TAKE IT OFF!

My beef about the internet is the anonymity people hide behind. You can be nameless and faceless.  Many have abused that. They are arrogant, angry, rude. I'm pretty sure that people who stand behind what they say will come from a totally different space--and it won't be negative. I choose not to publish anonymous comments on this blog because I believe we have to put our names behind our words. We need to be able to stand behind our thoughts. On the internet, revealing our identities by way of publishing our names, honors this practice of ownership. If you have something to say, be sure you can put your name on it. 

Wounded

During the last PAGASA workshop in Baguio, I was struck by an insight. First chance I got to sit alone, I pulled out my notebook and quietly sat to record the flow. The insight had to do with personal trauma. I realized that we all have to work hard so that our greatest personal wounds do not become our identity--that we recognize the trauma is not who we are. It becomes a part of us, yes, but we are so much more; the wound is but a portal into our highest possibilities. My own experiences tell me that life's most difficult challenges bring us to our next level of humanity if we are able to put the experiences in the larger context. What does the experience mean? What did it bring out of us that was never there before? I have experienced people who have turned their challenges into their identity. They are often bitter, clinging to their wounds for dear life, and unable to accept their trauma as part of their humanity.  I have come to know that the worst kind of pain can be the deepest grace in the larger scheme of things. Most people are able to achieve things they wouldn't have normally been able to after a death of someone dearest to them, because the question of their own life's purpose came to the fore. From that darkness was born their brightest purpose. I think our personal wounds are just that--vehicles that need to take us where we need to go towards our spiritual/human task. I know that it all leads to a kind of service for humanity and the world, no matter where we are. Crisis, pain, trauma--these are the things that prompt us to become active in the world from our most personal spaces, but only if we have worked through the experience and not allowed it to define us. You are not a battered wife or an ex-wife, a victim of rape or abuse--those were things that happened to you to shape you to become so much more.  To become fully human, we are plunged into the very depths of human experience so that, out of our own striving and consciousness, we can rise above it towards transformation because every authentic human transformation serves the world, especially when it is made conscious. The Christ, in his own human experience, had to plunge to the very depths, to awaken the transformative consciousness in man--to help us become what we are all meant to be. Life is not meant to be easy. It is a journey of sorrow and death, but also the triumph of resurrection and transformation. Pain is necessary for the development of compassion and love. To view our own experiences in a new light, we must stop defining ourselves by our pain and letting that be the fulcrum of our identity.  Instead, let us ask how our pain can lead us to integration towards the greater task of serving humanity.

Problem Solving

My older boy was involved in an incident with a rough classmate. He was pushed and kicked, even though that may not have been the intention. In the process of sorting out the situation, I was told that I should teach my son to fight back. One mother told me that she taught her own child to hit first before she gets hurt, with the assurance that she would sort things out for her later.  This made me very uncomfortable, though I could see where she was coming from. Of course no mother wants their child to be hurt, but I also could not bring myself to teach my son to hurt others. I told him he could defend himself by not hurting. In the PAGASA workshops, we are reminded that we cannot solve a problem with the same tools--actions, plans, mindsets--that created it. That's a big AHA moment. If your approach to life is simply on the level of your own children, it would be easy to tell them to hurt first to protect themselves. But if you're thinking beyond that and asking questions about what kind of values you want to instill in your children so that they can grow up behaving responsibly and with love towards others, fully aware that their thoughts and deeds shape the world, teaching them it's okay to hurt is not an option. Make no mistake, my child was hurt but he was also angry. I let him be angry. He expressed it many times at home, so I'm confident that this sort of bullying won't happen to him again because he will find a way through it next time, and hopefully not through hurting. On the one hand others keep telling him to fight back, on the other I've told him that he can find his own way of defense. I am hoping this tension will help him see that there are options and he can exercise them. You cannot solve problems with the same tools that created them. If we become bearers of change in the world--towards integration, peace, spiritual evolution--our options shift radically. I hope that I have armed my son with true grit and love and I trust that he will find his way without being an instrument of pain, violence and further separation.

zzzzzzzzzz.........

I woke up at 9am this morning (that hasn't happened to me in decades! I'm usually up before 7am) feeling very tired but good. We had a fantastic PAGASA workshop last Saturday and Sunday at the Regalia Tower Suites. We ended at about 10:30pm, got into the car and drove up to Baguio. We began the Baguio workshop the following day at 10am. It was another incredible workshop! After the workshop ended last night, we packed up, had a goodbye cup of coffee with the participants at the Atenara House, got back into the car and drove home. I am dazed, confused, puyat, and starving but also strangely enthusiastic. When you are doing work that resonates on so many levels--self, community, country--you know that your efforts are going towards something greater that will benefit every Filipino for generations to come, so you can put the fatigue in context and shore up energy for more work ahead. I've neglected this blog so the entries aren't exactly fresh, but I got a lot out of the workshop which I hope to be able to share in the next few days.  I need only one night more of good sleep! zzzzzzzzzzzzz......

Are you listening?

I had two kinds of telephone conversations this morning: one with someone who was listening and the other with someone who barely does. What a contrast. The first one was a steady flow--an engaged exchange that was quiet, respectful, and informative.  I felt good afterwards. I spoke she, listened. I listened, she spoke. We established a rhythm and respected it. Something productive and substantial was born there.  The last one was nerve-wracking. I was constantly being interrupted, though it was clear the interrupter was so used to doing it, he didn't even think he was doing it. I had to strain to repeat myself and make myself heard, but he was always already elsewhere--everywhere but with me on the subject. I was talking, he was talking. I was talking but I was already being dismissed: "okay...okay...okay...okay!" That was totally tiring and frustrating. It was rude. I felt frazzled after. There are people who truly do not know how to listen. They do not know how to make space for the other. There is only them--their thoughts, what they want to say. It's all about getting their pictures, ideas and concepts across and yours out of the way. Your words are merely jump off points for theirs. So much healing can happen in the world if everyone learned to truly listen, not just to words but to all the in-betweens that accompany them. Making space for the other is a daily act of giving--but also receiving.  Anyone who does not recognize that would naturally dismiss someone else's thoughts, especially if he has been allowed to overrule and interrupt everyone time and time again. Since non-listeners are a dime a dozen, we all have to learn to take deep breaths before and after we speak to them. We also have to make an effort--especially in a group setting where emergent dialogue is always sacred--to tell the interrupters to back down and make space for other voices to be heard. It is selfish to think that only your ideas are worthwhile. It is selfish to think that a person has nothing new or useful to impart. Listen. Really listen to what is being said. Take a step backward and create the space for ideas, thoughts, pictures, sounds and movement to be born. This world isn't yours alone. Everyone has his role to play and we must encourage everyone to play it well. We can only make space when we listen. Listen.

Tying the Knot

I saw an episode of Brothers & Sisters last night. It was the wedding episode. I always cry at weddings, but this was particularly moving because the bride was given away by her mom, a widow, who found out her husband (the bride's father)had another family shortly after his death. Talk about the last to know. Anyway, she's walking her daughter down the aisle, all the while telling her not to lose herself, her identity, her strength after she's married. When the priest asks, "Who gives away the bride?', the mother says, "She gives herself away freely with my love and blessing." I found that so touching and so appropriate. I think it so important that we all study the sacraments again and come into a new understanding of them. Just think of the marriage sacrament in the Catholic church today.  Does the ritual, the words, the symbols, still resonate with you? We all just do these things automatically today, not bothering to think about what these sacraments mean--what are they there for, what are they meant to provide? What is our role in them? How do we receive them? I belong to a church called The Christian Community and one of the reasons it piqued my interest many years ago, was because I learned that in their marriage sacrament,  promises are not made to each other. Instead, the promises are made to the self. I found that so wonderfully mature and conscious.  Actually, how binding--binding from a space of freedom. I am still learning about the renewed sacraments in our church and each discovery has led me to a deeper and authentic understanding of what they bring. This little snippet from the movie brought me to that place of questions again. I think we don't ask enough of them, nor are equipped to ask the right ones, especially when we approach life thresholds. I thought I was pretty conscious when I was married, but I have learned so much more since and now I realize I didn't ask the right questions, either.  Though I wrote my own vows, I simply did not know what I was doing in the larger and deeper spiritual sense. That is one big threshold that everyone ought to take a lot more seriously.  The wedding -- the place of the greatest misplaced attention -- is but the beginning.  Yes, it's important to get it right, but the dress, flowers and guest list are the least of your worries.  Start with the sacrament. Study the words. Study the ritual.  See what all that means to you and what it will mean for the union. In the end, the flowers don't matter.

HOY PINOY! TAMA NA ANG WERSH WERSH!

I've been listening to too many Pinoys twanging away and I have to say, PUWEDE BA, TAMA NA!!! It's BANGOONGOT not bangieungiuot.  The surname GO is pronounced GO-h--short "o"--sorry hindi ako marunong maglagay ng tamang, er, accent. It's not "gow" as in punta. Ok, so it serves me right for tuning in to that blog, but the Gorrell blog is a phenomenon that says so much about Philippine society today that you cannot ignore it, even if you don't agree with it. But that's another entry. Right now, I'm griping about the ameriken ahksen. Hay, sorry but I can't stand the pretension. Hindi naman tayo Amerikano. Ok lang if you grew up there or even lived there for decades, but I don't see any other reason for anyone to twang.  Speak! Speak the way you learned to. You can speak English the Filipino way.  I love hearing Pinoy English spoken properly. It has its own distinctive quality. All this twanging says so much about us as a people. On the one hand we rail at people's pretentiousness, all the while twanging as if that were our native tongue. Newsreaders love to twang.  FM radio broadcasters love to twang. Basta English na ang language, TWANNNGGGGG! Why? When people hear my children speak Tagalog (and not just everyday Tagalog at that), they think it's such a cute thing.  It is cute but I think it's cute only because it has become such a novelty, when it is so important for every Filipino child to speak his language well. Just a few months ago, I giggled when I observed my son looking wistfully into the distance. He was there for a while before he noticed me watching him. Comic that he is, he shook his head, smiled and said, "Nalingat ako." Now that's charming. Wersh, wersh? Not. Speaking with an affected and forced twang does not make you come across as being or having "more".  Some people are so busy twanging that they can't get their thoughts across because sustaining the twang already takes too much effort. Anything that is unnatural does. What's the point of affecting a twang when you cannot really communicate because every ounce of you is focused on keeping the twang  away from the giant slide? If you did not grow up or live abroad and are speaking with a foreign accent, it only says you are totally without identity. Or, worse, that the identity has become commodified. Now that is scary. That means the imminent death of your authentic self and your chance at an authentic, well-lived life. Is that twanging worth all that?