Lord, thank you for giving me eyes that see clearly more than what is here and now. Encourage me more as i take (big) step(s) one at a time. Direct my path more than ever. Help me to be patient - in waiting and in everything. Make/Allow me to love you more than everything else. I failed and may fail some more. Help me get up on my feet, for i cannot walk the way i did without you beside me.
You're all i will ever need, ABBA.
<3ice
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Dear - -
I'm looking at your reflection in the mirror right now, and i see nothing but pure beauty.
It's not perfect - a blemish here and there, but when you smile, there's something about your eyes. It's not explainable, but all i can say is that it's pure beauty.
I hate to say but your face isn't wrinkle-free, perhaps because of the many times you frowned or cried, nevertheless it's pure beauty.
Your smile says a lot, i hope you smile more than you'd ever cry, all the days of your life. For in your smile, i see pure beauty.
You are beautiful not because you're happy nor successful, for even without these, to me you are a pure beauty.
It's what's in your heart that makes me see the pure beauty that is in you.
Maybe someday i shall see what's in it just as much as i see your reflection now - face to face.
It's not perfect - a blemish here and there, but when you smile, there's something about your eyes. It's not explainable, but all i can say is that it's pure beauty.
I hate to say but your face isn't wrinkle-free, perhaps because of the many times you frowned or cried, nevertheless it's pure beauty.
Your smile says a lot, i hope you smile more than you'd ever cry, all the days of your life. For in your smile, i see pure beauty.
You are beautiful not because you're happy nor successful, for even without these, to me you are a pure beauty.
It's what's in your heart that makes me see the pure beauty that is in you.
Maybe someday i shall see what's in it just as much as i see your reflection now - face to face.
Monday, October 08, 2007
a prayer…
…from the past
I let go of everything I hold on to, even the last pieces that I’ve been gripping on to (all my life). Father, I empty my heart before you today. Knowing Lord, that you will give me a new one. Fill it Lord, with new desires, new things to love, and better cries. A heart that beats your heartbeat. A heart that will never cease to seek your own heart. A heart that loves not out of my own strength but by the love that you have shown me. A heart that is not proud. A heart that is enduring, gives freely. A heart that will always trust and obey You.
I love You, my God.
<3
Q's
Copy and paste into a new bulletin. When you are done, send it on. Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following... they have to be real places, names, things...nothing made up! Try to use different answers if the person in front of you had the same 1st initial. You CAN'T use your name for the boy/girl name question.
What is your name?
aiza camina
4 letter word:
araw
Vehicle:
aston
antipolo (it’s a city, right?)
Boy Name:
ambo
Girl Name:
Alcoholic drink:
alcohol (?) hehehe..i don’t know
Occupation:
anthropologist
Something you wear:
a&f shirts
Celebrity:
america ferrera
Food:
alimango, pwede rin alimasag :p
Something found in a bathroom:
astring-o-sol mouthwash (tagal ko inisip yun)
Reason for Being Late:
ang traffic
Cartoon Character:
angelica pickles
Something You Shout:
awch! hehe
Friends you're tagging to do this survey:
anyone who wants (A pa rin ha!)
oOo
isa pa!
RULES:
1. Put your music player on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!
IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY?
How Many Times, How Many Lies – The Pussycat Dolls
WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Kindness – Chris Tomlin (galing!)
HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
Easier Than Love - Switchfoot
WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
Mmmbop – Hanson (sabi ko na e, i'm gonna be an Mmmmmboppper)
WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
1000 Things – Jason Mraz
WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Unspoken – Jaci Velasquez
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR PARENTS?
We Are The Reason – Avalon (Christmas song?)
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
O Little Town of
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BESTIE?
4:12 – Switchfoot
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Do What You Want – Black Eyed Peas (hahaha!)
WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
The Lioness Hunt – The Lion King Musical Broadway (ooh wow! Lioness!)
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Blue Moon –
WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Are You Ready – The Katinas (as in..)
WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Goodbye, Good Night – Jars of Clay
WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
When The Saints Go Marching In - Elvis Presley (how romantic, eh?)
WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
The Best Song Ever – Chris Rice (ganda naman!)
WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
Get Rhythm – Joaquin Phoenix (beat that!)
WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST FEAR?
TL Ako Sa ‘yo – Kitchie Nadal (ay sus naman talaga)
WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Pedestal – Fergie
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Hello Again – Dave Matthews Band
WHAT WILL BE THE SUBJECT WHEN YOU REPOST?
God of Nations – Newsboys
Monday, October 01, 2007
of Marriage
Thanks Yanee for this article :o)
PARTNERS AND MARRIAGE
by Eduardo Jose E. Calasanz
I have never met a man who didn't want to be loved. But I have seldom met a man who didn't fear marriage. Something about the closure seems constricting, not enabling. Marriage seems easier to understand for what it cuts out of our lives than for what it makes possible within our lives.
When I was younger this fear immobilized me. I did not want to make a mistake. I saw my friends get married for reasons of social acceptability,
or sexual fever, or just because they thought it was the logical thing to
do. Then I watched, as they and their partners became embittered and petty in their dealings with each other. I looked at older couples and saw, at best, mutual toleration of each other. I imagined a lifetime of loveless nights and bickering and could not imagine subjecting myself or someone else to such a fate.
And yet, on rare occasions, I would see old couples who somehow seemed to glow in each other's presence. They seemed really in love, not just dependent upon each other and tolerant of each other's foibles. It was an astounding sight, and it seemed impossible. How, I asked myself, can they have survived so many years of sameness, so much irritation at the other's habits?
What keeps love alive in them, when most of us seem unable to even stay together, much less love each other? The central secret seems to be in choosing well. There is something to the claim of fundamental compatibility. Good people can create a bad relationship, even though they both dearly want the relationship to succeed. It is important to find someone with whom you can create a good relationship from the outset. Unfortunately, it is hard to see clearly in the early stages.
Sexual hunger draws you to each other and colors the way you see yourselves together. It blinds you to the thousands of little things by which relationships eventually survive or fail. You need to find a way to see beyond this initial overwhelming sexual fascination. Some people choose to involve themselves sexually and ride out the most heated period of sexual attraction in order to see what is on the other side. This can work, but it can also leave a trail of wounded hearts. The truly lucky people are the ones who manage to become long-time friends before they realize they are attracted to each other. They get to know each other's laughs, passions, sadness, and fears. They see each other at their worst and at their best. They share time together before they get swept into the entangling intimacy of their sexuality.
This is the ideal, but not often possible. If you fall under the spell of your sexual attraction immediately, you need to look beyond it for other keys to compatibility. One of these is laughter. Laughter tells you how much you will enjoy each other's company over the long term. If your laughter together is good and healthy, and not at the expense of others, then you have a healthy relationship to the world. Laughter is the child of surprise. If you can make each other laugh, you can always surprise each other. And if you ! can always surprise each other, you can always keep the world around you new. Beware of a relationship in which there is no laughter. Even the most intimate relationships based only on seriousness have a tendency to turn sour. Over time, sharing a common serious viewpoint on the world tends to turn you against those who do not share the same viewpoint, and your relationship can become based on being critical together.
After laughter, look for a partner who deals with the world in a way you respect. When two people first get together, they tend to see their
relationship as existing only in the space between the two of them. They find each other endlessly fascinating, and the overwhelming power of the emotions they are sharing obscures the outside world. As the relationship ages and grows, the outside world becomes important again. If your partner treats people or circumstances in a way you can't accept, you will inevitably come to grief. Look at the way she cares for others and deals with the daily affairs of life. If that makes you love her more, your love will grow. If it does not, be careful. If you do not respect the way you each deal with the world around you, eventually the two of you will not respect each other.
Look also at how your partner confronts the mysteries of life. We live on the cusp of poetry and practicality, and the real life of the heart resides in the poetic. If one of you is deeply affected by the mystery of the unseen in life and relationships, while the other is drawn only to the literal and the practical, you must take care that the distance doesn't become an unbridgeable gap that leaves you each feeling isolated and misunderstood.
There are many other keys, but you must find them by yourself. We all have unchangeable parts of our hearts that we will not betray and private commitments to a vision of life that we will not deny. If you fall in love with someone who cannot nourish those inviolable parts of you, or if you cannot nourish them in her, you will find yourselves growing further apart until you live in separate worlds where you share the business of life, but never touch each other where the heart lives and dreams. From there it is only a small leap to the cataloging of petty hurts and daily failures that leaves so many couples bitter and unsatisfied with their mates.
So choose carefully and well. If you do, you will have chosen a partner with whom you can grow, and then the real miracle of marriage can take place in your hearts. I pick my words carefully when I speak of a miracle. But I think it is not too strong a word. There is a miracle in marriage. It is called transformation. Transformation is one of the most common events of nature. The seed becomes the flower. The cocoon becomes the butterfly. Winter becomes spring and love becomes a child. We never ques! tion these, because we see them around us every day. To us they are not miracles, though if we did not know them they would be impossible to believe.
Marriage is a transformation we choose to make.
Our love is planted like a seed, and in time it begins to flower. We cannot know the flower that will blossom, but we can be sure that a bloom will come. If you have chosen carefully and wisely, the bloom will be good. If you have chosen poorly or for the wrong reason, the bloom will be flawed. We are quite willing to accept the reality of negative transformation in a marriage. It was negative transformation that always had me terrified of the bitter marriages that I feared when I was younger.
It never occurred to me to question the dark miracle that transformed love into harshness and bitterness. Yet I was unable to accept the possibility that the first heat of love could be transformed into something positive that was actually deeper and more meaningful than the heat of fresh passion. All I could believe in was the power of this passion and the fear that when it cooled I would be left with something lesser and bitter.
But there is positive transformation as well. Like negative transformation, it results from a slow accretion of little things. But instead of death by a thousand blows, it is growth by a thousand touches of love. Two histories intermingle. Two separate beings, two separate presence, two separate consciousnesses come together and share a view of life that passes before them. They remain separate, but they also become one. There is an expansion of awareness, not a closure and a constriction, as I had once feared. This is not to say that there is not tension
and there are not traps. Tension and traps are part of every choice of
life, from celibate to monogamous to having multiple lovers. Each choice contains within it the lingering doubt that the road not taken somehow more fruitful and exciting, and each becomes dulled to the richness that it alone contains. But only marriage allows life to deepen and expand and be leavened by the knowledge that two have chosen, against all odds, to become one. Those who live together without marriage can know the pleasure of shared company, but there is a specific gravity in the marriage commitment that deepens that experience into something richer and more complex.
So do not fear marriage, just as you should not rush into it for the wrong reasons. It is an act of faith and it contains within it the power of transformation.
If you believe in your heart that you have found someone with whom you are able to grow, if you have sufficient faith that you can resist the endless attraction of the road not taken and the partner not chosen, if you have the strength of heart to embrace the cycles and seasons that your love will experience, then you may be ready to seek the miracle that marriage offers. If not, then wait. The easy grace of a marriage well made is worth your patience. When the time comes, a thousand flowers will bloom... endlessly.
by Eduardo Jose E. Calasanz
I have never met a man who didn't want to be loved. But I have seldom met a man who didn't fear marriage. Something about the closure seems constricting, not enabling. Marriage seems easier to understand for what it cuts out of our lives than for what it makes possible within our lives.
When I was younger this fear immobilized me. I did not want to make a mistake. I saw my friends get married for reasons of social acceptability,
or sexual fever, or just because they thought it was the logical thing to
do. Then I watched, as they and their partners became embittered and petty in their dealings with each other. I looked at older couples and saw, at best, mutual toleration of each other. I imagined a lifetime of loveless nights and bickering and could not imagine subjecting myself or someone else to such a fate.
And yet, on rare occasions, I would see old couples who somehow seemed to glow in each other's presence. They seemed really in love, not just dependent upon each other and tolerant of each other's foibles. It was an astounding sight, and it seemed impossible. How, I asked myself, can they have survived so many years of sameness, so much irritation at the other's habits?
What keeps love alive in them, when most of us seem unable to even stay together, much less love each other? The central secret seems to be in choosing well. There is something to the claim of fundamental compatibility. Good people can create a bad relationship, even though they both dearly want the relationship to succeed. It is important to find someone with whom you can create a good relationship from the outset. Unfortunately, it is hard to see clearly in the early stages.
Sexual hunger draws you to each other and colors the way you see yourselves together. It blinds you to the thousands of little things by which relationships eventually survive or fail. You need to find a way to see beyond this initial overwhelming sexual fascination. Some people choose to involve themselves sexually and ride out the most heated period of sexual attraction in order to see what is on the other side. This can work, but it can also leave a trail of wounded hearts. The truly lucky people are the ones who manage to become long-time friends before they realize they are attracted to each other. They get to know each other's laughs, passions, sadness, and fears. They see each other at their worst and at their best. They share time together before they get swept into the entangling intimacy of their sexuality.
This is the ideal, but not often possible. If you fall under the spell of your sexual attraction immediately, you need to look beyond it for other keys to compatibility. One of these is laughter. Laughter tells you how much you will enjoy each other's company over the long term. If your laughter together is good and healthy, and not at the expense of others, then you have a healthy relationship to the world. Laughter is the child of surprise. If you can make each other laugh, you can always surprise each other. And if you ! can always surprise each other, you can always keep the world around you new. Beware of a relationship in which there is no laughter. Even the most intimate relationships based only on seriousness have a tendency to turn sour. Over time, sharing a common serious viewpoint on the world tends to turn you against those who do not share the same viewpoint, and your relationship can become based on being critical together.
After laughter, look for a partner who deals with the world in a way you respect. When two people first get together, they tend to see their
relationship as existing only in the space between the two of them. They find each other endlessly fascinating, and the overwhelming power of the emotions they are sharing obscures the outside world. As the relationship ages and grows, the outside world becomes important again. If your partner treats people or circumstances in a way you can't accept, you will inevitably come to grief. Look at the way she cares for others and deals with the daily affairs of life. If that makes you love her more, your love will grow. If it does not, be careful. If you do not respect the way you each deal with the world around you, eventually the two of you will not respect each other.
Look also at how your partner confronts the mysteries of life. We live on the cusp of poetry and practicality, and the real life of the heart resides in the poetic. If one of you is deeply affected by the mystery of the unseen in life and relationships, while the other is drawn only to the literal and the practical, you must take care that the distance doesn't become an unbridgeable gap that leaves you each feeling isolated and misunderstood.
There are many other keys, but you must find them by yourself. We all have unchangeable parts of our hearts that we will not betray and private commitments to a vision of life that we will not deny. If you fall in love with someone who cannot nourish those inviolable parts of you, or if you cannot nourish them in her, you will find yourselves growing further apart until you live in separate worlds where you share the business of life, but never touch each other where the heart lives and dreams. From there it is only a small leap to the cataloging of petty hurts and daily failures that leaves so many couples bitter and unsatisfied with their mates.
So choose carefully and well. If you do, you will have chosen a partner with whom you can grow, and then the real miracle of marriage can take place in your hearts. I pick my words carefully when I speak of a miracle. But I think it is not too strong a word. There is a miracle in marriage. It is called transformation. Transformation is one of the most common events of nature. The seed becomes the flower. The cocoon becomes the butterfly. Winter becomes spring and love becomes a child. We never ques! tion these, because we see them around us every day. To us they are not miracles, though if we did not know them they would be impossible to believe.
Marriage is a transformation we choose to make.
Our love is planted like a seed, and in time it begins to flower. We cannot know the flower that will blossom, but we can be sure that a bloom will come. If you have chosen carefully and wisely, the bloom will be good. If you have chosen poorly or for the wrong reason, the bloom will be flawed. We are quite willing to accept the reality of negative transformation in a marriage. It was negative transformation that always had me terrified of the bitter marriages that I feared when I was younger.
It never occurred to me to question the dark miracle that transformed love into harshness and bitterness. Yet I was unable to accept the possibility that the first heat of love could be transformed into something positive that was actually deeper and more meaningful than the heat of fresh passion. All I could believe in was the power of this passion and the fear that when it cooled I would be left with something lesser and bitter.
But there is positive transformation as well. Like negative transformation, it results from a slow accretion of little things. But instead of death by a thousand blows, it is growth by a thousand touches of love. Two histories intermingle. Two separate beings, two separate presence, two separate consciousnesses come together and share a view of life that passes before them. They remain separate, but they also become one. There is an expansion of awareness, not a closure and a constriction, as I had once feared. This is not to say that there is not tension
and there are not traps. Tension and traps are part of every choice of
life, from celibate to monogamous to having multiple lovers. Each choice contains within it the lingering doubt that the road not taken somehow more fruitful and exciting, and each becomes dulled to the richness that it alone contains. But only marriage allows life to deepen and expand and be leavened by the knowledge that two have chosen, against all odds, to become one. Those who live together without marriage can know the pleasure of shared company, but there is a specific gravity in the marriage commitment that deepens that experience into something richer and more complex.
So do not fear marriage, just as you should not rush into it for the wrong reasons. It is an act of faith and it contains within it the power of transformation.
If you believe in your heart that you have found someone with whom you are able to grow, if you have sufficient faith that you can resist the endless attraction of the road not taken and the partner not chosen, if you have the strength of heart to embrace the cycles and seasons that your love will experience, then you may be ready to seek the miracle that marriage offers. If not, then wait. The easy grace of a marriage well made is worth your patience. When the time comes, a thousand flowers will bloom... endlessly.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
just a thought
There are times that I know in my heart everything is going well for me – my family, my work, my ministry, my relationship with the Lord. Yet, I still find myself lacking, unmotivated. And I don’t know why. Sigh.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Excerpts
An excerpt from my other blog, dated March 30, 2007.
Then I realized, it was time to run back to You. I was so afraid to go back, I couldn’t imagine myself turning my back from the so-called ‘good life’ and run a mile just to get hold of You. In spite of that, I made up my mind, I was going to pursue You. So, I turned my back, head bowed down and to my surprise You were right there behind me. No need for me to run or even take one more step. You were there all along. I knew at that moment I made the right decision.
Here's another one from my entry entitled "Surreal. Delightful. Beautiful. Hopeful.
If love in dreams feels like almost-heaven, then in real life it must really be like heaven.
Kamusta naman? hahaha!
oOo
Lord, thank YOU!
You made me soar like the eagles
You made me fly so high
You made me see things the way You do
You made me more than what i thought i could be
You made me strong
You made me walk on water
You made me sail across the stormy sea
You made me what i am today.
Then I realized, it was time to run back to You. I was so afraid to go back, I couldn’t imagine myself turning my back from the so-called ‘good life’ and run a mile just to get hold of You. In spite of that, I made up my mind, I was going to pursue You. So, I turned my back, head bowed down and to my surprise You were right there behind me. No need for me to run or even take one more step. You were there all along. I knew at that moment I made the right decision.
Here's another one from my entry entitled "Surreal. Delightful. Beautiful. Hopeful.
If love in dreams feels like almost-heaven, then in real life it must really be like heaven.
Kamusta naman? hahaha!
oOo
Lord, thank YOU!
You made me soar like the eagles
You made me fly so high
You made me see things the way You do
You made me more than what i thought i could be
You made me strong
You made me walk on water
You made me sail across the stormy sea
You made me what i am today.
Friday, July 20, 2007
07202007
Haaay, bakit ngayon nga lang ba ko mag-a-update. Sobrang dami na nangyari. When I got back from Melbourne – oh yeah, my company sent me and I stayed there for 5 weeks. It was a lovely experience. Met people, learned so much things – about life in general, realized, again, so much things. Everything was really unexpected. When my boss asked for my passport pa, I just got reminded expired na pala, in short, nagka-delay delay pa tuloy yung visa. Nevertheless, the trip pushed through and it made so much happy. :D going back – I, together with my WHOLE family, prepared a little party for my grandparents. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. I prepared a short video for them, complete with their binata/dalaga to boyfriend/girlfriend to wedding to father/mother pictures plus a shot message from us, their apo’s. When the party ended, it also ended the life of my iPod and laptop. Well, hindi naman talaga ended, kasi hindi naman nasira or anything, they were stolen. At kung sino man kumuha, sana nakatulong sa buhay nya ang mga preachings na nasa podcast ko. Pero, until now, it makes me so SAD when I get reminded na ALL my pictures were gone (pictures from Christmas, from Melbourne, mom’s US pictures, videos, personal files – EVERYTHING!!) It pains me so much.
Pero, I know, in my heart, the there is a perfect reason why all these happened. Maybe, it’s a sign for me to grow up, to mature, to start anew again. Well, whatever it is, I know it’s a good one.
There’s so much more I’d like to write and blabber about. Maybe, tomorrow ulit.
I missed this! :o)
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Monday, March 26, 2007
Dear God, Thank You
Dear God, thank you so much for the many blessings you are showering me (and my family). I am not worthy of all these beautiful things/opportunities. I am no one without You. Yet, God, there are times that I neglect You in my life. Admittedly, I was so selfish of my time that I could neither get up an hour earlier nor sleep an hour late to do my devotions. Lord, You’re love is unfailing. I love you Father.
oOo
Thank You
The Katinas
Just a little while longer I wanna pray
Can't get You off my mind so I came to say
Thank You Lord just for loving me
Many times I do forget
Every need that You have met
Oh thank You Lord, I know You're showing me
You are there when I am down and out
You're holding me, Your love is so amazing
Oh it changed me
Chorus:
Here I am with all I am
Raise my hands to worship You
I wanna say thank you, oh thank you
For everything, for who You are
You cover me, You touch my heart
I wanna say thank you
I could have died in my sin but You saved me
Didn't have any hope at all
You gave me peace divine, strength to carry on
I should have been the one to pay
But instead You took my place
My Jesus, words cannot explain
Even though I don't deserve Your love for me
You look beyond my fault and You showed mercy
I wanna say thank you for the rain
Everything You do is beautiful
I'm so grateful for Your love
Sunday, February 18, 2007
for noone
Where?
Not here.
Maybe someday.
Your here will be my here too.
Our there will be pointed to the same place.
Not here.
Maybe someday.
Your here will be my here too.
Our there will be pointed to the same place.
Monday, January 15, 2007
anything Ordinary can be something Extraordinary
Do you recognize these flowers? Actually, these are the usual bushy weeds that you would see along the sidewalks. They may look common from afar but look how intricate it is when seen closely-lovely.
Life is sometimes like that. Everything seems so ordinary, it’s only when we take it deeper that we understand its real meaning, its beauty.
Life is sometimes like that. Everything seems so ordinary, it’s only when we take it deeper that we understand its real meaning, its beauty.
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