Healthy FOOD in our table

we keep complaining of the high cost of living. now that our gasoline bills are skyrocketing and everything else gets expensive, we need to think how we can afford to eat healthy and live well. my friends, tony and beth de castro have found the answer to a healthy and fulfilling life - caring for angelworms and growing organic food.

let me share about soilmates, yes SOIL MATES - the mates who produce black gold. lydia ,beth’s friend, coined the term while listening to tony and beth. with the food situation becoming worse, we must think of how to grow our own food and insure healthy food in our table. the solution lies with the angle worms, specifically the culture that they have brought to the earth a million years ago. worms are wonderful beings because they renew everything, from poison to bad bacteria into useful minerals - all the 27 minerals that life thrives on in this earth.

if i were an alien and wanted to find out how life is on this earth, i will take the angelworms. tony shared all the the research he found when starting to farm with the angleworms. he told us about the experiments with worms being fed with food injected with e-coli and salmonella. the worm’s shit was clear of any e-coli and salmonella bacteria. then they fed the worms with animal and human wastes. do you know what they found? the worms produced grade A bacteria that helped renewed soils that were depleted of minerals.think of your poso negro getting cleaned by worms without any service fees.

but the most important thing is that any land that has been abandoned /exploited,depleted and where plants fail to grow, the worms can renew in a short period of time, attracting good bacteria that spurs plant growth. the principle is simple - when the soil is healthy, the plants grow. feed the soil, and it will feed us. that is what angelworms do - they feed the soil with their shit and piss. so what do we feed the worms with ? everything that is biodegradable -our garbage! imagine all the garbage we produce and they recycle it into BLACK GOLD. from human waste to animal waste, from decaying food, kitchen waste to all the grass that is on our land - rice stalks,cogon stalks, name it, they will feed on it when in the stage of decomposition. when you walk in virgin forests and find the smell of moist soil, that’s the odor that healthy soil emits. that’s the odor of the shit the worms evict from their bodies. that’s the odor of black gold. amoy lupa is a most wonderful scent.

so why are we not caring for worms? why are we not mining the black gold that they produce ? because we are into fossil culture - we want oil, we eat oil, we breath oil.  urea, the fertilizer that agrifarms use all over the world is made from natural gas. we have been brainwashed that it is the only fertilizer for our plants and that the world cannot be fed unless our farms are using UREA. but now that many lands have been depleted of its natural minerals, urea cannot solve the problem. besides the price of urea goes high everythime the oil prices go up the skies. so every time there is a price hike in oil, there is food price hike too.

but that is not all - our HEALTH MAINTENANCE price goes up too, what with all the chemicals in our food! when our food is fertilized with urea, we eat the urea too. when the food is sprayed with pesticides, we eat the pesticides too. we eat chemicals - gasoline and dioxine and all the chemicals sprayed to rid plants of pests but they still get into our food. the chemicals get rid of us too by contracting cancer and all those incurable diseases. even flower enthusiasts get cancer from growing orchids and other flowers sprayed with pesticides.

so what do we do? let’s get worms growing in our backyards. let’s do zero waste garbage with worms composting. lets plant healthy food and grow them with vermicast and vermitea ( worm shit and piss) in our own gardens and idle lands.

let’s do it now! contact tony and beth. buy the vermicast, 30 pesos per kilo and renew your gardens this week. buy a kilo of worms with a 10 day food supply for P1100 from tony and beth. the one kilo of worms will serve your garden for 10 years. your angel worms will multiply every day, 1000 worms will be 2000 worms each day until all the biodegradable food in your house, in your street, in your community ,even in your town or city will be zero-waste. you can produce more than 10-12 kilos of vermicast for every worm bed you make. what you feed the worms, you get in exact weight in their shit.

LEARN the business sense of organic culture - you can sell the worms, the vermicast, vermitea, the organic plants, the organic vegies, herbs, fruits, flowers ,even organic rice! tony and beth started as professors of literature and psychology. now they are farmers and entreprenuers. they are happy and spiritually connected with the land. their lifestyle is something to copy and replicate.

VISIT ECOPARK, LA MESA DAM, ANGELWORM SANCTUARY. 9 am to 4 pm. look for rogelio and the angelworm sanctuary farmers. you can invite tony and beth for a short term learning session with your club or association. they can also design your community gardens and enliven the social life of your children by including them in the design and execution of healing gardens.

writing three books in one

this may has been very busy with ed and i. we are trying to write three books, prepare for the 60th wedding anniversary of my parents and paint each day to make it to ed’s august show. but it is the writing that really drives me to a pace i have never gone into. i sleep in the book, wake up in the book and use all my thinking power in the book. if there is a book driven woman, that’s me today.

last friday, ed and i went to peta’s 40th anniversary. they launched their storybook and it has a thousand pages! wow, that’s a feat producing stories that span 40 years. i went out to find out how they did it. first, it took ten years and there was a long procession of editors,writers,artists and managers. after a long delay , it took three women : beng cabangon, laura samsom and brenda fajardo to get the book written and launched.

i told ed” we dont have ten years to get the villaribas’ story of 60 years” and ed smiled at me. tonight we are still at the computer selecting, editing, finetuning the book that turned out to be three books. i emailed my siblings and told them to start promoting the books so we can get sponsors for the press run. why are we doing three books all at the same time? well, for one, my parents will never have another golden wedding. they are already in their bonus years and 60 years of marriage is the grandest event of their life. also, it is timely to get our clan honoring our parents, what their legacy is. the first book is all about love and life . the second book is the educational ideas, reflections and practices of my father and mother . they have been teachers since 1947. my father taught for 60 years while my mother taught for 39 years. the third book is our essays on lucena as a learning city, a proposal to widen the space and scope of learning. there are more than 200 photos and my headache revolves around who gets more mileage because their pictures are already available. i have sent out appeals since last year to give me the latest family fotos. as usual, at the last minute, people are sending me their photos via email.

ed has a lot on his tray : he needs to go home frequently to naujan to care for inay. he also has to earn more money since it is tuition time and ayen needs funds in college. not to mention a budget for a laptap ,a camera and a new calculator. ed also has to finish 30 paintings for his show in gsis museum on august 1st-22nd.

on my part, i also have to work for isis and craft a roadmap for its new executive since she will be coming from another country, another culture. besides i need the money to support another child , not mine, but our yaya whose daughter angela is very bright.

becoming book driven is the best thing that has happen to me right now. i understand many things that my parents did for us. as i write the stories that my parents verbally transmitted, i see patterns in my own household. i see why i am the way i am as a mother, a wife and a daughter. i am sure my sisters too are beginning to appreciate all the work that i am throwing at them. every day, i call on them to do a hundred things - get interviews, check out details, ask where is nanay’s best friend, etc. making three books have led me to discover the little roads and creeks in our storyline. connecting them led me to a bigger community. finding a bigger community led me to remembering those who made it possible for us to be who we are. the books honor my parents as much as they honor a community where we belong and are loved.

i suggest to friends to do the same for their parents and families. write books. write as if this is the best thing that you can do while your parents are still alive and smiling.

iron women in speed races

the movies Iron Man and Speed Racer led me to think of all the women who would qualify as better iron beings in races that parallel speed racing.. but first, beware of being entertained by these movies. ed and i really enjoyed watching Iron Man. we saw this movie while waiting for our daughter ayen in a concert in greenhills.

the plot is about Tony Stark, a genius with machines and is a manufacturer of weapons of mass destruction. he inherited a vast empire and is flaunted as a techno-wizard , having the gift of making machines that decimates enemies. this character is edgy and played well by downey. he gambles and plays with women. he has no family and has only one assistant, a woman who organizes everything he needs and wants, like a super secretary who anticipates his every move. like Batman , the hero is an orphan and has tremendous wealth including a basement with the latest information technology. unlike Batman, tony stark becomes the Iron man only after he is captured by afghan rebels and is tortured. he is helped by a doctor who modifies his heart and attached it to a car battery to prevent sharpnels from entering it. while under captivity, he is forced to make a missile but instead transform his heart into a mini-nuclear reactor. he manages to make himself an iron shield and become a weapon, escape from the rebels and then be rescued by the US air force. tony stark announces that his company will no longer manufacture weapons and this enrages his lifetime mentor ( who turns out to be his own nemesis). tony then decides to build a better iron man in his own home while appearing to be at rest from the trauma of captivity. the story is actually one of greed and betrayal. his father’s best friend and his mentor was the one who planned his murder in his bid to take over the company. tony stark realizes it only after having his mentor attack him in his own home. but being the hero, tony stark gets to fight his mentor and wins. what the movie does is show a man whose intelligence is limited to machines and poor in judging characters. his lady assistant Pepper could be the better character since she knows everything there is to know about his work and can go inside his head and heart. but she is given a minor role. only the US air force colonel gets a better mileage in tony stark’s limited circle of trusted people ( only three persons).

i like the movie for its vocational value - teach the youth to work with their hands and build machines in their own workshops. better, survive the desert by using all available machine parts to build impressive robots and shields.

now let us we switch movies and go to Speed Racer. this is a general patronage movie and i brought ayen, angela and jocelyn to watch it on Mothers’ Day. the movie is part cartoon, like disney movies and part super effects - like 300 Sparta. but the emphasis is still what the youth wants - SPEED and excitement. the one thing i notices it the family participation in the speed racing. Speed Racer is the hero of the movie. like tony stark, he is a child genius and has been dreaming, drawing, breathing as a speed racer from the age when he can walk and talk. his family owns a garage and makes formula cars. his brother Rex used to be the champion racer but died while in a race. his own dream is to enter the grand prix and make the new record. i wont go into the storyline since i think the youth will see this movie. what i want to stress is that the movie shows the family as fighting a corporate giant and winning the race because he learns to be the man he should be. the movie shows all kinds of colours and your eyes spin with all the rollercoaster rides you are brought to experience. it is like entering a kaleidoscope and experiencing LSD without the drug. i watched ayen and angel during the movie if they would puke with all the effects. they didnt go dizzy and laughed so loud. i often closed my eyes during the blast of electric colours and had my legs tucked beneath my seat. it is a movie targetting the young. i think the family will continue to patronize these type of movies because it is aggressively entertaining.

well, to close, what will i say? we are iron women running speed races. we take on the world with its greed and betrayal. we fight people who steal and plunder our commons. we build machines in our kitchens and cook meals three times a day to feed the world. we run all the races our family is involved in - living, working, loving. we should be starkly mad for entering races every time we wake up and rise from the sleep.

after all, where will all the life be on this world if not for our genius? happy mother’s day to all.

60 years of luving & raising a family

this 8th of may 2008, my mother Nene and father Cesar will be celebrating 60 years of married life together. we plan to have the celebration on july 5 so everyone can join us,especially our siblings in the US. i am awed by six decades of their lifelong love. i wish i can live that long with ed but am already 57 and ed is turning 65. if we count our married life to 28 years, we need 32 years together to reach this 60th milestone. that’s something to look forward to but i dont want to press God to get us living beyond what we can allow our bodies and hearts to bear… but how and what does it take to be married for 60 years and be faithfully loving and committed ?

intimacy and commitment are at the core of my parents’ love. this commitment to be together is a lot of energy and they give this love daily to each other. i see them waking up early at 4 am and help each other prepare for a 6 am mass. they have breakfast and go to work at 7 am. until my mother had a stroke in 2003, she would go to school with my father. my father never stopped teaching in Enverga university until last week when his emeritus status as dean was celebrated by the whole university. he started teaching in 1948 and this year 2008 we all honored his teaching contribution to the university and the city - six decades as a teacher! but i should stress that my mother, a teacher herself, made it possible for my father to work for 60 years. she managed all his schedules and served as the life events manager.

what does lifelong loving entail ? i will answer this from the stories and reflections i gathered from my parents, from my siblings and the communities my parents cultivated.

my father saw my mother when she was only 11 years old. he was barely 17 and found her very beautiful. he did not court her then but remembered her face which has not fully blossomed into a young woman. in 1943, the war started and many girls had to go into hiding to escape the japanese soldiers. nene went into hiding in tagbakin hills with her parents. cesar was recruited as a soldier while he was still in UP los banos. he was assigned to defend the towns from pagbilao to atimonan. in the tagbakin hills, cesar saw nene and introduced himself. he expressed his affection and promised nene he would return to court her. right after the war, cesar found nene and courted her. in 1948, they got married in simple rites. nene was orphaned by the war and cesar became her family. they had two children, sonny and girlie (i was named girlie as the first daughter). being future-oriented, cesar decided to apply for a scholarship to earn a masters and doctorate degree in Columbia University,New York. nene and the two kids brought cesar to Manila to board the SS Pres. Wilson for a one month journey to San francisco. each day at sea, cesar wrote nene and sonny and girlie. for three years, nene and cesar kept their love growing with letters and photographs. this 1951-53 letters became cesar’s journal and he poured all his feelings and dreams in these love letters. reading them transported me to another decade and the lives my parents struggled with. reading them made me reflect how good it was for my parents to pursue their higher studies and the struggles my mother took on to rear a family single-handedly during the time my father was overseas. many overseas parents will benefit from my mother’s experiences as parent.

i only found out about these letters from my sister heidi recently. nanay showed heidi the folders and i told her to read them. when i came home this may, heidi turned over the folders to me and it took four nights to read them the 1951 letters. i still have to peruse the 1952-53 letters. unfortunately, nene only saved the letters of cesar. but as i read the letters, i could still discern what nene wrote from the questions and thoughts of cesar. i found many spiritual and social gems in their letters. it will take a book to share the stories they exchanged with each other. their narratives are a rich source of lucena’s history in the 1950’s and what it took to build enverga’s university’s foundation as a teaching center in southern luzon.

may 1st :women’s labor value

am writing this to honor my mother Nene and all the mothers and women who work daily at home to provide us a life. every may 1st,ed and i would join the workers to observe labor day. last year, our whole family and staff joined the workers with a youth delegation from denmark. we brought young leaders from denmark and five phil.provinces to plaza miranda and listened to the speeches of labor leaders. this year, ed went to naujan and i went to lucena. but i spent may 1st attending mommy puri endiape’s 80th birthday with my maruknoll classmates. as mommy puri and her friends were dancing the hula ,i reflected on what women are experiencing now in the labor market.

now mothers and houseworkers share the same situation with young women workers. many young women do not get paid employment - they get income from commissions. i went to a health spa on may 2nd in lucena to have my TMG treated. i asked the hilot i got how much was her pay. she said ” am not a regular employee but i get a commission after treating you for an hour and a half”. “you do not get a salary from this spa?” i asked. “no maam, i will get a hundred pesos from your payment.”she replied . “but you work here seven days a week from 1 pm to 10pm?” i inquired. “yes maam,” she answered” i have to come here daily to earn a commission so i can support my six siblings.” i pressed her for more details and i found out that many of the women who provide services are not employees, though they are given philhealth and sss memberships but no basic pay. i inquired from my siblings who run health businesses and they said the trend is to get job orders. women are hired to be available for services but they are not wage workers. my sister said that sales girls in big stores ( i wont mention the stores) report for work, dress up well as sales girls but they get commissions only after they sell enough products. “you see them selling products like cosmetics and perfumes and if they dont sell anything, they go home without any commission.” ‘ but that’s unfair labor practice!” i objected.

“do you know why new nurses fresh from graduation cannot find jobs here? ” my friend dada asked me sometime last week. ” why?” because the philippines doesnt have enough political will to reform the labor market . “what do you mean ? i asked. “mika has been applying for a year as a new entry nurse. she made the rounds of all the hospitals in NCR but they will not hire her. they are open to volunteer nurses who must pay an entrance fee and they will accredit her after a year of volunteer service. ” ” haha! that’s another way of outsourcing but not paying.” i said. “mika has to pay in order to get work experience.” i also found out that the big hospitals in NCR require as much as P4000 as entry fees. when i inquired if the Quezon provincial hospital take volunteer nurses, the feedback is ” yes and the fee is P500 a month. ‘its the worker who pays the employer just so she can have work experience.” if mika doesnt have work experience ina hospital, she will not be allowed to work overseas.”explained dada. but even if she doesnt work overseas , how will she survive the labor competition ? the more she is not in paid work, the less she can be hired. because the more obstacles there are to paid work,the less chances new graduates can get paid work. the world of labor certainly has changed radically in methods but not in terms of fairness. ‘FaIRNESS in a Fragile world” ring loudly in deaf ears.

when you think of lifelong service and unpaid work, our mothers and household workers are the champions. i reflect at how long it took my mother to rear 13 children. she got married when she was barely 18 years old, had two children right away, then my father left for studies in the USA and was away for 3 years. my mother was an orphan and had no siblings to support her. she raised two children and supported my father during a time when the country was still reconstructing after world war II . she worked nonstop even when she was rearing us 13 children ! she  organized our growing household and worked as a teacher for 50 years . when we all graduated from college, she and my father continued subsidizing the education of some grandchildren plus children of friends who could not afford college education. my parents must have bankrolled a thousand scholars in the 60 years of their marrriage. my father always had students coming to our house for their allowances. my mother kept adopting girls from lucena, atimonan, meycauayan and liliw. i never realized how much they worked hard until i myself had my own household and had to run a monthly expense account. i pride myself in running a financially simple life with ed but i cannot match the managerial and financial competence of my parents, especially my mother. now i take stock of all the 60 years of their married life and learn from it. in another blog, i have started to write the lessons i got from reading their love letters and listening to their stories.

power to us women. fair pay and fair value to our women’s labor ! the world runs because we women give life .. from life to life while there is life , as the the ELF line goes…. mula sa buhay tungo sa buhay habang may buhay!

Yen and the gift of lifelong caring

this weekend ed, ayen and i went to naujan,oriental mindoro to celebrate yen’s birthday. yen dela torre, ed’s only sister is a nurse who runs a US Federal program for training institutes of midwifery in puerto rico. yen came home last week to care for Inay who has been ill since her foot developed gangrene in february. yen and ed are both in their senior years. ed is going 65 while yen turned 63.

for people who want to learn what it takes to have the gift of lifelong caring, the best teacher is yen. yen is the quintessential OFW who has provided family, not just ed and inay but various clans with lifelong care. she has been an OFW nurse  and migrated to the US in the 1970’s. she helped inay develop the community farm and piggery in Naujan with her earnings. in the years of ed’s detention, 1974 to 1986, yen campaigned for his release and made sure that  ed was supplied with  books, peaches and chocolates. in the early 80’s when ed was arrested the second time, i went to meet yen in illinois. i saw her work on two jobs - teaching in a college and doing marketing work for phlkraft dinnerware.  she would carry boxes of cookware from the garage to her attic even when she just had flu. i asked her why she worked that hard. “actually, this second job is really to  help the dela luna cousins in their cookware business”, explained yen “since they are still trying to build a market here in the US.” she went back briefly to the philippines in the late 80s to develop the philkraft market in the country.when it was already stable in the 1990s, yen returned to her first love- assisting mothers to have babies born the natural way.

 in 1997, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. she invited ed, ayen and me. she had earlier brought inay with her siblings to stay with her in chicago.  ayen, ed and i applied for  US visas. ayen and i got our visas ahead of ed and  so  we went to visit yen.  ayen and i were amazed at how yen took care of all of us in the US even when she herself was challenged by illness. she organized various tours for inay and her siblings, and separately for ayen and me from west to east coast. she would fetch ayen and me from the airport to  various destinations in between chemotherapy sessions. when ayen and i were in a hotel near disneyland, ayen noticed some thing in the bathtub after yen took her shower. “nanay, there is a lot of hair in the bathtub”said ayen. “Oh, that is the effect of treating tita yen’s cancer” i explained to ayen. “why does she not rest and stay in the hospital?” ayen wanted to know. ‘because yen wants to give us a good time here in disneyland. remember she gave you a lot of shopping time right after arriving from the philippines?” i reminded her,” yen feels that her time with us is more important than staying in the hospital.”  ayen and i never forgot this incident in disneyland. ed never got his US visa and couldnt fly to join us for the xmas holidays.  fortunately, yen survived the cancer and she has been taking annual check-ups.

 the one thing i appreciate is not just yen’s generosity but her drive to make people’s  lifelong wellbeing her priority. yen  helps people  across borders move higher in life. i have met many girls finish their education with yen and inay’s help. i have seen families thrive, both filipinos and americans because she provided them a lifeline.  her skill in birthing takes various forms, from physical assistance to financial care to learning opportunities. my friend luz martinez told me that yen offered to help her mother stay with yen whenever she feels lonely.” your sister yen is really lovely,”‘luz  was telling me” my mother who lost her husband recently was offered by yen to go and visit her in the other part of san juan and that is one of the best places in puerto rico.” “yes, yen is really that caring and she will take care of your mother like her own mother, too.”i agreed with luz.

i told ayen that she is lucky to have  yen ” you are secure for life when you have a tita yen. she  will care for you from womb to womb.” “look at all the women and men who got her as a godmother in baptism and weddings. they will also get her as a ninang to their children.” i told ayen. ” she will also make sure that yeyi and minette give birth to healthy twinboys.”i predicted, ” so love your tita yen  and make her lifegoals yours, too.” i advised ayen.

God bless and happy birthday Yen dela Torre. we wish our leaders, especially those in the three branches would be like her and serve us with lifelongcare  then we would be happy living from womb to womb.

 

Our Mothers Adang and Nene

i woke feeling the energies of my two mothers, Adang and Nene . i slowly saw the sun showering me with light and i looked at the clock - 5:30 am. it is already warm with the whole room bathed in morning light. i rose and sat on my prayer chair. what do my mothers feel now? last night ed said that inay adang may go home today or tomorrow once Yen can organize the home care set up in naujan. i say a prayer of thanks that inay survived sepsis last tuesday. then i reflected on the energies that mothers give birth to, from inay adang, nanay nene to minette and other mothers whom i know.

inay adang was 54 when ed was arrested in december 1974. she took care of all his needs and those of the political detainees from that year onwards. it took a campaign of five years to get ed released from detention.  inay navigated all the camps, traveling on public transportation and taking on the military ironfist rule on rebels. ed was released in 1980 on the condition that he would be exiled in rome. inay flew with him to rome and saw to it that his congregation SVD would take good care of him.

i imagine myself at 54 ( i am turning 58 this year ) working myself to the bone for ayen. i feel overwhelmed. if ed had stayed in europe and did not return home in 1981, inay’s life would have been focused on her farm. but ed returned from exile in 1981and got re-arrested in 1982. inay was 62 years old then and another decade of her life was dedicated to political campaigns. then ed was finally released by people power in 1986. inay praised heaven and went with him to japan to thank all those who helped ed. but there were the military coups and ed was on the hit list. so ed had to go on another exile in london in 1988. inay went back to her farm in naujan. she was 68 years old and got involved with development work in mindoro.

i went to live with ed in london and asked him to build a less stressful life in 1989. that was the time we wanted a baby since i was turning 40. when ayen was born, ed and i asked the ramos government to give us the green light to come home. ayen met her grandmother adang in 1991. inay was 71 years old and was very happy to take ayen into her care. we celebrated inay’s 75th birthday with all the clans, ed’s and mine in pansol where his cousin benny dela luna has a resort. then inay turned 80 , we celebrated it with the friends and families of the human rights and development networks. inay’s grandest celebration was when she turned 85 and we all turned it into a legacy feast. yen, ed’s sister, brought everyone to a week long celebration, from naujan to metro-manila. that was the party where inay wished she has a little more time to live.

my mother nene  villariba is 78 years old. she has 13 children and we are all married and with children except the youngest, paul. when i and my three brothers became active in the anti-dictatorship movement during martial law, my mother had to muster enough energies to help us four rebels and see that the whole family did not break with the conflict. my father was a government official and was serving during the Marcos regime. when three of us were detained ( obie,sonny and i) in different camps, nanay nene cried but did what inay adang  went to the camps and brought food and supplies. nene was 43 years old then and braved the same iron fist of the military. obie was detained the longest in camp vicente lim in canlubang laguna while i was detained in camp crame,cubao, quezon city. i imagine myself at 43 traveling to two separate detention camps in different provinces to visit ayen and yeyi. that would be like detention with hard labor.

i am a mother myself , 57 turning 58 summers. nene villariba  is a mother,78 seasons. adang dela torre is a mother, 88 seasons. i dream of ayen, 17 turning 18, becoming a mother. minette dela torre , yeyi’s wife, is a mother in progress with twin babies in her womb. we are all mothers and the energies we have flow from our mothers. thank God for the mothers we have. thank you inay and nanay. your love is a bottomless ocean of energy, with waves of work flowing endlessly to get us to the shore.

healing love and busy heaven

i have a friend who keeps missing her beloved. she has been talking to her beloved daily. sometimes she feels her presence and sometimes she doesnt. lets call this friend liwanag and her beloved carissa.

flash back: i met liwanag some years back when she was a rising star in the feminist women’s network. she is very articulate and has taken on public health advocacy as her mission. she met carissa while working in the UN and they fell in love. after living in the West, carissa had cancer and she died last year. liwanag went into mourning and still is grieving. i saw liwanag this year and had a conversation with liwanag. this conversation elicited a response from carissa, or shall i say a series of responses from the afterlife.

i dont know how people beyond this life choose who to talk with and how. i presume their choices are guided by what they need. when i found myself being in conversation with carissa, i felt a joy that i could sense her. since i never knew her in the usual sense, my meeting her fills me with ginhawa. liwanag was very happy that there is a person like me to link up with. i had a long date with liwanag and carissa came.

after a month of being quiet, carissa whispered to check on liwanag. so i called liwanag. “wow, i just finished working and wanted to call carissa” responded liwanag. she had been missing carissa but didnt want to call me. “am a bit hesitant to bother you” liwanag told me. “oh you dont need to feel that because it’s a joy for me to help” i assured liwanag. liwanag wanted to find out why carissa has not been responding to her calls. i smiled and offered her an explanation ” people beyond this life have busy lives ,too, and carissa must be working on something she loves.” liwanag laughed “talaga ?, does that mean she is not ignoring me?” she continued. “my dear, what i hear is that they even go to learn and study in universities” i elaborated. this conversations continued and i turned my other sense to check if carissa would affirm my explanations. did she? liwanag requested me to send a message to carissa . i did if she will give me a flower’s name to link the conversation.

flowers are a favorite love offering. i asked carissa to respond with a flower and i texted liwanag to buy tulips for carissa. ” carissa loves tulips but where will i get them ?” moaned liwanag. ” there are many flowershops like holland tulips that carry tulips”i laughed. “i had bought her everlasting flowers from baguio” offered liwanag “but a nephew said that is soo cheap”. ‘yes’, carissa didnt like those everlasting flowers even if you wanted it to last.” i said. “i will do anything just to get her to talk to me” promised liwanag. ‘well then, get the tulip even if you can find only one” i persuaded her.

why am i engaging liwanag? am i helping her, knowing she is in mourning ? i hope so and i believe healing love is what i tap into when sensing people in the afterlife. i also believe that heaven is as busy as we can imagine. whenever i get images from beyond , i offer healing love and request affirmations. ed sometimes would ask how i get the messages ” do you hear their voices?” ” i get images and words like sms while awake ” i shared,”" and they become coherent when i listen carefully.” sometimes, i dream of the people who passed onwards and the dreams are easy to recall.

is heaven really busy ? i hope so because whenever i get messages, they describe activities like reading, making music, travelling and give me a feeling of something happening. just the other night, i had a dream that tita daisy unson, delia unson’s mother, was telling me about the books she has been reading.

if our life on this earth is full of meaningful work, maybe the next life will build on the good things we started. isnt that what heaven can be? buddha was said to describe heaven as inside us. ginhawa is a term synonymous to inner bliss. perhaps my receiving affirmations from beyond is due to active imagination but i feel the kalooban that we all have allows us to receive what God provides, pinagkakaloob ng Diyos. the filipino kalooban can include mysteries. i believe that this is where our deepest spiritual energies develop.

eating and TMG

many times i wonder why i get spiritual messages from my body. this sunday, i developed TMG - temporamandibularjoint syndrome. i couldnt chew in my left jaw and even yawning is difficult. i tried rotating my tongue and opening my mouth. it is so hard that i have to help my jaw manually to open and close. my mind started tracing what could be the cause of TMG. ed googled TMG and found many causes, from wrong posture to stress. since i could not chew and grind food, i got the blender ready and pureed my meals. ohh, i felt as if i am a baby again. then i started enjoying the pureed fruits, combining papayas and bananas with lemon and honey. blended food does taste good and ed offered to puree chicken and rice. “Would that taste good?” i asked. “You wait and i will serve it. Inay likes it very much when i feed her this mashed chicken and rice.” ed replied. well, it is a good meal and it satisfied my craving.

now what is my body telling me with this TMG ? i even asked a friend nivah who had TMG. nivah said she talked to her jaw and listened to what it told her- that it was in pain because she has not been mindful of her health. ” how did you get it”,i wanted to know. “grinding my teeth while asleep” nivah explained. nivah t said her dentist had to make her wear a splint so that she could stopped the TMG from becoming severe. i spent two days being mindful of my TMG and even stopped eating solid food. i requested a therapist,hilda, to massage my face and get my neck relaxed. she used 6 heated stones to align my energies. she massaged my face with the stones. i told her the heat from the stones were soothing and she kindly lent me two stones for my care.

now whenever i sit in the dinner table and watch Ayen,  Ed  and other people eat, i am thankful that they are healthy and that there is good food to be shared. i think of Inay eating well despite her diabetes and painful foot. i think of all my siblings and nieces, nephews and cousins feasting and enjoying good meals together. i think of everyone in the country eating. i think of overseas friends feasting.  eating is  an enjoyable spiritual rite - especially it is done at least three times a day.  that is why communion is the time everyone, especially the young and old, want to participate and be part of during  spiritual masses.

thank God for all the food we get. thank God in our jaws and in our enzymes for moving  the energy in our muscles and bones. thank God we can receive daily communion. food is spirit.

spirituality and sexuality

two weeks ago my urduja friends brought me to la union for a forum on spirituality and sexuality. i asked my friend virginia ” Why are we talking about spirituality and sexuality?” “We want to open the topic so we can change certain attitudes of OWWA people.” “What are these attitudes?” i queried. “That spirituality is divorced from sexuality, that the two are separate, that one is good and the other is bad.” “Oh that would be fun!” i replied.

Spiritus is Latin for breath. Spirit,translated to Tagalog is hininga. Various cultures have a word for breath. The Chinese word is qi, the Indian word is prana, the Indonesian is nafas, the Japanese is ki. All look at spirit as the life force, the energy that gives us life.

I ask Ed ” What is spirituality?” “The whole, not just the inner or outer but everything.” Is spirituality more in the realm of ideas that seek to understand life ? Ed offers Thomas Aquinas, the foremost theologian of the Middle Ages. Thomas Aquinas had written volumes of theology in Summa Theologica where he tried explaining faith. He had a mystical experience at the end of his life and realized that everything he had written was like straw.

So if mystical experiences have led saints to realize that they could not even come close to describing a part of their vision, how then could we people understand spirituality? does this mean we will have to rely on faith and wait for mystical revelations? what is the role of sexuality in all these mysteries?

st. augustine was the saint who developed the theory of original sin, where the baby inherits the sin during the sexual act. original sin is interpreted as the sin of the world and so all babies need to be baptized to be saved. many catholics and christians look at sex as a source of sin in the dark ages . with this view, sexuality and spirituality become two opposing poles.

in the feminist debates, the control of women’s bodies and their minds is a major struggle. pro-choice battles with pro-life, opposing each other with views as to who has the primordial right to life. organized religions imposed the rules and deviance merits punitive action.

we still carry this view up to the modern ages. even our parents will not talk about the sexual act nor will allow daughters and sons to explore the link between spirituality and sexuality. i together with a circle of friends in the women’s movement, have decided to advocate open learning .after all, we are already in the 21st century and our human race is reaching 6 billion. that’s a lot of people to learn and share with!

personally i have met a lot of people who have asked me to share what i know. when i went with ed to cebu to meet fr. paking silva of cebeco, the nea administrator, edith bueno, told me that i would talked about sexuality. i thought she was kidding until fr.silva called me to join the first session with the mainly  male engineers of the electric coops .out of 144, only 3 are females.  i was delightfully surprised and took the challenge. ohh it was fun ! i introduced the body signals that women get but men miss because they have no wombs and dont menstruate. i talked about our breasts and breastfeeding as the first human machine for food security. i must have brought the men to near peaking when i talked about multiple orgasms….hahaha, not a single man walked away and you could hear their hearts thumping as i talked. that is why it is important to open the gates to sexuality and what we,as part of the loving human race need to appreciate.

lifetime growth mentor dan sullivan said: ‘make our learning bigger than our experience.”  ‘make your enjoyment greater than your effort. “this should be our motto in approaching the gate towards  sexuality and spirituality. enjoy life. mabuhay tayo!