This was some­thing I wrote just before I left the Jesuits. It’s a very spe­cial poem for me, not only because of the things I went through when I was writ­ing the poem, but because in many ways, it is some­thing that still rings true for me today. I am still on life’s high­ways and byways. Look­ing for home.

Look­ing for me.

I wrote this sev­eral years ago, in the Jesuit Retreat House called Mirador, in Baguio City.

I remem­ber it was a gloomy after­noon, and was about to rain.

I remem­ber being awed by the dogged­ness of the spi­der. How could he con­tinue build­ing his web, know­ing that it will prob­a­bly just be washed out by the rains? Per­haps, he didn’t know? Or per­haps he was just stub­born? Or maybe that’s what spi­ders do.

This is one of the first poems I wrote. I have this in one of my old note­books which I almost got rid of already until I found a lot of old poems I had writ­ten many years back.

I’m feel­ing a lit­tle poetic the past few days. This was some­thing I first wrote in the mid­dle of a prayer period sev­eral years ago while con­tem­plat­ing the beauty and the frus­tra­tion I felt in front of a silent God. I rewrote it after sev­eral years and it took on a new mean­ing for me. Last week, I rewrote it for the final time in its present form.

Some­times God does not seem to care about the things that are hap­pen­ing to me; and some­times I imag­ine Him just look­ing on as a bystander to my life. And I ask Him life’s dif­fi­cult ques­tions and all I get is utter and deaf­en­ing silence.

But some­how, there is elo­quence in the silence. And I begin to see that what I deemed as silence is really God’s way of talk­ing to me.

Some­thing I wrote years ago. :-)