Popular Painter's Journey with Courage

This is Popular Painter's journey with Courage. PP is one guy you want to be around with because he is kind, cheerful, and witty (and naughty??). This guy is very talented, gregarious and leader material. Gosh, did I forget to say something? Nah, just looking forward to our next COFI sessions.


Journey with Courage: 7 months of a spectrum of colors

When the calendar year 2009 unfolded I decided to have red as a color for my wardrobe or even on some other stuff. I never thought that I would soon be exploring and using some other colors as well that made my year so colorful and remarkable.

It is February 14th of the year when I decided to enter a religious congregation as I affirmed myself this is my way of expressing my love to God and my family, but I knew for a fact that I got these tendencies, so I thought of ways on how I could prepare myself for that way of life inside the seminary. A priest from Greenbelt Chapel referred me to Courage. From here into, I met Kuya Rollie and the rest of the Courage members on a Palm Sunday.

My first meeting with the group is really memorable. After that group meeting in a nearby food court in which the orange tables remain as witness to the laughs and giggles of each member we went to a nearby videoke house, where I witnessed how passionate they are. And by that time that I described the group as “they” eventually became ‘us’. This event lead to other activities that I truly cherished including my 25th birthday celebration in which four of fellow brothers came, dined with us, and sang their hearts out. And on that instance, as Kuya Rollie prayed for and lead us into prayers, I continually look forward and hold on unto God’s promise of healing in my life.

August came, and the streets were painted with yellow. It is then that even though I am with Courage I still have instances that I fell. God talks to us in ways that are only known and unique to us and that morning of August 1 is by far no different. God reminded me on how a lady like the late president Cory Aquino stood up for her country and faced every day’s challenges of fighting for democracy and manifesting truth and courage. In the same way I am maybe called to lead a pack of believers but I am too stubborn to follow and at some point that dying is needed to bring us back to life.

In that same spirit we had our Psychogenetics Retreat in Tagaytay in which we tried for ourselves on meeting our inner adult and inner couple - ideas that in the beginning were too absurd but lead me and the rest of the group into deeper reflections and realizations. The retreat is just one of those core components of our spirituality in Courage like community prayers and sharing meeting that I found very helpful in our journey. I am still awed by such experience that until now I want to hang on to the verse from Psalm 1 that says:

Blessed is the one who does not go where the wicked gather or stand in the way of the sinners. Instead, he finds delight in the law of the Lord and meditates day and night on his commandments. He is like a tree beside a brook producing its fruit in due season, its leaves never withering. Everything he does is a success.

But, reality bites. There are still these instances that I feel so alone that I feel like I wanted to give up and be back on my old ways again. I am very much thankful for those whom I bothered on those wee hours of the night in which I needed somebody to talk to or someone who could accompany me. I am thankful for my other community that gave the brotherly support that we’ve all been wanting. Here I found solace on those times that I feel blue and give hope for bigger and brighter future that is to come.

There are still those things that we found hard to accept, think or share. We still have these dark areas in our lives that we wanted to be healed though we just keep them inside our deepest and darkest closets. I, myself, do still have these things hidden on my ‘indigo’ room. We are all blessed that we have rigorous honesty as one of our core values but as what our group stipulates I am praying for courage - courage to reveal all of these, so that God can work on that dark areas of my life and light will soon reveal his magnificent work that leads to inner healing. I am asking for your prayers brothers and sisters in this specific intention.

If there is one thing that would keep me coming back to our group it is our higher sense of spirituality as we conduct our monthly Sacrament Sunday in which we receive the sacraments of penance and the solemn mass conducted by our priest director. It had been always a constant reminder to be true to what we have committed in our group and to rely on God’s message to ‘be still and know that I am God’ (Psalm 46:10). And again, I am thankful for God really work on wondrous things on my life.

Who would thought that purple would spell out a new meaning in our contemporary world, but for me it spells out opportunity, surprises and completion of a colorful rainbow-painted canvass that I once thought was plain and white?