October 2010 – scribbles and stories

I watched Glee’s Grilled Cheesus again. I so needed to de-stress and amnesia victim Acer didn’t have any good movies on drive D. All it had was Glee.

So, it was either Grilled Cheesus or Britney/Brittany. The Brit episode I had already watched a hundred times because loading it a hundred times on the net forced me to do so. I also had Audition, but just the first 18 minutes of it because Jaring never did let me download the whole thing. Hrmm. Tough choices.

Tear-jerking Grilled Cheesus it was.

I’m not really sure what it was that Ryan Murphy wanted the episode to convey to the Gleeks of the world. For all I know, the whole thing had an entirely different message from the one that I got. Still, the 43 plus minutes of songs and crazy dialogue spoke to me. Not in the way that the Grilled Cheesus spoke to Finn, but rather in a deep, deep, make-tears-come-out-of-your-eyes-forever-and-ever way.

I am tempted to reveal plot spoilers here but I’d rather not. Watch it for yourself and see if you won’t get a hair-raising experience listening to Amber Riley (Mercedes) belt out Whitney Houston’s “I Look to You”. Oh no. Spoiler right there.

So how do I express everything that I want to express without giving any major thing in the plot away?

Let me just do it this way. After watching the episode (and after crying my eyes out for the nth time), this memory flashed into my mind. It was a memory of a seven-year-old (I think) Mari rushing in to her parents’ bedroom with tears streaming down her eyes.

“Bakit ka umiiyak, anak?” (Why are you crying, my child?)

“Kasi, kasi, di na ako good girl! Baka di na ako makapasok sa heaven…!” (Because I’m no longer a good girl. I might not be able to enter heaven!)

I really can’t remember what it was that I did that caused the outburst or what it was that my mom said to correct my theology… But the memory just flashed there. Because it reminded me of that first time that the child in me ever longed for something eternal, ever yearned for something intangible, ever dreamed for something a lot of people call unreal… and yet for the first time felt “somethings” like that were just so extremely hard to reach and so incredibly hard to find.

Connect this with Grilled Cheesus, please, Mari?

Well, the episode made me realize how there is indeed this God shaped hole inside each one of us. A longing and a need for something “sacred”, the show said. And there are so many ways that many of us try to fill this hole… many things that many of us consider “sacred”… and I know it really is “to each his own”…

But the bottom line (for me) is this. People need the Lord.

Another memory just flashed through my mind. A high-school version of me singing in the high school choir (no, we didn’t call it Glee club, but Sir Bansiong was like Mr. Schue to some of the girls at school. Haha). We sang “People need the Lord” by Steve Green as a doxology.

Everyday they pass me by/I can see it in their eyes/Empty people filled with care/Headed who knows where?/ On they go through private pain/Living fear to fear/ Laughter hides their silent cries/Only Jesus Hears.

People need the Lord, people need the Lord/At the end of broken dreams, He’s the open door/ People need the Lord, people need the Lord/ When will we realize, people need the Lord?

I never really understood that song way back when. But now the lyrics are so real to me.

So here’s what I learned from God and Glee – people need the Lord. : )

Warm socks feel like home. They especially feel like home when they are worn under big rubber shoes. The combination shields my feet from the wetness of the sporadic “ber” rains. They save me from all feeling of squishy-ishy discomfort. They spare me from having to ride buses and trains with wet and freezing cold lower appendages.

Warm socks feel like home. Wearing them to sleep during these chilly “ber” nights sends me back to my room in La Trinidad. There I have a huge collection of long woolly (and well worn) socks which have always been useful when the cold months rolled around.

When I wear them and wiggle my toes under my Za’ba blankets, I feel like I’m not in Malaysia. I feel like my Mom would come knocking on my door any second, forcing me to get up.

Warm socks feel like home. But more like Home is my Resting Place who constantly shields me from every storm, who tells me when I’m all squishy and uncomfy that “Everything will turn out fine and dandy.”

More like Home is the Warm Embrace that covers me from head to toe, thawing away the coldness of my heart and bringing me back to the very Place where I belong.

Back to Him. Because He is my very Home.

When all is said and done, after nature and the whole work and acad load have all poured down, after the nights’ and the situations’ coldness have all passed, we would always find ourselves looking for… yearning… wanting to go back to that Home.

Well. He is our Home.

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Written while I was wriggling my toes inside warm comfy socks. While waiting somewhere out there. :)

Month: October 2010

God and Glee

Warm Socks Feel Like Home