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.

Review of Eileen Tabios' Thorn Rosary

Found this online and filing it here

Excerpt:

Once upon a time the eyewitness to the rituals of a Babaylan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babaylan ; http://www.babaylan.net ) told of her altered states of consciousness when she did her healing, her communing with the spirits. They didn’t understand her language but they accepted the efficacy of her relationship with the spirit world. They trusted her. They knew she had access to this world. (Why else did the Spanish friars in the 15th century  embark on the project of exterminating these Babaylans?). [3]

Does a poet like Eileen also perform, symbolically, the role of a Babaylan? If the Babaylan is able to ferry a person in-between worlds, or is able to summon a wandering soul back to the body, or plead with the spirits to be kind and generous, or negotiate a propitiation—can a Babaylan-inspired poet do the same?

Sometimes reading poetry, for me, is learning how to dive for one’s own meaning. In diving one learns, senses, embodies. This I have learned from my engagement with Eileen’s body of work over the past decade. [4]

If according to Archbishop Fulton Sheen, The Rosary is “a meditation for the blind, the simple, the aged.” is it then possible that the The Thorn Rosary is that which pricks the meditation in order to return us to our own bodies? Our bodies that aren’t blind, not simple, not aged.

Isn’t this the work of  babaylan poetics—to walk the angel back into its body in unborrowed light (see Eileen’s Babaylan Poetics blog at http://babaylanpoetics.blogpost.com ) . Eileen creates her own light, a luminosity that is also sorrowful, joyful, glorious…the light is unborrowed because it has already taken upon itself all that there is—the world into the poem. It doesn’t ask for a return, only an invitation to dance. The dance of the babaylan.

Isn’t this what the babaylan does? She dances. In wholeness. In ecstasy. A body out of time and space. And when she doesn’t literally dance, she writes Poems that dance. The Poem, like this one, takes your hand and leads your sensuous mind, this mind that descends into the body to become whole and sacred:

....

Interview with Nina Simons

This interview echoes what most of us already know. By 'us' I mean Filipinos who live resilience everyday, who value relationships over things, who understand interconnections.
What are the manifestations of this remembered ways of reverence in our communities?
Nina speaks of being replenished by Nature because this sacred connection is medicine.
I listen to this and I think of my brothers and sisters in the homeland who must live through the floods, landslides, then displacement, hunger -- the consequences of the devastation of the ecosystems that feed off a paradigm that does not think of the earth as sacred, only as resource.
What is my role in restoring balance? What is yours? What is ours?

Decolonize Together: Moving Beyond a Politics of Solidarity to a Practice of Decolonization.

glad that this word is finally getting its due.

starting the year with James Hillman

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!

connecting the dots...

typhoon Sendong pours nonstop for 11hours
sends flash floods down and washes away villages
thousands die
deforested mountains due to illegal logging
and mining perhaps?
weather authorities do not warn folks
in Japan they were warned
Mindanao has been declared the last frontier of development
mining companies and other corporate interests have set their sights on Mindanao
recent news that banana plantations were ruined by an unknown disease infecting the bananas
Mindanao didn't use to experience severe weather patterns because supposedly it was located off the typhoon belt
this is no longer true
Davao has experienced flooding
a few years ago we drove by yellowing coconut groves and i asked why
and i was told they were diseased, too.
the kadayawan festival flower growers were also worried that the growing season has been erratic
the Ampatuan massacre has not been solved and no one has been held accountable in spite of witnesses and direct evidence of who did it
on TV Patrol all i hear about is the Arroyo scandal, her supreme court justice appointee scandal
i do not hear about the anti-mining movement even tho 4M have signed the petition
the RH bill hasn't passed and population continues to explode
and Filipinos continue to be nothing more than "export" commodities
to support the nation
and yet no matter what is happening
Filipinos rally together to help their kapwa
social media offers lots of info on how to help
but am i deluded in thinking that social media is really making that big of a difference?
i know that distant objects appear bigger than they really are in the rear view mirror
and it is 6 days before christmas
and i am sipping coffee in bed
writing this on my laptop
we have been waiting for rain
this winter is too dry
on my bedside i read: the world behind the world
so i can connect the dots and hold the tension
between understanding and not
between gains and losses
between here and there
between tears and laughter
between soon and never

if you are reading this
connect the dots with me