I see you

Photo: Andrew Lin

— Swing Dance Meditations: Part 7 —

Acts of love happen often on the dance floor. Platonic acts: Friendly gestures, handshakes, asking to dance, thanking the partner after each dance... And in addition, drawing from my experiences learning martial arts on the dojo, floorcraft, making sure my friends are not swinging into pillars, fanning them with my hand fan, and letting people know that they are allowed to rest. I rack my brain looking out for everyone, at least, as many people as bandwidth can allow.

I was brought up by very affectionate parents who communicate love through touch. Mom is very much a hugger, and Dad likes to initiate handshakes. Dad initiates handshakes for any or no reason at all; he would do it at any moment if he felt like it, at home, on the road... Touch has become a way with which I receive and communicate reassurance. 

I realise that this has made me and my sisters outliers in Singaporean society. The average Singaporean parent communicates love through providing means. They do not say "thank you" when presented with small favours, but treat them as expected. They become surprised and curious to see me fistbump my sister so often, or thank my parents when they give me something. It surprised me, in turn, to see how much of my family culture comes off as strange to an outsider.

I experience love when I feel seen. I had the problem of not being able to take a complement and responding to complements by diminishing it or deflecting them. The spell was broken in August last year in Bangkok by a dance partner who told me that I had good situational awareness. We just had had a class in a stuffy dance hall. When it came time for a break, I took off into the service corridors and got the air conditioning units running. And she saw me doing it.

This was a complement that said, "I see you."

Nathanael asked, 'How do you know me?' 

Jesus replied, 'Before Philip came to call you, I saw you under the fig tree.'

Nathanael answered, 'Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the king of Israel.'

(John 1:48-49)

"I see you like Jesus saw Nathanael under the fig tree."

I came home to Singapore and made more friends who see something in me and say it to my face. I learn to take them as graciously as I can. I learn to see my friends and complement them as well, sometimes to return the favour, sometimes to pay it forward, since Allah doesn't care about the accounting.

I use dances to sharpen the skill of seeing the other. I learn not merely to treat my partner as a conduit to practice, as an audience, or as an instrument, but to have a conversation with them. I learn about each partner's dispositions and preferences, and put them into a mental dossier, itemised: Do they prefer certain moves, do they not prefer others? Do they tend to turn me down? What aspects of the dance are important for them? What do they tend to wear? Are they energetic on the dance floor, or are they phlegmatic? Do they have a preference in the music: tempo, genre, intensity? Are they open to new moves, or exotic moves from other traditions? Do they make eye contact, and do they rely on it? I remember things that people say; I act on them and they find out about it through the dance.

I receive love when I feel seen during the dance. To give an example, we have a follow in the community who dances in a strange way: instead of being passive like most other follows, she frequently takes the wheel, and lead me into moves. She imitates my moves, and I imitate hers. She brings in strange moves from other dances and laughs while doing it. She is also a maniac who makes eye contact with me when dancing with other people.

Since I treat dance as a way to build character, I have been dancing different ways from month to month. For this reason, I feel exhilaration when I see my friends change their dance game, because this is a sign that they are growing too, and that I am not alone on this path of growth, after all.

I Can't Run Away From Myself

Lindy Hop Spiritual Meditations: Part 2

It was the Sunday after my-ex-and-I's wedding plans were cancelled. I was praying in St. Iggy's. It was a traumatic weekend, so I was praying extra hard. Being brutally honest, my prayers are most often a one-sided affair where I vent and Allah takes his time replying to my texts, to the extent I might doubt if he is really listening. 

To address this tendency, the Catholic praxis (as I was taught) would be to get one's ears perked up and predisposed to pick up Allah's hints, as the fact is that he is always saying something, even when he appears to be silent, and the rest of y'alls just too obtuse to hear anything most times

I heard Allah loud and clear that day. I was no superstitious oik who sees Jesus on toast or Mary on a daffodil, but I was pretty desperate, and therefore open!

You might have heard it said in spiritual testimony that the voice of Allah is "small, yet firm". I experienced it as a thought that builds and builds until it filled the room. The thought was this:

SHE CAN RUN AWAY FROM ME

I CAN'T RUN AWAY FROM MYSELF

During our last conversation and the unraveling of the last tendrils of our life together, my ex had played the psychologist and said I had "self-esteem issues". I have no idea which Sigmund Freud sleep paralysis demon inspired her to say this; besides, I am sure psychoanalysis was crossing a line, so it couldn't have been a thought from my own mind, or planted in me from her, because I was still very mad at her for leaving. So, this could only have come from above — I can't run away from my own issues.

The other odd thing was that I experienced this message as a Consolation. Imagine feeling at peace after being called out for your shit! Yet, here we are.

St. Iggy's

The Will of Allah

Lindy Hop Spiritual Meditations: Part 1

If I were someone else overhearing me say that I joined the Swing Dance community in Singapore because it was the Will of Allah, I would have laughed myself out of the room, because what the hell is even that

I am dead serious, however.

How the heck did I end up in Swing Dance?

The coincidences and chance encounters that led me to the dance floor were myriad: The first cause, for context, was a bad break-up and the me suddenly having sweet fucktons of free time on hand, free from wedding prep.

The proximal cause, however, was an Olafur Eliasson exhibition at the Singapore Art Museum (interim campus) where I wandered into, feeling lost. My friend Joseph Chua, who I had lost touch with for many years, appeared again to me, and he invited me to watch a dance performance where he and a few other mates would be performing in. This was a dance that goes with an installation of rigged colourful lights that shone onto a semi-permeable wall across the room, so that any one (dancers especially) could cast moving shadows that looked interesting.

No one warned me that there was gonna be audience participation

So I found out about that bit when one of the other dancers took me by the hand out of the blue. She led me to the middle of the shadow room, and we danced something. It wasn't Swing and it wasn't the athletic and expressive flourishes that the dancers were doing right before; I remember it was fast and I just bullshitted all my moves. But, it just felt so good

In Catholic praxis, we had been taught that in prayers one could come to a place of desolation or a place of consolation. This bit was definitely a consolation; which was poignant, considering that I was in the middle of a very desolate part of my life. I took some time to ponder this fact.

I still haven't explained: why Swing Dance, out of all possible dances?

Back in October 2022, Miguel de Jesus was heading a cell group under the Archdiocese. Among the group members was Arisa McIntyre, who was very involved in Swing dancing. She invited Miguel to Aliwal Arts Centre one Monday evening, alongside Mark Pereira, and then Miguel invited me. That Monday night, 2 Opus Dei members found Lindy Hop for the first time.

My first impression of the group was that, even for someone from the famously shady Opus Dei, that the community seemed cult-like. People were smiling way too much, seemed way too happy, were too friendly to outsiders, and everything was self-referential i.e. about the dance. However, after the Olafur Eliasson exhibition, where I was demurring which kind of dance class to get into, these qualities were also what came to my mind.

Lindy Hop is a happy dance. It grew out of the culture of slaves, and then of the working class. It is a silly dance. It is a dance danced by people who do not take themselves too seriously. These people live a life liberated from their harsh inner voices. They put adequate cardio into their exercise regimes. And, I think, I would like to be more like them.

What about my sister? How come she joined too?

I got her into it. Jamie could do with opportunities to meet new people. There was a discount for people who sign up for class with a friend, besides. 

Villain Arc

Screenshot: Mr. Queen 철인왕후 (2020)

It is Lent again. A strange season in the liturgical calendar where one deepens their relationship with God. For me, however, it has always been a time of the year where strange and out-of-pocket things happen in my spiritual life, most of them also distressing. Presently I am knackered out of my mind but unable to fall asleep, the second or third night in a row. Insh'Allah, I will find out what the problem is by the time these paragraphs are done.

I came out of the engagement six months ago. I had experienced it not as some sort of calamity, as my friends believed, but like a disaster narrowly averted. It became clear in retrospect that I was not happy in the relationship, and that I had let my grievances fester. I did not sound them out because (1) I did not know how to put those feelings in words, and (2) that suffering in life is penance, that penance leads us to sanctifying grace, and one should just put up with them rather than complain. The implications of this realisation is momentous; to move any further, I have to shed these assumptions in the praxis of my own life. Very inconveniently, these have been formed in me by my peers and advisors in the church, who have been good to me and whom I look to as role models.

I want to become better, but not in the direction my ex would have preferred that I take, nor the priests, not even my friends in the Work— nor the sycophantic aunties who orbit the priests' cassock hems in the parish, nor the genteel parents of twelve children, brought up to become poster children of devoutness, nor the trolls of online Catholicism who compete with each other on the extremeness and disagreableness of their views— No, I will become a villain in all of their eyes, following the will of only Allah.

I WILL WAKE UP, I WILL FALL ASLEEP, ON HIS COMMAND ONLY

I have wasted all that time trying to be good in others' eyes. I broke my back for my daily commutes to work and to church together. My colleagues made huge strides in work; as for my extra hours, I wasted them on the road. I took my command from people who lived next to a tabernacle, when my own house is hours away. I wasted my time trying to fulfil my pious duties. I neglected even the birthday of my own mother. I cultivated values which clashed with my upbringing, and aggrieved my parents. I robbed myself of rest, I became cranky and cantankerous. I had become a monster in my family's eyes without knowing. 

I wasted two years wooing the ex-fiancée. I drew close with her who only put up with me without loving me. I wasted two years liking what she liked and being where she lived, and she would not do the same for me. All the meals I ate together with her now tastes to me as like hogswill. I reject the merest thought and memory of them; I'd throw them up if I could, as if I have just eaten a bucket of slugs.

In the wake of this rejection, what comes in its place? My sense of self, my authentic and private pleasures; my family, who have been so loyal to me. The Will of Allah made himself known to me last September. First my sister, who showed up randomly on the street when I was the most distressed, then an old friend and his troupe of dancers, who showed up and dragged me in for a dance.

I DANCE TO HIS WILL

A consolation— People have said to me, a guy ought to learn to dance, or that this dance floor is where you find your mate. I've not said this to anyone but family before now, but the Will of Allah was what got me dancing, and everything else is secondary motivations. 

The ex-fiancée hated frivolity. She hated adventure. She hated expressiveness. She hated that I talked to diverse people different from myself and from her. She hated that I loved all these things. But now, I think, that I have been restraining myself too much, and did not love them nearly enough. I realise to my horror that, by this learned reticence, I risked hacking off my own limbs to be buried in her coffin. 

From this Lent and onwards, instead of posing haughty and smart in the corner of the room, I shall make a fool of myself on the dance floor. Instead of following the lyrics of someone else's jam, I shall belch Turkish Flamenco to an unprepared audience. I will ditch my suit for bell bottoms. I will do difficult things, I will learn skills on a steep curve, I will kill it at work. Time is precious, I am close to Death, and I have already let too much of it pass fruitlessly.

Letter to Benoît-Joseph Labre

Why do I do this? Why do I head out to town on Monday nights to visit tent cities, why do I seek out the drifters loitering at the street corners? Why do I press a dinner into their hands so insistently, when they have not pestered me for it? Why do I seek out their company?

I have no answer. At least, I have no good answer. I look into my own heart and find no saintly motivation. Beneath my involvement in the Labre programme is a veritable hodgepodge of basal instincts and emotions, the same as those who govern all of the rest of my decisions. Though I have in the back of my head an awareness that Jesus and/or the Pope have at various points exhorted the rich to help the poor, these other emotions are presented to me with such immediacy that they threaten to drive me fucking insane, if I were not to act on them.

What are they?

FEAR

Some time in Summer 2012, I hopped off a ferry at Tallinn. The first person who greeted my arrival at Estonia was a drifter. And he pestered me: do you not have two euros on you? Do you not have five euros on you?

This was when I was a helpless intern in Helsinki. I travelled often, usually alone. I felt vulnerable all the three months of that stay. I relied entirely on dumb luck and goodwill navigating countries where no one spoke my language well. But this man, he spoke English. He was like me.

He WAS ME

I imagined myself in the event of a botched journey across the Baltics, losing all my stuff and having to beg for euros at the Port of Tallinn in perfect English.

I gave him the euros of course. I wanted people to be giving me euros in the unlikely but not impossible scenario where that happens. 

And even though in Ottawa (much later) I had been able to wait for my paperwork with a roof over my head, I felt very much among the homeless, with whom I spent long afternoons in the public libraries, and blended in with them.

TERROR

I moved to Cleveland in April 2019. This would be a year-long contract which would see extensions to 2 1/2 years. The so-called honeymoon period of one who comes to live in a spanking new country in this case lasted approximately 0d 0h 0min 0s. I am immediately overtaken with a sense of oppressive dread and constant terror about Cleveland (and the United States by extension) which lasted many months. Let me explain why this was the case:

1. It has been a habit for my parents to remind me to do my research on the "good" and "bad" parts of town before I went to any place in the United States, having lived in Inland WA and Downstate NY in the 1980s and experienced many close brushes with death and tragedy, all of which they delighted in sharing with us in the particularly dark and stormy nights.

2. While I dutifully "did my own research" for Cleveland, online commentators who obviously knew what they were talking about assured me that basically all of Cleveland is fucked-zone and I am guaranteed to be murdered 4 times in a year just for showing up.

3. Because of these reassuring findings, I looked on everyone around me with suspicion. I was on guard all of the time. I peered over my shoulder once per three steps. I imagined every small conflict escalating into dead people on the streets. I still had to take 30 minute commutes to school by bus.

Every little snag in bureaucratic processes sent me reeling in PANIC

LUST

This section is meant to be an amusing interlude. I had a passing fancy for a woman on a Facebook group. I confided in her in the TERROR of living in Cleveland, America's poorest large city.

She asked me in reply, doesn't the church have anything in place to help with it?

Roughly one year later, I found the answer, long after the conversation had moved on to other things (it didn't work out between us).

SPITE

The American home is a fortress. Inside this fortress, opulence, abundance; things bought and never used; an artefact here and there that pleads to the visitor: I do this awesome thing, when that thing was never and will never be done. Blasted lies.

Outside the fortress, the poor, the desperate, the dying

They are not for show. They are not fiction. They haunt all my hangouts. If I reach out my trembling hand, I could touch their broken, bloody faces. I could hear their pathetic pleadings, how terribly they pled!

This is the American Dream. People change out of their baptismal names at Ellis Island for this. People bake to death crossing the Sonoran Desert. For this!

I was so consumed with rage that I became unable to sleep, because people who thought themselves upright and good allowed this to happen, and persist in happening. It extended to the entire culture of American suburbia. It extended even to my friends, who came of age as part of that culture.

I watched what they did in life, and out of spite resolved to myself to do the exact opposite.

VIOLENCE

I overheard this at the airport at Charlotte:

Careful! There are some BAD PEOPLE around here!

I began taking self-defense lessons at gym out of this fear, although once I had reached a certain measure of aptitude in rearranging people's facial features, the fear automatically left me; and in its place came a certain unwarranted swagger, and the self-assured conviction that I would more likely be the dealer of grievous injury than a victim of it.

I set out to explore the poorest parts of Cleveland, emboldened by my newfound capacity for violence. I became familiar with its roads, then I began patronizing their businesses, then I went to their churches.

The most beautiful churches of Cleveland and its best-made chicken tenders are mounted like jewels in the poorest parts of town, in among the "bad people".

PEER PRESSURE

As a rebuke to the section before the previous one, there turned out to be people among my friends who were kindred spirits, especially where helping the poor is concerned. I was introduced to the Labre organization and community service through their good example. I will name names.

Shortly before I left Singapore I learned JOSEPH KOK, DAVID YEE and friends have conducted outreach to the homeless, staying with them over Friday nights at 24-hour McDonalds branches. I remembered them on my food drives.

The journalistic team of the PLAIN DEALER did a consultation with the public at Cleveland Heights Public Library (Lee Road Branch). I met a lady there whose name I have forgotten. Her deal was that she collected and gave out children's books for inner city households up and down the East Side. She surprised me by being very much alive.

(One year later, in 2020, the publication would be run aground in a devious union-busting putsch, leading to the sacking of many a fine journalist whom I had met on that day.)

An unknown young woman was spied in February 2020 in Cambridge (England), doting on a vagabond. She wore a vest with a logo which I can no longer recall. (edit of 23 Nov 2021: the organization is called Streetbite Cambridge)

I first heard of the Labre programme from GRÉGOIRE MICZKA, who attended Lectio Divina in 2019-2020, and also participated in Labre.

REGINA and ROBERT SINGERLINE volunteer at the West Side Catholic Center for women seeking shelter from abusive households. They roped me in as an extra pair of hands one random winter evening.

The plucky undergrads who run Labre are too numerous to name individually, but I am especially impressed by JONATHAN OCKUNZZI, Cleveland native, who knows every street corner and has a sharp eye for people who could use a meal.

Brother Larry and the team of ST. HERMAN HOUSE OF HOSPITALITY (Orthobros establishment). This is an establishment for homeless men. The entourage is a spectacle of surly, rough-riding characters who all looked like they could casually snap your spine. Brother Larry, their ringleader, is old, frail and half their height, creating a hilarious contrast when they stood together. They greet me and the others with nothing but warmth and smiles, and said we are welcome anytime to "come cut bread". Brother Larry gave us a tour of the chapel and iconostasis. They sell honey in the winter.

JOHN NIEDZIALEK picks garbage from the streets around St. Casimir for an hour every week. He did so quietly and thanklessly, except for one time, when he made a news feature.

LONELINESS

Friends of Case Labre come and go. Sometimes they find a permanent shelter. Other times they die. But mostly they fall off the face of the earth, leaving us uneasily in the lurch. Fortunately for us, one or two have become our regulars, and might even be able to recognize a returning participant.

In Fall last year I went on a run with Jason Choi. At St. Malachi's we ran into a guy who recognized my face, but I did not recognize his. We bumped a fist. I had not met a new person for many months, and relished this random encounter for a long time.

Now even though I am due to leave in a month, I have grown accustomed to the people and landscapes of Cleveland. I could almost call it home. I have given up (with difficulty) living in fear of the other and what they variously call "the poors" or "bad people". I learned that generosity springs forth naturally when such a thing is taken care of.

Benoît-Joseph Labre of Amettes, patron saint of hobos, prenez pitié, priez pour nous.

Despite my best efforts, I remain only vaguely aware that your intercession and the might of Lord Jesus have had a hand in the tangled mess that is my inner life. I should remain thankful in any case.

29 August 2021, Cleveland

Picutre credit: Wellcome Library, London

Earning the Funny Hat

Col de Mollendruz, June 2013

Four years' apprentice work to advance human knowledge; what kind of life is it? We could see how it is from way off: thankless, isolating drudgery — no wonder so many have been repelled by what they see, and never consider going down such a path! But those who do go down such a path do so despite this same clear view. Some do it because of a vague sense of destiny, and I just so happen to be one of these loonies.

Four years ago, I joined the PhD programme in a mixed state of boredom interfused with a feeling that I could do anything, marching in with a prayer on my lips — not so much a prayer, but more like a haughty demand to the almighty: I demand the right to be stupid! If what scientists do is exploring the unknown, then what greater raison d'être do we have other than our ignorance? Confront us with what we do not know, and let us charge right through it! And my Rabbouni answered my prayers (or acceded to my tantrums) all through four years. This is his still ongoing story.

Ignorance is in abundance, and there is no question about it. One of the first thing that would strike one freshly entering a community of scientists is how ill-equipped everyone is for tackling the frontiers of human knowledge. At least, it seemed to be the case coming from the undergraduate days, where questions have answers and those same answers could be unearthed in a week by a brilliant enough person. Every answer to a research question, by its very necessity, a stab in the darkness, an oppressive darkness where one could no longer reliably tell between right from wrong, rigour from quackery, or gravitas from frivolity. I did not know much, and the supervisors, with all the experience to bring them where they are now, are only just slightly further ahead, engulfed by the same ignorance, pawing about blindly, just as we are, for a glimpse of the same certitude of truth that existed in memories of bright school days long gone.

It is at the precipice overlooking this snarling void where my supervisor perched me, and let me plunge — or shoved me right into it; it was hard to tell.

With the darkness came failure — persistent, repeated, soul-crushing failure, fatigue and the laughable blunders that it brings, are the demons who walk with us and torment us in our waking hours. I lost sight of any chance of easy victory. If I had fantasies of becoming a trailblazer of scientific progress, I cast them behind me. Failure! Failed attempts became so frequent and numerous that any victory, however small, came to be met with a mute surprise rather than jubilation. Yes, I throw up my hands in excitement whenever things go according to plan! But then I have to weep and repent, because I am again reminded of the weight of my sins, of all the time I have wasted in my failures.

My self-worth was no longer bolstered by achievements, because such events seemed too much like providence, and so I accepted them as such. Defeat is my natural condition, while victory is foisted upon me most undeservedly.

A salient feature of this part of my faith journey is how secular the environment was and how much of my Rabbouni's message was handed down to me by my colleagues, most of whom were non-believers. A collaborator wrote this as part of his email signature: "The role of the scientist is to produce as many bad ideas as possible". Soon after, another colleague whom I have come to admire lived out this role, during our discussions, rattling out all sorts of outlandish ideas at me for me to try for a study. The volume of it was overwhelming, and the bulk of it was bullshit. But it was such apparent frivolity that betrayed a certain nimbleness of mind and a sense of adventure — he was sailing in the darkness, slicing huge gashes into it, not merely prodding at it timidly. Looking at what he does, I realise that despite my conceited demands for ignorance, I was not yet ready to embrace it. I was still a proud man who refused to bend down and lash his nose to the plough, rather than the small Therèse who accepted the littleness of her spirit and could therefore embrace the world in all its oversized and overwhelming ineffability.

No miracle of the sun marked the reconciliation between work-life and prayer-life. The two halves circled the arena like fighting cockerels in a pen, breaking out at times in spectacular bouts of combat... and then, imperceptibly, work took on the intensity of prayer, and prayer took on the rigours of work. My Rabbouni guides me wordlessly, holding me up by the arms like I was a child taking my first steps. He tuts, he hums absently, he says nothing in words. I take a step, I take two; I discover a new corner in the room, and then a new corner again, each new place a paradise of wondrous delights, ever a pleasant surprise.

 (April-June 2018)

The Sword of Allah in David's City Unsheathed

Source: Reuters / Ahmed Jadallah

The Sword of Allah has been brought down upon the Beast

The Hunter of Ages now has become the Hunted — Alleluia!

The Rabbouni, my guiding light, my walking companion, and my greatest love, has given me sweet succour and help in the past half year. He has healed this obstinate fool, unshackled him from the weight of his sins, by a critical series of confessions. Blessed sacrament, how have we taken you for granted? How have we poor sinners shunned you, made so fearful that our falls be brought to light and embarrass us? Fool that I am, I say with confidence that the greater my folly, the greater the pleasure there is to be called out for it! If Father Robertus had overreacted and yelled at me (who was in such a fragile state back then) in the confessional box, it was only to the effect of delivering me from the maws of the Devil. Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. The world only sees the fanatic thumping of chests, but it was really joy — joy and liberation.

You have heard it said among people debating homosexuality: Love the sinner, hate the sin. We have understood it to be the fine line dividing the sin and the sinner, lest they be condemned in the same breath. Our detractors scoff at it as a meaningless platitude, and I am inclined to take their side. God's mercy on me has started a fire within me, that I have come to not just hate the sin, but hate it with a burning passion, burning with a fire that does not consume. Not just a fine line between sin and sinner — may it become an unbridgeable gulf, that the torments and ensnarement of the evil ones will never again touch us! War! Yes, docility and obedience towards God who made us, redeemed us, and walk with us, but violence to sin, and viciousness towards all inclinations to sin. Through mortification we train our self-denial, and through self-denial our blows become quick, merciless, lethal. Indolence and Sensuality have fallen at the vanguard, now more hidden demons present themselves to be torn apart by our hounds. The Sword of Allah, in David's city unsheathed, has been brought down upon the head of the Beast; the Hunter of Ages now has become the Hunted! My hand, my right eye, I no longer want to keep them, but only the bleeding desire to walk in the way of Christ, to be one in will with him!

I still struggle with mercy. Mercy has been given me, but I have been slow to hand it on. I nursed a huge grudge to the ones who brought evil upon me the last summer. I fumed, I fantasized, I schemed to hurt them. But I trembled in fear at the same time, because I am aware that unless I have mercy, mercy shall be denied me, just as it was revoked for the servant in the parable who failed to forgive his fellow worker. The wound festered, dissonance took hold, and I have risked losing the friendship of a number of (other) people because of this. But, more and more, I am becoming aware of the place of those who wronged me on our side of the unbridgeable gulf. Even though my desire to meet them again is long gone, and is gone for good as far as I can tell, I have at least the pleasure to announce that their debts are cancelled. Yes, as He asks of me, and all of us! And let all these experiences set the scene for a new stage in my life.

References: Matthew 10:34 (Sword), Exodus 3:2 (Fire), Luke 16:26 (Gulf), Matthew 5:29-30 (Violence), Matthew 18:21-35 (Forgiveness).

A Shortened Testimony

In the morning (7 a.m.) of the last day of the previous year, I woke up to a great view. The weather was clear and Gunung Arjuna was visible on the horizon to the south. Later in the day, according to the routine dictates of the local climate, the white clouds would roll in and obscure the mountain again.

This is Surabaya, a city as beautiful as her name.

Tina, who I had been with for some years, is lost at sea. I had come with the gentle prompting of my parents, who did so out of empathy for hers. I gathered prayer intentions and well-wishes from those who knew her and some who did not. By noontime all the preparations were complete; by evening I had arrived.

Who have I seen there? No, I did not find sobbing wrecks and people who have taken leave of their senses. I met people who were strong in the Lord, people who were filled with grace and compassion for those around us. Love, peace and joy in the air, in defiance of every dismal piece of news. Each sheds their fair share of tears; such a gesture was not out of the question, and even I was not spared, but the mood has been largely calm.

We listened to and trusted the facts. We did not heed rumours and baseless speculation. Probabilities were meaningless to us; the media, who do not try very hard to appear sympathetic, are shut out of the door. We prayed. Day and night, alone or with the company of family and friends, in any number of languages.

We prayed for the Lord's mercy and protection, and he has heeded us. We prayed for strength and grace, and he has heeded us. We prayed for progress in the search and rescue, and he has heeded us. We prayed for hope, and he has given us reasons for hope. The Lord is good and he has answered these prayers of ours. We send in petitions for the safe return of his beloved daughter Tina. We enlist the help of Mother Mary, St Jude, St Florentinus and many others.

If she is in God's hands now, as I have thus submitted, then that is where I shall put myself as well. And why not? It is a good place to be in.

People who do not know us have sought to take our story and then to lace it with melodramatic embellishments. I only wonder what they will say when they open the box of my thoughts, expecting to find grief and hurt and regret, but instead find praises sung to the Lord's glory and goodness. I only pray that this box never be closed again.

Lord, have mercy on us; shower us with abundant grace, lead us to salvation; let all our lives be lived in your praise; with your helping hand we shall brave all difficulties. Amen, Alleluia.