Walang Hiya

I distinguished something last Sunday. The day before, one of my favorite mothers at the Foundation was telling me that she was desperately trying to put together some money for her son's "capping" (he's studying to be a nurse) as she could not afford the fees. Judith suggested that the mother give me a call and see what she could work out, but it just so happened that I'd been up 'til early morning and was still asleep when she rang. So Nanay C was stopped at that, and told me that she didn't want to bother me out of hiya.

As I told her, if she did bother, she would have gotten a more than favorable response, as I'd been praying about whom I should give a certain tithe. But hiya got the best of her.

Hiya. I just got that "being ashamed" is one of the biggest cultural inauthenticities of the Filipino - and to my mind, it's a major deterrent to true freedom and self-expression. I've heard it used too many times as an excuse to be concerned; hiya is actually repressive and totally a crock of *censored*.

"Nahihiya kasi akong lumapit sa iyo," "nakakahiyang abalahin ka," "hindi ko masabi dahil sa hiya," "Ayoko nga, nakakahiya!" Shyness, shame, reticence - a huge obstacle to really getting the results we want in life.

I was speaking to Mike and Judith about it over lunch, when I got the inauthencity of it: hiya in this sense cannot be from God. Embarassment and being ashamed on the one hand hides fear - of rejection, refusal, being made to look bad. Worse, hiya is actually a subterfuge for pride - which, in Christianity, caused a favored angel's fall from grace. It is a deceptively innocent means to mask the refusal to acknowledge that one needs assistance, support, or in the direst case, salvation. It may not be a malicious guise, but it is, at bottom, fake. And I cannot believe it comes from God.

For, after all, the opposite of pride - which is basically what hiya is - is humility, a virtue or quality extolled in Scripture. Humility, in practical terms, is the acknowledgment of one's limitations, and the grace of being able to request assistance, support, salvation, from another. It's telling that this kind of candor is frowned upon in this society: we live our lives pretending out of hiya that we don't need anyone's "help" and refuse to publicly acknowledge it, while actually knowing in our heart of hearts that another person could make a huge difference in regards to what we desperately need or want. Translating this in terms of faith, the refusal to accept the Lord's redemption of our eternal souls on the basis of hiya or "I'm not worthy boohoohoo" is not just a tragedy, it's fancy, fragrant bull*censored.* Or to even come face to face with Him after the temple veil was torn, once and for all, by His sacrifice of salvation, allowing us direct access to the Holiest of Holies. It's like putting up sandbags around us to keep the tide of His Divine Mercy from coming in.

Hiya is pride, pure and simple. So I say, don't be that. That's one Filipino trait I am definitely not committed to perpetuating. Walang hiya kami dito! :-)

A Powerful Pentecost

This last week has been leading up to the outpouring of the Spirit today, much perhaps like the time the apostles were anxiously waiting in the upper room to receive what their beloved Savior had promised.

And man, did they receive! (Acts 2)

Today was also my personal Pentecost, as I received with open arms a veritable thunderstorm of His love and messages. The clarity of the experience was much like the neon-light revelation three years ago that pointed me unmistakably to where I was being called at the time through Luke 14:12- to the banquet of "the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind," which transformed my life forever. And as I shared a long time ago in a previous journal, it takes incontrovertible evidence for the skeptic in me to actually get what's being Said. I also just realized that it's been almost three years to the day (June 6, 2004) that I received my calling to serve, and five years (June 2, 2002) since I first answered the One calling me to Him.

True to form, today's messages were brought to me, Sesame Street style, by the letter "P," from my Panginoon:

PRESENCE. POWER. POSSIBILITY. PURPOSE. PRAISE. PROPHECY.

PRESENCE (Alan's addition to my "P's" when I shared this with him earlier today; I wasn't "present" to it at the time!). During Mass at today's Feast, the priest-celebrant said that it isn't God who holds back on what He gives us - it is our willingness to receive the continuous torrent of His blessings that keeps us from getting them. Today what I got was that to receive the fullness of His abundance, we must be totally empty. More relevantly, we are truly open to His generosity and His communication when there is nothing between Him and us; when we are cleared of all our internal conversations of guilt and unworthiness (the "umbrella" we open that keeps up from His rainstorms of love) - for He has already redeemed us and washed us clean by His blood, and continues to allow us to draw near to Him through His immeasurable Mercy (from which we may constantly draw through the Sacrament of Reconciliation). It is then that we can actually be present to His word for our lives.

POWER. That said, and being fully empty and present to Him, His message landed loud and clear: "the power you wield is My power revealed." In my weakness, He is my strength; and truly, His power in me releases me from fear and enables me to allow His glory to shine forth. And, in receptive emptiness, I received yet another revelation: it is His message when it is a message that gives me power. Thus, perhaps the most powerful message I received today is that He sees me as my -

POSSIBILITY. "You are able to see others as their possibility because I see you as yours." Wow. I really GOT that. He, indeed, created us - and sees us - as no less. To rub it in a little more, worship began with All Things Are Possible, and continued on a bit later to The Potter's Hand: "Teach me O Lord, to see all of my life, through Your eyes..."

PURPOSE. I'm supervising a powerful program this coming weekend that I've promised to be nothing short of mind-blowing, earth-shaking, and extraordinary. Even more so than my own experience of that program last October 2006. What I have at stake is the future of the Philippines and the full self-expression and freedom of the Filipino people. And I brought this program to today's celebration and lay it the foot of His cross. The confirmations I received over the course of the Feast, from the messages in worship and during the talk that followed, to actual physical evidence and the Word itself in Isaiah 60 cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be coincidence, even to someone like me who needs more than the usual amount of proof (lawyers!):

"Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you.
See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the LORD rises upon you and his glory appears over you.

"Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

"Lift up your eyes and look about you: All assemble and come to you;
your sons come from afar, and your daughters are carried on the arm.

"Then you will look and be radiant, your heart will throb and swell with joy;
the wealth on the seas will be brought to you, to you the riches of the nations will come."

Yup, the Philippines will never be the same again after this weekend. I PROMISE that. And thus it shall be. :-)

PRAISE. I'm going to be doing a lot of that over the next week and into the weekend, in everything I do. I'm blessed that my partners in my possibility are also present to the miracle of praise. For in praise, there is presence, power, possibility, and purpose. Really :-)

PROPHECY. I missed most of Jon Escoto's talk because I took my sweet time over a snack, but the last part of it was even more confirmation of all of the above. Prophecy, according to what I got from Jon, is creating out of one's speaking (hmmm...sounds familiar, heh heh). And SO IT SHALL BE. At the end of his conversation, he bade us to prophesy to our spouses and children (I have none of the above - yet!), to the people around us, and most importantly - to our country. He said that too many "negative" (in my language, "disempowering" would be more accurate) things we say about the Philippines keep it where it is. Prophesy that it be blessed and be the First World, God-loving, God-abiding nation it is meant to be. How much more confirmation did I need?

A first-world Philippines, powerful (without disempowering anyone else, and instead empowering every other nation and people), free, and fully self-expressed! I prophesy that it shall BE sooner than any of us think. Praise God :-)

The Parable of the Talents

Something extraordinary happened over the last eight months. And I'm present to the many miracles that I've experienced over that span of time.

The Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30) most aptly illustrates the blessings I am present to.

"Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them. To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more. So also, the one with the two talents gained two more. But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money.

"After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received the five talents brought the other five. 'Master,' he said, 'you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more.'

"His master replied, 'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!'

"The man with the two talents also came. 'Master,' he said, 'you entrusted me with two talents; see, I have gained two more.'

"His master replied, 'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!'

"Then the man who had received the one talent came. 'Master,' he said, 'I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.'

"His master replied, 'You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.

" 'Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'"

Analogous to this is Luke 12:48: "Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more."

What I get from these verses of scripture is that the Almighty has generously gifted us with extraordinary graces - talents, abilities, ways of being - that He trusts us to cultivate, utilize, and grow. Each of us has unique gifts from above, and the "challenge" is how we shall best use them and thereby proclaim the Giver's glory.

The ordinary perspective is to prioritize, sacrifice, choose the talent with the most potential - abandoning the rest. Thus we have lawyers who secretly desire to be novelists, doctors whose heart's passion is to create art, employees who covertly wish to be entrepreneurs.

My take on the Parable of the Talents, and many other verses of Scripture, is that the good Lord actually wants us to take EVERYTHING on. I am not a lawyer to the exclusion of everything else I do - I am a lawyer, a senior Partner of the firm AND I am a cook, entertainer, singer, lay missionary, entrepreneur, agent, publisher, editor, writer, educator, and so on and so forth. All at the same time.

Our lives are not meant to be a matter of multiple choice, but instead, a choice of all of the above. This is one of the biggest things I got out of my Landmark education - you can have it ALL. Really. And when I start to embrace having it all, much more becomes available. I become present to the availability of being, doing, expressing, having everything I've ever wanted, without sacrificing (in the sense of having to give up) anything else. And then I get present to that so much more is being given to me.

The conversation no longer becomes about having too much on your plate - it becomes about getting a bigger one. And that's an exciting point of view from which I choose to stand. Next talent, please?

Completion and Creation

That just about sums up what the last several weeks have been for me. Completing tasks, projects, accountabilities, programs, and endeavors...and creating new ones.

Tonight's homily by Father JBoy, to celebrate the Feast of the Ascencion, spoke about that - episozomene, in particular, or completion, which leads to ascensio, or ascencion. In other words, the prerequisite of moving on to a higher plane is completion of a task. When what needs to be done gets done properly, in time and in substance, there opens up a clearing for the next task at hand.

Completion and creation. I just completed my assisting accountabilities in two seminars (oh YEAH) and my leadership program (which means I've completed the whole Landmark Education Curriculum for Living in a span of eight months!), aside from one other supervising accountability and a program in Japan.

In "life," I've also just successfully completed an editing job, and a legal project. I also completed - albeit in the sense of termination - a business partnership that was not within my own realm of possibilities from the get-go.

Which now leaves me free to create a lot of new stuff; and, consciously or otherwise, that's what I've been taking on. New accountabilities in Landmark Education that I haven't taken on before, new projects for the businesses I'm already operating and a whole new business enterprise that's full of promise. New perspectives, new openings - even new relationships and new views of old ones. And, due to the completion, none of the old baggage weighing me down.

Now that's what life's about: completion and creation. You just gotta love that!

Being Unreasonable

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
"The man who listens to Reason is lost: Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her." - George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists in Man and Superman