Against Abortion: A Way from a Mother’s Womb

For this 4th Sunday of Advent, i am sharing to you something very personal. This was originally shared to a clinical group 5 years ago and given the title Culture, Spirituality, and Transformation: A Way from a Mother’s Womb. With a little pruning, I am giving it a different title however for 2 reasons and in view of these 2 crucial events: one is Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth where the “infant leaped in her womb”; and the second, as my protest against the 15 US Catholic Senators who voted to finance abortion through public money.

Let me set the reflective mood first with this quote from Henri Nouwen:

“Where is this peace to be found? The answer is clear. In weakness. First of all, in our own weakness, in those places of our hearts where we feel most broken, most insecure, most in agony, most afraid. Why there? Because there our familiar ways of controlling our world are being stripped away; there we are called to let go from doing much, thinking much, and relying on our self-sufficiency. Right there where we are weakest the peace which is not of this world is hidden.”

Adam’s Story: The Peace That Is Not Of This World”

There is power in telling our stories, there is transformative power in sharing them. By sharing our stories, we learn to embrace our “angels” and name our “demons.” I have my story. You have your story. Let me begin mine from something so unique to me yet shared by human beings: what i learned, still learning, and need to unlearn from my mother’s womb.

Being in the womb was like being in the garden of relationality. It was total unity, like that of Adam and Eve before their expulsion from the Garden; a unity of my father’s sperm and my mother’s egg, of my mother and me. A unity so primordial and ancient, so universal. Never so close can one living being get to another living than being in one’s mother’s womb. What a profound and life-changing bond! Me, altering my mother’s body, my mother significantly shaping an emergent being in me. My mother standing with her own intra and extra personal resources: physical, psychological, and spiritual; Me, heavily dependent on those resources yet thriving independently on my own.

At the 16th week of my mother’s pregnancy, i could have been sensitive to light as my vision developed slowly in the dim, confined prenatal garden. Then by the 4th month, i may have developed basic reflexes and a host of facial expressions. At 5 or 6 months, i may have been sensitive to touch, then eventually to the noises in my mother’s body, and to voices , or music. Between 28 and 34 weeks, my brain’s neural circuits may be as advanced as a newborn’s and my cerebral cortex, mature enough to support consciousness. A few weeks later, my brain waves could have become distinct. Thus far in science, this is how a “normal” prenatal being develops.

I hope yours was a normal one.

I probably struggled hard with mine. After all, my mother was born fatherless and denied of her natural need for a father. My grandmother was a victim of masculine violence. And so is my mother, a kind of masculine violence that perhaps will never be resolved in her lifetime.

How about you? What was your mother’s experience in her mother’s womb?

While in my mother’s womb, the cycle of masculine continued. My father left her with no intention of taking responsibility for his actions. Masculine violence being passed to me, and certainly, to a good number of innocent beings around me. No wonder – millions die from violence! My prenatal world knew only the hostility of wounded men. Certainly, i must have felt my mother’s anxiety and her endless, restless thought to protect me. Our bonding was deepened because i was her treasure in a fragile vessel. The more intense the anxiety, the more neurohormones released to combat stress. I wonder what measure of those anxieties i have absorbed. It was a stressful world for a fragile being like me. No doubt, it was my first experience of violence in that garden of unity.

How about you? Was yours a serene world or a world of protest?

I grew in complexity as the environment, both internal and external, continued to fashion me. My growth continued despite the injustice. Or more ambiguously, despite the dialectic of my father’s absence and my mother’s over-attachment to me. My growing complexity continued. The more complex i became, the more resistance i had against my upcoming detachment. The womb became my protection against a violent world. My mother never had an easy “death” for me (i have one scar on the skull from some forceps). Alienation from that comfort zone was too painful. Onward with the struggle against the seemingly punishing uterine contractions and constricting birth canal. I have to “die” from that archetypal union anyway, to discover more about that violent world that i sensed, my mother hoping to find friendship for me outside her life-nourishing womb. It was only through the struggle of contraction of the uterus and the birth canal, the struggle against alienation, and the “emptying of the womb” that i could be thrown back into the “womb of the universe” where a more developed consciousness thrives.

Since then, i learned that truth is not as clear as black or white. I learned about culturally induced and unnecessary anger and anxieties. And so about the dialectic of connectedness, alienation, and transformation. Now, i am back to that struggle to reclaim that lost primordial oneness with Mother Nature. This time, in the womb of Mother Earth with its connecting, alienating (like abortion), and transforming elements.

In the midst of anger and anxieties, uterine contraction and paternal absence, alienation and violence, LIFE PREVAILS! Because,

You formed my inmost being;You knit me in my mother’s womb.
I praise You, so wonderfully You made me;
Wonderful are Your works!
My very self You knew;
My bones were not hidden from You.
When i was being made in secret,
fashioned as in the depths of the earth.
Psalm 139:13-15

I am wonderfully made. I can forgive. I am forgiving.

I am evolving more beautifully from my past.

I hope you are…

————Photo credits: VickyvSwiredfool

Third Sunday of Advent: Teachability

I was informed 3 months in advance about the event and got invited as a dear friend. Then 2 weeks before this big event, i received the invitation in glossy print with our names as sponsors, names familiar in political circles including officials from the Bureau of Customs and the Department of Public Works and Highways, a lawyer, a Congressman, a Police Superintendent, and myself a sinful blogger. On the event day, the pastiche of perfume, alluring to ones smell, filled first the aisle then onto the baptistery from men and women in coats and ties, Barong Tagalog and glittery bling-bling. It was not Baptism Day because we can afford to pay the special price. Besides, Baptism Days can get too crowdy for our privacy, simply a mishmash of the B and C and D classes of people for a baptismal festival. We want our souvenir photos, the pouring of water or the annointing with oil uninterrupted and unhurried by the celebrant. Soloing the Cathedral makes this social celebration plus sacrament more solemn in our opinion. A group photo at the altar afterwards, never mind the responsibilities as godparents, brings the event to its jovial element. These were all playing in our imagination in different frequencies as we await the celebrant to emerge from the sacristy. We, the less ideal, horde of sacrament recipients.

Here comes the priest, ambling towards the pews where we are all docked on. Then he begins, composed as a trial lawyer:

“You brood of vipers, miscreant beings who leech on the coffers of the people, rogues in officials’ robes, you who come here for social networking and fear that if this baby doesn’t get baptized, he would be cast into eternal damnation. You, you…”

Typical of our prideful, achieving and overeducated generation, we grudgingly stayed throughout the tirade, our nerves frothed with anger to hold back or cannon our own tongue-lashing charges. But this was not our turf, and instead, almost in unison, we whispered: “Never with this wicked bastard again, nor in this lousy cathedral.” We mindlessly made the sign of the cross.

My apology peeps. The story and event above is only imaginary to emphasize some points for this 3rd Sunday of Advent, points actually from our tongue-lashing hero par excellence – John the Baptist:

“So he began saying to the crowds who were going out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

Not easy to hear at all, especially for an Asian race and sensibility whose softest core is being shamed in public. But the Gospel this Sunday has a very interesting, if not shocking, opening sentence:

“And the crowds were questioning him, saying, “Then what shall we do?”

I hear more than curiosity over practical strategies to conversion. I imagine depth after depth where arrogance and self-exultation are emptied out, replaced by open spirits and spaces. It is called teachability – the openness to be taught of certain things, to learn from those who treaded the self-emptying desert way like John. Am i teachable enough especially in the things of God? Are you?

This 3rd Sunday of Advent, i will light 3 candles along teachability: one for that part of me covered by hubris and remains un-teachable; the second, in gratitude for past spiritual teachers; and the third, for present spiritual guides and those God will still surprisingly send me along the way. It’s my way of making sense John’s fiery, baptismal tongue.

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Photo credit: marc50

Baptism of Repentance: A Prayer for the Massacre Perpetrators

Gracious God,
You called John the Baptist
to preach a baptism of repentance on Your people.

i hear the words,
but not often the message.
For we do not always understand wisely
that the immersion into the baptismal water
is an invitation into our own dying to our self-centeredness,
a crossing of the River Jordan from our self-centered desires into new life with Christ.

Forgive me God,
for always underestimating my own baptism.
This Sunday,
I am reminded again
that my immersion demands from me
to repent for my sins.
May my confession be truly translated
into some newness in my life.

This Second Sunday of Advent,
i light 2 candles -
one for my sins,
and another in remembrance
of the perpetrators of the Maguindanao Massacre,
that Your light may find its way
into the darkest corners of their hearts,
awakening them from being servants of darkness,
into servants of light
by way of repentance.

Gracious God,
whose other name is Allah,
lead us again into our own baptism of repentance. Amen.

Circle of Life Revisited

Our Cook: It doesn’t feel like Christmas at all.

Moi: Massacre hangover i guess. There’s just too much to take from the news.

So i decided to forgo the evening news for 3 days now. Last night, i watched instead Australia the movie starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. A long movie set in the 1940s in the Northern Territory the English called the Faraway Down, through the harsh human betrayal in the outback around cattle business, the breathtaking landscape of Australian deserts, and the Aboriginal power of chanting. My attention was caught not so much by the predictable Kidman-Jackman outback romance (reminds me so much of Kidman and Cruise in Far and Away), but by the Australian wilderness so alive in the enigmatic presence of the Aboriginal King George, chanter and grandfather of 13-year old Nullah the narrator in the movie. Nullah, a son of an Aboriginal mother and a white father played a very endearing role representing the Stolen Generations whose fate must end up in church missions because Australian law prohibited them from living either with their Aboriginal mothers or white fathers.

Minus the Western machismo of the cowboys – the meeting of English and Aboriginal cultures and in-between, the singing and dancing mystique of King George and the wizardry of Nullah, the dusty deserts and the herd of river-crossing and chased cattles were all worth my time.

And the closest wilderness i can imaginably traverse at the office? Lion King peeps and playing the spine-tingling Circle of Life. i luv u Rafiki, i luv u Simba:

Circle Of Life

[MS: Male Singer]
[BS: Background Singer]
[FS: Female Singer (lead)]

[MS:] Nants ingonyama bagithi baba [There comes a lion]
[BS:] Sithi uhhmm ingonyama [Oh yes, it's a lion]
[MS:] Nants ingonyama bagithi baba [There comes a lion]
[BS:] Sithi uhhmm ingonyama [Oh yes, it's a lion]
Ingonyama
[MS:] Siyo Nqoba [We're going to conquer]
[BS:] Ingonyama
Ingonyama nengw’ enamabaal [It's a lion and a tiger]
[repeats 5]
Ingonyama nengw’ enamabala (Se-to-kwa!)
Ingonyama nengw’ enamabala (Asana)
[repeats 1]
[FS:] From the day we arrive on the planet
And, blinking, step into the sun
There’s more to see than can ever be seen
More to do than can ever be done
There’s far too much to take in here
More to find than can ever be found
But the sun rolling high
Through the sapphire sky
Keeps great and small on the endless round
It’s the Circle of Life
And it moves us all
Through despair and hope
Through faith and love
Till we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the Circle
The Circle of Life
[FS:] It’s The Circle of Life
And it moves us all
Through despair and hope
Through faith and love
Till we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the Circle
The Circle of Life

Maguindanao Massacre: God Is Watching

God is watching…

• how they planned it
• how they orchestrated human and other resources
• how the 64 victims feared for their lives before their last breaths; died very violent deaths
• how people become prisoners of FEAR
• how money and power are used to instill those FEARS
• how the pursuit of JUSTICE is carried out

In His time, He will act accordingly: this is my greatest hope. In history, there were no Hitlers or PolPots or Stalins who were not humbled from their seat of powers, condemned by their own savagery. In His time and not sooner the Truth will bring those murderers into their own self-condemnation and die lonely deaths, leaving their wealth and prestige rotting like carcasses, totally now abhorred and abandoned into absolute forgetfulness. Not worth a human memory at all. Only for the sake of a story of how the bloody defilement of the Garden of Eden, the Eastern side of the story itself was altered by not covering their scrotums. In the absence of repentance, shame is also lost. In God’s time – the flaming sword of God’s justice will overturn their sense of absolute control into a dog’s dung they would regurgitate from their bellies and out of their troubled minds and consciences. In His time BECAUSE HE IS WATCHING…over this land in violent disarray.

The Aim of Health Care

Healthcare, along with theology and spirituality, has been part of my mindset. The past 2 weeks, i’ve been wanting to simplify the recent ruckus in America on the recently issued revised guidelines on mammogram by the US Preventive Services Task Force of the Department of Health and Human Services. Essentially, the new guidelines discard the current prevalent practice of mammogram for women aged 40-50 because the harms outweigh the benefits.

This issue however is too complicated and raw to dissect, replete with political and medical overtones now being stalled for a Senate hearing for the gritty arguments from both the anti and the pro guidelines. While it remains a little premature to welcome the new guidelines uncritically, its impact for healthcare and the strong strides in breast cancer prevention will certainly be global. I’m keeping my watch…

Meanwhile, i found one wonderful quote on healthcare from one of the leading bioethicists in the United States – Daniel Callahan, author of 41 books and scholar and lecturer at Yale and Harvard Medical Schools. I once attended a lecture he gave on spirituality and bioethics at Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas. Dr. Callahan is a rapid speaker, probably most of the time, tries to catch up with the speed of his mind. But one prominent thing i sensed from him – he seems to be aging through laughter and increasing social engagement as a scholar. Here’s the quote:

“The aim of health care should be, within a finite life span, to help us to have a good chance to progress from being young to being old—but not to go from being old to being indefinitely older; to relieve us of our most burdensome physical and mental suffering—but not always fully or perfectly; to rehabilitate us as best it can if we are disabled—but to understand that some of us will live our lives with chronic illnesses and disabilities; and to help us achieve as pain-free and peaceful death as is possible—but knowing that goal will not always be possible. Medicine ought not to seek an indefinite extension of life or aim to enhance our nature beyond the ordinary standards of good health, or search out medical ways of excessively fighting our decline and frailties, many of which are now and always will be unavoidable. Just as death ought not to be taken as the ultimate enemy of human life, health should not be taken as the ultimate good.”

From the book: TAMING THE BELOVED BEAST: HOW MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY COSTS ARE DESTROYING OUR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM by Daniel Callahan (Princeton University Press, 2009)

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Photo credit: Ripon College
Book excerpts from: PBS

Voices on Arroyo’s Indecent Proposal

President Gloria M. is running for Congresswoman for the 2nd District of Pampanga this coming election. Now, she calls the decision a product of soul-searching. What a judgment! What a disservice to the Office of the President!

“I wholeheartedly suggest she gives others a chance to serve and not give in to temptation of power,”
CBCP President Angel Lagdameo

“She would have shown political delicadeza or some statesmanship if she does not run,”
Catarman Bishop Emmanuel Trance

“I think she should retire.”
Laoag Bishop Sergio Utleg

“It’s not proper for a former president to seek a lower position,”
Basilan Bishop Martin Jumoad

“The reason is political dynasty and might be interpreted to cover up for something of her son although ‘self-demotion’ but ugly,”
Legazpi Bishop Emeritus Lucilo Quiambao

“She manifests addiction to power, exhibits lack of propriety and remains fixated to have a Cha-cha (Charter change)—once elected—as soon as possible, to target the Office of Prime Minister,”

“There appears to be no reasonable cause for such a constitutional prohibition as really there is no person in his or her sound mind who will do such a funny and demeaning political circus,”
Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Emeritus Oscar Cruz

“We knew that she’s running and she has long been campaigning using her position as chief executive without qualms,”

“She has perfected the politics of patronage which the CBCP has condemned many times in its pastoral statements,”

“As the saying goes, ‘Tell me who your friends are.’ The kind of friends Arroyo has in Maguindanao tells a lot about who she is,” he said. “The kind of friends she has in Pampanga tells no less. May God save Pampanga and the rest of the Philippines,”
San Fernando Auxiliary Bishop Pablo Virgilio David

“Her ultimate goal is to become House Speaker and ram through her burning desire to change the Constitution,”

“Since she cannot hope to beat Noynoy, her next best option is to render his victory useless and lead the change in the form of government,”
Vice Presidential Candidate Mar Roxas

“While it’s her right to do so, it surely leaves a bad taste in the mouth,”

“What else does she need to prove and accomplish?”
Senator Chiz Escudero

“She still wants to be in power,”
Senator Jinggoy Estrada

This “sets a horrible example for politicians to follow,”

“GMA (Arroyo’s initials) is making the political playing field uneven versus all demands for fairness,”
Senator Aquilino Pimentel

“The real agenda is to … shift to a parliamentary form of government and snatch power from whoever is elected president in 2010 by becoming prime minister and head of government,”
Makati Mayor Jojo Binay

“She is drunk with power and can’t get enough. I think she needs professional help,”
Representative Teddy Casino

“This is a dark day for the Philippines.”
BAYAN

“I am not surprised. She is still motivated by political survival at all costs,”

“I recall Senator Joker Arroyo saying that her running for Congress would be demeaning but to GMA, nothing is demeaning when it comes to political survival,”
Senator Kiko Pangilinan

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Quotes Sources:
Philippine Daily Inquirer
CBCP News

Photo Credit: Kevin Camp

Maguindanao Massacre: A Pain Into Advent

Any normal human being could not easily get over with those images of mangled lives. I haven’t. I cried while listening to Jessica Soho’s official Network statement on the tragedy, asking every viewer of the choices at hand: peace or violence. Part of the tears was grieving with the grieving; a segment of those, for the enactment of human being’s capacity for demonic control, a reversal of how Godly we are capable of. Thank God for tears: when human suffering becomes absolutely absurd and enigmatic, tears seem to hold the bewilderment and the tension, alluring the human psyche and soul into some deeper cry for justice and strength only the tearful God on the cross could catch. It feels this way in the silence of a prayer: “God, what’s going on in this Christian country? Why, after 2 thousand years of ongoing Self-disclosure, must the violence of the crucifixion continue?”

I am learning it is more potent to honestly listen to the questions in daily silence. It is more long-term a political solution than some quick, defensive, rational answers that turn chatterers basely comical and detestable. In the honesty that Silence demands, it is safe to go naked without high-powered guns, paid goons and prestige, social influence, mansions, or fat bank accounts. Silence’s simplest and steepest demand is to cultivate total dependence on Someone, and not on something or someone.

So here i am, at the threshold of one of the loveliest seasons i often savor so religiously – Advent. I revel in the progression of the lighting from one candle to the community of 4 before Christmas. The Advent wreath reminds me so much of the hedge of God’s protection within this period or other times of waiting: it is safe to wait at bus lines, in malls and markets, for some commodities prayed for to arrive because God’s hedge of protection is always around me. Nothing is outside of God, not even death or evil deeds.

Aha! But here i am also, dragging those images of evil into Advent’s beginning. I contend the question is rather not “Why” but “Why not”. Hear this from Luke today:

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on earth nations will be in dismay, perplexed by the roaring of the sea and the waves.
People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world,
for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. But when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.”

How hair-raising a colossal of turbulence and restructuring of the cosmos! Beyond what we can imagine. Coming in a cloud with power and great glory is the Son of Man.

The Gospel of Luke was written after the Roman destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, the center of Jewish civilization, in 70AD. The destruction utterly torn apart the Jewish identity, shattering whatever peace and hopes they had for a new world order. It was a deep, searing wound on the Jewish psyche that Christian writers like Luke had picked up and turned this into a “2012″ narrative in the context of the second coming of Christ.

So i enter Advent with scary images of the Last Days and the massacre in Maguindanao. The Maguindanao destruction was no less searing and painful than the destruction of the Temple: it cuts deep into our democratic identity and national psyche; it mirrors the violence of the First Century; it showcases the daily Satanic subtleties of warlordism and self-centeredness only to erupt at an uncontrollable time. The Jews must have shed tears and the early Christians must have hoped high. So do i and many others. Still, i will light my first candle of hope and waiting for justice and the best of politics.

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Photo credit: zik “Tay”