Let your love flow...

This is my recent favorite picture not because I got my hair blowdried right (although that's a plus too) but because I at least found a spot interesting enough to spur an inspiration to write... I mean to blog.

This was a shot outside the Vilage resto in Sing. And thank God for Vilage coz after one is done trying Singaporean cuisine (Chinese, Malay, and Indian although too scared to try the latter) one has had enough and starts clamoring for "real food". In fact I vowed from the moment I stepped my foot in this cosmopolite dwelling to stay away from curries.

Anyway, enough of the diversion. Let your love flow...is a shot taken by my two friends, Jake and Amy who made my short stay in Singapore as pleasant as can be. I say short coz it was indeed very short with most time spent for Lawson training.

A shot that will remain a fave for the longest time I bet. It is etched in my memory, my heart and goodness knows, my desktop. It made me vain for a time that I had to crop it and take away my presence in that picture so that I can focus on how powerful those words are "Let your love flow..."

I know of another version and if I find time, I might as well insert the word "over" before "flow".
At times, love will be easier if it overflows. When one is filled with love and so can't help but love. Okay I'm not talking of romantic love but of love in general...for a person...mom, friend, husband, boyfriend, daughter, teacher, colleague etc...

Enter the complicated me. With a little play of words and the hope that I won't be misread, let me further discourse...

"To let love flow" is to leave love at the mercy of circumstance. To love, when it's easy to love and one feels like loving. But "to let love overflow" is pro-active in the sense that one is in a hurry to be in love and for it to overflow. She wants to be filled with it and so she asks for it. She asks for it? Wait, I thought I speak about loving and not about being loved in return. Correct.

She asks for it but she asks not from people, demanding that they love her in her better and worst. She asks that she be filled with love from the only person who can give it gratuitously. And you are right. God.

When I was there in Singapore, I felt good being in a strange place. I felt at home with myself even if I'm not home. Catholics are a minority in that part of the world. One time, I laid my rosary in a bench and a good old man, taking an afternoon walk with his grandson and obviously enjoying, asked if I was a Catholic. I said yes. And he said "good". "Are you?", I asked back. "Yes, it's good to be one". I cannot forget how people say the rosary there with a lot of fervor and no trace of hurry. It was very enlightening how they take their faith seriously even if there were just a handful of them. Amidst the somehow hedonist culture, since Singapore is one of those countries with Affluenza(to borrow a term coined from a recent book referring to the sickness of the affluents), there's hope in Singapore but only with the prayers of their fellow Catholics.

And boy was I glad to be back in my good ol' Manila enjoying the luxury of so many mass schedules in Makati and chapels even inside buildings. They said it was "heaven" to live here. And I didn't quite believe it until I realize how it was like to be away.

Only when one is away that one gets to appreciate the "luxuries" that one has here. The luxury of faith, of friendships, of unhurried conversations and pleasantries. So what if only few can afford "home theatres" . These theatres do not necessarily make a "home". No matter how slim and sleek they may look, to me they are still flat literally and poetically.

So Filipinos, let your love flow...let your faith flow...And ask that both may overflow. Cheers!