I’m not really a religious person, but for some sort of reason, when I was going through a terrible time of my life I went to a silent retreat. I was more attracted to the self-help part as opposed to the god part, so it’s so weird that I’m going to talk about something from the bible. Well, in fairness, I’ve always liked Jesus as a historical person because he was a radical and a progressive on so many fronts. I also like the bible if treated as literature and circumspectly examined.

So okay, the bible story that I’m going to talk about is the one where Jesus gets angry at the sellers in the temple because they’ve turned a holy place into a market. He gets so angry, as in nagwala siya, overturning the tables and everything like that. When I was reading it at the silent retreat, I noticed a part of the story that I’ve never before, despite the fact that I know this story so well. The reason for my extensive familiarity with this story is that I went to not just one but two Catholic schools: one from grade three to high school and another one when I was in college, and in those schools we had religion classes where we had to read the bible and everything, and even in the school before those Catholic schools I also had religion classes.

Anyway, what was my wonderful discovery all about? I saw that towards the end of the bible passage, it said that Jesus went on a retreat to reflect. He withdrew from the world and prayed. So after a big burst of anger and action, he retreated both physically and mentally from the world. So it’s kinda funny that during a retreat, I learned the value of  retreat, and I mean that in terms of both temporarily backing up and going on spiritual retreats.

This really helped me do a really difficult thing because before making that decision, I was afraid that the impact of my choice would take a long time. I was scared about being obligated to be brave all throughout the process, and if it was a lengthy process, then I didn’t know if I could be strong enough all throughout. After reading about the temple story though, I realized that in a war that lasts for years, retreating is a strategy to win. There is no shame in taking my time to withdraw from the battle. We lose and lose often when standing up to the Goliaths of oppression, and when we lose, it’s ok to take our time so that we can heal. When we recover, we will return to the battle field, ready to be brave again.