Monks of Tamie

Last 2013, I programmed my GPS and went to the monastery of Tamie.  Suggested by a friend, I first looked them up in the internet, and through their website, I was able to contact Br. Didier through e-mail and make a five-day reservation.  The abbey was just two hours drive from La Mure and so I packed a valise and headed there.  Just to be sure, I bought some snacks I can hide at the trunk of my car, if ever the food they offer isn't to my liking.
When I was but a mile away, my GPS brought me to a hill-side village and I got lost in its narrow alleys.  I parked my car and started to reprogram my GPS when an elderly lady smilingly approached me and tapped at my wind-shield.  Smilingly, she offered to give me directions to the abbey.  Apparently, she's been helping lost visitors to find their way on a daily basis, and like me, we had but one culprit for the misdirection: the GPS.
When I arrived at Tamie, I really don't know what to do.  I just found myself wandering around a big gift shop.  The bearded man behind the cashier didn't look friendly so I tried approaching one of the monks.  It turned to be Br. Didier, the one I contacted through email.  He told me to bring my car to the next building, just over the hill that blocked it.  When I drove to it, I was surprised how beautiful the monastery was.  The spring-time flowers covered a field sprawling before it and the towers looked old and imposing (Later I learned that this was only a 19th century construction).
Most of my days in Tamie are spent wandering at the woods, identifying beech, oak, poplars and evergreens.  I felt the cold rush of water by cascades and falls around the monks' property and had known how it is to be mildly brushed by the leaves of poison ivy.  I walked miles to see blooms and greeneries and cows and all the elements of spring.  I visited the monks' bookshop and even bought some souvenirs.   With the zoom of my camera, I spied on monks by my window and saw the abbot, dressed in a blue over-alls and a woolen lumberjack shirt, preparing a big wooden post, the purpose of which, I would not know for certain.  I also admired the way the building furniture were arranged by someone who has, no doubt, a flair for ikebana and interior design.  But what marked my stay are prayers, the monastic prayers. Most of the time, I would just be listening to them, along with other pilgrims and visitors who are as mesmerized as I was by the singing of the monks.  Psalms after psalms, the hair at my arms and at the back of my neck prickled at the haunting beauty of their voices, interpreting age-old chants in a rehearsed but still prayerful pace.

Lord, I am deep within your heart,
as dark as the night
and million times as lovely.
I sat by my window,
 your forlorn lover,
for I often mistook your silence
as a painful absence,
an emptiness other than
that which you are, that sweet
expanse of a space that breeds
love.  Yes, I am
in that place where you
embraced me and assured me
that I, your beloved,
am truly profoundly loved.

Blessing the Heat

I'm happy that it has been almost a year and my blog hasn't been discovered yet.  I guess it is true;  it is easier to hide in the crowd, and what could be more crowded than the blogosphere?  Everyone has something to say, and, flooded with words after words after words, I am forever lost in my preferred anonymity.  After all, who knows where would my thoughts would be if the world is oblivious of it?  I did not exactly hide:  I gave away hints, used old names and common tags, referenced subjects that would give me away.  But after some time, I know my new blog has passed the test.  I am officially anonymous.  I can now bear my soul, as I do before my Lord.

My first confession:  I'll do everything to be home.  Yes, to go back to my home country and suffer the tropical heat and the third-world inconveniences, but at the same time, be close to my family, my friends, my people who have this goofy charm that borders between nobility and kitsch.  I'll taste again the heavily salted cuisine of the islands, that rejoices on the flavors of the sea, the the clear soup of meat and vegetables that I knew from childhood.  I'll swim through the haze of the polluted mornings where women rush for the commute, with hair still wet and perfumed well with cheap shampoo, alongside men, that smelled of fresh shirts and cigarette stains, to open the day with a hopeful hum and a hurried prayer.  I wish to swelter in midday heat that glared through streets and corrugated GI sheets, and probably curse the climate change, but at the same time, consoling myself with the colors of halo-halo and the fury of an old electric fan.  I wish to watch TV shows that are infantile but of very high entertainment value, song and dance and crass jokes that have brought me up to who I am: sentimental, spiritual, tacky.

More confessions to come...



Christmas Wish

When sorrow dims the heart
as winter dusk does to the earth,
and the ache of solitude pierces
like an arrow from nowhere,
then Master, I fall as a warrior
by Your door, imploring
if defeat would still find me
 a place at Your table.
Lo! And see how opened his dwelling
to reveal at the core a meaning:
In this world, where the lonesome
is shunned, a leper in spirit,
there is a refuge that awaits me
where I can leave my mourning
by the door and find, among things,
joy, peace, rest.