Communicating Grace

Thursday last week. It was the last youth fellowship for this semester in our church, and as usual, I was there. Of course I was there not just for the hype of it nor for the taste of being feeling young when we--the not-so-older generation--had the chance to mix in the crowd of the legitimate youngsters, but I was there because my heart belongs to this generation.

I was there to get lost in the arms of the One who causes my heart to burst in gratitude and gladness for everything He has done. I was there to marvel and bask in the infinite glory of the One who have sought and has saved.

It really touches the heart when one sees how God is really working out amazing things in this generation of young people. When you see the yearning and the thirst of these youth for authentic faith and meaning, you can't help but be humbled in your own search for authenticity. And I am just thankful that during my younger years, I was able to find a family such as this that has nurtured me in my personal and spiritual journey. It was truly a blessing for me all in all.

But here's really the reason for this post. Haha. At the end of the program, I was given the privilege to close the fellowship in prayer. It was actually impromptu. But deep inside I really wanted to be given that chance to stand in the crowd and lead them. Deep inside I was yearning to share encouraging words to them. And to share and encourage I did. And though they only asked me to close in prayer, I went on to give a short exhortation. Well what was funny and rather ridiculous is the way I reacted on the stage. I don't know but there's something in me that tells me I'm on the right place. That I sort of miss this specific instance of standing before a crowd. 

It was then that I realized am literally trembling. My knees and hands were shaking. My voice was breaking. I was gasping for breath (well, perhaps I'm exaggerating). But it was not because I was having a stage fright. It was not because I was terrified of the crowd. It was rather the other way.

It is because I became too excited to speak. It is because I was too anxious to stand before the crowd of expectant young faces. It is because I have something to say.

It is because I miss, I sorely miss teaching.

So it was there on that stage that I was reminded of the intense feeling of teaching which I left more than three weeks ago. I was reminded of the fulfillment of having to reach out to people through the platform of education and learning. But it was more than teaching. It is communicating hope and grace.

What I shared to the young people that night was actually a note to myself. I shared to them something about the limitless God we worship. That although people are limited (in wisdom, resources, and strength), our God is not. He is boundless. He is limitless. And the people who believe in has this assurance.

Lastly, I shared to them one of my favorite bible verses, in Daniel 11:32, which says: "...the people who know their God will be strong...and will accomplish great things." It starts from knowing who really God is.

The unbearable 'blight-ness' of teaching?

It already dawned on me that I am now officially out of the teaching profession since I resigned more than three weeks ago from the university; and I have yet to adjust to my new work and working environment which I found to be not that really hostile however demands lots of mental and physical power. Read: pressure. 

It has been three weeks away from the vantage view of the whiteboard and congested classrooms but the breathing life of the teaching routine which has sustained me whether in the physical or the metaphysical terms for almost four years is still entrenched in my system and psyche that I sort of miss this profession touted by many as the noblest of all. And on the ‘noblest profession’ part, I still incline to agree.

However, this is not to romanticize the teaching profession although I always have the tendency to romanticize things. As a self-proclaimed romanticist of sort, that has always been my mortal sin. In fact, anyone can romanticize the teaching profession and it rightly deserves so. But then reality resonates, how can one romanticize further what has already gained respect and reverence as a profession. How can one idealize further something that is already larger than life and is close to being indispensable, if not already so? We say that teaching is the noblest of all profession? To what extent really?

Teaching was my first job. Fresh out of college some four years ago—demure and anxious as to what lies ahead of the “real world” just like everyone else—I’ve decided to pick up the whiteboard marker and embraced the teaching profession. Only one thing seemed impossible and rather ludicrous at the moment, which is ironically the one thing necessary for a profession such as teaching: my lack of confidence and my self-limiting withdrawal from anything that is social. Because the truth is, I thought I was too shy to become a teacher. I was too impassive and too concerned only with myself to be someone who is supposed to be responsible for the education of the youth, much more the future of this nation. For the life of me, it was not in my wildest imagination and rational intention that one day I will be someone that is regarded by many as a shaper of lives and moulder of minds. If that is too romantic, short of cliché-ish, that is only because I believe it is how one should suppose to see the teaching profession, and not as something short of a business enterprise. If ever it goes to that degree, business in education is permitted only if it’s in the context of doing business to transform lives. Period.

That is the weight that the people who are in this profession carry upon their shoulders. But unlike Atlas who carried the world on his shoulders however, the teacher’s responsibility to the world is not something mythical because it is real; but it can be legendary. And they are rather like Prometheus, that Greek non-conformist who defied the system which is the gods, and gave fire to mankind. Teachers, through the sacred platform of education and learning unleash that fire to people, that essential catalyst which has been responsible for the progress and survival of human civilization up to this day. Pray tell, how noble is that? With this I’m all hats off to these living legends and modern-day heroes.

(Photo from the internet)

Which brings us to this: are teachers being given the due accolade they deserve from the community which they help build and sustain? Or are they slowly being marginalized due to a post-structural thinking that the community is self-sufficient and self-contained?

In today’s globalized and integrated world, the capitalist appetite for power and control relegates teaching to the blue collar job, a no-good profession that does nothing more than to measure in quantitative yardsticks a person’s capacity or whether he is fit for a work or otherwise. We now seem to know a lot of ways to measure a person’s intelligence and aptitude, and unfortunately, we equate education as such. Is how much a person learns more valuable that what he/she actually learns? Worst, when one uses teaching only as a tool for the advancement of personal ambitions—for control and manipulation—then teaching fails absolutely in its supposed duty.

But we cannot solely blame teachers for that. It pays to look at the context of the community upon which teachers are received and perceived.

(to be continued...)

LEGENDS

(Here goes to all teachers around the world. It is still my fervent belief that teaching is  one of the noblest of all professions, if not the noblest. And though I just resigned from the teaching work recently (story on next post, hehe), its life changing impact on my person and well-being will go with me for the rest of this lifetime. Admittedly, I owe a lot to the teaching profession, and here on this post--to the two most influential teachers that molded me way beyond their assigned 'role' as teachers. Happy World Teachers Day. Cheers!)

Two of the names which could easily surface when I think of “great” people were two of my former teachers in CLSU—and I daresay, the two of the best teachers in CLSU.

They are Professor Ben G. Domingo Jr., much known by the students as “Tatay Ben”; and Sir Michael Carlo Abella, or better known as Sir Ponti.

Theirs will be the name I would always attach the word “teacher”, in the most precise definition of the word. I picked them out of the ordinary because they possess such an extraordinary perspective when it comes to educating students.

Sir Ben (I was not used to call him Tatay Ben because we were not that actually close like his students in Dev.Com) , was once my teacher in Public Speaking and Argumentation and Debate. He's from the Department of English and Humanities, and teaches almost every English subject.

The best thing about Sir Ben is that he never easily gives up on his students. You can call a student mediocre, but Sir Ben sees the potential behind that mediocrity. He always encouraged us in class to be better than what we are, and challenged us to exceed our limitations and to "think out of the box".

I learned from him that nothing can stop you if you are willing to firmly stand on your principles and on what you believe in. He considers courage and daring to be the key to making yourself the best person you can be.

There were so many things I learned from his lectures, which not only focused on the lessons on textbooks, but also on necessary lessons about life. He oftentimes point to his experiences in life as his greatest lessons, and true to him, experience is the best teacher.

Because of him, I came to regret once that I did not pursue Development Communication so that he could be my teacher for many subjects and not just one. But with what I learned from him, I came to love my course and see it in a more profound way.

Meanwhile, like Prof Ben, Sir Ponti was one of the teachers I dreamed of having in class. As a teacher, he was oftentimes seen as a funny person, and one who possesses a jolly and bubbly personality that is easily loved by people. He also has a free spirit that is very contagious if one would really read between his lips.

Sir Ponti was my teacher in our our last Philosophy subject in our curriculum, which is Philosophy of Man. My perception of his ‘greatness’ as a teacher was actually just established by the stories of his former students, most especially from the SokSay community. I had the notion that these stories were just myths and exaggerations. Not until he became my teacher that I realized he was more than the mythical figure I heard of, more than what legends have told in their romanticized stories.

To my opinion, he was some sort of an exciting adventure during lecture hours, in which, as you go along with his life stories you would discover for yourselves hidden treasures that was knowledge and learning.

He was a good story teller, yet what he says are not mere stories but knowledge itself. Not only knowledge about the lessons, but, like what Sir Ben reveals, knowledge about the world beyond the four walls of the classroom.

Like Prof Ben, he encourages students to be involved in things that could make them more productive and useful to the society. Sir Ponti is an advocate of extra-curricular learning: learning things outside the classroom, learning lessons under the sun. These things taught me that the best lessons of life one could learn are the lessons obtained by being with people in different walks of life. Sometimes, these lessons appear to be unrewarding at first glance, yet as you give them a place in your heart, they could be magical.

One of the best things Sir Ponti said, and one that I will remember, goes like this: “Just work hard and do your best…never mind what the world says at you. Do what makes you happy…and eventually, time will come that the world will see how greatness is made and achieved…”

With that, I am reminded that greatness was never given at birth, not for only a few individuals. More often than not, greatness is to be achieved, and most of the time, it is achieved through the respect and appreciation from the people whose lives you have touched….and changed.

And I say that Sir Ben and Sir Ponti, in more ways than one, have touched, inspired, and changed my perspectives, and challenged me to become bigger and better than I am. They helped a lot in grounding me as a person, and made me realize that there is more to it than the things we have in this life--and that, like what the Little Prince enunciated, the most essential things in this world are the ones that are felt by the heart.

That made them to be greater than what they could ever imagine. They are larger than life.

They are living legends.

Twenty-six

Thought I woke up on the wrong side of the bed today when I realized am already 26....and not yet married! Haha. Mah men, 26 and still a bachelor?

Really, who said I can't marry at 30 or even beyond that--when the time is right, when I'm ready to take full responsibility, when I am matured and sane enough to take love on its highest level? Was it so bad staying single and wait on love to take it's own course and find you instead of pursuing it at the cost of being lost? I say no. And I say wait.

At twenty-six, waiting can lose its appeal, and patience becomes an absurd virtue. At twenty-six, the thought of spending your life alone is a horrible dream that haunts you. At twenty-six--when almost all your friends and batch-mates are marrying young and are already settled--being single is almost impossible to take in. Haha. Paranoid ba?

On the other hand, being single at twenty-six is an opportunity. At twenty-six, the season of waiting no matter how long is a chance to have a positive outlook on love and of life in general. At twenty-six, the patience to learn so many things slowly but surely is a wonderful and irreplaceable journey. And it is always possible to take it all in when one learns how to appreciate the value of life and love...that this two are not exclusive of each other but a harmony, a unity, a single substance that holds existence in place.

It took me 26 years of knowing, losing, finding, and losing again to know this wonderful truth. I may have forced some few things in my life, and I may have been hard-hearted, but I'd like to keep breaking my heart until it opens.

And until then, I know love will work it's own way. And when I find it, it will be in the right time. It will be for the right reason. It will be with the right person. Medyo maarte, haha.

Oh yes, I'm twenty-six; and I'm lovin it! :)

(I posted this as a Facebook status on my 26th birthday last January 27. And in intentionally forgetting the reality of my age, I forgot to post it here, too :)

Teacher

(Disclaimer: This was written in 2007 while I was still a student of CLSU. I exhumed it from my old journal thinking that it would pay tribute to this very special day for Teachers (me included). So, please pardon the grammatical errors. This was 5 years ago and from a different world. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK :))*******

I was simply dozing off the remaining hours of my boring day when suddenly I was fantasizing about my future, or things like what-will-be’s instead of clinging to what-might-have-been’s.

In a moment of honest desperation to get a feeble grip on reality that was my life, I was suddenly and unexpectedly sorting out plans for my professional career and on the things that I will do at least after I get away with a college diploma—things that I never usually do.

Well, perhaps reality already sunk in into my already numb mind. It’s a good thing that at least, despite the careless and carefree me who is just about to become the next king-of-nothing-to-do, I still know (barely) what reality is from fiction—although at times I may get to interchange one from the other, really.

Alright, I was thinking about giving myself a career in the academe—schools and teaching, those stuffs. Well, that was not a bit of a surprise for me that came out of nowhere because I had already planned that even before. I wrote about that one time and even published the article on our school paper of which I lead, not that I don’t regret publishing it. Now, there were more or less two thousand CLSU students who know that despite I chose a field in Social Sciences, I may not give proper justice to it because I may end up probably in teaching anyway.

Not that a student who graduate with AB Social Sciences degree cannot teach, or doesn’t have a right to teach. Besides, I always thought, and will always think, that my degree is really flexible. With my degree, I could choose from a wide range of work and could enter many career paths and be able to walk through them confidently and end up a sure success. Well, they might say that my field is a no-earning course and that it can’t give me much penny to count, and sure they could be right. But what about earning compared to the vast learning you could acquire. And I daresay that while my field may offer little earning, it could offer countless learning that could equal even the most lucrative paying job.

That was what my field is. That was what I chose. There was no regret in that.
And for sure, I could never regret being in the academe and be a teacher. In fact, I already saw myself as an educator, never really the office-type kind, but the one who is responsible for shaping up lives and nurturing dreams and encouraging better ideals...to teach students the value of learning, and education, to provide a learning environment that could pass through the four walls of the classroom…

Yeah, that is how I see myself. It may have been delayed to see through that different side of things but surely I could not think of any other way to spend my time with. I believe that is a perfect way to inspire lives, to influence young people who could influence other people in the future when their time comes…and if I would succeed in that, it would be a constant cycle that would be passed on from time to time, and yes, what better way to have success in this life when you realize that you made an impact on someone else’s even if they don’t have a chance to acknowledge you behind it.

I could tell it because there are people who have made an impact on my life as well. People who are simple and ordinary yet they stand in the highest platform that could impact and even change communities and even the world.

I always owe to these people my appreciation because in one great way or another, they have made me to be what I am now. That is what I call influence. They may not have influenced me to become the best, but they have succeeded in changing a lot of my perspectives. That would always count.

"LEGENDS"

Two of the names which could easily surface when I think of “great” people were two of my former teachers in CLSU—and I daresay, the two of the best teachers in CLSU.

They are Professor Ben G. Domingo Jr., much known by the students as “Tatay Ben”; and Sir Michael Carlo Abella, or better known as Sir Ponti.

Theirs will be the name I would always attach the word “teacher”, in the most precise definition of the word. I picked them out of the ordinary because they possess such an extraordinary perspective when it comes to educating students.

Sir Ben (I was not used to call him Tatay Ben because we were not that actually close like his students in Dev.Com) , was once my teacher in Public Speaking and Argumentation and Debate. He's from the Department of English and Humanities, and teaches almost every English subject.

The best thing about Sir Ben is that he never easily gives up on his students. You can call a student mediocre, but Sir Ben sees the potential behind that mediocrity. He always encouraged us in class to be better than what we are, and challenged us to exceed our limitations and to "think out of the box".

I learned from him that nothing can stop you if you are willing to firmly stand on your principles and on what you believe in. He considers courage and daring to be the key to making yourself the best person you could ever become.

There were so many things I learned from his lectures, which not only focused on the lessons on textbooks, but also on necessary lessons about life. He oftentimes point to his experiences in life as his greatest lessons, and true to him, experience is the best teacher.

Because of him, I came to regret once that I did not pursue Development Communication so that he could be my teacher for many subjects and not just one.
But with what I learned from him, I came to love my course and see it in a more profound way.

Meanwhile, like Prof Ben, Sir Ponti was one of the teachers I dreamed of having in class. As a teacher, he was oftentimes seen as a funny, and one possessing a jolly personality that was easily loved by people. He also has a free spirit that is very contagious if one would really read between his lips.

Sir Ponti was my teacher during the previous semester for our last Philosophy subject in our curriculum, which is Philosophy of Man. My perception of his ‘greatness’ as a teacher was actually just established by the stories of his former students, most especially from the SokSay community. I had the notion that these stories were just myths and exaggerations. Not until he became my teacher last semester that I realized he was more than the mythical figure I heard, more than what legends have told in their stories.

To my opinion, he was some sort of an exciting adventure during lecture hours, in which, as you go along with his life stories you would discover for yourselves hidden treasures that was knowledge and learning.

He was a good story teller, yet what he says are not mere stories but knowledge itself. Not only knowledge about the lessons, but, like what Sir Ben reveals, knowledge about the world beyond the four walls of the classroom.

Like Prof Ben, he encourages students to be involved in things that could make them more productive and useful to the society. Sir Ponti is an advocate of extra-curricular learning: learning things outside the classroom, learning lessons under the sun. These things taught me that the best lessons of life one could learn are the lessons obtained by being with people in different walks of life. Sometimes, these lessons appear to be unrewarding at first glance, yet as you give them a place in your heart, they could be magical.

One of the best things Sir Ponti said, and one that I will remember, goes like this: “Just work hard and do your best…never mind what the world says at you. Do what makes you happy…and eventually, time will come that the world will see how greatness is made and achieved…”

With that, I am reminded that greatness was never given at birth, not for only a few individuals. More often than not, greatness is to be achieved, and most of the time, it is achieved through the respect and appreciation from the people whose lives you have touched….and changed.

And I say that Sir Ben and Sir Ponti, in more than a way or another, have touched, inspired, and changed my perspectives, and challenged me to become bigger and better than I am.

That made them to be greater than what they could ever imagine. They are larger than life. They are living legends. ©