Essays, 2

MARIANN MOORE MADE me believe more in my desire to write when she said, “Any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others. I hold her responsible for my recently plagiarized motto. Yet, the most eloquent quote in Sophy Burnham’s book, “For Writers Only,” is Albert Einstein’s “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science”.

Pleasing others after oneself is mysterious because of its desire to share the pleasance, a God-given gift that satisfies with its sacred sentiment. Like what God Himself must have felt after every day that He deemed good what He created. Although the others at His time were His creations only, until the making of Adam. Which soon afterwards ushered ambition (never lumped with the deadly seven), pride, finger-pointing and shame. Omniscience was not outdone by man’s free will (it did him in actually), which painted history with seven colors (red the most dramatic and dreadful) and the world without anything for the imagination. Adam and Eve have had their ample share already, for Cain more’s the pity.

When I was starting to use my father’s literary knack as a leg to stand on, I was a shameless claimer of his credit every time my column appears on our high school organ. Even my title, “Thinking for Myself,” was possessive, so determined and hypocritical was my ego to rise above the average studentry. I was young and knew the pitfalls of plagiarism already but my secret was safe between my Dad and me. The only thankful thing about this episode was that high school was a fleeting phase and it wasn’t until college truancy and subsequent failures that my writing stopped. An English teacher, however, took interest in my term paper, printed in long hand and however submitted late, and thought I had a flair for writing. But I was such a rascal that I only returned to that inspiration when my world would lose its luster and the quiet would make me hear her “cultivate it by being more precise with your words”. To think that I really spent research time in the library and got rewarded for the effort. I suppose I was starting to mature at the end of each boring, silent day. And it was up to me to energize my existence. Or rot with the rut.

The break came in the wake of a weekend seminar called PREX. It was an invitation that I almost took for granted were it not for the Holy Spirit being what He is. In spite of my misgivings, I turned up earliest at the registration counter and sat at the front row to guarantee that my impaired ears and eyes did not miss anything. It turned out a safe position when the course began and the talks interchanged from serious to solemn to funny to hilarious to sad and downright heartstring-tugging. It was in that weekender that I met and later befriended a most extraordinary man and profound speaker, the late Kuya Ross Evardone. An unforgettable character, too, Kuya Ross is a dyed-in-the-wool, true-blue servant of the Lord. He carries his natural humor in or out of the seminar hall, reason why he is popular not only in the PREX community but also in the Cursillo movement, where he was a perennial Rollista until his mournful departure. To this day, I treasure his erstwhile birthday gift, Thomas a Kempis’ “Imitation of Christ,” to keep his memory – and inspiration – alive.

I was never the same after graduating from PREX Class Number 9 in November of 2009. Because I became a fixture in church, I never missed a class thereafter and joined ministries like the choir, Legion of Mary, EMHC and BEC. The greatest gift my conversion bestowed on me was editing the “Paraclete,” the newsletter of the Holy Spirit Parish. Amen.