reviewing my old blog (kathang pinay). today reviewing march 2004. so many lovely posts then. i look back on this road i've travelled and see now that it is a road that chose me. they must have known. they must have waited. they must have set out these markers so i would find my way. i made my way slowly without this foreknowing. and now the road ahead beckons even farther. now i have traveling company. we laugh. we grieve together. we dream. we  dance. we sharpen our warrior eyes and tongues. we write. we teach. 

A Letter to Mungan

This letter to Mungan is informed by the work of Ming Menez Coben, author of Verbal Arts of Philippine Indigenous COmmunities.  I thank her for this important work. I have borrowed her own words in crafting this narrative and added my own response to Mungan's story towards the end. May the power of Mungan and the epic of Ulaging of the Bukidnon people, inspire us all.

Dear Mungan,

To the Bukidnon, you are the first babaylan. 
You are the true heroine of their beloved epic, Ulaging, even though the honor goes to Agyu and his brothers.

Your husband shunned you because of your leprosy but your brothers-in-law were kind to you.

They took turns carrying you on their backs on their long journeys from the sea to the top of Mt Kitanglad.

One day you told them that you didn’t want to slow them down anymore.

So they built you a hut and went on their journeys, returning on occasion to bring you food and gifts.

In truth, they returned for instructions from you because you alone knew where they should go and how they can obtain sustenance.

You taught them the virtue of sharing food. 
You told them that even if the meat is no bigger than a baby’s fingernail, that they must share it.

You taught them that they can achieve immortality without first experiencing death.

You taught them that they can attain the highest state of spirituality by abstaining from material wants and sustenance.

You taught them that they will lose their fear of famine and starvation.

You taught them that, in the end, their bodies will shine like gold, carried on a magic flying ship to the world beyond the skies.

One day, just before dawn, you began to beat your gong. Slowly at first, then building up to a rhythmic trance.

It soon became light and just before the sun rose, you looked up with amazement…

The sky in the east looked like polished metal

You kept on beating your gong but never took your eyes off the Sun

Gazing at it without blinking.

You were amazed that the sound of the gong now sounds like laughter that grew loud and louder  

When you took your gaze off the sun to look around you, all the weeds and wild plants around your hut have turned to gold

And the leprosy slowly left your body.

The sun is a source of magical power

The blinding light heals the leprous body of the gong-playing maiden

Your eyes became the conduit for the energy that would humanize the gong with the gift of laughter

Having conquered disease and death, now your scabs have turned into mountain rice birds and flew away.

One of the birds returned to you with a vial of coconut oil, a gold striped betel nut, and pinipig from the first harvest.

Mungan, everything that surrounds you shines with golden light.

In this state of rapture and spiritual ecstasy, your body is radiant with transcendent light.

To Lena, the first brother, you gave the first betel nut of immortality

And as he chewed, his speech became different

He speaks in the words of ancient poetry

Dear Mungan, your quest for a safe homeland for your people

In the time of war and violence

Your desire to lead them to paradise

To found a new community

To lead people in times of trouble

Is hiding in the words of the ancient epic

In these millennial dreams

At the heart of it is the desire for Oneness

All men and women of all creeds, ethnicities belong to one extended family

Who will attain immortality without passing thru death

Dear Mungan,

I beseech you now to shine your light upon us

Teach us how to gaze at the Sun without blinking

So, too, may our bodies shine like gold

So, too, may everything around us shine like gold

We are your descendants in the here and now

Flying ships carried us not quite to the world beyond the skies

But to this continent

Where we are tracing your steps

Where we are building our huts

Where we are forging Oneness

Where we are forging Wholeness

Shine your light upon us, Mungan.

Year-end reflections

Finally - a quiet day of reflection...after working in the garden - harvesting the last of the tomatoes and kalamansi and amused by the sight of newly-planted lettuce eaten by the birds who didn't touch the ornamental cabbage nearby. The autumn leaves have been cleaned up; the bulbs need to be re-planted soon.

In the kitchen, am using up the leftovers from our early Christmas parties - thanks to all of you who came to celebrate with us -- faculty from SSU, the women from Bioneers, my dear SSU mentors, our Fil Am community friends (who love karaoke!).

Last night I was reviewing this blog and felt thankful for the record of 2011 events that made the year memorable and life transforming. Here goes...

In January, Lane and Virgil both published their books and I was able to write a review for each of their opus. We hear that both are now writing the sequels because, as we found out, they've amassed so much research materials over decades. It is also in January when the core group of CFBS holds their annual retreat. This year we were able to plan and then offer a retreat/symposium in August with about 40 people.

In April, Lizae and other CFBS volunteers gifted us with Spirit Breath, A Healing Concert, at her beautiful home in the Oakland hills. For the first time, I was able to offer a Kapampangan chant, thanks to Mike Pangilinan.

In June, I attended the Bioneers' Cultivating Women's Leadership Retreat held at Westerbeke Ranch in Sonoma. I've been lurking around Bioneers for years and this time I felt that I needed to get my feet wet to see what the Bioneers experience is all about. With twenty women leaders together for six days, the experience was indeed transformative. But what was surprising to me were the exchanges I would later have with Nina Simons after she read A Book of Her Own and me reading  her book, Moonrise, and using it as a text in one of my courses...which led to her visit to my classes in November. Prior to this, I was able to attend the Bioneers conference for the first time with the added bonus of having a booksigning and meeting several Pinays including the wonderful Gemma Bulos, as a result. I also got invited to be part of  Bioneers' Education for Action Network.

Eileen Tabios' prompt to poets about the global recession resulted in this essay. Thank you, Eileen!

This Fall, it was great collaborating with Jurgen Kremer in one of my courses. Having him test-drive the workbook on Ethnoautobiography with my students is definitely an outside-the-box exercise in this setting but it was well worth it.

I also visited Napa Valley College for the first time. Thanks to the invitation of Janet Stickmon.

In November, Singgalot came to Sonoma County Museum as its last stop.

Lastly, there is the dossier for full professorship that went forward.

I look forward to giving the Virgilio Enriquez Memorial Lecture at the Kapwa 3 conference at UP Baguio next year.

On the vanity side: I have given up hair color. I am going gray. I embrace the elder in me.

It was a year of many "firsts" and perhaps this is why I feel as if I am on the cusp of something new...again.

Time is an artificial construct. As I watched Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams last night, I realize that this habit of painting word pictures connects me to the painter at Chauvet cave 35,000 years ago. This impulse to tell a story is the same across time and space. My story connects me to you which connects us to a larger community which connects us to everything and everyone beyond time and space.

For this a big thank you. I Loob you!

Meditating on the Global Recession

This essay is also now part of the Poets on the Global Recession archive here:

Ay, Ading! How do I begin to talk about the global recession?

Ah, for starters: this is the consequence of an economic concept conjured by the neoliberal assumptions of limitless economic hypergrowth and mobilized by the unholy trinity of the IMF, WB, and WTO whose failed policies have been put on steroids through structural adjustment programs imposed on the debtor countries. A circle of debt envelopes the global economy and no one is paying up. Decades ago there was a clamor to forgive the debts of the poorest countries in the world and only a handful got a reprieve. The engines of corporate capitalism and financial magicians thought that they could create something out of nothing, and now the house of cards that the global casino economy has become is crumbling.

The global recession: what is in recess? what is an economic recession? are there other kinds of recessions? is depression the synonym of recession in psychological terms?

Recess was my favorite subject in elementary school. Wasn’t it yours, too? That’s when we got to play outside, eat our baon or buy merienda from the sari-sari store, notice the cute boys, etc. Recess is fun.

Now we take a fun word and turn it into recession and suddenly it becomes a word that stirs up fear. Well, our economic myth has always capitalized on our fears to keep the profits flowing for the stakeholders, so why not manufacture fear, yes? It sells.

And it’s all about selling and buying – this global economy. Everything is a commodity. What I eat, what I wear, where I live, what I watch to entertain myself --are all global products.

I refuse to be commodified so I defy the word global recession! This phrase that conjures the worst scenario—the bleakness that is about to engulf us if we do not turn around from the wrong course we’ve been on for five centuries—feels to me like beating a dead horse.

The drums that beat about the end of the American dream, their rhythms getting faster, induce a sense of panic.

But there is an antidote to this toxic story. Yes, I said it: the architects of the global corporate economy unleashed toxins on the planet and now we are faced with the unintended consequences of our flawed assumptions about limitless resources, about the belief in an inanimate earth, about the belief in the magic of positive thinking (thank you, Barbara Ehrenreich). If you build it they will come. Well, China has just built the largest shopping mall on the planet in Guangdong and nobody came. In fact, they built 500 of them—all of them still waiting for their middle class to arrive to shop.

Why do I always get sidetracked? Oh, as I was thinking/saying…what I mean by antidote is this: what if I were an indigenous person living in the Sierra Madre mountains of Colombia who escaped the conquistadors and managed to live undisturbed for five hundred years, and therefore, had no concepts like global recession or have never heard of the American dream? How would such persons interpret the changes that they were noticing in their environment? The mountains no longer filled with snow in the winter and so their rivers have run dry affecting their vegetation and ultimately, their very way of life? These are the Kogi people. They saw that their Mother was getting sick and they were worried that their younger brothers (the modern ones) were doing things to the earth that were causing the illness, so they came out of hiding and began to have conversations with visitors from the outside (like BBC, Wade Davis of National Geographic, and other environmental groups that have now “found” them).

What about the Amazonian elder that David Suzuki brought to Seattle? David thought that the indigenous elder would be impressed by the tall skyscrapers and marvel at the wonders of his world; instead the elder said: oh my, how can mother nature replace what’s been used up to build this?

What about the indigenous woman leader from a Mindanao tribe who exclaimed at a symposium with the Fulbright teachers I brought with me from California in 2008: Please allow us to express our beauty! We do not need your versions of development and progress!

What about the women of Ladakh who lament that their sons and daughters have gone to the city to get an education; who would till the fields and tend to the animals when they are gone? And the kids who have gone to the city and learned to speak English say now their lives are all about money. If I don’t make money, I am nothing. (in Schooling the World, a videodocumentary).

Do you see why I don’t like the word global recession? I do not buy into the theoretical construct behind the word. It’s true that what we are witnessing today are human-made consequences of overdevelopment, mis-use of resources, endless wars, not only military but also “war on drugs, war on terror, war on poverty,” etc.  Don’t even get me started on the concept of war.

Did you know that there is a connection between war and food? Ask Vandana Shiva (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flpFnfK_3Yo). That fertilizers that were used to make bombs used during World War 2 were later offered to industrial farmers?

I digress again. Back to global recession. So there is a recession if your assumption is that the global economy should stay on a linear growth path, or if the assumption is that the American lifestyle should go global because it is the best. We package it as “freedom” and seduce the world with commercials. It is the “end of history” theory rearing its head. Oh, if only we know of seven planets where we can migrate to.

We already know that we are almost out of solutions. Bailouts didn’t work. International accords don’t work especially when powerful countries like the U.S. refuse to sign protocols and agreements—whether it’s curbing carbon emissions (the Kyoto protocol) or making a stand against racial apartheid (at the Durban conference on Racism).  We already know that tax cuts for the wealthy have not created jobs (it did, however, make plenty of profits that are stashed away in Swiss banks and off-shore banks, for the wealthy). Inconvenient truth, as Al Gore calls it.

So yes, we are in the midst of an economic recession. But this simply means that we have exhausted the limits of the modernist story. It is time to revisit other stories that can disentangle us from the ravages of modernity.

Decolonization is not just for the post-colonial subject anymore. Decolonizing from the modern narratives of self that disassociated us from a participatory sense of place is the work of every modern self that has been colonized by the myth of the masterful bounded self that is separate from nature and non-human creatures and the spirit realms.

In a way, we are all relatives of the economic hit men of the past. Those economic hit men who have now confessed to their sins of selling the economic model and gospel of free trade to developing countries (e.g., John Perkins, David Korten) are calling for a different kind of story—The Great Turning, Revolution from the Heart of Nature, Another World is Possible, and more recently, Occupy Wall Street – these themes are the mantras of our time.

The onus is on us—those of who us in the U.S. We are the belly of the beast. China, India, Latin America and the rest of the world are all mimicking us now. They will become modern and surpass the U.S. consumption and materialism. They will buy stuff until they are sated and realize that they are still dissatisfied. We know. We’ve been there.

I’ve always intuited that the U.S. will turn to its spiritual resources when the hubris of materialism finally catches up with us. When we wake up and acknowledge the shadows of history that we have denied or repressed, we will search for ways to grieve and heal.

That is why I believe in Poets in the same way that I don’t believe in the global recession. This global recession can actually be good for the soul, you know? Maybe we will learn how to become more human. Kapwa we call it. Kagandahang Loob – our inner gem/sacred self.  Maybe there is still time to get to know the Earth as our relative.

There is still time to learn how to reclaim our animist senses so that we may see each other and all our relatives through the eye of the Sacred.

There is still time to embody what we know in our heads so that when that knowledge descends into our cells, it transforms us. Our fears are transformed.

The rage and anger that we see all around us are projections of that repressed fear. Fear is nothing but unreleased grief.

I want to be a Poet of Grief. I long to learn the language that releases this grief. I long to learn how to do rituals without words…only the movement of the body. I long to learn how to slow dance into this new awareness. I long to feel more deeply the sacred embrace of the Earth on my small body until a word like global recession withdraws its fangs and is alchemized into a meditation about the beauty of a different Story that is much more ancient than the modern one. One that sits well with my body and soul.

Decolonization and Indigenization as a Path to the Sacred: Reflections

August 5-7, Sonoma State University
Center for Babaylan Studies

How do I re-tell the stories of this weekend? The words have been elusive. They sit on the tip of my tongue, they tug on my sleeve. Pssst, you must say something, the little voice says. Our photos (scroll to the bottom of Events page; there are 3 albums to enjoy) hint at the stories that want to be told. Here I am struggling to render a narrative of our time together at this retreat/symposium.

Day 1: Decolonization: The Power of Naming our Grief
We began this day with ritual honoring our ancestors. Virgil and Lane asked permission from the ancestral spirits to hold our gathering; we invoked their blessings and guidance with offering of anglem, rice, saluyot, betel nut,  and egg. Afterwards each one of us brought our two objects to the altar -- one signifying our connection to our ancestors and another signifying our power object. We brought photos of our grandparents and loved ones, rocks, crystals, and other objects that meant something special to each one of us. A bulol watched over the our objects and flowers decked the altar. The sun shining through the window cast a glow of peace and the palpable spirits of ancestors who were present with us.

We joined our small groups for the first round of talking circles in the morning. BA HA LA NA - the groups shared the same set of questions about our individual process of decolonization: what does it mean to you? when did you first become aware of the need to decolonize? what feelings surfaced through the process? In the afternoon, our small groups talked about the shadow of history: what are the narratives that have shaped us as historical subjects? how did these narratives affect indigenous peoples? how did it affect our homeland? our communities? our families?


Later in the afternoon all the groups came together to bring back their reflections to the big group. The power of naming our grief is palpable. It feels heavy and uncomfortable. This baggage needs to be unloaded. Forgiven. Let go. We had to honor this grief that is now communally shared and acknowledged. For a while it sat on the pit of our stomachs and filled us with sorrow. Tears welled up in our eyes. We held each other in silence. As we closed this day, I passed around sachets of lavender harvested from my garden -- the sweet earth comforting us, reminding us of the good work we did for the day.

In the evening we had Dreamtime session. In this circle of light, we shared dreams about our ancestors, the lessons from those dreams, the guidance from those dreams. It felt good to hear one another. Laughter has returned. There was lightness of being all around. We were fireflies in the dark night, each one with a burning flame.

Day 2: The Wisdom of our Ancestors
The Chairman of the National Commission on Culture and the Arts in the Philippines, Professor Felipe de Leon, Jr., was our key resource person this weekend. On this second morning, after a past-faced lecture on Filipino indigenous values, indigenous arts, indigenous languages, we felt full and deeply contented. This is how beautiful we are! We are Kapwa! Ka-Sinag! We are the rays of the sun, each drawing from the Core, each interconnected with one another. Prof. de Leon said that his lectures that morning were the content of a semester long class at UP -- how lucky can we get? We enjoyed his humor and his levity. But most of all, he enlarged our knowledge container of our unique cultural assets.

In the afternoon, we continued with workshops. I had told Prof. de Leon that the reason I included a workshop on indigenous rhythms and music is to awaken the fragments of memories in our cultural DNA. Surely, I told him, we can dance again and remember that the connections our ancestors had to music and rhythm also connected them to the Land which sustains them. Titania assembled her kulintangs and agungs, and we cajoled Lizae into a malong dance and we prevailed on Roque to do a warrior healing dance, the sagayan. Prof. de Leon taught us how to tap into our indigenous rhythms (ack! it's not that easy!) with our bamboo instruments from the Cordilleras. We learned to sing a version of Salidummay and a Manobo chant to the rice spirit (Ay Iding!)

Professor de Leon also expressed appreciation for the retreat's theme especially our session on Naming our Grief. At one point he said that this work should be done in the Philippines as well or at least it could be more embedded in our cultural and educational institutions.

In the evening, we played Tao, Bagyo, Bangko - similar to musical chairs. Our bodies needed to move and play; we needed to shriek, shout, laugh, run! It was refreshing! And we broke out into our small groups again with the intention of integrating our reflections from Day 1 and 2 and coming up with a five minute creative expression presentation. What a treat to see each group's talent shine and meld together to choreograph a dance, to interpret a story through movement and sounds. A bridge. A boat rowing on Pasig inspired by the Mutya of the river carrying our gifts to our communities. The breath of life animating our spirit.

Day 3: Our Kapwa, Our Service
When our grief is healed;  when we have emptied ourselves of colonial projections; when we internalize the Beauty of our indigenous cultures and the world view that sustains it -- we are ready to serve our Kapwa. On this day, Perla opened the morning with her spirit-filled prayer that touched our deepest selves. And as she walked us through the many forms of her service to her Kapwa via her artistic contributions: glass fusion art, mandala, the babaylan archetypes - we felt that this body of work is the result of decades of reflection about our Loob and Kapwa.

Our Kapwa panel - Lane, Venus, Mila, Virgil -- also talked about their service. Lane has studied Filipino tattoes and their spiritual symbolism and we are the beneficiaries of the wealth of stories that he shares with us through his book and public talks. Venus chose to talk about her healing journeys -- with her father back to the homeland, a trip to Spain that broke her heart open to forgive the colonizer, and how forgiveness rounds out the circle of Kapwa for her. Mila talked about her work with across generations, of how elders can teach the youth and when given the right context for decolonization, such mutual encounters are deeply transformative. Virgil talked about his healing practice and the growing visibility of this work, via his book, Way of the Ancient Healer, in our communities and beyond. Letty, as facilitator, contributed to the panel by talking about her engagement with non-Filipino communities like the Institute of Matriarchal Studies where she was able to present on the Babaylan.

In the afternoon, we created our community mandala on the sprawling grounds of the university. We retrieved our power objects from the ancestral altar and placed them on the center of the mandala. Lane also placed the bamboo (we have now come to call them bamboo oracles) pendants he hand-carved and burnt on the center. We presented Prof. de Leon with  his own Babaylan mandala poster, and a special bamboo pendant. He cried. And there were more tears as Lane presented each participant with his or her special pendant's symbol and story. We felt that we each received a gift that was only meant for us. Amazing!

And then it was time to say goodbye...

Some of us in the core group went to the ocean the next day to offer the atang/altar offerings to the ocean at Salmon Creek. In the main meeting room, we also had a secondary altar where participants were able to write down their petitions and place them inside a beautiful box; we brought these petitions to the ocean as well. We dug a hole and made a makeshift Sinag altar and burnt the papers, letting the prayers be carried by the wind.
**
If you have read this far, thank you! Now you know why our faces in our photos are glowing.

Decolonization and Indigenization as a Path to the Sacred.

Yes, it is.

my hand-made life

today i harvested kale and then washed, chopped, dried, baked. yay!kale chips!
i harvested tomatoes and will have to harvest basil later.
yesterday i harvested blueberries and there was just a handful so they got eaten pronto.
the other day, i harvested oregano and made a sun-dried tomato and oregano pesto.

when i am out in the garden, i catch myself thinking about what isn't getting done -- the manuscripts i have to read, the program i need to write, the books i need to order, the to-do list i need to check off, the books i have to mail, the books i need to read.

it reminded me of Winona La Duke's father who told her: until you learn how to plant corn, i would not listen to your philosophizing. this has stayed with me since. how can i talk about connecting with the Land, write about the organic life, write about environmental justice, etc., if i do not even know how to tend a garden?

so yes, my other work is important but that work is being fed by this small garden.

Post-event musings

Post-event musings:

As we drove home from the event, I mused about Lizae's comment -- "it's like creating a mandala" -- and how apt it felt. Like the recent visit of Tibetan monks on my campus and the destruction of the Tara Mandala at the end of four days of creation, we "dissolved" Lizae's mandala with kapwa jamming, gift offering of flowers and poetry to the attendees, picture-taking, and long goodbyes afterwards. 

The evening began with kulintang music and dance in the front garden and then we moved to the garden in the back where Maite offered a dance to the spirit of spring. As she greeted the blooming rhodies and other blooms in the garden, my little Noah was mesmerized by the dance. We all were. The sound of gongs, the color of malongs, the grace of dance, and the silent meditation ushered us into the the sacred space where we would receive the gifts that will be offered by volunteers after we had moved indoors.

Indoors, every corner of Lizae's home was beautified with flowers, water fountains, candles, art work, rock art, flowing luminous textiles.  As the offerings unfolded, we savored dance, chant, poetry, song, drum, harp, cello, kora, visual images, trance dance, food, and kapwa jammin. Afterwards - beaming faces, nourished souls. 

Time stood still. 

As I returned to my books, theories, and to the classroom, I kept thinking of how to awaken the senses, the soul, the light within each of my students. How can I enliven the work of the mind with the work of the body and spirit? How to swim against the grain of what has become normal but stale and tepid? How do I tell my students about my experience at this event and will they get it? Will I be able to adequately articulate why this work (of CFBS) is transformative and can I connect it with the syllabus content I have laid out for them? In the white concrete walls, no- windows-classroom, how can I speak of sacred geography and of the nourishing warmth of spring's sun, the soft drizzle of petals from the cherry trees around campus, the swallows's nest in Salazar Building?  But I do. I try.

With help from Wade Davis and his recent work on the importance of ancient ways in the modern age, I usher students into the importance of paying attention to the ethnosphere - the legacy of our diverse human repertoire on the planet that is now threatened by the power of domination that has been unleashed by the modern ideologies of progress and development.

We leap from the small particular stories to the Big Story. What is the story we tell ourselves and that we live by? Is there a story more compelling than the story of the free market and the American dream? Yes, there is. And it is Indigenous.

Spirit Breath, A Healing Concert

As I prepared for this day's CFBS event, I noticed how the tasks of picking flowers, chopping vegetables, mixing salad dressing, and getting dressed were all imbued with a feeling of being in ceremony. I didn't put on my watch as I silently told myself that today I will be 'out of time' and will not need to look at my watch.  As  I tried on the banana wrap that I was going to wear with my malong, I marvelled at this plant whose fibers have now become a beautiful gift of garb. Gratitude.

I thank Lizae for organizing this event from a place of heartful intention. Lizae was thinking of a relative in Manila who is living with cancer and she wanted to offer a healing ritual in her name. She thought of the symbols of of tendrils, young shoots, new blooms of Spring as reminders of the cycles of birth, death, and rebirth. She thought of an elderly aunt who is still painting flowers and she wanted to share this gift with her friends. She thought of her sound healing cohort who were always willing to share this gift with others, like me, who are not familiar with the concept of sound healing. Thus, the seed idea for this event was conceived.

Months and weeks into the preparation for this event, I was reminded of the writings of Prechtel about ceremonies and ritual and their necessity in maintaining the heart of the village.  I watched Lizae and the other volunteers for this event remind each other of the sacredness of this event. It is not merely a performance, a showcasing of talent, or putting on a show. And definitely it was not occasion for an academic to put on a lecture - this was their gentle chiding. Leny, please speak from your heart, Lizae said, when you speak from your heart it is so beautiful!

It challenged me. What then can I offer at this event if I am not going to talk in the language of the academe? In a secret corner of my heart, I've wanted to honor my indigenous Kapampangan roots, but how? So I asked Mike P if he knew of an indigenous Kapampangan invocation and he sent me Dalit Karing Nunu/Praise to the Ancestors. He said that this is chanted in the form of the pasyon, the holy week chanted reading of the life of Jesus. I told Mike that I didn't grow up Catholic so I didn't grow up with pasyon singing. Mike then said that the pasyon was borrowed by the Spanish and it "never belonged to them, it belonged to us." Ahhh! There is the answer! I will reclaim this chant and make it mine.

looking forward to spring break. but not much of a break really when i have papers to check, meetings to go to, projects to finish, etc...but a week away from the classroom is a nice respite even though my thoughts are never far from my students. i think of them a lot, i feel their concerns, i sense their anxieties. just last week a student said her boyfriend tried to commit suicide so she had to be with him and so had to miss a class quiz. another student is taking care of a younger brother who needs a bit of discipline. many students are coughing and wheezing.

the presence of tibetan monks on campus last week was a gift. in their maroon and orange robes they floated around campus on the way to the library where they were making a tara mandala...on their way to the cafeteria for breakfast, or on the way to the dorms. it made me wonder what the impact of their presence was on students. one of my students said she was so frazzled one morning and was rushing to print her essay at the library when she saw the monks walking by and she instinctively slowed down and calmed down. one student said she is thinking of going to meditation classes now.

a professor died last week. he collapsed in front of his class and then was taken to the hospital. the news hit me like a ton of bricks. on our regularly scheduled meetings on Tuesday that this prof attends, there wasn't even an acknowledgement of his death that weekend. how strange. business went on as usual but this time there would be no dissent because the prof wasn't there. he was always the one with the dissenting voice.

the sand mandalas are destroyed after they are created to remind us of the impermanence of everything.

Who's afraid of sharia law?

Today I got another chain email. This time it's an essay supposedly written by a woman Muslim convert to evangelical Christianity, warning of the coming sharia law in the US as Muslims in America begin to gain political clout.


I usually don't reply to chain emails but this time I couldn't help it. I wrote back to my friend who sent it and said:

Dear ,

I am very concerned about this kind of chain email circulating in our communities. I think it stokes our fears of the "Other" and makes us undermine our own faith in our professed democratic pluralism.

Even if the personal story of the writer is true, I doubt that the majority of American Muslims share her fear of shariah law ever taking over the U.S. I won't get into this lengthily here but I have faith that all of us who came to this country to find our personal freedom will be wary of any one fundamentalist doctrine threatening to rule our lives. (Of course, whether we find that personal freedom is another topic.)

This email could have been the story of one Filipina woman who was abused by an American man and then the word spreads that all American men are violent. Or the story can spread that a Filipina woman marries a white man to get a visa, exploit him, and then divorces him for another and then the story circulates that all Filipinas are the same.

Please let us be mindful of fear-mongering and let us not be afraid of other-ness.  Let us not forget that Filipinos in the US are still also considered "other" along with other communities of color. 

I just checked out the author of the piece you sent on wikipedia. She claims that she did not write the piece that is circulating. Also, her views should be considered as the views of a Muslim convert to evangelical Christianity and we know that an evangelical can espouse a dualistic world view that is just as sinister as its counterparts in the Muslim world. Is it really an either/or world with nothing in-between?

I hope you can send my remarks to the rest of your listserve. Thank you!

___

There is enough Fear circulating right now that is undermining our capacity for an ever widening and deepening appreciation for our diversity - religious views included. Our public discourse has been reduced to this "us" versus "them" or "West vs. the Rest" and we all suffer the fall-out from our lack of capacity to imagine how else we could view the world beyond dualisms.

Last week in class, we talked about jazz as life metaphor for improvisation; as the capacity to listen deeply to each other; the ability to create bridges instead of slamming doors in each other's faces; the need to learn how re-frame and reconcile rather than divide and conquer. 

It is beautiful to see that when my students listen to each other's stories, they develop a profound compassion for the one who is not like them. Then we remind each other that ideologies and discourses in the dominant culture would have us mistrust and fear each other.

How can we ever find our common ground if we  allow ourselves to be fearful? to be subjected to fear-mongering without critical reflection of what is at stake and who benefits when the people are afraid?

I know Fear intimately. I think about it everyday: I'm afraid of earthquakes, tsunamis, radiation. I'm afraid of oil running out; I'm afraid of soil erosion, global warming, etc. etc. The list is endless.

So I seek refuge in ancient stories about the Water of Life. I seek refuge in trickster stories. I seek refuge in the Beauty that takes my breath away. I seek refuge in the lemon, pomelo, apricot, pear trees in my small garden. I seek refuge in watching the finches feeding off the bird feeder outside my window. 

I seek refuge in writing...about this Fear...and allowing it to swallow me until the alchemy transmutes it into something else that is no longer Fear but Awe in the Mystery even if this mystery is tremendum. 

May all our fears become daffodils in the spring.

tsunami dream

Am looking at the earthquake and tsunami photos in Japan. The other night I saw the same scenario in my dream (tsunami). I woke myself up because I was afraid but then when I realized I was dreaming, I went into lucid dreaming and I told myself that this wasn't an apocalypse; it's the Earth dreaming. When I imagined the Earth dreaming and I allowed myself to drown and float with the waves, my fears changed into calm. Now as I look at the photos/faces of the people in Japan, I see the same calm...I imagine it comes from an understanding and respect for the Mother's dreams.

Who are my elders?

she asked: what do you think of inviting elders ,who are not Filipinos, to guide us since we do not have elders in our community?

who are my/our elders? what is an elder?

i understand where this question is coming from. in an indigenous community that is still primarily oral, the elders/council of elders take on the mantle of guiding the younger ones. they lead, they tell stories, they live by example. they keep the life of the community coherent, stable, meaningful, purposeful. they hold up the cosmic story and the  creation stories that give people their sense of belonging and identity. the shaman/medicine men and women work alongside the elders in keeping life in balance. in land-based communities and stable communities over time, knowledge and wisdom are passed on orally. knowing is embodied and lived. rituals and ceremonies are part of daily life.

but what about those of us in the diaspora? those of us who live in cities as modern subjects, as postcolonial subjects of empire? who are our elders?

when i think of my elders i start a list: my ancestors whose names i do not know. my theoretical ancestors whose works gave me the language that liberated me. some of them are not Filipinos. i think of my older friends who are my career mentors. i think of my parents and grandparents who -- by intentions and omissions -- guided my choices. i think of a lover who tutored me. i think of the IPs i met in Mindanao - many of whom i didn't get to talk to personally but i know of their lives and work and what i know teaches me and nurtures me. i think of authors i've read who confirm and validate my processes and my path and who often articulate what's still on the tip of my tongue, still searching for a language. i think of my husband whose steady hand, big heart, and clear mind provides a container for my ruminations. i think of my siblings. i think of my son and grandson -- they may be my descendants but the Indigenous Soul lives in them, too.

what then is an elder? who is an elder? in this context, in the absence of a community, i am grateful for the people, books, and experiences that became my teachers, guides...that shaped my life work, that led to this place of trust and knowing that my life is nurtured by the Indigenous Soul, that i belong to the earth, that i live in the embrace of the cosmos.

is this possible? to conjure the role of elder thru these weavings? i do not have a choice. but even if i don't have a choice, it is my responsibility to do this work of decolonization and indigenization. i am drawn to the community of like-minded seekers. but each of us have our own work to do since we each have different histories (familial, personal) that we need to unravel to shake off the  dust off our larger colonial history that has shaped us. 

i understand the yearning to be in the physical presence of elders who are wise and who are able to connect the past with the present and then envision a future aligned with a cosmic story that is beautiful and sacred.  i long for elders who have the gift of vision. 

in their physical absence, i have found this guidance elsewhere -- in conversations with others, in books, in dreams, in retreats, in meditation. could it be that the elders speak through these visitations in various forms? do we know how to hear when they are speaking? do we know how to discern their voice amidst the din of psychobabble that litter the road? 

i am learning.

connecting the dots...

it looks like the egyptian revolution is spreading around the Middle East. Bahrain. Iran. Iraq. the youth-led revolutions want democracy and the US supports people's desire for freedom, right? but the US has always backed the autocratic rulers in these countries in order to secure our supply of oil. so what will happen when the people start demanding that they take back control of their own natural resources (same demand in Nigeria re oil) and instead of shipping everything to the US and its allies, they will open the competition to China, India. they will demand that corporate profits be more equally distributed to citizens and not just the royalty. what happens if the royalty does not yield to people power? what will the US do? can we support democratic movements and support dictatorships at the same time? all the editorial pundits are already speculating on the precarious moves that the US must consider...

i smell blowback. i know i am not alone.

no wonder the elder brothers have been warning the younger brother to pay attention. the younger brother will not pay attention....

Banig Memories

Sometimes a banig is more than a banig.

excerpt:


I remembered the last mid-January weekend retreat in Sta. Rosa, the playing like children in Sonoma, the comfort of Leny’s kitchen and couch. I remembered the warmth of bodies and hearts, all 15 of us, settled like birds in a nest, treasuring the home we found in one another. I remembered the sheer bliss of rediscovering deep friendship, the sweetness of laughter shared as a family, the passionate play of being community. We were, as Perla so aptly described it, a bowl. We contained each other, our laughter and our tears, our smiles and even our fears, our bodies, our spirits. We were a bowl yes, but at the same time, we were also a boat on the river, flowing with our dreams, rowing to the rhythm of our vision - for service to our Kapwa - rowing towards liberation, always moving towards freedom.

Original Instructions (from dream circle, 1/16/2011

You are here because we summoned you.
For many decades now you have dreamt of this moment.
In your dreams, your Lola appeared telling you to plant
sampaguita, kalamansi - which are not native to his land.
But this is your Land now. We brought you here.
We sent you here.
These are the original instructions you are remembering now
because the veil of forgetting has lifted. Your memories
are alive; they live and breathe here and now tethered
to the thread that weaves the past, present, and future.
Because of moments like this weekend, we will grieve
no longer because you have welcomed us back and received our
presence into your life.
Your life now flows like song - sometimes of ecstacy and joy,
sometimes of rage and fear, sometimes of reverie --
but always full and throbbing.

feeding the soul...literally

on Christmas day, the Jewish-owned supermarket remained open until 3pm. i bought meself a 1.5lb dungeness crab and a bunch of green mustard leaves. for the spouse, i bought a slice of wild salmon and marinated it in kalamansi, soy sauce, and dill and panfried it in butter while the crab was steaming in another pot.
*
i chopped the green mustard then mixed kalamansi (from the garden) juice with bagoong and added a dash of sugar. i warmed the leftover brown rice. i ate with my hands...just like my Tang used to do...just like my Apo Sinang used to do. Apo even raised her right knee on the long bench and her right elbow rested on it while scooping the rice with her long beautiful fingers. . .
*
i see her now. she is wearing her long saya and her white hair is in a tight bun. i loved how her wrinkled soft skin felt in my young hands. after supper she would sit on the stoop and we kids would sit at her feet and listen to her stories. sometimes, she asked me to help her assemble her maman. her betel nut was already chopped but she would let me wipe a little lye into the betel nut leaf before she popped it into her mouth.
*
i have written about my Apo Sinang before. my maternal grandma, Apung Dikang, lived in Manila and we didn't see her often. But when we traveled by train from San Fernando to Manila to visit her, I always knew that we would eat well for she is a very good cook (she ran a cafeteria in her own home) and we would always get a treat from one of the jars in her sari-sari store.
*
this year we could have had ham or turkey or pot roast with potatoes, yams, and green bean casserole...
*
but my craving for something familiar subverts. back home, fresh crabs, shrimp, catfish were delivered fresh to our home straight from the fish farms of Guagua or the ocean off the coast of Bataan.  on some days when there is no delivery, the open market was never too far away. perhaps this is why, thankfully, i am healthy today because i grew up on fresh food. my mother taught me how to butcher a chicken, how to skin a frog, how to clean fish, how to process shrimp and make shrimp juice out of the fat from the head and shells.
*
later when they came to the U.S. and she was shopping at Safeway to make dinuguan, she asked for "blood" and she was promptly told to go to the Red Cross. likewise, it took me many years to get used to the sight of fillets - of fish, of chicken... so clean but, oh, so devoid of .... good memories.
*
it occurs to me now that my craving for fresh crab is a desire to visit those days when the old folks knew what it meant to live by the gifts of the sea. there were no mediating processing plants and packaging companies in-between. from the sea to the table. can't help but think that this intimacy fed their souls and in turn now feeds mine.

Thank you, Lissa, for this post on the Schools of Living Tradition Symposium.

Eros!

This gravitational draw that holds us to the ground was once known as Eros -- as Desire! -- the lovelorn yearning of our body for the larger Body of Earth, and of the earth for us. The old affinity between gravity and desire remains evident, perhaps, when we say that we have fallen in love -- as though we were off-balance and tumbling through air, as though it was the steady pull of the planet that somehow lay behind the eros we feel toward another person. In this sense, gravity -- the mutual attraction between our body and the earth -- is the deep source of that more conscious delirium that draws us toward the presence of another person. Like the felt magnetism between two lovers,...the powerful attraction between the body and the earth offers sustenance and physical replenishment when it is consummated in contact. Although we've lately come to associate gravity with heaviness, and so to think of it as having a strictly downward vector, nonetheless something rises up into us from the solid earth whenever we're in contact with it. (Becoming Animal, David Abram, 27).
***
No wonder. My first instinct when I get home from work is to put my hands in the garden...

The Day the Dancers Came: Redux

It felt like this to me the night Bayanihan Dance Co came to town recently.

In this neck of the woods, the center for the arts very rarely features any Philippines or Fil Am group. The last time was in the 90s when the Ramon Obusan Folkloric group came to the same stage. Naturally the local Filipino community was abuzz with excitement and they came to fill the venue.

They were thrilled and beaming with ethnic pride. One elderly matriarch even said: For the first time in my life, I feel proud of the Philippines! We know what the under-handed compliment means, don't we? Whether lamenting the local community's internal politics or listening to the network news about the latest scandal or latest catastrophe from the Philippines -- it all comes down to feeling somewhat embarrassed or ashamed about one's country of origin. But tonight there was something she could be proud of!

The day the dancers came to perform at our city's major arts center made the predominantly Filipino audience proud that we have this world class talent on stage. Never mind that during the pre-show interview with the group's directors, they stumbled on their words and sometimes gave the wrong facts (at least not very many noticed). Never mind that they didn't seem to understand the question and so the answer didn't seem coherent. (A friend said that the interview reminded her of the Venus Raj moment.). During the awkward moments of the interview, I wished that they were better prepared with answers. Their talent manager could have asked for a copy of the interview questions so they could have prepared a script for their answers. But all of this was quickly forgotten when the house lights went down and the dancing began. From one suite to the next, the hungry and thirsty audience was more than satisfied, some even mesmerized. On stage their beloved homeland was represented in dance, song, beautiful costumes, and beautiful women and handsome men -- satisfying their longing and homesickness.

Naturally, after the show, the community wanted to meet the dancers to say Salamat, to have Kodak moments. They heard that there was going to be a "meet and greet" time after the show and many lingered and waited. A small group who was privy to the instructions on how this was going to happen made its way to the stage where two white female docents were waiting. The docents were instructed to lead the 15 people on the list to a small room to meet some of the dancers for a brief 15minute meeting. But there were more than 15! The befuddled docents kept on insisting that there should only be 15 but the folks wouldn't budge. After a while, they relented and started to walk the group to a very small windowless room. The dancers obliged and posed. The folks got their souvenir photos.

I was on the list of 15 but there were six students from the university who wanted to be there so I  and others on the list gave up our slots to let the students have their time with the dancers. The docents told us that the reason for the brevity of the  meeting was because the dancers had to rest as they had to be back to the same stage the next day to perform for the schoolchildren of Sonoma County. Ah so....

But still. If the Bayanihan dancers are official cultural ambassadors of the Philippines, could they have arranged their schedule to include making time for connecting with their kababayans in a less hurried, less formal, less bureaucratic manner? What's with the stiffness of procedure? What's with the small windowless room? Okay, I get it. The group is managed by Columbia Artists Management, Inc. The group is on a tight schedule and who knows what other terms of contract they have to abide by.

Am I so naive to wish for the old ways of connecting? Ba-ya-ni-han spirit. We are a very friendly and happy people and we like to share this with the world said the two directors. I wish they had meant it that night.

Reviews

Babaylan book review by Carlene Bonnivier.

My review of Eileen Tabios' The Thorn Rosary on Moira Poetry site.