panaw-lantaw
a sabbatical journal
karl m. gaspar cssr
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
PANAW-LANTAW, A Sabbatical Sojourn
panaw-lantaw
a sabbatical sojourn
karl m. gaspar cssr
for y
introduction
When I turned 57 years old in June 2004 – after long years of doing what I needed to do – I felt quite tired. It was not just fatigue of the body; my soul yearned for rest.
That year, the health scare persisted. At the same time, unfortunately, I found myself dealing with a mild depression as discouragements after heartbreaking disappointments beleaguered me.
The signals were very clear. I needed a break. I spoke to my superiors and informed them that I thought it was time for me to take a sabbatical year.
Since joining the Redemptorists in 1985, I had not applied for a sabbatical; even if we are entitled to have such a year off, ten years after final profession. Earlier, I never thought I needed it.
My superiors agreed with me and approved my application for a sabbatical. It was to begin July of 2006, right after the centennial celebration of the Redemptorists in the
My application for a sabbatical year listed down the objectives of the one-year break, namely: to find time to rest, relax, recharge, and rejuvenate; to attend a renewal program that could help me deal with my personal issues (e.g. the reality of aging) as well as the need for healing; visit confreres and Redemptorist foundations in other countries; to visit friends and relatives who happen to live in the places I were to visit; and to deepen my spirituality by going on a pilgrimage to sacred sites and shrines as well as attend the CSsR one-month Spirituality course.
When I planned out the one-year sabbatical, I didn’t want to make it far too organized as to block off the element of surprise. While it was important to have a basic timeline and a general schedule given the need to book flights ahead of time, I made sure that there were many loose schedules in between the set ones.
Having explored many parts of the world in previous travels, I knew more or less what I needed to do as a sojourner, tourist and pilgrim so that I could maximize the opportunities of my set program as well as minimize the constraints that would get in the way of enjoying the sojourns.
I made sure I would not get lost at any juncture of my journey; but, if I did, I knew I had arranged all kinds of contingencies e.g. different contact persons and how they can be reached in the event of an emergency. I traveled light and resisted the urge to collect things along the way. I made sure I rested adequately, ate the right food and avoided stressful events so that I would never get sick on the road.
Deep in my heart, I just knew that I would really have a most fulfilling sabbatical year. What I didn’t know when I began this journey was that it would not only be that fulfilling but it would be a truly amazing peak experience, one that may never happen again in my life.
When friends knew that I was embarking on this journey, quite a number commented that they looked forward to a book that I would write about this sojourn. I told them: No, I had no plans of writing such a book. In fact, I had resolved not to write anything – except perhaps a few lines in postcards – so that I would have all the time to enjoy my travels and not waste my time locked inside a room to do some writing. I also didn’t want to be bringing along a laptop that would only add weight to what I had to carry.
But as experiences after thrilling experiences unfolded and as awe and wonder arose, there was only one way to deal with my amazement: write them down and send them as letters to confreres, relatives and friends. Yes, I took photos (and even kept a blog to share the photos) but I just felt the need to write down my impressions, thoughts, feelings, reflections and meditations.
By the time the year was finished in July 2007, my files revealed quite a collection of letters, poems and essays.
Indeed, there is a book in all these. However, I don’t really think any of my publishers would publish it now.
But who knows, somewhere in time, someone might have a use of this compilation.
So I am doing a “self-publication” by posting the whole book in this blog.
You may have read a few or even most of the pieces in this compilation. Who knows, one day you just might have the time and the interest to read these pieces once again.
I’ve always liked what Gabriel Garcia Marquez said about why he writes, namely, he writes mainly to amuse his friends. I resonate with his words. I’ve been writing mainly for my friends; these letters and essays in this collection were written mainly because I do treasure the friendships that have come my way through the years.
The semiotician, Umberto Eco, also had these words to offer: “All the authors who say that they write for themselves are liars. Writing is an act of communication, it’s an act of love, it’s something you do in order to be understood”. I guess the subtext is that authors have such a need to be understood.
Besides, this book can also serve as a cheap Christmas present. But if I were rich, I would offer you a sabbatical year fully paid for from my fortune. And you can go anywhere you wish and do whatever you want to do, go wherever your heart pleases. And perhaps use this book as some kind of a guide in your sojournings.
But perhaps, aside from this cheap Christmas present, I can also offer you a prayer as a gift: a prayer that, you, too, one day can have the most amazing sabbatical year in your whole life!
December 20, 2007
A short guide to reading the text
There are three main types of pieces in this compilation. Most are letters I wrote to confreres, relatives and friends. Some were written for one specific person, some for groups. The readers could find this out as they read the texts.
The essays were mainly my contribution to a column that the Mindanews (webpage: mindanews.com) put up with the byline – SABBATICAL. Some of the essays can still be accessed online.
The pieces of this compilation are put in a chronological order.
I have not found someone who would be willing to edit this manuscript for a song. Or even to proofread the texts. Perhaps, there is no need as this is not for mass circulation.
So there would be some repetitions of data and information. The last essay would have quotations from a few pieces in this collection. A shorter version of this essay constituted my talk at the last colloquium of the
If the reader does not know yet, it is possible to view photos of the sites I visited during my sabbatical. Go to my blog and this is the address: mindanawon-kakay.blogspot.com
So that there is a semblance of a continuity of the journey, I have written notes (and these appear in italics) in between the pieces I wrote while I was actually sojourning.
part I
to the sensuous south of
I left
letter from howick
July 16, 2006
I am writing you from Howick, which is roughly a 40-minute drive from
Fr. Collins has an interesting personal history. His parents were Irish, but he was born in
He asked me to give the sermon at the 8:30 AM Mass today. He had an earlier Mass at 7:00 a.m. He also officiated an anticipated Mass yesterday at 5:30 PM; almost all those who attend this Mass were white South Africans. However, in the 8:30 mass this morning, the majority of around 200 people were blacks, who are of the Zulu ethnic group. There would have been less than ten white adult Catholics who attended the
The Mass was wonderful as the singing was led by around 25 young people, young men and women, mostly students. There were a few songs in English (e.g. Go Tell Everyone), but most of the songs were in Zulu. As the songs had the African beat, the choir members danced as they sung and the majority of the congregation danced and sung along with them. Wonderful African rhythm, I must say. A Pinoy can so easily sway along with the beat as I did.
As today is the Feast of the Holy Redeemer and the Gospel is about not carrying too much load and going to live among the people to cast out devils and care for the sick,
it was easy enough to share with the people our mission experiences in
I learned a few Zulu words: Sunimorna for Good morning (easy to remember as it souns like sunny morning, and, indeed, it is a very sunny morning now) and ziyabongga for thank you (again easy to remember as one thinks: bongga si ziya!). As with everywhere, the people are very pleased when they see a foreigner trying his best to learn their language, and, of course, mispronouncing the words!
I arrived here in Howick last Friday night. I had stayed in Phokeng (where Bp. Kevin Dowling lives which is part of the Diocese of Rustenberg, which is quite near the neighboring country of Bostwana) from Tuesday till Friday morning (11 to 14 July. It was a wonderful three-day visit there with Kevin and two other Redemptorists: Fr. Sean Lunney, an Irish CSsR and Fr. Ifa, a South African CSsR. (I have a separate account of the work being done by Kevin especially with the AIDS pandemic).
While at Phokeng, the 14 Irish youth coming as part of the SERVE Project arrived; they were led by Jerry O'Connor, CSsR, who was in the
I left Phokeng Friday morning and was brought by Fr. Lunney to the novitiate. There, I met the 5 novices (3 from
Six new novices are expected to arrive within the week to begin their novitiate before the end of July. Three are from
This joint novitiate is, of course, a parallel "restructuring" project similar to our own efforts at Lipa today.
All the South African CSsRs (and there are 21 of them) will be congregating in
Earlier, I had not included
However, Kevin himself had insisted that I should go to
The confreres here have really been quite generous; I am very touched by their kindness. I am like a royal visitor, well taken cared of. And for them to secure me a plane ticket to
But the flights are full on Monday. Until today is vacation time for students. Classes will open again on Monday so all flights are fully booked. So I will stay in the city of
There are many interesting stories to tell regarding our confreres here, their own history (they first came here from
Hopefully when I return to our Province, there will be opportunities to share about my experiences here.
God bless!
Letter/essay from sterkfrontein
July 21, 2007
I've told you that for my sabbatical, I want to go on a long pilgrimage. Across some parts of the globe, wherever destiny would bring me as I refused to get into a strategic planning scheme for this one-year break. Whatever happens will happen; what is not meant to take place, will not arise. (Down with rational purposive action! Long live communicative action!)
I also told you I would like to visit graveyards; as recently I've developed a deeper connection with those who have moved on and what better way to connect but to visit the tombs of people I truly admire, respect and love. In fact, on my last day in
Given what I have consciously desired for this sabbatical, you can imagine how pleasantly surprised I was that one of the first things that happened as I began my journey in
But this is no ordinary graveyard. As this is the graveyard of "Little Foot" and Mrs Ples. Little Foot who? Mrs Ples who? Those who have done basic Archaeology would be familiar with these names and would have immediately gasped upon reading the names. Paleontologists from the
Little Foot's fossils are believed to be 3.3 million years old while those of Mrs. Ples would be 2.6 million years old.
Sterkfrontein - which has now a major museum that includes entering into the huge cave - is in the 47,000-hectare area know referred to as the "Cradle of Humankind" which is a "unique location blessed with a grater walth of the prehistory of humankind than almost any other place on earth..(consisting of) 13 major fossil sites and dozens of minor ones" according to a brochure available at the on-site museum.
More quotes from the brochure:
"Within the Cradle's 2.6 billion-year-old dolomitic hills lies a series of extensive underground caverns (Reminds me of the huge caverns in Kulaman). These geological time capsules;; have preserved thousands of fossil remnants of extinct animals, as well as the bones and cultural remains of our own ancestors, the hominins. (Hominins refer to our bipedal (the ability to walk on two legs) relatives going back to the earliest ape men".
"The story told by the Cradle's fossils is basically this: at some point around three million years ago, a hominin with a blend of ape and human characteristics occupied the
With these findings, this place have the right to claim itself as the Cradle of Humankind. If one visits this site, one is reminded that the ancestors of all humans, wherever they live today, originally came from
With a deep sense of pride, the South Africans assert that "the outline of
No wonder, Maropeng and the rest of this area has been declared World Heritage Site. At Maropeng is the newly-opened Cradle of Humankind Museum consisting of a huge four-storey building most of which is underground. Less than 20 minutes away, is the
It was, however, the knowledge that these ancestors were buried here that gripped my heart. Actually, we were not yet allowed to see the fossils of "Little Foot" as the work to extract the stones inside the caves is still ongoing. As for the skull of Mrs Ples it is deposited elsewhere; if I heard the guide clearly, it is still in the
But being right there in the savannah - which consists of undulating hills where once the primal forests were and have since disappeared - where our great ancestors roamed while alive was an experience of a lifetime. I wanted to kiss the ground which now boasts of African wildflowers with orange as their dominant color.
And while climbing up and down the steep alleys of the Sterkforntein caves (which brought happy memories of being a spulenker in Kulaman, Sultan Kudarat) along with 20 other people in our tour group, I couldn't help but imagine how insects, animals and hominids walked the same alleys through the last millions of years.
It was, indeed, a most moving experience. One was constantly in awe; one was wrapped in a prayerful mood. It was truly a pilgrimage, of being in touch with the earliest of human spirits and of seeking a divine explanation to this magnificence.
After all, one gets transported to the
But one's heart gets broken in this pilgrimage. There are warning signals in the museum reminding us that humans have only been in this planet a fraction of time compared to the whole cosmic reality. That there have been five periods in earth's history where extinction took place, and right now we are on the sixth with us, humans, taking a major role in making this extinction possible. As we left the museum, there are collage of photos that show wars, pollution, poverty, population explosion (there is a section that makes a count as to the total number of people in the world today which was 6.6 billion and counting) and other man-made calamities that are the clear signs of the extinction process evolving. It made me want to cry at this reality.
In that collage one could also see easily the scourge of AIDS. Here in this part of the world where the hominids reached a new level of evolution is also where the pandemic rages.
Everywhere there are graveyards.
I will be visiting more in the days while I am here in
Take care.
essay from robben island
July 22, 2006
Years ago, when I was a political prisoner in the Davao Metrodiscom stockade in downtown
The world's most famous political prisoner, Nelson Mandela, who was to spend almost 30 years in prison before being released in the early 1990s, was incarcerated there.
While languishing in prison, I read about this infamous island.
Then, I imagined
Today (22 July), I went on a tour of Robben Island, off Cape Town City, at the tip of South Africa, barely 2,000 kms. to the South Pole. I discovered it to be almost completely different from the
The island is flat; the highest point is a mound on which the lighthouse was built. It might as well be the
From the name itself, Robben, which is Dutch for seals, one is
made to realize this island was once upon a time an idyllic setting before the cruelty of men (men is used here intentionally; its use is not suggestive of being gender insensitive) took over. But since the coming of the Dutch to this part of the world - as connecting link between Europe and their treasured colony, Indonesia - the island would be the stage on which the colonizers (in the totality of the Habermasian sense) would act out their villainous roles.
As early as 1525 (just 4 years after Magellan made his own mark as the conquistador in the grace of the Spanish King), the Dutch brought Muslim dissidents - a few who were the equivalent of our Sultans - to this island as exile. Here they died and later, in their honor, a mosque was built.
Fast forward, in the 1800s, the island became a refuge for lepers. Today, there are around 1,500 graves of those who died of leprosy, including the Irish priests and nuns who administered to the sick. There is a cemetery where one sees the weather-beaten crosses. There is a still a church standing, named after the Good Shepherd, built by the lepers themselves.
Eventually,
As soon as we docked at the island's port - which now is as smooth as any port of a resort island - we were asked to board tourist buses that took us around the 325-hectare island. Many of the tour guides are former political prisoners themselves so deep in their hearts they know the history of this island.
Simbhutu was the ideal tour guide. At first as we cruised through the southeastern part of the island, he took it easy, highlighting the beauty of nature and cracking jokes (mainly soccer jokes to highlight the fact that
Story after horrifying story flowed out of Simbhutu's memory and as he told these, one could tell he was holding back the tears. And as we proceeded to the maximum security prison, the horror of it all was so palpable.
Even as one would not wish the prison life at Davao Metrodiscom on one's enemy, nonetheless, I could easily acknowledge that
So in the end as we reached the final stage of our tour - when one was told what happened to Mandela, Biko, Makana, Autshamato and the hundreds of other prisoners - I was right after all to imagine Robben Island as the quintessential harsh prison that could so totally break a human being.
But, in fact, even as many of them died in prison, their spirits soar. The other stories told were those of heroic acts: the political education taking place behind the guards' backs (remember the slogan: each one, teach one!), the hunger strikes so that rights would be respected, the prisoners who finished university degrees while in prison, and, ultimately, the persistence of the struggles that ultimately ended apartheid.
Tuesday (18 July) Mandela turned 88. There was a party in his daughter's house in
But the papers also reported not so very happy realities: the AIDS pandemic (2 million people would have died of AIDS complications by now), the high rate of unemployment leading to increasing criminality and drug addiction, massive poverty among the blacks including those coming from other African countries, the continuing rise of fuel prices thus jacking up costs of living, etc.
As we walked out of the maximum security prison at
The trip back to the mainland was rough.
And I thought: how rough life has been for the poor and oppressed of
essay from phokeng
august 2, 2006
Evading death's fatal gaze in the Land of a Pandemic
On my fifth day in
Inside this compound are a number of other buildings: one that houses the offices of the Diocesan Commission of Justice and Peace, another hall that we would call a seminar house where various diocesan and local meetings are held, the hospice where persons with AIDS are provided care and anti-retoviral (ARV) medication, a dormitory for the personnel of the hospice and a parish church.
Behind the parish church, barely a hundred meters away is a makeshift graveyard. I went to visit it Wednesday, July 12 at noontime. Because it is winter in
This place is not meant to be a cemetery. But there are dead bodies that desperately need a place where they can be laid to rest. There are many reasons why those who were buried in this makeshift graveyard cannot be buried elsewhere: their homes are far away from here, the nearby cemeteries would not take them in and, in a number of cases, because the dead died of illnesses owing to AIDS complications.
This is a cemetery where most of those buried died of illnesses related to HIV-AIDS. I was told earlier that since it opened in November 2004, there have been 660 persons with AIDS admitted at the hospice. Of these, 260 have died; a number were children.
At first sight, the graveyard reminded me of many cemeteries in faraway places in rural
This is especially true when one looks at the graveyard of the children buried here. In most cases, the adult graves are separated from those of the children. At the center of the cemetery is a long row of children's graves. Since most of those who died were not Christians, one does not see many crosses at the head of the graves. And very few had the names of the dead.
But what was most striking was that stuck into the mounds of earth were the children's milk bottles (even Coca-Cola bottles), dolls, toy trucks, teddy bears and other toys. In some cases plastic tubs used for the babies' bath were placed on top of the grave. Naturally, there were many plastic flowers.
Death's presence here is most palpable. One is almost powerless to evade Death's fatal gaze as one realizes the power of its tight embrace. In the stillness of the whole scene, one recognizes life's paradoxes.
I stood there for a long time gazing at the children's graves. In the cold of the African winter, even if its was a sunny mid-day, I shivered. A wind blew and the tall grasses danced in the sun and I shuddered. I thought I would cry, but not a tear was shed.
I found myself deadened by the tragedy even as I asked myself: Did I psyche myself up to a level of deadening my senses so that I would not be too overpowered by the concrete images of this pandemic?
In a little while, I made a hasty exit from the graveyard and retreated to a spot at the back of the church where one can sit under the shade of a big tree. And I collected my thoughts and feelings.
The stillness was soothing and yet I was most aware of a lot of questions storming my mind and emotions grappling with meanings in my heart.
That evening, Kevin addressed a group of 14 Irish young men and women who had come to
There are 6.2 million South Africans infected by HIV-AIDS. (I had checked the official figures from ASSA, their equivalent of our Bureau of Census and Statistics) and it indicated that as of July 1, 2002, there were 6,461,372 Africans with HIV-AIDS. If one wants to know what is the estimate for 2006, one only has to multiply this number with 5% and that figure would be close to 7 million South Africans today. With a total population of roughly 50 million, that means roughly 14% have AIDS. Of the 6.5 million with AIDS in 2002, 3,199,493 are child-bearing women, and 205,134 are children.
More statistics: 200,000 South Africans die of AIDS complications every year, there are 1,500 new infections every day, 1.2 million children are made orphans because of AIDS, this number will double in 2010 (the year South Africa will host the World Cup), 600 children die of AIDS every day and in 2005 there were 990,000 children who lost their mother to AIDS.
I watched the faces of the Irish youth as Kevin flashed these numbers of the screen along with slides of persons with AIDS who have died in the hospice and a nearby clinic (ironically located in a place called
Wednesday was a long and weary day. After Kevin's talk, I excused myself and walked to the nearby monastery.
It was 9:30 in the evening and the cold penetrated my bones. I stopped and looked at the sky and remembered the starry nights in Kulaman (Sultan Kudarat). In that cloudless, dark African sky, millions of stars blazed. I stood on that sacred spot in
They are out there embracing the brightness of those stars.
They have finally evaded Death's lethal gaze.
letter from
August 6, 2006
I'm finally out of
The only imagery in my mind of that last week I spent in
Saturday, July 22, I took the morning Nationwide Airlines flight from
In our conversations, both Fr. Collins and Fr. McCauley have commented that one of the main causes of death in
Because I was so engrossed with the statistics related to HIV-AIDs as well as concrete faces of people with AIDS whom I had met, the data on road accidents did not fully register. Until what happened in the evening of July 22.
That evening, Fr. Jim, his driver, Peter, Peter's wife and a Nazareth Sister went out to dinner. On their way home, they got into a head-on collision with another vehicle. Fr. Jim and Peter were dead on the spot, the two women survived but were badly hurt.
I received the news actually a few days after it happened through an email message from Fr. Sean. Naturally, I was quite stunned with the news. And I thought: if only there was a way to know that I would met Fr. Jim for the first, but also for the last time, during that short visit to
Fr. Sean's news came after I was watching news on TV where a news report flashed images of a Mexican sociologist who was mugged by a group of teen-agers right outside their hotel in downtown
The imagined face of Fr. Jim in the head-on collision and the TV image of the battered head of the Mexican sociologist added to the accumulated heartaches that had built up through the days of my South African sojourn..
Part of the reason why I came to
The first day of the conference was a tour of Jo'burg and its main highlight was a visit to
The black South Africans have done much better than us Pinoys in remembering and celebrating their heroes - both the famous and the unknown, men and women, adults and children, those in the cities and the savannahs. All we could come up with are simple commemorative statues and plaques here and there.
But
In
The dead body of Hector in the arms of an older boy who carried him, with Hector's sister crying beside them, was an iconic image that was splashed across the frontpages of newspapers around the world. That image meets the visitors as soon as they find themselves just outside the museum.
The
(A side comment was provided by another delegate: the children of Martin Luther King in order to accommodate President George W. Bush at the funeral of their mother, Corita King, did not include Harry Belafonte to the funeral in order to avoid embarrassing moments. And yet Harry Belafonte was the one who put up a fund for them to be able to go to college. Whether true or not, when put side by side with what happened to the children of Nelson Mandela, provide very interesting stories as to what happens to children of some of the most known heroes of the world.)
The street on which Nelson Mandela's house is located is also where Bishop Desmond Tutu still lives. Those who live along this street are certainly very proud to claim that on this street two Nobel Peace Prize winners were residents. Today, Nelson Mandela lives elsewhere, but Winnie has a house at the next corner and most of the time, she lives here.
Which is to say that some parts of
However, there are still parts of
South Africans would tell us later that, in fact,
The day's exposure was capped with a visit to the Origins Centre, another remarkable inter-active archaeological museum that celebrates
The documentation of their cave paintings, mystical rituals and sophisticated crafts leave the visitors in awe. However, the same visitors are heartbroken to know that most of these are glories of the past, as the present-day descendants of San ancestors have been fully assimilated into the dominant contemporary South African culture.
As a Mindanawon, I shuddered at the thought that this, too, could be the way forward of many of our indigenous peoples in
The EATWOT conference lasted for three days. The deliberations were quite interesting although it was such a big disappointment that the local hosts brought in so little of the richness of the South African culture into our liturgies and celebrations. Still we had good discussions both in terms of the global realities, especially in terms of the
In our Final Statement, we committed to the following covenant for future action and program development: 1) Concerted engagement of gender theologies and new methods for such theologizing be developed and which challenge patriarchal privileges and require the reconstruction of ideologies of all genders; 2) exploration of the authority of the biblical text in our theological endeavors along with naming additional oral and written sources to be engaged and explored in the formation of these new theological endeavors; 3) reaffirmation of praxiological methods which constructively engage the tensions between action on the ground and theological formations and constructions; 4) affirm our commitment as theologians to working with gender, racial, ethnic, indigenous, and sexual groups in mutuality, learning from each other to enhance the building of viable liberatory communities; and 5) the importance of developing dialogical styles and approaches to interaction with each other and with members of other religious groups which are non-hegemonic and which affirm the humanity and worthiness of all parties in the dialogue.
Whew! That is quite a mouthful.
My last two days in Jo'burg provided a fitting end to my very special sojourn in
The public market was best on a Sunday and I could no longer stay the following Sunday so that was out. But the art scene was awesome: their own home was an exhibition space of the best of wood sculptures as they had helped put up an exhibit and these have been deposited in their house after the exhibit. They took me to the Market Theatre - scene of the radical plays that challenged apartheid rule - and we saw The Suitcase, a most powerful play that could be easily translated and adapted into any
The National Park we visited was a time to be with the gentle creatures, the deer and the antelope, the onyx and the wild buffalos, the ostriches and the hornbills, the lions and the rhinoceros. This, too, was a pilgrimage of sort. One imagines St. Francis in the midst of it all. And I thought of the Bible text, of that day when all animals could lie together in peace under the bright African sun. For after all, the Bible text was written on African soil.
If this could happen to animals, what more for the descendants of the first man and woman who arose out of
Out of
In the airport, most souvenir items have a tag which declares the product to be OUT OF AFRICA. I had to smile at that clever appropriation of Robert Redford and Meryl Streep's film. I bought a few for family, confreres and friends back home with the little South African money I still had.
Out of the window of that Singapore Airlines plane that took off that afternoon of July 30, I took a lingering look at what I could still see on the ground.
The savannahs glittered in the afternoon African sun, bright as ricefields ripe with golden grains across the undulating hills of some parts of Zamboanga del Sur.
I prayed for a safe trip.
And prayed, too, for
Part II
back in the pinanggang
I left
a news story from up, diliman,
August 2, 2006
The Continuing Tasaday Story
Thirty years since "a group of people," in the words of the American news reporter John Nance, "walked less than 20 miles from their home in a Philippine rain-forest and traveled through 50,000 years of cultural and technological time", the debate on whether the Tasaday were truly from the Stone Age or not continue to rage in the country's anthropological circle.
A crowd of more than 200 professors (mainly from the fields of anthropology, sociology and history) and students packed this hall in the morning of 17 August 2006 to tackle the theme - "What's New About the Tasaday? Implications for Practice in Anthropology. The forum was organized by the Ugnayang Pang-Agham Tao, Inc. (UGAT) and the University of the
The UP's big names in the field of social sciences, including Dr. Ponciano Bennagen, Professor Israel Cabanilla, Dr. Zeus Salazar, Dr. Arnold Azurin, Dr. Abe Padilla, Dr. Maria Mangahas, Dr.Maria Mangahas and others, presented papers or act as reactors during this forum. Invited guests included Ms. Sylvia Miclat of the Environmental Science of Social Change (ESSC) and Commissioner Janette Serrano, Chair of the National Commission on Indigenous People (NCIP).
The Forum's rationale according to its organizers was stated in the program in this manner: "The Tasaday have come a long way from being projected as 'stone age people' to being ancestral claimants today. The objectives of the forum are to discuss continuing issues of representation of the Tasaday and their implications for ther practice of 'Public Interest Anthropology'. The event is also a commemoration of the International Tasaday Conference held in August 1986, which was sponsored by the Department of Anthropology and the UGAT".
When 26 Tasadays were "discovered" by PANAMIN head Manuel Elizalde in 1971 in the rainforests of what is now an area near Barangay Ned in the
Nance was one of the distinguished visitors flown by helicopter to the Tasaday cave. Others included Charles Lindberg and Margaret Mead who were escorted by Madame Imelda Marcos. Foreign and Filipino anthropologists and journalists came up with all kinds of books and publications on the Tasaday including those written by the likes of R.B. Fox, Frank Lynch, Teodoro Llamzon, Carlos Fernandez, Carol Molony, E.E. Yenb and Hermes Guteirrez. They covered all aspects of the Tasaday: their alleged stone technology, language, their food and diet including the plants that they ate, their social organization and various other aspects of the culture.
Nance who claimed that he stayed in the Tasaday's dwelling for a total of 72 days from June 1971 and 1974 first came up with the book, The Gentle Tasaday published in l975. Nance, like many of those whose visits to the Tasaday cave were arranged by Elizalde believed that "the technological period of pre-history in which we first see the Tasaday is commonly referred to as the Stone Age. Tools were made of stone, wood, and bone. Metals were not yet known, nor were cloth and pottery. The Tasaday were in this technological stage in the 1960s".
As information on the Tasaday filtered to those outside the sphere of the Marcoses and Elizalde, there arose discordant voices as to the alleged exaggerated claims of those who were the favored ones to se the site and intermingle with the Tasadays. Dr. Zalazar claimed that the Tasadays' continued stay in the forests, with no contact with the outside world, could not have exceeded more than 150 years. In the years to come there would be more anthropologists who would question the claim that the Tasadays were of the Stone Age.
These voices found a venue during the 1986 International Forum on the Tasaday held in the country sponsored by UP-Antro and UGAT, following another conference held abroad.
The media reports, the published books and the international conferences led to a representation brouhaha as some voices held on to their Stone Age representation of the Tasaday and with other voices passionately claiming that they could not be represented as such.
No doubt this wide coverage made the Tasaday a household name among academic and other circles all over the world interested in the discovery of such supposedly "Stone Age, primitive and exotic" creatures of the forest. Many Filipino anthropologists attending international conferences, as claimed at the August 17 Forum, are continuously beset with questions as to whatever happened to the Tasaday.
With this forum, a new generation of Anthropology students have been introduced to the continuing saga of the Tasaday controversy. However, as I listened to all the speakers and the discussion that followed during this forum, I doubted if there was going to be a closure to this controversy. My hunch is that there will be more generations of Anthropology students who will continue to hear about the saga that was the Tasaday!
a journal from the ilokos
August 26, 2006
The Brothers of the newest Redemptorist foundation in the
Bro. Joel de Guzman CSsR, the Aspirancy Director and in-charge of the Mission Center, who also serves as member of the General Secretariat for Brothers, resides in this Center along with 6 aspirants (3 for the Brotherhood and 3 for the priesthood). The aspirants include Michael Adlaon, Agustin Bagguatan Jr., Rey Regan Gatdula, Mario Alba, Rufino Macasaet Jr. and Ferdinand Pelagio.
First to arrive in
August 27
Bros. Salac,
August 28
Bro. Karl Gaspar CSsR arrived in Laoag on a bus from
August 29-30
Bro. Joel, the aspirants and two lay missionaries have already began to conduct missions in the Diocese of Laoag. On September 3, their mission team will begin a mission in St. James Parish, Solsona, Ilocos Norte, less than an hour away from Laoag. They have been struck with the prevalence of popular religious devotions and practices in the north. For this reason, they wanted to have a study on Popular Religiosity.
The Brothers' gathering then provided a chance for a common study on this topic for the Brothers and for the aspirants. Bro. Karl was tasked to serve as facilitator and resource person for this seminar. We held it at the Bishop's residence. In the discussions during this seminar, the Brothers from the south got to learn about the socio-eco-political as well as religio-ecclesiastical realities of this Diocese.
In order to have a better understanding of the realities of popular devotions, the Brothers went on a visitation to two popular shrines of the nearby parishes. These are those of The Miraculous Virgen of Badoc and the "Apo Lakay" or the Jesus Nazareno in Sinait. The icon of the Miraculous Virgen and the black life-size statue of Apo Lakay are believed to be at least 400 years old. Along with two angels and a violin, these were found inside a box retrieved by fishermen along the coast near to Badoc. The belief was that a boat that came from
The rest of the morning we went to see two famous tourist destinations. In Batac, we both went to see the old church and where Apo Ferdinand Marcos was laid to rest. No, one no longer sees the dead body; in its place is a wax figure dressed in barong Tagalog. The room, however, remains air-conditioned and one hears Gregorian music. It is a depressing room, however, as it is quite dark and there is a stuffy smell that hovers.
The other site was the famous baroque
August 31
This day was for a picnic and a chance for the Brothers to be Redemp-tourists in the scenic spots of this beautiful area up north. First stop is the famous Pagudpud beach, known for its white sand and pristine beauty. We left the
After a swim we visited other tourists sites nearby including the site of the giant windmills (more than 10-storey high, numbering 15 all-in-all, the likes of which are common in
Then we went off to see the
After lunch, served by Fr. Ronald Bonayon and a few of his parishioners in Davila, Pasuquin (a feast of sinugbang isda of various kinds), we went to see another baroque churche, the one of Sarrat. This is where the younger Marcos daughter was married. Unknown to many Filipinos, the church collapsed a few weeks after the wedding and had to be restored. Today one can see how beautifully the church and the nearby structures were reconstructed. Like in the places where one sees the other old churches, here the local artisans made use of the local bricks and stones to create what would arise as a distinctly Ilokano baroque architecture. Truly these churches are a sight to behold and are a legacy to the whole nation.
To cap the day, we all went for a sumptuous Ilokano meal in La Preciosa, a local restaurant that has been cited by a number of national dailies for the delicious local cuisine that they serve.
September 1
The last day was reserved for out business meeting. Bro. Joel reported on what were discussed in the meeting of the members of the General Secretariat and what he presented to the meeting of the Asia-Oceania Regional Major Superiors held in
By evening, all except Bro. Epy, left Laoag for their respective destinations. Left at the
essay from
September 1, 2006
A pilgrimage to
I had always wanted to go on a pilgrimage to
Finally, the opportunity arose with my sabbatical year. Since pilgrimage is some kind of a leitmotif of my sabbatical, I planned to include
Thanks to the FMM Sisters' community in Sariaya who hosted me, the Mendoza family who provided me hospitality while I stayed in Sta. Lucia, Dolores, Quezon and my guides, Allan Abesamis and Pepay Mendoza, I had a wonderful pilgrimage in
A pilgrimage to
There are places in the Philippines that every Filipino - if only all can afford to travel - should reach, visit, see and experience like Mt. Apo, the Cordillera's mountain terraces, Bohol's chocolate hills, Marawi's mosques by the lakeside, the Ati-atihan and Boracay, Lake Sebu, Palawan, Quiapo and Baclaran. Include in this list the mystical mountain of
I've been very lucky in terms of having visited many beautiful places, some of which bring the sojourner peace and joy because God's presence here is quite palpable. The days that I spent in
The
Since my base was Sariaya, Allan (my guide) and I travelled by bus to Tiaong, took the jeep to the poblacion of Dolores and a tricycle to Barangay Sta. Lucia which is part of Dolores. The travel took about two hours including waiting for the jeep to be filled with passengers. The travel is actually quite pleasant as the roads are cemented/asphalted all the way to Sta. Lucia.
When we arrived in Dolores, Allan and I first went inside the Catholic Church. At the main altar is the patron saint, Our Lady of Sorrows. It is not coincidental that Dolores (meaning sorrow) would have as its patron saint, our Lady as one of sorrows. But since I arrived in Sariaya, I noticed now popular this title of Mary is around this province. Is there a correlation between the sad history of this province (with its long series of revolts and massacres) and Mary's sorrows? As soon as one steps down at Sta. Lucia, one immediately sees the sign - PATALASTAS ANG BANAHAW AY SARADO PA! (ANNOUNCEMENT BANAHAW IS STILL CLOSED!) It is prominently displayed near the Barangay Hall. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and the Local Government have both declared some parts of
The closure of some parts of
However, when one is in Sta. Lucia one immediately notices the changes in the surroundings compared to the lowland areas of Quezon, including the poblacion of Dolores. Since Sta. Lucia is already more than half-way of Mt. Banahaw's more than 5,000 feet, this place is quite rustic and the various shades of green are greener here than in the lowlands. Around the area one is delighted to be confronted with scenic landscapes. And later that day as I walked around, there was even a small green snake that wiggled its way across the road. Lucky for me, I saw it before I stepped on it.
Those familiar with the vast Philippine (and even foreign) literature written on Mt. Banahaw(especially those written by the likes of Sturtevant, Covar, Ileto, Enriquez, Gorospe, Reyes, the Pamathalaan group) which traverse through the various social sciences to literary criticism to theology and spirituality, think of Mt. Banahaw in terms of the samahans that go a long way to the Colorum before the turn of the century.
As of today, there are approximately a hundred of them peacefully co-existing with each other. The most famous ones as they have been subjects of various researches are the La Iglesia del Ciudad Mistica de Dios and the Tres Personas Solo Dios. But there are also smaller samahans like the Bangon Bayan Banal (BBB), the Spiritual Filipino Catholic Church (with the statue of Rizal placed prominently in the frontyard), the Rosa Mistica, Nuestra Senora
There are also landmarks placed in strategic areas by the National Historical Commission. One informs the nationalist pilgrim that the hero Macario Sakay and his men retreated to this part of
The signs and symbols in the villages located at various levels of
For students of Spirituality - as an academic discipline - interested in indigenous mystical practices of our ancestors, here in the samahan one is afforded a glimpse into what could be one model or lived experience of mysticism that goes a long way back to our pre-colonial era. While listening to Nanay Isabel, I was conscious of a deep desire: that there would be serious Filipino scholars who would pursue this type of research as it would be most helpful in rediscovering our very deep sense of the divine as well as the roots of our own indigenous spirituality.
As an attempt to have some insights into what is the mistica of the samahan, I returned that afternoon to be "immersed" in the solitude atmosphere of the compound. I was also invited by Nanay Isabel to join their evening prayer inside their church. There was a slight drizzle late that afternoon, so I just sat still at the big house's veranda. There was hardly anyone around so I enjoyed the silence of that hour. To my delight Nanay Isabel joined me and we sat in this long bench the length of which is an entire tree.
We could see the gate and so I asked her for the meanings of the symbols attached to this gate. The crisscrossing swords are not supposed to mean anything violent or war-like; instead, holding the swords is akin to an effort to struggle against sin which, in their teachings, refer not just to personal sin but social sin as in mga kasamaan sa mundo (evils in the world). The fire symbol bursting out of the giant pots are the fire from the kalooban that lights our paths. The flags of all nations suggest that the samahan's mission cover the entire world. And the angels are guardians for human beings.
The samahan members guard over the welfare of one another. Staying in the dormitory in Sta. Lucia are families displaced by the mudslides and floods that affected Infanta and Real recently. While waiting for full rehabilitation, they are staying here and their needs are responded to by the samahan.
I joined them at the Evening Prayer where 14 women, 6 men and three children gathered along with the prayer leader (a woman who knelt all throughout the more than one hour session) and Nanay Isabel (who sat in what looked like the Bishop's chair, but placed not at the altar but among the people). The men were on the right side and the women and children were at the center and the left sides.
The symbols on the altar easily attract the eye for the colors are vivid and the lines and textures of all its constitute elements are quite sharp and well-silhouetted. The altar's "boundaries" are what appears to be a huge pair of angel's wings placed strategically at both sides. Those that can easily be seen and read from a distance are the words: At the left - Pag-ibig sa Dios, Pananampalataya, Gawa at Pag-asa and Tiyaga (Love of God, Belief, Action and Hope and Industriousness). Above these words are the Roman Numbers for the Ten Commandments. At the right - Kalinisan, Katwiran, Kaliwanagan, Katotohan, Kababaan ng Kalooban and Pagtitiis (Cleanliness, Righteousness, Being Englightened, Truth, Humility and Suffering).
Above these words is a big heart with a cross at the top and on it the words - Aral ni Jesus (Jesus's teaching). There are plastic flowers all around the altar space and candles lighted at the center. During the prayers, a woman would offer incense. The prayers are spoken, chanted and sung. The singing was quite remarkable as the congregation blended their voices; with such good acoustics, the voices are strikingly clear and very pleasant to the ears. I thought: this was how our ancestors sang or chanted their prayers (at least the Tagalog ancestors); the music was most distinct, quite different from the kind of music that Tagalog liturgical songs have today.
I could not help but be struck by the irony of it all. Here was an indigenous model of a genuine Base Ecclesial Community in prayer (whose members also insist on showing through gawa - actions and deeds - their pananampalataya or belief in God). Here is where the Filipinos have truly "inculturated" not just their liturgy but the very essence of their faith. Here was where the believers celebrated their history as a nation and expressed their genuine cultural identity. Here is a religious ceremony in a mystical site where the language, the music, the symbols, all that which are linked together, manifest nationhood (understood as genuine solidarity in community) but also being Church. Long before Vatican II, long before PCP II, the members of this samahan were already practising theologico-pastoral terms such as inculturation, liberation theology, BEC, preferential option for the poor and the like. All throughout this time I kept on asking myself: how is the Local Catholic Church dealing (or inter-faith dialoguing) with samahans such as that of Suprema Isabel. (I should have gone to talk to the parish priest, but I intuited that it would only be a source of frustration so I didn't go see him. If I am able to return there, I really should).
Returning home after the Evening Prayer, I could sense the enchantment of this place. The rain had stopped and so the walk was quite pleasant as the climate turned cold. There were fireflies everywhere, reminding me of Kulaman. Despite the presence of the military headquarter, I felt no fear and did not have any sense of foreboding as in many militarized areas of
That morning of August 21 after our talk with Nanay Isabel, Allan toured me around my first pamuemuesto. This was the route towards the river. Fortunately, the local folks have cemented the trail, so despite the rains, it was not very difficult to follow the pilgrimage route. This included the stairway to take us down to the stream below. Pepay had to leave us since she had a meeting in Sariaya (she works as community organizer of the Luntiang Alyansa sa Mt. Banahaw). A group of students from a college in
Down at the bottom are huge boulders on which statues of saints are placed. On this huge one are the statues of our Lady of Lourdes and Bernadette as well as that of the Sagrada Pamilya. A very devout male pilgrim was sitting on a big rock facing this boulder where candles were burning as he meditated. When he stood up, one could tell that he was physically challenged and could have come to pray to make a panata so he could get well. After his prayers, he stood up and took a swim in the river.
Unfortunately, there are those who come to this place not as pilgrims but to have fun while swimming in the river. These include the local boys. Allan mentioned to me that when he came during one Holy Week the place was so crowded. And people were quite noisy as thewere eating, swimming, chatting and going on a picnic. Meanwhile they throw their garbage anywhere including cigarette butts, candy wrappers, the sachets of shampoos and other non-degradable garbage turning this spot in
As
The following morning, I went through my second pamuemuesto. This time my guide was Eddie Bagtas, originally from Malabon but who has lived in
In this second route, one goes up the steep surface of
When Eddie told me that this was the shrine of Ina ng Awa, I intuited that inside the cave there would be an icon of Our Mother of Perpetual Help. I was right, in fact there were two of such icons: one that was already faded and one that is relatively new with its bright colors. There is also a picture of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and a plastic Sto. Nino. Eddie and I stayed longest in this shrine as I collected my thoughts, as I remembered family, confreres and friends needing help and as I prayed for my own sabbatical intentions.
The rest of the pamuemuesto brought us further up the slopes of
After this pamuemuesto, I said goodbye to Eddie and I proceeded to Kinabuhayan to visit the shrine of Tres Personas Solo Dios. Kinabuhayan is around five kilometers from Sta. Lucia and one climbs steadily the slope of
It was a quiet day and I was the only visitor. I saw immediately the white-painted statue of the Samahan Persona Solo Dios founder, Mr. Ilustre who originated from
It is the image of the Solo Dios (which is at the top of the blue triangle) hovering over three figures who all have the face of Jesus Christ (long hair, beard and all). But they are the God the Father, the Spirit and the Son. A dove figure is between the white-bearded figure at the top and the one who is the center of the three figures. Below the painted three figures is the statue of the three figures, providing some kind of a repetition of the same image as well as providing a sense of depth to the 3 figures. On both sides of the three figures are two angels. There are also other symbols on both sides of the backdrop including an ear, a hand writing, a judgment tableau, a figure that could be Mary and a prophet figure. It is, indeed, a picture with a rich imagery, no wonder it's been used as illustration in many history books.
I sat there quietly inside the church for some time to contemplate the image on the altar. It was possible to appreciate it at its different layers of meanings, as well as its aesthetics. It has a very distinct Filipino texture and design - a lot of putting together of signs and symbols and using bright primary colors. The paint used is the one that one can ordinarily buy in a hardware shop. The drawings manifest the rich popular religiosity tradition which incorporates numerology, komiks type of illustration and a sense of pang-fiesta pageantry. In short, truly an art form evolving out of the masa. However, there are many nuances of meanings in this whole art illustration if one were to include the plastic flowers, the candles and other artifacts. Filipino religiosity offers the element of sensual vision, touch, symmetry of lines and a child-like simplicity.
After I left the church, I chatted a while with Jose Illustre, a son of the Founder. He had no major preoccupations that day so he was taking it easy. He was outside when I exited the church and we chatted while he smoked a cigarette. He told me the story of how his father founded this samahan beginning with his enlightenment in Bantayan and the subsequent departure for
When I asked them how many they were in this samahan, he said that they speak in terms of balangays (clusters of families) and as of the moment, they have 71 balangays spread across the country with most of them being in
Jose thought that things were fine with them; besides they have no aspiration to be rich.
After my conversation with Jose, I went down to the pamuemuestohan at the back of the church. There is a stairway from the base of the church down to where the spring is from out of which flows waters that merge with a nearby stream.
The water sprouting out from the spring is considered holy water and it is known for its miraculous cures. Here sick people take a shower for healing purposes. I drank from the spring and felt relief from the humid heat. I also blessed myself with the crystal clear water.
As one walks through stones and boulders gathered all over the riverbed, one notices the various puestos by the riverbanks. Here one sees a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes, one of a seated Sacred Heart (which has been hit by falling debris) and crosses. Here pilgrims place their lighted candles and pause to pray for their intentions.
Before noon, I decided to exit out of Kinabuhayan. I walked back to Sta. Lucia. Along the way, one can gaze at one of the peaks of
That afternoon, I said goodbye to my host - the
After travelling for close to two hours from Sta. Lucia in Dolores to Lukban, Quezon (involving two jeepneys and a bus), I found the historical shrine at his home village in Sitio Pandak, Lukban. The National Historical Commission had carved out a space, built a monument in his honor - a more than life-sized bust painted to gold - and planted pomelo trees,
Since I was in the neighborhood I also played the role of a tourist. I walked on foot around the poblacion of Lukban impressed with how the local folks have built and maintained a solid statue in honor of Gat Jose Rizal, an illustrado building beside the statue and a more than a century-old church. Later I took a ride to nearby Tayabas and went to see its basilica.
The churches of Lukban and Tayabas are, indeed, impressive with their antiquity, architectural style and appearances both from the outside and inside. But - no offense please to those who build and continue to maintain these edifices - they leave me cold after having gone through the churches and puestos of
Or was I just too tired after the three days of my intense sojourn?
As I travelled back to
I could tell that I had gained new insights into my history as Filipino while being affirmed in my Pinoy identity. I sensed a deeper communion with the ancestors who had simply wished that they be set free so that they could simply live as people with dignity. Since that was not possible with the oppressive colonial masters, they knew the only way to be free was to fight for that freedom and they persisted until their heads were chopped off. I knew that something stirred deep in my soul because of this pilgrimage. Once again, but this time after facing the lead agents - like Nanay Isabel - up close and personal, I am impressed with how the simple, poor people of Mt. Banahaw had prefigured many things we now take for granted in the Catholic Church because of Vatican II in the l960s, the MSPC in the l970s-80s and PCP II in the 1990s.
Their churches were always locally-based; they've had BECs long before such ecclesial communities arose in Latin America, especially in
So, who are the truly blessed by the God we believe in?
Part III
in the “myth-ical” land of milk and honey interfacing the belly of the beast
After finishing all my engagements in and around Manila as well and having secured all my needed travel documents, I was ready to leave for the next segment of my sabbatical – the one that would take me across the Pacific towards the U.S.A. On September 20, I boarded a
letter from manila
September 20, 2006
Tonight, I am on a Singapore Airlines bound for
It felt quite ironic to be flying out of
It took a while before I could continue with my sabbatical journey. I was here in
I will be staying for a while with the Redemptorists at the Bronx in
Please pray for me as I continue my journey. Rest assured that since I will have adequate time to be still, that you will also be in my prayers. I will occasionally be in touch and share with you my reflections as I go on this pilgrimage, depending on my schedules and the availability of a computer with an internet (I wish there are internet cafes in the
Take care.
essay from
September 28, 2006
Imagine
It is a good time to be in
As I am on some kind of a pilgrimage - even here in the Big Apple - I've been hopping from one sacred place to another. My home base is the Redemptorist community here in the Bronx, uptown
Saturday last week, I attended the anticipated Mass at 5:30 p.m. officiated by the parish priest, Fr. Ron Bonneau, CSsR. As the Mass began, I saw two uniformed white men occupy the pew behind me (I thought they were policemen, but I was to learn later that they were firemen). There were about 30 of us who came to church, majority of whom were colored (including me, of course).
I was a bit tired that afternoon and there was hardly any singing during the Mass, so my attention drifted elsewhere. I wasn't focused on listening to the readings and my attention only perked up when I heard Fr. Ron speak about the war in
Well, at this Mass, without any hesitation at all, Fr. Ron made the same point - Bush wanted the Iraqi oil. And he went on to explain why this war was immoral and why Americans should oppose this war and demand that the
I could hear the grumbling at my back and knew that the two uniformed white men were not happy with Fr. Ron's sermon. If Fr. Ron only made a passing remark, the grumbling would end and the Mass would have continued. However, to my pleasant surprise, Fr. Ron went on and expressed his displeasure at what the American government is doing in
The two men could not take it any longer. They stood up and one of them shouted: "that is not the Gospel you are talking about, Father!" Both then walked out of the church. I half-expected some other parishioners to follow the uniformed men but no one did. Fr. Ron, however, was shocked at the men's action; he said, he did not expect it at all. That this was the first time that it happened to him while preaching in the
But to appease the parishioners, Fr. Ron had to say that he loved his country, the
The papers - except the really right-wing ones - have been indicating the low popularity ratings of Bush. With elections coming up in November, Republicans running for Congress are afraid they, too, would be affected by a growing dissatisfaction of the Americans re the
Still, the overt opposition to the war remains hidden. There are no reports of actual demonstrations in the streets. While taking a walk at the
There was a sense of deja vu as I read a few sections of liberal newspapers and magazines recently printed. From left-wing authors and artists came the same lament: unlike the youth of the l960s, the young Americans today are not interested in protesting against a war but are rather busy embracing the latest Apple technology; unlike those who proposed radical changes to consumerist America two generations ago, the present generation are only interested in earning more to be able to consume more. Similar lamentations from the mouths of martial law activists in the
Last Sunday's walk through
A walk to a more quiet corner at the park, however, made it possible for me to remember the Vietnam war and the protest against it worldwide. To celebrate the spirit of John Lennon, his widow, Yoko Ono, made a contribution to the park to establish the Strawberry Field. Strawberry patches occupy this section along with a variety of tall trees. At a section where three long benches face each other to make a big triangle, there is a mosaic round figure on the cement ground. It reminded me of the big eye design at the pilgrim site in
This was, of course, the title of one of John Lennon's song which was an anthemn for peace. John opposed the Vietnam war; if he were alive today, would he oppose the war in
There were about 30 of us who sat around the benches intently gazing at the circle on the ground even as bikers, hikers, mothers with children, tourists walked up and down to glance at IMAGINE. It was late in the afternoon and the traffic noise further down the road was muffled by the trees and bushes. It was quiet and everyone - except the children - had somber looks. People remembered the poet-singer-songwriter who did stick out his neck. The remembrance was made easy as there was a man who wore the same type of glasses that Lennon was known for - except that the lens were red - and sang some of Lennon's songs. It was easy to sing along with him in one of the songs' refrain: I'll get high with a li'l help from my friends, I'll get by with a li'l help from my friends (being quite homesick for friends back home).
That morning, I was in
The other church, which is in the Little Italy section of
After visiting the two Catholic churches, the Buddhist temple along
It was good to come to Chinatown and enter into the religiosity of those who founded this part of
I do hope to find time to visit a mosque and a synagogue while I am here. A friend from
I also heard that Dorothy Day, the American woman who founded The Catholic Worker and is an uncanonized saint (although the process of her canonization is supposed to have been initiated) was laid to rest in nearby
On September 30, I left for
letter from
November 25, 2006
Thanks for your Christmas message.
It is Saturday afternoon, the usual time when I write once more from the library here at the Catholic U in
Many days during the Christmas holidays seemed like the days of late summer and early fall. This climate has been quite confusing not just for human beings but the animal and plant world. Last week-end, as my companions and I went around
It is very interesting to be here in
I couldn't help but compare how life was in the interior of Mindanao, in places in
But right now, my feeling is that I'm right at the very center. And while here, there's been no let-up in terms of political events that could easily find their way into the pages of history books. These events included the November elections which saw power shifting from the Republicans to the Democrats (the latter now have the majority in both Houses), the eroding popularity of George W. Bush (who only a few years ago seemed invincible), the death of ex-President Gerald Ford and the wake that was held here, the media coverage of the Iraq Study Report which was quite critical of the Bush policy in Iraq, the growing anti-Iraq war sentiment among the people which have impacted the positions of Senators and Congresspersons (especially those who voted for this war years ago), the swearing-in ceremonies of the new government officials, the positioning of those who aim to run as President in 2008 (with Hilary Clinton - a woman, and Obama Barack - a black person as leading contenders), a movement towards the impeachment of Bush (an ad was printed in the New York Times yesterday calling for more signatures), etc. etc.
One is, indeed, in a very privileged position here given the ringside view of the goings on in
However, all I could do is update myself about the goings on, but not intensely. I do not read all the newspapers and my TV viewing is quite limited. And, most certainly, I can only be a bystander since I'll be out of here in less than 3 months from now. Besides there are other better things to do while I am around.
At our
And
Considering all of the above, my Christmas-New Year turned out to be quite a memorable experience. Imagine, I have two godchildren here and I met both of them. One is Camille Dowling, who is now 25, the daughter of John and Esper Dowling. I met with her and her sister Christine. Then there is Luke Wallis, the son of Jim Wallis of Sojourners. There is also a Pinoy family here I could visit and there is good Pinoy food when I visit them. This is the Francia-Reyes family; Judy is Myrna's ICM's sister. Henry, the former writer for the Inquirer Magazine came to visit his sister, so I met him, too. And because the telephone is cheaper here, it is easy enough to call on friends.
This is all for now. Once more, rest assured you continue to be in my prayers. And I do hope, the first few weeks of 2007 have been good to you. Take care.
letter from
November 26, 2006
I'm writing this letter from the house of Judy Francia-Reyes, who lives in
It's our week-end off and there are many places to visit around here. Fortunately, the Center where I am doing my sabbatical is quite near a subway stop and from that stop one can get around practically the whole of
It is a wonderful day today, with the sunshine very much like back home. Here in this room, one needs air-conditioning even if it is winter outside. The beginning of winter in the eastern side of the
The big day for the Americans was last Thursday - Thanksgiving Day. My companions at the
Naturally, we had turkey in its various forms, I was surprised there is turkey bacon here too. And tastes much better than pork bacon. One wonders how many thousands of turkeys got massacred for the Thanksgiving dinners last Thursday. If travel around the
Yesterday was Black Friday, another Day that is of interest to foreign anthropologists when they come to the
Thanksgiving day was a bit dreary as it was cold, dark and gloomy. On that day, many Americans do have many reasons to be grateful for. The Democrats, of course, are quite grateful that they have once again taken over Congress and the Senate. However, I wondered how many American families prayed for the Iraqi people on that day and for peace in that troubled land as well as other places like
This is getting to be a longer letter than I intended. I end by writing that things are really fine with me in terms of my sabbatical. This is such a major gift to me by my congregation and my higher Power. It is not so often that one can have the time to rest, relax, recreate, do art work, read as much as one wants, have all the time to pray and meditate and be in touch with one's core being. I'm so glad there are no major upsets, problems, disturbances affecting confreres, family and friends which can get in the way of me fully enjoying my sabbatical. I pray it remains so until it is time for me to pack up and go home.
And one last thing: rest assured that I do have a lot of time to remember you in my prayers.
Take care.
letter from
February 18, 2007
It is snowing as I write you this letter. The "winter wonderland of a White Christmas" is only coming in February here in
Two days from now is Ash Wednesday. How time flies! It seems as if Christmas/New Year were just a few weeks ago. Tuesday is Mardi Gras in
There's no money for the homeless here, but billions of dollars are still being appropriated and spent for the war in
Part of the reason is the more than 3,000
A survey was recently undertaken and the results published in The Washington Post as to the Americans' view on
The Democrats and a few of the Republican congresspersons have opposed Bush's plan to send more troops. Last Friday, a sharply divided House of Representatives passed a resolution formally repudiating Bush's decision to send more troops to
So, it will be interesting how the political turmoil here in
Congress may be bitterly divided over the resolution vote and how they view the
(I did saw Jane Fonda from afar during the anti-Iraq war rally at the National Mall here in
If you watched the Grammy awards you must have heard John Legend singing "Soldier's Song", another anti-war song.
If you've seen the Clint Eastwood films of 2007 - "Flags of our Fathers" and "Letters from Iwo Jima" both of which are up for Oscar awards - one knows this is
Not that popular culture here in the
Anyway, as I've written earlier, part of the "privilege" of having a renewal program here in
I'm glad I don't live here for it can also be a city to cause despair.
As I write this letter, I am counting the days of my remaining stay and I am so pleased to let you know that in less than a month I will be out of here. On March 17, I leave for
Meanwhile, I will go to the museums I have not been able to visit yet and maybe go once more to those I did. There is an interesting Jasper Johns exhibit at the
Possibly, there might be cherry blossoms already in bloom by then across the mall. It would be nice to see the blossoms before saying goodbye. I hope everything is fine at your end. God bless!
letter from
March 17, 2007
I leave the "belly of the beast" -
I'm sending this letter from the house of Judy Francia-Reyes, Myrna's younger sister where I stayed a few days. Two things happened here yesterday that are of interest to us theologians.
First, the gathering of Pinoys around the issue of the current violation of human rights in our Inang Bayan. Eliz Tapia had written me earlier that she was coming to this gathering which is known as the Ecumenical Voice on Peace and Human Rights in the
Second, last night, to commemorate the 4th anniversary of the Iraq War, there was a prayer vigil and march sponsored by the Christian Peace Witness for
I stayed with Jim Wallis (editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine and convenor of Call to Renewal and recently featured in Time magazine as the voice of the "American Religious Left" whom I first met at an EATWOT event in Switzerland in l983) and his family (his eldest son, Luke, is my godson) last Thursday and Friday. He had informed me earlier of the event and invited me to join. Naturally, I wanted to join. Since I was his guest, I had a ringside view of the proceedings inside the cathedral.
The liturgy was quite moving. Outside it was raining hard and the cold of winter penetrated the bones. But inside the cathedral was heated up with the warmth of more than 3,000 bodies who came from far and wide. (In fact a few buses of Mennonites coming from
The talks and homilies, the songs and chants were just so moving. These were both personal and political, communal and spiritual. First major sharing that moved us to tears was the Witness of Ms. Celeste Zappala, a member of the
There were readings from a
The witness of Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock of the
It was a pleasant surprise on my part to listen to Rev. Carol Rose of the Christian Peacemaker Team reading a text written by Sheila Provencher, her colleague who went to
The prayer for peace brought to the altar representatives of the various Christian denominations: Pax Christi, ELCA, Baptist, Reformed Church in
"Lord of hope and compassion, Friend of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, who called our ancestors in faith to journey to a new future, we remember before you the country of Iraq from which they were summoned, ancient land of the Middle East, realm of the two rivers, birth place of great cities and of civilization. May we who name ourselves children of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, call to mind all the peoples of the
Jim Wallis gave the last talk - The Call of Action. He began his talk by referring to the birthday of his younger son Jack, who was born 4 years ago when the
"Since its beginning, we have believed this war is immoral....
The
Immediately after the end of the ceremony, the people left the cathedral and marched towards the White House, despite the fact that there was a mini-snowstorm raging outside the cathedral.
(At this stage, I said goodbye to the Wallises and was brought to the nearest Metro Station where I caught my subway train and a bus to
More than 3,000 joined the march from the cathedral to the White House (close to 3 miles away); they reached the place by 11:00 PM. There they walked around the White House with their candles. A hundred or so then crossed the line and committed civil disobedience, including Jim. They were all arrested and brought to a nearby police station where they had to fill in documents and were fined US$100 each. Jim said they were out of the place by 4:00 AM.
Arriving at Judy's place we covered the late evening news. Even this morning, the CNN continues to report on the march. Outside of Fox News, all major TV channels covered it. If you were watching CNN today, you might have been able to get a glimpse of the march.
So there. It was good to be at the event, one of the last things I did while staying here near and around
The memories of last night's prayer vigil and march will last me through Easter and beyond.
May God's (Allah's) blessings be with us always. Allahuh akbar!
During this part of my sabbatical, it was such a delight to spend time with a godson (Luke, the son of Jim and Joy Wallis) and a goddaughter (Camille, the daughter of John and Esper Dowling).
POEMS
the season of falling
i sit in awe
as I look out the window
life’s passages
unfold in slow-mo
this time the season
bursts out in color
so lovely
one’s breath almost stops
as if the iPod
is on low bat
this time the season
is one of falling
a myriad of colors
fall from the sky
as a wind gently blows
the autumn leaves
the ground embraces
‘tis the season for
discarding masks
‘tis the season for
shedding skin
‘tis the season for
falling to the ground.
October 7, 2006
the season of disintegrating
i shiver in desperation
as I walk across a winter-field
life’s passages
roll out as tsunami waves
this time the season
recoils in the wake of a collapse
so filled with gloom
one’s sight on the verge of relapse
as if one drops in a state of vertigo
to a bottomless pit
this time the season
is one of disintegrating
the forlorn sky
mirrors the heart’s despair
as the branches without leaves
shake in the icy wind
blowing across a lonely landscape
‘tis the season for
embracing manageability
‘tis the season for
tearing out the flesh
‘tis the season for
burying the discarded
December 30, 2006
the season of hoping
i await the first glow of dawn
as I contemplate the east
life’s passages seem as
blurred as images on a train ride
this time the season
gently shakes off the dizziness
so reassuring
one’s body floats
levitating off the ground
rising with wings
this time the season
is one of hoping
blessings wonderful blessings
cascade from the heavens
as one’s gaze beholds
the possibilities and opportunities
life continues to offer
‘tis the season for
locking up despair
‘tis the season for
healing the wounds
‘tis the eason for
daring to step towards hope.
February 18, 2006
the season of rebirthing
i glimpse a moment of serenity
as I surrender myself to a space where
life’s passages
come to a standstill
this time the season
demands life-saving breaths
so spirit-filled
one’s restlessness goes wilder
as if traversing the starlit sky
ready to spark the fireworks
this time the season
is one of rebirthing
a bonfire of intense longing
explodes from the belly
as amazing grace bury
the traumas of a life
lived as a lonely leper
‘tis the season for
embracing vulnerability
‘tis the season for
exploring simplicity
‘tis the season for
being at home with one’s inadequacy.
february 18, 2007
part IV
stopping by germany/Austria before
landing in the holy land for
the holy week
On March 17, I left the
mga balak
ALPINE
akong gisud-ong ang katahum sa
samtang nagpa-uraray sa akong biyahe sulod sa tren
gikan sa alemanya padulong sa Austria
gibati kog kaharuhay kay ang hulagway daw dili ra layo
sa lugar sa akong labing lawom nga mga handurawan
ang luna sa kalibutan nga ginganlag Mindanao
kay sa maong dapit habog sab ang mga kabungturan
ug sa ilang kataas mahikap na ang mga panganod
ug sa dalikyat daw mo-abri na ang pultahan sa langit
apan sa takulahaw nigitik kanako
ug wala ko damha nagngisi na ang akong aping
nga kung dunay nagsud-ong nako, isipon kong buang-buang
nahinumdum ko niadtong bata pa ko nga sip-onon
nga kung sugoon ni Nanay nga mo-adto’g tindahan
aron mopalit og gatas, ang paliton mao gyod ang Alpine
pastilan ngano man gyod nga kining maong kabungturan
maoy gihimong kinaham sa wala masayod aning bungtora
nga naa man unta ang katahum ni Diwata o ni Apo
KAUGMAON’G WAY PAGLAUM
bag-o lang nga akong nabasahan sa mantalaan
nga nagpadayag og kaguol ang Santo Papa sa Roma
kabahin sa kaugmaon sa kontinente sa Europa
kay kung tawo pa kini, ang paglaum iya nang gibasura
wala na kuno’y paghandum si Europa sa umaabot
wala na kuno’y paghigugma si Europa sa ugma-damlag
wala na kuno’y panghinaut si Europa nga magpakaburos pa
wala na kuno’y interest si Europa nga mopakatawo’g bata
tinuod, kay kung itandi si Europa kang Asya
o kang Africa ug kang Latina Amerika
Dyutay ra ang mga bata nga nagpalupad og tabanog
o nangaligo sa sapa o naa sa kadalanan nga nagyaka
apan mahimong idekonstrak ang pulong ni Benedicto
aron dili ta matakdan sa pagkadulom sa iyang handurawan
siguro sa mga lumadnong Europeyano maihap mga kabataan
apan sa mga yanong migrante, daw lahi ra ang kahimtang
ang makalingaw nga hunahuna mao hinoon kini
kung buot gyod sa Papa nga modaghan ang mga kabataan
tugtan niya ang mga kaparian nga magminyo
ug kadtong tingdosena og anak, hatagan niya’g premyo
NAMATA NA
namata na ang
kasagbotan
kabulakan
kakahoyan
pipila sab ka bulan sila
nangantulog
nipahulay
nagpauraray
ang kinaiyahan
masinabtanon
maalamon
malangkopon
gigahina’g panahon
kasagbotan
kabulakan
kakahoyan
apan kitang katawhan
dagan ngari
dagan ngadto
Kanus-a mohonong?
WAY KATAPUSANG PANAW
kaliwat ka sa mga nagapanaw
bisan pa niadtong panahon nga dili na
mahinumduman sa imong mga kaapohan
kay kadagatan ang nag-alirong sa
imong gihimong pinuy-anan
busa naa kanimo ang kahibalo’g kaalam
pagmugna’g mga sakayan sa kalaworan
gani nahinagbo mo usab kadtong
nipanaw gikan sa lagyong lapyahan
namaligyag ilang mga gihagoan
ug naghisgot sa mga tinoohang gibarugan
daling nagkatagbo ang inyong gikaoyonan
apan naaninaw ba sa imong kaapohan
nga moabot ang adlaw nga perteng layoa
ang ma-abtan sa imong paglaroy-laroy
ug nga dili na mayhap - sama’g mga bituon sa langit
o samag mga kakahoyan nga wa pa putla
diha sa mga nahabiling kalasangan sa Mindanao -
ang mopanaw sa tanang suok sa kalibutan?
kay kung adtoon mo ang hilit ug awa-aw
nga dapit sa Australya’g
mga pantalan sa
sa disyerto sa
sa mga hotel sa
mga ospital sa Alemanya ug Irlandiya
nagtapun-ok ang mga Pinoy nga nangindahay
imo ba kining kapalaran nga dili kalikayan
o lintunganay’ng kahimtang sa way honong
nga pagtampalas sa imong kaliwatan
niadtong nagpakagamhanan sa kalibutan
kansang kahakog hangtud karon wa pa magun-ob
ugma pa ba ma-undang ang imong pagpanaw
o karon na ba kay way itambal sa kamingaw?
SEMENTERYO
sementeryo na ang mga simbahan
sa mga dugay nang miuswag nga mga siyudad
daghan nang gilubong nga mga patay
ug maihap na lang ang mga buhi’ng mosulod
gilubong na ang mga tinoohan sa katigulangan
gibalibag na ang mga nangaging kasaulogan
gipadaplin na ang mga kanhing giisip nga bulahan
gisarhan mga simbahan, kung abrihan papultahan
nagpabilin na lang ang mga bulawanong
hulagway sa mga anghel ug santos nga gimingaw
sa pagsud-ong niadtong dunay putli’g mithi
duna pa bay luha nga mitagak gikan sa matang buta?
sementeryo na ang maong mga simbahan
sementeryo nga museo – maoy gidangatan
dunay midagkot og kandila sa paghandum
sa gi-agian’g kaliwatan nga nahanaw na
KINSAY GIPALABI
dili ang mga politikong kurakot
o mga negosyanteng konsabo sa langyaw
o mga mitampalas sa mga kalasangan
o kasundalohang gapahapsay sa gamhanan
ang giila
ang gisaulog
ang gihandum
sa mga lugar nga tinuod nang
naka-ila ang katawhan sa kinsa’y angay nilang
ilhon
saulogon
handumon
(sama sa
ang giila
ang gisaulog
ang gihandum
mao ang:
mga manunulat sa kadulom ug kahayag
mga pintor sa kamatayon ug kinabuhi
mga musikero sa kasubo ug kalipay
mga dramaturgo sa kapotong ug kasadya
(duna pay purohan sa atong mga siyudad
sa kapupud-an nga
ang kasinatian sa
mahimong ikasalamin?)
ANG TIYAN SA MANGTAS
lisod ang kinabuhi
sa
sa iyang pagtoo
kung siya nagpuyo
sa tiyan sa mangtas
sama ni Pablo
niadtong panahon sa Roma
diin ang emperador ang nangulo
lisod tuod ang pagpamatuod
sa usa ka Kristiano
sa iyang baruganan
kung siya nagpuyo
sa tiyan sa mangtas
sama ni Clementeng misyonaryo
niadtong panahon sa Viena
diin ang emperador ang nangulo
lisod gyod ang pagsaksi
sa usa ka Kristiano
sa iyang tinoohan
kung siya nagpuyo
sa tiyan sa mangtas
sama ni Jim Wallis akong amigo
karong mga panahona sa
bisag ang emperador way sulod ang ulo
WAY TINGGANAY
way tingganay
kinsay hawod
ang tawo o makina?
nalipong na ko
sa kahaytek karon sa panahon
di ko kaapas
sa papaspas sa pagbag-o
sa makainarya
sa galamitonsa mga butano
sa airport, terminal
opisina bisa’g pinuy-anan
wa ko maanad
nga mosandig sa mga butano
aron masacran
ang kanhing nahibaw-an
unsay oras na ba?
unsay sakyan padulong sa pantalan?
pilay kantidad sa peso sa euro?
asa ko kapalit og tambal?
anad kong mangutana’g tawo
dili makina nga way pulso
apan pastilan mag-unsa na lang
sa lugar nga daw gikalipay
ang way tingganay
konsultaha ang internet
si goggle, si youtube, si yahoo
mabuang ko
ANG KAMATUORANG MAKASAMOK
duna tooy kamatuoran nga makasamok natong tanan
gipakaylap kinig mga pelÃkula, programa sa TV ug mantalaan
maayo na lang kay dili na kini mahimong dili toohan
gawas niadtong nagpabuta-bongol kay walay baruganan
kini kabahin sa kalibutanhong pag-uswag sa kaigang
sa panahon ug maoy nahimong kapasikaran
sa pagkaylap sa makalilisang nga katalagman
sama sa bagyo’ng motayhop sama’g higante’ng nabuang
tungod kay duna nay boslot sa gihapnig nga pandong
didto sa awa-aw sa panganod nga masud-ong
ang kainit sa adlaw manohoptohop kay way honong
ang mga gawi niadtong way konsensyang nagapabadlong
tiaw mo ang lingtunganay niining maong kasamok
daghang lugar daplig dagat sa katalagman isoksok
angayan na kitang tanan mangurog sa kahadlok
magpakabana, magtambayayongay sa hiniusang lihok
letter from
March 28, 2007
I arrived here in
I've been in
At the Redemptorists' church which is right at the center of
Indeed, it is a prayer one can say of one's loved ones. Because
There is so much to see and experience in this eternal city. One could stay here a lifetime and not exhaust the sites that have accumulated since the 5th century. There are places here where archaeologists excavated walls built during the time of the
And words are never enough to describe all that one glimpses in such a short stay. However, I will try to highlight those that have such deep impact on my own sense of aesthetics.
Art is so alive here, it is in every single space of this city, in every bone of the Viennese person, in every stone that constitutes the cobbled streets, in every garden that in the spring allows the sprouting of colors, in every window of stores attracting the gaze of potential buyers, in every building that stands, in every tower that jots out to the sky. the whole landscape is one where every imaginable expression of beauty converge. Name every area of artistic endeavor - architecture, painting, sculpture, music, literature, the visual and folk arts, opera, theatre, garden landscaping, flower arrangement, food and drink - each one has been brought to an almost unimaginable level of excellence in this city with such refine tastes built through centuries. AFter all, this is the city of
And because it has not reached the overwhelming size of
I wish, one day, you, too, will get a chance to visit this awesome city! Take care.
Finally, after the short interlude in
Unfortunately because I was in
letter from
April 6, 2007
Assalamu alaycum! Shalom! Kalinaw ni Kristo uban kaninyo!
It is Good Friday night in the Old City of Jerusalem. I just went for a visita Iglesia and ended up at the Holy Sepulchre Basilica, the center of Christian (both of the Latin and Greek Orthodox traditions, including the Armenians and the Protestants) celebrations for the Holy Week.
The highlight, of course, was the Via Crucis at noontime, which began at 12:30 till 2:00 p.m. There must have been a million people - the local Jews and Palestinians, the pilgrims, the tourists, the traders and the Israeli police and military - who competed with every precious inch of the Via Dolorosa.
I prayed for all of you, for your loved ones and for your intentions at every shrine I've been to including
Through Sr. Helen Graham's help, I managed to find a room at the
Ecce Homo which is right at the very center of the
Tomorrow I go to visit
There are so many thoughts and feelings to share and reflections to
write. But those sharing will have to wait when there is more time to face this computer screen.
For how, let me wish you and your loved ones a Blessed Easter!
Peace and shalom.
part V
the euphoric escapade in
The
After
essay from
April 25, 2007
The Face of the Filipino in Diaspora
Much have been written about the Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) and as the number approaches 10 million (and counting), more write-ups will appear everywhere. What I want to write about comes from a reflexive view of a Pinoy-in-pilgrimage who have encountered hundreds of them at every stage of my sojourn in the last ten months.
First of all, the term OFW may already be outdated as the phenomenon of the Filipino abroad has shifted into various constructs. Wasn't it only yesterday that they were referred to as Filipino Contract Workers (FCW) or was it Overseas Contract Workers (OCW)? One of these days, another acronym might arise as the new realities would impact the manner that a phenomenon is labeled. Might it be FiD as in Filipinos in Diaspora?
The OFW if they involve "workers" is only one of the categories of the FiD. They are, of course, the great majority. And rightly so, since they are the "bayani ng bayan". Through sheer hard work in, mainly, very harsh working conditions, they've been very much responsible for keeping our economy floating (even more than Gloria's technocrats who think mainly in terms of perpetuating our dependency to our western masters who control the flow of capital and investments) and our country surviving in the globalized scheme of things.
But there are more to the OFWs in terms of the face of the Filipino abroad. There are also all other kinds of "OFWs" who are better included in the wider "FiD". Even among the OFWs alone there are now all kinds of categories: those who are "legally" in foreign countries for just a limited time according to the stipulations of their contracts (and who will have to return to the native land once the contract expires), those who are "illegal" (or TNTs) and yet able to secure employment where they are exploited further on account of having no papers, those who might be abroad for a much longer time as their contracts are regularly renewed until they retire, those who in the process of being abroad have married locals and could now enjoy citizenship, those who are aggressively seeking citizenship through one way or another. There could be other sub-categories within this category.
One other feature in this typology has to do with where they will be once the age of retirement catches up with them. There are those who are counting the days before they go home as they have no doubt where they will retire, namely, in the arms of the Inang Bayan. Some are making provisions now in terms of being able to comfortably settle down in the country as they retire. In some cases, their foreign husbands/wives are the ones more interested in retiring in the
But who are the non-workers among the OFWs? Well there are the husbands and wives who are not employed outside the homes. There are the children, too. A confrere of mine in
There are also Pinoys who do not fit in easily with the category of OFW unless this construct is understood to bring in almost every FiD under its umbrella. Usually when the letters OFW appears in the average Pinoy consciousness, one refers to those who do manual work especially as domestic workers, nannies, selling goods in stores, low-paid workers in various establishment in malls, seamen, hospital aides, and the like. There are, of course, other ways of earning money as this list could be much longer.
In my travels, they have constituted the big majority. In the Cape Town, South Africa I met a nanny who was traveling with his Saudi Arabia employers who were on vacation as I went to see the penguins. In the Washington DC Cancer Research Institute, I met hospital aides. In
Me: Kumusta na po kayo?
She: Ito Kuya, hirap na hirap sa ginagawa ko. Ang laki kasi ng asong ito.
Me: Kumusta naman ang employer ninyo?
She: Mabait naman Kuya. Pero noong isang araw, sinigawan ko po dahil masyado na siya. Alam mo kaya, nag-iyakan kami pagkatapus. Kasi sinabi ko sa kanya, kung mananatili kang malupit sa akin, iiwanan kita.
Interesting conversation considering the sub-texts. Another conversation worth including here is one I overheard in an internet cafe right inside the old city section of
Nimfa: Oy Nay, perte man nimong payata oy. Mora man kag sigueg puasa. Tan-awa ko, nanambok na ko dinhi. (Mom, you are so think, as if you've been fasting too much. Look at me, I am so stout).
Silence
Nimfa: Kusga imong tingog Nay, kay dili ko kadungog sa imong tingog. (Speak louder Mom as I can't hear you).
Silence
Nimfa: Kusga lagi imong tingog ba. (Speak louder ba).
Silence
Nimfa (laughing): Sobra-an sab kakusog sa imong tingog, pero OK lang. (You speak too loud but it's OK).
Silence
Nimfa (shedding tears): Lisod baya ang kinabuhi dire Nay! Pero unsaon ta man, kinahanglan man gyod kong motrabaho dinhi. (Life here is difficult Mom, but what can we do, I need to work here).
Ay pastilan puno gyod sa drama ang kinabuhi sa atong mga OFWs!
Indeed, given the huge number of FiDs, the categories beyond the usual construct of OFWs is quite awesome! If someone ever wants to write an interesting dissertation about FiDs, this area of study would yield very interesting findings. Consider the following narratives of FiDs I met along my sabbatical journey (names and places have been changed to protect their identity):
Fely lives in
Susan was a teacher back home in Butuan but has always wanted to be a nurse. Somehow she found a way to study having stayed in
Maricel used to work for the Department of Agrarian Reform in Cagayan de Oro City. She was being promoted to a job in
Puring was a catechist in a parish near
Then there are the priests and religious abroad and some of them do accompaniment work with the OFWs. In one sense, that also make them OFWs. For some this is an assignment. I already mentioned my confere in
Then there are the Pinoy artists abroad. Some have to find jobs so they can survive as their art is not yet able to support them financially. A Pinay theatre artists in
Another group is constituted by development workers who honed their skills in various Church and non-governmental organizations since the martial rule of Marcos until post-EDSA. many were with institutions like NASSA and its national network, PBSP, the MSPCS and the like. Many are in development agencies in Europe including
Then, finally, there are the Pinoy/Pinay scholars who are out to learn new theories/skills and develop expertise. There are Pinoys who are doing their course in
Why am I writing this essay? Possibly I just want to collect my thoughts on something that has really struck me since I began my sabbatical and traveled far and wide. The Filipino abroad is everywhere. At airports, train and bus terminals, at public plazas, malls, hotels, fast food centers, museums, hospitals, churches - everywhere, they are there. In my travels before, it was quite usual to stop and say Hello and exchange a few words especially: Kumusta? Taga saan ka sa atin? Anong ginagawa mo rito?
But now, as the numbers have so drastically increased, one no longer feels compelled to stop and chat with Pinoys even as one knows they are truly Pinoy (after all,our collective habitus is so transparent, one can easily spot a Pinoy in an international crowd).
However, one thing is quite evident. The Filipino face abroad is actually that of a FILIPINA. A PINAY. I don't know what the actual statistics are but my hunch is that at least 65% of the FiD are Pinays. And of these number, at least 70% are in the age range of l7-40. It is a young face and a beautiful one at that because of the perceived exoticism in the face, especially of the morena type.
Nowhere was this more evident than in
Me: Sa Haifa ka gatrabaho? (Your work in Haifa)
Lolita: Oo, Kuya (Yes)
Me: Unsa may trabaho nimo didto? (what is your work?)
Lolita: Taga-bantay og bata, Kuya. (Take care of children)
Me: Di ba nga bag-o lang mo niagi og kuyaw nga guerra? (Isn't it that you just went through a frightening war?)
Lolita: Tinuod Kuya. Perte gyong kuyawa, pagboto sa bomba, mokurog ang yuta, mokurog sab akong kabukugan. (Yes, it made us very fearful, when the bombs exploded, the earth shoke, so also our bones).
Me: Pero nganong magpabilin man ka didto? (So why remain there?)
Lolita: Ay Kuya, wala may laing katrabahoan. Usa pa, anad na man sab ko.
Taga-Basilan god ko. (There is no other place to find work. One more reason, I am from Basilan!)
Ay pastilan, depende lagi sa kagikan.
Indeed, it is rare for the Jews and Palestinians to see Filipino men. Most of the time they inter-act with Pinays. This is why when one goes to the tourists shops for souvenirs, the storekeepers immediately flaunt the Filipino words they've picked up from the Pinays: Magandang umaga! Kumusta ka! Salamat! Mahal kita! And since Pinays bargain like they do in Divisoria and Baclaran, the storekeepers are ready for the bargaining game once a Pinoy shows up at his store.
So there, the Filipino face abroad is Pinay.
So what are the ramifications? That is a study in itself.
But for some reflections:
What is this phenomenon doing to the so-called fabric of the Pinoy family back home, especially if a sizable percentage of the women OFW have families back home, or if not, boyfriends waiting for them back home?
So how has this phenomenon impacted stereotypes? For example, it used to be that the metaphor for the
Can we continue to have a policy - presently fully backed by the State, with Gloria giving her own blessings without she appearing to have a sense of worry as to what is happening to Pinays abroad - where we export our women no matter what are the costs? Some people may not raise an eyebrow and accept in very pragmatic terms that we no longer can avoid globalized labor, but is this the best way to "benefit" from the exportation of labor in order to earn precious dollars so the economy keeps floating?
And what of the women themselves?
I run the risk of being critiqued by even writing this essay and usurping the OFW women's right to have their own voice. And thus, to textualize their own experience. I can only wish that more women will not just speak their voice but scream such voices to the four corners of the world. I can only wish that there are more fora and opportunities for such voices to be heard, not just heard, but be considered in the context of policy and legal decision making processes. I can only wish that the public square will widen so discourses on the commodification of women's labor can be ventilated even more. I salute all those efforts that parallel such wishful thinking. For apart from writing something, there is really very little I can do on my own.
But I assert my voice as a pilgrim.
In fact, the Pinay face abroad is one that confronts the pilgrims as they seek to search for a God (a Higher Power, a Cosmic presence) of the everyday. I appropriate De Certeau (in my very inadequate manner as I need to study De Certeau more) and say that, indeed, there is something to being mystic-wanderers especially for those engaged in perpetual departures. This is very true for the FiD, in particular the Pinay OFW.
She is mother and sister. She is babaylan and catechist. She is change agent and artist. She is the embodiment of the gift of nurturance which in our Lumad mytology go all the way back to Mebuyan and her sister goddesses. When she takes care of a little boy in Hongkong or a little girl in
But she prays. Very intensely, knowing that this is the final weapon of the weak, that along with her tears, will bring whatever form of redemption wished for from a land, far far away from that which she keeps in her heart.
Because, as with many other key biblical figures, she, too, is in diaspora. And exiled abroad, ironically, her faith is strengthened.
As if by a cosmic design she finds her roots in the most unexpected places.
By her intuition, she encounters the spirits of the land where she grow up, the ancestors that continue to haunt her dreams and the world that she knows will be her final destiny.
She has, indeed, become a mystic-wanderer!
And blessed is the pilgrim who encounters her in his own wandering.
letter from permerend
April 20, 2007
Greetings from
The visit to
By the end of the month I will leave for
This sabbatical has really provided me a lot of blessings and part of it is that what I wanted to do, namely, go on a pilgrimage has been fulfilled, more than I expected. Once again, I feel so grateful to the Council and the confreres for the blessings of this sabbatical.
I hope you've had time to rest and relax after the Holy week and that this summer will not be too hectic and busy for you.
God bless.
letter from livensum
April 21, 2007
My sabbatical journeying- cum mystic-wanderings continue to bring me to the abundance of pilgrimage blessings! And to my delight, the pleasant surprisesnever cease.
I just arrived here near Livensum in the central part of
And most recently, I had a wonderful time in
Somewhere along arranging my visit, Prof. Jacques Haers entered the scene and convinced me to give two talks one for his class and another for a forum sponsored by the Center of Liberation Theologies. It was easy to be convinced about giving the class because of the fact that there are quite a number of Filipino students in Leuven and I did want to reach out to them (among other reasons, to get them to be future EATWOT members in the Philippines).
So I talked on Ecology and Theology:"The IP (Lumad) Perspective" in Haers class and Peace-Building Paradigms of the IPs (Lumad) Amidst Multi-Layered Conflicts and Challenges to Theologizing" for the forum. About forty students, including 8 Pinoy students, came to join these sessions. I enjoyed the discussions that followed the talks and especially the beer that came after the formal discussions. If there was something that struck me after this experience in Leuven was again the urgency of our IP group in EATWOT (the one that met during the last EATWOT assembly in
Anyway, nandito na ako sa
Take care.
letter from
May 8, 2007
Greetings from the land of Foucault, Derrida, Bourdieu, de Certeau and all the other French theorists who are your favorite social theorists! I arrived here in
My coming to
You can imagine the long faces of my friends on Monday morning as they fear that with Sarkozy, the French government will pass legislations and implement programs that will be detrimental to women, migrants, workers, students (e.g. scholarships will be less available) and people of other ethnicities and faith traditions. Already, there is fear that with his victory, there could be more riots in the streets, same as those that took place in the past year.
It was rather ironic that the statistics show that a big percentage of women voted against the woman candidate, Madame Royal. If the big majority of French women voters voted for her, Madame Royal will soon take over as
Ironically, during the elections Sarkozy promised to do his best so that his government could assist battered women.
What is impressive with the French elections is the speed that the votes are counted. In this country of 63 million, the voting stopped at 6:00 PM. By 8:00 PM, on national television, the results of the Presidential elections were immediately broadcasted. One can only wish that, one day, this will be possible in the
The visit to
Fr. Michel brought me to Taize, one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in
For all the secularism of
One church that bears the name of St. Bernadette and where the main altar shows the famous grotto scene is the
Talking with some of the church leaders after the Mass, I found out that the church overflows during special celebrations as Christmas and Holy Week. Always some of the enterprising ones sell kakanin outside the church and one saw lumpia, puto, biko and other merienda fare. The leaders hope to find another place that could accommodate the increasing number of Pinoys who join the
At the church I met some of the women I had bonded with the previous evening. Two of my women friends in Paris, Maya Jezewski (married to a Polish-French poet) and Sally Rousset (married to a French social issues advocate) had asked me to address their Babaylan group, a loose organization of Pinays in
Another interesting pilgrim site for me was the chapel where St. Catherine Laboure's remains are venerated. This is the Chapel of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal along rue du Bac. Our Lady appeared to St. Catherine in July, November and December of 1830. Today, like
Another pilgrim site in
There are other "pilgrim sites" in
There is also the
For anthropologists, the museum to see is the newly opened Musee du quai Branly or the Museum of the arts and civilizations of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the
Despite the awesome museums with the same intent and agenda that I saw in
Which brings us to post-colonial and, of course, post-modern theories.
The afternoon of the day before I left
We were on "sacred" ground as near the cafe is the Ecole Polytechnique where Foucault studied and/or did a lot of research and writing. In the course of our conversation, Maya mentioned to me that her husband, Christophe, had met Monsieur Michel F in his youth. Later as I stayed overnight at the Noval-Jezewski's flat, I asked Christophe about Foucault and he shared interesting stories.
Christophe was in his late teens and early 20s living in
Later, Christophe decided to move to
Having met someone who actually knew a bit of the young Foucault provided me with an interesting anecdote to close this letter. I had wanted to visit Foucault's graveyard thinking that he is buried here in
In its place, hearing about Foucault from Christophe is a good substitute. It certainly has provided something interesting to talk to friends about if I am asked how my trip to
As ever.
letter from
may 8, 2007
I'm writing from
I am writing this letter in the office of the Paris Foreign Mission Society (MEP in French) to which organization Michel belongs and who supported his missionary work in
One of the staff persons of this Agence, Natacha Brunet stayed in
Natacha is planning to visit the
Take care.
Letter from
May 8, 2007
An integral part of my sabbatical year was to go on a pilgrimage to various sacred shrines in some parts of the world. For my purposes, I have expanded the scope of "sacred shrines" to include not just the well-known sites such as those of Baclaran and Manaoag in the Philippines, Jerusalem and Bethlemen in Israel, Lourdes and Taize in France, Rome and Turin in Italy but also those places that othodox Christian believers would not consider as holy sites worth the pilgrim's attention.
Thus, where the opportunity arose, I visited other spaces that I would consider as holy (read: where the Holy Spirit manifests the Spirit's wholeness and, thus, could possibly invite the pilgrim to the pilgrim's own search for wholeness). The opportunities were quite bountiful even as I was very much handicapped by the limitations of time, financial resources as well as what my body is still capable of undertaking. If not for these limitations, I would have included pilgrimages to other places like the Santiago de Compostela in
The other sacred shrines were graveyards/markers of those who might not be canonized saints but whose lives manifested the workings of the divine (Archbishop Hurley in Durban, South Africa, Dorothy Day in Staten Island, New York; Victor Hugo at the Pantheon in Paris; Hermano Pule at Mt. Banahaw), churches that have the remains/relics of saints/blesseds who are not widely known in the Philippines e.g. Edith Stein in Nuestadt, Pier Giorgio Frassati in Turin, Catherine in Paris) places of heightened struggles for freedom and human dignity (Mt. Banahaw, Soweto, the Palestinian territory) and art museums/galleries that reveal the depths of beauty in the soul of Vincent Van Gogh, Gus Flimt, Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Through my life, I have been privileged to visit many Marian shrines. As soon as I reached
Finally, I had a chance to visit Our Lady of Lourdes during this sabbatical year. In my previous visits to
First was that I found a wonderful place that was hospitable, comfortable and conducive to prayer and solitude – the
Second, those who run the shrine have made sure that all the places within the shrine complex are so maintained as to allow for the needed atmosphere conducive to prayer, reflection and meditation. I was very struck and totally impressed by how they have managed to do so, by how the crowds are challenged to act accordingly, how they have given such top priority attention to the sick and physically challenged, how the procession at evening time is organized and how everyone is made to feel at home in this mythical place. One does have a glimpse of a better world here. One can palpably sense the divine; one can just intuit the presence of a “feminine energy” that allows one to just BE. I could have just sat on a bench across the river looking out to the grotto (the Massabielle) all day long and stay there to contemplate. Words are never enough to describe just how one experiences, even by just sitting on that bench!
The pilgrim arrives full of expectations and questions. The pilgrim leaves
After
But it was during this part of my trip that the only “negative, frustrating, irritating” incident happened to me throughout my 2006-2007 travels. Unknown to us passengers, the train employees had decided to conduct a slow-down strike. All trains were still running but they were crawling; our train reached its destination 5 hours late! There was pandemonium in the terminals with thousands of passengers unable to find their connecting trains or arriving late for appointments.
In my case I had to find my connection to Le Pins where I was supposed to have arrived at 5 PM that day of May 12. There I would meet Ana Mae, a friend from way back the NASSA days of the l980s. She and her husband were coming to Le Pins from
Instead I got in past 10 PM owing to the slow-down strike. Since I never traveled to this part of
Le Pins is a wonderful spot between
That morning, as Matias attended a conference, Ana Mae and I took the bus and went to
It was a glorious summer day in
One more day, I spent with Ana Mae and Matias in Le Pins which also has its own charm and offerings to the tourists. There were so many choices of restaurants and shopping centers but most of the time we just caught up with our lives. It was so wonderful to spend time with friends I had not met in a long while.
After
Sometime in 2006, at the house of Nana and Ditsi in
The most memorable event of that visit would be going inside the church where the shroud is. Unfortunately, they could no longer show the “original” shroud, in order to preserve it.. One can only view a representation of that shroud in a special chapel of the church; one is made to believe the shroud is deposited at this chapel. But can one believe such claim?
What mattered though is that one can put on the mantle of the pilgrim and meditate on the meanings of the shrouds. Having been to
Giorgo’s flat was most interesting as he has quite a collection of books (a lot of photography books) and films. As we both share an interest in the films of Pier Paolo Passolini, we could discuss about the films. As he had some of these films, I made sure to watch all that he had, knowing these films were hardly available back hom. He also had a photography book on Pilgrim Sites throughout the world – Tommaso Bonaventura’s La Vie Della Fide, Paths of Faith - which I thought was serendipitous. I Xeroxed a number of pages of the book as I knew I would have a use of them later.
From
From Milan, I proceeded to Venice, the city of falling angels according to one recent bestseller.
letter from
May 24, 2007
I am now in
Jimmy and I are here only for 5 days until today. Tomorrow, Jimmy leaves for
Here there are a number of churches with the relics of many saints (including San Roque, Sta. Barbara, San Zacarias and a few other saints). Thus, my pilgrimage continues in this city and you are in my prayers as I visit these shrines.
Take care,
From
I again stayed with OFWs, this time, however, it was with a family (a husband, wife and a son). The husband was a former community organizer in the
While in
After
letter from
june 8, 2007
Apart from becoming a senior citizen,
what is the significance of one turning 60?
Many moons ago, most of our ancestors
did not reach 60 as their life span was
shorter. So, I guess turning 60 means
one has turned immortal, has gone beyond
dying.
As you might have known, I don't mind
dying at 60. That death wish has actually
been diminished this year as I've had a really
great time traveling and I just know there
are so many other places to visit in the
years to come. If I live to be a century old,
I don't really mind, so long as my good
health persists. But that is asking God for
too much.
If one plays around with the word sixty and
mispells it so that it turns out to be sExty,
what is the significance then of the word?
Alas, at sixty, Viagra is a temptation.
For us vowed celibates, one doesn't even
have a right to think of that V word (and
I'm not necessarily referring to monologues as
I refer to Viagra). So that's that.
I really cannot think of anything significant
about the word 60. Which is fine: that means
my birthday is really of the everyday. And
right now in the field of theories, the
reigns.
Where I am now, however, is not
everyday reality, as I am typing this letter
on a computer which is in a room of a wonderful
villa by the Mediterranean sea, outside
My congregation's gift, this is. And I am
spending my birthday in the company of
33 (maayo na lang dili 666) other Redemptorist
Brothers from all over the world.
Wine flows.
Of course, I wish you were here, too,
to celebrate this turning sixty with me.
Thanks for your birthday greetings.
PS: to those who are curious: I will not
be home till the end of July pa as
I will still be here in
of June and I spend more weeks in
spend time in a Buddhist monastery
somewhere in Changmai to reflect on
what it means to turn sExty!
In the last week of the Spirituality course, we went around the different first foundations of the Redemptorists. This was a pilgrimage tour that was most appreciated by all of us. It is certainly an experience that all Redemptorists should undergo once in their lifetime.
letter from materdomini
june 22, 2007
I am writing from the mountainous area of Materdomini, around 100 kms. from the city of
Here is where the Redemptorist Brother-saint, Bro. Gerard Maiella CSsR, rests in peace. It is a pilgrimage site, one as popular as the place of Padre Pio, the Capuchin-Franciscan known to us with his stigmata. Bro. Gerard may not be as popular as Padre Pio in our part of the world. But here in the mountain areas of southern
On the anniversary of his death (he died on October 16, 1755 here in Materdomini), tens of thousands of pilgrims crowd this small city which used to be just a small village in 1755. Materdomini is a virtual
Bro. Gerard had a short life. He was born on April 6, 1726 in the nearby
Bro. Gerard lived only till the age of 29. But in such a short life, there were so many "magical, mystical, ordinary-but-extraordinary" events that took place in his life that even before he died, people knew a saint walked among them. The ordinary folks of Muro Lucano and Materdomini never get tired telling pilgrims and visitors about these stories: how as a young boy his playmate was the child Jesus who gave him bread (as Gerard's family was poor), how he was seen as "sirang-ulo" by others but that he turned out to be God's favorite, how he cured the sick (including babies who were on the verge of death), how he managed to find food to give to the poor and how he cared very much for the most abandoned.
One of the local people we talked to know that there would be skepticism on the part of some visitors if not utter cynicism to these stories. He has these words to offer: whether these stories are true or not, one thing we can say is this - if the stories are true, then surely God has always been present among us with Gerard around.
Owing to the miracles attributed to Gerard, he was canonized a saint by Pope Leo XXIII on January 29, 1893.
Like Sta. Clara in Ubando, a religious devotion unfolded in this part of
I came as pilgrim to Materdomini but also to honor my confrere, a Redemptorist Brother. We did visit other Redemptorist foundations like those where our founder, St. Alphonsus Ma. de Liguori made up his mind in terms of founding the Redemptorists in places named Scala, Ciorani, Pagani and
And here in front of a reliquary where St. Gerard's remains lie - inside a basilica which survived the l980 earthquake - one can pray intensely, hoping for God's blessings, perhaps even a miracle.
As ever.
letter from materdomini
June 24, 2007
In thirty minutes, our group will be inside a tourist bus for
southern
in Bukidnon, Zambo Sur (especially around
Sultan Kudarat. Kana lang, tungod sa ilang "development status"
the infrastructure is unbelievable. Imagine, flyovers the length of which is perhaps the whole highway from Pagadian to Mahayag. So you feel like you are flying above the cliffs and flatlands below. Awesome! Unta, before we disappear from earth, we get to see such infrastructure in Zambo Sur all the way to
Before night, we will be in
All signs you see along the highways point out the direction to
The Herald Tribune in their special issue last week-end did a survey of the best 20 cities in the world. The criteria included: peace and order, criminality, getting a drink at 1 am, the level of entertainment, communications facilities and the like. Anyway,
Anyway, as the rest are still getting their bags, I have this time to waste and it is always good to write to you. I will be in
In 3 weeks time, my sabbatical year will be over. It has been quite a year. I can't believe I've covered such a huge section of Mother Earth and somehow I've not gotten lost. The worst thing that happened to me is to lose my wallet with very little money left. I nearly got mugged by 3 gypsy women near the train terminal in
There is too much to cherish in the past year. I don't know if I will
write about it as I've written a lot already as I traveled. But if I can
find a month of rest at a quiet place with a nice computer, it would
be great to write down some reflections. But let's see what the
near future will bring.
I had wished at some parts of my journey that you were around. It would have been a lot more enjoyable. somehow, traveling is meant to be shared, rather than enjoyed in solitude. of course, there were moments I treasured being alone, like those moonlit nights in
There is no place like home. Indeed. And right now I am counting the days when, finally, I get back to eating ginamos, drinking buko
juice, having halohalo and being bitten by mosquitoes and riding
the jeepneys.
The rest of the world can be magical, but the home is always where
one's heart rests easy.
Take care.
After the Spirituality Course, I still stayed in
letter from
june 30, 2007
It is Friday here in
Today, I went to the Basilica of St. Paul's and there was a crowd there, although my guess is that there would be a lot more at St. Peter's today. I went to three other churches today - the Maria Magiorre, the Basilica of St. Praseede and our own church where the original icon of the Mother of Perpetual Help is. Naturally, there are High Masses in all these churches.
I am taking advantage of the last few days that I have here in
Saturday, June 30 is my last day in
I've been working on my blog these past few days. If you have time and you are interested to see photos that I take while we went around the pilgrim sites, especially those of the Redemptorists, just access my blog in this address: mindanawon-kakay.blogspot.com
Next time you hear from me, I will be out of
The rest of the world may be a wonderland, but there is still nothing like home!
God bless.
part VI
on the way home,
and, finally,
coming home
Finally, it was time to say goodbye to
As it was possible to visit Buddhist temples during my short stay, I took advantage of these short pilgrimages and joined the Buddhists in praying and lighting incense. One is struck by the monks’ gentle ways, friendliness and an easy manner of welcoming guests. They also have such a reverence for their sacred sites and an ability to be attuned to the world and nature around them. I wished I had a longer time to just stay for a while in a Buddhist monastery and experience that kind of a life. It was not to happen yet; who knows, in the future, the possibility could just arise!
Meanwhile, one cannot avoid being a tourist in
One, however, cannot avoid seeing and observing the “shadow” side of this phenomenon with sights such as: the women along the Pattaya beach, the red light districts, the children put up for adoption by orphanages, etc. and realities such as the prevalence of drugs and the AIDs statistics.
One can’t help comparing “us” to “them”. Tens of thousands have left the country to be OFWs who serve the foreigners in their home countries while earning dollars for their families and to keep our economy afloat. But for the Thai people, there are a lot fewer who work overseas; but at home, tens of thousands of them serve the tourist industry. While they have the advantage of staying home and having jobs, they still service the needs of foreigners.
Still one can’t help but envy
Despite everything, one is overjoyed as one lands at the
essay from
July 20, 2007
July last year, I left the
On July 15, after a wonderful two-week stay in
Finally, I am back home. There were mixed feelings as soon as I hit Philippine soil. I felt elated that I am in familiar grounds for, indeed, there is no place like home. There were deep feelings of deep gratitude as I could look back and be thankful for endless moments of euphoric joy and contentment as experience after satisfying experience unfolded in the actual meeting of friends and strangers ("there are actually no strangers, only friends you haven't met!") and encountering events and happenings of all sort.
As much as I am excited to go back to work, there is the lingering wish to remain on a holiday framework, to be frozen within an endless vacation scenario. I felt ambivalent about embracing back the reality I left behind a year ago, one of being under the pressure of work, assignments and various tasks. Fortunately, my conscience dominates convincing me quickly that I've had my fun, now it is back to a post-sabbatical life.
The news of recent events in the country immediately drove home the need to face the reality squarely. The recent ambush of a convoy of Marines in Basilan resulted in the killing of 14 soldiers (with 10 of them beheaded) and the wounding of nine others. Allegedly, the ambush was conducted by Moro armed rebels. The Marines had penetrated the rebels' lair in the hope of freeing Fr. Ginacralo Bossi. The tragedy complicated further the rescue operations.
The day I landed in
The taxi driver that brought me from the airport to where I was to stay in Manila for a few days before flying to Davao City immediately made me realize that perhaps there was little change since I left a year ago. He complained as to how high the fuel prices are now and how difficult it is for him to send his son to college; meanwhile his eldest daughter is processing papers to work overseas. He expressed how angry he was at the beheading of the Marines and wished there was a law to send all the Moro people in the country back to the
Because I spent some time in
Still, it is good to be back. After having been a stranger in many a foreign land, now I can feel at home in a land where I acknowledge the gift of being a native. After missing all the food that were not readily available out there, here I am satisfying fully my taste buds. After living in a suitcase, it is now time to settle down for a while.
After a few days in
One's heart leaps at the familiar sights from the airport to Bajada, and, later to Maa. Very little has changed, but somehow, my view of these day-to-day familiar things seemed different. That's when I realized how deep was my feelings of homesickness and how intense my delightful feelings are now that I am back.
The warm welcome of confreres and family members heighten the joy of the itinerant who has returned.
Slowly, however, I get to return to the spaces that haunted me while I was away. Yes, Fr. Bossi has since been released, but Basilan has become like Spingfield of the Simpsons movie. Since she wishes to be the strong leader that she projected at her SONA, GMA and her caboodle of armed men plans a punitive action against the rebels ensconced in their lairs in the battered
Then an article was published in The
(Earlier, when we were in Kulaman, there were moves on the part of some Christians - including leaders of Base Ecclesial Communities (GKKs) - to arm themselves as a way of protecting themselves from "armed rebels" who they perceived were Muslims and Lumad. In the event that there is going to be such a movement that brings bring us back to the days of the ILAGA (this time with a broader mass base), then God help us all!
I was hoping that the death squads have taken a vacation like I did. While the data I gathered is still quite limited, it seems there is no rest for the wicked and they are still out there lurking in the dark! The small success of environmentalists to stop aerial spray cannot yet be celebrated as the banana planters' move to stop the implementation of the law has created a snag and there are still court hearings to settle the impasse. As to the result of the elections? Haay, what is there to celebrate?
So what is new? I have to admit, inside me, there is something new. And it is captured in T.S. Eliot's poem: We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
Thanks for having journeyed with me through this last year of my wanderings. And with this letter, this SABBATICAL column takes an exit.
POSTCRIPT
I was back home in
One of the immediate tasks was to work on the keynote speech for the Spirituality Colloquium of ISA which was to take place less than a month away. The theme of the conference was The Spirituality of Mystic-Wanderers, a take-off from the book I wrote and was published in 2005.
Fortunately, writing the paper was like making some kind of a summary of my sabbatical year. So, in the week that I worked on the talk, I did a lot of revisiting the past year and thus, reliving once again those wonderful experiences. Below is the full copy of this paper which I presented at the colloquium held at the Titus Brandsma last August 7.
JOURNEYING TOWARDS AWAY-FROM-HERE:
The Spirituality Among Mystic-Wanderers
In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth… and the Spirit (or wind) of God was moving over the face of the waters.” (Genesis 1: 2)”1
For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour the Spirit upon your descendants, and my blessing your offspring. (Isaiah 44:3)
And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. (Joel 2:28)
Because the Spirit of the Lord has filled the world… (Wisdom 1: 7)
… and breathed into him a living spirit. (Wisdom 5: 11) I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. (Matthew 3: 11)
And when Jesus was baptized, he went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him… (Matthew 3: 16)
The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death, light has dawned. (Matthew 4: 16)
Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. (Acts 2: 1-4)
If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. (Galatians 5: 25)
The above texts from the Bible serve as the point of departure for this article. The word – WANDERERS – can immediately be highlighted, considering the theme of this year’s colloquium. Such a theme immediately bring us into a realization that in dealing with the spirituality of mystic-wanders we have to begin with metaphors that suggest mobility, flexibility, inconstancy, transitory, liquidity – words that all connote fluidity.
Taking this position seems most appropriate as I stand on the shoulder of Fr. Daniel Franklin Pilario CM, who in last year’s colloquium, delivered the keynote address on the theme – Spirituality and Postmodernity in Asia.2 In defining postmodernity he identified its characteristics as “unfixed, transitory, mobile, fluid”.3 The concept of postmodernity could be linked to fluids as these “travel easily… (t)hey ‘flow’, spill’, ‘run out’, ‘splash’, ‘pour over’, ‘leak’, flood’, ‘spray’, ‘drip’, ‘seep’, ‘ooze’.” 4
This sense of fluidity thus provides a continuity between the 2006 and 2007 colloquia. Last year’s verbs used by Pilario have not departed; they will again take center stage today.
The beginning texts referred to the various biblical metaphors of the Spirit including: the Spirit or the wind of God moving over the face of the waters, the Spirit’s presence in the wilderness, the pouring of water/streams on dry land, the Spirit filling the world, the Breath of the Spirit, to baptize with water and fire, to be born of the water and the spirit, to see the dove as Jesus rose from the water, to see the light, to note where the wind blows, to be led by the Spirit, to walk with the Spirit, to experience a rush of a mighty wind, to see the tongues of fire, to drink of one Spirit, to sing with the Spirit and to be sent forth to serve.
The key words of these texts suggest images that are fluid:
. wind, breath, blowing,
. waters, as in pouring, flowing, drinking
. fire, light
. dove, flying, as birds singing
. moving, walking, leading, going to
. wilderness, in the darkness, the desert
All in all, these key words are linked to wandering and the Spirit as wanderer, taking on images of movement: a wind blowing, a life breathing, a river flowing, a fire raging, a dove flying, a presence accompanying, walking by, leading, showing the way, pointing a direction.
In many religious traditions, the Spirit is perceived in its fluid and liquid metaphors. The Spirit has no fixed forms being unstructured and free. The Spirit cannot be reduced to a box, structured into a fixed and rigid building. The Spirit cannot be caged, codified into laws and doctrines. The Spirit cannot be confined to a set-pattern, neither can it be institutionalized. The Spirit has to wander if it is spirit!
Such was the imagery of the Spirit’s first entrance into the world of faith as codified in the book of Genesis: the Spirit or the wind of God moving over the face of the waters when God began the creation of the heavens and the earth! That supposedly took place 13.7 billion years ago with the Big Bang, the cosmic event that physicists posit gave rise to the universe. Ten billion years later (or about 3.6 billion years ago), “a tiny living cell emerged from the dust of the earth… (which) replicated itself, and its progeny replicated themselves, and so on, with genetic twists and turns down through billions of generations.”5. Thus “today every living organism – every person, plant, animal and microbe – can trace its heritage back to that first cell.”6
For a while, owing to our anthropocentric superiority over the rest of the universe, we thought that God created the earth in such a way as it remained fixed in the universe and everything else moved around it. We were supposed to be the bidang-bida, the superstar or megastar for all seasons and reasons, everything else was dakilang extra. To the shock and utter dismay of those whose power and authority were linked to this unscientific assumption, the likes of Copernicus and Galileo appeared in the scene to debunk this theory. They proved that it was the sun that was truly the superstar; the earth was only one of the supporting planets revolving around it. Our only consolation today is that, unlike Pluto, we have not been relegated to the status of a “dwarf planet” in our solar system.7
Today, it is a taken-for-granted knowledge that the world moves around the sun and circles it around 365 days or in one year , as versus Pluto that needs 248 years to encircle the sun. No wonder the a songwriter waxed poetic in these text: “round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel, never ending nor beginning on an ever spinning reel, like the snowball on a with these words: round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel, never ending or beginning on an ever spinning wheel, like a snowball on a mountain or a carnival balloon, like a carousel that’s turning, running rings around the moon…and the world is like an apple swirling silently in space, like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind.”8
Not only does the earth move around the sun, but it twirls around as it does, so that in many parts of the earth, there are seasons that turn, turn, turn from winter to spring, summer to fall. These parallel passages of the seasons celebrated by Ecclesiastes: a time to plant and a time to harvest, a time to be born and a time to face the final rest. (Ecclesiastes 3: 1 – 9).
As with the perpetual movement of the earth as well as the constant flow of mountain streams and flooded rivers, gentle winds and howling storms, the twinkling lights of fireflies and the raging forest fires, so also are the movements of the Spirit who is constantly wandering.
It is easy to perceive the interfacing of spirituality and wandering. As the Spirit wanders across the face of the earth manifesting in various forms, some of the world’s wanderers could turn self-reflexive and realize that it is in their wandering where their spirituality is. When that happens, it is very possible that they turn mystic. And as they continue their journeying, like rivers, fires and winds, they turn into mystic wanderers engaged in perpetual departure.
The question, however, is – to where do they journey? As sojourners, where are they headed?
I answer with a story from the Austrian writer, Franz Kafka. For such is the nature of stories; above all else, stories “hold up a mirror so that we can see ourselves… as stories are mirrors of human be-ing, reflecting back our very essence.”9 In fact, “listening to stories and telling them helped out ancestors to live humanly – to be human”.10 As we capture other people’s stories we are able to contain particularities of a person’s experiences, people’s arguments and discourse”.11
Kafka’s story is actually a parable and the central figure is the narrator. He was mounting a horse and heard a distant bugle call which the others did not hear.
A servant asked: “Where are you going?”
The narrator answered: “I don’t know… only away from here, away from here. Always away from here, only by doing so can I reach my destination.”
The servant asked: “Do you know what is your destination?”
The narrator said: “Yes, didn’t I say so? Away-From-Here, that is my destination!”
The servant said: “How about your provisions?”
The narrator replied: “I do not need any, for the journey is so long that I must die of hunger if I don’t anything on the way. No provisions can save me. For it is, fortunately, a truly immense journey.”12
As with the narrator of the parable, the mystic wanderers’ spirituality is embedded in their journeying towards this place called – Away-From-Here.
What is this spirituality all about?
Let me tell another story and please bear with me as I factor myself into the text. Two years ago, because of my enthusiasm for the
The book’s title, and consequently, the theme of this conference owes a big debt to de Certeau. But who is this man and why am I holding his hand as my guide?14
The Kafka parable I narrated earlier manifests the sense of the restlessness that help create the dynamic in the literature of de Certeau. In exploring the notion of a “movement of perpetual departure”, the destination is none other than Away-From-Here, for it is here that the others are encountered.
A Christian philosopher, social theorist and theologian, de Certeau’s work displays a sensibility which seems characteristically postmodern: an awareness of the inescapableness of linguistic presentation, an overturning of traditional hierarchies of presence and absence, a recognition of the shattering of meta-narratives, and, perhaps, above all, a concern with otherness. Yet unlike many postmodern thinkers, Certeau’s sensibilities are profoundly marked by Christian faith and tradition, making his thought of particular interest to theologians, even though he himself seems to have come to view theology as one of those provisions which must be left behind on the journey to Away-From-Here.15
But who are these others? For de Certeau, they are the wanderer, nomad, migrant, itinerant and pilgrim whom he refers to as Wildman-wildwoman or those in transit who ”bear witness to the passage from one world to another”.16 Added to these are also the others including the pauper, the idiotus, the illiterate, the woman, etc.17
In de Certeau’s life trajectory, one sees his own movement towards embracing mystic wanderers to become one himself. His own childhood provided him the space to cultivate “an intense desire: to ‘not belong’, to free himself, to overcome the limits of family, of milieu, of a province and a culture, and to encounter the Other in order to be, at the same time,… ‘transformed’ and ‘wounded’’18
Consequently, this desire led him “to so many ‘wanderings’ and ‘distant explorations’ in search for the meaning of existence, of history, of God” as his “passion for the human and the other” was also his own “quest for God”.19 . The itinerary of de Certeau’s theological journey especially in the l960s and l970s made him look at Christianity in the context of modernity and found it to be in a state of being “shattered”.20 In de Certeau’s view, the contemporary ecclesial institution is fragmenting in an irrevocable manner as Christianity – faced with a social and cultural decentering – no longer organizes the social body in the modern era. As a result “the Christian religion ceases to be the organizing principle from which global meanings and dispositions can be articulated”.21
De Certeau’s spirituality is one of wandering which recalls the mystic. But it is also one of resistance, especially in the context of everyday practices especially where one has a “sense of others”.22 We will return to this point later in this presentation.
Even as he highlights wanderings, de Certeau also refers to the reality of a space and the need to have a sense of space. For him “to practice space is… to be in a place, to be other and to move toward the other”.23 His sense of space is that which is “composed of intersections of mobile elements”; it is “in a sense actuated by the ensemble of movements deployed within it”.24
As there is space, there is also time that de Certeau deals with in terms of his critical reflection on historiography, which brings him, as a historian, to a task in which the past is encountered as “other”.25 And as a historian, he is drawn to moments of historical transition or rapture.26 Questions of historical rupture and transition are central to his work. Earlier, I indicated how he was very much taken by the passage from a religiously conceived world to a politically ordered society over the early modern period. In his words:
“The socio-cultural shifts at work in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries concern frames of reference. They operate a transition from a religious organization to a political or economic ethic. They provide a privileged terrain for the analysis of the mutations which touch both upon the structures and upon the believable in society”.27
De Certeau was born in
If he lived after 1986 until today, he would have seen more shocking ruptures, radical transitions and shifts in practically all aspect of the lives of human beings across the globe, including the following:
- The IMF and World Bank’s imposition of structural adjustment programs on developing countries - making it a condition for the renegotiation of their external debt - have resulted in the globalization of poverty leading to a far greater impoverishment of millions of people especially in the two-third worlds.
- While there are hundreds of millions of the poor constituting the large segment of the world’s population, a few privileged social minority accumulate vast amounts of wealth in the
- In 1998, the data from the World Bank indicated that 78.3% of the world population only had an 18.9% share of the world income, whereas those in rich countries who are only 15.0 % of the world population had a 78.3% share of the world’s income.28
- Meanwhile, the ills of urban living escalate as populations boom in the cities. In East Asia in 2005 (ASEAN plus Japan, Korea and China), the share of urban population to the total is 44.2% as compared to 48.7% in the world; in 2030 it is projected to go up to 62.0%.
- With depleting resources, most governments are faced with the problems of dealing with the health needs of their citizens as there is a resurgence of infectious diseases like tuberculosis, malaria and cholera.
- There is the HIV-AIDS pandemic affecting millions of people; 68% of Africans living in the sub-Saharan countries are infected with this disease.
- While not using force, the ruthless enforcement of the economic reforms by the global institutions of IMF/WB/WTO is tantamount to warfare.
- Wars have erupted everywhere and continue to escalate in many countries especially in the Middle East and troubled spots of Africa and
- Meanwhile as human beings have increasingly polluted the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, more of the sun’s heat gets trapped leading to the rise of global annual average temperatures. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – mainly coming from burning fuels for energy like gasoline and coal – has been climbing fast. “The
The historical realities that continue to unfold provides both the time and space realities that have led to the rise in people wandering from place to place. As globalization impacts the world in an ever-increasing spiral, millions of people encircle various locations in the world even as this continues to turn, turn, turn. Most of them either fall out of the place that cannot hold them or are forever expelled from the places where they are, so “they go from disequilibrium to disequilibrium and from miracle to miracle”.30
To continue my story: after finishing the book, I applied for a sabbatical year which was to be a time to rest and catch up with old friends, a time to take the road and be a pilgrim, a time for renewal and healing, a time to be a Redemp-tourist and see the sights I’ve missed during past travels and to get lost in the wilderness of the globalized and globalizing worlds. I traveled up north from the mountains of Banahaw in Southern Tagalog to the Ilokos area,
It was a wonderful year of wandering. I encountered other wanderers of the world: the nomads, the overseas workers and other migrants, the itinerants, refugees, tourists, vagabonds, pilgrims, exiles, outcasts, stateless people, illegal aliens, the TNTs and palaboys, paupers and beggars, women and children in the streets, those with HIV-AIDs, orphans, those with various addictions, artists and musicians – a lot of wildmen and women who are citizens of the world having claimed its various spaces whether privileged or not, welcomed or not, provided hospitality or not. I also met those who administered to their needs including missionaries and activists. And true enough, among them I had the privilege to actually cross paths with mystic-wanderers. With such graced encounters, I, too, may have wandered into the fields that provide some insights into mystic wandering!
Because of such a plurality of encounters, experiences and excursions, I could share with you some reflections arising out of my experience of threading the path defined by de Certeau’s spaces linked to the discourse on mystic-wandering and its concomitant spirituality. Hopefully, there are lessons for all of us in these.
BY THE WATERS OF
The Judeo-Christian Sacred Scriptures document the Chosen People’s exile to Babylon as well as in Egypt – when the Jews had the same parallel experiences as refugees and migrant workers of today - which occasioned the first textualization of their faith in Yahweh.The Jews’ experiences of exile did not end with their return to the Promised Land as remnants of those who left their ancestors’ land moved across the rest of the world that gave rise to their diaspora.
Given the immense literature around the Jewish people’s encounters with the dark side of humanity’s character, there are very few among us today who have not heard about how they became the Holocaust victims of Nazism, how they pledged to reclaim their land and establish their own nation-state now known as Israel. Unfortunately, there is to be no happy ending; recently ex-President Jimmy Carter refers to a new apartheid in terms of
Other countries have had similar experiences of their people going on diaspora. Those from the ancient kingdoms that fell into difficult times –
Since the onset of globalization and our corrupt government’s inability to deal with chronic unemployment at home, it has been the turn of vast numbers of Filipinos to go on a diaspora. This is why the OFWs might as well we called Filipinos in Diaspora or FiDs.
I read from a journal I wrote as I traveled:
Usually when the letters OFW appear… we think of those who do manual work especially as domestic workers, seamen, nannies, salesgirls and janitors working in malls, hospital aides and the like. In my travels, they constitute the big majority. In
Me: Kumusta na po kayo?
She: Ito, Kuya, hirap na hirap sa ginagawa ko. Ang laki kasi ng asong ito.
Me: Kumusta naman ang employer mo?
She: Minsan mabait naman Kuya. Pero noong isang araw, hindi na po ako nakatiis, sinigawan ko po siya, dahil masyado na siya. Alam mo Kuya, nag-iyakan kami pagkatapus. Kasi sinabi ko sa kanya, kung maging malupit sa akin, iiwanan kita.
Interesting conversation considering the sub-texts. Another conversation worth including here is one I overheard in the Ali Baba Internet Café located inside the old city of
Nimfa: Oy Nay, perte man nimong payata oy. Mora man kag sigueg puasa. Tan-awa ko, nanambok na ko dinhi. (Mom, why are you so thin, as if you have been fasting too much. Look at me, I’m so stout).
Silence
Nimfa: Kusga imong tingog Nay, kay dili ko kadungog sa imong tingog. (Speak louder Mom as I can’t hear you).
Silence.
Nimfa: Kusga lagi imong tingog ba!
Silence
Nimfa: (laughing) Sobra-an sab kakusog ang imong tingog, pero OK lang. (You speak too loud, but it’s OK).
Silence
Nimfa: (shedding tears) Lisod baya ang kinabuhi dire Nay! Pero unsaon ta man, kinahanglan man guyod kong motrabaho dire. (Life is difficult here Mom, but what can I do, I need to work here).
The OFW is only one of the categories of FiDs; although they are, of course, the great majority who have been rightly labeled “bayani ng bayan”. Through sheer hard work in, mainly, very harsh working conditions, they’ve been very much responsible for keeping the economy floating in the globalized scheme of things (far more than Gloria’s technocrats who think mainly in terms of perpetuating our dependency to our capitalist masters who control the flow of capital and investments).
But there are more to the OFWs in terms of the face of the Filipino abroad… Even among the OFWs alone there are now all kinds of categories: those who are “legally” in foreign countries for just a limited time according to the stipulations of their conracts, those who are “illegal” and yet are able to secure employment where they are exploited further on account of having no papers and so on. There are those – including mail order brides - who have since married Americans or Europeans, some of whom are intent on retiring here. There are those who work as professionals (doctors, nurses, teachers) who are better off in terms of employment, those in various aid agencies or international non-governmental organizations, artists who seek to practice their art but surviving through various available jobs, scholars in various academic institutions and religious serving the needs of the FiDs, either on part- or full-time basis.
In my earlier travels, it used to be natural to strike a conversation with a Pinoy abroad, with the numbers were stills mall. Today in places like Rome and Milan, Los Angeles and New York, Hongkong and Singapore, the numbers have so drastically increased, one no longer feels compelled to stop and chat with Pinoys even if one knows they are Pinoy (after all, our collective habitus is so transparent, one can easily spot a Pinoy in an international crowd).
However, one thing is quite evident. The Filipino face abroad is becoming more and more a Pinay. Of the estimated close to 10 million FiDs abroad, the Pinay could easily be at least 65% of the total. And of this number, my hunch is that 70% are in the age range of 17-40. It is a young face and a beautiful one at that, because of the perceived “exoticism” in the face, especially of the morena type.31
But it is also a face lined with pain. We are all aware what the OFWs have been experiencing abroad and the situation of their families at home. Films, TV teleseryes, komiks and other popular media have told us their stories. And since the majority of Pinoys have a connection to an OFW within our extended family system, we’ve heard stories about the myriad problems of those who follow the OFW trail.
How have they survived such excruciating lived experiences? Herein lies the core of their spirituality. And this is how I textualized this at one time when I found the space to write down my reflections on this phenomenon:
The Pinay OFW is a mother and sister. She is babaylan and catechist. She is change agent and artist. She is the embodiment of the gift of nurturance which in our Lumad mythology go all the way back to Mebuyan and her sister goddesses. When she takes care of a little boy in Hongkong or a little girl in
But she prays. Very intensely, knowing that this is the final weapon of the weak, which along with her tears, will bring whatever form of redemption she could wish for in the land where she is now located, far far away from that which she keeps in her heart.
Because, as with many other biblical figures, she, too, is in diaspora. And exiled abroad, ironically, her faith is strengthened. As if by cosmic design she finds her roots in the most unexpected places. By her intuition, she encounters the spirits of the land where she grew up, the ancestors that continue to haunt her dreams as well as perceive glimpses of the world that she knows will be her final destiny. She has, indeed, become a mystic-wanderer!32
While it is quite obvious that Pinoys are everywhere, we do not hold the monopoly in terms of globalized labor forces. From the ASEAN region, Indonesians are fast catching up. Before Pinoys, there were the Vietnamese, although their dominant presence now in
The inclusion of Eastern Europe to the European Union to include Eastern European countries have brought tens of thousands of the unemployed – from Poland, Craotia, Serbia, Slovakia, Romania and others - seeking jobs in the urban centers of Western Europe. They do not stand out, compared to those coming from Asia, Latin America and
Like the Pilipino OFWs, there are other migrants in First World countries who bring with them the Christian faith of their ancestors having been baptized by Caucasian missionaries, mainly from
Going to church and attending Mass is only one indicator of the thirst that the migrants have for a sense of belonging in an alien land; a thirst relieved somehow by the continuation of their practice of popular religiosity in a foreign land. Flowing like a river, the Spirit accompanies their journey while quenching that thirst. As such, the migrants’ spirituality deepens as they are able to survive this jungle unscathed by the enormous expectations of their kin at home, the prejudices and oppression they encounter in the work settings and the loneliness of life lived in an alien land. In fact, for many migrants, this spirituality allows them to grow in generosity not only for their own families but towards the others. (However, as their habitus also travels with them, one hears of Pinoys finding it difficult to maintain a sense of mutuality with other Pinoys given the persistence of values and attitudes that promote bickerings and in-fighting.)
Back to the East European migrants. As there are countless numbers who are without employable skills and backgrounds, many of them end up in the streets seeking out ways of surviving either through the oldest professions such as being prostituted, pimping, selling drugs, stealing and begging. Along with the gypsies of old – those who have always roamed around Europe for centuries known through other names including travelers, the Romans, itinerants, tinkers – they are victimized time and time again with the manner that panoptic gazes especially from those in authority would cast on them. As can be expected, they, too, find ways to victimize others in order to survive the violence of living in the streets. Today, anyone who arrives in
This type of stories unfortunately perpetuate a myth making these nomads undesirable to the local population and tourists. A current phenomenon, however, is the undesirability of other itinerant people from the viewpoint of the State. It is rather ironic that in an age when all nation-states have turned gung-ho vis-Ã -vis globalization in terms of the free flow of goods and capital, there has now arisen an anti-migration viewpoint everywhere. Whether it is the
The war on terror has further aggravated this situation causing nightmares to illegal aliens without the necessary documentary papers. Side by side with this phenomenon are the refugees who have turned stateless peoples in countries hostile to their arrival. Whether in
Such is the flood of itinerants into the Away-From-Here destinations. The river along which they journey stinks and seethes with danger, but they embrace the risks and uncertainty because not to do so could bring them even closer to Death’s embrace. One can only imagine the strength of their will, the utter commitment to a deliverance. And since many are believers, one can surmise there is a spirituality that allows them the grace of fluidity so that they can swim against the tide and survive. The experiences of having been uprooted bring them to the parallel experience of those exiled in
It is thus a spirituality that flows like a river meandering through valleys of tears and fields of hope!
OUT THERE IN THE AFRICAN BUSH
In their encounter, God asks Moses to “put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” (Exodus 3: 5). The Exodus, more than being a watershed event for the Jewish people – who dreamt of escaping towards the Away-From-Here - can also be deconstructed as a drama of refugees wandering for decades in hostile territories in search of a better place for their children.
Africa is holy ground and yet if the name Africa flashes in front of us, the images conjured by our mind is one of women and children afflicted with HIV-AIDs, refugees fleeing war-torn areas, hunger and malnutrition caused by endless droughts and corrupt governments propped up by gun-wielding soldiers. It is the face of despair, destitution, death. Global media has perpetuated these images thus covering up the other side of
There is no denying the horrible facts of life in
With most economies unable to compete in the world trade system, the per capita income of the people is at the bottom of the list, given that most of the African countries appear at the bottom list of the UNDP’s Human Poverty Index. Sub-Saharan
I visited
One sunny but windy afternoon at the peak of winter 2006, alone I visited the lonely graveyard. There on the children’s graves were markers of their innocent lives that had ended tragically: milk bottles, stuffed toys and dolls. My eyes were dry, but deep inside I wept as the wind whispered words of consolation in the midst of utter desolation.
There is consolation in the midst of hope that is arising in
There is fire in the belly of Africans, a flame that help them to see a brighter future for the continent. In big events led by powerful leaders, as well as in their everyday lives, they are seeking to carve out a new
For there is no question:
The Cradle of Humankind is a unique location blessed with a wealth of the prehistory of humankind than almost any other place on earth.. (consisting of) 13 major fossil sites and dozens of minor ones….Within the Cradle’s 2.6 billion-year-old dolomitic hills lies a series of extensive underground caverns. These geological time capsules have preserved thousands of fossil remnants of extinct animals, as well as the bones and cultural remains of our ancestors, the hominins.34 The story told by the Cradle’s fossils is basically this: at some point around three million years ago, a hominin with a blend of ape and human characteristics occupied the
With these findings, this place have a right to claim itself as the Cradle of Humankind. If one visits this site, one is reminded that the ancestors of all humans, wherever they live today, originally came from
If the ancestors were the gauge of our human reality as wanderers, then we know that all along through the years of evolution, we’ve been wanderers. From
The Cradle of Humankind is not only the place in
There is
Mandela, Biko, Makana, Autshamato and hundreds of other prisoners also spent years here. Eventually many of them died; but despite the harsh situation that could so totally break a human being, their spirits soared. A pilgrim to
Their spirits soared because there was fire in their belly. Where did that fire come from? Perhaps because they were convinced that theirs was a just cause! That to reclaim their holy ground, blood needed to be poured on it? That despite their confinement, their visions traveled across the sea towards the liberated homeland, across the era to a time when apartheid becomes history?
For, indeed, as many political prisoners will tell you there is no limit to how they can imagine freedom; even as they are caged, they can soar like free birds, roam the land like wild tigers. For as riveting as freely wandering physically is the wandering that happens in one’s mind that not even the harshest of dictators could block.
For the believer, this could only happen because of a spirituality that accompanies the one reduced to a prison cage. No wonder, in the annals of spiritual and humanist writings, nothing beats those who spent time in prison with the likes of St. Paul, Bonhoeffer, Gramsci, Rizal, Kim Chi Ha, Aquino and other political prisoners in many times and places. They, too, could turn into mystic-wanderers, with the fire of the Spirit in their hearts.
There is also the story of Jesus’ first followers. When Jesus’ days were numbered, except for the women and John, the rest went into hiding fearing for their lives. It was as if they turned prisoners and secluded themselves in safe havens. There gathered together in such a place, they heard a “sound coming from heaven like the rush of almighty wind…(a)nd there appeared to them tongues of fire.. (a)nd they were filled with the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2: 2). Fired up, “they began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:4). That fire in their belly transformed them into courageous disciples and they would consequently wander to Away-From-Here, facing risks, defying authorities, going to prison, and offering their lives as martyrs.
This brings to mind a story from the Desert Fathers:
Abbot Lot came to Abbot Joseph and said: Father, according as I am able, I keep my little rule, and my little fast, my prayer, meditation and contemplative silence; and according as I am able I strive to cleanse my heart of thoughts; now what more should I do? The elder rose up in reply and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. He said: why not be totally changed into fire?36
In
We know of course that the experience of Exodus in South Africa was unfolding for the peoples in other places confronted with similar scenarios (even as each had its own unique specificities) – Korea, Taiwan, East Timor, Poland, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile and of course, the Philippines.
In our own contemporary era, we’ve witnessed the burning bushes that came with local and global conflicts and privileged have we been to also witness the rise of the prophets whose fire in the belly challenged us to follow them in working for liberation. And, indeed, in these Exodus experiences, a contemporary spirituality arose which Gustavo Gutierrez pinpointed as one that comes about when “we drink from our own wells” as he posits that “every great spirituality” is “connected with the great historical movement of the age in which it was formulated.” 38
Today, both the outbursts of protest and the ensuing theologizing may have dispersed a bit; we certainly are no longer able to witness the kind of demonstrations, rallies and marches of the late 1960s to late l980s that mobilized millions of the disenfranchised and their allies. One cannot rush into a conclusion that the defiance of protesters have disappeared from the face of the earth. There are still mobilizations taking place out there, lately whenever the G8 gather to advance their globalization agenda and because of the war in Iraq. The multitudes may have gone down in number but only because there have arisen other ways to express dissent, especially in cyberspace. Out there marches will always be part of the landscape like graffiti on the walls.
As I wandered around the globe this past year, I found myself marching with protesters: with half-a-million Americans in the National Mall of Washington DC on February 12, 2007 demanding that George W. Bush end the war in
Indeed, even as we sit here together, out there in some corner of the world there are the marching nomads who carry placards other than one with the sign: Repent! The End of the world is near!
The spirituality of the nomads is like fire in a burning bush ready to burst out in flame to confront the darkness!
THE BREATH OF LIFE
Talk about people who march and we see images of persons walking and when they walk hundreds of miles – especially if this including climbing a mountain - we know that every now and then, they regularly try to catch their breath!
Breath – ruach the Hebrew word, hininga in Pilipino, ginhawa in Cebuano – is another metaphor for the Spirit. We recall the words of
You breathed your fragrance in me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.39
Breath is a powerful metaphor to help us have a glimpse of the power of the Spirit. No wonder, this metaphor is embedded in biblical texts that point out to us the fact that “(man) is not body and soul (a Greek distinction) but is dust animated by the Lord God’s breath or “spirit” which constitutes him a living being or psycho-physical self”.40 Thus in Job it follows that : “if he should take his spirit to himself, and gather to himself his breath, all flesh would perish together and a man would return to dust”. (34: 14). The psalmist sings: “When thou hidest thy face, they are dismayed; when thou takest away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created; and thou renewest the face of the ground.” (Psalm 104: 29-30).
All these texts relate to the word-play on man (‘adham) and ground (‘adhamah) which “introduces a motif characteristic of this early tradition: man’s relation to the ground from which he was formed, like a potter molds clay (Jer. 18:6).41 For the Cebuano-speaking, the yuta and tawo can easily be merged into yutawhan to emphasize the connection of the two.
Nowhere is the concept of yutawhan as clear as when people walk, because people walk on the ground, on earth.
Which brings us to one of the ways that people walk the earth, again moving towards the Away-From-Here destination catching their breath as they do so. This is, of course, the way of the pilgrim! Pilario distinguishes the pilgrim from the wanderer claiming that the former “starts his journey in all solemnity and knows where he is going (i.e. the sacred place)”, whereas ”the wanderer does not”. 42
For my sabbatical, I wanted to go on pilrimages in our own native land and wherever I might be able to go, considering the realities of my resources. Sa way pabor-pabor or without playing favorites, I began, of course, at Baclaran to continue the revisiting of the Mother of Perpetual Help icon then moved back to Fort Pilar in Zamboanga City with Robert Panuguiton as my guide (and he will be speaking on this topic), then to Our Lady of Manaog in Pangasinan and the various pilgrim sites in the Ilokos region (naturally, I had to pay my respects to the ”Apo”, although only a wax figure is displayed and on that day of my visit, the airconditioning did not work rendering the place not very conducive to contemplation). Earlier I had gone to other pilgrim sites:
As my pilgrimage journey continued overseas, I visited various cathedrals with the remains and/or relics of saints; their graveyards and those of prophets and mystics, the Holy Land during Holy Week, Lourdes and Taize, Vienna and the mountains of southern Italy where the Redemptorist saints from St. Alphonsus de Liguori to St. Gerard Majella responded to God’s call; Assisi and the seven churches in Rome that millenium visitors were encouraged to enter as pilgrims.44 I had planned to go on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in
Why pilgrimages? Because there are people – and they are in the millions – who every now and then feel the urge to leave Away-From-Here to There-Where-The-Sacred-Is for various reasons: to experience the divine presence, to commune with the spirits, to atone for their sins, to seek healing, to fulfill a vow after a favor is granted, to express gratitude for prayers answered, to have a wholesome time with family and friends, to exercise the feet and lose unwanted weight, to fulfill a dream of a lifetime, to make one’s vacation worthwhile. The list can go on and on.
To go on a pilgrimage is not a contemporary Christian practice. It goes back centuries ago and has a very interesting progeny:
While debate continues over which is the world’s “oldest” profession, the most commonly held assumptions tend to opt for the protégés of Ares and the favorites of Aphrodite, the two divine lovers. But alongside the warrior and the woman who uses her body like a mercenary we might also place a third and no less ancient and venerable category – the traveler. It is usually said that the “pilgrim” is a variant of the traveler, and that making pilgrimages is one of the many forms of traveling. According to our sensibility and in those languages which have been influenced by Latin… the various terms that indicate that which in Italian is expressed by the term perigrinus derive from the term peragere. This verb in itself conveys the idea of wander over vast spaces (peragros) and thus of being an outsider, a foreigner in lands which see him passing through…46
Those who have gone on pilgrimages of sorts can easily resonate with these words as they are subjected more and more to the consequences of being seen as unwanted foreigners or undesirable aliens. Until today, the pilgrim is considered a foreigner who travels “to a distant land in search of something, and when he finds it … sets himself up by it, waiting for whatever destiny has in store for him.”47
There is also a Greek perspective of pilgrimage as they had pilgrim sites such as Delphi and
The “pagan” (a Greek) pilgrim, a follower of one of the many religious, sacred-myths systems developed by man over thousands of years, sums up and re-absorbs his act of pilgrimage in a cosmic order of the immanent type, in which the Sacred permeates the cosmos and nature. The goal of his pilgrimage is a “high place”, the “umbilicus of the world”, a place rife with the forces that man fears and worships, and recognizes as “holy”…48
The phenomenon of going on a pilgrimage entered into our consciousness and practice today via the Judaeo-Christian tradition as it arose among the different “sister religions born under the tent of Abraham”.49 God’s revelation to Abraham occurred along the caravan routes of the fertile crescent; all three monotheistic religions have been influenced by “what for the Hebrews is aliyah, the “ascent”… and what the Moslems call haj. This “rising up” recalls places like
pilgrimages does not mean establishing contact with ancient sources of strength. Their adoration of stones from the Eastern Wall of the
The pilgrims, however, pay a price for going on a “passage” especially in today’s context where they need all kinds of pasis, specifically documents to assure entry or proper documentation recognized by those who gaze on the authenticity of their travel papers. From the moment they enter a foreign land, the gazes thrown at their direction could prove lethal:
A stranger in this new land and often the object of mistrust, the pilgrim is odd also on this account… In effect, from a sociological perspective… as recalled in the wonderful books of Piero Camporesi… the semantic and phenomenological aspects of the pilgrim assume, on the one hand, characteristics of the mystic and the penitent, and on the other, the beggar, the vagrant, the fabricator, the charlatan, the impostor, and even the bandit.52
There are jokes, for example, codified in Roman medieval novels about pilgrims who in the “darkness and promiscuity of a dark inn, happily enjoy(s) the sexual favors of the poor innkeeper’s wife”.53 In today’s world, the inn has been transformed into five-star hotels, pensions or even resorts and the favors could be provided from all possible sources of enchantments and dis-enchantments. However, as there is the dark side, there is also one of light (one only hopes there is more of the latter than the former). Thus:
The ambiguity, or should we say polysemy, the image of the pilgrim and his symbolic value is intrinsic. Basically, according to the logic and discipline of the church, this made sense. The pilgrim was very often a sinner who traveled to atone for some grave sin. His signa super vestem…(e.g. the palm of
This, most certainly, is one of the roots of hospitality shared by believers to the pilgrims that come their way. In our case, however, the roots of our world-renowed hospitality could be traced back to our indigenous roots, although, one assumes it was further nurtured by the introduction of Catholicism.
Over and beyond the Abrahamic religions are also the indigenous people’s religions (pejoratively referred to as animism), Shintoism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism and the like. They all have their own “pilgrim sites”. If you visit the homelands of the Lumad and katutubo in Asia, Africa and
Lourdes, Fatima, Santiago de Compostela, Czestochova, Medjougorie, San Giovanni Rotondo, Rome, Velikaja, Rocio.55 These names call to mind visions of devotion, faith, sufferance, hope. For centuries they have been destinations for pilgrims lugging their heavy and painful burdens in search of some purificatory end goal. This is time-tested magic for Christianity, which seeks out, through collective traipsing and prayer, redemption from sin or divine intervention. The result is also theatrical in nature and alluring.56
Wherever pilgrims go, one sees “images of the masses in motion, their solitude, their religious symbols, their pain and fatigue (as…) hope (is) painted on their faces.” As they walk in the sun and rain they get “ tired, wet, hot, sweaty, urged on by hope or sheer momentum” as “they perform both spontaneous and organized rituals in which each individual finds his or her own space – in order to come to terms with one’s self, one’s faith, one’s determination.”57
Taize, stands perhaps, as a new paradigm for going on a pilgrimage. Here, in a traditional sense there was no apparition of the
In doing a deconstruction of these pilgrim sites, one notices the dominance of the feminine, the intuitive, the emotive. Consider the following:
Among indigenous peoples, the sacred sites are abode of goddesses like Mebuyan and Maria Makiling.58
In ancient monuments such as those of Stonehenge in southwest
In Hinduism, there are goddesses in the Hindu pantheon that have inspired Hindu women: elements of nature are “personified and worshipped as goddesses such as Usha (dawn) and Ganga (river), the great invisible and immanent goddess devi, lakshmi the goddess of wealth…There is also Parvati – otherwise known as Durga or Sahkthi; Durga appears in another form, Kali revered as mother goddess.60 Her victory over evil in the form of the buffalo Mahisha is celebrated as Durgar Prija by the Bengali Hindus. A goddess imagined as 10-armed and 3-eyed, she is considered “the greatest of the gods, sometimes wrathful protector but also benign and forgiving.”61
The mother image figures as the creative power thus highlighting the feminine divine and encouraging an equitable view of the male and female. For the Shintoists, there is the acknowledgement of the role of the sun goddess Amaterasu which consequently gives a lot of importance to female religious practices. For the Mahayana Buddhists, especially those in
In
In the most popular pilgrim sites: Lourdes, Fatima, Mary Maggiore, the shrine of the Miraculous Medal in Paris, Czestochowa, Andalusia, Medjougorie, Guadalupe-Mexico, Naga, Lipa, Baclaran, Port Pilar, Antipolo, the central figure is Mary in her various titles. In many of these, there were apparitions whether officially recognized or not. Icons of these apparitions have now been commodified and sell in the millions as pilgrims believe they bring all kinds of healing.
But to whom does she appear? Not to kings and princesses, not to army generals and rich society matrons, not to movie idols and music superstars, not to the rich and famous, the high and mighty. But to mainly poor girls and women, shepherds and the ordinary folks. Mary’s sub-texts are profound for those who are willing to read carefully the signs and wonders of divine manifestations.
As I indicated in the Mystic Wanderers book, there is need to conduct researches in this field involving indigenous belief systems and popular religiosity, goddesses and Mary from the perspective of feminism or women-centered perspectives.63 For Pinays interested in the field of spirituality, one area of study – that of the babaylans - would be most instructive; afterall, there is the claim that before feminism there was the babaylanism. Such a study could provide insights into the relationship and links between spirituality and care-giving, nurturance, healing, reaffirmation of gender-identity, gender equality and the like. It is, indeed, interesting that the divine presence in the Spirit is directly linked to the feminine. In its metaphor – breath – the Spirit is like the mother from whom the child in the womb is afforded its first gift of breath until the moment of birth.
This reminds us of an adage that at the moment when the mystery of Incarnation unfolded no male person was present. The three members of the cast of characters were Mary, an angel and the Holy Spirit. The latter two of course are by their very nature, neither male or female, man or woman; but both are wanderers, indeed.
We return to various images of the pilgrim.
In various ways, the Catholic tradition appropriated the movement of pilgrims through processions. During the medieval age towards the pre-Vatican II period, processions took place regularly. The Christ the King procession was a dominant event in Spanish-era
There have been appropriations of such a religious practice. The members of the the Redemptorist Itinerant Mission Team have been doing so for years. Way back in l988 at the height of the people’s action to end logging in Bukidnon, we introduced the practice of Pagpanaw ug Pagtukaw Alang sa Pagkabanhaw (Journey and Vigil of the Resurrection), a three-day event when people of the Base Ecclesial Communities in the mountains and far-flung villages walk as pilgrims to the center of the parish to celebrate the rites of Easter. Bringing along their baon – supplemented by food offered by BEC members whose chapels are located along the route of the Panaw – and malongs to serve as blankets in the dark night and a cross fashioned from bamboos or branches of trees, they walk the hundreds of kilometers as pilgrims.
A song composed by Popong Landero – Panaw – captures the soul of these pilrimages.64
In a way this Panaw was an appropriation of the procession, but also of the Lakbayans that arose in the Filipino people’s landscape of struggle during martial rule. Remember the Lakbayans in Luzon and Mindanao, and the one in
Today, there is, too, the lonely pilgrim who represents the other pole of the Lakbayan. All alone by himself, he takes the road: in the case of Fr. Robert Reyes, he runs or walks as a marathoner, in Fr. Amado Picardal, he bikes. They go on a solo pilgrimage – although at times there are joggers and bikers who accompany them at a section of their journeys – but always “preaching” a cause which are mainly the hot issues of the times: globalization, corruption, extra-judicial killings, peace, the integrity of creation. Media’s “social-humanistic reportage” do provide an “aura” to these events as the Don Quixote figures are perceived to fight the windmills, but in a most heroic sense.65
In all of these, breathing is an act that becomes extremely important. And of course, where there is breath, there is the spirit hovering. It is thus the spirituality that resuscitates life through breath and the witnessing of the spiritual energy can take our breath away!
TO SMELL THE FLOWERS
Today’s world have two main types of sojourners, namely the tourists and the vagabonds.66 The former travel because they want to and the latter because they have no other choice.67 Pilgrims are also tourists, but there are other kinds of tourists, namely those who do not prioritize visits to sacred sites. They just want to have a good time, they have decided that for their vacation they will go abroad to discover and enjoy other cultures and ways of life, they are in search for the exotic places to go and see the world’s wonders and to have fun (in some cases lured by the delights of sun, sex and sand). Far from the madding crowd, distanced from the usual humdrum of life lived in a maddening pace, they have time in their hands, time to smell the flowers.
The sense of smell figures prominently in the priorities of tourists: they want their hotel rooms smelling clean, they want to smell the fresh air of unpolluted mountain resorts, they will avoid resorts and restaurants that stink, they want to taste new cuisine that have the exotic smells of the best herbs and spices not available in their own localities, they will shop for perfumes to enhance how they smell and, at all times, they heighten their sense of smell to be always on guard against predators of all kinds.
It is a fact that tourism remains the privilege of those who can afford the high costs of traveling, especially if one travels in style. However, as the world has shrunk, as many countries have developed a middle class, and today’s travel has become more affordable, tourism is no longer the privilege of the world’s elite. On the road these days, one encounters the back-packers, mainly young people from all over the world who go on cheap tours. As much as international tourism, governments are also promoting local tourism. And because tourism is good news for Gross National Products (
Ordinarily, one usually cannot relate tourism to spirituality especially if one highlights erotic – the exact opposite of ascetic - images, such as those of the window showcases in
And think of whatever spirituality can arise in the popular tourist packages that bring tourists to 10 cities in 10 days! Hopping from one place to another, going through various security checks (which in the post 9/11 have become horrific!), packing and unpacking, adjusting to new tastes and rhythms, the pace is hectic, leaving very little time to deal with their spirits. No wonder after their 10-day vacation, the tourists need another few days to have a vacation from their tourist junkets.
These days, however, a new tourism movement has arisen which allows some space for spirituality. It is called traveling “in the slow lane”, which is becoming a vanguard of a popular new way to travel. This is its rationale:
As work life becomes increasingly hectic, holidays are occupying a more important place in our lives; when we take a break, we want to truly step off the threadmill…(T)he trend toward slow travel promotes a more thoughtful style of vacationing. It refers not only to leisurely and environmentally friendly modes of transport… but also to the nature of the trips: smaller in scope and more off-the-beaten path – a custom-crafted trek through niche sites rather than a top-10 group tour.68
This means, they do have time to smell the flowers. They are able to interact with local people and artists, have a longer time to know more about local cultures, to savor the local tastes and smells. It is leisurely so it is not just good for the body but for the soul. It comes from a philosophy of travel that posits the idea that getting to the destination is half the fun, or what is important is not just the destination but the actual journeying69
Slow traveling is linked to being ecologically sensitive. The advantage is that slow means green. Tourists are limiting their travel to one flight a year, buying into low-carbon holidays, taking the train rather than flying. “Many are driven by concerns about the environment; they understand the havoc mass-market tourism can wreak on the planet, and shun all–inclusive resorts that threaten local livelihoods and packaged tours that can trample the world’s ancient and fragile monuments”.70
There are also travelers today who follow the likes of the Polish journalist turned literary superstar, Ryszard Kapuscinski. He travels a lot as both journalist and tourist; his writings – like his new book Travels with Herodotus – are a collage of sorts, part travel writing and part self-reflection. Like Herodutus who wrote “The Histories” after setting out to see the world while recording everything he could (“The purpose is to prevent the traces of human events from being erased in time”), Kapuscinski wanted to see and hear firsthand whatever he could. There are the travelers today who follow what we could call the globalists such us Herodutus and Kapuscinski who just don’t tour around, they reflect on what they encounter on the road, they observe without rushing to judgment and they cherish the journey and not just the destination. However, we can only be such type of travelers if we follow the slow route.
Slow travel affords a type of vacationing with a rigorous sense of purpose. While being tourists, they join scientists in field research and contribute to ecological campaigns as in planting trees, volunteer in various agencies whose goals they resonate with. As I visited our communities abroad, I met Irish tourists volunteering to assist HIV-AIDS in a hospice run by our confreres in Rustenberg (
In this new trend of tourism, spirituality can thrive where tourists take time off to appreciate the beauty of creation, to not take for granted God’s benevolence and to sing in praise of God’s bountiful grace in nature.
The phenomenon is easy to understand as the majority of humankind – especially those living in the cities are more and more alienated from nature and even humanity. Today, most of us have no direct experience of producing any of the food we eat, as the population of farmers have gone down. However, for many people there is a hunger to reconnect with the land, with the soil, with plants and animals, with herbs and worms. Today there is a whole movement towards organic and city folks are abandoning the cities to set up organic farms.
This goes back to the ways of the ancestors – as they wandered from place to place - who were more dependent on Mother Nature which explain the richness of their rituals and the tightness of their kinship. And, indeed, they had a very keen sense of smell helping them to divine the presence of spirits. Today in our liturgies we use candles, incense and fragrant flowers as their smell bring us to a deeper consciousness of being in God’s presence.
If we have time to smell the flowers, the spirit is near! It is thus a spirituality of the senses.
BLOWING IN THE WIND
There is the second category of travelers – the vagabonds. Who do we include in this category? The palaboys, those who find themselves trying to survive in the streets, the beggars, the children and women of the night, the homeless, the gypsies, the lumads and katutubos who come down to the cities during the Christmas season. We have very colorful names for them, mostly pejorative: makililimos or pulubi, mananaygon, taong grasa, bulingot, burikat/boring/kalapating mababa ang lipad, mangungu-ot/mandurukot, maniniyot at iba pa. While referred to as homeless, they do reside in the subaltern zones of the cruel cities: below bridges and underpasses, backyards of abandoned buildings, unattended parks and in karitons. Being nomads, they move from place to rat-infested place, cities to cruel cities, eskinitas to masikip na eskinitas, wherever the winds of fortune will take them.
As I already indicated earlier, the phenomenon of palaboys is no longer confined to Third World countries like the cities of
When one goes around as a migrant worker, a pilgrim, a tourist, one cannot but help see them in the streets. The drama of the lives of street urchins, orphans, beggars, pickpockets, prostituted women, thieves and the homeless can be quite riveting which is why artists through the years – here and abroad – have been drawn to their images. Consider the musicals – Oliver, Annie and Les Miserables. The movies that have won Oscars: West Side Story, Midnight Cowboy, Klute, The City of
As art is almost always the “texts” that best penetrate the heart even of an uncaring humanity, the artists are the best persons to draw our attention to the tragedies and crises of our societies. One is hardly surprised with this fact, because the great majority of artists in the world – except those who manage to secure the patronage of the elite among “cultural consumers” whether of the corporate or the political worlds or who manage to seduce the adoration of the masses – are starving, which, in fact feeds into the truth, goodness and beauty of their art. Thus, many artists are also vababonds as one can see in the La Traviata-Moulin Rouge-Rent trilogy of opera-film-and musical.
The artists feel, see and experience the howling wind that blows across the landscapes of the vagabonds. In return, the wind that blows across their art could provoke storms – not only of protests but also of rage that leads to action. And where there is the wind, surely, the Spirit – in all its disguises – is present.
But where do the vagabonds originate? Where are they coming from? What brought them to their seemingly hopeless and desperate state? With the production of wealth expanding to levels unimaginable during the industrial Revolution, why are their numbers increasing?
Bob Dylan would sing his answer to these questions: The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind; the answer is blowing in the wind!
Pilario posits an explanation: the vagabonds are “’leftovers’ of an ever mobile ‘capital’ which leaves the place as soon as the all-powerful ‘profit’ calls it to go.”71 Before the rise of globalization, there were always vagabonds especially as the advent of Industrial Revolution helped to generate the movements of populations from the rural to the urban areas. In the age of globalization, these movements have gone berserk as urbanization expands, entire villages decimated, dysfunctional families becoming the norm, gaps between the rich and the poor widen (in fact there is now a huge gap between those in Forbes’ list of billionaires and those who are just sort of rich). Consequently, there will be those left in the wayside, who couldn’t cope and end up in the streets to lie there, to die there.
To ask the question – what is their spirituality? – seems merciless on the part of those who inquire since they could easily be critiqued as asking a most irrelevant question. Shouldn’t we rather do something to help them rather than be asking what could be interpreted as a silly question?
I leave it to the reader to ponder on that question. However, one can posit a position: our response to the plight of a vagabond might be better informed if we know where the vagabond is coming from – literally, socio-culturally, psychologically (when we ask these questions, we sound like formators pondering on their role vis-Ã -vis their formandi). Possibly this makes our response more appropriate and more sustainable (although this term can also be a problematic).
The son of Joseph and Mary was also, in his very context and his own way, a vagabond. No wonder, he ministered to them. And he had very important words to teach us when he referred to a parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25-37), the Prodigal Son (Luke 15: 11-20) while exhorting his listeners that unless they became like children it would be difficult for them to enter the kingdom of heaven (Luke 18: 16-17). Being an itinerant preacher, Jesus naturally hobnobbed with the disenfranchised of the earth: the children, the beggars, the lepers, the tax collectors, the prostituted women, the unclean and those possessed by the devil. How low could you go down the layers of the subaltern? How deeper could you penetrate the lower labyrinths of a land of contrasts.
How did Jesus cope? Jesus was fired with the Spirit in his own journeying as he claimed: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the Good News to the poor…“ (Luke 4: 18a). Taking off from Isaias 61: 1-2, the “spirit, “working through God’s anointed, here opens a space, as it were, which is to be filled by a people freed and made whole for the Lord.”72
The Spirit’s wind was at Jesus’ heels and so it was natural for him to feel the same wind blowing across the desolate landscape of the vagabonds.
If Jesus perceives this, shouldn’t his followers do so? Today the winds of change blows hard and harsh across the global terrain. For all of us - whether we move or are still, are able to eat well or find our food in the basurahan, have power over others or are forever subservient to those above us – the only way to protect ourselves from the storm is to seek shelter, build a fire, catch our breath and – if it is in our habitus – to invoke the spirits for protection. Then to possibly catch the message in the blowing of the wind and find answers to questions the answers of which could spell a big difference between emptiness and abundance of life, subservience and liberation, life and death.
It is thus a spirituality that blows with the wind.
BLESSED ARE THE MERCIFUL, THE PURE OF HEART AND THE PEACEMAKERS
While we might be hesitant to explore the question what is the spirituality of the vagabonds, it may be the opposite when dealing with those who administer to them in ways we resonate with or disapprove. While various agencies – from governmental to non-governmental, civic to philanthropic and charitable institutions – have their share of the bleeding hearts, I will concentrate on the missionaries especially those of the religious congregations.
In today’s world, when we speak of missionaries, we no longer refer only to priests and religious. Today, because of efforts to encourage the formation and the sending out of lay missionaries (in our country this was part of the original vision of the Mission Society of the Philippines, there are groups focused only on lay missionaries, like the Philippine Catholic Lay Mission or PCLM and religious congregations like – the Maryknoll, Columban, Scarborough, Redemptorists - have been recruiting and training lay missionaries) there are increasingly more and more lay missionaries out there “being sent” to preach the Good News. However, this article focuses on religious missionaries, although at the end of this section, all missionaries are implicated as everyone care about deepening their spirituality in today’s post-Vatican II era especially in situations where life is at its harshest.
Religious congregations were at the vanguard of the Church’s missionary vocation. Arising out of the “groups which formed around the men and women anchorites of the third and fourth centuries” the group members “separated themselves from the world, lived in common, and followed a rule of life.”73 In the sixth century, monastic orders thrived until they reached their “most complete expression in Benedictine monasticism… with its stress on stability and the creation of a society independent from the world”.74 Throughout most of the Middle Ages, the monastic form became the most important until the early thirteenth century with the establishment of mendicant orders such as the Franciscans and Dominicans who believed that genuine evangelical life could also flourish outside the walls of monastic life. A shift took place with this development. Instead of being members in a specific monastery, they constituted membership in the whole order; consequently, they could wander about more freely to serve both the gospel and the people. On the other hand, the clerical religious institutions known as Canons Regular, whose progeny go back to the fourth century through
A dedication to ministry – in the areas of education, health care and the like – characterized the apostolic religious congregations as they grew in big numbers in the nineteenth century. Many of the founders and early members saw the people’s needs and intensely responded to ameliorate such needs. The realities of
They believed that anyone called by God’s spirit could have access to the gift of the tongue in order to preach. Consequently, they wandered in countryside “calling all to conversion, using metaphors appealing to the new merchant class.”78 They lived in poverty and lived their lives so that at one time they are out preaching and at other times, they undergo periods of solitude.
Their wandering spread out further with the further development of mercantilism spawned by the monarchies desire to expand their kingdoms fueled by their yearning for gold, silk and spices available in the land of the heathens. New lands were discovered, new colonies subjugated. Side by side with the conquistadores were the padres. The Papal Bulls made possible the kings’ support for the accompanying missionaries.
Their wanderings to these newly subjugated sites “generated a missionary spirituality characterized by the desire to announce the mystery of Christ as His ambassador by means of an evangelical life of fidelity and unswerving charity.”79 Considering the risks of travel in those days and the violent opposition of a number of would-be converts, the mystique of missionary martyrs engaged their spirituality which helped to give rise to a distinct theological discipline called mystical theology.”80 The setting up of the Congregation for the Propagation of Faith cemented the flow of these wanderers.
One cannot discount the fact that the Western missionaries who came to what are now the Third World Churches – the object of their missionary agenda – came during the height of the colonial era. In many instances, their destination was very much determined by the colonial polices and practice of the country from where they came from. For example, as the
This phenomenon has parallels with the movements of the first missionaries, namely the apostles and disciples. Moving away from their homeland they moved from the periphery to the center of the Great Roman Empire. In the years before the reign of
Considering the theological, doctrinal, ecclesiological, ecclesial contexts of the missionary churches of the Medieval Period, the discourses vis-a-vis theology and spirituality are those valorized by the powers-that-be of that period of Church history.82 And so we know what were the implications and consequences of these, which, fortunately, were challenged by what the Vatican II represented. The “older spiritualities were vertical roads of questing for God beyond this world” which contrasts with “the this-worldly fullness of life as an experience of Christian faith” promoted by the newer ones.83 These life-centered approaches to spirituality – “which are influenced by the surrounding culture with its hope for authenticity in the ordinary” - could be seen as a reflection of the ‘eclipse of the transcendent” by those who favor the traditional one. But the former believe that “in the search for a more holistic living of faith” this “contemporary sensibility construct a new ‘range of spirituality’’ much more helpful for them.84
No one would discount the significance of what the religious missionaries have been doing especially in responding to needs of those being evangelized especially in the area of education, health, economic upliftment and social services. And yet, if the religious missionaries know then what they know now especially in the fields of theology, liturgy, missiology and spirituality, the whole project of evangelization could have been less seen as problematic especially by adherents of inculturation and inter-faith dialogue. Indeed, the theological and missiological constructs that inform the missionaries’ practice impacts their approaches to ministry. Consequently, there are varied spiritualities that missionaries adhere to.
I join other people’s voices suggesting a spirituality of resistance which integrates De Certeau’s mysticism of perpetual departures.85 As much as we privilege the mystic, we also welcome the prophet.
If there is a wide divide between spirituality and the cost and concreteness of the Bible, the former serves only goals for therapy and self-expression purposes. For “Christian interiority can never be content with mere withdrawal and serenity, because the cry of tragedy and injustice and the reminders of the prophets challenge (us)… to do something about this wounded world, and to do so in God’s name…” 86
It demands a spirituality that has a solidarity with the poor in terms of a spiritual journey of transformation that goes through “different stages with its own crises or dark nights and its own discoveries or illuminations”.87 We have to see that those who are vulnerable and in jeopardy of life are God’s chosen instruments for transforming the world” and that “ solidarity begins… when we recognize that we are a part of the process of solidarity that the poor and distressed of the earth are building with one another, and we understand the way the spirit is moving and working in us and through us.”88
This involves what a religious formator called “catching up with the Spirit as we realize that out there, hundreds of people are running to catch up with the Spirit. All of us are being called “ to be part of this larger consciousness of God’s Spirit at work blowing where it will to make things new… (and)…(t)he only way to change the way we believe is to change our way of imaging ourselves in relation to all that exists” that is, as “deprivileged and decentered” so that we could share from our “abundance, our maturity, and our overflowing energy.. (which is) none other than God’s Spirit alive in our hearts”.89 For, indeed
The Spirit, who from the beginning has been God’s active presence in the world, drives Israel, then Jesus, then the Church to run after Her, to catch up with Her vivifying and healing presence, to point to Her as She leads people to human flourishing and the reconciling of their differences to tread grace fully on the surface of the earth whose inner energy She is. It is the spirit, who, by her activity, defies God’s mission in our world. And that is the mission of God that has been entrusted to the community of faith, the Church… 89
When we are faithful to this mission we reclaim the fierce purposiveness of the Spirit that has been embedded in us.
For Carlos Mesters, O.Carm, the path of the prophets Jeremiah, Isaiah and, especially Elijah could be instructive for us today. Elijah also encounters the wind, the earthquake and the fire, which were to be great signs of God’s presence on Mount Carmel but whereas on
This view resonates with those of Fr. Joseph Chalmers, O.Carm, the Prior General. After attending a meeting of religious superiors in Rome 232-27 November 2004 (attended by 848 men and women), he echoes some of the challenges to religious life: for their prophetic witness, the religious must seek to create a whole different world both in the realm of the theatre of human history but also of the whole creation. He posits that religious should bear witness in every culture and in very era that Christ has come to give life in abundance to all. In terms of priority issues to deal with the assembly pointed to the “movement of people through war, famine, displacement and migrant and the impact of these to our ministry of Justice and Peace.
Peace is a buzz word today. Thus the revulsion against all sorts of wars, especially the war on terror. The call today is to promote and not just tolerate multi-lingual, multi-cultural, multi-faith societies. This is why there has been an upsurge of interest for inter-faith dialogue. And where there is peace, there is Picasso’s symbol of the dove. Which is another metaphor for the Spirit.
This brings us back to Jesus; filled with the Spirit, he delivered his discourse on the Beatitudes - blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure of heart and the peacemakers… (Matthew 5: 2-9).
To be merciful, to be pure of heart, to be peacemakers – these, too are the gifts from the Spirit for us. The same Spirit – taking the form of a dove - that hovered over Jesus at His baptism is the same Spirit that hovers over our wanderings. And with the spirit, we could soar, take flight knowing that in our wanderings we are not alone. Also, we could sing as we take flight.
Still, despite our wanderings, we do need to be alone, we do need to be still, we do need to nurture the mystic in us.
There is also another challenge, especially if we want to engage spirituality as an academic discourse and this is to widen our understanding of the kind of mystic-wandering that would help deepen our interiority as Christians. De Certeau guides us along this path.
Spiritual guides, companions of the way and gurus – who have appeared in the horizon across multiple cultures, contexts, faith traditions and eras – have been the instruments through which the novices, the disciples and the seekers were led in the path towards contemplation-meditation-transformation. Today they are usually called the Spiritual Directors and we enlist them knowing that through our spiritual journey “in the beginning and during times of particular difficulty and/or discernment, spiritual direction is essential” and that their presence “can be a life-saving grace, as well as a real consolation.”94
Thomas Merton has said: “It must not be forgotten that the spiritual director in primitive times was much more than the present name implies. He was a spiritual father who “begot” the perfect life in the soul of his disciple by his instructions first of all, but also by his prayer, his sanctity and his example. He was to the young monk a kind of “sacrament” of the Lord’s presence in the ecclesiastical community.”95
Tall order it is, indeed for beyond prophecy there is the need to explore the call of the wind that comes as a voice of a gentle whisper, which in the original Hebrew word demamah, meaning to stop, to be motionless, to be speechless. After the wind, earthquake and fire, these experiences indicate a situation whereby persons turn to silence which creates a void within them. These help them prepare them so they will listen as they’ve just experienced some kind of a slap on the wrist, or in the face waking them up, “shattering an unreal illusion” and bringing them back to reality.96 This is the moment of “being still,” and relates to the space of silence for prayer, meditation, contemplation.
Here de Certeau takes our hand. Even as he is absent in our midst, he could be present to us as a guru in dealing with the notion of mystic-wandering and its spirituality that can be appropriated within our own contexts.
How is this so? Let’s go back to what he offers by way of a methodology. For de Certeau, the passage from a ‘religiously’ conceived world to a politically ordered society over the early modern period constitutes a fecund testing ground for what might be termed second-order models of structural transformation and slippage”.97
In The Mystic Fable, he studied the movement that later he referred to as perpetual departures. He studied the texts left behind by well-known mystic figures such as Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross as well as the not-so-well-known ones like Pierre Favre, Jean-Joseph Surin, Jean de Lery and others.98 However, he studies their texts in the context of a movement in various parts of
This brings us back to Gutierrez’ position that “every great spirituality is connected with the great historical movement of the age in which it was formulated.”102
Thus, de Certeau places his informants within the socio-cultural shifts in the era included in his study, especially the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when the “religiously conceived world” shifted to a “politically ordered society” which saw the decline of the power and influence of the religious system as the eco-political one arose given the cumulative events that took place during the Enlightenment. He posits that in this transition, the movement of perpetual departures arose; and the textualization of this movement are what we now read in the writings of Teresa, John - even Martin Luther103 – and the thousand others who de Certeau considered part of this movement.
In effect, de Certeau posits that the historical grounding of the medieval mysticism did not arise out of the blue but owing to the “mutations” which “touch both upon the structures and upon the ‘believable’ in a society”.104
I had the audacity to appropriate de Certeau’s methodology as well as Gutierrez’s stance in my research study as ISA fellow. I posit that we are into a parallel scenario today. The Enlightenment Project inaugurated the modern era that impacted philosophy, science, politics, economics and religious systems. The domination of rationality and science led to the valorization of the political and economic ethic as capitalism and liberal-democratic States reached new levels of accumulation of capital and power. This spelt the end of the era of the ‘religiously’ conceived world; in its place were set up a politically ordered society ensconced in a capitalistic economic system.
In the ruins of the war that affected most of the world in the l940s, a new Project arose, again arising out of countries that controlled capital and power; this could be referred as the Globalization Project with its free trade agenda reinforced by a national security ideology. However, as far back as the turn of the century, there was already a movement towards this direction when capitalism managed to get its act together after the Great Depression. The Globalization Project would cement the gains of capitalism, advancing it to a level involving global conglomerates, its trajectory directed by the richest capitalist countries of the world, today’s G8. Governments actually are at the beck and call of business; however, both have become subservient to the dictates of high-technology while having to fend off the global resistance especially in terms of ecological campaigns. So from the “eco-political’ conceived world we are moving now to a technologically-ecologically ordered society.
But just as a movement of a mystic configuration arose out of various parts of
I did one in the context of our Philippine situation, but focused more in terms of the
Today’s globalist Christians who seek the convergence of prophecy and mysticism are confronted with situations, perhaps more complex than those of earlier eras. On one hand, there has been the rise of secularism – affecting First World countries now but could spread to the rest of the world rapidly in the next few decades – and that of fundamentalism which is present in most countries although its concomitant theater of war are still primarily in Third World countries (although bombings have spread to the most cosmopolitan of cities from New York to London to Tokyo).
Indeed, “one of the striking differences between our age and the past is the depth of distrust and breath of rejection of what we now refer to as organized religion but, on the other hand, even if few people want to wear a religious label, more than ever today many claim to be “spiritual” and to be on a “spiritual journey” or trying to construct a “daily spirituality”.105
This movement towards greater secularism has impacted the field of belief systems as atheism attracts more adherents. Today, as fundamentalist religious perspectives are in the upswing, militant atheism is also on the rise. As religion has re-emerged as a big issue because of Europe’s growing and restive Muslim population and a fear that faith is reasserting itself in politics and public policy (think of Bush and his relationship to the Religious Right) atheists like Michel Onfray are becoming more militant in their non-belief, creating a trend called “missionary secularism” which “mimics the ardor of Christianity, Islam and Marxism, all of which have at their core an urge to convert non-believers to their worldview.”106
The other side of the coin is the rise of fundamentalism, not just in Islam but also in Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism (in
An orthodoxy of fundamentalism arose further when the ”guardians and representatives of the true faith ignore the epistemic situation of a pluralistic society and insist – even to the point of violence – on the universally binding character and political acceptance of their doctrine.”108 With fundamentalism is a return to the exclusivity of the attitudes if pre-modern era.
In the face of secularism, fundamentalism and other complexities of the world today, many of us are intimidated and overwhelmed to inaction. These are the moments we need to dig our heels and go for it, search for the spring of water that could bring back life, look for the burning bush that could restore the fire in our belly and seek the wilds for the wind that could slap our face! Indeed as Karl Rahner said twenty-five years ago: the Christian of tomorrow will be a mystic or he will not be at all a Christian.109
This is the challenge of mystic-wandering’s spirituality: to tap into the potential of spirituality by establishing “a unified field of meaning linking fragmented and proliferating areas of universal and pressing concern such as prayer, dialogue, politics, healing arts, social action, science and ecology, which so often distance themselves from each other.”110
In the end, we are back to the scriptures: “Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water…” (John 7:38). In
As the rivers ultimately flow to the sea, so also the wanderers need to go home. For the wanderers, the call to go home is a primordial one as home is where the heart is. But as much as there is a human home, there, too, is the ultimate home. This is to say that our journeying from Away-from-Here is towards Somewhere-Out-there, much like the title of a song.
For us travelers, pilgrims, nomads who are foreigners in the in-between time and space, life is a passage. We know know that we will always be foreigners and pilgrims upon this earth. “The pilgrims strive towards their goal, but at the same time recall with nostalgia their homeland, with one true Homeland being Heavenly”.112
Outside of this eschatological home, while on earth, ultimately our destination is never a place, even as we know our journey’s point of reference is the Away-From-Here. As the writer Henry Miller said “our destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things.”113
The goal of the pilgrimage that is spirituality is, simply, to keep moving – spiritually – one step at a time, one day at a time. The spirituality of the mystic-wandering makes us realize that we need to journey to Away-From-Here. And as we move like the wind, flow like the river, soar like the dove, we take to heart the words of T.S. Eliot:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
August 1, 2007
The Feast of St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori
END NOTES:
1 All texts are from The New Oxford Annotated Bible.
2 Daniel Franklin Pilario CM. “Spirituality and Postmodernity in Asia,” Talk delivered at the Sixth Spirituality Forum,
3 Ibid, 1.
4 Zygmunt Bauman. Liquid Modernity. Cited in Pilario, 1.
5 Lee Silver, “Life 2.0”, Newsweek , 4 June, 2007, 35.
6 Ibid.
7 Jerry Adler, “Of Cosmic Proportions,” Newsweek, 4, September 2006, 42.
8 “The Windmills of your Mind,” words and music by Alan and Marilyn Bergman and Michel Legrand, from the 1968 film, “The Thomas Crown Affair”.
9 Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham, The Spirituality of Imperfection, Storytelling and the Search for Meaning. (
10 Ibid, 8.
11 Abu Lughod, “Writing Against Culture”. In Richard Fox (ed), Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present, (
12 Cited in Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, The Postmodern God (London: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), 63.
13 These include Pilario’s Back to the Rough Grounds of Praxis (Leuven: Katolieke Universiteit Leuven, 2005) and “The Politics of Political Representation: Perspectives from Pierre Bourdieu (Hapag, Volume 1, No. 2) and Cueto’s “Tactics of the Weak: An Exploration of Everyday Resistance with Michel de Certeau (Leuven: Katolieke Universiteit Leuven, 2002 a and Perpetual Departures, On Theology and Michel de Certeau, Some Preliminary Reflections, 2002 b.
14 For an introductory reading as to who Certeau is, see The Postmodern God and Jeremy Ahearne, Michel de Certeau, Interpetation and its Other (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995).
15 The Postmodern God, 135.
16 Michel de Certeau, The Mystic Fable, the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. 1 (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), cited in Pilario, 2; Cueto 2002 a, 76; and Karl M. Gaspar, Mystic Wanders In the Land of Perpetual Departures, (
17 The Mystic Fable, 105, cited in Interpretation and its Other, 125.
18 Luce Giard, “Michel de Certeau’s Heterology and the
19 Ibid, 7.
20 Ibid, 70.
21 Ibid, 71.
22 Interpretation and its Other, 192.
23 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 110.
24 Ibid, 117.
25 The Postmodern God, 136.
26 Ibid.
27 Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History (New York and Oxfod: University of Columbia Press, 1988), 149. Cited in The Interpretation and Its Other, 27.
28 World Bank, “Development Report”, 1999-2000,
29 Jefrrey Kluger, “The Tipping Point”, Time, 3 April 2006, 34.
30 The Mystic Fable, 272. Cited in Pilario, 26.
31 Karl Gaspar CSsR, Journal of Sabatical Year 2006-7, entry of 25 April 2007.
32 Ibid.
33 Data was made available by the local advocates caring for HIV-AIDs in a hospice in
34 The hominins are our bipedal relatives, that is, those who walk on two legs. They go back to the earliest ape “people”, to include Little Foot and Mrs. Ples, whose bones were unearthed in Maropeng.
35 From a brochure distributed at the museum of the Cradle of Humankind.
35 Ibid.
36 Cited in Stephen J. Rossetti, When the Lion Roars (Notre Dame, Indiana: Ave Maria Press, 2000), 35.
37
38 Gustavo Gutierrez, We drink from our own Wells, The Spirit Journey of a People (New York: Orbis Books, 1984), 26.
39 Cited in When the Lion Roars, 57.
40 The New
41 Ibid.
42 Pilario, 26.
43 Gaspar Sabbatical Journal, entry of August 2006.
44 These include the Basilicas of St Peter,
45 It was a French film with English subtitles; unfortunately I could not retrieve the title of the film and the name of the Director.
46 Franco Cardini, “Introduction” in Tommaso Bonaventura, La Vie Della Fide, Paths of Faith (
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid, 17.
49 Ibid, 11.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid, 17.
52 Ibid, 13.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid, 15.
55 Here are some information regarding these sites: 1) In
56 Ibid, 7.
57 Ibid.
58 See articles in Centennial Crossings,
59Caption of a photo in The Internatioanl Herald Tribune, 22 June 2007, 4.
60 Mary John Mananzan, OSB, Woman, Religion and Spirituality in Asia (
61 Isabel de Bertodano, “Sacred and Female”, The Tablet, 14 October 2006, 4-5.
62 Ibid.
63 Mystic-Wanderers in the land of Perpetual Departures, 355-6.
64 From the booklet, Popong Landero’s Songs. This song, itself, was composed by Landero during the Panaw in Mahayag, Zamboanga del Sur in 1993.
65 La Vie delle Fide, 7.
66 Zygmunt Bauman, Post-Modernity and its Discontents (Cambridge: Polity, 1997), 92-92. Cited in Pilario, 26.
67 Ibid.
68 Rana Foroohar and
69 Ibid, 58.
70 Michell Jan Chan, “Capturing the Niche”, in Newsweek, 14/21 May 2007, 78.
71 Pilario, 26.
72 Robert P. Imbelli, “Holy Spirit”, in The New Dictionary of Theology (Manila: St. Paul Publications, 1991) 476.
73 Juliana Casey IHM, “Religious Life”, in The New Dictionary of Theology, 873.
74 Ibid.
75 Ibid, 874.
76 Ibid.
77 Ibid.
78 The New Dictionary of Theology, 78.
79 Ibid, 978.
80 Ibid.
81 Robin Lane Fox, The Classical World, An Epic History of
82 Kees Waaijman, Spirituality, Form, Foundations, Methods (
83 Michael Paul Gallagher SJ, Clashing Symbols (London: Dartmon, Longman & Todd, 1997), 137.
84 Ibid.
85 These are the voices and texts of many of those quoted in this essay namely Gutierrez, Gallagher, Nolan, Pilario and the like.
86 Clashing Symbols, 140.
87 Alert Nolan as quoted by Marie Chin RSM, “Running to Catch up with the Spirit: Spirit in Hope”, unpublished article, n.d.
88 Chin, 3.
89 Chin, 4.
89 Gary Rieve-Estrella, quoted in Chin, 5.
90 Carlos Mesters, O.Carm, “Prophecy of the Bible: Inspiring Sources of Religious Life, unpublished article, n.d., 5.
91 Ibid.
92 Ibid, 10.
93 Ibid, 9.
94 When the Lion Roars, 42.
95 Quoted in Ibid, 43.
96 Mesters, 96.
97 Interpretation and its Other, 27.
98 Ibid, 65.
99 The Mystic Fable, 13. Cited in Interpretation and its Other, 116.
100 Ibid, 102.
101 Ibid, 101.
102 We drink from our own Wells… 26.
103
104 The Writing of History, 148. Cited in Interpretation and its Other, 27.
105 Laurence Freeman, “An Aerial Tour of Postmodern Life,” The Tablet, 24 September 2005, 22.
106 Andrew Higgins, “Bolder atheism borrows zealotry of faithful in modern culture clash,” In The Wall Stree Journal, Vol XXV, No. 50, 12 April 2007, 1.
107 Quoted in Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror (
108 Ibid, 72.
109 Quoted in Ignaz Dekker CSsR, “Spirituality in our Constitutions”, unpublished article, June 2007, 25.
110 Freeman, 22.
111 Imbelli, 476.
112 Cardini, 11.
113 Quoted in The Spirituality of Imperfection, 138.
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