In 2014, I went on a Visita Iglesia by myself since my homies weren’t available that night. For reasons still unknown to me, I decided to walk the entire stretch of the journey. I visited 7 churches in 7 hours, walking a total of 18km. Throughout this mini-pilgrimage, I decided to share snippets of my reflections every hour. I value these reflections to this day, as every year, I am reminded of lessons that I need to apply in my current situation.

And so I compile them all together for you today, hoping that they might point you in the right direction as they’ve done for me.

Hour 1, RVM

Love should be the basis of everything we do and true love will need not tolerate passivity. Initiative is born of passion, just as action is born of love. For love will always seek to manifest itself, and we are tasked to do the same.

Hour 2, In Transit

There are times when it’s not enough to just fulfill the spirit of things. Going through the motions represents a kind of service that cannot be replicated by good intentions. Of course, going through the motions is meaningless without the understanding to back it up. We need both the understanding of the spirit of things as well as the rigor of going through the motions in order to breathe life into our traditions.

Hour 3, St. Therese

I often ask why there are a lot of people suffering in the world. I often ask why tragedies happen and good people are made to feel the brunt of it. I’ve asked what God is doing during these times and chances are you’ve asked that too.

The fact that we are able to recognize and empathize with the rest of humanity proves that something is being done: We’re here, aren’t we?

Hour 4, Mt. Carmel and Pink Sisters

“Seminarista ka ba?”

One of the nuns from RVM asked me if I was a seminarian. I wondered why she’d think that. Was it because I went out of my way to secure chairs for a couple of church goers who came in a bit late? Was it when I gave up my own chair when we ran out of monoblocs? Was it the singing or the heartfelt response?

Maybe it was a combination of those little things. It’s kinda sad when little acts of kindness and sincerity become extraordinary deeds. I’m far from perfect. I have more flaws than merits, to be honest, and everyone knows that. I do, however, hope that random acts of kindness and sincerity become normal and that they are met with smiles and not surprise. You don’t have to be religious to be a good person.

Let’s make helping out the norm in our society by making it the norm in our everyday lives.

Hour 5, SVD

Walking around has made me value a more deliberate pace. Every day, we seem to be trapped in the hustle and bustle of life. We try to beat time by squeezing more into our days. We press down on our horns too often and give way less so. We need time to listen to our God by whatever name God exists for you, the universe, ourselves, others, and the world we live in. There’s always a lesson to be learned; there’s always room to grow, but we have to slow down a bit to find them. It’s not just about being patient but rather the conscious effort to listen, observe, and understand.+

Hour 6, Immaculate Conception Cathedral

Wow, I easily get distracted. It’s not enough to completely sidetrack my endeavors but rather small distractions that makes me stop and take a look around. Even when I shut my eyes in prayer, I just can’t seem to resist my environment: a pretty face, the creaking of pews, the smell of incense, the call of nature. It can get really distracting despite one’s best efforts.

As I was apologizing for being distracted, a comforting feeling descended upon me; similar to the feeling you get when you apologize and your mom simply laughs your offense off. Distractions are a part of human nature and we have to embrace that.

My thoughts flashed to other distractions in our everyday life: horrible traffic, a hyperactive kid, a troubled friend. I realized that it’s not being distracted which causes offense but rather how we respond to these situations. We’ll always be distracted but we can choose how we respond to the distraction. Do we give it more attention? Do we ignore it?

Which distractions aren’t worth your attention? More importantly, which distractions are worth turning away from the task at hand?

Hour 7, St. Paul the Apostle

Why am I doing this?

Not the Visita Iglesia and Vigil but rather the constant sharing of reflections by the hour. I did consider stopping them altogether every now and then. I asked myself if they were becoming a distraction to my vigil.

In truth, they kept me thinking about my reflections while walking to the next church. They allowed me to transform my conversations with my Maker into a tangible representation of love. You see, conversation, for me, is the most common form of love; it’s a mixture of time, humility, and understanding.

In the final stretch, I asked if I was doing the right thing. Memories of teaching came to me. It’s my calling to impart the things I learn about life. It’s the time when I’m truly excited about what I’m doing. Like a schoolboy who’s raring to tell mommy what the teacher taught me today, so am I raring to share with you the things I pick up from this vigil. It is out of love that I write these words with the hope that it is out of love that you do everything you do. So that when you find that one thing that excites you the most, you’ll know that you have found your true calling, and that will be the best way for you to serve the world and every being in it.

Today’s casualties
Just two pairs of shoelaces
And two broken hearts

My eyes meet your tears

Our demons on the table

My hand moves for yours

To pull you back from the past

With no desire to let go

I was going to tease you that you traveled 1,300 miles to do your work;
Work that you do pretty much all the time back home.
On your vacation, you decide to hunker down on your laptop
Eyebrows furrowed as you peruse the information again and again
Making sure that everything is on the right track.

I was going to tease you that you traveled 1,300 miles to do your work;
In a foreign country, yet in a cafe that feels all too familiar.
Leaning back on the couch to see the bigger picture,
Drawn into that world which you help create;
Seemingly oblivious to your immediate surroundings.

I was going to tease you that you traveled 1,300 miles to do your work;
The rain pours outside and you remain unshaken;
Locked in trance as you weave your magic.
I sit across you lost in wonderment.
Pretending that I too have something important to do.

I was going to tease you that you traveled 1,300 miles to do your work;
Yet I traveled the same distance to watch you do it.
Though my eyes dart from you to my computer screen and back
And my fingers dance busily on the keyboard; my mind never wanders.
So this is what working from home feels like.

Deny as I may to keep myself sane,
Echoes of desire whisper in my heart.
Indecision has always been my bane.

Reluctant to the hopes of a new start.
Dumbfounded, my mind finds small ways to stall;
Repressing the words unchained in my art.

Each escaping letter begins to call,
Rolling slowly into a symphony.
Entranced, I walk without fear of the fall.

Madness, my mind makes of this melody.
Insanity throbs in its every beat;
Delirious notes in sweet cacophony.

And yet, I’ve never been more sure of it;
Guilty pleasures of every day’s thoughts
Are arias of your voice on repeat.

Entwined with the mundane daily inkblots;
Tying up reality with fiction;
Overtly sprinkling routine with subplots.

Seldom do I stand with such conviction.
Causality be damned I run away
Out of the shadows of dereliction.

Nightly searching for the right words to say;
Drawn into you, silent as if in trance.
Every moment hoping that you will stay.

It may be stupid to hope for a chance
But it takes stupid to ask for a dance.

Light bulbs flicker and then die.
Mundane routine tasks spread a sense
Of normalcy. Everything is normal, see?
Nevermind the jumbled letters on the
Newspaper literally littered on the ground.
Muddled dates with faces.
Amorphous. Amorous. Amorphae of wine.
Fiddly as time.
Moving without reason or rhyme.
Poorly cut and grainy
Disjointed wings unable to fly.
Trapdoor that wasn’t there before.
Disentegrating floor. Toeing the line.
Paralyzed. Neck stiff. Eyeballs dancing.
Breathless in the vacuum of your own room.
Glancing. Unmoving hands. Ticking.
Split second blindness of consciousness.
Days in minutes. Years in hours.
False memories mine not ours.
Trapped in these ivory towers bereft of powers
Gifted and cursed with the eyeless sight
Lost at sea with no Isles in sight.
This here is my Kryptonite
and I’m lying in my crypt tonight.

I promised a poem and so I’ll deliver
But first let me tell you about this fever
I have brewing inside of my soul
That burning sensation keeping me from my goal
Sleepless nights while high on caffeine
The voice in my head harassing my brain
Yammering that I have something to say
Too much, in fact, and the words did play
Yet it was silence that accompanied me all week long
My mind wants to protest; my heart sing a song
Socrates and Shakespeare swing swords to a stalemate
Sparks flying on a powder keg of unsaid words tempting fate
So I lie down tongue-tied with the pen on my bedside
Furrowed eyebrows seal the building frustration inside.
The explosion deafening in its silence, they disappear in a blip
I got nothing in my head. Nothing in my heart. Nada. Zilch. Zip

Find the limit of x as x approaches infinity from the right
Where x is the number of thoughts in my head at night.
As I toss and turn through a tempest in a teapot,
Slipping and sliding in a stretched out slipknot,
With wisdom waxing and waning while wandering in wonderment,
Rebellious thoughts cry out: “Down with your government!”
We have now taken over and we’ve exiled your false sanity,
You are now to be caught up with every single triviality
And lose all your ability to tell with any bit of certainty
Imagination from reality; fiction from fact.
You are not meant to leave with your mind intact.
Conspiracy theorists will weave patterns in your head.
Intricate and terrifying they fill you with blissful dread.
Or is it dreadful bliss, you can’t help but worry that something’s amiss.
My messed up mind meanders mulling muddy memories;
Reminiscing the nights before in everything it sees.

Find the limit of x as x approaches infinity from the left
Where x is the number of moments in a day bereft
Of thoughts of you; those bleak milliseconds that serve to contrast
Imagined days of future past from moments shared at long last.
The die is cast and time starts to move too fast.
Einstein’s Relativity. Theory of Reflexivity.
Hyperspeed activity that we just want pause
And just give the universe one round of applause.
I couldn’t have written it better but maybe I did.
Déjà vu in my head. God forbid.
9.8 meters per second squared, it’s the gravitational constant
I shouldn’t be scared yet with every word you utter I seem to fall in an instant.
None of this makes sense as I ramble like a madman.
You put me to a sweeter sleep better than the sandman.
There you go again, making your presence known.
I’ve embroidered your image in every tapestry I’ve sewn.
Unconsciously moving to the sound of your voice and the sway of your hips;
To the rhythm of the keystrokes I mouth with my lips.

Find the limit of I as I approaches U
Using that little information without any further clue
No equations nor solutions nor formulas derived;
My brain start to black out as if oxygen deprived.
The train of thought tenaciously travels the temporal terrain
Internalize the incident and interrogate the insane
In the same vein, many before writhe in pain or lay slain
Chasing after a figment of imagination in vain. Memory’s stain.
And the simplest solution would be to drop it altogether.
Leave the questions unanswered; float away like a feather.
Maybe it’s best to leave things undefined for the sake of my mind
And there are just some things one simply can’t find.
It’s best not to defy logic, experience will tell you it’ll be tragic
and that magic is the exception not the rule and it’s safer not to act a fool.
But try as I may there is no way I can resist;
It seems that with you the limit simply does not exist.

Space. All you see is the space closing in on you.
You weave in and out almost on pure instinct.
The chalk flies as you move through the touch line.
You feel a thousand eyes burning holes through you.
The anticipation in their collective sighs resound with every
Missed tackle
As you bound towards goal,
The weight of expectation bear down on your shoulders;
You feel the hot breath of pressure down your nape.

You see it.
An opening, an opportunity, the last one in the match.
It’s not as clear cut as you’d like but you’ve run this scenario
In your head a thousand times before.
You grit your teeth and tighten your shoulders;
The muscles in your body coil like a viper
Poised to strike at any given moment.

Then.

You crash to the ground; pain shooting up your brain.
Your legs taken out from under you; the moment stolen.

The whistle sounds and you get up gingerly.
You can’t let the pain blind you.
You breathe the moment in as you stand over the ball;
The conqueror indignant to the threads of fate.
You make your move, eyes locked on target.
Silence.

The ball hits the net as you skid across the turf
Arms outstretched and your thunderous cry echoes
On the empty bleachers, the empty dugouts, the empty goal.