Google video's number one -- truly a wowser

Digging into dark secrets, there came light

I think I've always been fascinated with the dark secrets of Catholicism. I wanted to find an angle for my blog entry about the Gospel of Judas, that fine piece of documentary-cum-expose shown by National Geographic before the Holy Week. Initially, I asked myself, why do I feel so compelled to write something about it? Then some impish alterego voice in my head chided: "Wrong question. The question is: why are you becoming obsessed with things like this lately?" And as I tried to recall my fascinations as far back as I could, I realized (and defended against that impish voice) that it's not an obsession-come-lately. It has always been there.

Back in grade school, I remember going to the Guadalupe minor seminary for a recollection activity. A confidante-classmate and I broke away from the group during our free time and prowled the seminary, went into the obscure and darker areas, half-hoping to discover something or be freaked out by -- oh, I dunno -- a ghost(?)

Then there was television. Around the same time, I remember repeatedly watching this horror/thriller movie shown in the afternoon. (It could be on RPN-9.) The movie was called "The Sentinel," it's about a secret order who manage the succession of hermits, who become "guards" in an apartment building that was actually a portal from which all evil could invade the human world. I might have seen it more recently, and I'm quite sure I watched it like I've never seen it before.

In high school, that period of heart-wrenching identity crisis, I got involved with the "born again" movement. Much less because of my loss of faith in the Catholic church but more because of finding "healing" from my identity crisis via a more personal relationship with the Christ. Strange logic, strange times, and a very strange me actually. I was very ravenous about reading one book, the title which escapes me now. It's about the Catholic church being the prophesied "whore of Babylon." There was a chapter there that reduced many of the Roman Catholic church's rituals and artifacts into numbers, and all of those cited amounted to 666.

In college, I seemed to have lost passion for anything spiritual. That sounded empty, I dunno, I could have been empty. And I could have lost trust in myself in being able to reconcile spirituality with corporality. There simply were no clear answers. I rejected spirituality. Later in college, and into my early days of working "rackets," I was fortunately too busy and too restless to take some time off and think into these things.

The late nineties was worse, in retrospect. I lost my advertising job thanks to the Asian financial crisis. Mom started a small business and I worked for her: there were days that I earned less than a peso. Because I had nothing much else to do, I went back to attending Sunday mass. It felt good to actually do something, if not for just acting or going through the motions of the mass rituals. Eventually, but by no means clearly distinguishable by time, place or event, I again sort of got fascinated with Catholicism, including all its pa-grandiosity. Maybe because of friend gregg who had lived a monastic life once, no, make that twice. Or maybe because I'm growing old. *Insert pregnant silence here* No definite answers there.

Then the Da Vinci Code broke the silence of the Catholicized norm. Or that's how some people think... it was because of that book that people warmed to questioning again. Someone told that to me actually, I don't remember who, it might be eon. My growing interest for digging the roots of Catholicism was spurred by the popularity of the book and the intrigues that it created. Ano ako, faddist?

I'm quite sure that I began to reconsider my displaced spirituality after I attended a workshop organized by Health Action Information Network (HAIN); "Defending the Faith," it was called, and it was for workers in reproductive health (and by extension, HIV/AIDS, where I am at). It felt like falling off a chair while dozing when Mike Tan began talking about his own efforts at reacquainting himself with Christianity. I always get mesmerized with Mike's talks, especially those where he makes connections between facts and figures and socio-cultural values. But up until this workshop, I haven't heard him speak of matters of faith, particularly one that enabled him to disclose what I'd think is a very personal matter. (It was way too subjective-sounding for me to associate it with Mike.)

Having been demonized by certain groups and leaders, our passion for our work in RH and HIV/AIDS seemed to have alienated us from the Church. (Have you heard of DEATH as an acronym? Divorce, euthanasia, abortion, total population control programs, homosexuality, things that would allegedly threaten to end humanity.) I admit, I had the notion of our work and us having irreconcilable differences with the teachings of the church. But it should have not necessarily been so, it now seems. I learned about the Church having shifted several times in history in its position about sexuality and reproduction issues. I had fun doing that Mary of Magdala exercise, where we deconstructed all the previous (and heretofore unquestioned) characterizations of Mary Magdalene, the prostitute. I have never appreciated "The Church is the People" argument as much before until this workshop. At the end of all our discussions, we left with one personal resolve: discernment.

Which I think what has led me to my Internet search frenzy. It started with unearthing the now-Vatican-ignored beauty of Vatican II, searching for the gospel of Mary (much discussed about in the wake of the Da Vinci Code pop culture siege), landing at the gnostics resource site, discovering the Nag Hammadi library, getting the perspective of Jewish scholarship on the "New Testament," the forgeries in the gospels, the "Q," and so on and so forth. Gospel of Judas just came at such an opportune time in learning the skills of "discernment."

But what has the Gospel of Judas, the documentary, brought into all this excitement? For me, there were several. First, the gatekeeper known as Irinaeus or his "four winds, four corners of the world, four gospels" principle -- I was flabbergasted that we (i.e., the people) actually bought it. Second, the dynamism of early Christian movements -- how I wished Christianity could be once more as vibrant but this time with much more humane and civil regard for each other. Finally, the Christ characterization in this gospel -- Jesus was a different man, disarming and revolutionary in his time, I'd like to believe; in this text, this characterization was very clear.

I grew up discouraged from questioning. Millions of others over many, many years may have been as well. With the fortification of one -- uh -- brand of Catholicism, the light of the dynamic Christian faith discourse has been snuffed out. How disempowered people have become in face of such a monolith, no? Surely, there are so much more questioning to do (for example, "What about infallibility and all that?") As for myself, however, one thing can never be questioned anymore: I'm now aware/discerning and I shall never be unaware/unquestioning ever again.

Passion and ideals: the iBlog 2

Quite the last minute, yesterday I signed up for, and today attended, iBlog 2 - the Second Philippine Blogger Summit held at the UP College of Law. I was making my usual round of blog reading yesterday when I happened on the announcement at PCIJ's blog. I don't consider myself at the cutting edge of blogging and podcasting - in fact, up until the summit, podcasting was abstract to me. But registration was free, that was enough motivation for me even at the risk of further delaying several pending work. Besides, I have a meeting scheduled with the Philippine National AIDS Council's advocacy committee in Quezon City anyway, I told myself. I could squeeze in a bit of time... much like the way Mr. Incredible's deciding to do some more saving of humanity hours before his wedding. "I've got time," I could almost hear myself mimicking.

Perhaps more than the free registration, I have been long curious at how the Pinoy blogging community really looked like. I long wanted to have a sense of how the real people behind their blogs and their words come together, relate to each other, beyond cyberspace. And it was somehow a pleasant experience. I initially thought I would be seeing a truly geek-dom community, talking in pure geekabulary, and that in all of this, I would be astounded and amused. I was impressed (not just mere amusement); I was truly impressed at how articulate and insightful some of the speakers are with issues on free speech and human development work. I dig these guys.

Foremost in my mind, I couldn't forget at how pleasant my experience was with Manuel Quezon III's presentation on political blogging (or Manolo, as he is fondly referred in blogosphere). I confess that I didn't get to see all the sessions, I wasn't able to attend the summit in its entirety as I had a meeting-appointment at Philippine Information Agency (as I said). But for the several sessions I did attend, Manolo's was I think one that made my intellectual juices flowing. Maybe because I was reflecting at how sometimes his blog and his name have been referred so many times in comments at the PCIJ blog. More perhaps because of this discovery of the PCIJ blog was due to my rummaging blogosphere of PD-1017 (or somewhat the mini Martial rule that transpired in late February). So much maligning of personalities actually came into ether-space print, Manolo's not exempted. Yet there he was, calm and somehow very discerning of how all of this created a picture of many online Filipinos' intellectualism. Personally, I think it also reaffirmed my positive outlook of all this talk then: dissent, fear not, for it's part of the dynamism of democratic discourse. (How's that for alliteration? hehe)

I regret that I wasn't able to attend Dean Alfar's and Jonas Diego's talks. I met ricci at the summit; he is one of our peer educators for the outreach project in Pasay and Manila. When I got back from the PNAC/PIA meeting, he told me that Dean's talk "Write Here, Write Now" was very lively. I also wanted to check out Jonas Diego's talk, I haven't met him previously, but his topic "Comic Books and Blogging" I was curious about. Ever since I had reconnected with a high school friend, saintvladymir (a.k.a. oliver), who you may now best know for his "Lexy, Nance, Argus" opus, I got a glimpse into yet another circle of immensely creative and passionate people. I'm not a comic book artist nor a graphic novelist (oliver, some day, you gotta give me some 101 here), but I truly long to experience once again, even as participant observer, the camaraderie of such spirited communities. Here romance and ideals throb and thrive. It is I think what some speakers in the summit referred to as niches of the mass audience that blogging and podcasting are thriving and evolving into unique, very special media of communication.

If next year there would be an iBlog 3, I'd definitely make time to attend. I'd resolve to participate more, maybe, even share my experience as a worker on HIV/AIDS and an advocate of the LGBT community. They haven't heard from this niche yet. Besides, maybe I'd get to see the cuties again, and there were really more than a few of them in this summit. Now, isn't that motivation enough? *tongue-in-cheek*

Just as fab to stay in the city

I wasn't attracted to the idea of going out of town for the long summer holiday, i.e. Holy Week. Going out of town was a big part of my job since our Global Fund project started in 2004. My idea of a holiday was to feel rich, lazy, without a care in the world, not putting effort to distances traveled. Maybe that's why we ended up vacationing in a hotel in Manila.

There was actually an earlier plan to go to Donsol, watch and play with the butanding (whale sharks). But planning became too difficult, getting to Bicol being the most difficult of all. Two weeks before Holy Week, every form of comfortable transport was fully booked already. Two other remaining options were the airconditioned train and rent-a-car. Remaining not because they're still available, but because we don't have leads at the moment. Then came news from my staff in Legazpi that Donsol's accommodations were already full, so option was just to make a day trip then head back to Daraga or Legazpi for accommodations. It's beginning to sound like holiday hell, and it hasn't even started yet. Ditch Donsol, I said.

There was the Puerto Galera option always ready and willing for consideration. But for several years now, like since 2003, I've noticed that getting accommodations in Galera had increasingly been harder. The most convenient way of getting accommodations was to check in before Holy Week. We couldn't afford that. Both my hunny and I still had our hands full at work up until Wednesday. Also, I'm not sure which was getting older faster, me or the Galera scene. I didn't experience Galera the way my "lolas" have often fabulously reminisced about it. I first arrived in Galera 1998, on its allegedly sudden boom of holiday tourists. And if you could just imagine being a vacationer wanting some peace and quiet, you won't have it in Galera on Holy Week.

So check in at the Tropicana hotel in Malate I did. We did: ron, eon, rex. It's not actually the richness that one could compare with, say, Shangri-la hotel. But we did the Shangri-la bit earlier, Thursday: we had lunch together, at the lobby's buffet luncheon, after realizing that Glorietta was essentially shut down for the holidays.

Tropicana would do, it's cheap -- er, affordable -- enough to feel rich and lazy, which was the priority tone to be set for this vacation anyway. And of course, the sun and swim. Tropicana had a swimming pool, cozy, discreet and well maintained. Not too many kids stay in this hotel, a big plus in my book. It also helped that ron and rex were with us; they took care of so many details keeping "house." I just had to think of very pressing vacation matters: rest, watch TV, eat, swim, eat again. Eon slept... slept a lot. One dinner also was in T.G.I.Friday's (the only one open at nearby Robinsons Place)... my friend gregg and I once talked about how expensive eating out has gotten lately; at TGIF that night, our bill amounted almost as much as our overnight accommodations at Tropicana.

There was a time I remember that summer uber fabulosity was also measured by how much you've toasted yourself under the sun. So post-Galera, guys would come together, hang out, see and be seen sporting Hawaiian Tropic or Coppertone aided shades of skin color. Last Saturday, eon and I spent a day of loitering and shopping at Glorietta, and we decided to cap our mall adventures with a night of singing at the movies in Greenbelt. We went to see RENT (Eon's first for the movie, my second). Someone saw me, a friend from way back (the earlier days of TLF's community center), who was also about to see the movie. He remarked that I seemed to have a very fulfilling summer vacation. I was nicely bronzed. I didn't go out of town at all, I said, I opted to stay in the city, and results were just fine (and fab, I could've added).