different now, it's more of the will that's working, not mere emotions. Doubt, that's perhaps what the rational mind does, but faith, something above reason itself, tells me that He exists and that He is always listening. I'm beginning to accept that a life of prayer is a life of struggle. it's when the heart begins to say something the mind knows nothing of.