CFC North B Leaders

Hail Mary, full of grace!

Today’s Readings

Do you want to live a grace-filled life? The angel Gabriel salutes Mary as “full of grace”. To become the mother of the Savior, Mary was enriched by God with gifts to enable her to assume this awesome role. There is a venerable tradition among many Christians, dating back to the early church, for honoring Mary as the spotless virgin who bore the Son of God in her womb. A number of early church fathers link Mary’s obedience to this singular grace of God. “Being obedient she became the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race.” “The knot of Eve’s disobedience was united by Mary’s obedience: what the virgin Eve bound through her disbelief, Mary loosened by her faith.”

What is the key that can unlock the power and grace of God’s kingdom in our personal lives? Faith and obedience for sure! When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they immediately experienced the consequence of their action – separation from the God who loved them. God in his mercy promised them a Redeemer who would pay the price for their sin and the sin of the world. We see the marvelous unfolding of God’s plan of redemption in the events leading up to the Incarnation, the birth of the Messiah. Mary’s prompt response of “yes” to the divine message is a model of faith for all believers. Mary believed God’s promises even when they seemed impossible. She was full of grace because she trusted that what God said was true and would be fulfilled. She was willing and eager to do God’s will, even if it seemed difficult or costly. God gives us grace and he expects us to respond with the same willingness, obedience, and heart-felt trust as Mary did. When God commands he also gives the grace, strength, and means to respond. We can either yield to his grace or resist and go our own way. Do you believe in God’s promises and do you yield to his grace?

“Heavenly Father, you offer us abundant grace, mercy, and forgiveness through your Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. Help me to live a grace-filled life as Mary did by believing in your promises and by giving you my unqualified “yes” to your will and to your plan for my life.”

North B 1 Household Meeting

2009-07-14
meeting venue: Bagsarsas' Residence
in attendance: Buddy and Virgie Villarey, Jimmy and Susan Dizon, Terence and Thel Grana, Willie and Beng Bagsarsa, Rev. Fr. Mike Ravina, Jun and Gie Garcia, Gerry and Chona Santos, Omin and Nette del Castillo

North B Sector Service Meeting

30 May 2009
Immaculate Conception Chapel
New Capitol Estates I
Quezon City

Hosted by Terence & Thel Grana

A General Sense Of Chaos

GLIMPSES
Jose Ma. Montelibano

I had just arrived from a week-long sojourn to Sulu and Zamboanga, the first to honor an invitation for bravery, and the second to bask in the generosity of a hospitable city. There was much drama in the trip to Panglima Estino, Sulu, with a party of 200 Christians defying their fears and choosing instead to invest in friendship. We thought building houses for poor Muslims was more important than perpetuating the hostility that had broken our historical brotherhood.

Zamboanga was another matter. As much as we entertained some initial apprehension about Sulu, it was only celebration in Zamboanga. Mayor Celso Lobregat went all out to make the Bayani Challenge of Gawad Kalinga a fun affair despite the heat and rain that greeted almost fifty teams of volunteer house builders. The good mayor coined the greeting, "Mi casa es tu casa," so appropriate for the bayanihan spirit that dominated the event where 800 volunteers from all over the country and abroad built homes for fifty poor families.

I thought that going back to Manila would bring back a sense of order in my life. It was fun sleeping on floors of classrooms in Sulu, or crowded rooms of overextended hosts in Zamboanga, but one longs for a modicum of comfort and routine to assuage an aging and tired body. I cannot exchange my latest experience in Mindanao for anything, not even for comfort and luxury. However, I must admit I wanted to rest, and wanted to take this rest in my own home.

After several days in Manila, I am now wondering if facilities for physical convenience are enough to make an active citizen rest. While there was fear of violence in a province long known for fierce fighting between Tausugs and government troops during the martial law years, the reality as we experienced life on the ground was totally different from perception and expectation. Mayor Munib Estino of Panglima Estino played the most gracious host together with a whole town so appreciative of Christian guests who opted to believe in a forgotten fraternity rather than succumb to ugly prejudice.

It helped so much that Mayor Munib Estino and the Marines under the command of Gen. Juancho Sabban, ably assisted by Gen. Boying Ecarma, constantly lent their presence and active cooperation. It helped even more that Sulu Gov. Abusakur Tan affirmed the provincial government was very much in control, given extra powers by an emergency situation. Sulu became the safe zone it was not supposed to be. I wonder why we were so worried in the first place, and why many who never had been to Sulu, and would most probably never go there, almost succeeded in getting the event postponed (meaning canceled). Judging a book by its cover is a dangerous habit, and, oftentimes, a stupid one. This attitude has kept Filipinos from crossing barriers to repair divisions amongst them, locking us to destructive patterns rather than taking chances at forming new ones.

What greeted me in Manila was a lot of news, bad news. My body is getting some comfort back, but my soul gets mostly vexation. While I heard only laughter and lively conversations of old and new friends enjoying each other, I read and watch media report shameful attempts to change the Constitution against a people's will, strange and abusive police behavior in investigating the death of Failon’s wife, senators alleging corruption and murder against each other, and speculations of an arrest order against a whistle blower who saved billions for the Filipino people. The list of bad news goes on forever, and I wonder why there is no attempt to postpone or cancel an atmosphere which goes beyond physical threat to the actual corruption of a collective spirit. Obviously, many leaders, including those claiming spiritual scendancy, can find peace with moral decay but go nuts over threats of physical danger. It is not order I returned to but a general sense of chaos.

Instead of getting what I thought was a well-deserved rest, I am reminded by the hypocrisy of it all, the same hypocrisy that sustains a warped value system. When attachment to power and wealth become more important than service and generosity, society is, indeed, sick. No wonder poverty and corruption rule the land together with religions of all sorts in one merry milieu, contradictions in substance finding harmony in tolerant co-existence. Principle often surrenders to protocol, nobility less valuable than credit-grabbing, in a nation dominated by Christians led by the most un-Christian role models.

When Gen. Sabban, and Gen. Allaga before him, told our contingent of volunteer builders that the Marines would and could provide security to ensure our safety, we trusted them. When Mayor Munib Estino was laughing off our fears and assuring us that all is well, and that, in fact, he was already hosting for over a week our forward party of a dozen volunteers, we believed him. When Gov. Tan said, "Come and help my people," we accepted his invitation. Yes, we knew that the kidnapping of Red Cross workers was muddling the situation in Sulu, but the word of those who knew better must have more value than the speculative fears of fearful and prejudiced people. I am glad we realized that, took a chance for peace, and have now established many, many new strategic friendships.

I am not discounting the reality of danger in Sulu, just putting it in context. We here who live in Manila and elsewhere far from Sulu are threatened by more than physical danger. We are forced to survive in a perverted atmosphere where evil can be more powerful than good, where wrongdoing can be rewarded more than observance of law, where the welfare of our pocket and position takes priority over the welfare of our soul. How can Sulu be more dangerous than this?

The word of a noble Muslim warrior or Marines willing to die for a friend, or even just an invited guest, is more credible and valuable than the word of politicians and many so-called religious leaders. Never in our history has honor bent so low when those who represent State and Church have themselves become suspect to a people they are supposed to serve but have failed. Ordinary citizens cannot allow failed leaders to determine our destiny. We must look to ourselves, constantly choose Good over Evil and Walk over Talk, look to our God and our conscience for directions, and allow our Davids to emerge from rigid King Sauls clinging to power.

"In bayanihan, we will be our brother's keeper and forever shut the door to hunger among ourselves."

GK Robosnai Groundbreaking

07 April 2009
Groundbreaking
Gawad Kalinga Robosnai
East Fairview, Quezon City
Philippines

(pic taken from www.hblad.no)

Dangerously Beautiful

GLIMPSES (2009-04-03)
Jose Ma. Montelibano

It is a drama that has captured a nation's attention. Three International Red Cross workers, two foreigners and one local, were kidnapped by Abu Sayyaf bandits and are now trapped, together with their tormentors, in a mountain range in Sulu. A threat to behead one of them if government troops would not leave the area and contain themselves only in the Jolo area was not carried out. Having bought time, the kidnapped victims and government forces still do not know how the Abu Sayyaf will play out the drama. Neither does the public which follows the drama.

As I write this article, a deadly cat-and-mouse game intensifies. It does not threaten three lives but hundreds, both innocent and guilty alike. Around the mountain and the large band of bandits with their prisoners are the Marines and civilian militia coming from all the local government units. The Abu Sayyaf threatened to behead one of the kidnapped Red Cross workers because I believe they saw how they could all be massacred by the superior numbers and position of government forces. A simple threat put the Arroyo administration on hold. Once in a while in the Philippines, a life counts, especially if it is white and if it belongs to an international agency.

When Dick Gordon makes a plea for the lives of the three Red Cross workers, I cannot help but shed a tear with him. And what Dick may not be able to show in public but may be very much alive in his heart is a rage I cannot help but also feel. Sympathizing with victims is natural. What is not so clear is the cause of my rage, not just at the inhumanity of banditry for profit but the many lives that will be lost in the future if a settlement is reached and the kidnapped victims are returned alive and safe. What is not clear, even to me, is why a drama can whip up so much public sympathy for the Red Cross workers but almost nothing for the slain soldiers from the Marine Corps.

Are lives of ordinary Filipinos so devoid of value that the death of hundreds under the strangest circumstances that upset international human rights agencies create no public furor? Does it have to be like the case of Mary Jean Lacaba whose threatened life draws so much attention because she is part of the Red Cross? Even when we appreciate, or do not, one human life because it belongs to an ordinary Filipino, it is almost automatic that foreign lives, especially Caucasians, will elicit more importance from us.

I was in Sulu last week, part of a contingent from Gawad Kalinga visiting our first GK village in Patikul and preparing for our second in Panglima Estino. While media plays up the drama of an unresolved kidnapping and a most fluid situation which, in the end, can only end up with more lives lost, a miracle quietly unfolds where landless and homeless Tausug families in a barangay in Patikul discover that life is not all that hopeless. A generous landowner and just as generous a corporation produced land and homes for the poor.

From a very successful first initiative where the provincial government, Marines, civil society personalities, a municipal bureaucracy, and poor residents of a barangay converged in a Gawad Kalinga program, a template for replication is emerging and exciting those who have been traditionally frustrated at how things simply do not work in a conflict torn area. Panglima Estino is somewhere in the middle of Sulu, a place which most Filipinos may never have heard of. Yet, its mayor and the governor of Sulu asked Gawad Kalinga to establish a village in Panglima Estino after seeing how the residents in the first GK village in Patikul are so enthusiastic about their new homes and community.

Several more GK villages are planned for the next twelve months. Sulu Governor Abdusakur Tan has been such a persistent advocate for GK in his province and is moving heaven and earth to produce funds for the houses and communities he wants to build with Gawad Kalinga. And the Marines led by Gen. Sabban and Gen. Ecarma believe that development the Gawad Kalinga way may trigger not just development but even friendship. It is unfortunate but somewhat anticipated that intermittent violence is still part of a pattern which is not so easy to break.

Sulu is dangerous not because of its terrain, which, by the way, is so beautiful with shores covered by white sands. Neither is it dangerous because it is home to the fierce and proud Tausug people. It is dangerous because we have allowed historical prejudice and religious competition to overtake the brotherhood that had been our birthright before being colonized and driven to fight against each other. And it will become even more dangerous if we do not struggle to dismantle four hundred years of Christian-Muslim conflict.

In the heat of the moment when bandits who terrorize for profit try to have their cake and eat it, too, what is beautiful in Sulu and its proud people remains hidden from view except from very up close. Sulu teaches us many lessons, many of them sad ones. Sulu reminds us how a divided people are not only weak but destructive to one another. How, then, can a Philippines ever be a strong nation with a fractious, quarreling population, jealous of their religions, resentful of their past and despairing of their future?

The road to peace in Sulu had long started. The path to friendship has begun between Christians and Muslims who are building homes and communities together. The passageway for the rediscovery of our fraternal bonds lies in our hearts if we choose courage over fear, generosity over greed, nobility over compromise.

When a friend from the military coined the phrase “dangerously beautiful” in reference to peace, he did not mean the usual meaning of danger. He was speaking about a personal experience, about how a beautiful land and people would captivate someone not from the place and make him giddy with infatuation. He was sharing, in two words, a love story that began from conflict and now wants to blossom in harmony.

Dangerously beautiful. Sulu.

My Bohol

Bohol is an island province of the Philippines located in the Central Visayas region. Its capital is Tagbilaran City. It is the 10th largest island in the country, located in the heart of the Visayas. To the west of Bohol is Cebu, to the northeast is the island of Leyte and to the south, across the Bohol Sea is Mindanao.

Bohol is a popular tourist destination with its beaches and resorts. The Chocolate Hills, numerous mounds of limestone formation, is the most popular attraction. The island of Panglao, located just southwest of Tagbilaran City, is home to some of the finest beaches in the country. The Philippine tarsier, considered the second-smallest primate in the world, is indigenous to the island.

Boholanos refer to their island homeland as the 'Republic of Bohol' with both conviction and pride. A narrow strait separates the island of Cebu and Bohol and both share a common language, but the Boholanos retain a conscious distinction from the Cebuanos.

Hills dominate the island of Bohol. Two ranges run roughly parallel on the northwest and the southeast. An interior plateau is dominated by limestone hills. In Carmen, Batuan and Sagbayan, these hills form near perfect cones in great numbers and are collectively referred to as the Chocolate Hills.

Bohol's climate is generally dry, with maximum rainfall between the months of June and October. The interior is cooler than the coast. Bohol is the home province of Carlos P. Garcia, the fourth president of the Republic of the Philippines (1957-1961) who was born in Talibon, Bohol.

GEOGRAPHY

Bohol is the perfect arena for scuba diving, kayaking, trekking and cave exploration. For the less adventurous, it offers leisurely pursuits like cruising, swimming, snorkeling or, simply, collecting seashells by the seashore.

The Island of Bohol is oval-shaped mainland surrounded with 73 smaller islands, having a gently rolling terrain, ideal for commercial and industrial site development. Bohol's mountainous interior is home to rare and endangered flora and fauna. At certain points, hills drop steeply to the coast from a maximum elevation of 870 meters above sea level. The interior uplands are fit for agro-forestry and high value agricultural production. The central and northern lowlands have also fertile grounds and abundant water supply. Over a hundred caves have been identified, the biggest of which is found in the eastern part which makes Bohol ideal for spelunking adventures. The Chocolate Hills in Carmen, Bohol are considered one of Philippine's natural wonders and Bohol is often referred to as the Jewel of the Philippines.

Most beaches are of white sand. The sand is often of such high quality that it is exported to other beaches in the world. The most well known of these beaches are in Panglao Island, and there, numerous islets have similar, yet untouched and pristine beaches.

The Loboc River is the most famous, running from the southeastern coast to the center of the island. It is famous for its River Cruise going up to its water source. The largest, Inabanga River, runs in the northern part of the province.

Numerous waterfalls and caves are scattered across the island, including the beautiful Mag-Aso falls in Antequera. Mag-Aso means smoke in the native tongue. The water is cool and often creates a mist in humid mornings which can hide the falls.

Marriage Enrichment Retreat Three

2009-03-14&15

St. Michael Retreat Center
Antipolo, Rizal