Remembering Dublin

Last December, I went to Dublin for a three-week "vacation."  It's not exactly a vacation because I just couldn't imagine myself, doing nothing for 21 days.  But, truth be told, it was the best three weeks of my life since I arrived in Europe.
I arrived to a community that has experienced a bit of a storm lately and I'm just lucky to be there during the quell, on a sort of ceasefire that accorded me a bit of a space to put myself in.  Actually, every member is just nice and lovable in own way, with ticks and a charming quirkiness or two, enough to keep them interesting but not too much to scare me away from them.  It's a bit like living in a sitcom, really, where each has a personality that isn't at all one-note and is downright punchline worthy.  My favorite is of course, Father Raphael which is in many ways my best friend in Europe. He's the most Irish person you'll ever meet in Dublin, but at the same time, he's never a stereotype Irish.  At all our travels, he sang me nationalistic songs that always involved a story of a very specific woman, which I find very fascinating because, embarrassingly, the only traditional irish song I know is Cockles and Mussels, which I only learned later to be a song about a prostitute. We went to pubs, the proper Irish ones and was introduced to hot toddies and dark beer.
At other times, when Fr. Raphael couldn't accompany me, I never ran out of people to help me go around. Thanks to Renoir, Ben and Mary, I was able to go to Duleek, to Galway, to Drogheda....  With them, I scoured museums and parks and churches and theaters.  We watched the traditional Christmas concert of Handel's Messiah and were among those who stood up while the choir sang the composer's trademark Halleluiah. I walked the length of the river Liffey.  I hang out with Filipinos, too, who, despite the years of staying in Dublin have stayed Filipino by heart.  In fact, on my last night, I was with them till dawn, belting out Pinoy standards on karaoke machine.  But what marked me well was the spiritual side of my vacation.  For the first time, since I arrived in Europe, I felt truly a priest.   I celebrated Mass (the new translation which really sounded unelegant, if my opinion matters) and heard confession and prayed and shared tea with the local Catholics, like a true pastor would.  I guess it helped that I can speak a bit of English.
Truth be told, Dublin haunts me even until these days.  The seedy pubs, the crumbling monasteries, the moldy tombstones, the ubiquitous Celtic filigrees, the medieval melange with the cosmopolitan feel of the city, the charming accent and the ready smile of its people.  But most importantly, the Irish Catholic faith, a faith that knows how to forgive and to ask forgiveness, a faith that is alive and well and is practiced in every aspect of life, a faith that is homegrown but well-informed and well-worn by countless prayers of novenas.  It suffice to say that when I went there, a place which is way much nearer to the North Pole than La Mure, I have never been more warm, I have never been more blest, I have never been more at home than any other place in Europe.


Nursing a mug of the dark brew,
I am reminded by the West Liffey wind
of how I traded hops and malt
with Mass bread and wine.
I held much of my dignity, however,
announcing with a borrowed accent,
my love for all things green and medieval,
only to be reminded that a year ago,
the closest I can get to Dublin experience
is buying a bar of Irish Spring.

Remembering a Childhood Friend

The other day, I learned about the death of my childhood friend, Noel.  His body was found washed ashore the beach, around two kilometers from his mom's house, wrapped in plastic bag.  No one knows exactly when did he die, but according to neighbors, he was shot several times and that his motorcycle is missing.
It was his birthday last March 31, and I remember leaving a generic greeting on his Facebook account and then he replied a couple of days after.  I didn't even suspect anything, like how he changed his profile name and picture and how his status updates since the beginning of February were all about being bullied, stalked and verbally abused.
I checked the internet for news but nothing was ever published.  It was from Chie, a common friend in Italy, that I learned all about it and when I asked my sister to check on the details,  all that she got was that Noel was robbed and shot to death.  Nothing about the gory details that Chie recounted.
Noel was already my friend even before I started to go to school.  He was adopted by an elderly couple who owned a tailoring shop and who lived right next to our house.  He was the only flat-footed person I know.  They weren't very rich, but he had the coolest toys: Matchbox cars, GI Joe action figures, Lego blocks, Justice League playing cards and whatnot. And what's more, they've got colored TV.  I was practically in their house every afternoon to watch the Three Stoogies and Batibot and then later, Voltes V, Bioman, Shaider and Daimos, and would stay there until my parents came to drag me out of their living room.  During play, we never spoke much, but our imagination ran wild:  the rubber tire swing at my father's backyard was our galleon tossed by tempest and the high seas; the aratiles and the guava trees were already our Pandora even before James Cameron envisioned it;  we drew treasure maps that would lead to toys we buried by the walls of our homes; though we never went beyond a mile, we made quests to forests and vacant lots and hunted for ghosts or monsters or dwarves until we, ourselves, would be too scared of our own imagination; we bruised each other trying to recreate the fight scenes from the TV show, The Kung Fu Theatre but we never held grudges for hurting one another, we retold for the Nth time the last episodes of a cartoon we watched until they were so embellished, they no longer resembled the original plot....
Then, next thing I knew, school started and we just got separated.  Although sometimes, I would invite Noel over and by our porch, we will talk about our life until it's dark.  But those times were very far and few. Until the time that we just lost contact of each other.  Then, years after, his mother told me Noel entered the seminary.  I was secretly envious, because I was thinking of the very same thing, and because of my timidity, he beat me to it.  When I announced to my family that I wanted to enter the seminary too, they thought I was just copying from Noel, and that peeved me.  That actually stalled me from bringing up the topic of priesthood with my family, for the fear of being unoriginal.  Later, I learned that Noel left the seminary and it was a surprise because Noel was seen then as a sort of prodigy by his formators.  Apparently, one of the priests hinted about his being adopted and poor Noel, he didn't know about it.  In fact, everybody knew except him.  Even I, on the first time I met him, knew that he was adopted, but I guess no one bothered telling him because it doesn't matter anyway.  This accidental revelation by some imprudent priest actually broke Noel and he felt betrayed by all, including me.
Noel had a natural talent for music and so, later, he learned piano from a local music teacher in our town, and went to become one of the regular church organists during Sundays.  Every summer, during my college days, I would join the choir and every after practice, we get to talk a bit, but other than that, we just went on each other's ways.  With no nostalgia for our childhood memories, we just drifted so far apart that we no longer have much in common to talk about with.  Later, after my mother's death, my father sold our house in the countryside and with no home to return to, I no longer had reason to go back to that neighborhood, effectively cutting all communication with Noel.
The last time I saw Noel was two years ago, on the afternoon after I celebrated my first Mass.  My sisters and I decided to visit our old house, and we were surprised that nothing much has changed since it was sold.  Then, I went to check out the neighborhood and, next thing I knew, I was at Noel's.  He was there and he embraced me with joy.  Until the time I had to leave, he kept on repeating to all the people around us, "Look, everyone! Here's my best friend, here's my best friend."



As children, we tore up
our treasure maps and tossed
the pieces to an open fire,
and so today, some cherished toys
are still buried somewhere in our mind.
Whatever we imagined as our boat,
a spaceship, or a time machine,
tossed hard by every quell and tide,
now lies quiet and worn at the backyard.
The trees that used to shake
under our weight no longer cast
cool shades on childhood,
browned by dirt and sun.
But we were never bothered
by the passing of time,
until now that it is too late to say,
"Thanks, I had so much fun."

Asking to be confirmed

Last night, I had my second meeting for the preparation for the sacrament of Confirmation.  It coincided with the Junior High's night, and so Charlene, one of the candidates for the sacrament got confused and so didn't come for the preparation.  Simon, on the other hand was there.  Son of a very pious but internet-savvy couple, Simon's interests include comic-book writing and zombies.  Truth be told, I wasn't expecting Simon to really follow the program.  He wasn't even in the original list of candidates.  But this young man had shown unusual interest.  With him is Nadege, whom I knew only through a few exchanges of emails that we had recently.  She has stopped coming to the Aumonerie since 2011 but surprisingly, she showed up and asked to be included in the program.  She was of Portuguese descent, she's already in her senior high but she looked unusually young for a typical French youth.
We began our meeting with the lighting of the vigil lamp, which is nothing more than a saucer with a few drops of olive oil and a spindled cotton as wick.  Simon gladly demonstrated to Nadege how it worked, and our improvised lamp actually stay lit for more than an hour.  With my broken French and a bit of enthusiasm, we explored the meaning of faith, the importance of trusting, believing and putting one's faith on something. Videos and other things to animate came handy, while our little vigil lamp shone before us.  We were surprised after on how the time flew, and so we immediately and a bit hurriedly made our prayer.  I asked them to draw, and the two, completely different yet in many ways similar, huddled over sketches their made.  The pencil drawings of Simon and Nadege struck me hard, as they happened to be the most honest and most revealing prayers I ever heard from a French teenager.
We said our Notre Pere, holding each other's hands and then stood up to join the Juniors with the prayers I prepared for them.  The words of Timothy Radcliffe rang well in our experience that night:  Prayer is an act of friendship with God.  It's not about thinking about him but rather being with him.


The pages of the Sacramentary had traces
of panic and forgetfulness at its crease and tears.
Drops of candle wax dot the Easter prayer
while regularity sullied the Ordinary Times.
Spines are broken and leaves are folded
and somewhere, pieces of paper marked
a hope or a plan in a priest's mind.
Grime and sot is today's monastic illumination
on the Second Eucharistic Prayer, imitating
the familiarity and haste of every presider
who knew each of these words by heart.

The Funeral of a War Hero

I left early to be at Pierre Chatel, a village about 7 km from the rectory.  I had with me my black bag containing just about everything I'll need for a celebration of a funeral rite.  It's actually an overnight bag, practical, elegant and spacious.  The church was closed but there are already a few people by the front steps.  As I made my way to the back-door, I passed by an old man and greeted him bonjour but he seemed lost in his thoughts and didn't reply back.  As I entered the building, I was greeted by the comforting warmth of the thermostat and the dim silence of the sanctuary.  I set up my CD player by a side altar, at a piece of instrumental music, Gabriel's Oboe which I have used as entrance song to practically all of my funerals since last June.  I donned my robes and was greeted by a war veteran.  He said he'll be saying a few words during the celebration and that three other war veterans will be there to carry flags.  You see, our beloved deceased, Georges, has participated in the battle of Montfroid in Savoie on a  resistance against the Germans, during the Second World War.  Apparently, he received many medals for for his courage, leadership and patriotism.  It should be noted though that while he's a local hero, he's not French.  He belonged to a family of Italian immigrants who escaped Mussolini's regime and settled in the mining community of La Motte d'Aveillans.  Foreigners were viewed with contempt those days and Georges worked hard to belong to his new country. From the number of people who went to his burial, I can say his efforts paid off.

The funeral service was just like all other funerals in Matheysine:  quiet.  The congregation, when greeted, would respond with nods and a mumble.  To songs and prayers, they join me by mouthing the words without producing any sounds.  Their lips would enunciate the difficult French words but you'll not hear a single squeak.  If some person would dare to sing any louder, he will be hounded with stern stares and well-placed nudges until he'd step back and sing the rest of the song in awkward silence.  I thought at first that it was only in my funerals that the people are like that.  It turned out, my confrères have the same experience at all funeral services they made.

The coffin was covered with the tricoloured national flag and is flanked by two candles lighted by the grandchildren of Georges.  At the song, Ave Maria, the deceased's daughter trembled with emotion and sobbed in a peculiar way: it had all the trappings of a full-pledged sob, with all the shoulder and head motions, but none of the sounds.  It actually impressed me:  an all-out cry on mute.  

We all went out at the song, Amazing Grace and went to the cemetery.  The high noon sun is melting last night's heavy snow and there's water and mud everywhere.  The three war veterans, these fully decorated flag bearers were cautious to walk over the melting snow while balancing their flags.  The coffin was placed near the mouth of the tomb which Georges shares with his wife, Simone.  I made a reference on how he died on a Valentines day, and how these two, separated by death, are now reunited in death and in the life after, and then everyone lined up to bless the coffin with holy water, a simple gesture of solemn goodbye to a beloved friend.

Tree branches looked

like lifted hands holding up snow

towards the high heavens.

As the first signs of spring begin

to bud on the leafless twigs,

the white icy holocaust melted

and dripped, the sun trapped

at each crystalline drop.

Lifeless, but we know it isn't

true, because days from now,

all the snow will be gone,

and these branches will again

be furiously teeming with life.

Baptism of Nathanael

Nathanael is the son of Mark, a physician and Therese, a music teacher.  They've been married since 2008 and after a long wait, and almost at the verge of giving up, they finally had a son, born August last year. They weren't even expecting it, and Therese only found out about her pregnancy when she was already well in her second trimester.
The couple was actually expecting that Fr. Manuel be the one to officiate the baptism, but since this Italian priest had to take his sabbatical, almost in a hurried way, and Fr. Armand, peeved that he was only a second choice, decided to passed it to me three weeks ago.
I know the couple well, they're regular churchgoers.  Therese sings and plays the violin during Sunday Masses while Mark, who is under formation to become a deacon, is our new sacristan, a role which he shares with two other men.  While I'm not exactly the chatty type and I totally abhor small talks, Mark and Therese aren't fazed at all in striking a conversation with me, although most of the time, I really don't know what to say and I nod myself out of a dialogue, because frankly, my French still isn't that good.
When I met them, however, for the preparation for the baptism, our conversation was a bit perfunctory and clinical.  Not that I mind it, but I can sense a very palpable disappointment from the couple. Later, that night, Therese emailed me and told me that she was in fact sad that Fr. Manuel couldn't be there for Nathanael's big day.  She said that he is her best friend and spiritual father.
During the ceremony this noon at the Chapel, I tried to keep it simple. The only reason for this is that one of the sponsors, the godfather if you will, is actually a priest, ordained on 2001 and the family had known him for three years since they met at Rome.  He knows the tool of the trade, so to speak, and so, he'd see if I'm just trying to add theatricals to the rite, a cheeky liturgical trickery I have learned from Armand to spice up the celebration.  At the end, the simplicity actually worked, and we had a very solemn baptism, attended by a few friends, most of them I personally know. At one point of the ceremony, Nathanael cried his lungs out but at the moment when I poured the water on his forehead, he became quiet and gave me a quizzical look.
What made the celebration special is the music.  We actually sang during the celebration, which is rare in baptisms here in  this country.  They picked well the hymns and the responses.  In fact, the litany of the saints was chanted (a first time!) in a manner that made me recall my ordination to the diaconate.
My homily focused on being a poet.  I told them, if they wanted Nathanael to grow up and be a priest, prophet and king, like Christ, they should make him a poet first, and these munus triplex will naturally follow.  A passage from Homer's Odyssey inspired me here, the one that recounted the killing of all the suitors of Penelope until only a priest and a poet were left.  Ulysses killed the priest but spared the poet because the poet is blessed to speak the language of the gods.


Some dinners are made of glass wines
lined up to great vintages, while others
are series of fancy desserts,
cute little cakes and heavenly pies.
Others are spartan, functional,
while there are those that are made
of stories, told and retold at occasions.
At each of them, I always ask
God to help me survive.
For cutleries glinted at epic wars
that end not with a truce
but with a cup of coffee getting cold.

How to get the sacred dousing

This morning, I decided to have some coffee with Bernadette, a retired secretary of the Mayor's office and one of the volunteers for our exhibit.  She was already boiling some water on a kettle while we're discussing about her last visit to Marthe Robin's place when suddenly my cellphone rang.  Annie called me up to remind me of my meeting with a family at ten o'clock... and it's already ten fifteen and I'm about a mile away from the parish.
I've been terribly out of shape for a year now and running back to the parish office to catch my appointment wasn't easy.  Kipling spoke about filling an unforgiving minute with a 60 seconds of distant run.  I did that, multiplied by ten.
Waiting for me is a family.  The husband is from a known family here in the parish, whose parents live in a village two kilometres away. The wife is a very beautiful Polish woman, with a charming accent.  They have their kids with them, Emilie, who was baptised on 2012 and Leon, the one I will baptise next week.  The family is very nice and they seem to be practising Catholics, a rarity in France these days.
We talked about how the baptism will go about.  Emilie started crying.  Her dad opened an app on his iPad and gave it to her.  The wife started breast-feeding Leon.  Polish names were spelled and written and a bit of an explanation about conjugating names was made.
I lent them a CD of tasteful music and songs for baptism and hoped that they'll choose something sensible. We wrapped thing up with exchanges of emails and numbers, and then I showed them the door.


Broken car wheels and doll heads
scattered on the floor,
stained with milk, spit and mud.
Of course, we looked away
to keep the legends of parenthood
as magical as it sounded before.
Blood-shot sleeplessness floats
like empty feeding bottles on
sterilizers, while it carried
a blissful image of joy and pride
that's only theirs to keep.

Asking the Dead

This is only my fourth post and I already wish to talk about death. Don't worry.  It won't be about my own death.  Nor would I contemplate or wish for a death of a person.  I just felt like the need to talk about my visit at the chambre funeraire.

This afternoon, I walked to a funeral parlour, only half a kilometre from the rectory.  I went there, first, to take advantage of the sun, which is becoming a rarity this January and I felt that a bit of fresh air won't hurt either.  Second, I wish to visit the remains of Monique, a nice middle aged mother who died of cancer just a few days ago.  She is well-loved by her family and her community, and I often see her during the Mass, always smiling at the pews. She's a member of our little association and I have already been to her house a few times, and have met her family.

Peeking at the glass door I hesitated a bit at the front steps the funeral parlor as I saw no one inside.  I entered anyway and wished aloud that someone is there to tell me where would I find Monique's wake.  A paper carefully taped on a door replied mutely of my query.  I entered and I was surprised at the dimness of the room. I must make this clear:  the room wasn't dark, it is just that it didn't have the artificial funeral candelabras that we often use at home.  The furnishings were utilitarian but tasteful, chaises on corners, a coffee table book, a table lamp, a reproduction of still-life painting on the wall.  As I surveyed the room and went to discover what's behind the divider that stood at the middle of the room, I soon realised that it's not only the candelabras that are missing.

Before me was a bed, and there lies Monique, wearing, not a formal dress, but a cream-colored thermal pull-over, covered with a dark blue quilt until her chest, her two white hands resting over her stomach.  There was no coffin at all.  It struck me as strange but then again, the whole concept of it seems to stress to all who visits her that she was just, in fact, sleeping.  As I sat down at a bench nearby, I looked at her and tried to recall of my memories of her.  One thing for sure, her sweet smile, even at death, hasn't left her.  

I then tried not to stare as I felt it not right to stare at a lady at whatever state she is.  Also, I began to hallucinate and imagined seeing the tell-tale rise and fall of her chest, breathing.  I felt obliged too to stay silent in my prayers so as not to disturb her "sleep."  So I just looked around this corner which is just as dim as the rest of the room and it felt companionably quiet.  Near her was a receptacle for holy water and an unlighted candle.  On the floor is a slab of stylised cut marble bearing the inscription, Annabelle Soeur.  Who is Annabelle Soeur?  Later, I realised that the writing actually said, A Ma Belle-Soeur, "to my sister-in-law." 

While my eyes were rarely on her and I barely made a sound, I didn't dread the presence of Monique's mortal remains.  I guess I am no longer afraid of the dead people.  In fact, in the dimness of the place, I began recalling the memories of my own beloved dead.  My mother, my father, my sister...  I don't know but that thought ached a lot like a nostalgic splinter in my eye and next thing I knew, I was weeping.  

I then asked Monique, in French, that if she sees my mom, my dad and my sister, to please, please tell them I said Hi, and that I love them and I miss them very much.  And that I am doing well although it would help alot if they would always pray for me.  My hallucination led me to believe that she smiled the more after that. Then I recited a decade of the rosary, stood up, wiped the tear-stains away from my face, bid Monique my adieu, went to the register to sign my name and then left.

Paperbacks

I am lost in this chapter

where the protagonist hid

among indecipherable words and I fear

that I don't care anymore.

My own story blurred at edges

and my world is filled with

the same faceless words that hurt

my eyes.  I searched

for the solace of a sound,

familiar, flowing, unstudied,

to break out somewhere between

the lines.  Is there an end?

Yes, of course, but reading it

would mean death to a friend.

About Bread

There are about seven bakeries in La Mure.  For a village of a population of 4000, that's not too bad.  But if you consider other shops, you'll be surprised:  five pastry shops, three driving schools, 15 bars, three pizza takeouts, two decent restaurants, a barbershop, two florists, a greengrocer, four banks, two butcher-shops, two sporting goods store, six bookstores, a pharmacy and two tobacco-and-newspaper outlets.  The fact that there's almost as many bookshops as bakeries and bars are twice as many might make you rethink the priorities of this little commune.
Buying bread is one of the few reasons why would I dare go out on a street with at least ten centimetres of snow.  French people can't have a meal without their baguette.  A curious thing, baguette, which is an average size of bread to be consumed by three persons on a normal meal, baguette literally means a stick. The smaller version, ficelle, means a string, while the "family"-sized ones are called flute, which means, well, a flute.  The huge ones, the size of a body pillow are called boulot, roughly translates in English as "the works."
Curiously, bread here only lasts a day, not because they spoil easily but rather, they become rock-hard and uneatable if they are left exposed in air. They can become so dry and hard that you can seriously hurt someone if you hit him with a day-old baguette. (note to self: keep one by the door, for self-defense). Thus, bread has to be bought daily (now the idea of a daily bread makes sense!), freshly baked and carried home under one's armpit.  Which brings my compatriots here in France to call them pan de kilikili. Which brings me to another trivia.  Monay here in France is actually called brioche.  And brioches are eaten like desserts or snack.  In fact, in the expression, "Let them eat cake" wrongly attributed to Marie Antoinette, the cake in question is none other than our humble monay.
Baguette however have no Filipino equivalent and I don't think there will ever be a local version.   It's not the kind of bread that you spread coco jam on.  It's more like rice for French meals.  But the real purpose for baguettes is for wiping.  Yep, wiping.  A spoon rarely appears on a French table, and it is only used for soup.  So the bread is usually used to drain sauces on plates and then to wipe them clean afterwards.  If in my home country, wiping one's plate almost equates to being patay-gutom, here in France, a picked-clean plate after the meal is a must.  And the best tool for the job is a slice of a crusty baguette.
By now, I know which bakeries serve the best bread and which ones give out the crappy kind.  Each baguette roughly costs 80 cents (roughly 40php) and we consume about two and a half baguettes a day, so that means 3 euros worth of bread is eaten in my community daily.  I buy them usually at l'Anthracite, which is not a name you usually associate with freshly baked bread.  Anthracite is a rock-like but shiny kind of coal mined here in La Mure until the early 90s; it is so hard, it's almost like diamond.  One fist-sized rock can last a month, burning on a fireplace.  The bakeshop used to belong to my very good friend, Brigitte, until, in 2010, she decided to sell it to a younger couple.  They used to have a saleslady who was fired for regularly stealing from the cash register.  Ironically, the couple who bought the bakery re-hired this saleslady and Chantal is still there, everyday, smiling behind the cash register.



(while at the young priests' gathering, listening to Armand's rantings)

Huddled under the warm yellow light,
our eyes shone brighter at the background
of black coats and heavy air.
We broke barriers without lifting a finger
in declaring who are those at the margins
and that we owe them a welcome.
The unfortunate bottom line is that,
under this same yellow light,
we conveniently labelled him who hides
at the periphery's shadow.

On my 37th birthday

I just turned 37 last week and truth be told, for the first time in my life, I felt I really grew up.

I admit that at each birthday, I can see things that changed in me.  My appearance, my voice, the fact that I moved from year to year to different levels of education... I had celebrated my birthdays in weirdest places, often hung-over by new year revelry, or just at home, or in my apartment, or in my seminary room, or in front of the computer answering emails and private messages.  Last week, I was just in my room, almost two years as a priest, who before Christmas was in one of the most beautiful cities I've ever been, and, as always, since my participation in Facebook, looking over the messages of many people, most of whom, I only met once somewhere in my past and now, our only interaction is the rare "likes" we give at each other's posts.

But as I said, suddenly, I felt that I had grown up.

It might sound a bit late, especially for a 37 year old, to say these thing, but frankly, I have no excuse whatsoever.  All I knew is that the world around me has suddenly changed and I felt its weight bearing on my soul.  I no longer doubt the power of hushed prayer and the importance of silence while looking at the window with a cup of cheap tea.  I give more respect to the written and spoken words and bow down to appreciate the lyric touch they give in my adult life, but more importantly, I realised that I have a new friend, wordlessness, an ominous being that loomed over me as a ghost, but now, she holds my hands with such warmth, that I am assured that it is her that I need, here and now.

As I turned 37, I have learned to lay down my imaginary sword and surrender to my long-time enemies, uncertainty and subtlety. And while they leered in delight to my defeat, I somehow feel that I earned their respect and will one day be there with me on the streets, offering me cigarettes or helping me with my groceries or picking up my fallen ego from the floor.

As a 37 year old, I am confident that I've grown wiser, more cynical, more dark, more compassionate, more nuanced, more adventurous, more careful.  At 37, I am now much closer to knowing who is the real me.

Here's another free verse, during the time the parishioners gathered to reflect on the letter of our local bishop:

We read the letter, but our hearts drummed hard
on the questions that seemed not to rhyme
with the superlative generalities
that rose and fell like a heaving chest,
short of air, peppered with nominal gasps in risk
of reducing the Word into something proverbial,
or painfully parochial. We pulled our vests,
in a church that is becoming more and more
Cold.  Hope is the word
we all desperately want to touch and hold.

It's been a while

It's been so long since I wrote in my old blog and I just decided to make myself a new one.  Nothing fancy.  Just trying to find myself an outlet.  Or rather a drainage for my clogged thoughts and feelings that haven't seen the light of day, but rot nonetheless at stagnancy of wordlessness.

To you who somehow found my blog, I wish to introduce myself.  I am Fr. Utoy.  Five years ago, as a seminarian, I have a blog at Wordpress that I just got tired of keeping alive.  I got busy with studies and also, Facebook came along and so divorced me from my once exciting love affair with words.

And then I became a priest.  A week after my ordination, they sent me to a small country village in the Rhone-Alpes and I'm here since 2012.

I'm not claiming to be a good writer.  I never was.  I don't even speak English that good.  But the English words are my best friends and have kept me sane when I am confronted with another language that never seemed to love me back: French.  The English language is the one that consoled me when la langue francaise just treat me as a stupid and awkward foreigner that does not even merit pity or politeness.

For today, I just want to share a free verse I doodled while attending a diocesan clergy retreat in Annecy.

Knitted jumpers heaved at each breath,
the spoken words flowed like a sinuous serpent,
or perhaps, it is the solemnity of this air
that declares each moment a verdict,
a law spoken by angels, carved on rocks.
We stared ahead, an illusion of attentive gaze,
but our mind raced for something witty,
something cliché to blurt out, in hopes
of breaking the heavy atmosphere of boredom,
or just an attempt, a misguided wish
to funnel all attention to one's levity.
White hair that shouted haughtily of cynicism,
low-key snobs on faded jeans,
the current and the retro collide
and not a rat's behind was ever given.