From Roots...To Wings: A Life Story
“When the Spanish missionaries came, they teach us to pray looking up the sky while they grab our lands. When the American missionaries came, they teach us to pray closing our eyes while they abused our land. Now, Filipinos learned how to pray with one eye opened!”
(... a Peasant reflection)
My Roots...my Story...
My “Popoy” (grandparent) told me the wonderful stories about how huge the American bread was, how abundant were the powdered milk, the canned margarine, the chocolates during the American occupation. My paternal grandparents were a happy host of American missionaries in the early 1900s, later most of their family were converted into the Protestant faith.
In my youth I used to go fishing with my “barkada” (friends) and to spend overnite fishing in an open sea between Leyte and Bohol. I can feel the hardship of a fisherman’s life waking up early morning and staying late in the night over the dark and vast sea for a handful of fish catch un-able to feed his family.
I live with a farmer’s family in the hinterland of Cebu and share with the family’s table of dried fish fried with water because they cannot afford for cooking oil. With my host family I experience a farmer’s family life, waking up early morningto tend their farm but the whole family’s labor could not feed them until the next harvest.
Sometime in the late 1970s we were made to live with a family in Dagat-dagatan, Tondo as part of our urban exposure. I experience sleeping under the dining table among six children and disposed in plastic bag thrown behind logs and bushes near the shore.
Yet, inspite of the experience of a hard life they were able to survive and sustained their family in the best way they can.
Something in the Roots....
My father was a Pastor and most of my younger days were spend in the parsonage. As the eldest in the family of seven siblings I was “offered” and groomed to become a pastor. But, I find church life so enslaving, we live with lots of “do and don’ts” trying to keep up as “good model” for the church members. In my inner self, I resent the idea of becoming a pastor for I have experienced the hard life of a pastor. The salary was never enough, the family keeps on transfering from one place to another denying us of permanent friends, I feel that the church members keep on “sniffing” behind our back trying to find the “worse” on us.
But, my father’s life and dedication in the ministry of the church is an inspiration. I often asked: “What is it in the church that we have sacrificed so much?
Quest for Wings...
My family’s religious background, my contrast social location, the church rigid expectations led me to question the “good missionary message” of “salvation”! But, the inspiration of my father’s commitment in church ministry and the “quest for life” of the marginalized people challenge me to journey in search for the meaning of life.
I become active with the church, participating in youth activities and later entered the seminary. It was at the height of martial law and the anti-dictatorship was gaining ground in the campuses including our seminary. This campus environment provide us the opportunity to look into the social dimension of the Christian faith which include among others; studies on social analysis, praxis, social relevance and liberal theologies calling Christians for social action and involvement.
After seminary I was assigned in a small rural church – among small congregation of rural farmers. I live and share life with them e.g. living with their family, facilitate bible reflection and studies, work with them in the farm etc.
One Saturday evening while I was preparing my sermon trying to give meaning on people’s lives, a strong wind and heavy rainfall was experienced by the community over nite...in the morning I wake up with all of the barangayflooded, uprooted coconut trees were everywere...most of the houses were destroyed...I learned later that the barangay was on thetyphoon path and have destroyed the village and the peoples’ source of life...my prepared sermon was never delivered!
That very moment, I asked the question: “What is the relevance of Faith in a destroyed life?”
We don’t have Sunday worship that day...for people start rebuilding their lives...
The following Sunday, people were gathered in the church...and there were many of them...Their Faith has become their only hope to rebuild their lives...
The experience become an opportunity of me venturing into community developmentseeking relevance of the faith expression in the lives of community people...of understanding the “church” beyond its “four walls” but, among the people...where faith and action works togther in changing peopls’s lives!
I was strongly involved in a church base community program since then; working in different part of the Visayas area and later, headed the Community and Extension Development Program of the College of Maasin, a school base community development program.
Like any change and transformative program that time, our approach is strongly problem base seeking the gaps and what doesn’t workin the community or organization e.g. problem analysis, identification of the gaps, providing resolutions on the basis of the felt problems etc.
Looking back after more than two (2) decade of my journey, I feel drained, “burned out” and frustrated for the expected change is not that “quantitative and qualitative”! Yet, in our sharing and integration with the life of the people...we find elements of changes in their perceptions, in their attitude and outlook of life.
I seek a way to magnify these significant changes!
My Wings...
My conversation with Appreciative Inquiry (AI) started with my engagement with SAIDI. The small talk I had with Dean Rose became a “quest of inquiry”, seeking books...surfing web sites...finding conversation with AI practioners sets my journey. However, for people who are used with “gaps”and problems my conversion to AI was never easy, I even write in one of my notes: “this cannot happen with the Filipinos considering its culture”.
Because, I am personally stressed, burdened and is “heavy laden” of achieving goals, coping with the standard performance, “toeing on the line” on the proposal and log frame’s accomplishment...I seek a way of looking things around me...and, of “flying” beyond accomplishment, performance, work, proposals etc. and, seeking for answer on: what is the meaning of what we are doing? What changes have been made in my life and in the life of others?
It is my journey with AI that I find inspiration, sense of fullfillment, reinforcing other lives and find the meaning of my being.
When one is conversant with AI...one can see all human events the AI way.
This “journal of journey” is my appreciation of LIFE!