Please wake me up tomorrow at 6 a.m.
This imperative is not directed to anyone. Except Him. Every night, before I go to bed, I talk to God to wake me up at six in the morning. Lately, 24 hours is not enough to make me accomplish my gargantuan task in the many jobs I engage myself in. Ever since I asked God to give me a wake-up call every morning, I have enjoyed this little miracle from Him of getting up at the exact time I specified in my prayer. With this blessing I realized even the most nominal of believers like me could request something from Him and He would grant my plea.
I was never religious when I was young. I grew up in a family whose concept of God was two yardsticks away from being titular. Instead of seeing ourselves inside the church on most Sundays, I would see myself bringing breakfast or lunch to my parents and brothers who tilled our parcel of farmland in the province. Instead of receiving catechisms, I learned lessons – albeit the hard way – about the basic rule of life and belief: That God helps those who help themselves. I never learned these things inside the church. I learned them in the middle of the field while the sun scorched my skin or the rain drenched my body.
Not that my family was without God. (My mother was quick to recite "Hesus, Maria, Josep" thrice every time a volley of fierce lightning would strike while they were in the middle of the field. She would abbreviate her prayer to "Susmaryosep" when successive thunders rumbled all through out their days in the palayan.) Only, our belief in God was not anchored in the traditional way of hearing Sunday Masses. Early on in life, I learned from my mother that God was everywhere and I could talk to Him the way I could talk to a friend. She told me that I could recite Ama Namin or Aba Ginoong Maria or Lualhati or Sumasampalataya by meaning every word of those prayers and not merely mumbling them. At a young age, I was coached and coaxed that hard and honest work was a form of prayer that would surely merit a smile from God and a reserved seat in heaven. Things that I could have learned from a priest or a pastor I first learned from my family: "Hindi laging hingi. Dapat marunong ka ring magpasalamat. (You should not always ask. You should learn how to thank God)."
Talk to God I did when I was a kid. When I couldn’t memorize a poem for tomorrow’s recital in school, I would ask Him to help me put the words in my head. I treated God like an invisible friend who was always visible in everything I did. When there was nothing on our dulang (dining table) but a bandehado of steamy sinandomeng or C-4 rice, I would loudly storm the gates of heaven to help me imagine that there was fried chicken in my labay tubig (piping hot rice mixed with water and salt). Always, always, my prayer would be answered and I would end up having a happy, hefty meal.
Once, a childhood friend thought I was crazy when – I was about nine years old then – out of the blue I looked up in the sky, while we were gathering fodder for my father’s carabaos, and prayed aloud: "D’yos, sana wala pong ahas dito sa damuhan. Alagaan N’yo po kami (God, I pray that there are no snakes in the grassland. Please protect us)." My friend laughed and told me that I should keep to myself whatever my prayer was. She reminded and reprimanded me, too, that I should not say "D’yos" instead I should say "Jesus" with the letter "J" pronounced like a hybrid sound between "J" and "Z." Later on we both realized that, like Shakespeare’s take on the rose, God would be God no matter what you called Him. Much later I realized, if God had another name aside from the ones people from different religions call him, He would still perform magic for the young ones which in the eyes of the young once is called miracle.
"Talk to God aloud," I always remind my nieces and nephews. Now that I am almost one moon shy from hitting my mid-thirties, I also teach them how to build a positive house of prayers – one thing that I learned when I took a course on Vipassata Meditation in Bangkok some years back – that simply requires them to send love, kindness and compassion to anyone they know even to the people not close to them. Every time a friend of mine needs a prayer, I also encourage my pamangkins to pray for my friend. I always tell them: "It is immaterial whether or not you know the person you are offering your prayers for. What is essential is that you help better the lives of people with your prayers."
The basic things I knew about faith, I first learned inside our humble house. I heeded the teachings of my mother like they were the embodiment of the 11th commandment. I bet you, my whole family could not even recite verbatim the Ten Commandments God entrusted to Moses in Mt. Sinai but anyone from my family would know how to interpret them in the best Christian way we could comprehend. In fact, I don’t even know if my parents have heard of Mt. Sinai. Many parents and children in my community grew up without a Bible at home yet the camaraderie and peace and order (in those days) were a proof of people’s belief in God and His omnipotence. God could have given the synopses of His teachings to anyone else whether it was in Mt. Makiling in Los Baños or Mt. Bromo in East Java or Table Mountain in Capetown yet my family would still not know. Not that they couldn’t care less. Only, what we cared about when we were growing up was how to better our lives so we can better others’, too. What we were taught to do was how to carry out good things and avoid evil. If it was unavoidable on our part to do someone wrong, we were "obliged" to talk to God and to the person we offended to forgive us. (People – nations, too – traverse the road of discord and disagreement, antagonism and animosity, hatred and hostility because they do not know how to say sorry. I said it before, those who don’t know how to apologize for the mistakes they have done are undermining the aptitude of the one offended to forgive. No mistake is irremediable to the repentant sinner. No mistake is irreparable to the understanding forgiver.)
And yes, the most radical of all, we were taught that the graces of God were not the monopoly of those who regularly went to church. I don’t know if it is being un-Christian of us but our concept of being Catholic is way below the expectations of the Church, that is if the barometer of being a good follower is achieving a 100 percent attendance in Sunday Masses. Have mercy on us for we don’t always get to fulfill this part of the Ten Commandments but we get to thank the Lord by simply being together and keeping our values as a family intact. And if it is a sin that we don’t regularly hear Mass whether individually or all together, let those who don’t sin cast the first stone on us. If someone would ever dare, I could now hear my mother fervently chanting "Susmaryosep." Deep inside me, I know, the stones would turn into bread.
Meanwhile, as I sleep tonight, I will talk to God. Aloud. And at the end of my prayer, I will again ask Him to wake me up at 6 a.m. tomorrow because I need to better my craft early to better other people’s lives. I will thank Him for that little miracle the minute I wake up. And even if one day I don’t anymore wake up, the sinner in me will still thank Him for the gift of after life.
(For your new beginnings, please
e-mail me at bumbaki@yahoo.com. You may also snail mail me at the Philippine Star c/o Allure Section, R. Oca Jr. corner Railroad Streets, Port Area, Manila.
Have a blessed Sunday.)
