Intermissions

Kai Alfonso in Ang Pinoy Stories

May 21, 2020 • 5 min Read

My high school friend and batchmate Sr. Mary Hope is a nun and an orthopedic nurse at a hospital in Lucca, Italy. She tells me that their hospital has a holiday once a year. Prior to the month of August, their hospital will stop accepting patients. If there are any left that are not discharged yet, then they will be transferred to another hospital. The staff and doctors take their vacation this time and really take time to rest.

The conversation took place years ago but it really left a mark on me: Even God rested on the seventh day.

I work in the corporate world from Monday to Saturday, and I head a 35–staff finance and accounting department. I have a prickly son in his junior year, a temperamental college niece to fend at home, and my responsibilities extend up to the seventh day of the week. My only consolation though is that I get to silence the cell phone alarm on this day and let the body clock work. That’s so far as the rest can go for me. And I think about the rest for my own soul because besides my daily prayers I only get to connect with God for an hour during mass. Both God and my doctor would agree that I am physically and spiritually exhausted. I need rest.

When I joined the Benedictine Oblates Community under our Spiritual Director Fr. Paco, I understood the reason for rest — physical, mental, and spiritual. I began to attend silent retreats and recollection over the weekend. At first I struggled with the idea and got entangled with a number of reasons why people do not want to commit: I hardly had time for myself, I had to take care of somebody, and there were many things to do. I was busy.

When I committed myself to the community, I realized that instead of being limited by my busyness I was able to free more of my time. Slowly I was able to prioritize physical and spiritual rest. I began to learn to drop everything for God and I let Him take care of the rest. The more I commit my time for Him, the more I am free of the burden to multitask.

Forty days into the enhanced community quarantine, I rested from going to work, paying my rent, my credit cards, and from taking care of students going to their classes. I began to adapt a new routine: work from home, watch Netflix, eat, pray, write, and sleep. This time it will be doctor’s order to stay home and stay safe for my physical wellbeing and God’s orders to spiritually learn from this ordeal. God gives us an intermission from the busyness of this world. Earth is responding; I should be, too.

As I was reflecting on this note I realized that I was also given these intermissions before and my decisions after led me to a much better path. I hope to learn the same lessons after the ECQ because of covid19.

I graduated from high school with both elder brother and sister still in college, and my father’s mining company in trouble. I went to Manila with no agenda and contemplating on entering a monastery. My parents though asked me to wait so I spent a year with close relatives from both sides. There was no resistance or resentment because there was nothing to rush at all in the first place — until my father got sick and asked me to go to college. The two years that I spent away from home had practically taught me valuable lessons that came in handy during the years I was in college. I earned an academic scholarship and graduated on top of my class. Come to think of it, I never once thought that the two years were wasted. I lived the day as it came. All I knew was that the next day would definitely be a lot better. This was the first intermission.

The second intermission was when I was working. From the lowest rank of clerk I become Assistant to the Accounting Manager after six years in a multinational company. The promotion took me to the height of my career. Then I got pregnant. To some it was a mistake, but not to me. Three months into my pregnancy I went home to my province with only my savings and a bag of clothing. There I was: a single parent, no job, and no savings. Still, I kept my faith.

I felt like the donkey that fell in a well and was getting buried alive! Like the donkey, I shook off every dirt that hit my back and stepped up. I figured out that when you reach rock bottom and you truly reached solid ground, then you can figure out which way to go. I learned to drop everything for an intermission knowing it’s only then that I could see a much clearer road ahead.

Before the lockdown, I was scheduled for a 9-day stay in the Abbey of Transfiguration in Malaybalay, Bukidnon. It’s my spiritual home where I can just shut the door from the world, stay in my cell, and heal from the exhaustion.

This quarantine is my third intermission, sixty-five days and counting. As we are together in this intermission, let us all step up and hit that solid ground. God is faithful. Better days are coming.