The Quiet Week

Why?

I prefer to call it The Quiet Week as opposed to Holy Week

It resonates with me that way. 

While I was born into the Catholic rituals and traditions... I'm not really a worshipper. To me, it's just rituals. It's just... Something others to do because history and beliefs and all that.

This cosy. And quiet. And peaceful.

The town is basically almost a ghost town.

Not that I mind. I had prepared the day before.

So a good portion of the week, no stupid loud live bands and no unnecessary broadcasts.

Except the poems and singing passions -- I don't get them. I cannot understand them. I have auditory processing issues. So to me they're just patterned noise.

At least it's not as disruptive as a live band.

And the only way to mess up my walks outside are the weather... Though the weather had gone weird lately.

I wish I still have my room; from the picture. It was taken sometime between Christmas Eve and New Year...

Well, I might as well have my own rituals, maybe related to how I'm, spiritually.

I don't do well with Religious Observations. Heck, I even skipped my aunt's funeral few days ago and only showed up at the last minute of the burial. Anything else is just noise, noise, noise. 

Though how I take death will be another story for another day.

This is about the quiet week.

While my mom's actively participating and collaborating with the religious occasions -- I'm just at home, enjoying the silence.

And if I ever have something remotely spiritual to go to; I'm better off with reminders than the word God itself.

This is a post personally typed and submitted by me; it's about some metaphor of God being in one's heart.

Here's my response:

I'm not specifically raised a Christian. And I'm not a devout Catholic.

Yet I do get what that meant somehow.

It feels like a tiny yet a bright spark than a hole in my chest. I knew and 'have' this as a child.

It's not hollow. There's nothing to be 'filled' in there.

There's nothing for me to 'accept' to fill it whole -- so there's no saviour for me to accept, there's no god for me to beg and satisfy it.

It is not derived from a person. It has no face, it has no name, it has no audible voice that I can imagine from it. Just light.

It's a subjective feeling and a somewhat knowing to me. Whatever this is, it's the very reason why I never, ever felt lonely...

Some can relate and understand, some cannot.

And projecting anything towards it would 'spoil' it.

And whatever it is, I do not worship it. I do not glorify it. I do not 'condemn' those who "don't have it".

It is wordless. It's more of a belief concept than whatever I picked up. It's not 'godly' in a sense of how most gods are portrayed.

It felt more like a really, really dear friend who will never judge you, or how a loving parent should feel like yet without the demanding and uneven dynamic between a traditional parent and a child, or this childhood thing that you love so much that you'd trust all your secrets to it.

It whispers of good things.

Forgiveness, true empathy, humbleness, emotional resolve and courage, prosocial ideas, sometimes wisdom, etc...

Things any child should be exposed of and safely express. Things that no one taught or often shown me in this physical existence.

Not my family, not school... No one. Any attempts just confuses me.

The longer I acknowledge this feeling, the calmer and safer everything felt...

Yet like most humans with an ego, I do not listen to it. Or even 'hear' it all the time.

Because it's silly. Or irrational.

And getting caught up with this world existing with the thoughts and feelings, along with the stress and the environmental distractions left me not much room or time for it.

Not this... Ritual and projections or whatever. That even feels rigid and demanding.

No one explicitly taught me this. Especially as a child when sermons and lectures are just noises.

Going to the church won't let me access this light. Going to a sermon won't give me time and processing.

I get better luck with meditation and reminders.

So yeah.

I do sort of have a 'relationship' with this feeling, if one calls it that. It's neutral at worst. And because of stupid EF issues, sometimes I just forget it exists.

It always exists in this all encompassing background.

The same way I have a serious hate relationship with my sympathetic nervous system for dragging my development down, for it's inability to regulate and whenever it's triggered an unwanted memory at the wrong time and place.

Anyways.

I don't read the Bible.

Partially because my verbal abilities are that bad and a lot of sayings just confuses the heck out of me.

Partially I do not trust the popular translations in English. And I basically understand nothing when it's translated to my native language.

Really, 'commandments'? And not well, 'sayings'?

I'll consider reading if there's a more faithful translation that can actually translate the ancient contexts.

Not agendas about how women are inferior or how humans should be obedient and submit to whatever.

Feeling or not...

I'm just not drawn to most ways religions are taking itself a bit too seriously. 

Sometimes I read it from time to time. To recall it.

Might be why I know how to compose a living breathing prayer. But that's another post in another time.

I'm not an atheist. I'm not particularly religious. I don't have what constitutes as a religious belief; just assumptions. And feelings.

I don't have a particular opinion over the Holy Week in my country. Nothing about the story of Jesus and how he died and resurrected. Nothing about other people reenacting his last moments as said by the bible, or if it's becoming more secular or not...

It's just another ritual to me. Like how I have to watch a foreign custom and 'respect' it by mimicking behaviors or ask some itinerary of whatever holiday.

In any other case;

Enjoy Quiet Week of this country.