Long Weekend!

It was a cloudy and windy day when we were going to Chicago. Fr.Kun and Rosa picked me up at 2 one o'clock from my base camp Franklin heding for the windy city, Chicago. Driving on the free way in the afternoon made us sleepy, and fr.Kun knew very well where had to come over. So, we went to Starbuck Coffee to have a cup of coffee just to stay awake. Ehm..one cup of coffee was enough for us to flavor little bit our conversations. The weather changed suddently from cloudy to sunny, so everything was great. I decided to spend my long weekend in Chicago, first of all to attend the priesthood ordination of Sonny and Francis and to say goodbye to Petrus who will be leaving on Monday morning. Sony and Francis have been studying in Chicago for six years while Petrus for five years. We got there at 2.30 at the same time of the coming of the guys from Chicago. It was really a festive, tasteful and wonderful celebration. The church itself was very peaceful place, huge building with a very strong pillar and unique ornaments. As soon as I entered the building, I felt as if I were very familiar with this place even though I have never been there before. I was there with my whole being and once a while I explained to Rosa what was going on about the ritual that was presided by Archbishop Timothy Dolan from Milwaukee. After mass we joined Indonesian community to have party downstairs. Some of them danced poco-poco and Sajojo. Everybody was happy. Anyway this weekend was realy great for me, not only I could make something difference but also I learned a lot from many people who are generous. On Sunday, I went to St. Therese Church, China Town, to participate the first mass of Francis and Sony. We celebrated mass in two languages, English and Indonesia. It was a conselebration mass with ten priests, most of them were young and I was struck by this experience. The church is still young (what or who is the church?) After mass we joined together to have lunch. There were happiness and sadness as well. Tante Imelda asked Denny to read her lovely poems for Petrus, Sony and Francis. Many people were touched and began crying. On Monday morning at 7.30 we dropped Petrus and Ignas off to O'hare air port. Petrus will be in Indonesia for several years before his following destination while Ignas is taking his vacation for two months. I will miss them a lot. Long weekend is ended and I have to come back to my ordinary life. Now I am here in Franklin with a load of paper in front of me to be done. Thank God for everything!

Bola

Kesalahan adalah bagian dari hidup kita. Kita pasti pernah salah. Adakalanya kesalahan yang kita buat akan terus dikenang oleh orang sebagai bagian dari track record kita. Orang akan mencibir karena kesalahan masa lalu yang pernah kita lakukan. Ini merupakan bagian ketidakadilan yang kita terima dari orang di sekitar kita. Tetapi bisa terjadi juga yang sebaliknya betapa orang-orang disekitar kita begitu cepat melupakan kesalahan kita. Adalah seoarang Jerzy Dudek, kiper Liverpool membuktikan kemarin. Ia hanya memerlukan waktu dua jam untuk menebus semua kesalahan yang ia buat. Moment itu terjadi dalam pertandinga Piala champion antara AC Milan vs Liverpool. Bahkan bukan hanya ia menebus kesalahan yang ia buat tapi justru kesalahan itu menjadi sarana yang menjadikannya seorang pahlawan. Di akhir pertandingan ia dengan tenang memberikan bola kepada Serginho, eksekutor pertama dari AC Milan. Kedua tangannya bagaikan sayap mencoba mengacaukan konsentrasi Seginho. Dan berhasil! Serginho sang pemain kawakan itu menendang bola jauh di atas mistar gawang. Untuk kedua kalinya Dudek memungut bola memberikannya kepada Pirlo sang eksekutor kedua dari Milan. Andrea Pirlo memiliki track record yang mengagumkan dalam tendangan penalti tapi malam itu gerakan Dudek yang ala malaikat benar-benar mengacaukan konsentrasinya. Selanjtunya dan selanjutnya Dudek melakukan hal yang sama hingga tiba giliran Andriy Shevchenko. Sheva adalah pemain andalan Milan tapi malam itu ia gagal mengeksekusi penalti. Dudek berlari merayakan kemenangan Liverpool. Semua orang mengelu-elukannya. Ia menjadi pahlawan. Ia memenuhi judul banyak koran! Fantastic! Absolutely incredible! Kesalahan yang ia buat telah dilupakan orang. Orang tidak akan mengingatnya lagi.

Hidup kita kadang seperti permainan bola. Kita melakukan banyak hal baik karena kita mau menebus kesalahan yang pernah kita buat. Kesempatan selalu ada untuk menebus kesalahan yang pernah kita buat. Dudek sungguh beruntung karena dia mampu menebus kesalahannya dan orang begitu cepat melupakan.

Teman-temanku

Adakalanya hidup ini begitu indah untuk dinikmati. Ada saat di mana kebahagiaan membuncah dan aku sungguh-sungguh hidup. Tiga hari ini aku bertemu dengan orang-orang yang sungguh membuatku bahagia. Mereka adalah Rm. Kun (mokun), Petrus, Wawan dan Ignas. Saat-saat membahagiakan itu datang ketika kami membagi cerita dan berdiskusi tentang apa saja. Rm. Kun aku kenal belum lama, beliau sedang studi Phd komputer di Marquette University. Pertemuan dengan beliau beberapa kali sungguh mengesan bagiku. Hospitalitas dan rasa humor yang tinggi membuatku tidak bosan untuk berbagi cerita dengan beliau. Sabtu ini rencananya kami ke Chicago bersama-sama. Selanjutnya Petrus yang akan segera kembali ke Indonesia setelah lima tahun studi di USA. Aku merasa begitu kehilangan dia. Mungkin selama ini dia menjadi "benteng hidup" dan "saksi mata" tentang arti sebuah perjuangan tanpa kenal lelah. Dia selalu mengingatkan pentingnya refleksi, melihat kembali perjalanan hidup, mengevaluasi dan menjadikan today is better than yesterday. Selanjutnya ada Wawan that is realy a nice fellow, yang selalu siap melayani dan mendengar. Semalam kami diskusi tentang berbagai hal. Ia sangat rasional dan terbuka terhadap opini orang lain. Baru kali ini aku punya kesempatan untuk bicara dari hati ke hati dengannya. Life is so colorful. Satu lagi Ignas yang selalu siap sedia menolong di kala aku membutuhkan sesuatu. Arek Nias tapi lahir dan besar di Padang ini begitu sering main ke Milwaukee sehingga sering kami habiskan waktu setelah dinner di garage untuk sekedar cerita dan menikmati cigaret kesayangan kami. Aku bersyukur punya teman-teman yang selalu membuatku merasa tidak sendiri. Aku sungguh bahagia karenanya!

Lagi narcis nih..

Foto ini ngingetin gue waktu ke Madison beberapa minggu lalu. Ehm...ada kisah lucu! Waktu itu gue main-main ke University of Wisconsin, the weather was great! Di tengah kerumunan orang yang bermandi cahaya mentari ada dua orang perempuan dan seorang anak kecil. Gue yakin banget mereka itu orang Indonesia, karena wajahnya Jawa banget kayak aku. Maka gue beraniin nanya sekadar basa-basi, "Excuse me....do you know State Union Building? Salah satu ngejawab "I'm sorry I'm not a student here! My husband is studying here" Trus gue tanya lagi "Are you from Indonesia?" Dianya tersenyum "Yes I'm". Gue berharap bisa ngomong-ngomong tapi sayang mereka bergegas pergi karena si anak kecil rewel minta pulang! Ehm....Kapan ya bisa ketemu lagi orang Indo di Milwaukee?

Sahabatku Petrus!

Namanya Petrus! Orangnya tenang dan low profile. Aku kenal dekat dia justru di Jakarta ketika kami sama-sama studi filsafat, meskipun kami berasal dari satu daerah. Bapaknya dia guru bapakku dulu waktu masih muda. Satu pengalaman unik aku alami ketika kami di Jakarta, dia tingkat IV Filsafat sementara aku tingkat I. Waktu itu tahun 1999 ketika kami perlu ganti kacamata. Maka pergilah kami ke Blok M ke optik Timur. Sampai di sana ternyata harga frame kaca mata sangat mahal. Ehm....maka dia pun mengeluarkan jurus "discerment"-nya ala Ignatius Loyola. Aku yang notabene masih junior ikut saja. Hasilnya beli yang paling murah dan itu harganya Rp.199.000,-. Jadi kami beli kacamata yang sama persis framenya kaya anak kembar! Kaca mata itu sampai sekarang masih sering aku pakai meskipun sudah tiga kali ganti lensa. Aku akan tetap memakainya untuk mengenangnya! Tahun 2000 dia diutus studi di USA dan empat tahun kemudian aku pun menyusul. Kami suka sharing dan bagi pengalaman saking asyiknya kadang sampai pagi. Sekarang dia sudah lulus dan mau kembali ke Indonesia. Selamat jalan kawan!


Selamat atas graduation untuk sahabatku Petrus! Hm...nggak terasa waktu berlalu dan kita akan berpisah. Doaku untukmu sahabatku!

Nothing special!

Most of day I spent reading some books and listening to music. It was a cloudy day with unbearable cold today. Maybe winter is coming for second time. Staying for long hours in my ugly room made me relax little bit. I don't know how I can organize my room regularly. One week ago, I cleaned up my room by vacuum cleaner, threw away junks, so it looked organized, tidy and fragant. I'm not a hoarder but I like collecting articles that I think useful. I always think everything will be useful for next time, so I keep many things in my room. After one month the loads of paper will cover every corner of my room. It's time to clean up. Stop talking about that, I'm tired to blame myself. I read two books today "The Best American Short Stories 1993" and "Poems for Idle Moments". I hope I will be faithful with my commitment this week to read more and more. At 12 o'clock I had lunch and I had to prepare it for myself. I enjoyed my lovely pasta. I like scrambel egg and noodle. Unfortunately the noodle was finished. After lunch, I continued to update my blog and tried to modify some pictures. The results were amazing, some of them I published already. Afterward I continued reading....and took a shower. I'm used to taking a shower twice a day otherwise I will have a problem with my stubborn itching. The cook did't come today...so we ate out. We went to China Buffe by van. It's my favorite restaurant, just pay 8 bucks and eat what you want. While we were enjoying our meal we had a nice conversation. It was 07.15 when we went back. I hope tomorrow will be better than today. Thank God for my experience today!

Ehm....

Coba-coba eh..jadi...ehm...luarbiasa!


Musim semi tiba kerja di kebun......

Pentacost Sunday

Pentacost Sunday….this morning I had a mass in Francis Villa (nursing home), about twenty minutes by car from my community. It was a peacefull celebration. I joined about one hundred old people, most of them were over 80 years old and most of them were in wheel chairs. I myself find peace in my heart if I can share with them. After mass I had time to take two ladies to their room. I really wanted to talk with them about their experiences in their lives. This celebration reminded me how fragile human being is. Life is ‘a little while’, a short moment of waiting. But life is not empty waiting. It is to wait full of expectation. The hope that God will fulfill our expectations makes the waiting exciting. Actually we can already see the beginning of the fulfillment. Look at outside, the sun, the moon, and the stars speak of it when they offer us light and beauty. Whenever people smile, they share a hope. This ‘little while’ is a precious time if we know that God is really among us with His promise. The old person I met this morning perhaps wanted to share her ‘little while’. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to listen to her.

My reflection

I've been here for eight months. It has been the best time to reflect on my journey. I've never thought before that I would be in the USA to study theology. The more I think about that the more I'm aware of the guidance of God. He is really God of surprises. Yes...my life is filled with a lot of surprises. Who can predict my future? Is my future in my hand? I've been passing an uncertainty path. It looks like a puzzle. I enjoy figuring out puzzle because even though I don't know exactly the result yet, but the way I use to do is really amazing. To be honest, I really appreciate the result of what I have done. If I work hard I will succed. I think some people agree with me. That is my paradigm to organize and manage my life. Until now as if I had never failed in my life and I'm really afraid of failure. I will be so disappointed if I fail. Failure is hell in my life. But I realize it is not true that I will succed always. So I prepare myself to stand firm in many kind of situations. I like this statement "I am in this world not to live up to your expectation and you are in this world not to live up to mine". It doesn't mean that I like to stay alone without others or to be a self-centered person. I just want to remind myself to be independent. I am so dependent in emotional with my family. Very often in my life to be accepted by others I always fulfill what they expect me to be. I feel a certain pressure within me to keep living up to a kind of conduct that fit the expectations of my family or others. Thank God....for your love for me!

Send Us Your Spirit

Send us your spirit,O lord
Evening enfolds us and holds us too near
wake the morning light
Make our living bright
Shine on our darkness O Lord
Hold us with mercy O Lord
Sorrow has spoken, has broken our hearts
Clothe us in Your care
Be the life we bear
Feed us and help us, O Lord
Teach us Your wisdom, O Lord
Shadows have clouded, have crowded our sight
Give us hearts that see
Set our loving free
Hear us and help us, O Lord
Send us good summer, O lord
Winters have chilled us, and stilled us too long
Give us love's own fire
Be our true desire
Send us Your Spirit, O Lord
I sang this song during evening prayer in the chapel. This song represents my yearning to have a good weather. Today was very cold like a winter time. It made me crazy, I did nothing today. This cold have chilled and imprisoned me to live in my loneliness. I felt lonely and my mind was so overwhelmed by an anxiety. I miss the solitude I have ever had a long time ago when I could go deep in my spiritual life. Bad weather depicted my feeling.....send your spirit God....

Be yourself!

I'm tired of this statement "be yourself", eventhough I use it very often to advise some people. In my opinion it's better to be natural, acting according to our own personality but very often it doesn't make sense. I mean, it becomes a kind of slogan, a meaningless slogan. "Be yourself" in its original meaning means be genuine, be authentic, be natural. Recently, it becomes a bias word to justify that what we are doing is right because we do something according to my own way. Here, everything is so subjective. We should have an ideal which is our guide line to reach our self-realization. Sometimes we say "you don't understand me because you are not me", of course, "I am not you" and "I will not be able to be like you". So, it is very clear that there is an universal value where we agree about that. Our actions in our daily lives are the representation of our ideal.

"The Hearer of Message"

While I was organizing my room this morning, I found accidently an article about Karl Rahner. He was a famous theologian the Catholic Church has ever had. His book was very organized actually but....I struggled a lot to understand his thought. When I studied theology in Jakarta two years ago I wasn't able to grasp his main thought. Fortunately, I could download from the internet to have the guide line of his prominent book. It was an article I downloaded from the Internet a couple months ago. It looked dusty and ugly. I read it for a while and I was really struck by it. It talks about "The Hearer of Mesage". According to Rahner human being is the one who is able to hear God's message. People do not hear the message as mere information about God that is unrelated to their lives but they really hear it explicitly or inexplicitly in every experience. In fact, Rahner says that this is what makes us human. We have been created with the ability to encounter the transcendent God in the experiences of daily life. By nature the human being is capable of a relationship with God.

Thank God that after reading this article, I found a new spirit to love my vocation. It urged me to go deeper in my own life, to find out the value of my ordinary life.

Karl Rahner....this guy reminds me to reflect on my whole being.

I wanna be faithfull

First time when I decided to have blog, I promised to write down my daily life. It seemed so easy to do that. I just need to go to my lovely computer and start writing. Actually, I have a lot of stuff to be shared with others. It's inspired by the journal of Henry Nouwen, an outstanding writer in spiritual life I love very much. He wrote down his own journal during his sabatical year. In his journal, he tells us about his friendships, happines and sufferings. His life is so colorful. He really tells the truth about life and shares with others that we are the grace of God. I wish to be like him but honestly I'm not be able to be faithfull in one thing. Sometimes, I really commit to start something good and interesting in my life but because of my shortcomings I forget easily my commitment. I used to collect some excerpts from several books but I gave up after that. Now, it comes true. I'm lazy to write my journal in my blog. This coming week I will have a lot of spare time. I hope I will be able to write something in this blog! I hope so!