Mt. Arayat with Love

This early morning, I just arrived from Pampanga. It’s home of Mt. Arayat, a popular old mountain filled with traditional folklore, beliefs, and stories since the 1600s, located in central Luzon, Philippines.

I joined my wife Nhorie on her family’s reunion at the home of her younger brother Aki (and wife Weng) for her older sister (Lolet with husband Gerry and kids) vacationing from Florida, USA.


For me, Mt. Arayat kindles a feeling of “longing.” It’s a feeling akin to the “longing” that Moses must had felt when he was in Mt. Nebo speaking to God.

In Mt. Nebo, God spoke to Moses about His people’s entering the promised land (Canaan). I can imagine the “longing” Moses and God’s people may had felt for the fulfillment of the promise.

Life often finds us experiencing “longings.”

Like in my past travels when I departed from places I loved, my wife’s sister Lolet and husband Gerry have always expressed “longings” to return.

When they come on board the plane this week to bring them back to the US, Lolet and Gerry will depart but their original home is left behind.

The home represents emotions we feel as an airplane, ship, or vessel slowly moves us away from it.

The home is a place of “longings” - with nostalgic partings, yearnings, and hopes that defy definition.

We simply ache for what’s left, and long for what we can’t quite reach in reality.



Noted psychologist, Dr. Carl Jung, once wrote: “Everything that happens to us, properly understood, leads us back to our selves; it is as though there were some unconscious guidance whose aim is to deliver us ...”

Amid the “longings” that are natural to our human state, I sense echoes and hints of our true deliverance.

Our “longings” all point us to God and His everlasting Home in heaven. He is the only complete deliverance and fulfillment of all the “longings” we yearn.

Writer C.S. Lewis shares, “The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing - to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all beauty came from.”

Secrets of Your Self:                                            
https://www.kobo.com/ph/en/ebook/secrets-of-your-self