Saturday Morning Praise with Phoebe

I worked on my PDEP (Peace and Development Educators Program, wherein I volunteer as facilitator) session guides until 5:30 AM, all the while listening to Tim’s laptop repeatedly and unrelentingly belting Air Supply’s Lonely is the Night (with him fast asleep in one of the single twin beds, and me left to surf the Net for the interpretation of The Levels of Consciousness across various cultures, the night sure was lonely.) I wasn’t at all sleepy, but I felt a kind of heaviness in my head and shoulders, as if my brain has turned to tons and tons of metal junk, which made carrying my head such an enormous amount of strain for my too thin shoulders. Moreover, the air conditioning was set to “freezing cool” that my (spare) ribs seemed to rattle the way jinxed snake bones never could. Thus, I spread the thick purple blanket on the narrow bed, stretched my long body onto one end of it, held the blanket’s edge, and rolled over to the other end of the bed, wrapping myself shanghai rolls-like with the synthetic wool-like fabric. I closed my eyes and imagined the tons and tons of metal junk that was my brain to be an ocean of the clearest morning blue, reflecting the image of a solitary vinta and a wistful white bird gliding equally serenely away from each other, in an effort to get some sleep.

But I couldn’t sleep. My stomach felt like it was digesting itself. I got up, hopped to the dressing table where my bag was, rummaged for one of the two antacid tablets I filched from the PDEP medicine kit last night, and took it, downing the water in large hurried gulps, as if it would hasten the coming of Relief. I went back to bed, knowing it’s puerile to hope for Sleep and instead tried to think of something more consequential than hyperacidity. I glanced at my cellphone—5:59 AM, it beamed. Why, we have Morning Praise today, I sighed. Morning Praise is a meditative-reflective, usually at seven in the morning, activity that we religiously observe in the PDEP weekends. I got up again and headed for the bathroom.

I looked at the undressed waif in the mirror—so physically tired but so mentally awake. You can do this, I soothed him, you can make this day great. Then I turned the hot shower on.

I didn’t have a towel in my bag, didn’t want to use Tim’s or deplete our toilet paper supply, so I air-dried myself, which took some time in the tiled bathroom. I got dressed in yesterday’s faded plum jeans, yellow patent shoes, and a fresh mercuric oxide tee shirt, then tiptoed to a sleeping Tim and patted his shoulder to wake him up, so he could make me a slide presentation on Levels of Consciousness while I was away. Ever obliging, Tim got up, still soft and flushed from sleep, and pulled up MS PowerPoint on his laptop. He looked like the stuffed toy version of Winnie the Pooh’s Piglet; it made my heart go out to him. “I wish the time would come that you would need my help, so I could oblige you, and reciprocate the sacrifices you made for me,” I melodrama-tized, feeling a rush of guilt (for waking him up) and gratitude (for him waking up) within. He just smiled that Timothy smile. I sort of hugged him and walked out the door.

The other rooms were already empty; everyone was already in the Prayer Garden for the Morning Praise. For the dyadic activity, I got for my partner, Phoebe, a middle-aged grassroots community worker and headmistress of a little orphanage, who filled me up on what to do. I was to look for an object that represents who I am at the moment and tell her about it. I looked down and found a flower lying on the ground, “My heart crunched when I saw this; this must be the thing I’m meant to pick up today,” I grinned at her. We strolled down the wet and mossy footpath of the garden and settled on an old concrete bench.

“Look at this closely, Phoebe,” I whispered, holding the flower high between us, “It’s a beauty, isn’t it? A passionate blend of red and orange, like a flame. But, see the edges of the corolla; they’re brown and frayed from the kiss of Time and the harsh elements.”

I held the flower to my cheek, it felt cool and smelt faintly of morning dew. “I got up this morning and said to myself everything is okay,” I began to share to her, “but at this moment, I feel fallen, and withered, and frayed around the edges. I feel left alone on the ground, not more than a fire of fading colors, burning until it lasts.”

Her face was a study in earnestness, the more she seemed to accommodate the weight of my words, the more wide-eyed she looked. “I believe though that I will be found,” I went on, my voice sounding unusually husky. “I will be lifted from the dirt and ignominy of having fallen. I will be deemed as representing something profound inside another living soul. For before we become all that we are in this life, we are all elements of Hope.”

“That makes two of us,” Phoebe intimated, opening her hand to reveal a large earth-covered seed with many tiny root protrusions lying still on her palm. “The shock of everything falling apart and falling upon us could sometimes leave us so overwhelmed, like this seed, half-dead or half-alive. But like this seed, which I intend to bury in the earth later, we can still grow. Though it’s dirty and dead-looking, it still holds a promise of change, a change for the better.”

“I’m bearing a lot of trials in my life now,” she continued, her lilting child-like voice permeating my life sphere in a determined crescendo, “and sometimes I feel I’ve had much too much. But here I am, still fighting, still believing that all this is part of the incomprehensible wonderful work of God. And I’m thankful for that.”

The lines on her face ceased to be just years of tries and toils; they now glistened with an outlook of faith beneath the sparkle of her unshed tears. Not a breeze ruffled the leaves hanging above us, not a heavy cloud trapped the sunlight from cascading freely to where we sat, two souls brewing such drama out of words, a dried red flower, a dirty seed, and Life.

As if to lighten the moment, Phoebe exclaimed, “I love this time of day—don’t you?—when the sun is full and generous, and I can breathe in its light, feel it renewing my spirit.”

“Hmm, so the sun not only activates Vitamin D in your body, it also recharges your soul,” I quipped.

“Yeah,” she said, almost to herself as she’s drinking the glory of dewy green foliage sparkling silver in the embrace of soft morning light.

I joined her in what she was doing, breathed in the warm light, felt the warm quiet glow inside, and together, this time not needing any more human words, we let our morning praises soar, higher than the reach of those sturdy tall trees, beyond the gauzy canopy of clouds, towards the sun.