Confirmation

The Confirmation sacrament is a rite of passage in the Catholic church, much like a bar mitzvah.

I’ve forgotten when I got confirmed, but it was probably around when I was 13.

For the ceremony, we had to choose a confirmation name and I chose Paul.

For a few years after that I called myself Philip Paul Hii.

(Incidentally, I always thought I was named after St Philip of Neri, but my mother told me in her later years that she named me after Prince Philip, the Queen’s Consort.)

I named myself after St Paul because even at that tender age, I knew I was going to travel and from our Bible studies, I knew St Paul was known for his travels.

These days, however, when I think of St Paul, traveling is the last thing that comes to mind.

Instead, I’m thinking of 1 Corinthians 13:4-7:

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

This is possibly the second most beautiful passage in the gospels, after the Lord’s Prayer.

I started thinking about the passage when I wrote the earlier post about sacred love and romantic love and how they’re both manifestations of the same selfless love.

Or as St Paul called it, ‘not self-seeking’ love.

This of course goes against everything I have written about the energy of love and how it is a two-way conditional street.

Selfless love however belongs to a whole different category—it’s not human love because human love is mostly transactional, at least that’s what I’ve found out.

Perhaps the best way to describe selfless love is ‘divine love’ because selfless love transcends the pettiness of human existence.

A selfless love is in a place far beyond mere human relationships and because of that, it has a purity which is the hallmark of true love.

Of course, for us mere mortals trapped within our human condition, it’s also very rare, but when it occurs, it’s the most wondrous thing to behold, whether it’s the love of a parent for a child, or a mystic in search for God, or two people in sync with one another.

The Sacred and the Sensual

Listening to Gelora, I was struck by the brief prayer segment tagged to the end of the video.

As a device, it is incredibly effective.

When you juxtapose two seemingly antithetical elements—that of the sensual (romantic love) and the sacred, it creates the ultimate contrast, and art is mostly a play of contrasts.

But it also points to something deeper.

It brings these two elements together—two elements that actually have much in common.

Both involve a heightened state of existence called ecstasy—both involve the giving up of the self for something deeper—in the case of the sacred, for God, and in the case of the sensual, for another person.

In fact (and this is from pure speculation, not from personal experience), I believe that both experiences are rooted in the same place in the heart.

This is that yearning deep within the heart for meaning, for truth, for fulfillment, for a sense of belonging.

That’s why so many spiritual poems read like the lovesick yearnings of a person in the midst of a romantic throe.

Take St John of the Cross’ famous Spiritual Canticle.

Here’re the first three verses of the poem:

I
Where have you hidden yourself,
And abandoned me in my groaning, O my beloved?
You have fled like the hart,
Having wounded me.
I ran after you, crying; but you were gone.

II
O shepherds, you who go
Through the sheepcots up the hill,
If you shall see her
Whom I love the most,
Tell her I languish, suffer, and die.

III
In search of my love
I will go over mountains and strands;
I will gather no flowers,
I will fear no wild beasts;
And pass by the mighty and the frontiers.

A more beautiful love song, I can’t think of.

Or take Chopin’s op 48, No. 1 which inserts a hymn-like passage in the middle of an ultra sensual romantic work.

(I actually think it sounds better on the guitar than on the original piano, and there might be a guitar version somewhere.)

One can even go as far as to say that sacred love and romantic love are one and the same.

There is a purity of purpose, an innocence, and this is the most important, the complete letting go of the self for the other.

And it is this last element that would indicate that whatever a person is feeling is true romantic love and not lust (which is all about gratifying oneself), or possessiveness (when a person has to own the other person) or puppy love (infatuation).

Gelora

I took quite a few Grab rides in Kuala Lumpur and Penang last November. Grab is the Malaysian equivalent of Uber.

Except for one ride in Penang which was a disaster, I always enjoyed the rides—they were a chance to meet the locals and chat about nothing in particular.

I was in a Grab car going back to my hotel from the Central Market in KL when a song on the car stereo caught my attention.

The driver told me the song was called Gelora.

When I got back to the hotel, I found the song on Youtube.

I’ve loved Malay rock/pop music for as long as I can remember and this song really captures its essence with the wailing guitar and the soulful singing.

Here is the song—Gelora by Usop:

A whimper, not a bang

I’ve been following the news stories about the upheavals in the housing market in Florida, caused by out of control insurance rate hikes and property taxes. *

The same in California where homeowners are getting their policies cancelled. *

And now killer summer heatwaves in Asia and it’s not even summer yet.

It looks like the beginning of the end is here.

The scientists have been warning us for years that this would happen—that human greed is going to turning the planet into a hothouse.

But human greed has also been denying this.

I have friends who vehemently say global warming is all a liberal conspiracy.

Unfortunately, just denying something is happening is not going to stop that thing from happening.

Hopefully, some of those conspiracy nutcases and deniers live in the sunshine state where they’re going to get even more sunshine in the years to come.

There doesn’t seem to be any political will to stop mankind from the impending plunge over the cliff.

As I write, law enforcement is clearing a few campuses of student agitators and activists.

Yes, the carnage in the Middle East is a disaster and young people should make every effort to stop it.

But what about the greater disaster that is staring us in the face?

What about the slow but surely warming up of the planet?

Until young people wake up to the fact that they may not have much of a planet left in a few decades, I forsee continuing denyalism, political corruption, and corporate greed that are driving us to our doom.

One of my favorite poems for many years was ‘The Hollow Men’ by T S Eliot which eeirily foretold our present predicament:

 III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

….

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

* There is a direct link between global warming and insurance rates in Florida and California. In Florida, warming ocean temperatures mean more numerous and powerful storms. In California, more droughts and heat equal more wildfires.