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Today, howling winds, too often heard in these parts, tear through the glass windows sealed for comfort. Incorrigible. The deaths of 10,000 or so on one island during the last super-typhoon of this magnitude is still fresh in the collective memory of those among the 7,000 islands of this country that were spared. The winds don’t lash or buffet, they crush any sliver of faith that God will spare us from danger. At least for me.

Today, right now, we hear of minimal casualties. I wait. It’s past midnight and I won’t be able to sleep. And what do I pray for that seems doable or reasonable to our God? Compliance hardly saves us in this nation that is hard to rule over. Whatever semblance of stability we try for ultimately gets challenged by powers of nature or powers-that-be. Does God honor our efforts to suffer one another? When we barter our personal space for the accommodation of another, does God not see how small we feel?

I only pray that as minister, I have something to say next Sunday to the congregation I serve, when all the numbers are in and we all feel once again that nagging doubt. I will tell them that the wound of disappointment is where the light enters, as Rumi said. That I open the wound to a different care. That I am feeling small because I am. Because power does not lie in invincibility but in resilience; not in domination but in steadfastness. That it is not certainty around which the order of God is built—not in control, but in adaptability, in forgiveness and love that adapts to the loved without losing oneself.

And in the core of doubt is the ability to accept the relativity of certainty as well as of failure, of loss, of change. The best window to the eternal is the one where we find ourselves not as people comfortably looking out, but one in which we are the stranger looking in, uncertain and hopeful. And sometimes the darker it is inside, the better we see ourselves reflected. Our reflection shows our deepest intention. It takes courage to see God within ourselves. And that may be the message for the living. Perhaps only the dead can reside in certainty.

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Rev. Tet Gallardo

minister at UU Congregation of Bicutan, Philippines

Tet Gallardo is minister of Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Bicutan. She was ordained in April 2013 after the congregation called her and after having served the UU Church of the Philippines for 7 years as a  leadership resource. Roman Catholic in upbringing like 95% of the Philippines, she learned about UUs when she was living in sabbatical in New York in 2002-2004. She has been involved in interfaith work, mediation, and have been supporting non-profits for more than 20 years. She will turn 45 this year and is probably the first openly lesbian minister in the non-Western world.

Latest posts by Rev. Tet Gallardo (see all)

• Praying in the Wind - April 1, 2015