WHO WOULD HAVE thought I could go cold turkey for three months? When, not too long ago, my libation outings were unabated weekly, give or take a sudden, “justified” occasion that calls for a liquid session. The plan was not deliberate, rather, a recent resolve to be chaste, obedient and poor compelled the alcohol away from my bad habit, like prayer packages come in the form of. More so when I read that Episcopalian convert, Fr. Daniel Calloway, practices the COP discipline. And his life was way worse than Augustine’s before he became a saint! Like his conversion, there is no telling when the Holy Spirit ordains the time. In his case, his itinerant family kept moving from place to place as often as the transfer of his military father and, in Japan, he found himself alone with no friends and the only family he had usually out working. Then his eyes caught his mother’s books on the shelf, among which was Mary and her apparitions to the Fatima children. Chancing at killing time with whatever he could find, he flipped open the book. The pull was such that he could not push it down. The turnaround moment was when the Blessed Virgin answered his silent question with, “You do not have to change to love me.”
That rang very audibly, clearly, powerfully to me, a wastrel of sorts who has found the handle apparently, yet, owed to excursions that pulled me away from the narrow and straight, suffered setbacks brought about by wrong turns. So I was very, very visibly happy when Ate Rose, Block Rosary Coordinator for our street, offered to bring Mary to our house. And we get to keep her for the whole month of September! My joy was probably infectious because my wife prepared the place where she would be installed (bought garlands for her) and personally welcomed Ate Rose and her companion, Sr. Tess, on the day of the transfer. And, while she begged off from leading, prayed with me, the welcome prayer. It got better. Since Ate Rose’s birth month is October, like my wife’s and mine, she allowed us to keep Mary for that period as well!
It was refreshing, after being stuck at home for a spell, to stroll along Holy Spirit Drive. The sun did not make me sweat under my Petron cap and Bench collar. An insistent note because the treasured items are gifts from Sis Irene and Fr. Jigs, respectively, although the gap between them spans a decade.
Going there in a tricycle gave me enough air to ignore the warm weather. When I got off at The Generics Pharmacy, the driver offered to wait for me but I smiled and said I was running other errands. The lady at the counter was sorry Colchicine was out of stock so I walked to yonder Mercury. Here, the realization of discipline being necessary to the country really hit me. The security guard was doing a good job of seeing to it that the ratio of customers’ entry and exit was 1:1. So I was patiently waiting for my turn to enter when a fat woman from behind tapped on the glass and, as soon as a man exited, took that to mean as her entry, totally cutting me off without as much as a by-your-leave. When it was my turn to go in, the guard was still shaking his head and murmuring “the nerve of some people.” Fatso’s fly didn’t hurt the orderly ointment inside the pharmacy. I was happy to be corrected by the same guard to stand on a marked place and dutifully complied. Like me, the others looked patiently waiting their turn. Although another fat woman wiggled her way into the front of the line whose window was being manned by someone she apparently knows by their conversation (the counter lady not minding at all her chum’s condescenscion). (Do people really have to throw their literal weight around? Are there really insensitive equivalents who tolerate the imagined entitlement?) Then the man at a window called for the next customer. The lady in front of me asked if I was a senior citizen and, when I said yes, offered for me to take her place. It’s still a moral universe, I smiled, even if the counter man said they also ran out of my med. I was thinking on my way out, thanking the still efficient guard as I exited, that there should’ve been no need for drastic, stringent measures to straighten out the pasaway population if we were normally orderly from the very beginning. Falling in line, waiting our turn, not cutting anyone off, not, pushing one’s way ahead of the rest, not putting one over anybody.
In 2011, when Japan was hit by a massive earthquake-tsunami, there was panic, all right, but not in buying. In supermarkets, people were polite, not pushing their way to get to the front of the line, even letting the elderly go ahead of them. Whereas, in the country, it is not only the frantic mannner that people react to the crisis that gets noticed but also the attendant hoarding that is lamented. Why can’t people keep from forgetting the self at times that call for solidarity. Which, perhaps, adds to the discipline concern covering many sectors of the community. More than ever, now is the time for society to link arms with the government and pool their energy and resources instead of throwing brickbats at each other. The pandemic is larger than life, a dread that needs the coming together of hands, heads and hearts to rue not the destruction the crisis left in its wake but to embrace the exhortation to link arms in rebuilding the ruins of the pandemic and hands in prayer that the crisis leaves earlier than expected.
So that I may not forget, I wrote down Diane Berke’s 6 tips for choosing blessing to expedite the country’s (and yours and my) healing process:
Be honest about your feelings, not by merely appearing enlightened but keeping those feelings toward the light. Follow all protocols on the pandemic and infect the others, before either of you get infected by it.
Recognize the price for holding on. If you see yourself as a victim, you are susceptible to a deceased immune function and a host of stress-related disorders. Lack of discipline and stubbornness are bad examples to emulate.
Set a healing goal aligned with God’s will. With healing as the certain outcome, the unknown timing and route will not matter. Align your plan with that of the authorities and increase your tribe of followers.
Affirm His presence and power to bring forth healing. A Psalm says “Be still and know that I am God, at work in this situation.” Help God help us by helping one another.
Ask for help, reach out. God promised that we will never be left comfortless. But we need to reach out and ask. As it takes a village to raise a child, we need all the help we can get to combat Covid.
Be open to heal and heal. Be receptive to direction from God’s Voice. When healed, help the healing of others.
Don’t give up. Be like Jacob who wrestled with an angel of God all night, got wounded, and would not let the angel go when dawn approached until the angel gave him a blessing. With God on our side, we shall overcome.
Share your healing until, at the deepest level, when we have demonstrated that pain gives way to joy, anger to forgiveness, anguish to love, and discipline to crisis control, our lives become examples of those possibilities for everyone. If a virus like Covid 19 can spread like wildfire, so can a natural, God-given gift of shared compassion. Healed, let us pray in thanksgiving and continuously beg for His eternal mercy. Amen.