hope

nothing beats waking up to a home filled with music.

i remember, when i was younger, i'd wake up to ottmar liebert's lively flamenco pieces which would accompany papa's breakfast before he went to work. on weekends, even till this day, as i'd trudge sleepily down the stairs in the mornings, that familiar sense of hope and peace would seep in as the likes of nick drake, enya, george harrison, neil young, pink floyd, etc, greeted my ears and as i saw papa having his morning breakfast and reading the newspapers in the garden outside. like today.

it is good friday. this morning, as i was reading the papers consumed with the strife of humanity, i was filled with, not gloom, but hope, so much hope. for in every article that was choked with suffering, the darling buds of human goodness were also found to be blooming through the crevices of darkness. there are always people who are fighting, raging against the dying of the light, and that gives me hope.

it was maundy thursday yesterday, the night jesus washed the feet of his disciples. the night he gave of himself. that same night, he experienced the depths of human loneliness in the garden of gethsamane. on this night every year, the holy eucharist is transfered to the altar of repose in all catholic churches to signify when jesus prayed and wept alone in the garden that night. it is a catholic tradition to spend some time at the altar of repose on maundy thursday, to "stay awake at least an hour with him."

as i spent some time at the altar, i realised that in that moment, noone could touch his loneliness, his great anguish. the airconditioning was ridiculously cold and i was shivering under my thickest (by singapore's standards) cardigan. i recalled the countless nights when i was in my very own garden of gethsamane, crying alone in the early hours of the morning in a park somewhere, skin all cold not because of the air but because i felt that i had lost everything. i felt that noone could touch my loneliness then. i remembered how i scratched myself to get the pain out and felt contented when i saw the angry marks on my skin.

and last night, as i recalled the moments of how my nails dug into skin, i would immediately have a vision of jesus bent double in agony at the same time, as though it was his skin i had dug into instead. and as i recalled the nights i spent praying for god to just not let me ever wake up again, daring him, challenging him, provoking him, i would instantly see that same image of the tormented christ again. i felt ashamed, that as he carried the weight of sin that night, for me, i wanted to destroy and only destroy, me, the very one he was dying to save.

i marveled at how even jesus had experienced what it felt to pray so hard for something only to be rewarded with more pain. he had prayed, "Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still, not my will but yours be done." he prayed so fervently that "his sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground." yet, even after all that, he was betrayed, scourged, made to carry the cross, crucified on that very same cross between two criminals.

i had almost missed the point when i was reminded that the crucifixion had to come before the resurrection. i soon recalled the chain of events that transpired last year, at this very same time, that changed the course of my life drastically. it was a painful experience, filled with much rejection, uncertainty and confusion. it still stings, believe me. yet, if it did not happen, i would still be in a sorry state of succumbing to who i wasn't. i shudder to think what that would be like. for sure, i would have been totally off-course in the path of fulfilling my dreams.

totally.