I love Spam and other (non-essential) thoughts on a Tuesday night

Like many Filipinos, English is my second language. Big thanks to the Americans who aside from liberating us from the Japanese, greatly improved our life in many ways, the effect of which not limited to what happened decades ago. When I was young, all I thought they were good for was making available products like Pringles, Hershey’s chocolate bars, and Spam. Yes, I love Spam. I never eat it straight from the can. I fry both sides of a slice until the color turns from pink to brown and pair it with rice. But wait, I digress.

While many of my people are expected to understand and speak this second language, I must admit that there are times when I get stumped. Frustration can eat me up real quick as I mutter under my breath, What is that word I’m looking for? It’s funny how I sometimes joke around by using the fancier word “pulchritudinous” when I mean “beautiful” or say “altruistic” instead of “selfless,” yet there was this one time when I couldn’t, for the life of me, remember the term for that thing that keeps on spinning in electric fans. (In my desire to snuff out the dead air, I said the first word that came to mind when I was describing to somebody a cool—pun intended—electric fan without it. Propeller! I imagined myself in a game show and all I had for clues were the following: revolves, spins, attached to a mechanical device. Propeller?! Pathetic, I know. I blame it on today’s current events, what with the former FG embroiled in the helicopter controversy. Propellers are all over the place, you know.)

Most of the time, I just laugh at my blunders. Sure, some previous blunders proved to be costly and humiliating (I work in publishing, after all, and am responsible for many books that see print) but my default reaction is to avoid bludgeoning myself to death whenever evidence of my imperfections rears its ugly head. Among many, I am directionally challenged. I will go the opposite way twice, and sometimes even more, until my brain remembers which way to go. But there’s hope for me. A personal GPS device that people can wear on their necks is being mass-produced already in China. How did I know? I tested the prototype. I got lost on my way to our bathroom only once while wearing it.

Who among us, descendants of Adam of Eve, can claim to be perfect? Who among us, citizens of this rapidly changing world, can claim to know everything? Not me, definitely. But I do not consider myself hopeless either. For the only hopeless person is the one who carries a homemade sign that reads Dead End, which he stakes to the ground everywhere he goes. As for me, the directionally-challenged me, I know for a fact that no Dead End signs can stop me on my way to reach the end of rainbow. I am wearing my ruby slippers after all, from Dorothy who used the pair on her way to the Emerald City.

Am I ever worried about getting lost? Not really. To help me with my vocabulary, I’ve tucked under one arm the latest edition of Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. On the other, my personal GPS device from China plus some extra batteries.

Walking on stilts

Just recently I read about a popular televangelist who fell from grace. A picture of him holding hands with a woman who was famous in her own right was snapped. The problem is (you know where this is going), she wasn’t his wife.

No big deal, you might say. But then we know how the world is a harsher critic when a Christian is on stage. A photograph of two unmarried adults holding hands can send the same shockwaves as if it was a snapshot of them naked in bed.

Last I read, the man owes his publisher money for violating their morality agreement. (I do not plan on rambling why this couple shouldn’t have done what they did. They’ve received enough castigation already and I am not about to flog them forty more times.)

The first thing I remembered doing when I came across this article was to cringe. Oh no. Not another ammunition for the world to shoot us with. Many other stories came before his. The disgraced preacher who was apprehended while enjoying the services of a prostitute in a parked car. The country singer who left his wife and embraced the homosexual lifestyle. How many stories of famous Christians do we know whose catastrophic descent into shame made us blush?

I can breathe a sigh of relief. I am not a high-profile figure whose one wrong move can potentially land me on the front page of a newspaper. This writer is just an ordinary Christian who struggles to make it day after day to walk the straight and narrow way.

But sometimes while walking I feel like I’m on stilts on a cobblestone pathway. Life.gets.hard. There are days when I don’t clearly deserve a medal for being a good person. I procrastinate in answering another’s letter. I hold off facing a particular task I don’t feel ready doing. I get frustrated and simmer inside even if it doesn’t outwardly show. I ignore God deliberately when I feel He is being unfair. And pride. Should I really get started on pride? Just like Eustace Scrubb who had to endure the peeling of his dragon skin, bit by bit, by Aslan, I go through the same too. It hurts when God confronts me regarding my own pride. Ten times out of ten I have no excuse.

If I could only tack post-its wherever I look with the written words, “It’s all about Him,” I would. But I can’t. What I can do,instead, is to revel in the wonderful, beautiful truth that God still changes people inside out. That it’s not the end until we see the closing credits. That for every person we encounter who prompts us to mutter under our breath, “What an obnoxious human being!,” God looks at the same person and says, “If only you realize how much I love you.”

Everybody needs a reason to believe that having a bad day today does not disqualify them from having a good tomorrow. Every one will fail, one way or the other. Therefore, we all need to believe that something, no, Someone bigger than tiny us is under control. We can trust Him. Others call it exercising faith. For me, it’s like God offering to rid me of my stilts while He walks with me all the way through. I can take His hand.

Exclusive

Exclusive.

That is one of the words a tabloid editor might use to refer to a story or a piece that only his publication can provide. Not found anywhere else. Read it here, and only here.

I may not be working for any tabloid but I, too, am an editor. And right now let me use this word yet to refer to something other than a sensational celebrity story or a heart-stopping news item.

OK, here goes: Exclusive-ly dating.

For the past several months, ten months to be exact, I have been logging precious hours online—instant messaging, magic jacking, emailing, skyping—getting to know this one guy. While Cinderella needed her fairy godmother to turn the pumpkin into a coach that can take her to the ball, all I need to do every time is to turn on the router and my laptop to be where I have to be: right next to this giant of man.

Where I come from, in this land littered with Lilliputians, one of the first things many people will notice about him is his height. How’s the weather up there? is one line he probably gets asked a lot. That or, Are you a basketball player? But after people have gotten used to how much nearer he is to the clouds than the rest of the population, what is hard to miss about him, if you can get close enough, is his heart.

He loves God, which goes beyond lip service. He doesn’t go around brandishing his faith like a sword and scaring people away with his overzealousness. What he does, however, is more powerful: He reflects a genuine love and deep trust in the Lord that affect the way he lives. His faith reverberates in the way he treats the people, even those who do him wrong, in the way he displays integrity and patience, or in the way he carves time out of his weekly schedule to prepare the Sunday school lesson for his class of 2-4 students, of 10-12 year-olds, among many other things.

When his dad was still alive, he would spend time with him regularly—cooking or buying his meals, driving him to the hospital for check-ups and treatments, ensuring that he takes his medicine daily and on time. (One of the things I regret is not visiting NC earlier so I could’ve met his dad. I would’ve told him what wonderful children he and his late wife Evelyn have raised.)

Where could I find the latest Merriam-Webster? I could sift through it, pick all the positive adjectives, and heap superlatives on him and might still end up lacking in my assessment. In reference to him, I once borrowed some words found in Jon Acuff’s description of cash in the writer’s funny credit card break-up letter: “Somebody I can trust. Somebody without hidden motives or hidden fees. He’s simple but honest. Hardworking and true. I found someone who really cares about me and isn’t into playing games.”

We both have seen our worlds up close: he in November 2010 when he flew for more than twenty hours to visit me, and I in March 2011, when Eva Air and US Airways took me to NC to visit him and attend his father’s funeral. In both instances, our knowledge of each other grew exponentially as we realized that face to face communication beats online connection. For, pray tell, how else could I have known that he is the kind of person who would turn back his car after being on the road for miles just to attend to me and put band-aid on my seriously bleeding finger after the ceramic knife accident in the kitchen? [This happened the day after the real accident on the road.]

I can cite more stories here, telling you how this voracious book reader/hunter/golfer/coupon-clipper/all-around nice guy suddenly appeared in my life. Because of him, my computer use can rival the geekiest of geeks in Silicon Valley. But I would rather stop here because all I really wanted to say is that I am exclusively dating him—seeing him; knowing more about him; and with him trusting our wise, loving and sovereign God who will continue to lead us to the right path.

It’s the first time I have publicly acknowledged, online, this relatively new development in my life. You can’t get a scoop about exclusivity more exclusive than that. And I have nobody else but Michael Daren Jones to thank. 

Doomsday

It was somewhere between Alaska and Manila, last March 31, when I first learned that the world is (supposedly) going to end tomorrow.

“I was looking at you since we were waiting to board and I felt God told me to give this to you,” an old woman told me. She, a Filipina, a grandmother to two young children who she left in their seats in the Eva Air plane, probably mustered all the courage in her tiny frame to talk to me. “I don’t usually do this,” she said, “but I just had to talk to you.”

The next thing I knew, she handed me some sheets of paper, photocopied. I stole a quick glance at it, read several key words and Bible references, and volunteered the information,

“Oh, I’m also a Christian.”

This should save her the effort of trying to win me over to God’s side with her 3-point spiel on how people can get to heaven. Not that I would have minded but I thought it would be better to stop her that early from preaching to the choir.

We engaged in small talk and I told her about how I also help produce reading materials for people, I working for a Christian publishing company. She, on the other hand, spends most of her time looking after her grandkids while her daughter and son-in-law are away at work. Since she stays home for most of the time, she found a wonderful preoccupation: watching TV.

It is on TV that she stumbled upon the Family Radio ministry. She’d religiously (pun intended) watch their program, which ran 24/7, and attributed her growing knowledge of God to it. If I had a time machine then and could’ve fast-forwarded to at least seven weeks, I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear what she told me.

May 21, 2011. The world expires. Good-bye to life.

My first reaction was alarm. Oh no! She is misguided. Nobody knows when Jesus is coming again. He Himself said that only the Father knows.

Then it was my turn to speak. As lovingly as I could, I shared with her how no human being can speak so authoritatively about such things. Yes, I love God, I believe the Bible and I am sure that yes, this present world will end someday. And yes, there is heaven to look forward to. But there is absolutely nobody who can mark the end of the world in any calendar. Many have tried, but failed.

With a will firmly set as a flint, she did not buckle and insisted, gently though, that I read the photocopied material that explained why 2011 calendars should only have five months. I accepted it but not without doing my own pleading,

“I will pray for you. And if we reach May 22, would you please reconsider your beliefs?”

She paused for a moment and smiled. I smiled back and said thanks. With concern in my heart my eyes were fixed on her as she made her way back to her seat.

How interesting this up-in-the-air conversation had been.

I don’t have harsh words to say about her and other doomsayers. Many of them are sincere about what they believe in or else they wouldn’t risk being labeled as nuts as they boldly announce to whoever has ten seconds to spare what is going to happen to the world.

Are they brave? Or just foolish? Should I feel disdain towards them for propagating what they think is the truth or should I feel compassion instead and allow this feeling to spur me towards loving people no matter what their size, shape, color, or religious inclination?

It is easier to be smug, sit with the Pharisees and watch other people fall into their own destruction. Aside from doomsday preachers, I’m talking about people around us who are stubbornly heading towards the wrong road. Don’t we silently wish we’d have a taste of the delicious satisfaction of being able to say someday, “Hah, you deserved that, foolish you. I told you God will come and get you. See?! “ I might not have verbalized these words to anybody but I have recited these words, again and again, when my only audience is myself. Yet I want to purge these ugly words from my heart, the poison of condemnation from my lips. I may never be on their side in the case of circumventing the truth or their deliberately turning a blind eye to what God’s word says is right but it doesn’t mean I should stop loving them.

Oh, Lord, how hard!

I’m really hoping the world doesn’t end tomorrow. Because I need more than a day to change and strip out of this robe I am wearing, and love people—really love them—better.