Brief

Brief is a polymorphic word. It can function as multiple parts of speech.   

Verb: I’ll brief her about the meeting. 

Noun: He wrote the brief for the trial.  

Adjective: This is a brief blog.

Please humor me; I may be splitting hairs here. 

But after visiting Tony’s grave one morning, the word brief (adjective) kept nagging at me. 

First, it was a brief visit because the heat of the summer sun was already scorching even at that early hour, making me woozy.  

Second, his tombstone shows the dates of his birth and death, a stark proof of how brief earthly life is. 

Third, in the face of my pesky off-and-on grief, I sought comfort from the Lord and reminded myself of this verse,“Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow.” (Psalm 144:4 ESV) 

In all, I looked forward to the promised grace of eternal life after I breathe my last and when the shadow shall have passed.  

Tuesdays

On Tuesdays, I am reminded of the now-classic Tuesdays with Morrie (a memoir by Mitch Albom), which I enjoyed reading sometime in the late 1990s. 

I am in good company. This particular book continues to be popular among the reading crowd. It was in the New York Times bestsellers list for over 200 weeks. Now it is the best-selling memoir of all time. It has sold over 20 million copies in more than 59 territories worldwide. Despite all that, there were many initial negative reviews: “same old; sappy; like a  Hallmark greeting card; oversimplified; pseudo intellectual).  

Tuesdays with Morrie began as a modest labor of love to help with the hospital bills of Morrie Schwartz, Albom's past Sociology professor, who was dying of ALS. The unprecedented success of the book shocked book lovers. 

From here, Albom moved to writing real-life fiction (about 20 to date and one more to be launched this year).  

I have savored only half of that number. I look forward to reading the others as they make it to the Philippine bookstores. My latest purchase, which I could not put down:  

Albom, as many of you already know, is an American author, journalist (sports), and musician. What makes him so popular as an author? 

Well, the underlying themes of his books are love, relationships, authenticity, transience, choices, acceptance, and grace—values that should endure but are now in  “Lost and Found” or in the trash bin. 

For me, his books make for a riveting read because of the surprises that spring at me along the way. He interweaves his characters with values and conflicts, then solves them almost seamlessly in the end. 

You don’t have to believe me. Each reader has his own reading preferences. For one, Tony read spy thrillers and history books (one book a week)  and didn't give my book choices a glance,     

Tuesdays remind me of the kind of books I read and the timeless values I always write about so they may not be lost or tossed into the trash bin. 

Gotcha!

“Grace is not something we find,” I wrote in the Author’s Note of my book, Grace Found Me. “Rather, it finds us—but only if we allow ourselves to welcome and be embraced by it. Grace is free, but we cannot find it in ourselves. It is something we can find only in God. And the good news is, we need not buy or earn it, because we could never, ever, afford or merit it on our own.” 

In short, gotcha! 

This photo, which I found posted online, demonstrates it best. 

Once Grace finds us, we are set free. Jesus fulfilled the law for us: "Sin is no longer your master, for you no longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead, you live under the freedom of God’s grace.” Romans 6:14

Once grace finds us, we receive salvation: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9 

I was afraid I won't be able to go it alone when Tony bade us goodbye. But grace sought me out. “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” Psalm 34:18 

Gotcha! Grace tracks God's children down and finds us right where we are.    

Photo credit

Beautiful, Big, Brown Butterfly

Butterflies flit from flower to flower in our garden every day. They are my early-morning delight! At mid-morning, the heat hits hard and some take refuge somewhere. 

Their sizes vary, but the biggest I have ever seen is about nine inches in length with colorful wings. 

But on the 20th of May, exactly four months after Tony left us, Mother Teresa called me in her shrillest voice. “Come, look at this big butterfly!” It posted itself on one of our posts. I took a shot from a few feet away so as not to scare it off.  

Amazed, I moved closer and it didn’t budge. I clicked away and still it stayed. I wasn’t sure if it was a moth or a butterfly, because I haven’t seen anything as big (about 12 inches long or more) and as uniquely designed before. 

So I sent the photo to my ading Aie, who loves butterflies. “It IS a butterfly!” she replied. 

The butterfly stayed on that post for hours. Then it moved to another post. 

“Manong Tony came a-visiting!” ading Aie joked. 

Coincidentally, Son #3 saw the same species of butterfly inside his office that same day.

Many cultures associate butterflies with transformation and rebirth because of their metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly. That's why this symbolism leads some people to interpret their presence as a sign of a deceased loved one's visit.   

As a believer in Sola Scriptura, I eschew this idea. But definitely, butterflies, beautiful as they all are (and big as the brown one that delighted us one day), demonstrate one of God’s manifold delighting grace. 

Writing-for-Children Workshop

This happened many moons ago, but after I had blogged about writing for children, memories came flooding back. I am glad I kept photos of the event.  

One publisher was mulling over the possibility of expanding its genres to include children’s books and invited Luis (Tito Dok, a Palanca Hall of Fame Awardee) and me to conduct a workshop among writers.   

By then I had written about a dozen books, and Luis, double or triple my number. Both of us never went through formal training in writing, neither had we attended any workshop such as this. 

But the publisher said, “Just talk about how you do it. Inspire the writers!” 

It was a two-day workshop for writers whose manuscripts went through the critical eye of the editorial board. To register, they had to first send a manuscript, and from there, the attendees were chosen. 

At that time I was not at liberty to divulge the event. But I think that after many  years, without naming names and everyone of us transforming into unrecognizable miens and sizes, it is as safe as safe can be. These once-upon-a-time photos tell the story: 

Day 1: 

Day 2:    

Since then, I have conducted many workshops (I call them my grace days), but this one, long ago, remains to be one of the most memorable. The participants were not only engaged, they were incisive and sharply focused. In fact, all of them have published works to date. 

I am grateful that my mind is still lucid to remember and my hands still steady to write about it.