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Many stories are being told about climbing a mountain; this one's about faith. |
![Merit Badge in Appreciation
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For your patience during the delay of juding for [Link To Item #1102921] . Thank you!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/general-Appreciation-1985.gif) A question often crosses my mind – how do I want to be remembered? I have so many thoughts on this because, simply, it always crosses my mind. But, you know, I try to treat this as imaginations. I will never know. You will never know – that we are being remembered. Do our heroes know that they're being adored and honored? Rick Warren said, “You were not put here to be remembered. You were put here to prepare for eternity.” Nevertheless, the image of my papa always comes across. He was a simple man with nothing – but everything – to give. “Just be happy.” Despite the scarcity of things and opportunity, he was happy. And he was misunderstood - by me, my siblings and mama. When I was nine or ten years old, old enough to remember those memorable days, he brought me to the center of a mining village. The mine was to us a real blessing, to my boyish mind, it was a gift from heaven above. Dusty road and yellow water, and an English speaking (American) manager, the environment is still inside here. I was proud to hear my papa converse with him. We rode in a truck used to transport lumber to our town. It was my first long trip as a child, and I saw the mountain, the rigorous terrain, and the beauty of God’s creation with the backdrop of a yellow water. My eldest brother was one of the laborers. At salary time, he’d present to mama his pay slip, a summary of earnings and deductions. “Well, my son, better luck next time,” she said with a kiss on his forehead as she stared the contents of the slip. Maybe a few pesos to buy a ganta of rice. The innocence of the place could be pictured in my face. “What are we doing here, Papa?” He couldn’t give me a clear answer. He simply muttered things like he was applying for a job because he was suspended as policeman of our town. The American manager was too kind to accept us, not kind enough to give us a job. And so we walked from that place back to the nearest town, some twenty to twenty five kilometers, maybe more. We trailed a vast wooded area, rivers, up and down, long and winding. An exhaustive, long trek for a ten-year old kid like me. When we reached the first house in town, we asked for food and water. I felt how it was like to be a beggar. Mama kept on nagging: study, study, my child, so you can’t inhale the mountain and the color yellow. And now I know why I have to study and strive like what she said. Life is a very difficult subject, more difficult than the trigonometric principles in college. Now I know why the earth moves and revolves like a spinning ball. It’s because life also revolves and spins. Sometimes you are poor, sometimes rich. I was called Amerkano because as a young boy, I had those features, genes I inherited from my grandfather who lived in the island, and later left for his good, native land after espousing one of the natives. He left a part of his gene to become a writer like me who struggles to coin words everyday. Now I know why I speak good English. A brood of five and all boys was mama’s ticket to heaven; she had her purgatory on earth (to be aggravated by my papa’s drinking). Sometimes, she would just scream in the middle of a peaceful morn. The five brothers didn’t really have peace in the kitchen. My vivid memories are focused on the rainy days of my childhood, so full of nature. How happy we would have been if those drops of rain were real manna of the Jews, because the five brothers always longed for them. I feel nostalgic when rainy days are here, or drizzles outside the windows come at times. During those wet days, we used banana leaves as umbrellas. And tin cans protected us from pouring rain that flowed like water falls on the holes of our nipa roofs. The cans were hung on the ceilings to catch the water when the rotten nipa leaves could not anymore protect us from the pouring rain. High school was full of action, hungry stomach and memorizations. A teacher forced us to memorize history notes, word for word, including periods, commas and question marks. No wonder, she too could do it even with colons and semi-colons. I could memorize long sentences and stanzas of American and Filipino literature. We did it under the shades of coconut and guava trees, reciting facets of world history, word for word, facing the woods at the back of the school. The hollow-blocked fence separating the school and the wilderness looked like a long bridge adorned with young, ambitious "memorizers". College? Less thrilling than high school. I copied one whole article from a magazine and had it published in the school organ, with my big by-line. From that time on, I became the writer and future attorney. After college, I joined an army purportedly to serve my country, but which later turned out for goons and gold. I took with me some wealth I wanted for a lifelong adventure, forgot everything that was left behind. Slowly, my foundation deteriorated, eaten by rats and mice I kept in my subconscious. All the enigma, excitement and endless dreams and ambitions suddenly, to my mind, became positive. Now here in this world of my own – I can call my own – away from the land of poverty I started to build my dream world. A real one. A fantastic recreation of my childhood dreams full of adventures and escapades. How did these all happen? It was just like a dream. The earth, seen from above, is a beautiful stone, a mighty rock, thrown by a powerful hand from an ocean of nothingness. It will be there forever. But to be destroyed slowly, and slowly by you and me. Haven't you imagined yourself a spirit? You can regard yourself as a spirit floating over the universe, watching at the earth, slowly and slowly deteriorating, until it collapses into nothingness. Like a mountain with mines. Like a river with chemicals. Like the air that you breath. Slowly they will go back to the mouth of God. WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF GOD SPITS THEM ALL, MAKE ANOTHER BLACK HOLE FULL OF EVIL SPIRITS? CAN YOU IMAGINE? ASK YOURSELF!!! (This is the introduction - somewhat - to a book about me, of course, and it's like a summary, don't you think? Our life is like an island, there are rivers and seas and mountains, and mines. It has a beginning and an end, and the end seems to be the beginning of another. Don't you think?) |
| Are they always taken for granted? The souls are all around us. They are spirits hovering over only to be noticed on All Saints' Day/ All Souls Day. They are true and real, a part of us, although they are in their new realm of consciousness. Their existence does not defy reason, in fact it is logical to believe about souls and spirits. Recently, I greeted somebody "happy Halloween". She got hurt and demanded that I stop "that crap". I don't know why. I know she's a Christian. To believe on spirits and souls, and Halloween, is part of Christianity. But I just took it for granted, also, because reason may be lost if you don't believe in it. You believe, I believe. That's supposed to be the question. Others just think of it that way. No more logic. And if you go on arguing, they also contend that we do not believe. Which is which? |
| I've read someone say, "Change is increasing at an increasing rate." And change is the only thing that is permanent. You are not a human being if you don't change. All of God's creations change. It's a part of our existence, a part of being me, you, them and things that we deal, take care, and consume. Wow. Change. From our childhood, we encounter everything change into something different. I imagine myself when I was a kid, then into an adult, to my disability, to my current state, what I'm thinking at this very moment, what I'm doing. It's all change. I have to change. I have to be somebody else. I have to strive, to work, and help others change. This is adulthood. This is aging. And I'm going somewhere. Going home. That could be the purpose of change - because we all go home to our father. In a changed state. A changed being. |
| Thanks for this upgrade. There's new hope for me as a writer. Blessings have been poured, and as they say, "When it rains, it pours." I have been lax in this site, and I want to make up. I'll upload some of my stories now. Thanks too to RAOK. And to my readers, thanks for passing by. |
| First day after Easter. It's a new day for us Christians. Easter is a new beginning, a resurrection after our death from sin. Jesus saved us from disgusting, horrible life of sin, and transformed us into new beings. That is after our death. But since we are still alive, we can still sin. Jesus' resurrection allows us to live a life without sin. And we should maintain this life of no sin until our physical sin. We have to be serious in maintaining a clean life in order to be with Jesus in heaven. Thank you for this Easter, Lord. Help me maintain my life of no sin until my physical death. Amen. |
| This is an interview with someone who calls himself the great pretender. "Com'n, Med," he explains, his sometimes slipping, but words still clear, "everybody calls me I'm dumb, but I'm just pretending. I'm the great pretender." His voice reverberated in the night. We had consumed about two bottles each of large-sized beer. "What do you mean the great pretender?" "Oh, I'm just pretending that I'm dumb but I'm not," he said, giggling. "You know what? When it comes to gambling, I'm the master." I nodded and smiled at the thought that this guy grew up with cards in his hands. "I made a living out of it, friend. I pretend that I don't know what I'm doing with my cards, but when someone's not watching, I do all the tricks. And I go home with all of their money." "What tricks do you do?" I asked this time more curious, forgetting my drink. "My cards are marked," he says with a dint of secrecy. "But even if they are not marked, I still can recognize my cards, if it's a king or an ace. I can make all the bluffs. I can let them win first. But later when I'm certain that I got their trust, I do my secret magic, and go home with my pockets full." "Do you always do this?" "Oh yes, but now I'm cooling down." "Why?" I asked, with a toast of my beer. "I don't know. Just have to cool down." Then we went home when our beers were done. |
| Arrived just on time. In my mind, I hated to come to work too early. Reason? I hated revisions. Revisions of jobs, essays, academic papers. So I tried to open the website. Immediately I got heartburn. This thing heartburn is the most I hate ever since I've been trying to earn dollars. And these dollars could just be earned by writing and writing term papers or essays. Heartburn turned to heart attack. Yes, revisions. Another sleepless night. Another period of searching and researching. So there folks, I have to stop. Got some revision. |
| No, dear folks. I'm not signing out. It just occurred to me recently, while I was thinking of a prompt, the thought of when are we really signing out. When am I signing out? It's not that I'm tired of 'signing in,'curiosity has let me asked the intriguing question. I heard a voice in, a frail little voice: "I'm signing out." Oh, did I hear it? It was a weak, seemingly hollow voice, belonging to some little creature. Could it be me? My ego? "Signing out." Why? Oh, just tired. Lowbat. If there's signing out, there's the in. |
| I've just read from the Spiritual Newsletter the interdependence of things, of nature, of the world around us - from the simplest, insignificant flapping of a butterfly's wings to the wild fire. How is the wildfire related to us or mother nature? Ecological balance is the explanation for it. The wildfire occurs by itself and is extinguished by nature itself, too, even if man painstakingly tries to extinguishes it. The explanation for all of this is the laws of Nature which God has instituted on the universe. It is not to be violated. It is there for us and all creation to follows. In our human body, there are laws too. If you try to violate, abuse, or over-use, we know what happens next. This is nature. This is all God's creation. This the evidence of the existence of God, that we are all created for a purpose, and we are going somewhere, a place, a state He destined us all to be. |
| I've just read from the Spiritual Newsletter the interdependence of things, of nature, of the world around us - from the simplest, insignificant flapping of a butterfly's wings to the wild fire. How is the wildfire related to us or mother nature? Ecological balance is the explanation for it. The wildfire occurs by itself and is extinguished by nature itself, too, even if man painstakingly tries to extinguishes it. The explanation for all of this is the laws of Nature which God has instituted on the universe. It is not to be violated. It is there for us and all creation to follows. In our human body, there are laws too. If you try to violate, abuse, or over-use, we know what happens next. This is nature. This is all God's creation. This the evidence of the existence of God, that we are all created for a purpose, and we are going somewhere, a place, a state He destined us all to be. |
| If I wrote for others, why can't I write for myself. I've been writing for some site (for a payment), and now I can't write for myself - for my blogs, for my other sites, for my diaries. Something is motivating me to write for them, and that is money. I have to pay myself to get to writing for my unfinished novel, my personal experiences. Writing is easy, sometimes, don't get me wrong. We have to reach to that point, the beyond where we can so easily grasp what is being dictated by our subconscious. It is like a soul, or a ghost, or a monster, that when you touch it, here comes your writing. Yes, touch it, pinch it, speak to it. You've got to do something. |
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At least, I hope you have the time.
I'm sorry, but I really would've! That was hilarious.