Pagi di 15 Ramadhan 1435 H

Bangun sahur sudah pk 03:40. Sebenarnya sudah 10 menit mata  terjaga. Dingin sekali, menggodaku untuk malas bangun, dan menarik selimut untuk lelap lagi beberapa menit. Hemhh..ingat kemarin kebablasan sampai melewati subuh, aku segera bangkit dan menyiapkan makan sahur. Menu sahur yang sederhana. Nasi goreng dan segelas kopi susu.  Selama ramadhan belum pernah minum kopi, sahur kali ini rasanya ingin sekali minum kopi. .  Ada sisa buah saat berbuka tadi, tetapi aku malas menghabiskannya. Juga sudah beberapa hari absen mengkonsumsi air perasan jeruk lemon setiap mau berbuka dan mengawali sahur. Komitmen untuk menerapkan food combining belum bisa dipatuhi..

Waktu subuh yang khusuk, suara shalawat dan bacaan kitab suci yang tadi sayup-sayup terdengar sudah hilang mengiringi mulainya hari baru.  Menunggu terang di luar, aku ditemani dengan tausiyah dari kanal TV. Terimakasih kepada teknologi yang memudahkan aku untuk bisa menghadiri majelis taklim di rumah sendiri. Ramadhan hari ke-15. Alhamdulillah, bisa sampai separuh bulan ramadhan. Semoga, sampai hari ini ibadah ramadhanku diterima olehNya.

Pagi yang sejuk, karena rintik hujan masih setia mengiringi terang memulai tugasnya hari ini. Pk 05:30 aku buka semua jendela rumah.  Hemhh....seringkali aku merasakan bahagia luar biasa melakukan aktivitas ini. Apalagi kalau suasana pagi seperti ini. Aku bisa merasakan udara segar menyeruak masuk melewatiku ketika jendela terbuka..nikmat sekali. Terimakasih ya Allah untuk udara segar yang kuterima pagi ini, juga selama ini yang seringkali aku abaikan... Aku semakin semangat untuk lebih cepat membuka semua jendela rumah agar semua udara yang bersih dan segar itu membanjiri seluruh ruang di dalam rumah...

Pagi yang membahagiakan, karena aku bisa menuliskan anugerah Tuhan yang luar biasa pagi ini di blog ini. Kadang cinta sulit untuk dinyatakan karena terbatasnya kosa kata untuk menjabarkannya,  termasuk juga cinta kepada Tuhan.  Mampu menyatakan cinta kepada Tuhan, semakin banyak rasanya rahmatNya yang aku terima. 

Ya Allah, senantiasa jaga hatiku untuk selalu bisa merasakan kasih dan sayangMu...

Bandar Lampung, 13 Juli 2014

Thinking About A Birthday Gift For My Special Friend

Today, 8 March 2011, is the birthday of my special friend.  We have been friends for about 11 years. Development in  information technology has been maintaining our long distance friendship during that time. On this special day, I wish I could make him very happy with something I could give as a birthday gift. I know he would not ask me for a gift as he has had everything I could afford for the gift. Moreover, we are separated by thousand miles of distance. No, he has never hoped anything from me instead of seeing me happy. He would come as a flash soon he knows I need a hand, care, or attention. He always have time for me, until I could face the world again with more confident and a big smile.  He does want to see me happy. 

Looking happy before him on his birthday may become a good gift for him. By developing my imagination I would take a seat next to him and show him what I have learnt today that has brought me to go into a deep thought of life. I read a short chapter of the book : SIMPLE ABUNDANCE : A Daybook of Comfort and Joy. The author is Sarah Ban Breathnach. The book is like a daily personal journal. So, I read the book everyday according to the date of the calendar as the title of each chapter.  This morning, I read Chapter “MARCH 8” after I sent him a short birhday message  via mobile phone. The content suits to our last conversation and I hope he would be happy that his effort to make me staying happy is fruitful. “Happy Birthday, my great friend : William Stanley Lilley”. May God give a healthy and joyful life always. I would buy a nice cake and ice cream to celebrate your birthday from afar.

MARCH 8

Take The Plunge

Until you make peace with who you are, you’ll never be content wih what you have (Doris Mortman)

Simplicity gains importance in our lives as we begin to make peace with ourselves.  This is because we gradually come to the inner awareness that we don’t need to gild the lily.  Some of the trappings can be relinquished because t he Real Thing is finally ready to be revealed.

I call this point in the Simple Abundance process “ taking the plunge” because it involves a courageous leap of faith in the most intimate way. exploring the way we express ourselves to the outside world through our personal appearance.  But this is much more than just how we dress or style our hair.  It’s about the many subtle ways we choose either to celebrate or conceal our authenticity.  It’s about learning to become comfortable wih who we really are.  “ We are not born all at once, but by bits.  The body first, and the spirit later,” Mary Antin wrote in 1912 in The Promise Land. “ Our mothers are racked wih the pains of our physical birth, we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth.”

Simone de Beauvoir put it another way. “One is not born a woman, one become one”. This becoming takes time.  We need time to consider, time to reflect, time to make creative choices, time to emerge from the cocoon, time to clean out our closets, and time to clear away psychic cobwebs so that we might pare down to our essence.

Some of us have remained dormant for years-oblivious to our genuine beauty-drugged senseless by our own numbing disapproval, nagging doubts, and benign neglect.  Coping strategies that once brought a sense of relief now only offer regret.  To undo the damage and reconnect with our authentic selves  we need to take the plunge, confident that the Spirit is holding the net.  Above all,  we need to treat ourselves gently with the kindness we would bestow on amnesiacs who need the patient reassurance of their true identities.

IT IS RAINING

It is 09:17 pm. Raining outside. I remember to an email sent by my friend a long while ago, writing about the best times for doing prayers. One of  those times is when raining.

The sound of rain for me is like a beautiful music, that can penetrates deeply into my heart and makes me silent in peace,embraced by the love of the Universe. 

Tonight, the music is enhanced by the voice of a person who read the holy book with "tartil" (low voice)...Thanks God for the peaceful evening You gave me just now..

Water and Life

          Photo : Personal collection

A Mutualism : Bee and Flower