Quest

Ah. This illness weakens me. But I am on a Quest. My King had given it to me when I was up Prayer Mountain. And I wanted to continue my Quest, and not let sickness stop me. And so I met my party yesterday. And we covered a lot of ground.

Minstrels, most of them were. Singers and Musicians. Wonderful voices with wonderful hearts. I never really played around with music. But these people had. Some of them were more broken than I was. But they were loyal to the King. The King truly is wise, giving me these minstrels as party members. And I am grateful. May we finish the Quest with flying colors, with hearts ablaze, and closer to each other.

Tombs

Back in September, a few months after I first broke and my heart stopped beating for any man, my King picked me up and gave me this message.

38 Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. 39 “Take away the stone,” he said.
“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”
40 Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
41 So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
43 When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.
Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

John 11:38-44

What He was saying was clear. I may be asking for healing. But He may be wanting to do a resurrection. I wrote a short post about it before saying, my King has chosen not to open a tomb in my life as of yet. And I will wait. And my good King was kind to me. He busied me with His work, and showed me the beauty of what was around me. He showed me wonderful things I had never seen before. Then just a few weeks ago, I got an email from Game Connection. The first line that loaded was this:

This surprised me, and brought to mind immediately the message my King had given me more than a month earlier. Why in the world would Game Connection send me a message like this? It didn't register, until the whole email loaded:

It was a "Happy Halloween" message. Still. I couldn't help but think... Could it be? Could my King be opening my tomb finally? I didn't want to think too much of it. But I couldn't help but hope. May I hope, my Lord? Would You finally heal my broken heart and bind up my wounds? Would You cause my heart to beat again? I believe, my King. Would You show me Your glory? I live hoping, my King. I cannot help it. Fulfill Your promises to Your servant, my King, and show me Your glory.

One Day...

Such a good voice. Such a good song. Sigh~ I dream of the day when a man with a good heart, who serves my King, and who would love me utterly would come into my life and feel like this for me. But my King is faithful. He will not forsake me. He will finish what He had started in my life. He will not stir my heart and leave it dead. He will not let me taste something good, then forever deny it from me. My King is good, though I am impatient. But this I know to be true: I will taste the goodness of my Lord in the land of the living. I live in hope.

Repairer of the Breach

6 “ Is this not the fast that I have chosen:
To loose the bonds of wickedness,
To undo the heavy burdens,
To let the oppressed go free,
And that you break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
And that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out;
When you see the naked, that you cover him,
And not hide yourself from your own flesh?
8 Then your light shall break forth like the morning,
Your healing shall spring forth speedily,
And your righteousness shall go before you;
The glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
9 Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;
You shall cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’


“ If you take away the yoke from your midst,
The pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,
10 If you extend your soul to the hungry
And satisfy the afflicted soul,
Then your light shall dawn in the darkness,
And your darkness shall be as the noonday.
11 The LORD will guide you continually,
And satisfy your soul in drought,
And strengthen your bones;
You shall be like a watered garden,
And like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.
12 Those from among you
Shall build the old waste places;
You shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
And you shall be called the Repairer of the Breach,
The Restorer of Streets to Dwell In.

Isaiah 58:6-12

Serving the King, Ravens like me sometimes forget why we do things. But the King is patient. And he has spoken thus to me this morning. Why fast, little Raven? It is to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free. When we satisfy the souls of the afflicted, our own souls will be like a watered garden: satisfied, abundant, and restoring.

We, the Ravens

We are Ravens. Look at us. We are the mysterious, the adored, the companion of poets. We are the revered, the feared, the bringer of omens. We sit there, high on our perch. Quietly contemplating on our beauty. Comparing the creatures that pass beneath us. Watching. Judging. Proud.

Yet beneath that glamour, we are nothing more than scavengers. We are opportunists. Not willing or capable to acquire our daily bread on our own. We wait. We watch. Then we eat the scraps. We feed on the garbage this world offers us, not realizing that what we eat is waste. Then again, maybe we do realize that. But we eat it anyway.

Sad, don't you think? That all our beauty, all our greatness, are nothing but a glamour. And after the spell has been stripped away, we are exposed as the filthy creatures that we are. This realization had caused me to pause. I cannot fight my own nature. What was it that I had to do with this thought? I learned. I became wiser. But to what end? This revelation had caused me to despair. And I wandered. And I sought. And I cried out into the night. But the cold merely swallowed my voice. The darkness just swallowed me whole.

Then I saw the King.

The King sat not on His throne, but walked among His people. And I called out to Him. And He stopped, and beckoned me to Him. "Rest, Raven," He told me. And He offered me His arm.
"You created me," I accused Him, refusing to land on his arm.
"I did," He replied.
"Why?"
"Because it pleases Me."
"Why would it please You to create a flawed and filthy creature?"
"You are beautiful and poetic."
"And a scavenger! A trash-eater. A scourer of waste!"
The King smiled kindly at me and lifted his arm higher, and closer to me. "Come, Raven, find rest in Me."
Tired from flying all night, and tired from screaming, I landed reluctantly on His intricately embroidered sleeve. With me on His arm, the King walked down the forest path.
"Will you help Me find My ring?" He asked me.
"Where did You lose it?"
"Somewhere in the forest. You know the forest, don't you, Raven?"
"To an extent."
"Then find it," He said, lifting me up in the air.
"I don't have my answers yet."
The King smiled. "Honor your King, Raven. Find Me My ring."

It didn't take me long to find the King's ring. It was mixed with a pile of dead leaves not far from where I usually perch. Returning to the King, I dropped the gold ring on His open palm.
"Well done, scavenger," He said.
I tilted my head and fixed an eye on Him. "Was this what You made me for?"
The King once again smiled His benevolent smile and said, "Do not question My purposes for You. For you will never understand them. Just know that My plans for you are good and wonderful. And forget not, Raven, that I have given you wisdom, that You may discern the treasure from the trash."
I bowed before the King. My burden, lifted from me.
"The forest is littered with treasures," the King continued. "Some of those treasures don't even know they're valuable. But you see some of them, don't you, Raven?"
I nodded.
"Then go. Find them and bring them to Me."

Go...
Find them...
And bring them to Me.

The Raven's Song

At last, again, the breaking dawn;
The gloom has passed, the darkness gone;
As golden light bathes all I see,
Awake the wonder deep in me.

My frozen heart, You caused to break;
A painful cup I had to take;
But You, my Lord, are firm and true;
And I submit my life to You.

So fill my heart with holy light;
And may my countenance be bright;
That I may be for all to see
The one, the girl I wish to be.

In the Presence of Giants

I'm not normally a physical adventure-type of person. I'm usually more interested in the art scene of a place than its thrills. But when my sisters voted to go to Donsol to swim with the whale sharks for our local trip this year, I thought it wouldn't be so bad. I had been so uninspired for the past few months that I thought a change in scenery, as well as a deviation from my usual activities, would do me good.

Growing up to a length of forty feet, the whale shark is easily the largest fish in the sea. It is a shark, not a whale, which means it's a fish and doesn't need to surface for air. But plankton being its pimary diet, it needs to go close to the surface where the said organism thrives by taking in sunlight. This also means that this colossal shark is harmless to humans. Donsol, a small town in Sorsogon in the Bicol region, is the whale shark capital of the Philippines. From November to May, the whale shark comes to the area to breed and feed. And as part of an awareness campaign for this creature, the World Wildlife Foundation and the Department of Tourism came up with an Ecotourism program that allowed visitors to swim and see the sharks up close.

I was excited to get away from Manila and its heat for a while. Then again, I'm always excited about going to places I've never been to yet. But I must admit, I was not as excited as my travelling companions to swim with the biggest fish on Earth. It was not that the prospect of swimming with an animal in the shark family scared me. It was more like I didn't quite see what all the fuss was about. If one wanted to see a whale shark, one need only go online and search. There are a lot of pictures out there of the butanding, as it is known locally.

Anyway, I couldn't really say that out loud and burst everyone's bubble, could I? Not when my sisters were so looking forward to seeing the whale sharks. And not when my cousin kept jumping off her seat and shouting, “Oh my God! Oh my God!” everytime our spotter thought he saw something. But I'm getting ahead of my story. Allow me to start from the beginning.

Our day started at six in the morning of April 18, 2009. There were four of us: me; two of my sisters, Marie and Maita; and my cousin, Lala. Our Butanding Interaction Officer, or BIO, picked us up on the shores of our resort. There were four of them manning the boat: our BIO, who would be joining us in the water; a spotter, whose job was to spot the whale sharks from afar; and two men who manned our boat.

It had rained the night before. And BIOman said it would be difficult for our spotter to find whale sharks after a rain because they tended to swim deeper down whenever it rained. But we would try anyway. We had three hours to find them. The boat was ours for that duration. We set off.

I still couldn't feel the excitement. It's not that I disliked the idea. I liked seeing wildlife, too. But I just couldn't feel anything.

And I wanted to feel something. I was uninspired and I needed to feel something.

It was still a bit foggy when we headed to the deep. Donsol was a beautiful place. Not manicured-beach-beautiful. And there's not much of what we, from busier cities, would consider entertainment. But it had its own wilder, more untouched, kind of beauty. From our boat, the waters looked like a sea of shiny mercury. Mount Mayon was barely visible on the horizon. And when I looked up at the sky, the cloud formation looked like a white version of the aurora borealis. Beautiful. Out at sea we saw several flying fishes jump up and skim over the surface like a stone skipping over the water. There were dolphins, too. Once, they even swam quite close to our boat. Not like Talicud in Davao City, though, where dolphins sometimes actually swam just beside your boat. But they were still close. It was good to see. It was a calm and pleasant feeling.

But still not exciting.

Well, at least I felt something. Calm and pleasant was good. Bored and frustrated, though, was not. That was what came next.

For the next few hours, we scoured the sea for the elusive butanding. On normal days when the sea is clearer, each boat would have its own area, and a group could see up to eight sharks in a morning. But it was not clear that day. It had rained at around two that morning, which raised the river's level and spilled some of the river's dirty water into the sea. Because of the scarcity of sightings, boats moved out of their respective areas and converged in places where other boats saw the beast. And too many people scared the creature into withdrawing deeper down and out of sight. Once, we arrived just as the shark was descending. I didn't see anything. Only Marie got a glimpse of the creature, and all she saw were faint white dots.

It was probably aleady close to eleven in the morning, although one couldn't really tell with the way time moved so slowly in Donsol. BIOman was getting frustrated with how the other boats always beat us to the sharks. My companions and I were already slumped with our smiles gone from our faces. I had already fallen asleep a few times. BIOman probably noticed how disheartened we looked, and told us we wouldn't be heading back until we found one. He told the driver of our boat to move towards a part of the sea where the other boats were not spotting for sharks. A little while later, BIOman suddenly jumped up and talked Bicolano to the spotter. There was a sort of urgency in his tone. He turned to us and told us to gear up and get ready. Quickly, we put on our goggles, snorkels hanging on the side of our eyewear. We had spotted something.

BIOman quickly pulled on his flippers and instructed us to sit at the edge of the boat. But looking behind us, there was another boat in pursuit. Our movements had been noticed. BIOman shouted to our driver to go faster. Then, turning to us, he said, “When I say jump, jump!” I didn't know how to swim. I could doggy-paddle in the shallow part of the swimming pool, but I didn't think I could swim in the deep open ocean! I always thought this whole butanding experience would be a lot slower, calmer. You know, like the pictures you would see from the Tourism posters. And I thought I could let my sisters jump in the water first, then I could slip down slowly and hold on to them. But with everyone's energy level running this high, and with another boat just behind us intending to take our butanding, I wasn't going to protest. BIOman shouted for us to jump. “Bahala na!” I thought. “Let what's coming come. I'll deal with my swimming problem when I'm actually swimming.” Anyway, I was wearing a lifevest. It was torn in places and the styrofoam might just burst out of the vest once one impacted with the water, but, hey what were the chances all four of the styros were going to pop out all out once anyway. Throwing caution to the wind, I threw myself off the boat.

I fell into the water with a splash. Completely submerged, I couldn't see anything but blue. My body rotated (not through any deliberate effort of my own) to an awkward angle and, to my relief, surfaced sputtering plankton-rich sea water. Take my word for it, it doesn't taste good. Fumbling around to see where everyone else was, I felt BIOman grab my arm and adjust my goggles. He told us to put our snorkel's mouthpiece into our mouths already. I was still dazed when BIOman gave us new instructions: “When I say look down, look down.” I just nodded. “Alright,” he said. “Look down!” I did what I was told. If this was a movie, the next scene's sound effect would have been one low reverberating drum beat.

The posters showed whale sharks in clear blue waters with rays of sunlight peeking through from the surface above. About three meters away, divers swam side by side with the gentle giants. It looked like a scene from an inspirational movie. But like fastfood, the actual thing is always different from the poster. Unlike fastfood, though, the actual thing did not disappoint. I wanted to feel something intense? Well, I got it. Not exactly what I was expecting but then I wasn't really very specific. Instead of Free Willy, the feeling was more like Jaws. When I looked down, instead of seeing a spotted blue creature swimming past my line of sight, what I saw coming out of the dark murky waters was a grinning grey giant... coming straight towards me.

It headed downward. When it reached my position, it would be just a few inches below my feet if I extended them. I just floated there, too stunned to do anything as the spotted shark slowly swam on beneath me. BIOman grabbed my arm and we pursued the butanding until it finally descended out of sight. We surfaced. And my sisters, my cousin, and I laughed and exchanged stories about how surprised, shocked, and awed we were when we first saw the whale shark. It had been a medium-sized whale shark, measuring about twenty-three feet. The width of the butanding's body was double my width or more. And so was its mouth. Yes, width-wise, it seemed very much capable of swallowing me whole. But its mouth didn't open very wide. Like I said, it only ate plankton. So, I was quite safe. Come to think of it, the butanding actually looked like a twenty-three-foot spotted janitor fish.

Climbing back into the boat, we set off to find another one, giving me a bit of time to reflect on the experience. I had thought swimming with the whale sharks was going to be a shared kind of experience. While we were physically together, once you see the shark, you tend to forget everybody else. No, the experience was more personal. In the presence of the giant, I suddenly felt small. I, Miss I'm-so-great-I-can-do-whatever-I-set-out-to-do, suddenly felt vulnerable and powerless in the face of an endangered fish that wasn't even going to hurt me. Its size, its beautiful spots, its serene movement towards the deep, they all evoked so much awe. You know the feeling when you see something so beautiful it makes you want to cry? I felt that then. Mixed with the daunting feeling you get being before a living creature so much bigger than you.

Just for the record, no, I didn't cry.

Not long after, we spotted our second whale shark. From afar, we saw its dorsal fin sticking out of the surface of the water. Same drill. We sat at the edge of the boat and waited for BIOman's signal. Only this time, we had more competition. From two different directions before us were boats speeding towards the fin. BIOman screamed at the driver to go faster. We managed to get to the butanding first. But the other two boats weren't stopping. They intended to swim with this one, too! “Jump!” BIOman ordered. This time, I managed to land without the flailing in my movements. “Look down! Look down!” He shouted. I did. Like the last encounter, I was face to face with it. Only this time, it was a lot nearer.

I curled up my legs, not wanting to hit the creature. Quickly, I struggled to move to the side so I wouldn't collide with its dorsal fin. It was about the same size as the first one we saw. But this close, the spots were more majestic. I allowed BIOman to drag me as we pursued the creature. And I just stared, awed at the beautiful white spots on the equally beautiful giant beneath me. Suddenly, I needed air. I realized I had forgotten to put on my snorkel. Going up to the surface, annoyed at having to cut my already brief encounter with the butanding, I breathed in and wore my snorkel. Going back down, I saw that it had gotten lower already. This time, I saw the middle part of its body. The pattern of the spots on its body changed after the gills. The head spots were more random. The body spots were more arranged. The pattern was alternating row of dots and lines. Absolutely breathtaking. I forgot to breathe. Then I realized I already had my snorkel on. And I had to make a conscious effort to breathe in through the snorkel. But somehow, I was too distracted that I couldn't get my breathing in the right rhythm, and a bit of water came in through my snorkel, my breathing ended up ragged. But I wasn't willing to miss any more of the butanding, I did my best to breathe slowly through the snorkel. When it finally dived, I surfaced coughing and sputtering and laughing. Not because anything particular was funny. But because I simply felt good seeing the giant, and the only thing I could do was to laugh.

All in all, the trip to Donsol to see the whale sharks was worth it. So, was I inspired? Hey, I wrote this entry, didn't I? If not for anything, it gave me a story to tell. Hope you enjoy it. Save the whale sharks!