Maraming salamat sa inyong pagbati! Having passed the 2005 Bar Examinations is a blessing in itself. Indeed, placing eighth is even a bigger bonus. As the euphoria of the past days is beginning to wane, I, and many of my classmates, are beginning to acknowledge the realization that we are now, finally, lawyers.

While many have been quick to congratulate— and their felicitations are greatly appreciated— some of my more perceptive friends were quick to add that passing [and even placing] in the Bar exams is really quite scary, because it somehow creates expectations which have to be fulfilled. Sabi nga sa Spiderman: “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Hopefully, by God's grace, we will not disappoint.

Non nobis, Domine.
Non nobis sed tibi gloria, Domine.

Amen.

People at first could not believe that it had happened, until reports were finally confirmed: Cebu Pacific Air Flight 387 bound for Cagayan de Oro City had crashed on the slopes of Mt. Sumagaya. It was February 2, 1998.

Among those on board the ill-fated flight was Bobby Arévalo Gana.

During the memorial services, people paused and remembered the foolishness that was Bobby Gana’s life. Bobby was a shy and quiet boy, they said. He loved to read and draw. His high school friends remember him most for his stout frame and high-pitched voice, which often became the object of much teasing. They remembered him for his teaching, for living what he taught and having no compulsion to prove himself better than his students. And they remembered him for his work, for his passion in the upliftment of the poor, for the organization that he had helped found, the Sentro ng Alternatibong Lingap Panlegal [Saligan].

You see, Bobby Gana was a lawyer. He graduated fifth in the bar. He knew that he could have started out well with some of the name-firms in the country. Yet, as his friends say, “There wasn’t even a moment of doubt.” He wanted to work with the poor.

In 1997, with lawyer-friends Al Agra, Joy Casis, Butch Abad, and Fr. Joaquin Bernas, SJ, Bobby founded Saligan. Organized primarily to attend to labor disputes, it gradually took on the cases of farmers and peasants. Under Bobby’s direction, Saligan eventually became the biggest alternative law group in the country in terms of the number of full-time lawyers, the number of sectors served, and the number of programs implemented.

Indeed, Bobby Gana’s life would be a very good subject lecture about lawyering and the preferential option for the poor. It almost feels that writing about it only detracts from the powerful eloquence of his life— indeed, an option for the poor is not something talked about, written about, nor planned. It is chosen, and it is lived. Yet reflecting about his life, what strikes me more is the genius of God’s Divine plan: of how he uses man’s talents as a means for the making of His Kingdom here on earth, if we only let Him. Indeed, like Nicodemus, God meets us where we are at.

I am quite certain that Bobby Gana need not have been a lawyer to have done great things for God. Indeed, He would have worked through him just the same. Yet Bobby chose to become a lawyer, and he allowed God to use that privilege to effect change. It seems to me, then, that what is truly important is not so much the doing— for God often takes care of that— but the surrendering. It is allowing God to work through us, however broken, or however imperfect we may be, that the Kingdom of God can find its fulfillment.

One must understand this surrender, however, not as a fatalist escape, a bahala na to the challenges of life. Rather, it is an entrusting of that very life to the “gentle curve of the palm of God’s hand.” Bobby himself said it during his senior retreat in College, “Trust him. . . Trust your life to Him.”

Father Catalino G. Arévelo, SJ, Bobby’s uncle, called this surrender in Bobby a sense of vocation. Fr. Arevalo says, “I have been a religious nearly sixty years now. I know this kind of talk is ‘vocation talk’— ‘Who’s going to do the work?’ ‘People need us to be around for them.’ It means, really, ‘This is where the heart is. This is where I’m called to serve. This is my place.’”

Theologians say that we find God most in the deepest longings of our hearts. Pete Ariston, then still a Jesuit brother, sent me this prayer for a retreat I once attended. It said,

“Nawa’y marinig mo ang pinipintig ng iyong puso
at marinig mo rin ang pinipintig ng puso ni Hesus.
At sa wakas ng lahat, nawa’y maunawaan mo,
na ang pinipintig ng iyong puso
at ang pinipintig ng puso ni Hesus, ay iisa lamang.”

The greatest desire of our heart. For Bobby, it was clear, and the surrendering, absolute. The law, for him, became the means; he merely an instrument. Indeed, this “foolishness” of Bobby’s life humbles us. Yet to say that Bobby is not indispensable in the building of the Kingdom of God is not to negate his sacrifice; rather, the challenge is on us who pray “Your Kingdom Come”— upon whose shoulders must fall the share of those who have been called away. “And so we must join hands,” as Fr. Bernas says. “The struggle is still ours.” To honor and remember Bobby, then, is to live out our own surrender, to be true to our own vocation.

A good friend and colleague of mine at work said that the past couple of months for her have been an emotional roller-coaster ride. Having started work for the first time in January, and with the results of the Bar in less than two weeks' time, she observed how on some days she would be riding high upon the crest of her new-found independence, and on other days, she would be wallowing in the dolldrums of ennui and self-doubt.

With certain recent realizations and disappointments foisted upon me yet again— and with the ominous shadow of the Bar results creeping ever so slowly into our collective consciousness— I am beginning to understand what riding the same emotional roller coaster is like. Perhaps the interesting thing about the journey, though, is that I have an acute awareness that I am navigating the course alone, both in the ups and in the downs. Not that it is a particularly pathetic or disturbing thing. But the soul occassionally seeks solace in the comfort of familiar presence and comfortable silences.

Riding this emotional roller-coaster reminded me of the movie shown way back in 1993 starring Michael Keaton and Nicole Kidman. Directed by Bruch Joel Rubin, the movie is called My Life. It tells of how the main character, Bob Jones, discovers that he has lung cancer and has only months left to live. He sets out to videotape his life's acquired wisdom for his child yet to be born, and ends up on a voyage of self-discovery and reconciliation. While the plot of the movie was quite contrived, pulling as it did on the audience's heartstrings, the movie pulled me in with a strange nostalgic urgency, as though asking me what I would do if I found out I only had months left to live.

The last scene of the film was particularly memorable for me as it served as a metaphor for the manner with which Bob Jones faced his dying: riding a roller-coaster. Having made peace with death, he is seen slowly ascending that first highest hill, the sun bright, the wind in his hair. And just as the roller coaster dips for that first drop, Bob, tightly grippng the restraining bars, lets go, raising his arms high in the air in defiant surrender. And the movie ends.

Sitting here in Starbucks on this gloriously vibrant Sunday afternoon, rushing an opinion due first thing tomorrow morning, I look out in envy at the cars speeding past the Katipunan Avenue, with seeming purpose and direction, filled with families and friends. Riding on the crest of yet another drop, I wish that, like Bob Jones, I could just also defiantly let go.

* * *

Tan ahora sé que está finalmente, acabado definitivo. Cómo es extraño que he estado manteniendo esta idea que podemos todavía ser los amigos y que todavía le amo. Pero la verdad es que te quiero, o pienso que lo hago, pero que no debo más. Y por eso, voy.

Me ahora confunden y se pierden, pero manejaré. El vivir sin su presencia tomará cierto aprender. Pero las circunstancias lo requieren. Cuidado de la toma, siempre.

I wrote before that Angelo V. Suárez's else it was purely girls was a worthwhile read. I still think it is. But now that a friend of mine had gifted me a copy of his first work, the nymph of MTV, I am convinced that, indeed, the first one is the charm. While else it was purely girls was sonorous and playful in its use of language, the nymph of MTV was more meaningful and subdued, focusing on the image rather than the language. While else it was purely girls gave me a pleasant shock, the nymph of MTV drew me in slowly, thoughtfully posing question and connotation without being too self-conscious.

I post two poems from the collection; the first, because it spoke of the rain which I love; and the second, because it validated a distant memory.

* * *

Paano nga ba magpalipad ng Eruplanong Papel?


[Thanks, stuckie. Yes, it should never be about issues.]

as originally posted on Vannie's blog, A Daydreamer's World:

The pear leaves redden, the cicada's song is done.

Wind high up in the River of Heaven,

flute sounds: cold and cutting.

A chill on the mat, the water-clock dripping.

Who taught the swallows to make so light of parting?

At the edge of the grass the insects moan,

as autumn's frosts congeal.

Stale wine: awakening,

I can't remember when you left.

How much of what I really feel is left unsaid?

Night after night moon dawns

upon my pearl-embroidered screen.

by Ou-yang Hsiu, translated from the Chinese by J.P. Seaton.

From Love and Time, published by Copper Canyon Press.


Funny how we fail to say the things we ought to say when we really ought to say them. And funny how we realize that we ought to have said them when saying them no longer matters.

Inebriated and tired from yet another insane night of poker, the topic of conversation turned to regret, and how it's the most wrenching feeling in the world. Indeed, why we fail to say the things we ought to say when we should escapes me. Fear? Anger? Pride? So much wasted opportunity. Nasa huli ang pagsisisi.

And so we try to make-up, repeating the words over and over again. We post blogs, we make press releases to friends, we write poems and journals and stories, hoping that somehow, our repetitive words will find wings and reach the person to whom it should have been uttered to.

But until we get to stand before that person to tell him/her— in flesh and blood— what we really wanted to say, we will be always be restless, wondering, what if.