Sacred Sundays

Recently, my son Roel, a writer and an educator, mentioned he was writing down reflections about literature, family and life, and I asked if I could reprint this in my column for Easter. This is what he wrote:

In Warren Ellis’ seminal Transmetropolitan which I first read in 1999, the main character, anarchist-journalist Spider Jerusalem, described the rain-drenched city exactly the same ethereal manner as I would Sundays. The streets look different, cleansed. People move and act differently, a bit slower, and more serene. Pockets of chaos and frustration are left at home as everyone dresses in their Sunday best and most picturesque smiles, calmly searching for refuge from the daily grind. Arguments, divisiveness and rat-racing could wait until the alarm clock rings the next morning. A perfect day for life lessons.

One of my most vivid Easter Sunday memories occurred as a child, right after a mid-morning rabid egg hunt held in the village swimming pool facility right behind the church. My cousin, Rhea, who was my same age, spent the Holy Week break with us. Caught up in the impassioned quest to gather as many shelled treasures as possible, she had somehow gotten lost. I remember the feeling of dread of losing a dear cousin and the guilt of becoming too caught up in the festivities. Hours later, I still recall the relief of seeing her silhouette walking down the street, accompanied by another child. I am reminded of the things that are truly valuable, and all things fleeting and less significant to which one tends to become susceptible. This image in my mind is calmly accompanied by older brother Zooey Glass from JD Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, frantically conversing with younger Franny. Covering a young person’s existential breakdown, all that is pretentious and incoherent in life is exposed as the young heroine is convinced that in one’s anguished search, the form seldom matters. Whether it’s for Seymour’s Fat Lady or Christ himself, an epiphany via a burning bush or the dissipation of remorse, embracing the moment and the people that surround you with kindness and love is both the means and the end.

As I moved into my high school years, poets such as William Blake demanding I create a system before I become enslaved by another’s occupied my mind. The warning of Dead Poets Society’s John Keating not to choke on the bone came too late, as I proceeded to “live deep and suck all the marrow out of life” as Henry David Thoreau in Walden proposed. In failing to live deliberately at the same time, I realized I also failed to appreciate the several occasions my younger sister Aina would gleefully participate in our community’s Easter Salubong celebrations as an angel. I could never understand all the pomp and circumstance, only focusing on having to awaken before dawn and witness the spectacle with muddled eyes. The same goes for all the family Sunday lunches, Easter or otherwise, I’d spend lost in my head instead of reveling in the warmth that came with each hearty meal. Going over favorite lines from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass now aids in appreciating not only the unbreakable spiritual bonds that hold together a family, but also all things sacredly untamed and untranslatable that occurs when a family gathers. When Mary Oliver asks me once again in the poem Summer Day what I plan to do with my one wild and precious life, my answer becomes resolute as I become older: I will embrace those I love more warmly, fastening the spiritual bonds of family more tightly by loving more clearly.

Other memories of Easter Sunday were as conflicted. There was a mixed bag of guilt and anguish as my family was regularly chosen to walk down the aisle for offertory during dawn mass. Other years were spent on trips out of town to reside momentarily by the sea. With the conflict originating from within due to much uncertainty and personal demons, I’d find flimsy reasons to escape both familial duties. But the lessons of my parents were not lost on me with age: we find ways to be there for those we love, even with an older sister living with her husband and three adorable kids in California. Through countless personal struggles, we’d find time on any day to offer needed refuge and all else it entailed. Albert Camus hit the mark that invincible summers exist even in the most desolate winters, while also proclaiming in Lyrical and Critical Essays that “there is no love of life without despair of life,” reminding me the love that came with the Easter Sundays I spent growing up ultimately overshadowed all else. No grand trip or solemn gathering was without light, as I know I spent those hours with “people who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved…the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars…” Jack Kerouac in On The Road was right: this family was all that mattered.

Now that Easter Sunday lunches with my family have become more scarce, to a lesser extent I understand Joan Didion’s sentiment, grieving for her deceased husband, in The Year of Magical Thinking, that “A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty.” The many things I’ve learned from a gathering of family continue to flourish deep within. I value more things of substance, especially having gone through my own version of rebirth and one too many second chances at living. Ecclesiastes 2:4-11 poignantly reminds me, “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired…Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.” And as I create new traditions and new bonds of the spirit with my new family, I continue to make sure there is no room for vanity, pride or frivolity. The lessons from all those Easter Sundays will serve me well, with Joy Harjo in How We Became Human reliably nagging me, “Remember that all is in motion, is growing, is you. / Remember the dance that language is, that life is.” With immeasurable gratitude for a life blessed, I will always remember.

Summer creative writing classes and workshop for kids and teens

Young Writers’ Hangout on April 7, 14, 21 and 28, May 12, 19 and 26 (1:30 pm-3 pm; independent sessions); Wonder of Words Workshop on May 7, 9, 11, 14, 16 and 18 (1:30-3:30 pm for 8-12 years old/ 4-6 pm for 13-17 years old) at Fully Booked BGC. For details and registration contact 0945-2273216 or [email protected]

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Email: [email protected].