Uh-oh! #1

First chapter of "What, Me Retire?"   

(Covid-19 has forced many people to retire and, as expressed in their social media posts, home 24/7 is such a lonely place. Perhaps by sharing my own retirement story, they can find humor in their change of pace, and may even discover that retirement is a blessing in disguise.)                                                                                                         

Retire from a dream career? No way.    

Well, I upped and left—without packing my bags—never to return to that place where I did what I loved to do for over 25 years! I dared not look back, afraid I might, like Lot's wife, turn to salt. 

Not your typical retirement scene, is it?  It's more like a movie sequence. 

Company retirees are usually sent off with a ritual: speeches of accolades and gratitude; food and drinks; hugs and tears; a small parting gift (in an envelope), and a wild applause. I had mounted those rituals myself (with the help of my staff) for esteemed officemates who reached the retirement age and, by law, had to go.  

In contrast, here I was, ritual-bare, a 54-year-old ex-EVP, sitting alone like a petrified driftwood in the middle of the Dead Sea instead of the car that would take me home for good.

As the building that housed my advertising life grew smaller and smaller from the car's rear view mirror, I heard a grandiose music soundtrack swell to crescendo. Then when the building was out of sight, in sync with the last chord, the screen turned black and the words “The End” appeared. 

Tragic ending? Well, I lamented the fact that nobody would ever know whether I just left for coffee or took a spin around the block.  

* * * * *

Written in most of my books today: “Grace left the workplace to try new things.” New things mean everything outside of advertising, but primarily, they mean writing. Nothing new, really, as I might have begun writing in my mother's womb. I’ve been writing  letters, plays, nursery rhymes, greeting cards, speeches for aunties and grannies, among others. But along the way, my mind, not my heart, led me to other persuasions.   

Just a week after fleeing my place of work, I rekindled my dormant love for writing and took on where I left off. I seized writing with a focus so ferocious I pounded on my keyboard almost 24/7, more hours than any day I ever spent at work. I asked myself then, Retiring isn't so bad, is it? 

On the flip side, I knew I had to go through that made-only-in-movies dramatic exit to make me appreciate “new things.”  

Here now is a sneak peek of how the plot thickened for two years before it moved toward the scene when the screen turned black for “The End.”  

To be continued next post 

Unimaginable Imagination

Visual artists see lights, shadows, lines, colors, tones, shapes, spaces, and textures that ordinary eyes can’t see. 

I am privileged to have many friends in this field. And I am in awe of the master artists whose magnum opuses are in famed museums all over the world and whose works command millions of dollars.

Wow, what imagination! 

Yet Plato asserted that when artists are using their imagination, they are simply imitating. In his Theory of the Forms, Plato wrote that art imitates physical things (mimesis), and physical things imitate forms. Therefore, “art is a copy of a copy.”  

How so? Plato explains through the metaphor of the three beds:

One bed is an idea created by God. The second bed is created by a carpenter who imitates God’s idea. The painter than imitates the carpenter’s bed by painting it. Ergo, the artist’s bed is twice removed from the truth.

Artists, therefore, can only imitate so much, because our God of grace, the original Artist, has endless ideas. This I found out with great reverence while Googling images of flowers. (Yes, I will dare paint flowers again while the pandemic rages on.) 

We are all familiar with many blooms in our garden and in flower shops. But do we even know how many rare flowers there are in the world? I discovered more than a hundred (I am sure there are more in some hinterlands somewhere) and I am sharing with you a few that kept me gushing till I ran out of breath.

There aren't enough adjectives to describe them so I came up with one all-inclusive phrase: 

“Unimaginable imagination!” Our Creator’s lights, shadows, lines, colors, tones, shapes, spaces, and textures are indeed out of any artist’s league and out of this world. 

These are just my personal picks. There are many, many, many more on the Net. 

“Great and marvelous are your works, O Lord God, the Almighty. Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations." (Revelation 15:3 NLT) 

My Sister and Her Butterflies

As I watch the butterflies in our garden, I smile thinking of my only sister, Aie. She loves butterflies! She has them (decal, drawing, photo, ceramic, plastic) on most of her doodads like fans, eyeglasses, notebooks, pens, umbrella, flip-flops, etc. 

Why? I don't know. Come to think of it, I never got around to asking her. 

They are in the Bible! I say to myself, because during this pandemic, most (if not all) of her days are focused on our home church in the province. In the absence of a pastor, she seems to have naturally slid into the role. 

Actually, butterflies are not found in God's book, but their life cycle is an uncanny illustration of the transforming work of Jesus Christ in the lives of believers. In 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NKJV), we read, ". . . if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new." 

The same God, who changes a caterpillar into a butterfly, transforms a sinner into a saved soul. 

The metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly has striking parallels to a Christian's life: conversion, resurrection, and transfiguration. The word transform is metamorpheo in Greek, the origin of the English term metamorphosis—the  change a caterpillar undergoes to become a butterfly. This very same word is used to explain Christ’s transfiguration: a complete transformation. 

At Jesus’ transfiguration, his physical appearance metamorphosed from an ordinary Human to a divine Being in all His glory while three of His disciples (Peter, James, and John) watched:  

". . . He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light." (Matthew 17:2) Just like a caterpillar emerging from its cocoon to become a butterfly! That must be why Aie loves this remarkable marvel.  

I am no theologian and cannot articulate it in greater detail, but to me, it seems that our cocoon stage as Christians is when we die to sin. 

What a mind-blowing grace!  

Blast from the Class

 Last-class days are usually ho-hum. I expected only two or three students to come and listen to my instructions for a future online exam. 

I was shocked to see them all! 

Perhaps because it was the last day, even those who chose silence through the term put their larynx to work. And since I had no formal agenda, except for the instructions that were spelled out in a few  minutes, the talkies were free-wheeling. 

We talked about their plans, the weather, some politics, nuggets of wisdom, past lessons, and countless inanities that needed no brain surgery. 

Then when the final minutes came, I nonchalantly said, “Okay, goodbye for now. See you when I see you! Let’s take one last class photo.” 

And suddenly, a blast rocked my screen. From each frame sprang out faces and words that knocked me over. 

I didn’t know whether to cry, laugh, babble, or snivel. I did all. 

See, online classes are frustrating, if not heartbreaking. A teacher, who exhausts all bags of tricks to engage her students, never knows whether she is connecting or not. Body language and facial expressions that usually guide a teacher's tempo in a classroom, are non existent. Closed cameras show only grinning photos. 

That was why on this last day, I expected yawning. 

The shock wave triggered by that blast from the class blew up my senses and turned my throat into a fist. That night, like a weeping willow, I bowed down in thanksgiving for this burst of grace.   

Freak of Nature

This noun phrase is the simplest explanation for anything we see that is unusual or abnormal in creation. Man is supposed to have only one head, but when someone has two (conjoined twins), it’s a “freak of nature.” Then we think of the circus, which features a freak show.     

It is so convenient to use this wholesale, catch-all summary of things that go beyond the norm. 

Roses, for instance, come in all colors today than years back, because gardeners scientifically graft them. And yet, “freak of nature” happens. 

My niece, Vinya, uploaded this photo of a rose on her FB page.  Burgundy and white in one?! 

They are supposed to bloom separately. 

Quickly, I searched the Net to find out how this could have happened. (Man has this unquenchable thirst for an explanation behind any rarity.) To my delight, I find multi-colored roses that had been tinted and dyed by humans hands.  

But the undyed and untinted two-colored rose is surprising grace; not a work of man, but a gift of God. There is nothing freakish about it. There is a twin of Vinya’s photo online! Gasp.   

Just when we think we know how God acts to show His love for us, we behold something unexpected. 

Theologians say that the Bible bares everything about God’s love. He revealed Himself in creation (Romans 1:20) and in Jesus (the Gospels), and through the prophets and apostles. Unfortunately, our finite mind cannot grasp it all.

“Freak of nature” is one of those ungraspable—and unknowable and unmeasurable—acts of the Lord. That’s why for the Ephesians (chapter 3:19), Paul prayed, “May you . . . grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ . . .” 

The roses and all of God’s creation manifest His love for everyone. My eyes cannot see it all, so I depend on faith. 

Martin Luther once wrote, “God our Father has made all things depend on faith so that whoever has faith will have everything, and whoever does not have faith will have nothing.”

Divided Heart

Posts about losing a loved one or getting sick with Covid-19 always leave me wordless. So I reply with the broken-heart emoji, hoping it would convey exactly how I feel. I have been using this emoji too often lately, a clue that the catastrophe the coronavirus crammed into our chests has not ceased since last year. 

Then just like that, it is the middle of year again. I am also midway in reading my chronological Bible. 

Here we see King Solomon now building God’s house, which his father David dreamed of doing himself—he had all plans drawn, including the details. 

But God instructed David that it would be his son, Solomon, who will build the Temple and its courtyards . . . and if Solomon continues to obey God’s commands, his kingdom would last forever (1 Chronicles 28:6-7). 

Solomon uses the finest of materials (costly precious gems, metals, and stones; trees transported from other places), put in place by the best of artisans and hundreds of skilled workers. 

Simultaneously, however, Solomon builds his own palace and another palace for one of his concubines, the Egyptian pharaoh’s daughter, causing delay in the construction.  

While reading, my broken-heart emoji took a despicable dimension. It suddenly became the illustration of Solomon’s divided heart! 

His heart is not wholly for God; it is fractured by other loves.

Solomon’s heart starts to fragment during the building of the temple. It further splinters when he, in later years, start worshipping the idols of his foreign wives. 

When God’s temple is completed after 13 years, Solomon’s two other personal temples are completed as well. During the consecration of God’s Temple for worship, the Lord warns him of the dangers of a divided heart: 

If he and his children cease to follow the Lord and His commandments by worshiping other gods, the Lord will cut off Israel from the land given them, and God’s Temple will be destroyed (1 Kings 9:6). 

From a whole heart to a divided heart; from grace to disgrace. Now, isn't that heartbreaking?

Is That You?

That question is not an insult per se, but when it is asked while someone is looking at your old photo and then his eyeballs pivot toward you, he is actually being polite. What he means—but bites his tongue— is, What on earth happened to you?! 

Even if that unasked question were yodeled on a mountain peak, I take no offense. In fact, I am laughing while writing about it—as I hear that question more often these days. 

Any reference to my youth is relevant only as far as the vibrant memories are concerned, but what has happened to my facade is of minor importance. Beauty regimens are a thing of the past when one reaches a certain age—think of all that money and time saved for prettying oneself!  

The question, “What on earth happened to you?” can be answered by one word: age. 

And as sure as “the sun will come out tomorrow,” age carts along with it a carry-all that contains a multitude of things: illnesses, tragedies, failures, losses, and disappointments. 

Rescuing grace lightens the load on the road, but the cargo piles up through the years, and its increasing weight takes a toll on one’s skin, eyes, ears, hair, muscles, posture, veins, organs—name it. Every living and non-living matter on earth atrophies over time.  

Youth is ephemeral. 

Despite my aches, pains, and discomforts today, I can honestly say, without meaning to boast, that I am comfortable in my own skin.  

If someone asks, “Is that you?” 

My reply, “That I was, then. This I am, now.” 

A perfect example of a comparative ad.  

"Is not wisdom found among the aged? Does not long life bring understanding?” (Job 12:12 NIV) 

o o o

P.S.

Tony and I exchanged marriage vows 51 years ago, today, with our immediate family members as witnesses. 

Geen’s Gone

 Before I check social media these lockdown days, my heart seesaws between anticipation and apprehension.  

I look forward to hearing from friends and family—about the exciting things they are into. And yet, I dread the bad news, which has been overwhelming: deaths, illnesses, financial woes, and mental anguish. 

Many of my dear ones document their struggles on their pages, asking for prayers, and suddenly, one day, you see a black empty frame or a lit candle on common friends’ pages. Collectively we mourn and lift each other up with words of comfort.  

But one friend, Geen, left without warning. She had always been a very private person and spurned social media. I like to think, however, that she was open with me—as I with her—when  we became co-teachers and friends in a university. 

Geen had awe-inspiring credentials earned from the business sector, where she had been a commanding force in a multi-national company. She brought her expertise and sharp mind to the university; these she shared with her students and me, in the faculty lounge, selflessly. No wonder she was loved by her students and had a fan in me.

Among other things, she taught me how to do systematic records so that nothing is left to chance. She would simplify strategies in plain diagrams, and interconnect even disparate syllabi. 

I knew we’d meet again, but she took off even before we could see the finish line of this crisis. 

Geen’s gone, but the things she left me are legacies of grace that will last till I, too, would be . . . well, gone.  

"Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never ever die." (John 11:26 NLT)