My Take On A Moro-Islamic State

I remember a class I had with Dr. Macario Tiu (T-Mac) back in college. We were discussing Mindanao and the need, or rather, the want for a Moro-Islamic state surfaced in the lecture. He asked me what my opinion was about this burning question: should the Philippine government concede to the wishes of the Muslim secessionists and carve out an Islamic state out of Mindanao? My answer was a firm no, citing that the Muslims weren't ready for self-government.

Ever the sage, T-Mac asked me why and what criteria was I applying. That's when I realized I was seeing the issue from an unacceptable perspective, my perspective. I was speaking as I was, a Filipino citizen on Mindanao's soil. Although my assumption was correct, that Muslims weren't politically fit for self-rule (as evidenced by their leaders' increasing arrogance, corruption, and apathy), I also summarily dismissed their case because they didn't meet the benchmarks that I've arbitrarily set upon them.

Looking back, I think the question is best answered by those who will actually carry the burden of self-rule: the Moro people. They should be the ones who should answer because they are the ones who can assess, for themselves, if they are up to the challenge. They alone can assess their strengths, their weaknesses. In short, they should be the ones setting the criteria, the ones who should be answering the question: Are we ready? Are we ready for a separate state?

The problem nowadays is that the voice of the Moro majority is muffled, distorted. The people who do the talking are the ones who hold the guns, who hold the power. MNLF and MILF rebels push for separatism. Some political warlords push for the same thing. Both claim they represent their constituents but you can never know. The Moro people want peace but, somehow, that message is seemingly lost among their leaders. The Moro people clamor for development and security but, again, that need never comes across.

I cannot speak for the Moro people no more can my fellow Dabawenyo speak for them. But, if there should be any talk about a Moro-Islamic State, I believe the Moro people should be the ones on the negotiation table, not the rebels nor the politicos who claim they know who they stand for.

Taxes And Citizenship

I have a story. 

Ma'am Nora, an activist, approached a lawyer for some advice. Her organization was working on a deal, trying to negotiate the purchase of a property. Some associates had advised her earlier that she should execute two sets of the Deed of Absolute Sale, one for BIR purposes and one for the actual transaction. This was to minimize the tax payments since the Deed of Absolute Sale for the BIR would show a lower selling price than the actual, thus leading to a lower computation of the taxes involved. This was a common practice, they said. 

However, the lawyer Ma'am Norma approached would have none of it. They shouldn't be cheating, he asserted. Embarrassed and impressed at the same time, Ma'am Norma marveled at the lawyer's integrity. 

I cannot remember the name of that lawyer but Atty. Alex Lacson, the author of the yellow little book "12 little things you can do for your country" is espousing the same ideal: Pay your taxes. It's a very Filipino thing to do. 

Never mind the corruption or the fact that the government misuses its funds most of the time. What matters is that you're doing your civic duty. You're doing the right thing and that alone gives you all the moral ascendancy to demand the same from your government.

For me, if you're screwing the government by cheating on your taxes, then you don't have any right to complain when your government screws you back.

Dark Night Of The Soul

 In a TIME article by David Biema, he wrote about Mother Teresa and the inner spiritual life of the saint as written in the book, Come Be My Light.  Contrary to the public image that Mother Teresa and her community had cultivated over the years, the woman herself had persevered through an emotionally depressing period, punctuated by extended bouts of spiritual 'dryness'.

 The book discusses the saint's struggle with a God who seemingly had left her for good, a God who, at the start of her ministry, was omnipresent but was now absent even as she lived through the pinnacle of her ministry's success.

David Biema, in due course, discusses how certain groups, from the atheists, to the psychologists, then to the religious scholars, have explained this paradox. He also mentions St. John of the Cross, the influential Carmelite who wrote in great detail about the stages that one had to go through towards a spiritual union with God.

St. John was the first to coin the phrase, "the Dark Night of the Soul", an intense period where, as per Wikipedia (because it defines it better), "spiritual disciplines (such as prayer and consistent devotion to God) suddenly seem to lose all their experiential value; traditional prayer is extremely difficult and unrewarding for an extended period of time during this "dark night." The individual may feel as though God has suddenly abandoned them or that his or her prayer life has collapsed. It is important to note however that the presence of doubt is not tantamount to abandonment—as there is a strong Biblical tradition of authentic confusion before God. Psalms 13, 22, and 44 display King David, the 'man after God's own heart' undergoing serious confusion before and anguish with God, yet this is not condemned or mentioned as being unfaithful, but rather as the only measure of faith that David could have in the face of such withering apparent abandonment."

Such was, according to some leading theologians, the case with Mother Teresa (although hers was a rarer variety since it went beyond several years).

In Conti's Holistic Christianity, he discusses the stages leading to and from The Dark Night of the Soul:

Active Night of the Senses: God reveals to us Himself through our senses, a period characterized by euphoria and spiritual ecstasy.

Passive Night of the Senses: God withdraws the sensible spiritual delights He had lavished on us during our earliest days of growth, to test our mettle, to attune us to subtler perception of His presence.

Illuminative Way: The ego is now well-oriented to God's will and has constructed a kind of self-made union with God - a good union, but not as deep or abiding a union as God would have us finally know.

Dark Night of the Soul: God dissolves the ego, undoing our self-constructed union with Him to make way for a perfect union.

Unitive Revelation: Peace at last, union with God, as God draws together the elements of our being around Himself who is our new non-egoic center.

Going back, Mother Teresa persevered in her works despite the all-encompassing feeling of abandonment, a fact that, among anything else, highlights her as a true saint. As Kolodiejchuk, a priest and the editor of Come Be My Light, would say, "The tendency in our spiritual life but also in our more general attitude toward love is that our feelings are all that is going on," he says. "And so to us the totality of love is what we feel. But to really love someone requires commitment, fidelity and vulnerability. Mother Teresa wasn't 'feeling' Christ's love, and she could have shut down. But she was up at 4:30 every morning for Jesus, and still writing to him, 'Your happiness is all I want.' That's a powerful example even if you are not talking in exclusively religious terms." 

Why am I writing this post anyway? That's probably because I'm one of the many who are left in the dark, looking for a God who is nowhere to be found. 

Another Encounter To Talk About

Mama calls it self-imposed equality. I call it self-imposed inequality.

I happened to drop by a Minute Burger stall on a Tuesday night. I figured out I should munch some dinner before going home. So I ordered two double burgers with coleslaw and eggs.

When the burgers were halfway done, the attendant checked her freezer to get some eggs. There were none. She could have checked beforehand but she opted to check it when the burgers were almost ready. I thought, 'No problem'. There was a convenience store nearby and I could buy some eggs there. So I told her I'll be back for the burgers.

When I came back with eggs, she told me she couldn't cook them. Her employer was nearby and it was bawal. I would have loved to check her rulebook for that rule but I didn't take my burgers when she asked if I was still buying them.

What's my point? Well, the employee could have seen this encounter as a sales opportunity. Here she had a customer willing to go the extra mile by buying his own eggs (that sounded funny). She could have accepted my offer to have the eggs cooked, charged me P5.00 for the 'use' of the grill, and I would have just shrugged my shoulders. At least, I had my burgers with coleslaw and eggs. Instead, she lost a sale because she couldn't, wouldn't accommodate my request.

She could also have provided me with advance notice that eggs were out. She was in charge of inventory after all and it was so easy to check her freezer before cooking those burgers.

Mama and I discussed about this the following morning and she concluded that, perhaps, what accounts for the great divide between the rich and the poor is purely a difference in mindsets. It boils down to a person's mentality. The opportunities are every present; it's simply a matter of recognizing these and utilizing these opportunities. 

In the case above, the employee never had a chance. She wasn't thinking like her amo would, who would probably be happy if she converted one cooking effort into a sale despite missing some eggs. It also probably explains why some employees do remain employees and some persons go out to becoming successful businesspeople.

Something About Aging And Man's Propensity For Good

Just want to share something from what I read.

In an essay by Gay Luce, she mentioned an inevitable transformation among people as lifespans become longer and longer thanks to medical advances:

We will be too long on Earth to embrace our old character deficiencies, like characters in a sitcom, pretending to be what we are not or grasping and competing for material accumulations. We will outlive the naivete that allowed us to believe cultural promises about the way life should be. Upon reaching age 120, the strident clamor of passionate selfishness simply may not be worth the effort...

Eventually, the sheer accumulation of experience will begin to wear out our demands. The nature of the prize will change. The inevitable next step, I believe, will be a default process of spiritual realization. Rogues and wastrels, over time, can become saints. We may not set out to embody goodness, but with the years, goodness becomes of us.

If only this were true, right? You're probably recalling all those grumpy elderly people in your childhood years.

But I do believe in what Gay Luce has said and, harking back to this post's title, this excerpt definitely points back to our basic nature; that we are essentially good and predisposed to doing good. As we age, all the corruption, the bad habits, the wrong assumptions, the self-defeating exercises of the mind, will simply be swept away as the years provide us with enlightenment and ultimately self-awareness and self-mastery.

Even then, the prospect of death will provide us focus on what is essential to our life's meaning and purpose. From striving for success, we now strive for significance as what Lloyd Reebe would say.