Quiet Storm by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, 24 March 2025

Some people have been asking me how does it feel to be sigisty years old? I really don’t have any complete answer yet except the feeling of sudden shift in my perspectives in life.

Whether it is what experts call as the gestalt shift, I do not know. However, since I have failed in a psychological exam to the major seminary in 1982 that forced me to forget all about the priesthood momentarily (nine years), I have always thought of myself as “crazy” with weird thoughts and ideas, weird perceptions coming from weird images and illusions I see on many things

These manifest in my photography subjects that are often wala lang, as in trip trip lang talaga. Like in my recent annual retreat at the Sacred Heart Novitiate in Novaliches where I have been coming since 2016. Suddenly this year, my focus were so bent on the most ordinary features of this venerable institution that is about 75 years old.

During my stay there last week, the stairs, the windows, and the arches that are even older than me be4came so lovely and interesting. I felt so drawn to them that I had a lot of shots taken upon my arrival.

The Sacred Heart Novitiate is my “happy place” because it is my Bethel where I “dreamt” like Jacob of the stairway to heaven (Gen. 28:10-22). It is also my Peniel or Penuel (Gen. 32:23-32) where like Jacob I also wrestled with God or an angel in deep prayers every year.

In my previous article, I have explained that maybe my focus on the stairs was due to my excitement in awaiting the Netflix documentary on Led Zeppelin whose most famous song is called Stairway to Heaven.

Today, I share with you some photos I have taken with my weird perceptions of the Sacred Heart Novitiate’s windows that suddenly evoked a lot of ideas in me as a sigisty year old man so loved by God.

Being a new senior sixty cent only last Saturday, I felt the joy of being able to look at a very long past of both beautiful and sad even painful memories that have made me who I am today.

Despite the hurts and scars from the many battles in life, I am still glad and thankful for the gift of six decades.

Being a sigisty year old man is like looking out the window, marveling at how fast times have flown that many times, some scenes in my life are like some spots outside that look so near that are actually so far and distant.

I felt my getting old started the time I kept saying “40 years ago ba iyon” when commenting on an event or a song or a movie. Parang kailan lang pero matagal na pala!

Like in life itself, you can choose your focus when looking outside the window: you may include the window itself in the vista like a frame or totally disregard its existence and simply look at the world outside or the past itself. You may also focus on the sceneries you prefer, more of the lovely ones and less of the unsightly.

On the other hand, I have strongly felt too as I turned sigisty years old how my remaining days on earth are numbered. Looking back to the past seems an endless horizon while looking into the future is very definite. You can see already the end of the line, so to speak s you get that feeling my days are numbered. That is the moment when the eternal spring within tells you that at the end of that tunnel or wall is eternity. But, before that, you know the end is near.

The word “window” came from the Old Norse vindauga, from vind or “wind” that was pronounced as the English “wind” and auga for eye that phonetically sounded as “ow” that literally meant “wind-eye” that became the Old English word wind-ow or “window” as we know and use it today.

Hence, window became the term for an opening in any building like home that allows air and light to pass through. Most of all, it is an opening for people inside to see the world outside while giving those outside a glimpse of what’s inside.

How lovely is that interplay happening in every window that opens a person’s vista outside and inside. It is how one looks on windows that makes the great difference that eventually forms our perspectives in life.

About three decades ago, Bill Gates launched his company Microsoft’s operating system called Windows that greatly revolutionized our lives with computers becoming easily accessible for everyone. Unlike its funny looking predecessor called dost, Windows was aptly called as one had to simply click a box like literally opening a window to explore its many programs.

Windows – the real ones like in buildings – still present us with such great possibilities when we look outside or into them.

But of course, that still greatly depends on that one great window God had gifted us – our eyes that have both sight and vision.

Jesus told his disciples, “The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness. And if the light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be” (Matthew 6:22-23).

How unfortunate that many times, we prefer to limit the use of our eyes to just sights that limit our perspectives on what are simply obvious and visible.

Only a few called as visionaries dare to use their eyes to have vision, that is, to see and look beyond what’s visible and before us, whether from the window or into the window.

If we can have our eyes synced together with both sight and vision, then we shall see much more in this life that we become grateful with our past while at the same time filled with joyful expectations of the fast approaching beyond of this world as we age. Amen.

*All photos taken by the author using the iPhone 16 Pro Max at the Sacred Heart Novitiate, Novaliches, QC, March 17-22, 2025.