Grace

When I was still in college, a friend of mind gave me a copy of an essay by Paul Tillich on “grace”. I guess it was what I (then a troubled young man) needed. I would like to share them with you today.

“Do we know what it means to be struck by grace? It does not mean that we suddenly believe that God exists, or that Jesus is the Savior, or that the Bible contains the truth … It would be better to refuse God and the Christ and the Bible than to accept Them without grace. For if we accept without grace, we do so in the state of separation, and can only succeed in deepening the separation. We cannot transform our lives, unless we allow them to be transformed by that stroke of grace. It happens; or it does not happen. And certainly it does not happen if we try to force it upon ourselves, just as it shall not happen so long as we think, in our self-complacency, that we have no need of it. Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: ‘You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted.’ If that happens to us, we experience grace. After such an experience we may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed.”
I guess in the end, transformation and action is the most important. As my favorite basque saint would sometimes say: love is better shown in deeds than in words.

Nation Building

Can we ever be united as a people to build this nation or shall we continually shoot ourselves in the foot by trying to destroy each other and our country? Can we be, for one moment, stop thinking about punishment and who is to blame, and start anew, forget the past and work to eradicate poverty? Can we be a nation of winners rather than whiners?

Mga Haka Haka

We Filipinos are naturally opinionated and tsismoso. It is something that I love about being Filipino. And now with advances in technology, we can bring the level of our being opinionated and tsismoso to a new level – cyberspace. I am recently retired and with a of time in my hands. In this blog, I hope to share with you my opinions – serious, inane, illogical, far-out, outrageous, and irreverent (I hope). For what is life if we continue to parrot what the pundits are already saying in the Inquirer or Tribune or Philippine Star? So tara na and lets engage in real cyber dialogue.