Scarred people are beautiful

These words just came to my mind today. I remember that I read it during a retreat when I was in college.
With our culture's fascination for perfection, corrective/aesthetic surgery and the likes, there is no room whatsoever for scars. Scars are like badges of one's imperfections, mistakes, follies and weaknesses, and we never go around parading them, do we? Instead, we try, as much as we can, to hide them or to pretend that they do not exist.
If this is so with physical scars, how much more it is with emotional scars, those scars that nobody sees, yet they are so real that they could make or break a life.
Well, I have a deep respect for scarred people, especially those who carry deep scars that nobody sees. They have within them a resilience made possible by their contact, their deep contact with suffering. And they are wiser, too, as it is only in suffering that we somehow touch the mystery of life.
Of course not all scarred people manage to discover this resilience and wisdom. But they are much much ahead of us in terms of acquiring these evasive qualities, for they are acquired only through suffering.

"through his bruises you have been healed" (1 Peter 2:24)

I dreamed a dream

I've always loved this song. Though the song ends in a very sad note, it is very realistic. But I hope that I won't ever get tired of dreaming. But first, I've got to sleep in order to dream, no?

Life is not fair

The weather and the whole view outside my window bring me into a nostalgic mood. Why is life not fair? I've always thought that if I am good, people will also be good to me. If I am kind, I will also be treated kindly.
But I've learned that life does not always give me what I think is my due. It's like a crude awakening for me.
Then what can I do so that I will be treated fairly and live in peace with people and with the world?
Wrong question. I cannot do anything because it is beyond my powers to decide how others or life itself would treat me.
So how can I, at least, have a certain measure of peace? I know it isn't easy, but I've got to discover joy that is within me, which no person or circumstance can rob me of. As I said, it is not easy, but I have had moments when despite the abnormality of everything around me, I still survive. I do not say that I am smiling or that I am happy or my former cheerful self. But I am still breathing and surviving, so I guess I must have something within me.
Going around begging people to like me, or changing myself just so I would be accepted is a sure recipe for disaster and lack of self-esteem. People could be cruel, I've learned it the hard way; though this doesn't mean that I've given up on people.
The call is to go deeper and to drink from the fountain of living water, so that what I offer to people is not my needy self wanting to be satisfied, but an integrated person, or at least someone who is on a journey to becoming one, ready to offer and receive true love.

Serenity prayer

Thorn in the flesh

For several years I have struggled with a weakness. I remember that my prayers were always to ask God to cure me of this weakness as I seemed powerless, despite my best intentions and efforts. That magical cure never happened. But it is no longer a struggle for me. I mean, I didn't even realize when it was that it happened. I just know that it is no longer an issue. It doesn't even make me so preoccupied as before.

I have entered another phase in my life and it was provoked by a difficult experience. I've struggled for several months, moving from denial to self-accusation. Somehow I have managed to survive but I can still feel its aftereffects. I am tempted again to ask God to take away the pain, maybe to give me amnesia so that it wouldn't torture me anymore.

Then I look back to my past experience, and I am sure that this too will pass, that one day I am going to get back my smile. The thorn in the flesh is not a curse but a blessing. It reminds me of my creatureliness, and of the goodness of God.

Sharing the good news

Often it is easier for us to share gossip and bad news, but we aren't too free to share our realizations, the deep things we keep in our hearts. Maybe we are just afraid to bare our souls and be rejected.


I have come to the realization that I need to share with people because I have a good news to share. I thought it would sound boastful if I talk about God and how I see His hand working in me, and how I have realized that the most important thing in life is to have this personal relationship with Him, since this is the hinge that ties our whole life together.

Love is for the brave

Love is not just a sweet word. It is a choice of the courageous because it demands an asceticism that starts from the awareness that even my most beautiful and good word or gesture may not be at all motivated by pure love but by self-seeking.
Each day I am called to this journey of purification, to love even when I encounter indifference and rejection. It is actually the only way to purification. "If we love just those who love us, how can we be true children of God who makes the sun shine both on the good and the bad?" It is not easy and I can always find reasons to throw in the towel.
Paul's Hymn to love inspires me not to give up. I can always be on a journey to true love.
We never arrive if our measure is the love of Christ:
Love is always patient and kind; love is never jealous; love is not boastful or conceited, it is never rude and never seeks its own advantage, it does not take offence or store up grievances. Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but finds its joy in the truth. It is always ready to make allowances, to trust, to hope and to endure whatever comes. Love does not come to an end.
But there is no need to lose hope. Our experience of God's pure love that accepts us, warts and all, will help us in this difficult journey towards true love. It is the only journey worth staking our whole life in.