GETTING EVEN

[June 9, 2015]

My remote seldom switches to CNN, and if it does it’s only in passing. I watch it only when it presents something I truly find interesting. Just exactly like what that fabled cable news network featured last Sunday, May 07, in its "GPS" segment, when it featured about the emerging warriors, no, not the Golden State’s, but the ones belonging to ISIS movement.

The show merited my full attention when their resource person, a colored but well-respected woman, testified about the savagery those ISIS men did and do to all innocent civilians. But when she spoke about every pretty young female of every village they would overrun, I stopped watching it as her story sent shivers down my spine, giving me some goosebumps.

You try to have a very young and lovely princess for a daughter with you to whom you spend daily your most precious moments, especially now that she works with you too when you report for duty at least five days a week, then you'll know what I mean.

I could easily imagine through her detailed account in spontaneous narration of every scene when ISIS would hold public auction of those female captives right up the stage, chained and naked. If you’d only let your emotion and carnal self grip completely your mind and spirit, you’d never think twice about training in the Middle East for bomb-making and suicide-bombing: against the ISIS.

It makes you wonder, if this sort of human creatures so vocal and passionate about their so-called faith, the reason their acolytes and fanatics do those things as they would allege, then it's easy to assume what attributes their deity does really possess, for one interprets that whoever that god is, then rape, murder and mayhem are what he’d encourage.

And the rest of the world will conclude that such kind of deity is totally unlike the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob. He’s the same God of every believer today and tomorrow, dwelling in the hearts of men and not in any building, tent or cove.

He Who is "gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy" (Ps.103:8). The Beginning and the End Who inhabits eternity (Rev.22:13; Isa.57:15).

His main character, uniquely separating Him from any other god, is that He is the Lord of many chances for our God is love (I Jn. 4:8). If other gods teach their loyal minions and followers that killing their enemy gives them satisfaction and glory, our God doesn’t, as He teaches us instead to be humble, to be sensitive for everybody and to even love our enemy (Jn. 5:44).

As Jesus Christ Himself reminded the people in His preaching that even the publicans were also good to those who were good to them (Jn 5:46). That is why loving an enemy is the core of Christian teaching for only through this way that we can show our difference.

Hence, if someone wronged you, deliberately broke your heart and caused you terrible hurt and unbearable pain, don't take revenge, "Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord," (Rom.12:19) but rather take it to God in prayer to pray for him.

AMANDA

(I just like to share with you one of the finest works of my past favorite writers in the Inquirer, the late Supreme Court Associate Justice Isagani A. Cruz, a man of law and reverence who did speak like a common man mostly in his writings, but with full of poetry in his heart, through his column “Separate Opinion.” I just took the liberty to edit the syntax errors.

This was written around Valentine’s Day of 2008 and I’m glad I found this today in the net (thank you, Google). I remember I cut this out then right after I read but also subsequently misplaced.

He wrote this while he was already in his eighties. Read on, this is from the heart of the romantic.)

"Separate Opinion

Amanda

By Isagani Cruz

Philippine Daily Inquirer

First Posted 19:50:00 02/16/2008

THIS ONE’S FOR THE LADIES WHO WERE young some 60 years ago but still regard love as the Great Adventure that tested and tempted their pure and innocent lives. I write this with wry humor in recollection of how girls were during that less daring time, when the chaperone sat between sweethearts in the movies and the boy paid for all expenses of their date instead of “kkb” or “kanya-kanyang bayad” as at the practical present.

So I leave politics out in the meantime and, for the benefit of the fair sex, write about the more engaging topic of Romance that many of them may still enjoy but only vicariously. I suppose some of them are still secretly recovering from recollections of their own Valentine’s Day that was so different (or maybe not?) from the one celebrated last Thursday by their less inhibited granddaughters. Their reveries are like sniffing the faded fragrance of a wilted rose between the pages of a forgotten book.

I recall that time when I remarked to the late Sen. Ambrosio Padilla that he must have been a quite popular young man, being tall and handsome, a brilliant law student, a star Olympic athlete, and immensely rich to boot (although I did not mention that last attribute). He demurred humbly and said, “No, because I was so skinny then and was very shy with the girls.” I half-believed him because he later won as his bride one of the loveliest ladies in the land, the regal Lily de las Alas.

Mrs. Padilla’s singular grace accentuated the radiance of the Filipino women at the time, along with Aurora Recto and Nelly Lovina, both elegant matrons. Among the younger set were Guia Balmori, Telly Albert, for whom I had a boyhood crush that did not diminish when I first met her personally at the Inquirer when she was already a grandmother, and, of course, the exquisite Susan Magalona. The nation remembers her with pride and affection although she left long ago for other shores where many people might have doubted that she had come from the boondocks of the Philippines.

I was like the modest senator, but only because I was also skinny and shy, that’s all. But I did have a number of girl, i.e., female, friends who probably considered me harmless. Among them were Ester, who later married a hoodlum; Cely, whom I walked daily to her dorm after our classes in UP; Elisa, who researched at the USIS library while I waited for her and smoked outside; Myke, who said to a mutual friend that I have been in love with her for the past 50 years; Cora, who was my phone pal until I sent her a picture of some pug and said it was me; and Mary who never went out except with a suspicious eagle-eyed aunt. And there was Ursula.

Ursula was special because she was exceptionally lovely. Her family moved to a house near ours during the war and we could see each other while she washed the dishes in her kitchen and I read in the afternoons in our porch. One day she wrote me and said, “Hi! Would you like us to be friends?” And then she asked if I had a copy of “Magnificent Obsession” that I might want to lend her. I did and immediately took it to her, and that started our beautiful friendship.

We began exchanging letters every day (remember we were teeners then) until one day the answer I got was not from Ursula but from her sister, who explained that her “ate” was indisposed. It was from Amanda, whom I had hardly noticed before, and the next day it was Ursula who was writing back again. After the war, her family moved back to the province and we lost track of each other until I read the sad news many years later that she had passed away.

Looking back, it is not the enchanting Ursula I mostly remember but her younger sister Amanda. In my mind’s eye, I see her again, a wisp of a girl with long black hair, light brown eyes, a smooth and fair complexion, a cute nose, full red lips and white even teeth. Also, she was two years younger than I, not two years older like Ursula as I discovered from her obituary. Amanda was lovely too, not as extravagantly as Ursula, but in a way I liked and wanted my future wife to be.

I am married now to my caring and beautiful wife Sally, who has given me a happy life. I thank God for making her my eternal and beloved soul-mate.

But every once in a while I think of Amanda and where she might be now if she is still alive after these many vanished years. Why had she written me when her sister could not and why did I not answer her instead of her sister? Could there have been the spark of a mutual fascination that would have changed our separate and distant lives? If I had wooed Amanda and succeeded, could that have brought us together to live happily ever after in some approachable fantasy land?

Old people like us luxuriate only in memories because the future no longer beckons us with promises of excitement and fulfillment. Reminiscences are better for they can be retroactively erased, amended or embellished as the wistful heart dictates. Dreams do for us what reality cannot. So on a lazy afternoon in my quiet garden, or at night when the stars are bright in the lonely skies, I become 17 again and dream, vainly, it is true, like all dreams, of the ephemeral vision of Amanda."

REBOUND

[April 11, 2012 at 12:03pm]

I’s just thankful it coincided with the Holy Week hence it was mistaken for a “penance,” as throughout the period my body suffered all kinds of aches known to man, or in this case, to me, at once.

The culprit? The usual suspect, my first and last love, my ultimate desire, my passion, longing and pride: basketball. It’s the only exercise I knew which could set my body and soul in motion without really trying. As the sight and sound of a bouncing ball is more than enough to bring back to life my dead cells and fading adrenaline.

But not all the best things in life are free. Somewhere, somehow, there’s always a price to pay.

Yeah, in the middle of the game, your never-say-die attitude is there to go on the fight, to make or break. But even in the field of sports you could prove that the Bible is true when it preached about the spirit that is willing and the flesh that is weak.

You could anticipate the ball where it’d be going yet you lost your reflexes as you see it coming, thus the next scene is you’re going up for the rebound, summoning all your spring to jump up high but realizing later you just elevated yourself in the air by not more than five inches high and subsequently securing the ball all by your lonesome but not without it hitting your face first and then it rolled through your chest to diaphragm.

However, playing with the youngsters is an exhilarating feeling. Imagine, running toe to toe with those kids half your age who are your ex-playmates’ kids, banging bodies and rubbing elbows with them aside from cymbals-like crashing of heads. We oldies are just thankful the same old great “hilot" from Gines, Tay Crispin, will always be around when we have twisted ankles and separated joints with free unbearable pain.

But that’s basketball, the game of the tough and the best if not the beast. Jaworski once said if you don’t want to get hurt physically, play chess.

If the game had taught me anything, it’s the principle that if after several tries you’re still scoreless and your offense’s still sour, just stand up and go back after the fall and defend and get the rebound. Never lose hope at anytime and persevere, there’s always a chance to win as it ain’t over till it’s over.

STARTING ALL OVER AGAIN

[April 11, 2014]

One of the hardest parts of life insofar as I am concerned is, after each fall, how to start all over again. Like after my long hiatus from FB due to other concerns, I’d grope for words at once upon re-logging in.

Like when you’re compelled to renew your multi-purpose loan anew after having paid back only some fifty percent, your agony’s end is hard to imagine because you start another long period of extended monthly amortization payment.

When you are still in your early teenage years and starting to feel something special for your opposite gender, you don’t know how to commence conversation with her, much less spill out the words you hope she longs to hear. Or, when you have just been dumped to the floor by someone who for years you adore, and worship as well, it’s hard to teach your heart to beat once more since you would doubt now if it’s still capable to feel.

When you are a fire victim, having lost loved ones and all belongings to the towering inferno which devours everything, despite having no experience whatsoever, still you would sympathize with those victims for you never know too how your next life would begin. We’re all certain that starting anew from the scratch is one of life’s most difficult tasks. It’s like becoming a baby once more: despite fear of falling flat, taking a step is a must.

But while others are at a loss on how to start all over again, other people are insignificantly confused about when does life actually commence.

Like the case of Pro’s and Anti’s regarding the controversial Reproductive Health Bill now in action which the Supreme Court ruled as “not unconstitutional” but struck down its eight provisions thus regarded by many as “win-win” solution. It’s laughable that some religious leaders are in vehement opposition of government funding of youth’s RH education and contraceptives’ provision yet they find no fault in the funding for these same leaders’ personal SUV’s like Pajero and Expedition.

However, many are precisely confused and thus cannot avoid asking: when does a life of a human being would truly be starting?

If we would still care to remember, all human born of a woman are, naturally and scientifically speaking, born winners. If I’d still recall biology right, we were just a sperm cell, racing and reaching first to an egg cell, over several million others.

But, when God actually gives breath and spirit in action, is it during fertilization or conception?

If you ask for my sincerest opinion, I don’t really care about in what stage of creation a human life begins. It’s because I truly believe we will all be judged not on how we started life but how do we live it till it ends.

You think you’re holier because you’re born ahead and have had done for God so many tasks? What do you think then, why did Jesus said that many are called but few chosen thus the last shall be first and the first last (Matthew 20:16)?

In this sports where involved are all the living, the matter’s still on how we played the game. So, if you ask me when it truly starts rolling again, well, life begins at forty-seven.

AND THEN THERE WERE THREE

[April 11, 2015]

Some days ago, the saddest scenes in the globe, at least in Youtube, for the young ones and the young once, like my generation, are many people’s one reaction upon their official confirmation of the departure of Zayn Malik from his popular band One Direction.

The uploaded cries and anguish and some mix of contorted faces, especially by that gay man who tearfully rankles, as if he’d now to face life’s hardest hurdles, show that the pain of losing someone is indeed too hard to overcome, like some heart’s battles, especially if you’re used to hearing his familiar canticles.

And I’d say the internet is ‘luckier’ it’s born only a few years ago and not during those years when melodies were felt like life’s mantles or a soothing balm from all pain, sounding like trickles.  Lest, the net would have already crashed severely if not exterminated totally when John Lennon chose Yoko Ono over his group the world-renown, no, universal phenomenon, called The Beatles.

It was a tragedy for the Beatlemaniacs, as if the day of death of music, and half the world at the time unabashedly wept. That love would be chosen over fame by Lennon was too hard to believe, for he caused his band to disband because he left.

In the local shore, the same thing happened when in Cainta I early woke up, and while sipping my coffee cup, I picked a  Tempo tabloid one morning. I could not understand why there was something inside me then that was terribly saddened upon reading the tabloid’s headline, “Tunaw Na Ang Asin!”

Yup, the jolly musician in me on that day instantly turned into a heartbreak kid. For many years I had lived my life too singing a variety of Asin’s sensible music.

Therefore, upon confirming it was not among usual tabloid’s tricks, there was stinging loss not just for me but to all of the band’s fanatics. Every fan, every one, full well knew right in that moment that the group would never be the same again after that death of Saro Bañares.

Some years back, Reverend Mueda was also with the world that was lacking peace before he responded to the call for a full-time job in His Majesty’s service. He recruited at the time cuties three of Kirayan Norte: Damy, Gard Ray and yours truly, to form a group, then nameless, but I secretly dubbed “The Beatless.”

He’d always convince us to go to the city to visit and be fed by him when he was still at the Iloilo Provincial Governor’s Office. He would make sure we’d be all present during every Jaworski’s and Ginebra’s game at the USA gym, tickets of course courtesy of his.

But Damy was destined to go ahead among us four and his chuckles to my corny jokes will never be heard anymore. But some golden daybreak someday we will all be reunited for non-stop joy of camaraderie, yeah, I’m very sure.

It’s as sure as that thief in Golgotha who, because he instantly believed, Jesus promised him a paradise too great. And we too stand on that same promise since we have what that thief had as well before his own death: faith.

THE HARVEST

[April 11, 2016 at 8:39am]

The Kirayan Baptist Church has successfully culminated last week its Vacation Bible School, or VBS, and I’m still happy for the huge turnout of children aged 4 to 15 from here and from Banuyao and Naulid, our neighboring villages.

We would like to thank all their respective parents for allowing them to join in this summer activities, to learn and hear about the Bible, about Christ and His saving grace, and to promote goodwill and camaraderie among those kids

.

We’d like to thank likewise Pastors John and Ryan and their assistants Ma’am Paopao, Ma’am Jera, Ma’am Kakai and Ma’am Bembem, student volunteers from Doane Seminary, for a job well-done. The joy is truly unparalleled when despite the hardship and pressure and physical struggle under the sun, one gives diligent efforts and total dedication and passion for the work of the Great One.

We know that such efforts are definitely not in vain if our motivation is not the world’s accolades or award. If our desire’s to become partakers of God’s promise: “I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward” (Gen.15:1).

I quietly observed those initially noisy children who could not contain their excitement obviously, especially when their culmination program was finally starting last Saturday. And once more, I saw myself among them, just like four decades ago, when I too was so excited and happy, singing, playing, memorizing verses and listening to a Bible story.

I was sure the happiness and laughter they were having at that time were genuine and pure. Thus it was a delight to see that crowd of innocent young children, the adults of the future.

Some more years from now and each one of them would take his own path, begin his journey and follow every dream and desire of the heart. And like the rest of aging men among us, they’d know that the world waiting for them is composed both of deep happiness and a deeper hurt.

The sight of innocent faces filling the church did me amuse. And I remembered Jesus’ words, “the harvest is plenteous” (Matt. 9:37).

That thick “harvest” in the vast field against the dwindling number of harvesters who also sowed the seeds and the coming of uncertain days in the hearts of those kids are what make the pastors worried. But as it’s written, though some of those seeds may fell by the wayside, among thorns, and on stony places, there’ll be some on good ground to yield fruits, some thirty, some sixty and some in hundred (Mark 4:3).

As the Lord Himself said, “My word. . . shall not return to Me void,” this He told Isaiah the Prophet: “but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it” (Isa.55:11).

GRACE AND JUSTICE

[April 7, 2016 at 6:28pm]

"For I, the LORD, love justice; I hate robbery and wrongdoing” (Isa.61:8).

One of the hottest issues that erupted lately was about these “Panama Papers” which stirred a lot of controversy after their list includes so many “who’s-who” among world leaders and personalities. Last night, April 07, the news said the prime minister of Iceland, one of those in the said list, resigned from his position because the loss of trust and confidence by his constituents denied him peace.

What a breeding! We poor Filipinos could only watch in envy with some of the rest of the human race—the people from Reykjavik in this case—when it comes to a government official’s propriety, honor, and self-respect.  Elsewhere in the world, if there’s prima facie evidence of a public leader’s scandalous act and deed, such leader immediately leaves, here, a controversial official rather runs for a higher office while citing “due process.”

And we all know well how “due process” is being handled by clever lawyers in this country. Some suits, in the average course, are litigated for at least two decades before it attains finality. In fact, if you try to research about some cases already buried in the grave and declared final and executory, could still win, provided you get the services of an old Martial Law attorney.

And may I ask you, what are these “Panama Papers”? I’m sorry, but I lack details, just go read the papers. I mean news in newspapers. Better yet, online or Inquirer’s. In fact again, to tell you honestly, I’ve no idea where exactly is Panama. I heard it only because of its Canal and boxer having “Manos de Piedra.”

Panama Papers could be as deadly as pretty Darby Shaw’s legal documents called the Pelican Brief. They could be like Pandora’s Box, with indicting information against the world’s wealthiest and the filthy rich. As filthy as a Filipino politician who could be among the worst in the world as, you mind only reason and logic about his lifestyle and wealth, and presto, he’s undoubtedly more lethal than Lupin The Third in looting and dividing the spoil, making him hazardous to the nation’s health.

You ask, why do our traditional politicians behave like that? I think it’s because they believe stealing is a privilege in a public office. Or maybe, although they know what they’re doing is a sin indeed, yet, they decide to enjoy it for a while as after all there’s God’s grace.

However, the Christians in Rome had Apostle Paul exhorted: “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid” (Romans 6:1-2). “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof” (v.12), for today’s Lord of Mercy and Grace is tomorrow’s God of Justice.