It’s so hard to blog about my trip to Thailand because I’ve reserved an entire notebook that if published will be just like a book. This simply means that there is a multitude of information, people, places and experiences that can be written down describing the country, the culture and the people. Looking back at it now, these are the key things I re-learned in Thailand:
1) Faith is an eclectic expression – I was waiting for mass to start at the Holy Redeemer Church in Bangkok. I wanted to dispose myself so I sat still and started repeating a Jesuit phrase (btw, repeating phrases in disposing one’s self for prayer is a Carmelite method). As the Eucharist began – I listed to a vibrant all Filipino choir singing English praise songs and the homily of a (I think) Nigerian priest who had the fire of Martin Luther King. To top this eclectic spiritual experience, I was sitting in a row of people who were speaking Bisaya and Ilocano inside a church that looked like the Thailand’s Grand Palace with a golden statue of the Risen Christ towering a catholic altar. Nice.
2) My ten days in Thailand was filled with beauty, simplicity, courteousness and mildness – things that I took home with me.
3) Fr. Bom’s 1st homily as a priest gave words to live by – follow one of Christ’s words or works in the bible – even just one for every day.
4) Filipinos may have much woundedness and limitations that we carry around even when we travel to foreign countries (especially in a tour group) but we still love each other anyway and continue to be compassionate to our sisters and brothers who sometimes get on our nerves.
5) There’s nothing greater than traveling thousands of miles to be exposed and free of my comfort zones and see and learn new things as an initiation into real adulthood that would require – confidence to hold one’s ground, independence, discernment and the ability to use diplomacy and effective communication even without words.
1 comments:
dugo ilong ko!....
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