Small Things

Every Christmas, excitement is always in the air. The lights make many December nights colorful. Music chimes with magical Christmas carols. Stores mushroom all over the country, while people crowd for shopping before Christmas rush. Decorations of different colors, shapes and sizes embellish almost all homes. Cool breeze chill those days and nights of anticipation. Families long to gather, lovers long to romance, friends long to reunite. Gifts and foods will flood again. And the heart of many are rekindled to the experience of authentic joy and peace. They all prove what most people always say that Christmas is a season of Love. As far as the sights and sounds are concerned, yes, it is true. Christmas is a big day to celebrate for big things with big Love. Yet, there is something missing. If Christmas is the only season of Love, how about the rest of the year? It is a question both easy and difficult to answer, especially if it calls our heart to provide one.

My spiritual friend and mentor once asked me how I feel about the coming of Christmas. I answered the question nonchalantly: I don't really feel excited at all. For some, this statement might be misunderstood. While the whole country is thrilled to count the remaining days to celebrate the most wonderful time every year, someone like me seems to be swimming against the tide. My friend understands this intuitive realization, because she also feels the same way. Most of us have seen Christmas day as a special day to look forward to, a time where we can feel happy and loved. It must be the only time where we can appreciate each other, or celebrate the essence of being alive. This is the season where we can open our hearts, become generous even just once a year. We have this renewed sense of soulfulness, wherein we can feel the value of everything that we are living for. This is why excitement is a palpable energy that waves all throughout, and vibrates with our hearts. There is nothing wrong to be excited. There is just more to see and understand.

My friend and I are not excited anymore, but we are neither depressed nor feel meaningless at all. It is just that no matter how significant Christmas is, it is never happier nor grander than any days of the year. This whole 2009 we have both experience profound changes and transformations that have made us spiritually grow. She finds her days where she can feel love in many little ways, like giving food to the beggars, walking along the bay every sunrise and sunset, or greeting her customers in her wonderful eating place in Manila. Each day it brings her so much opportunity to be generous and alive. While half a hundred miles away from her, I am here in the comforts of green paradise here in Laguna, where I savor the fragrant freshness of the trees, flowers and grasses. My days during this year are filled with inner adventures, where I get in touch with my soul more often. Almost all the words of Love that you are reading, have read, or will read in this blog have flown like a fountain of words coming from the Love that continues to unfold in my being. Some days were spent to inspire and be inspired, whenever Communes are taking place. There were also days when I met amazing people from all walks of life, searching and learning like me, yearning for the wisdom we both long to understand. It's not just a great chance to meet them, but making and keeping them as friends are both tremendous gifts to my soul. And another thing that has excited me is my growing collection of books, all about exploring the essence of God and Love. I owe a great deal of gratitude to the authors and teachers who painstakingly yet happily finished their books, from where I find valuable wisdom that resonates with my own.

All of them, among all other great blessings, are small things we have each day of our lives. They arrive each they, in small quantities but great value, things where we can channel more Love in our lives and into the lives of others around us. A genuine smile, a gentle act, a kind response, a fine gift, a lovely presence, an amazing encounter, a newfound friend, a warm hug, a sweet kiss, a bright hope - they can be just small things. Mother Teresa was certain of this: only small things we can do - and we can do it with great Love. I wonder how she did resonate with the Chinese sage Lao Tzu. Twenty-five hundred years ago, Lao Tzu said great things begin as small things. A cell, an embryo, and a seed are common in one way: they are all small, where something great can rise and grow. To underestimate the small is to disregard how powerful it can become. This is true for the once denigrated concept, Love is now acknowledge as the greatest of the great. Every small Loving effort reverberates across the universe. Every small things that we choose to happen to our lives bring profound impact on how we can change others and our souls. Once we desire to change, we cannot just wait it to happen. Small actions contribute to the change. Like a rice grain, which barely touches the dial of a weighing scale, is another way of describing the small. In time that each small grain is dropped one by one and mounts up, the scale measures a considerable weight. And it might seem to find that change do not ever take place, yet as time passes by, the accumulation of many smalls grains weigh more. This is how in simple terms Love teaches us. It looks like that nothing is ever happening but our faith fills that waiting, and once it arrives, we are blessed to enlighten our souls. It takes only one heart to begin to revolutionize how we see and change the world.

This Christmas, gifts, songs, lights, foods and reunions are all part of our growing search for these meanings. All we have to do is to start fulfilling our purpose not just through these symbols, but the true essence Christ's birth has realized. Being born as a baby (which is being small), in a manger (which is small place), Christ shows the humility and smallness as a virtue by which he has become a symbol of great Love. We do not only stop on the reality of external celebration, but to affirm the significance of this small, inner voice that booms with the sound of Love. We can tell ourselves silently that in whatever small ways we can do, our Christmas and the rest of the year will only be filled with one small thing that brings great miracle: Love.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!