You are Dust and to Dust you shall Return

I am not sure whether my brothers notice that the Mahogany leaves are turning brown and these leaves are falling on the ground. Brown leaves are scattered, covering almost the dry ground. Sometimes, a gentle wind pushes these brown leaves and they are crawling and crawling, depending on where the wind directs them,  creating a hush in the air. The sun is about to rise.  I notice that the streak of sunlight is orange as it reflected on the morning clouds. The orange clouds are in the same color with the orange leaves of Talisay which are hanging on branches and are about to fall on the ground.  Summer is here, I thought. And I am not so sure if my brothers feel the coming of  summer.

Perhaps, my brothers are sleeping still at this time. I happen to pass a room where I can hear the heavy snoring and the sound of the rotating  fan. It is already 6:12 AM. The bell supposedly will ring at 6 AM. I did not hear the bell rings. And no one bothers to wake up for 6:00 AM rising . Perhaps, my brothers were tired from defending their Pastoral Plan yesterday. It was a very heavy week for all of us here in Galilee Year (a Formation Year in Vianney). Most of the nights were busy preparing,  planning, brainstorming,  writing, and arguing  our Pastoral Plan. The Pastoral Plan hopes to train us, future priest, in handling parishes someday.  So, I do understand why my brothers do not bother to wake up. They need to claim the sleep which they were deprived of for days because of preparing the pastoral plan.

However, I bother to wake up. This is my routine in life. I just wake up earlier than the others. I would like to attribute it to my body clock which I usually  wake up, even without an alarm clock, earlier than the rising time. Perhaps, to let me see how beautiful mornings are. To let me know that the leaves are turning brown and they are falling on the ground. To let me see orange clouds with the  same color of Talisay leaves hanging on the branches and are about to fall on the ground. To let me recognize that summer is coming. And to let me realize another ending.

School year.

It seems it was just yesterday when I reentered the gate of the seminary (Vianney) after spending my life outside for four years.  It seems it was just yesterday  when I met my new brothers, my new batch, BUNGA. It seems it was just yesterday that we played basketball on lazy afternoons. It seems it was just yesterday when we became over-all champion during the Intramurals. It seems it was yesterday when we worked as chaplain-trainee in a hospital. It seems it was just yesterday when we spent for three days with Sendong Survivor families. It seems it was yesterday when we travelled  far to Yolanda affected areas in Visayas for our Rural Exposure. It seems it was yesterday when we let go of twenty red and white balloons during Valentine’s Day to remember the victims of typhoons. It seems it was yesterday when we gather outside the room of Isaiah and waste our time playing tong-its.  It seems it was just yesterday when Rhaby left the seminary for good.

It seems that there are many yesterdays which have passed so swiftly. Thanks to these falling brown leaves. They remind me to take notice  the almost  forgotten yesterdays cherishly spent as brothers.  I guess this is the gift of waking up earlier than the usual rise up here in the seminary. I am sensitive to how time pass so swiftly.  I hope I can tell my brothers who are sleeping still that the leaves of Mahogany are turning brown. And it means summer is coming, school year is ending. Days from now, we are leaving this place, we are  going back to our homes  and be assigned in summer parish exposure. We can look forward to another exposure, another memories with families and old friends.

Hope before my brothers go to their summer exposure, they may stop and notice these brown leaves falling on the ground. These falling leaves may tell something about the swiftness of time, the passing of season, the temporariness of life. It was symbolic that during our year end community pictorials, it happened after the Ash Wednesday Mass. An ash cross marked our foreheads are captured in our community photos. No matter how we look good with our smiles, the marked ash cross in our foreheads will remind us that those smiles are temporary and passing. No matter what we do, possess, achieve in this life, we could not escape the fact that “we are dust and to dust we shall  return.” Someday we become part of the ground covered with these brown leaves. Perhaps, two hundred  years from now,   no one ever remembers we have existed once in this space and time, unless we become poets, saints and a hero or a lousy leader recorded in history.

Is this what Emily, a character in Thortorn Wilder’s  play Our Town,  meant when she asked, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?--every, every minute?” Have we really realized that we existed and we have limited time? Have we realized that our life is passing as fast as the tick of the second? Have we realized that someday worms will enjoy eating our rotten bodies and transform it into dust? Have we thought someday of becoming one with those brown leaves on the ground and the orange clouds will pass above us every time the sun rises? Since our existence is limited, have we spent it to the things that matters most, to the things that makes us really really really  happy?  Have we felt, even though all things will pass, this “something eternal” deep down things, this something permanent?

I am not so sure that my brothers have asked these existential questions. Perhaps, they do but in different circumstances. I wish I could knock on their doors and wake them up to share what I see. However,  I know they are not concerned about the leaves turning brown and falling on the ground. They might find it corny.

I only hope for them to read this blog. I will tag them. Maybe, at the middle of their exposure, they are able to visit their Facebook account. If in case they are able to read this blog, I just want to let them know that falling brown leaves are telling me that I need to thank them for a year of shared memories.  This is the least I can do to let them know that I take notice the time when they sleep soundly at morning when the leaves are turning brown and are falling on the ground.