You Don't Know This Man

Being a hugely emo person, I get carried away by the small difficulties of the day. The past two days have been terrible ones, if we rate days based on the happy-making and sad-making things that happened in those small twenty-four hours. The terrible things are mostly my own fault, and that's what sucks most of all--my own weaknesses and incompetence, my lack of organization and forward-thinking. I get humiliated by my own shortcomings and wish I could quit a position of responsibility that others might take lightly, but which I take truly seriously but can't manage to do well.

And then after dinner my friends and I sat down to watch clips from a movie, There Be Dragons, about the very man I was talking about in my last entry.

I know you've probably heard about it. You might google it and see all of the terrible reviews, most of them bashing either Opus Dei, or the Catholic Church, or the simplicity of the plot.

I don't care. Just go see it. Because if you are honest with yourself--if you have the necessary strength of character--you're going to sit through this movie and allow it to help you to think. To think about what you're doing in this world, where you're headed, what the meaning of your life is. If you have that kind of honesty, you will get rid of any bias you've ever had against the Catholic Church or the Work before you sit down and watch it. If you had any integrity at all, you will acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, this is closer to the truth than the other portrayals of Opus Dei in the media have been, because those attacks have been uninformed and uncharitable.

And what does this have to do with my two bad days as a liaison officer? Everything. Sitting through those clips--watching young Josemaria follow the footprints of a Carmelite walking in the snow in the dead cold of winter--sharing his thoughts of "If that person can give up everything for God... then what am I doing with my own life?"--was a poignant reminder.

We're in the world to sanctify ourselves and the world. To do it silently, hidden in the small difficulties and humiliations of life. Each one of us, made of the precise "stuff" needed to be saints, whatever our defects, whatever things we have done in our past. Anyone in the world--butcher, baker, candlestick maker--anyone, taxi drivers, magtatahos, tricycle drivers, lawyers, doctors, anyone doing good and honest work--becoming a saint, without doing anything extraordinary, maybe even without other people knowing. Each one of us sinners, but each one called for the demanding perfection of being saints.

It's not a new message. It just sounds new because the world has forgotten it, and it took one man--a young priest, kind and gentle while being strong and firm, and always fully Human--to remind the world that when Jesus said that we must be perfect as His heavenly Father is perfect, he didn't just mean priests or the religious or people who leave the world to be in monasteries and convents. He meant everyone, in any corner of the world, doing any honest job. Married people, single people, old people and young people. People of all sorts of backgrounds and temperaments and faults and talents. People... like you, and me.

People like a twenty-two year old medical student with faucets for tear ducts and so much self-consequence that she gets profoundly hurt with even a hint of rebuke, however deserved. Like a medical student who has so many flaws she can't count them. Like a medical student who knows that, no matter how many flaws she has, the only thing that matters is that she struggles, and believes, and knows she's loved as a King loves his daughter the princess.

So forward, always forward, we go. And if we're faithful, we'll get the reward that Josemaria got when he went to his true Home.

Teacher and Father

There was once a man who had nothing except his mother, brother and sister; a handful of friends; a sense of humor; and the grace of God. He had no power and no money, and sometimes he had barely two pesetas to rub together. But within a century he changed the world and changed the lives of thousands (if not millions) of people.

I am one of those many people. I found him and everything changed. Before I met this man I led a dissipated life, without sparkle and without purpose, without true joy and without meaning. My only thoughts were for myself and I didn't stand for anything, and fell for everything.

Now I'm still wildly imperfect, but he taught me never to be discouraged, and to know that whatever changes I need to make in myself and in the world around me are possible, as long as I rely not on myself, but on a higher power.

He taught me how to work with intensity, and he taught me how to struggle to be holy even in an unfavorable environment and with my thousands of defects. He taught me to love others as they are, which may be very different from what I am.

I have to admit that I get hurt when people say things about him that are unflattering or slanderous, because whatever they've said about him is wrong and without basis. I used to have this totally false idea of him, long before I met him, and when I finally came to know his spirit and his life, he totally blew any expectations I had of him out of the water. He is the kindest, most gracious, most refined human being I've ever met with the exception of his Mother and his Brother. The final proof of his kindness is that he has never spoken badly about the people who spread stories and rumors about him; he greets even the worst and dirtiest lies with a peaceful smile and a ready prayer. He is the real thing--a man who walks the talk.

I love him with the love a daughter has for her father, and with the gratitude of a student to a beloved teacher. I wish everyone could meet him and his poor, large, faithful Family.



Happy feastday, Father! I only wish that I could be half as kind, as loving, as obedient, and as faithful as you.

Fandom

This is not a legitimate entry. Come back next time for regular programming.

- - -

When I was twelve, I wandered into fandom. And really, if you're the kind of person who really devotes time to fandom rather than, you know, having a real life, you end up crossing fandoms. From Harry Potter I went through Sherlock Holmes, Lord Peter Wimsey, Mary Russell, Discworld, Rex Stout, Terry Pratchett, Diana Wynne Jones, blah blah blah. It was all downhill from my first click into Mena Baines' website, Hermione's World.

My involvement in the various fandoms varies from time to time--lurking here, actual participation in fic exchanges there. However, one thing it has never dipped into is large-scale, real-life encounters. (One of the highlights of my life, though, came really close: I got sent three books by Dan and Jerri Chase, from the LordPeter groups, all the way from California to my humble home in Laguna.) I know fan communities regularly meet up via conventions, but I've never had the courage to go to any of those, and anyway, there have never been too many of them in the Philippines--except for anime, and I'm only going to dip my toes into that, not dive the whole way by cosplaying. (I guess that's because most of my fandoms are less based on graphics and based more on books; harder to cosplay, then.) I did meet one friend, though, who shares most of my fandoms (both DWs: Doctor Who and Discworld, plus a handful of other fandoms) and I remember how thrilling it was to be sitting, shatteringly terrified, in a Starbucks until a girl in a La Salle jacket came up to me and said, "Oh, hello, are you wallyflower?" That was the best. I know we didn't really remain close friends, but occasionally we still talk to each other online, and somehow, that connection can feel so much more concrete, so much more real, than a lot of connections you can make in real life.

I read recently that the internet tricks us into a facsimile of friendship; it convinces us that it's enough to send a person a message via FB, and that it's not as necessary to meet up in order to maintain a friendship. To some extent, I agree. I'm facebook friends with all of my close friends, but I haven't met up with 72% of those closest friends within the last year, and I wouldn't even know what they're thinking, who they're in a relationship with, what their after-school jobs are like, how their families are doing--because the peremptory FB status and that comfortable, lukewarm button "Like" has replaced some of the need for phone calls and meet-ups.

On the other hand, I don't know where I'd be without the internet. For the socially awkward, fandoms are a safe haven, and sometimes they can be the only happy thing in a grey, mean week. Not just because of the anonymity--you'd think that, maybe, but actually a lot of lj friends really post pictures of themselves and you'd know where they live and who their relatives are--but because, like it or not, it's the least threatening way of making a connection. You can't really reason that the reason we veer into fandom is that we're afraid of being rejected in real life, because rejections happen in fandom all the time. Comment counts on lj entries and lj-posted stories, as well as the number of people on your flist, are a way of "gauging" how rejected you are by your fan community. Replies to reviews left in stories can brush you off like a speck of dust.

In fact in so many ways, if we're talking actual livejournals or blogs rather than a profile page in FB or myspace or whatever, fandom interaction is so much like real life. You have the popular kids--the "BNFs" (big name fic writers), like Cassandra Clare, who will probably migrate into "legitimate writing" even as their comment counts and lj friends skyrocket to the thousands. You have the nobodies--people with under 20 friends, who never get comments on their ljs, whose stories hardly ever get reviewed. You have the sycophants and the hangers on (OK, if you want a really entertaining read and want to waste the next ten hours of your life, read The MsScribe Story, which is a weirdly fascinating account of a pathological liar who created earthquakes in the early days of the Harry Potter fandom).

You have the cool kids who just don't care--people who are genuinely talented but don't seek attention or advertise themselves and just do it for fun, and who basically keep to themselves. (In case you're wondering, I'm a nobody, and I think it's better that way because you're not as self-conscious about how you write, and you're surer to get solid criticism if you're a relative unknown.) So I think it's less about escapism, than about trying to find people who are more like you, to assure yourself you are not quite so alone or not quite so weird and horrible as you imagined.

It's just... it's always home. No matter what has happened elsewhere, you will still find the same community waiting for you. If you're talking to people who are genuinely interested in the same things, it's like you speak an entire language, and they just get you. They won't know your favorite colors or your mother's maiden name, but they will talk to you about the things you are most passionate about--writing, writing, writing--and they'll know what you mean when you say it's the glorious 25th of May, and they'll know what you were feeling the moment Amelia Pond was tucked into bed by a time-travelling alien she'd waited for all her life. They'll know it's seventeen steps to 221B Baker street and they'll know The Lord of the Rings is legitimately one book, not three.

I guess all I want to say is what Kathleen Kelly, as shopgirl, said to ny152.

The odd thing about this form of communication is that you're more likely to talk about nothing than something.

But I just want to say that all this nothing has meant more to me than so many... somethings.

So thanks.