Doing my year-in-review in Loyola this afternoon, I realized that notwithstanding the many losses and missteps of the past year, I can still say, in all honestly, that 2006 was a good year. Not that it was particularly memorable— if passing the 2005 Philippine Bar is not memorable enough; rather it was good because it was consistent and comfortable, with the occasional quiet moment of redemption and surprise.

In a very real sense, 2006 marked off for me the pattern which my near future is to inadvertently follow, that is, weeks of work, teaching, the occasional dinner or celebration, and lots of quiet and solitary moments of loneliness and joy. And the judgment, on top of all the seeming ennui or pathos (depending on which side of the bed I wake up on) is that this pattern isn’t really all that bad.

Indeed, 2006 taught me how to be more patient, particularly with myself, and where my life is going. In the times I find myself sitting in the office, slaving away at a pleading at ten o’clock in the evening, wondering whether it was really what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, I realized that this, too— this doubt, confusion, boredom, and elation— was all part of the journey. And what life is asking of me now is to experience this, fully, the best way I know how. All this, no doubt, will have a point.

Not that all has been smoke and mirrors. On the contrary, in certain quiet, blessed silences, there have also been moments of redemption and consolation, when, somehow, I was given a glimpse— or perhaps, more precisely, a feeling— of eternity: that giddy expectation that something more, something far better is waiting just beyond the horizon.

It is all just a matter of time. Or better yet: that the best is yet to come.

And so, tonight, of all nights, I respond in faith, that though things may not be too clear to me at the moment, at the turning of yet another year, “no doubt, the universe is unfolding as it should.” And like the good man Job who attempted, without success, to understand God’s inscrutable ways, I too have the courage to pray: The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the Lord’s name.

May your 2007 be filled with the same hope and the same faith.

* * *

Coupled with the thankfulness for the past, I sense that this coming year will be a year of choices for many of us. No doubt, we are at an age where many of us face difficult crossroads, both exciting and terrifyingly permanent. Marriage. Commitments. Career choices. Leavings and good-byes. May we, therefore, choose wisely. May we, most of all, choose what will truly make us happy and what will truly give us peace.

A prosperous and meaningful new year to all!

Now I know the bitter tears,
The dull despair, the frantic rages,
The sleep-destroying hopes and fears
Of fish in bowls and birds in cages.

After Two Months in Prison,
by Fr. Horacio dela Costa, S.J.


They warned me early enough. No matter what I may think, they told me, it was still a prison that I was visiting. Sure, they were children, many still in their teens. But they had committed crimes, and they had to be punished for it— student of law that I was, I understood exactly what they meant. But coming to the National Youth Receiving Center that Sunday morning, I felt that the warnings were hardly necessary, because everything around me, even the very air I breathed, told me that I was in a prison. And the fact that there were children behind bars only made the experience all the more poignant.

It began with an invitation from a Jesuit friend, who had been assigned to work with the children confined at the Center as part of their apostolate work and formation. Wanting to do something different (and perhaps more meaningful) this Christmas, I accepted the offer and decided to involve my students at the law school with me. Why not hold a Christmas party for the children at the Center, I suggested. Why not spend an afternoon with them?

Initially, I was concerned about the security of my students. The children at the Center were, after all, not “harmless” orphans or abandoned toddlers— they were, for all intents and purposes, detention prisoners, charged for the commission of crimes, some even involving rape, homicide or murder.

I understand now, of course, that it was an unfounded and exaggerated fear, a product more of my overactive imagination and over-zealous sense of protectiveness. They can take care of themselves, a fellow faculty member told me. Don’t be too Atenean to the Ateneans, some even said, referring to the Ateneo’s penchant for “sheltering” too much its students. Ivory towers have no place in the true practice of law, they chided.

And so, brushing these concerns aside, we began preparations in earnest. Pleasantly, these were not at all complicated: I simply divided the class into committees and assigned them specific tasks for the event: a group would take care of the entertainment, another for preparing the food, another to purchase and package the Christmas give-aways, and finally, another to gather old clothes. Following some meetings and a flurry of e-mail messages over the span of two weeks, all preparations were completed in time for the Sunday morning activity.

We departed from the Ateneo Rockwell campus at around eight o’clock in the morning, in a convoy of vehicles, to the Center located a short distance from the City Hall of Manila. The children were hearing Mass when we arrived; and from the receiving area, I could see them seated neatly in rows of monoblock chairs.

It was not until almost an hour later, when we were allowed to assemble at the hall where mass was previously celebrated. At first, I was surprised at the small number of children waiting: we were told there were at least one hundred and fifty children who would participate in the activity; there were only around fifty seated along one side of the room. I was told, however, that many more would come; they were merely being taken out of their cells on the first floor of the Center (we were on the second).

Out of the window, I could see the rest of the children being prepared for the activity, squatting in long straight lines, like a scene out of a movie. From the second floor hall where we were waiting, I could make out their cells surrounding the central courtyard, and I could see that some children remained inside (some were not allowed to participate as punishment for previous infractions). It was not until later when I would finally get to see the cells first-hand.

Through a spiral staircase ascending from the courtyard, through a barred and locked steel door, they were herded into the hall, where they bunched with those already in the room. Looking at them all, I had to consciously tell myself that these children are now being prosecuted for the commission of various crimes; that some of them had raped and even killed. This uncomfortable realization, however, was short-lived, because from the moment they were split up into groups and interacted with their ates and kuyas from the Ateneo, they became what, I suppose, they really are, notwithstanding the prison bars: they became, quite simply, kids.

All through the morning, they talked and laughed and even danced. They made cheers, played games, and joked with each other and with their ates and kuyas. Watching on the sidelines, I wondered how these children dealt with this dichotomy of their existence, this polarity between prison and childhood. It was an existence that few of us, hopefully, will ever get to experience, yet it was a reality that, hopefully also, would disturb us in our comfort zones.

And so, after distributing lunch and their Christmas give-aways, it was time for the children to leave and return to their cells. Free time, I suppose, was over. They left as they had arrived, in long straight lines, down through the spiral staircase, onto the courtyard below.

We waited a few minutes for the children to be herded back to their cells, and we were given the chance to see them where they were at: inside their cells, before we said good-bye. Thus, in a crude line of our own, we were guided to the first floor of the Center, into the gut of the building, where the children were kept.

There were four or five cells around that courtyard, and into them, were crammed the child-detainees. The cells were bare save for native cots and the smell of the nearby latrine. Fans whirred idly in each of the cell’s ceilings, while bars, old and rusty, marked their expanse of freedom. Some children were seated on the floor, others standing with arms hanging out the bars. I know of no other way to describe the sight, except by saying that the children looked like animals in cages. You could hardly tell that these were the same kids who, moments earlier, were laughing and joking and playing. You could not even tell this from their faces, which were now blank and expressionless, borne, perhaps of the boredom that marked their nights and days. The distinction, it appears, has become blurred even to them. I noted that not a few called out to their kuyas and ates filing past, greeting them good-bye, as though it was the most normal thing in the world.

And then, we left.

I am not sure what my students took home with them that afternoon following our visit to the Center. Perhaps some were glad to have been able to perform a good deed for Christmas. It was, after all, what Christ himself prescribed: when I was in prison, you visited me. Others, perhaps, were disturbed at the condition of the children’s detention, or the dissonance between the lofty provisions of law and the reality beyond it. Or others still may have felt the stirrings of that dark and unnamable discomfort deep down in the gut, the same one that characterizes the beginning of passion or action: that something is wrong and that something has to be done.

As for me, it was not these things that I thought of as I left the Center that afternoon. Rather, it was the awareness of, and the appreciation for, the simple pleasure of being able to walk out of an open door. Perhaps this realization is a bit too simplistic, if not even a bit selfish. But, indeed, it is an act too often taken for granted: the ability to leave when one wishes; the ability to go where one chooses. As I was leaving the Center, I felt many things, some unarticulated and others still nascent. But one sure thing I felt was this: that I was glad that I could walk back out into the world again, and that I was not one of those who would need to be left behind.

Se atan la cara y el discurso. La cara habla. Habla, es en esto que hace posible y comienza todo el discurso. Acabo de rechazar la noción de la visión para describir la relación auténtica con la otra; es discurso, y, más exactamente, la respuesta o la responsabilidad que son esta relación auténtica.

Emmanuel Levinas, El Etica e Infinito

Aparte de la inconveniencia de ser en la compañía de cada una y otra, él realizó que él no sentía la misma expectativa, agitación u obligación que marcaron sus encuentros pasados. Quizás era el silencio o la distancia, o el finalidad de las palabras habladas antes, que salido no más para discutir. Lo que era, él conocía que esta inconveniencia que él se sentía era solamente temporal, una inconveniencia que disolvería tan pronto como la tarde terminara, tan pronto como él consiguiera en su coche para ir. Fuera de vista, fuera de la mente.

Es igual la falta de memoria entrenada que lo ha mantenido sano con los días y los meses que seguían su separación. De hecho, es una falta de memoria entrenada que tiene llegó a ser menos y menos difícil como los días pasaron con la merced. Esto significó solamente que él finalmente conseguía “librado” de ella, de su olor, de su presencia, de su memoria. Él no recordó su cara. Pronto, él se olvidará de muchas otras cosas. Y él puede finalmente vivir normalmente otra vez.

Pero él sabía que él no estaba allí todavía. Pronto, y lentamente. Para mientras que él sabía que se puede quedarse en el mismo cuarto con ella, o quizá hablando con ella, o iguale quizá hacer su amigo, él sabía que él todavía no podría mirarla sin la sensación de la misma dificultad o lamentarlo se sentía siempre que él estuviera alrededor de ella. Y él también no podría tolerarla que lo miraba. Él temió eso con estos vistazos más leves, esta seguridad frágil y construida la suya lo desenredaría y dejaría vulnerable y perdido con todo otra vez.

Y por eso, él deseó decirle (como si su entero que es quemado en estas mismas declaraciones) que cuando se encontrieron en la calle, o se vieron en las fiestas, nos dejó no mirar uno a otro. Él no significó ningún desacato por esto. Ella no necesita preocuparse, él podría hablar con ella, podría reir a ella, iguala quizá podría decir una broma (de la manera distraída él era siempre que sea nervioso o afectado). Pero en todo el esto, él no la miraría, y él quisiera que ella no lo mirara. No deben mirar uno a otro. No todavía. A fin de lleguen a estar vivos de nuevo al uno a otro. Él era seguro que ella convendría: viviendo con un fantasma es bastante difícil.