There's My Temple

There's my temple!

Believer, unbeliever or wild one.
You are welcome!
We have no definition of who we are but human.

We have no code but that of respect.

We have no creed but that of equality.

There's my temple!

Identity-seeker, sinner, stateless or not.

You are welcome!

We have no constraints on expression but space.

We have no code but to listen to poetry

between the silence and the surrender.

There's my temple!

Nature-tripper, urban-dweller, or saint.

You are welcome!

How shall we divide the world but by our breaths.

We have no pope above us, no infallible bull.

We have no judgement but in terms of harm.

There's my temple!

History-maker, marginalized, unorganized.

You are welcome!

We have no covenant among us but mutual assistance.

We insist on no assumptions and doubt moral facts.

We are free to theorize with emotion and call it hope.

There's my temple!

Unbecoming, expert, robe or disrobe.

You are welcome!

We have no dwarfs or giants, Goliath fell long ago.

We have no seal on revelation, tentative is truth.

Lead by your desires and serve by your power.

There's my temple!

Funny, temperamental, shy, or wise.

You are welcome!

There is not one way of being human, not even Superman.

We have no world but that which we together create.

There is as much wisdom in harmony as in dissent.

Track One

I gaze into a meadow I'm not sure what the soul aspires for.
The rough grazing winds over the blades of grass
stirs the brazen histories of when I was strong and true. 

How can all this be so stark in the mind
now when I used to laugh at the sentiment that drives the beasts to the wild. 
I said, "How can so much be felt in a while?"

This barren distance that helps me see what was once not defined -- what have I myself denied and by what right? I seem to see more than what is in this light.  

I need place so many lives that would have crossed this path in another time. 
Would it not have been some word unkind
that brought me here or perhaps a test of what's divine, if only few will know. 

And I will be twisting like a leaf over the gale
whispering some lovely tale from a squirrel to a tree. 
I am but a borrower of its root, this puddle, or this yoke

worth its weight in stone as though these questions did this minute give. 
This breadth is but a step in another's dance. 
And I would need to comprehend yet even more than I can, given this chance;

for this is not a matter of what's in store but of many things beyond measure.
I need to unravel what spaces between me and the meadow I see,
for all that is here and all that is there is equal beyond repair.

If my mind could embrace beyond my arms' length, beyond what I can move,
what I can reach, then there is more than the meadow and me and the soul,
and the brush and the butterfly no matter how overwhelming they can be.  

They will not envelope me, and I shall not contain them within me. 
And if we all fell into place there will always be a space farther than myself can grow. 
And I needed not to be the master of it, nor its slave.  

Loving Like My Lovers

I've been a self-confessed serial monogamist.  I began dating at the age of 12 when a girl of my same age courted me.  I believe it was just a dare.  The subject of my sexuality had been bothering other students and they were very curious to know.  I myself didn't know what being a lesbian meant.  I had found my desires very unnatural since I began crushing on my teacher at the age of 5.  I grew up with my grandmother who doted on my early showing as a bright student.  Naturally, my clan loved showing off my academic awards. But I have always felt awkward not knowing why I didn't act like my girl friends and why I loved hanging out with boys in my neighborhood, climbing walls, playing ball, wreaking havoc in the neighborhood and looking for gangs to fight with.  

At the age of 12, I began to look at myself as attractive, my looks found affirmation in the eyes of those who would form a string of affairs.  At one time, in my junior year in high school, when I went on a spiritual retreat as was required in Catholic school, my 2 roommates took note that I had an impossible heap of letters from well-wishers. I was then living with my father and mother who never told me I'm beautiful.  And the attention from those well-wishers saved me from more complex self-esteem issues.

Serial monogamists are not necessarily clingy. In my case, perhaps I grew too wily in the game.  In three instances, in different relationships, I've had affairs with other women.  I became so adept at the stages of relationship that I developed a three- to four-year cycle and learned when was the best time to start affairs. I was a love crook. One lover even moved closer to where I was living with my partner so that I could just walk to her home anytime I felt like it.

I'm turning 45 in a few weeks. I've been single for more than a year.  This is the longest I've ever not been moved by anyone enough to pursue or charm them.

When my 7-year and longest relationship fell apart in 2011, I felt old, worn, ugly, and useless.  I was obese, jobless, and crabby.  For the couple of years after, I forced myself to rediscover and remake myself.  I forced myself to go clubbing even when I hadn't done it in more than a decade.  I developed a liking to sports and the outdoors again.  During that last long relationship, I wallowed in my introspection, reading, studying, avoiding friends, satisfied in my lover's gaze and her ability to love me for whatever shape I've taken.  

So it is ironic that my friends constantly comment that I look more happy than I've never been before although I still wonder why I have no craving for love anymore.  

For the first time in my adult life, I'm the one who fills my home with warmth and light, I take my own time, I reside in my own thoughts, and I make my own goals.  I don't get excited buying something for someone except for me.  I don't hurry home for anyone, except for me. I don't represent a couple in my voice, my temper, my stand, my actions.  I stand only for myself.  I fall only for myself.   And everyday, I look forward to me.  

I look forward to how I shall unfold in the challenges when there's no one to vent to. I am amazed at how I let myself win more when no one nurses me in my victimhood.  I love how I can go out feeling the evening cold, the noises that startle me as I walk, and the distractions that I don't entertain even if there's no other to attend to but my own feelings and thoughts.

I serve myself and feel my skin.  I cry unremarkably and even forget about how often it happens when playing a sappy song for the sake of it.  I can treat myself royally without having to explain why and I can also starve days just because I'm tired of the regular choices of food.  This person is no stranger - this self.  Yet, it rarely talks back and doesn't always analyze me or break apart my choices throughout the day.  Although there is a big chance that I will be invisible to myself when the crowd goes away, it is easy to do and invisibility takes much with it.  The crease of my eyes that make them look like they twinkle more - no one sees that.  I look at the whole wall that is made of mirror in my kitchen and I make faces to see my own smile, but I will never discover how I look when I bow my head, when I turn my back, when I look down or up, or close my eyes.  I just have to know that if I had a lover, it wouldn't matter, I'd feel loved.

And that feeling is how I know my lovers have seen me.  And that feeling of being loved is my purpose at this time.  That I am so happy with myself, though it's not even romantic.  I feel loved because I've taken care of me as they would have.  They have given me freedom, confidence, and affirmations.  

In the painful beginnings after my last breakup, which was with a four-month fling with a Filipina neighbor who went back to the US where she is based, it was a struggle to feel no one's presence but mine - the stranger that was me.   But memories of her were beautiful.  For us both, the end was clear --- we always knew she wouldn't be staying here.  Yet she cared for me in my sickness.  She soothed me in my doubts and praised me for my day's victories. She was graceful as she was gracious in receiving what I could give.  We didn't have drama.  I'm fortunate for having her as my last affair.  When weeks later, I came to Vegas, she made sure to send me a package of gifts from her place in Arizona.  A watch, perfume, and some vitamins.  She was still nurturing.   She gave me so much trust in myself that has left me with this wealth that is hard to compromise for a whim.  

If she sees me again, the commercial model that she is, she will tease me about my weight, but even that wouldn't injure me.  I'm too happy to be put down.  Thanks to her, and also the many lovers who came to love me.  Growing up lesbian in a Catholic country is very trying and I could easily have been one of many lesbians who have taken their lives, like the classmate of mine who never turned around to accept who she was.

Finally, my lovers' lessons no longer fall on deaf ears. "You're fine", the last one would always say.  I've finally learned to be like her and the others -  to see Tet as lovely and fine.



  

We Are Muslims Too.

I read Muslims killing Muslims online today.  ISIS is killing seven times more Muslims than non-Muslims said a CNN article. Obviously, this is no longer a question of religion, not a question of conversion, not a question of ideology, but a desperate reaction to something equally violent. 

Back in 2007, I gave a talk attended by commissioners of the Philippine Commission on Human Rights on the nature of violence that I learned volunteering in 2002 at the New York Anti-Violence Project.  I wasn't trained there, but I read a lot of material.  The singular message was: There is no profile of a violent person.  That person could be a Muslim, a Christian, your professor, the homeless woman, the child, the husband, the wife, the sister, the grandmother.  There is simply not one kind of person who can commit violence.  My talk, as a representative of an NGO committed to report human rights abuses, made the point that two people can have exactly the same experience, but one may be violent, the other not.  But looking back now, my talk was incomplete.  Back then, I noted one or two directors of the CHR who liked to justify the violence of the armed communist rebels against structural violence.

But let us go back a few centuries. The Philippines was a sophisticated culture with evidence of Hinduism and Buddhism.  Archeological finds with Sanskrit words on them date as far back as 100 C.E.  Buddhist texts date as far back as the 9th century.  We were quite an open economy of 7,000 islands.  The Muslims came in the 14th Century.  We have no record of resistance of our ancestors against the Muslims.  And most of the over 100 indigenous peoples here preserved their pagan cultures, perhaps because it was a time of the Ottoman Empire known for religious tolerance.  When the Spanish came to force Catholicism on all in 1521, the economic centers were the first to convert.  Many sub-cultures continued to exist in the margins.  Our language today bears evidence of its Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim etymology.

I grew up in Mindanao, a part of the Philippines known to be heavily influenced by Muslims, if not populated by them.  I grew up in Davao City with my paternal grandmother.  What is notable is that early on, kids were taught to dread Muslims.  Grownups would admonish them by saying, "Ok, if you don't do that, the Muslims will come and get you."   Yet the only few Muslims I knew personally seemed kind people - two were my classmates - one was Muhammad who turned out to be an heir to a seat of power, and Shaj Pendatun, now a political leader of a place named for his surname; and the third one was the fish vendor, a gentle sunburnt man with leathery skin who used an old-fashioned scale to sell fish to my grandmother every week.  

Later on, studying in the University of the Philippines, I befriended some Muslim leaders supportive of the Moro National Liberation Front.  Of course, there were quite a few discussions on the Quran and Islam, but nothing short of rooting us back to our common vision of a real economic and political democracy for the Philippines. 

Right now, I'm a Unitarian Universalist minister serving a very small chapel in the shanties of Western Bicutan in Taguig City.  When I was installed, it was such a privilege for Muslim friends to come and bless me, along with my Buddhist friends.  I invited Hindus, but they were unable to make it.   I believe in diversity as a key to peace, and I wanted that to be clear during my installation.  My ordination, on the other hand, featured a hands-on-my-head pray-over by many ministers rooted in animism and pagan practices.  These connections didn't have overnight.  I have worked with different faiths most of my life.

I believe if there's a truth that I share with all of them, it is that we are human beings and that we believe there is a way to live together not just in peace but in harmony.   In fact, most of the people I know from those faiths speak to my beliefs more than the Catholic faith I grew up in.  As Sting, yes the musician also known as Gordon Sumner said, "People go crazy in congregations, they only get better one by one."

Jesus went after "lost" individuals - the unorganized, the marginalized, the poor, the voiceless, the invisible.   Muhammad went after civilizations to put order that was for him classless and just.  But as history would consistently show, it is the organizing process that puts evil in many a benevolent mission.  When people are given thankless duties, like his generals, especially huge responsibilities to instill order in chaos, they can become frustrated, desperate, and may start seeking power either to make administration easier, or to take advantage of their position of trust, and the very good they try to establish becomes merely a tool, confusing their ends and means.

Muhammad's message today is that civilizations need caring for, they need centralization of values if they are to understand each other and live in peace.  His was not a religion that could suffer attacks against his tribe without a military defense - a way that today's military tacticians would view as practical - which does not discount preemptive strikes.  This is a religion with practical applications in today's post-modernity.

Muslims are not blind to the war going on against them.  They will defend and retaliate as any nation would.  Why would they be demonized doing so?  

Last March 2014, my country has ended a long war with Muslims by signing an agreement that gives them their overdue governance on territories where they are the majority.  This means that any harvest, mine, or resources coming from their region benefits their region first. An ignorant American who works for the US Embassy scoffed at me, over one dinnertime conversation, at why Filipinos would "give them effective secession".  Clearly, he feels that his opinion was borne of either brilliant insight or mainstream enough to be spewed over the salad.  Does he know how our culture and way of life honors the contributions of Muslims this way?  Probably not.  I wonder why the American government sent this UC Berkeley graduate here with his sense of entitlement.  Muslim-dominant parts of the country have remained below poverty levels for too long.  Our discrimination have fed the war too long.  Their literacy rate of 65% is far below the country's average of 95.5%.

We have bridged the divide through decades of peacebuilding dialogues.  The solution didn't arrive from thin air as a reaction to fear.  This was an olive branch, extending our fellowship to our fellow Filipinos in the south.  And we are only too lucky they have honored our peace efforts.  The agreement itself was born of years of talks between the government and rebel Muslim leaders and their legal counterparts and has set the bar for peace talks in the world.  But that's not exciting in a world given to Warcraft, Clash of Clans, and other gamefication of human lives for the sake of gold coins, treasure, or power points in public perception.

My talk was incomplete in 2007 because it did not differentiate between suffering the flaws of individuals, seeking justice against criminals, and the intolerable onslaught of violence by a nation, whether that nation be called Western, European, American, or Christian.   The difference is you may suffer flaws, perhaps pardon criminals, but to not defend your nation against another is itself a sin in many languages.

It is common knowledge to the Filipinos now that the US sent more troops here than they did in Afghanistan in the guise of teaching Filipino military better tactics.  But no one believes that now.  Filipinos know that the US military is learning from Filipino war experts who have been doing land combat for decades against the Muslim rebels and the Communist rebels here.   But that is only if you are optimistic.  The worse case is the US military is learning our tactics so that they can sow more confusion and grow an ISIS type of movement soon for all the mining potential in Mindanao.  The Philippines is in the top of the world's lists in mining resources for palladium, for one, essential to the alloy of white gold, and also for nickel, copper, and chromite, with a huge demand for industrial purposes.  Go figure.

There is a redemptive aspect in knowing one's historical national identity. Fact is, we will always be as Muslims as we are Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and pagans.  We need to embrace the fullness of our history, not through a fractured lens will we bring healing from suffering and brokenness, but through a lens like Galileo's, willing to break the boundaries of belief in order to look beyond what we've been told.

Can't Quit Asking

Forget centuries of religious intellectuals and spiritual gurus, consider scientific discoveries and technological innovation, why are we sitll at the point of history where violence is currency and poverty is a majority experience?

What have we accomplished?
Have we discovered God?
Have kind people discovered a way to trust each other to work together?
Why do certain organized religions continue to persecute people?
And why do scientific strides continue to benefit the rich over the poor? 
Is there an organization working towards making sure these things don't happen? 
How can organizing well-intentioned people lead to the suffering of others?

Is there a way people can take their needs for granted so that they can work for good?
Don't well-funded non-profit organizations try to accomplish this?
Don't well-funded religious oranizations also try to do this?
Do these organizations make the objective of managing intellectual competition and encouraging collaboration?

Is it too much to ask?
Is the urgency not clear?
Are there other priorities that need to be considered over erradicating poverty?
Are we simply distracted?
Are we self-indulgent pricks carrying on with our "way of life" because we deserve it?

Are we cowards?
Have we deluded ourselves into thinking that guns can silence people much too many than those who wish to destroy us?
Is the human race still hung up on empire that we continue to live and think like slaves enabling the powerful by enjoying their treats?
Are we afraid that the very people we seek to save won't care for us after all is done?
Can't we have a covenant with the poor to guarantee social equality?

I wanted to write some answers, but there were many questions, instead I found much ambition in the way.

 

What Happens To Nights Like This

What happens to nights like this

When words you've heard

become what they were meant to be

and you don't learn. You stay at home.

You let what will be,they don't own you -

you don't own them.

Feeling spent while all are filling.

Having much and many

all this silence, all this lonesome

all this darkness not built for me,

but made for me regardless

if outside is a breeze

you don't walk away from this.

Do nights go anywhere?

Do they run or walk somwhere?

They run like lava over everything

this wealth I'm not made for

in a room I've made austere

when sunlight hits the walls tomorrow

I will be all the same.



The Stranger Pope

I had high hopes when I learned that the pope was a Jesuit.

I'm not naive. I've read about the work of Jesuits for nazi Germany and all their crude misconduct throughout history. But that's what I was counting on - not a scheming agent of devious machinations, but a person who goes against the grain on his own principles. Put someone like that as Pope and you can expect a shakedown.

I was not only schooled by Jesuits, I was personally mentored by the former Jesuit Provincial (the highest Jesuit position in any country) in matters of social justice. Jesuits have founded many social action organizations including two of the largest labor unions in the country.  In the end, the Jesuit Provincial, who also had taught Ethics in the prestigious Philippine Military Academy, had a serious falling out with the women's organization he helped found because of its positions on abortion and the reproductive health bill.  I had a falling out eventually because although I took the cudgels of organizing the women loyal to him, I could not not support the bill.  Or so I would like to think. Possibly I'm difficult to work with in a structured environment where Jesuits can thrive with the military.  It's always been my challenge.

So I love this Pope because he has gone against many traditions. I suspect he is also torn on many more issues than already publicly confessed.  For instance, several Jesuits are gays. There are many whispers among the halls of the Ateneo University.  We who heard of them were torn between sympathy and cringing. So the Pope opening the conversation on this piece should have been helpful.

This Pope will surely change lives if he hadn't already. But not because he has his own opinions that differentiate him from many modern Catholics, but because he is dressed in a robe, he is talked about, seen in crowds, and he waves from a magnificent balcony dripping with symbol. One day he will pass away and we will feel empty for his loss. And his successor may prolong his legacy or overturn it, as popes are allowed. But 30 years from now we may have already disregarded his words, especially if no real change in the clergy hierarchy would have taken effect.

My point is, there are people more ordinary who have no clout but will be shaping our lives more than any person on TV.  They are called our neighbors. They elect the local community leader, the next president, and even has a hand in how traffic is managed in our neighborhoods.  Yet we hardly ask about their principles and values. We don't sit them down and dress down their wrong notions about women, gays, carpooling, or the electoral system.  And yet we can.  And even get some clout in the process.

The Pope soon comes to the Philippines. Already, streets are being paved more thoughtfully. People will be flocking to get a glimpse, it will be a nightmare for the government of a hugely Catholic country to ensure his safety.

I'm already learning two things from his hugeness and his smallness.  Every generation has a revolutionary, but this generation has many, although pity they have been adopted by corporations. There's Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and others. People who don't care whether you have community gardens only computers.  This Pope may be a different revolutionary. At least he spoke about inequality as the root of all evil. Nathan again, he has not started a program for equality in Vatican City.   His hugeness is becoming increasingly inappropriate to his message.   But then he is also inherently small, a small piece in the puzzle. He can't change the world alone. And so he must try to preserve the office which differentiates his not-so-extraordinary opinion from the common folk.

Elementally, the Pope is still an ordinary stranger outside your doors. How much of the Pope you let in is a reflection of the world you're trying to make; how much you let in of any stranger for that matter.

We curate chaos just as anybody else does. He may be one thing and so are you.