Aug
28
Questioning One’s Faith
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While walking along Danforth Avenue on Sunday (26Aug), I saw this headline in one of Toronto’s mainstream newspaper about Mother Theresa’s questioning her faith. Mother Theresa, for people who don’t know, belongs to a rare breed of people. She sacrificed a great deal of her life in the service of the poor of Calcutta in the name of Jesus Christ. Because of her lifetime humanitarian work and the fact that Christ, according to her, talked to her to continue His work through her, she has been nominated to be beatified as a saint.
At first glance, one will wonder how she, who never hesitated to follow Christs’ calling, could lack faith inspite of all she did for Him. What is it that made her continue serving if she do not have faith? Is it possible to be passionate of something that you do not have faith in?
Not for me.
Intrigued, as well as also questioning his faith for years, I searched more online and found this article by Time magazine: www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1655415-1,00.html
I will not try to pretend that I understood her persistence in fulfilling her calling, although I pretty much understood what made her continue inspite of the negative effect of her work to her spirituality, and I will leave it to your own interpretation.
Also I intend to read the book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light which is the source of this new discovery about the life of Mother Theresa. I want to better understand how “love” overshadowed “faith” in the performance of her duties and have proven to be a more effective way of achieving her purpose.
Aug
22
I received a YM this morning from a Pinoy colleague with link about an article posted at this site: www.englishsubject.net/2007/08/22/hate-letter-against-filipinos/
This article is just a rehash of what was circulated thru email years back, same author, same article.
During the time that the article was circulated by email, I read it’s entirety, but have doubts if this person really exist or if this is just another person who wanted to excite controversy. Of course, his or her plan worked. I know at least 10 people who have sent me the same email which they received thru email as well.
Now, I doubt if the writer of that article made any money during that time. Because that time that the article circulated, email was the most relied upon marketing technique of internet marketers. If blogs were prevalent during those time, he could have written that in his/her blog, slap a few adsense ads with it and presto - adsense clicks would have at least offsetted the time he/she spent writing the article.
Anyway, I read the link sent to me anyway but not the main article. What got my attention were the comments made on the blog that made my heart pound more everytime I read or hear stories like it. The comment contained a speech by Patricia Evangelista which won her the Best Speaker Award in London 2004 (International Public Speaking competition conducted yearly by the English-Speaking Union in London).
As a Filipino who searched for a better life in another country, I can’t help but feel sensitive whenever someone bad mouth us as a people. But to me, it is better to just ignore whoever says mean about us and concentrate more on moving forward as “one” and continue doing something to help better our lives and our homeland.
I am one of those who left the Philippines for economic reason but is yearning to go back and give something in return, someday. I just pray that the leadership in the Philippine government, military and police somehow share the same sentiment as we do and somehow mend their ways and make our country, the Philippines a better place for us Filipinos.
Below, I have posted in entirety, the winning speech by Patricia Evangelista, a very inspirational piece that every Filipino should ponder upon:
Blond and Blue Eyes
by Patricia Evangelista
(English-Speaking Union International Public Speaking Competition 2004)WHEN I was little, I wanted what many Filipino children all over the country wanted. I wanted to be blond, blue-eyed, and white.
I thought — if I just wished hard enough and was good enough, I’d wake up on Christmas morning with snow outside my window and freckles across my nose!
More than four centuries under western domination does that to you.
I have sixteen cousins. In a couple of years, there will just be five of us left in the Philippines, the rest will have gone abroad in search of “greener pastures.” It’s not just an anomaly; it’s a trend; the Filipino diaspora.
Today, about eight million Filipinos are scattered around the world.
There are those who disapprove of Filipinos who choose to leave. I used to. Maybe this is a natural reaction of someone who was left behind, smiling for family pictures that get emptier with each succeeding year. Desertion, I called it.
My country is a land that has perpetually fought for the freedom to be itself. Our heroes offered their lives in the struggle against the Spanish, the Japanese, the Americans. To pack up and deny that identity is tantamount to spitting on that sacrifice.
Or is it? I don’t think so, not anymore.
True, there is no denying this phenomenon, aided by the fact that what was once the other side of the world is now a twelve-hour plane ride away. But this is a borderless world, where no individual can claim to be purely from where he is now.
My mother is of Chinese descent, my father is a quarter Spanish, and I call myself a pure Filipino — a hybrid of sorts resulting from a combination of cultures.
Each square mile anywhere in the world is made up of people of different ethnicities, with national identities and individual personalities. Because of this, each square mile is already a microcosm of the world. In as much as this blessed spot that is England is the world, so is my neighborhood back home.
Seen this way, the Filipino Diaspora, or any sort of dispersal of populations, is not as ominous as so many claim. It must be understood.
I come from a Third World country, one that is still trying mightily to get back on its feet after many years of dictatorship. But we shall make it, given more time. Especially now, when we have thousands of eager young minds who graduate from college every year. They have skills. They need jobs. We cannot absorb them all.
A borderless world presents a bigger opportunity, yet one that is not so much abandonment but an extension of identity. Even as we take, we give back. We are the 40,000 skilled nurses who support the UK’s National Health Service. We are the quarter-of-a-million seafarers manning most of the world’s commercial ships.We are your software engineers in Ireland, your construction workers in the Middle East, your doctors and caregivers in North America, and, your musical artists in London’s West End.
Nationalism isn’t bound by time or place. People from other nations migrate to create new nations, yet still remain essentially who they are. British society is itself an example of a multi-cultural nation, a melting pot of races, religions, arts and cultures. We are, indeed, in a borderless world!
Leaving sometimes isn’t a matter of choice. It’s coming back that is. The Hobbits of the shire travelled all over Middle-Earth, but they chose to come home, richer in every sense of the word.
We call people like these balikbayans or the ‘returnees’ — those who followed their dream, yet choose to return and share their mature talents and good fortune.
In a few years, I may take advantage of whatever opportunities come my way. But I will come home. A borderless world doesn’t preclude the idea of a home. I’m a Filipino, and I’ll always be one. It isn’t about just geography; it isn’t about boundaries. It’s about giving back to the country that shaped me.
And that’s going to be more important to me than seeing snow outside my windows on a bright Christmas morning.
Mabuhay. And thank you.
