A Cup of Tea, Before Sunrise

Emails from the Desert
Edgar A. Gamboa, M.D., FACS

There is something to be said about getting up early in the morning – before the sun rises – saying your prayers (Vigils, as the monks and hermits do), then sipping a warm cup of herbal tea, or hot coffee, as the case may be.

The sun hesitates to rise above the horizon, your clock slows gently down, and life takes a calm and tranquil turn. Somehow, it isn’t night or day, nothingness or being…just you, immersed in the wonder of God’s immeasurable creation.

The children are not off to school yet, or, if they are in college, they are in never-never land; your spouse may still be dreaming dreams; the world, in any event, has not yet decided to stir from its slumber.

Merchants have not opened their shops nor have businesses started counting their monies. In your side of the globe, the politicians have yet to grab their microphones and no one has fired a gun; peace, for the moment, reigns supreme.

The hustle and bustle of city traffic have not mercilessly encroached into your day. You have not stepped on the unending treadmill of life’s familiar rat race.

Your troubles are nowhere in sight. Your obligations are somewhere in the distance. Your list of things to do is not within reach. There is a stream of happiness in your soul and a sparkle of gladness in your spirit.

You’ve had a good night’s rest and the physical world has chosen not to bombard your senses, yet. In the back of your mind, you know this nirvana will not last forever. You pick up the morning papers, or worse, turn on your TV, and you know that magical moment will vanish into thin air!

There is in our inner core an attraction to this treasured moment. Harried office staffers may not realize it, but I assume that is why they pass by Starbucks for a cup of latte or cappuccino on their way to work. Others forego the coffee and pass by church for traditional early morning Mass. While still others simply kiss their slumbering wife and children goodbye before heading out of the house before dawn.

The mystics recognize this as the deepest tranquil point and central stillness of our being, where we are linked in communion with the One who created us.

When you were a child, you would not sit quietly, sip a cup of tea and contemplate like this. You would rub your eyes, bolt out of bed and, without caring to wash your face or brush your teeth, confront the world headlong like an energizer bunny.

I do recall, on lazy Saturday mornings, when school was closed (thanks God), my little brothers and sisters would sit in the patio or the outside staircase or on the steps leading to the dirty kitchen adjacent to the house, and spend a half hour or so just staring at the yard. We would watch a frog leap from the wet grass and busy flies buzzing from the fence to the clothesline. Or we would simply observe ants lining up in procession up the post.

Every so often, our father would ask if we wanted to go with him to pick up something. All excited, we would file, in our pajamas, into the old Studebaker, and fight for the window seats. Papa would drive to a tiny spot, just outside the city, where an old, old lady would be cooking puto maya. She would wrap the steamed sticky sweet rice in banana leaves and, with a toothless smile, proudly hand her home made delicacies to us in a brown paper bag. For a few pesos or centavos more, Papa would buy a potful of sikwate (native hot chocolate) with it.

Sometimes, we would stop by the bakery for a bagful of hot pan de sal. When we arrived home with our prized goodies, Mama would be waiting for us at the breakfast table, where she had set a plateful of sliced ripe mangoes from Guadalupe. Wow, that was heaven on earth!

A Different Kind of Santa

Emails from the Desert…
Dr. Edgar A. Gamboa





Christmas 2008 came and went. The New Year has begun. Are you one of those who take stock of all the gifts you received from Santa Claus, thank those who kept you in mind during the season, then wonder what to do with all your stuff?

Despite the global economic downturn, we in these United States are still blessed with many material things. CostCo, Wal-Mart, Toys-R-Us, and the ubiquitous shopping malls that proliferate from Oahu to Manhattan, ensure that even a part-time worker can fill those stockings with enough goodies and line the Christmas tree with toys and gifts.

Which, indeed, is a blessing. Everyone loves Santa, no one likes Scrooge. But don’t you get the feeling that perhaps we, in this side of a lopsided globe, just have too many things we don’t really need?

I read about a family who arrived at this juncture – and did something about it.

Instead of sweaters or electronic gadgets or another set of something, these wise parents requested their grown up children to give them, for next Christmas, some charitable deed – an act of kindness – performed to benefit someone else. It could be something as simple as volunteering in a homeless shelter or soup kitchen, buying a stranger a sandwich and a cup of coffee, or teaching a child to read.

One act of kindness that made someone’s day brighter. That was all they asked for Christmas. And the idea caught on.

Their children (and their spouses) came up with all kinds of cool stuff for Christmas gifts -- helping out with Little League sports, collecting blankets for the homeless, donating books to the local library, teaching English to refugees, etc. Soon, their grandchildren came up with their own gifts of kindness – wrapping toys for orphans, collecting school supplies for needy children, distributing gifts to poor families.

The family tradition took root. It became more involved as, year after year, everyone in the family looked for a variety of ways to become a different kind of Santa. Someone delivered a Christmas tree to an “adopted” family and decorated it with gift certificates. The electric and water bill of a senior citizen was fully paid. Colorful backpacks with schools supplies were distributed to students in poor neighborhoods. Orphans across the world were fed and sheltered through monetary donations. Houses and schools in slum areas were gradually built.

The gift-giving rules are simple. The charitable deed has to be done within the year. It can be performed by spending money or giving of one’s time and energy. It can be simple or elaborate, done solo or in teamwork with others. It starts at New Year so that everyone in the family has twelve months to come up with something they could present as their special gift on Christmas Eve.

To keep track, they started taking photos, wrote about their “gifts”, and compiled them in the family scrapbook.. Every Christmas, the family celebrates the birth of the Savior knowing that they had all done something, big or small, to make someone else’s Christmas better.

This humble but remarkable family has captured the true spirit of Christmas. For did not Christ, the reason we celebrate Christmas, say: “Whatever you did for one of these, you did it for me.”?

Filipino-Americans would not find this kind of Christmas giving too unusual, having migrated from a third world where abundance is the exception, rather than the rule. But it is easy to get caught up in the individualistic and materialistic culture of Western society and, in effect, depart from the traditional value of the bayanihan spirit.

Thus, it would be worthwhile for us, Filipino-Americans, to get ourselves and our children more involved in projects that will benefit our kababayans, here in our adopted country and back home in the mother country.

Humanitarian projects, such as medical missions, the construction of schools and clinics, educational funds, and the building of homes (such as those successfully promoted by Gawad Kalinga) can be endeavors worth our time, commitment and effort.

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