Sun and Candle

Abe V Rotor

The candle, the sun in its ebb
for man to write a book untold,
and the sun is reborn
on its pages while the world
sleeps til next morn.

Home Sweet Home with Nature, AVR Acknowledgement: Photos taken at Manila Penninsula, Makati

Part 2: Liberation Theology “What do we want for an alternative society?”

Diego and Gabriela Silang fought for self-rule against Spain,
monument at Santa, Ilocos Sur , overlooking Banaoang Pass

Abe V Rotor

Freed from their master, the subjects faced self-rule. The end led however, to autocracy. Dictatorships prevailed where people were weak. The few where wealth and power were concentrated took the helm of government. A new master was born.

The paradox is even greater if we take the case of the woman who is now doubly jeopardized of her status of being a woman and at the same time poor. For poverty plagued the newly independent states now depleted of resources. Neophyte managers ran new governments poorly. These scenarios naturally led to a paradigm still reminiscent of the cities of the French Revolution, which sought social justice, this time addressed to the new master in cohort with the old one. Here Liberation means first and foremost, meeting the people’s basic needs, removal of inequities of wealth distribution, respect of the rights of the common man. It was also a call for the end of the vestiges of colonialism in the guise of capitalism. Thus, the birth of the masses. Conflict then moved away from the David and Goliath model. There must be a solution to an Abel and Cain conflict.

To poor people, God is a God of the poor. Being poor is also historical but people cannot accept that. It is structural. Unjustly structural. Like the pork barrel and other hidden compensations for members of congress. What is sin then?

From the viewpoint of this paradigm, sin is likewise structural. Graft and corruption is structural sin. If the dialectics is that poverty is the result of unjust structure, this model calls also for a dialectical method: bring out the conflict.

Liberation from sin is not being passive, but active participation in bringing about a new society, as Christ died to redeem the sins of mankind.

Feminist Theology
“Where art thou, woman?”

The breed of Tandang Sora and Joan of Arc’s local version, Gabriela Silang, comes to the picture in this period. Recently at one time five world leaders were women sitting side by side with men plotting the course of world affairs.

Had it not been for the paradigm of this period, the world would hear more of the whimpers and moans of a suffering woman, cast away from a man’s world. Her DNA is no different from the male’s, and that is a biological fact. Physical, mental, sexual and emotional attributes, scientists say, are potentially equal. Thus, the birth of Women’s Liberation. And man found a partner at work and at home. Bread winning is shared, so with housekeeping.

The dignity of a person is in accepting responsibility. When one accepts responsibility one also exercises freedom to choose and to decide. Liberation theology plus feminist theology points out one important aspect of this paradigm which has a social dimension. Here the woman rises and history will never be a history solely that of men. While sin in man is pride, in women it is passivity. “I think therefore, I am,” to women becomes more compassionate and caring. Breaking from passivity brings into the woman self-worth and self-assertion, and above all, wholeness of being.

Continued...

Part 3: Ecological Paradigm “Why is Mother Earth Complaining?

Dead tree, UST Manila

Abe V Rotor

The prolificacy of the human species sans war and pestilence, plus growing affluence of its societies led to a population explosion, doubling in lass than 50 years. We are now 6.7 billion. In this paradigm, master and subject have joined hands to exploit the earth’s finite resources. Our best economists are the worst housekeepers of Nature. While they aim for the good life, they have unwittingly reduced the very foundation of that good life – the productivity and beauty of Mother Earth.

Ecological paradigm endorses an eco-centric approach where all forms of life and non-life are important to human life. Spirituality points out to a unitive force: the sacredness of everything. Hod’s divinity flows in everything. There is integration in the universe. And we are part of that integration, exceedingly small as we are notwithstanding.

The kind of person we truly are is reflected by our relationship with Mother Earth, how we comply under her treaties. Clearly, biocide is the greatest sin man commits in this period. Long live, Ceres! And Albert Schweitzer and King Solomon must be smiling up there. So with St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of ecology. “Reverence for life,” is the key to this paradigm.

Filipino Paradigm
“Saan and magandang kalooban mo?”

Rip van Winkle is said to have slept for 20 long years, “dahil sa sama ng loob” because he was a henpeck husband. When finally he woke up he was suspected a spy, but later forgiven and accepted back to the fold, because of “kagandahang loob.”

The Filipino, like old Rip, finds spirituality if not through meditation with saints and spirits, and escape from reality and often into his inner self – “loob”. While he is afraid of the “aswang,” he at the same time wishes an “anting-anting” or amulet to fall from heaven. He views the world on the vantage point of “loob,” that life is cyclical: “gulong ng palad.” The other is a simple version of William James’ stream of consciousness, which he uses in expanding his “loob.” Example: “Pagbubu-o ng loob.” “Abot dama.” It is no wonder that the greatest sin one can commit is “pagsira ng loob,” which means destroying the dignity of a person.

There are things he is completely silent about, such as sex. But he will be most proud to talk of his family. Family-centeredness is an extension of “loob.” OFWs send back home their earnings. A private jeepney bears the name of the family which owns it. Houses huddle together in the company of family members and relatives. Thus the send of nationhood is little emphasized. Why globalization when that is too far from “loob.”

Continued...

Part 4: Alternative Paradigms In Search for Sacredness

Route of Moses delivering his people from Egypt to the Promised Land.

Alexander, The Great

Dr Abe V Rotor

“Why can’t many people find sacredness anymore?” asked Time in a special issue. Moses asked the same question, puzzled on why his people had turned their worship to a golden calf. Christ released His anger, the first and only instance, when the synagogue was turned into a marketplace.

I remember Alvin Toffler’s books Future Shock and Eco-Spasm. We are unprepared visitors of a changed planet who broke away too soon with the past. We are willing victims of an accelerated thrust of time and change. We are a people of the future too soon, carried away by the concept of transience and adhocracy, and not one of permanence. We created a throw-away society that we discard many things including values in favor of novelty.

We find little sacredness when we talk in the future tense, of foreign ideologies not founded by enduring philosophies, but of futurism, its promises of choice and kaleidoscopic images. How can we find sacredness in subterranean cities, in modular fun houses, in sprawling mega malls, in mail-a-bride and rent-a-person, in hurry-up welcome, in Batman, in temporary marriages? Welcome to the rental revolution, to simulated environments, the portable playground.

Gone is the homing instinct. Broken is the old family. If we are a product of periodicity, then we are but a drifting lead swept onto the ocean of change. No, we are not. Here we remember the classical period, the anchor against the fallacy of human dreams and ambitions. What caused the downfall of Alexander and Napoleon?

Here we remember the historical period. History is the greatest lesson of mankind. He who knows his history does not run and get a stabbing thorn. He who walks sees reality and the beauty of the countryside. We remember liberation theology – it is the catalyst of social justice; the feminist paradigm – it gives wholeness to man-woman relationship; the Filipino paradigm, the quaintness of Filipino life, shy from the world, but full of life’s simplicity as well as flavors, while ecological paradigm is making us move closer to nature.

The Internet Paradigm
Finding God on the Web

The Computer Revolution is touching our faith more openly and deeply now than during the age of Bible Study and Sunday Worship.

The marriage of technology and religion, though an ancient one (starting with the codification of religious belief in cuneiform writing), has gone farther than following Mass on television. It now makes available in the home through the Internet the subject of God in the countless denominations of faith. This leads to the creation of a cathedral in the mind, but what does it look like? Will a worldwide web bind all of us, Christians and Jews, Muslims and Buddhists, together?

Time poses this question with a sense of optimism that opens the door to religious understanding rather than religious isolation and conflict. These electronic exchanges will ultimately help people from many religions understand the common ideas that bind them together.

“One of the causes of religious disagreement has been the sense of strangeness, of pure unfamiliarity,” says Notre Dame philosophy professor, Alvin Plantinga.

The world is about to plunge into a giant pool called globalization where the dividing lines of distinction begin to dissolve: sex, geography, public and private life, status, race, religion, trade, education, culture, many others. Will these end up into a “classless and raceless” society? what paradigm do all these offer for one in order to lead a true moral life?

As I walk on the road of change, I see a faint light from the window of an old house. It gives me comfort, more that all the stars I see above. ~

Comment:
Feminism gives wholeness to man-women relationships. Sin in man is pride, while in women it is passivity, Women nowadays are more compassionate and caring which breaks passivity.

Ecological - It makes us closer to nature and it is said that all forms of life and non-life are important to human life. Reverence to life is the key in this paradigm.

Analysis - it is about social justice, like meeting the people's need, removal of inequalities and respect of rights.

Alternative - Some Filipinos are shy, especially about religion. They are not that aware of certain things but are aware of the fullness of life through the alternative paradigms. - Chiara alyssa Cochico

Light from the Old Arch, UST-AVR

Florence Nightingale - The Lady with a Lamp

Dr Abe V. Rotor

Florence Nightingale holding the Lamp, and grave in London

Teaching is an art. It is an art of the masters - Aristotle, Plato, Christ, and many great teachers of the Renaissance that brought the world out of the Dark Ages. While we have developed modern techniques in teaching, it is important to look back into the past.

It is looking back at the lamp that enabled our national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal, to write his last masterpiece, the lamp Florence Nightingale held over her patients at the war front, the lamp that made Scheherazade’s “one thousand and one nights” stories, the lamp a Greek philosopher held high at daylight “searching for an honest man.” Or the lamp fireflies make and glow with the spirit of joy and adventure to a child.

But why do we look back and ponder on a tiny light when the world basks in the sunshine of progress and development, of huge networks of learning, of high technologies in practically all fields of endeavor? I’ll tell you why – and why we teachers must.

But first let me tell a story of a computer enthusiast, who like the modern student today relies greatly on this electronic gadget, doing his school work so conveniently like downloading data for his assignment. So one day he worked on his assigned topic – love.

He printed the word and set the computer to define for him L-O-V-E. Pronto the computer came up with a hundred definitions and in different languages. Remembering his teacher’s instruction to ask, “How does it feel to be in love?” again he set the computer to respond. And you know what?

After several attempts, the computer printed on its screen in big letters, “I can not feel.”

Where is that main ingredient of human relations – feeling – today?

• Where is the true feeling between teacher and student?

• Where is the feeling of joy at the end of a teaching day, in spite of how hard the day had been?

• Where is that tingling feeling of the student for having recited well in class?

• Where is that feeling in singing the National Anthem, the school hymn?

• Where is that feeling Rizal felt when a moth circled the lamp in his prison cell while he wrote, Mi Ultimo Adios?

• Where is that burning desire that drove Michelangelo to finish single-handedly the huge murals of the Sistine Chapel?

• That drove Vincent Van Gogh to madness – madness the world learned a new movement in the art – expressionism - years after?

• That kept Florence Nightingale, the founder of the nursing profession, make her rounds in the hospital in the wee hours of the morning?

• The lamp that strengthened Plato’s resolve to change the way people should think in the light of truth and justice.

Feeling. There is a song Feelin, and the lyrics ask a lot of questions about human nature changing with the times. I do not think human nature has changed. It is as stable as Nature herself and the natural laws that govern the universe.

What we are saying is that our ways are changing. The conformity of our actions is more with the rules we set rather than the philosophies on which they are founded. It is our quest for want above our needs that has blinded us and benumbed our feelings, that has taken us to the so-called fast lane so that we no longer see objects as they are, but abstracts, that has made us half-humans in the sense that we spend half of our lives dealing with machines – who have no feelings.

What then is modern man? I am afraid we have to review some of our references on the Janus-like character of man, like -

• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• The Prince and the Pauper
• The Princess and the Frog
• The movies - Mask, Superman, Batman, Spiderman
• Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter
• Cartoons and animated movies

The doubling of characters in man has led him away from permanence. Today, the biggest crisis in man is his impermanence. Impermanence in his domicile, nay, his nationality, political party. Affiliation in business and social organizations, and most disturbingly, with his marriage and family.

When was the last time we said to ourselves – or experienced - the following.

• It’s a weekday for my family and nothing else.

• How I wish I can help my child of his math assignment.

• I’ll teach only this year and will find a more rewarding job after.

• I think it’s time to settle down.

• I want to go to a concert and enjoy the fine art of music.

• Can’t I put all my ideas in a book?

• It’s always meeting – can’t we just talk?

• This dizziness, it must be the pressure of my work.

• Maybe I can concentrate on my thesis this time.

• I have not finished reading Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea.

• This summer I’ll be with my parents.

Here are ways by which we can brighten up our lamp amidst the factors that test our dedication of our profession as teachers.

1. Be yourself. Be natural.
2. Keep on learning
3. Be a model of your family and community
4. Relax
5. Use you faculties fully and wisely

Be Natural

Naturalness is a key to teaching. I saw a film, Natural with then young award-winning Robert Redford as the principal actor. It is a story of a baseball player who became famous. The central theme of his success is his naturalness. Naturalness in pitching, batting - in the sport itself, above all, in his relationship with his team and fans.

Our students can easily sense our sincerity. They shun from us if we are not. They cannot fully express themselves, unless we show our genuine love and care for them. Develop that aura that attracts them, that keeps relationship easy to adapt or adjust.
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“Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.”

- John Cotton Dana

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Be a Model

A teacher must have more time for himself and for his family. Teaching is an extension of family life. And this is the primordial stimulus that makes your family a model family and you as a model teacher – because you cause the light of the lamp to radiate to others. And it is not only the school that you bring in the light. It is the community because you are also lighting the lamp of others, including the tiny glow in your young students. When they get home, when they interact with their community in whatever capacity they can, even only among their playmates, relatives and neighbors, they are in effect sharing that light which is also the light of understanding and unity.

Relax

Great achievements are usually products of relaxed minds. Relaxation allows the incubation of thoughts and ideas. Churchill found time to paint during the Second World War. In his relaxed mind he made great decisions that saved Great Britain and countless lives. Or take Einstein for instance. His formula which explains the relationship of energy and matter in E=mc2 was drawn out from casually observing moving objects - train, heavenly bodies, marbles. Galileo watched a huge chandelier in a church sway with the breeze and later came up with the principles of pendulum movement.

Darwin studied biology around the world as if he were on a leisure cruise, and summed up his findings that founded the most controversial Theory of Evolution by means of natural selection. An apple fell on Newton’s head when everything was still. Examine closely the parables of Christ. How relaxed the Great Teacher was in telling these stories to the faithful. The lamp shines the brightest when there is no wind. When held high with steady hands and given time to examine things around, views become clearer, and the more certain we are along our way.

Use Your Faculties Fully and Wisely

Our brain is made up of the left hemisphere, the thinking and reasoning part, and the right hemisphere, the seat of creativity and imagination. Together they reveal an enormous capacity of intelligence, which are pictured in eight realms. These are

1. Logic
2. Languages
3. Music
4. Spatial
5. Interpersonal
6. Intrapersonal
7. Kinesthetics
8. Naturalism

From these realms the teacher draws out his best qualities. He explores, decides, adapts, entertains, leads, and stands courageously to lead the young.

Here he sows the seed of knowledge. And in the young the seed grows, and grows, which the educator Henry Adams expresses in this line.

“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” ~ 

Pilgrimage at the Saint Paul University Museum

Pilgrimage at the Saint Paul University Museum

Dr Abe V Rotor
Museum Faculty Curator

World War II Memorial at St. Paul University QC

At a corner inside the St Paul University Museum in Quezon City, where once stood an altar many years ago when the Japanese invaders converted the campus into a concentration camp, a small group of visitors bowed in deep thoughts and prayers. For a moment these pilgrims transformed the museum into a holy place.

It was like turning back the hands of time into the Second World War. Now there is peace. There was hatred, but that too, has given way to forgiveness. Despair, and now hope, pride into humility. These contrasting scenarios provide very valuable lessons of man. For man is tempered by war and mellowed by the peace that follows afterward. All these took place in half a century or so.

The SPUQ museum stands as a witness of the history that shaped the school. The events are the lifeblood of the museum - its walls originally the immaculate walls once stained with blood speak of peace, its pillars the original pillars that withstood the atrocities of war and the tests of the elements and time attest to endurance and posterity.

The museum is not only a repository of history; it is the abode of history. It is like Fort Santiago or the Paco Cemetery. Or the great Pyramids of Egypt, the City of the Dead of the Aztecs, walled city of Jerusalem and St Peter’s in Rome. These museums have one thing in common: they are part of history. They are living relics that chronicle past events, stirring nationalism while promoting brotherhood in men. They strengthen universal values and rekindle the spirit. They bring the relationship of man with his Creator closer and harmonious.

Since its opening in late 1994, many pilgrims, old and young, parents and students, city and rural folk, have brought significance to the museum. Other than being an educational institution, it has somehow earned respect for pilgrimage.

Burning of St Paul School during WWII, wall mural, AVR

The building is a early American architecture bearing the basic designs of Greco-Roman style – high ceiling, prominent, bare and square pillars, solid walls with small grilled windows. The entrance is unassuming, yet there is an aura of dignity that engulfs one on opening the door. For a panoramic view meets the eye, with virtually all four corners optically converging. The scene is accentuated by the massive murals depicting some chapters of the life of St. Paul, and widened by the transparency of the glass cabinets allowing the eye to roam freely.

All these no doubt contribute to the pilgrimage atmosphere. But what is revealing is the gathered information of the place coming from no less than the sisters, many of them in their seniors and living at the nearby Vigil House then. Some of the informants have already died, but the memory of the place lives on.

The senior sisters recall the place as a prayer house. “There was an altar which was located towards the left corner of the room adjacent to the backdoor.” And they would point out the place in the museum. The backdoor leads to the basement used as clinic during the Japanese occupation. The wounded and the sick were led to the prayer house and to spend time meditating, praying, or just to let time pass by. On several occasions the dead were brought in for the wake.

Imagine that for a period of four years, SPUQ then a novitiate and a school for elementary and high school, was made into a garrison and concentration camp, the same way the Japanese did to UST during the same period. And also to De La Salle University in Pasay. We do not know how many died but many Filipino, American and Japanese soldiers died here. There were local residents, foreigners, women and children who also died.

My students would ask me whenever I tell them the story if there are ghosts on the campus – or spirits of the dead. “Have you seen or felt their presence?” I would counter. And the conversation lengthens, creating a world of the supernatural in the process.

Anyone would believe in spirits that may make their presence felt in one way too many, depending on who is telling the story and who are listening. I for one sensed their presence on a number of occasions. The question with believing in the supernatural though is that the mind cannot decipher reality from imagination. But it is this aspect from which we build our stories and beliefs. Take this experience as an example.

In 1995 I was painting Saul on Damascus Road into the night alone. The museum was dead silent. What a ideal time to paint! Then suddenly the arm of Saul “moved” an inch downward. My brush missed the outline. I made the necessary correction but this time the arm had moved upward and now I have two errors to correct. I told myself I was too tired, and left the museum for home. That night I dreamt of Saul holding a red robe, which he was to use to clothe the dying Christ. Early that morning I went to the museum and continued painting the arm. I fixed Saul’s right hand and put on the red robe on it. Where did the idea of the red robe come? Was it a dream or a message I got? What made his arm move? Or was it a way of getting a message across?

Saul on Damascus Road (8ft x 8ft, AVR)

I remember at one time in the early part of the painting I received visitors while I was painting the sky on makeshift scaffolding. Causally they would come and take a look at my work. Sometimes they would ask me a question or two and I would obligingly give an answer without breaking my concentration. One evening a kind sister visited the museum. She stood for sometime looking at what I was doing on the scaffolding. Anyone at the top could not see well the person below. And not know when she came and had gone. What I remember was her large hat, but that crossed my mind only days later. Who was she? Where did she come from at 9 in the evening?

At one time I was painting Paradise after Rome. This time I did it at home at our front yard. It took me until dusk. A silhouette figure kept passing at the corner of my eye. I would have dismissed it but it came twice, thrice, not saying a word and not pausing. But there is semblance of the figure I was painting with the silhouette – a bearded man and heavily built, clothed in flowing robes. The big difference though is that the man I was painting was about to be beheaded while the silhouette was roaming free, with an air of dignity and command.

The following day I changed the man on my painting. Yes, death, I realized is resurrection. So I painted Paul, the resurrected, on the day of his execution when Rome was razed by Nero’s torch.

Paul survives shipwreck on the Mediterranean mural (AVR)

Spirits to me are guiding signals that sometimes take the form of humans. They carry messages that lead us to the theme of our art such as in these particular cases. The denominator is goodness – they help us seek goodness, and goodness leads us to truth – truth that is built by strong faith other than reason.

Can we decipher messages the same way we receive communications in daily life? I say no, not always. For the message with deep meaning are not readily evident. One has to labor in order to understand it, and capture the essence of that message.

For example on the painting, School in Ruins, which I entitled in an accompanying verse, Grow and Bloom, Grow and Bloom, an outline of a young devil cast a shadow on the burnt building. This was discovered while I was working on the dying smoke emanating from the fresh ruins. Someone almost shouted at me, “Stop, stop!” Then he explained. He was seeing a devil in outstretched hand hovering over the ruins. I preserved the outline. Anyone who comes to the museum today experiences the same thing the discoverer made 15 years ago. Yes, the war, the killing, the burning, the looting are works of the devil. His imprint makes us aware not to submit ourselves to evil, but rather fight it at all cost.

A pilgrim took notice of Saul talking with Christ on Damascus road. Did Christ really appear to him? But look again at the painting. That is why those who come to the museum stay longer than just to visit. They pray. They wish.

Students facing the trials of defending their thesis come to the museum. They come from UST, Pamantasan ng Maynila and other schools. Students seeking entry in medicine proper, reviewers in bar and board exams – they come and wish. There are those who came back, others have not. Well, in the story of the ten lepers, not all came back to thank. There are many ways to thank, of course, such as doing good for others.

Oh, Centennial, Oh Centennial (8ft x 8 ft, AVR)

The community takes pride in having a museum accredited by the National Commission for the Culture and the Arts (NCCA), and the museum curator sits in one of the Commission’s sub-committees. The SPUQ Museum is also a member of the Association of Museums in the Philippines. Because of these, the school has the opportunity to take part in various national programs in health, environment, historical events, food and nutrition, and community development, to name the major events. In return, the museum is recognized for its effort. It is one of the very few school museums given such distinction.

Face of Christ in the Woods (AVR)

Our own students, faculty and the whole community recognize that here in a not far away land is a little Smithsonian, a little Gethsemane, a little Lourdes, and a little Sistine Chapel. And the same grace we find in those places is also found here – here at the Saint Paul University Museum. ~
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Author’s Note: Prominent pilgrims to the SPCQ Museum include high government officials, leaders in the business, university professors, journalists, personalities in the entertainment world, Filipino balikbayan and their families. Their identities are kept to give due respect to their person and privacy. The museum celebrates its 15th year in June 2010.
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A Walk with Nature, AVR