the space in between

Easter: When peace & justice embrace

2012-04-08T09:10:00.003-07:00

At daybreak I heard something that came somewhat like an epiphany.

There in the midst of sunbeams breaking amidst the darkness, the speaker uttered: “shalom”.

Hebrews defined Shalom as a word meaning peace, completeness, and welfare. Its content bears more than language itself can contain in fact it can be understood as the whole essence of the transcendent message of the Christian scriptures, which means more than a state of mind, of being or of affairs.

Idiomatically it has been used to mean both hello and goodbye, which in a way also points to the timelessness of the word itself as something that cannot be contained within our linear definitions of time but rather can be seen as an all encompassing event that goes beyond time itself.

As the speaker Dr. Liza Lamis puts it: “shalom is where/when peace and justice embrace.”

Thus falling neatly into the goal of Jesus Christ’s Easter, resurrection because it tells us that goodness overcomes evil. To be good and to do good is to be a child of the resurrection as it is a way out from those that destroy ourselves, others and our island home.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the ultimate manifestation of God’s love for us and how this love is more properly understood and lived out in relational ways. Love demands justice and peace. Love demands inclusive communities and respect. Love renounces greed and offers new life.

May we all be instruments that usher in the embrace of peace and justice beyond Easter.

One Day

2012-04-05T20:15:00.000-07:00

I just finished watching the movie One Day, and it somehow led me into writing this, because the movies theme of people defined and coming to terms with the nature of love and life itself ushered by a fateful day seems fitting for this occasion.

Some 2000 years ago somehow in a single day everything came to a halt. All frozen: heaven and hell; past, present and future; life and death itself--bound together in a dreadful hill to witness the outstretched arms of one who gave up the ghost and died the tragic death of a martyr for a noble cause.

There in that hill time froze and all came into pieces. It might be said that it was serendipity unrealized. A divine question mark in humanity’s history of tragic comedy.

Some 2000 years ago the ball dropped and death claimed the life of the Divine. Hearts broke, hopes shattered and the faithful flea for their lives in fear.

Still unknown at the time that this routine execution of one who stood and invoked a radical consciousness amidst the shadow of the Empire and auspices of the religious establishment would somehow turn the world upside-down and inside-out.

Meanwhile, "in the streets the children screamed the lovers cried, and the poets dreamed and not a word was spoken"

The liturgical calendar calls this day Good Friday and it was called "good" for a very good reason.

Crux probat omnia

Of silent pandas and condescending statements

2012-03-28T10:27:00.000-07:00

More than a week ago Earth First! Philippines, raised questions about World Wide Fund for Nature Philippines’ (WWF) affiliation with McDonalds, Aboitiz Power and their usage of tarpaulins in their materials on their Facebook page. Being an activist that values the capability of social media as a valid avenue of facilitating informed discourse I was taken aback by the response that the Facebook Page admin did. They deleted the comment.

Seeing that happen comes as a shock for me and when I tried asking about it all I got is a comment from another person affiliated with WWF saying that its because they’re about being positive and not negative. The answer gave me the impression of how ill-informed they are at the basics of social interaction within social media.

It wasn’t until a few days later when the people involved with the struggle to stop SM Baguio, from cutting down and earthballing 182 trees in Luneta Hill, to pave the way for their mall expansion project engaged them en masse about having SM as a venue provider and supposedly as their sponsor for their Earth Hour activities, wherein they responded with a vague and condescending ‘official statement’ that it has become obvious that what’s posted as legitimate concerns are not really in their radar of priorities.

I am writing this not because I am a part of Greenpeace which has always been compared to WWF. I write this because I value informed discourse and consensus so much that I believe legitimate concerns of individuals and groups should be given due priority if we are to establish a civil working relationship within the broader world of civil society and within the broader environmental movement.

But instead the response that WWF gave is that they have been branded people posting in their Facebook page their personal concerns as counter-productive, because we chose not to remain silent in expecting consistency between the praxis of what they are asking of us and the kind of work that they are doing. From the very beginning no one called in for a boycott of Earth Hour but rather we inquired in anticipation for a qualified answer to valid concerns since the whole essence of Earth Hour is for people like me to pledge to do something for an hour and to put it beyond that. That is the reason why I personally asked and was passionately irking WWF is for them to answer questions based on the issues raised first by Earth First! and also of the many individuals who may be attached to personalities of other environmental groups but have nevertheless spoken up as individual activists.

Instead what they did is they posted a statement that not only defers the issues but have labelled us as being counter-productive and divisive. But I would beg to differ: I cannot begin to say how this whole thing affected me personally as a one who considers them as fellow sojourners in the journey of working for a better planet. Because concerns about the broader issues of interests, pronouncements of where WWF stand in practice to the usage of toxic materials like PVC, their affiliations and the kind of relationships that they have with corporations are legitimate concerns of people in their niche who just want to understand why they are doing what they are doing even if news and broader consensus on a whole lot of other groups’ findings run counter to their position.

By choosing to censor comments by deleting them, by choosing to avoid making categorical answers and by making saliently patronizing remarks of WWF being positive and all the rest of us as being ‘divisive ‘and ‘negative’ they have closed the door for mutual conversation, learning and of finding common ground and exploring avenues for collaboration even if we do not see eye-to-eye.

Their silence and adamant refusal to engage in informed debate put forward by people on their page has spoken more about whose voice they consider as legitimate and whose opinion they have considered as valid. The first two paragraphs that enumerates the volume of support they have sounds more like a boast rather than a statement of their conscious responsiveness to the needs not only of the environment but also of the needs put forward by the social contract that they have with the broader environmental movement.

I rest my case. The whole ordeal feels more like talking to a condescending brick wall that would not take into consideration a voice such as mine. Thanks to WWF’s disparaging reaction on their Facebook page they made me lose all respect for the organization and the work that they’re doing.
____

Before Sunset: a linguistic deconstruction of love

2012-03-17T06:33:00.000-07:00

Sometime during the early 1990s Richard Linklater, made a movie entitled Before Sunrise, that told this story about an American named Jesse and a French girl named Céline, who meet on a train and disembark in Vienna, where they spend the night walking around the city and over the course of one night, and lead to their revealing more about themselves than they normally would, fall in love and make love and the following day vowed to meet again after six months. The film’s ending leaves audience to decide for themselves whether Jesse and Céline will actually meet again in six months –a fine test of a person’s perception of romantic love.

I think this film is worth reviewing since beyond concepts of romance and youthful idealized depictions of love the movie Before Sunset speaks a great deal about the anxieties that I feel are also facing a lot of us who have been quickened by the reality that what is ‘ideal’ and ‘perfect’ are illusive concepts that we may never really be realized in this life. I would like to think that this perhaps is what makes the movie Before Sunset quite remarkable because it strips us of this romantic illusion of relationships that pop culture constantly bombards us with in the media. It shows relationships as complex interactions of people, circumstances and decisions that we have to live with.

Before Sunset, begins 9 years since the events of Before Sunrise. Since then, Jesse has written a novel, This Time, inspired by his time with Céline, and the book has become an American bestseller. To help sales in Europe, Jesse does a book tour. The last stop of the tour is Paris, and Jesse is doing a reading at the bookstore Shakespeare and Company. As he speaks with his audience his eyes wander to the side, and he can hardly believe it: Céline is smiling at him.

After his presentation the bookstore manager reminds Jesse he has a plane to catch and must leave for the airport in a little more than an hour, and so just like in Before Sunrise, the characters are forced to make the best of the little time they have together, making it easier for their conversations to become ever more personal, beginning with the usual thirty-something's themes of work and politics and then, with ever increasing passion, approaching their love for each other, just as their time together is running out. And it was there that they come to realize how maturity comes at the cost of losing all sense of the passionate romance that fuelled this one single night that happened to them 9 years back.

9 years later: Jesse is married with a child an experience to which he refers to as like running a day-care center with someone that he used to date; while Céline, turned out as a cynical environmental activist charged with the disquieting trepidation that all her sense of romance has been lost in that 1 single night that they spent in Vienna 9 years ago.

In the concluding scene, Céline and Jesse arrive at her apartment. Jesse had learned that Céline plays the guitar and persuades her to play a waltz song for him. The waltz is revealed through the lyrics to be about their brief encounter. Jesse then plays a Nina Simone CD on the stereo system. Céline dances by herself to the song "Just in Time" as Jesse watches her. As Céline imitates Simone, she mutters to Jesse, "Baby ... you are gonna miss that plane." As the camera slowly pans in, Jesse smiles while nervously fidgeting with his wedding ring and responds, "I know", as the film ends. Leaving us again to wonder what happens next...

Too often we tend to idealize relationships and romance as things that we can work for or as prizes that we can earn. But reality is far more complex than that. Our digital age has wreaked havoc at this archetype notions of love and life by marrying it with consumerism and fad, which has functioned as a language of how we tend to view and attach value to things in this day and age.

We seemed to have lost what Heidegger, calls as the primordial significance of language. Take for example the word “love” as it is used today in our society.

After seeing this word used on countless greeting cards, advertisements, publications etc, the word has become impoverished. “Love” no longer carries the same meaning and significance it once did. In fact, the very process to which we attached value onto words has sort of become impoverished, because each generation adds another layer of curd over the original meaning of a word, covering it like layers of rust. To follow Heidegger’s view there was a moment in time when someone first used the word “love” in relating to someone .

Watching Before Sunset, is an experience that compels us again to revisit the value of conversation, honesty and that of being grounded in the complex reality that we live in to which language plays a big part in forming concepts and constructs that affect the way we see and interpret things around us. The movie gives language to that complexity that we go through as we journey in this constant reality called life.

Because, language is not just about points and meanings: it is a medium of communication, but also of avoidance, misdirection, self-protection and plain confusion, all of which are among the themes of this movie, which captures a deep truth seldom acknowledged on screen or in books .

Of conversion and idiots

2012-03-06T16:33:00.000-08:00

A classroom conversation is what got me into browsing at notes that I wrote last semester after viewing an excerpt from Akira Kurosawa’s cinematic depiction of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot.

The conversation that I had with my classmate was about presenting a distinctive portrait of the Christian doctrine of salvation, which puts particular consideration to the existential facet of conversion and the goal of wholeness which sums up the kind of life that was presented and made possible by Jesus Christ. Here I find our exercise on the character of Kinji Kameda, the Idiot in Kurosawa’s movie quite interesting.

For starters it was done less than a decade after World War 2 which could be Kurosawa’s cinematic portrayal of the general distrust of Japanese society of people’s goodness which was salient in the film’s plot. The film portrays Kameda as an idiot that somehow embodies Kierkegaard’s idealistic anthropology of one who is transposed to a new understanding of himself.

I find it interesting that Kameda’s innocence and genuine sense of awe and naiveté is somewhat close to the biblical picture of Christ (and his otherworldliness) where interaction with his apparent ‘idiocy’ stirs a sense of catharsis that comes as a reaction when confronted by someone who is very much like us and yet so different.

Kameda’s remarkable divergence from other people is explained in the movie as the result of a near-death experience which for him led to a turning to his ostensible lunacy which was highlighted by his instantaneous dedication of himself to be kind and gentle to other creatures. Personally I find this as a parallel to the event and goal of metanoia to which we are called to full humanity or to “become as babes” to which God’s kingdom belongs to –in other words towards Christlikeness.

Here we find that trauma functions as a turning point that re-orients our life towards a new direction. Conversion in this sense is about being transposed to a new realm of existence.

Kameda’s experience of being rescued from the firing squad in the nick of time finds similarity with an individual’s experience of grace. Thus implying that we do not go through extreme experiences and come out of the ordeal unchanged, because ultimately we are products of our experiences and our decisions when faced with trying circumstances, and this perhaps points towards a better understanding of the transformative call of the Gospel upon which we encounter God in the embrace of one who has become ‘one of us’ in the incarnation of Jesus who shows us that God is as close to us as the next person is

2000 years ago something happened...

2011-12-24T08:42:00.000-08:00

2000 years ago there were young lovers.

They were minding their own business, when in the mediocrity of their lives something happened:

It arrived...unexpectedly...

It was strange, and altogether life changing, but nevertheless they looked at it as a gift from the Divine.

It was welcomed with meaning, uncertainty and faith.

Little did they know that altogether this something that happened, this gift, this baby would in turn become this Palestinian Jew who would in both words and actions announce that the Kingdom of God has arrived.

This man would reveal God to us as the one whom we can call "Father". Ultimately this something would be 'God with us' and in turn would "give himself for us" because he loves us.

This something came unexpectedly and there's a lesson to be learned in welcoming unexpected because it is in the unexpected that the obvious is seen and felt. It is there that God works and there that God meets us in love.

Gloria in excelsis deo.

Christmas: A rant

2011-12-11T20:34:00.001-08:00

Let me say it clear: I do not want to abolish Christmas; I am just frustrated with the beast that it has become in recent years.

I hate the way Christmas turns people into proactive gift recipients who expect people to give them presents. Newsflash, the idea of a gift is that it is given because those who want to 'give' so freely chosen to render gifts it cannot be the other way around.

I hate the way taxi drivers see it as a license to overcharge, choose passengers whine and make you feel that you should give them an extra on top of their meter rate.

I hate the way some Christians always say that it is under threat from the secularists because the politically correct term for "merry Christmas" has been turned into "happy holidays". Yet they find nothing wrong with how Christmas celebration has long been sitting comfortably with ideas like consumerism.

I hate the hypocrisy of those who are anti-Christmas. Because they don't want it in their secular society yet, they still enjoy their Christmas holiday leaves, Christmas bonuses and all the perks that their hated holiday gives them.

I hate the way Christmas has become a consuming frenzy that has made shopping malls replace cathedrals as the place to be for the holidays.

I hate the way that a child's Christmas experience is now summed up into how much cash or how many gifts, they were able to get for Christmas.

I hate how it creates traffic jams. I hate how stressful the streets have become. I hate how we are being lulled to merry for all the wrong reasons.

I hate how it has lost its innocence and made us forget about those wonderful memories of celebrating it without having much, without electronic gadgets and without the branded things that have replaced the joy that comes with remembering that point in time when we were young and we only need our family to make us happy.

Ultimately, I hate how in spite of the glitz glamour and hype still a significant 99% go to bed hungry, have no job, and live lives that lack freedom, purpose and meaning clinging to nothing but that faint hope that comes from that story of a child born on a manger to become God with us which sadly has been replaced by the consuming hype of capitalism that keeps on forcing its idolatry of materialism in our faces.

a question of faith...

2011-11-28T01:38:00.001-08:00

How long, how long, will I slide into the abyss that is myself?

God knows how much I try to make sense of this life by putting it in a perspective that is beyond me. But every time I do so I miserably fail. It must be a matter of will power, something that I sadly do not have an ample supply of. For someone who holds fast to a truth claim like faith in a loving God, I am one who always treads that thin line between belief and unbelief. In faith I wrestle with doubt. In faith I fall prey to the apparent certainty of my understanding. In faith struggle to climb out of the pitch-dark well that is myself...

Learning to 'mind the gap'

2011-10-17T08:23:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I was blessed to have been invited to teach a Sunday School class on New Testament history and in the process of preparing the material I was constantly confronted with the nagging question of why would we need spend time and energy bridging the historical and cultural gaps between the modern world and the world of the New Testament era?

As of now I am still struggling with this question and below are some insights that I shared while giving the introduction to the lesson, to which I think the phrase: ‘mind the gap’ fittingly exemplifies.

Let me start with posing a question?

Do you believe the Christianity that we have now is the same as the Christianity that existed during the time of the Apostles?

Obviously the answer would be a resounding: "no!"

Of course if we'd look at our church now we'd see ourselves in a far different setting we are in the Philippines, we are worshiping in a church building and are reaping the benefits of modern technology. On the other hand, the earliest Christians are living in Judea and are gathering in houses speaking a different language (probably Aramaic or Greek Koine) and are within their own cultural contexts.

The reason I asked this is because realizing this difference is the start of understanding the New Testament in light of history. Because we are 'people' that are 'situated' somewhere (in time & space) and that we are products of our own environmental, social, economic and cultural contexts.

It is important to take note of this if we are to study New Testament history, because much of what we know and understand now about our faith and more importantly our Scriptures (which we understand as the inspired Word of God) are actually products of its own historical existence. A study of its historical milieu then is an attempt at reconstructing the world that exists during the formation of the New Testament.

This session is by no means extensive in its take on the historical setting of the New Testament. But the intent here for all of us is to be able to situate the external factors that have informed and influenced the formation of the New Testament writings that we so often read and study at church and in the privacy of our homes and workplaces.

For sure there is a gap that exists between our socio-cultural context and the socio-cultural context reflected in the New Testament. As readers and followers of the Bible we are called to a respectful reading of it. Because the Scriptures’ meaning is always predicated on contextual assumptions shared between author and original recipients. Also the communicative intention of the author can be discerned only in light of the text’s background conceptual assumptions.

Ultimately we are also doing this is because we believe that we are the continuation of the first community of believers who have gathered around this belief in this risen Christ and therefore understanding this belief in light of history is like going to a grand reunion where we learn about the origins of our faith and community which would hopefully help us find connections with how they lived alongside the forces at work in their society to our present struggles as Christians which would prayerfully inform our decisions that would help us live and witness consistently to this faith that we proclaim in Christ.

Tristura da endemiko

2011-10-14T02:16:00.000-07:00

It is in silence that I responded to that desperate plea for something that I cannot wholeheartedly give... I can't find the words to articulate this complex drama of thoughts, memories and emotions that battle inside... Faith, hope, and love finds its fulfilment in pain that longs for comfort, from promises kept in concrete manifestations that renders doubt obsolete... The fuckin' drama of it al...

Of flash mobs, Christology and the church

2011-10-11T00:33:00.000-07:00

Watching this video somehow struck a chord.

Especially, since last Sunday I broke my months of absence at church. Months ago I've somehow lost interest in attending worship services, because I feel as though like I've just been spending years of my life going through the motions of standing up, sitting down; reading the Bible; singing long praise songs that repeats the words Jesus" and "me" to the point of abuse; and sitting for an hour to listen to unchallenging messages and reading bullet points flashed in a multimedia projector.

To cut the story short I dropped out and given up on the idea of attending worship services.

But watching this video reminded me of something and somehow it got me into thinking again about the church and Christ's mission in the world. Since the very reason that I landed myself back at church again was that I was invited to give a lecture on the historical backdrop of the New Testament.

Looking back now I think that too often I think we have come to forget that during the time when the New Testament was being formed in 1st century Roman-Judea there was a widespread consciousness of an apocalyptic vision that existed alongside a nationalist notion of a messiah, as one who will defend the Jews against foreign oppressors and rule the Jews justly, and by divine right. God would reign, to liberate His people from oppression; to judge the wicked and vindicate the righteous, and the new age of God’s future would emerge.

The God of promise, the God of hope: this God was now drawing near, so that the final goal of history was at hand. God is coming! God is near! God is here and now establishing His kingdom of righteousness in the people that gathers in Jesus name. This was the message of Jesus of Nazareth.

The resounding chorus of Handel's Messiah climaxes with these words:

The kingdom of this world
Is become the kingdom of our Lord,
And of His Christ, and of His Christ;
And He shall reign forever and ever,
Forever and ever, forever and ever,
And He shall reign forever and ever,
King of kings, forever and ever,
And Lord of lords,
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Because actions speak louder than words

2011-09-19T03:31:00.000-07:00

Last weeks’ celebration of Greenpeace 40th founding anniversary reminded me that this year I am also celebrating my 6th year as a part of Greenpeace Southeast Asia’s Philippine office, and I am proud to say that it was 6 meaningful years that I will forever treasure as an individual that have chosen the path less-traveled of environmental activism that finds its personality in direct action – in “cutting out the middleman” and becoming an instrument of defense for this precious blue marble that we all call Earth.

Amchitka: the beginning of a movement

Vancouver, Canada 40 years ago: a ragtag band of hippies, Quakers, American draft-dodgers, journalists and ecologists would change the face of environmental activism as we know it...

...Motivated by their vision of a green and peaceful world, this small team of activists decided set sail to Alaska, in an old fishing boat –the Phyllis Cormack.

Their mission was to "bear witness" to US underground nuclear testing at Amchitka, a tiny island off the West Coast of Alaska, which is one of the world's most earthquake-prone regions; and also the last refuge for 3000 endangered sea otters, and home to bald eagles, peregrine falcons and other wildlife.

Even though, the Phyllis Cormack, was intercepted before it got to Amchitka, the journey sparked a flurry of public interest. The US still detonated the bomb, but the voice of reason had been heard. Nuclear testing on Amchitka ended that same year, and the island was later declared a bird sanctuary.

This signalled the beginning of the movement that would become known globally as Greenpeace –a fusion two fledgling movements that arose out of the social progressive values that began in the 60s counter-culture: the peace & the environmental movement.

Greenpeace began to grow, following that fateful journey to Amchitka, in the succeeding years it developed to become one of the largest environmental organizations that would carry out this brand of activism called, non-violent direct action, in exposing environmental criminals, and challenging government s and corporations when they fail to live up to their mandate to safeguard our environment and our future.

From Vancouver to the Philippines

Today, Greenpeace is present in 40 countries including the Philippines, which is a part of our Southeast Asian office that was established in the year 2000, and has led successful campaigns in the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia. In the Philippines Greenpeace played an instrumental role in the passage of landmark environmental laws such as:

The Republic Act No. 8749, otherwise known as "The Philippine clean Air Act of 1999" which includes an unprecedented national ban against waste incineration.
The Philippine Ecological Waste Management Act which mandates the implementation of front-end strategies, namely waste reduction, separation and recycling to solve the country’s waste crisis.
The Renewable Energy Law which is intended to accelerate the development and utilization of renewable energy sources in the country.

Actions still speak better than our words

Throughout the years Greenpeace, has gone through a lot and yet that is not to say that it has softened its approach to ecological problems. Today we might make fewer headlines. After all, direct action is no longer new and there are a lot of distractions that we have to compete with in capturing the public imagination for the problems that are facing the world now.

This is the challenge that besets us now as we continue in the struggle as activists to stir people to put their sentiments into concrete actions that would usher in a more sustainable future for our planet. We take action because something is wrong or because it is right – it is that simple. Greenpeace’s pursuit for integrity and its focus on consistency of thought and action is something that we can all benefit from. It challenges us to put our words into deeds. Because when all has been said and done the challenge is not about what we claim but rather what have we done in light of the things that we have seen and learned: thus the nagging call to make our actions speak louder than our words.

Lean Alejandro on being a revolutionary

2011-09-13T02:51:00.000-07:00

In this day and age of technological overdependence and internet activism I believe there is wisdom in re-visiting what being a revolutionary meant to those who have actually given their all for their vision of a better world.

Lean Alejandro was an activist who was murdered at 27, ironically in the democratic space instituted by the Aquino administration. May his words challenge us to go not gently unto the dark night of complacency and romanticized notions of awakening an upheaval with our mouse clicks of 'likes,' 'RTs' and online petitions...

"A revolutionary must know how to compute the distance of the stars, how to differentiate a fish from a shark.... He must know how to distill wine into liquor, how to arrive at e=mc². He must know how to cook bacon, butcher a pig and roast lamb. He must be capable of leading enemies into battle. He must know how to follow orders and he must know when to disobey them.

He must know how to soothe pain, comfort the sorrowful, maintain his composure in hot water, drown gracefully, sink with his ship with honor together with the mice.... He must be able to debate, he must know how to analyze difficult political situations ... he must know how to sail a ship, dig a latrine, wash clothes, wash dishes, plan an offensive, plan a retreat ... take care of babies, manage a state bureaucracy.

He must know how to discuss Mao and debunk Zinoviev, ridicule Stalin, correctly read Mabini, recruit members to the party, motivate members to struggle, host a party, be critical, be self- critical, be honest...."

The makings of a beautiful mess

2011-09-11T23:36:00.000-07:00

A beautiful mess is somewhat of a term that I use to define cathartic moments in life. That's how I would like to describe how clutter when thrown in a mix seems to come out with something beautiful. Just like how chaotic experiences brings out the best in people. Or the experience of being caught the middle of a Sonic Youth song. It is an experience of long lost aural blasts of resonating guitars and the staccato of pounding punk rock drumbeats. It is an experience that can only be found in the middle of PayItForward’s live performance of A Childlike Response To The Nearness Of You.

The world needs whipping boys...

2011-08-18T11:51:00.000-07:00

A meme is an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture. We can see this at work whenever we'd log in to Facebook or Twitter and the pause for a while and watch the updates feed refresh in real-time. I've often seen this at work and to tell you honestly I am starting to question the kind of collective consciousness that flourishes in the world wide web. Christopher Lao's 'I was not informed' news clip is a case in point of how we've come to exploit recent strides in technology for making juvenile and asinine pokes at people like Lao. Don't get me wrong I myself see him as an arrogant douche, however I think what was done to him is not only harsh but destructive. This I think shows our unquenchable thirst for self-assurance that we are not as bad as this and that person. But reality check we are what we post, like and share on our social media personas. The memes that have come to popularity since the advance of the internet in the late 90s is a testament of our twisted sense of humor that comes at the expense of unwilling victim whose lives are forever scared for our sake. God help us all...

Graphic novels, The Fall and the nuisance of human existence

2011-08-09T08:12:00.000-07:00

I often find it strange that in my case theological constructs are derived out of my exposure to what many dub as juvenile entertainment, which includes graphic novels. Perhaps there is something that I hit upon as profound in the action-packed artworks that are situated in separate panels that represent individual scenes which make up a plot. After all, human experience unfolds in story and its meaning is fashioned from places, plots, and players fused in real-time.

In like fashion Biblical narratives function as vehicles of divine revelation that helps us makes sense (or better yet find) our place and meaning in this sizeable and ever changing storyline that we call life. That perhaps explains why we often find ourselves identifying with the characters in Bible stories because in a way they lay bare a part of ourselves that we exhibit we whenever we cope with the harsh realities of life as well as when we feel like we are brought face to face to the actuality of the divine in our midst.

In this reflection for this class on Christian anthropology I would like to turn our attention on the primordial creation narrative of The Fall, looked at from the vantage point of a graphic novel: Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s Batman: The Killing Joke, where I will attempt to find parallels between the two comic book storylines in relation to the fall of man and the predicament of human existence that follows it.

Ave atque vale Rainbow Warrior

2011-08-07T06:55:00.000-07:00

I remember first meeting the Rainbow Warrior during my first year working for Greenpeace six years ago. I will forever be grateful to have been given that rare chance to go on board as a volunteer blogger during its Asia Clean Energy Tour of 2005.

A wise man once said: “endings are mere beginnings that are looked at the opposite direction." Today Greenpeace stand on the crossroads in eager anticipation of its new vessel as it tearfully gives the well deserved retirement for its flagship, that has carried out daring campaigns and inspiring actions that have pave the way to making our collective aspiration of a green and peaceful future a step closer to its realization.

Bon Voyage Rainbow Warrior, thanks for the memories

Click here to share your memories of the Rainbow Warrior

MCC as a necessary intentional community

2011-08-06T00:20:00.000-07:00

The Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) has gotten a lot of flack recently from both theologically conservative wings of the Roman Catholic and Evangelical Protestant Churches for administering same-sex mass wedding last June 25 in Baguio City.

As an Evangelical Christian, I still have a lot of questions about the theology and praxis of how Evangelical Christianity ought to conduct itself with regards to the reality of homosexuality.

But while that struggle to consolidate an Evangelical and Biblical response wages, I believe Christ calls us to love people and that includes those that we deem unlovable and for many Christians those unlovable are given faces by the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community.

Like the Good Samaritan in the parables of Jesus we are called to unconditionally and genuinely nurture them in ways that at times may come as an inconvenience to us. In an ideal world LGBT Christians should be part of a local church congregation where they can interact, fellowship and ultimately worship alongside heterosexuals and families of people that transcend age, class and gender.

Sadly that is not the case, mainstream Christianity has still yet to accept this reality of homosexuality and the inconvenient call to love those in the LGBT community. This is when communities like the MCC become a necessity for LGBT Christians as churches fail to respond in providing them that community where they can worship God. Hence, the existence of MCC testifies to our collective guilt of failing to love of our failure to not make distinctions between people whom God alone can judge.

This is a challenge that besets us now as we live in an age where in spite of the recent strides in technology and medicine we still have yet to cure one the greatest disease of them all that is –homophobia.

Looking at Scriptures through the lens of Gadamer

2011-08-04T08:59:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we had a very stimulating discussion about Hans-Geroge Gadamer’s work and philosophy which is mainly related to his magnum opus Truth and Method to which he tries to put forward a philosophical approach to interpreting text which involves what he calls as a ‘fusion of horizons’ where the interpreter finds the ways that the text's history articulates with their own background, which Gadamer intends to be a description of what we always do when we interpret things (even if we do not know it) to which he writes: "My real concern was and is philosophic: not what we do or what we ought to do, but what happens to us over and above our wanting and doing[1]".

How this relates to sacred scriptures like the Bible, I believe Gadamer offers thoroughgoing insights that can be very important to theologians whenever they would approach scriptures.

Since the Scriptures are dynamic pieces of literature.

As the Word that which we Christians affirm as the final authority is living and active and cannot be bound and confined to our systems of dogma and interpretation.

This realization affirms the need for us to concede humbly that our assumptions are not the final word when it comes to interpretation of the text, but rather to accept the text's multi-faceted meanings that relate to our reading of it.

Doing this now challenges and changes us because understanding a text requires more than an intellectual ascent but rather one that gives a higher premium to actions which ultimately reveals we have understood a given text because actions speak louder than words.

[1] Truth and Method 2nd edn. Sheed and Ward, London 1989 XXVIII

Cool eh?

2011-08-03T07:26:00.000-07:00

Buhawi Meneses was gracious enough to make a 3rd installment for his acoustic nights for Greenpeace. As usual DeathToPuberty is again part of the lineup of performers. Anyways I just want to post this marquee here because that's a first for DeathToPuberty. Anyways you are invited to:

Fan DeathToPuberty on Facebook

Follow DeathToPuberty on Twitter

Or visit the DeathToPuberty website.

John Stott (1921-2011)

2011-07-31T06:41:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday I was greeted by the tragic news that the Reverend John R.W. Stott, has already gone home to be with the Lord. Early this morning I wrote what's below on his memorial website's Remembrance Book:

I have never met him personally. I only knew him through his books, that I first encountered after my long departure from the Evangelical church of my youth. Reading his works challenged me to take serious note of the radical and holistic thrust of the Gospel of Christ. His passion for authenticity of thought and action that was motivated by his fidelity to the Scriptures was among the many factors that brought me to environmental activism and what also got me into taking up a master's degree in theology. I may not have known him in person, but thank God that he was blessed with eloquence that made his faith both a challenge and an inspiration for a sojourner like me in the Philippines. God bless you Rev. Stott.

Read more about John Stott's life and ministy on the links below

Because I link doing it "my way"

2011-07-27T06:05:00.000-07:00

People who've known me for years and people who've been familiar with my former band PayItForward often ask me why I bother to still play music as a solo act and why opted to do home recordings and tried experimenting with making electronica.

The simple answer to that is because I have never really shaken-off that adolescent drive to play in a band.

I've somehow gotten myself stuck in that stage and somehow that's the reason why I still do session work for other bands and every now and then perform live acoustic sets.

Depending heavily on a band setup can be both a blessing and a task as in all forms of human relationship it is quite complex in the sense that you have to concede to the fact that you are not in total control a lot of factors contribute to the sound that comes out of such collaborative efforts: on the one hand it can sound awesome because your hook somehow compliments your guitarist's riffs which are amplified with a drummers' chops; while on the other hand difference in styles, influences, moods, personalities and even priorities of band members greatly influence how a band would sound like and that could at times be very frustrating and not to mention the whole ordeal of trying to make schedules fit for rehearsals and gigs.

For me that's what lured me to what I am doing with my present projects. I simply just don't want to complicate things, because I link doing it my way...

Genetic Engineering and the Risk of Harm

2011-07-25T05:59:00.000-07:00

At the very least, one needs to understand that, as far as genetic engineering and ecology is concerned, the earth is not a giant laboratory where experiments can be conducted without due consideration given to the impacts that it may wrought on the planet’s fragile ecosystem and the lives of all the organisms that live in it. Also, that people should have the right to know what is in what they are eating, because it is intricately connected with their right to life.

Tragically, both the environment’s and the people’s rights are violated, because we have been deprived of informed choices since government institutions involved in agriculture chose not to side with caution, and the existing legal framework of the Philippines does not have a law that requires people to know if the food they are eating are genetically modified or not.

This shows the tragic premium given to life (or the lack of it) by those who seek to advance the implementation of genetically modified organisms into the production line and in the market . They go so far as advancing GMOs at the cost of the environment and of people. It does not look after the ‘rights’ of the consumer and it fails to go on the side of caution, which goes contrary already with proper scientific methodology.

Genetically Modified Organisms should not be released into the environment since there is not adequate scientific understanding of their impact on the environment and human health.

Life is not an industrial commodity. When we force life forms and our world's food supply to conform to human economic models rather than their natural ones, we do so at our own peril.

DeathToPuberty @ Buhawi Meneses Acoustic Night 2

2011-07-21T05:50:00.000-07:00

Here, there and everywhere

2011-07-14T22:56:00.000-07:00

I haven't been up to blogging lately primarily because I find myself stuck in a number of things right now at work and in my studies so I never really had that much free time to write. Anyways every now and then I get the chance to read a blog or watch a video on YouTube and here are some of the things that I think are certainly worth sharing.

How To Be A New Age Guru And Get Rich

Retired professional ice hockey goaltender for the Boston Bruins Scott Bailey, now blogs regularly over at Scotteriology has written quite an interesting blog that will hopefully give you pointers on being a New Age Guru and getting rich. Read more >>>

“Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”

I recently tumbled upon a copy of Harry Emerson Fosdick's classic sermon “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” which cost him his post at New York’s First Presbyterian Church, because his views then represented those of an influential Protestant minority. He writes: "There are many opinions in the field of modern controversy concerning which I am not sure whether they are right or wrong, but there is one thing I am sure of: courtesy and kindliness and tolerance and humility and fairness are right. Opinions may be mistaken; love never is." I say Amen to that! Read more >>>

Nike vs. Adidas

Greenpeace challenged Adidas and Nike to remove toxic chemicals from their supply chains and from their products. The demand comes as the result of a year-long investigation into toxic water pollution in China and how the chain of custody tracks back to the Philippines and other markets worldwide. You can learn more about it over at www.greenpeace.org.ph/detox

Look no stretch marks...

WITH no apparent evidence other than a photograph of Spanish priest Andrés García Torres hugging a young Cuban seminarian, the Catholic bishop of Getafe has leapt to the outrageous conclusion that there is something gay about two topless men in a warm embrace. Accused of being gay, Spanish priest challenges Church to measure his anus! Read more >>>

Statements of faith & honesty

Matthew Paul Turner, of Jesus Needs New PR comes clean with what he believes and what he knows in a blog post that I can honestly relate to entitled: What I Believe (and what i know). Read more >>>

Survey says...

A recent Gallup poll has recenyly been released which documents that in U.S.A., 3 in 10 Say They Take the Bible Literally. This further reaffirms that Biblical literalism is back, well and causing many of us to give Bible reading a second look. Read more >>>

Defining theology

W. Travis McMaken, attempts to give answers to basic questions about theology; being a theologian; and why should theology persist? Read more >>>

The Devil is well on its way to Manila...

As the American rock band Incubus, face protest about their upcoming Philippines show courtesy of a text message is circulating throughout the Philippines that asks local Philippine residents to pray against Incubus, pointing to the band's name which people associate a "with male demon believed to lie on sleeping persons." In response, Incubus singer Brandon Boyd enlighted folks with the band name's origins saying: "And we were 15 and we had to think of a name quickly because we got to play at a party in someone's backyard." This goes to show two things: 1) Religious fanatics are stupid and will react in opposition to anything without considering facts 2) Incubus aren't really as brilliantly profound as many among us would like to believe. Read more >>>

Rob Bell Is A Fundamentalist

The poster boy for contemporary Christian Universalism a fundamentalist? Zack Hunt, of the American Jesus blog eloquently argues for Bell's fundamental message of God’s love, grace, forgiveness, and redemption to a world desperately in need of hope and healing. Read more >>>

New Mystics and Jehovahuana

Check out this video documentary from Current TV if you're interested in understanding this thing called jehovauana. Watch video >>>

The Bible & same sex unions

Rev. Ceejay Agbayani, Administrative Pastor, of Metropolitan Community Church of Quezon City an Ecumenical Christian denomination with special ministry to Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transgenders. Talks about the Bible, theology and Sodom & Gomorrah over coffee on national TV. Watch video >>>

Down with M&Ms!

Jason Fried has a radical theory of working: that the office isn't a good place to do it. Watch the video to find out why, and to discover what all this has to do with M&M's. Watch video >>>