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.

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.

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.