contents
Preface v
Chapter 1 The Fertile Soil / 1
Chapter 2 An Existential Expedition / 19
Chapter 3 Going Solo / 32
Chapter 4 Harmony in our Hearts and Minds / 49
Chapter 5 The Story of Our Faith / 65
Chapter 6 Judging a Book by Its Cover / 76
Chapter 7 Good Samaritans with Time / 96
Chapter 8 From Community to Communion / 117 Endnotes 137
preface
Tracing My Roots
J
ose P. Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines, once said that he learned more about his own country and himself when he left to visit other countries. I believe this to be true for many Filipinos living in the diaspora; it certainly is true for me. Having to pull one’s roots out from his/her homeland and replant them in another is one uncomfortable disruption. However, such disruption is also a profound way of realizing how deeply connected one’s roots are to the ground. It is true what they say: we don’t know a good thing until it’s gone, or in this case, until we’ve left it behind. I was coming of age when I migrated from the only home I’ve ever known — the Philippines, to a faraway land, a dream destination for many, the United States of America. This new land, “the land of opportunity,” was to become the place where I would put down my roots and cultivate my dreams over the next few decades. My first few years in America were also my teenage years, so, needless to say, that was an intense period of soul-searching and struggling to find my identity. As a young wide-eyed immigrant, I remember having mixed feelings about the life-changing move that my family was embarking on. Part of me was looking forward because we’re getting the opportunity to pursue a better life, but part of me kept looking back because the move meant saying goodbye to my friends, many of v
vi
Gift of Kapwa : The Sacredness of Our Shared Togetherness
whom I had known since kindergarten. We were leaving the only home we had ever known in search of a better home that we knew nothing about at all. On one hand, there was that feeling of excitement about the new, better, and brighter possibilities waiting to be explored. I grew up hearing about that famous phrase, “the American dream.” And there I was about to walk into it fully awake. On the other hand, there was that feeling of loss that inevitably comes with leaving home. I’m sure it’s a story that resonates with other immigrants. Being able to gaze at a bright future of possibilities and taking that giant leap forward, thousands of miles away, comes at the painful price of having to leave it all behind. After an 18-hour flight, once we reached the American side of the Pacific, life laid out not a red carpet welcome but a blank canvas for us to start painting our American story. We were starting from scratch. And just like that blank canvas, our first apartment was empty and bare, and it remained empty for months. As I sat in our quiet apartment waiting for my parents to come home from their new jobs, I could hear my voice echo across the room. My thoughts would wander back to my old home in the Philippines. I started to miss the little things like the sound of other kids playing outside, the roosters crowing, and the tricycles revving. For a while, I didn’t have friends or neighbors to play with, nor video games to keep my mind occupied, so my mind kept traveling back to my old home. I started to miss the games I played in the Philippines like those that involved twigs and sticks and getting my knees down in the dirt and the mud with other kids. I started to miss the warm fertile soil that cultivated and nourished me and the warm tropical rain that washed me. Homesickness was breaking through.
1
chapter
The Fertile Soil
I
grew up in Anos, a small barangay (village) in the province of Laguna, named after a bamboo plant, about 12,000 kilometers away from the Western shores of America. America is where I am now, surrounded by pine trees instead of bamboo trees, cold winters instead of a year-round tropical climate, English instead of Tagalog or Tag-lish (mix of Tagalog and English), and the smell of burgers and fries instead of rice and banana leaves. As a migrant people, we Filipinos try to do our best to adapt and make the best out of new and extraordinary situations. We figure out ways to assimilate and adapt to the norms of our new lands. We work on our accents but for some reason I still find myself using “ano” (a common Tagalog filler word) in my American conversations. Our bodies can get used to the climate and the food. We can get used to, even embrace, the TV shows, the music, the language, and apple pie. But no matter how much we try to assimilate, adapt, and adjust as we reset our roots, there are some things that will be difficult to change, untangle, or unravel. America has a lot to offer, but there are some concepts, words, beliefs, and values that may not be as readily adoptable, replaceable, disposable, or even translatable. Apple pie surely is delicious, but it cannot 1
2
Gift of Kapwa : The Sacredness of Our Shared Togetherness
replace buko (coconut) pie. The personal choices, self-reliance, autonomy, and independence that come with the American rugged individualism are greatly appreciated but they cannot replace that deep sense of shared togetherness with kapwa. Kapwa, as I further explore in this book, is not just a Filipino indigenous value, not just a Christian value, but a universal human value that can be treasured by all. Kapwa is that fertile soil that allows our faith to blossom. Embarking on this writing journey, one that I would like to categorize not just as an inquisitive exercise but as a spiritual journey, opened up the delightful possibility of discovering wholeness on the path to holiness through kapwa. Kapwa summons us to wholeness and holiness.
Kahulugan – Meaning, Lost in Translation Having spent my growing years in the Philippines, kapwa is one of the cultural values that has deeply permeated my thinking, behavior, actions, and interactions. It is ubiquitously taught, practiced, used, and lived throughout the country, but one side effect when something becomes a part of the daily vernacular is that it becomes too pedestrian, losing its specialness and sacredness. Kapwa, its practice, meaning, and concept, all become too easy to be taken for granted. It was when I moved and lived somewhere else that I started to search for it and realized how special and how deep it is. Having Tagalog as my first language, I often struggle to translate, let alone explain to non-Tagalog speakers the word for what is considered to be our foundational core value: “kapwa.” It is a lot more than just a word. According to Virgilio Enriquez, founder of indigenous Filipino psychology, kapwa is the core concept in Filipino psychology integrative of the self
The Fertile Soil
3
and the other.1 Filipino American scholars like Leny Strobel, Kevin Nadal and E.J.R. David have often described kapwa as a view of the self in the other or as the intense spiritual connection typically felt among Filipinos. It is a concept that can be loosely translated and casually explained but too often at the expense of diminishing its value. Just how does one unravel, let alone translate, a word that deeply undergirds the Filipino cultural psyche, a core value that is inextricably woven into the fabric of our Filipino identity? It is a word that begs for something more than just a literal Tagalog-to-English translation. English is a beautiful language and I often feel that it is adequate enough to capture the nuances of everyday life, but there are some foreign concepts or words that are simply not translatable. In the Philippines, if a foreign word is not translatable without losing its essence, it’s used as-is. And there are many nonindigenous words, including Spanish and English words, that have permeated the Filipino vernacular. Many indigenous Tagalog words, especially those that have evolved through preand post-colonial times, are simply untranslatable. “Kapwa” is one of those words that’s not meant to be translated casually into another language. It is a concept that deserves a deeper understanding for not only is it core to our being and our Filipino-ness, but it is, as I wish to illustrate in this book, one of the Filipinos’ important offerings to humanity. Kapwa, our core value of shared humanity, is a treasure deeply entrenched in our culture, history, and psyche worthy of sharing with the rest of the world. To see the self in the other is a vision that had been clouded by the divisions and the divisiveness in today’s society but we have an opportunity to clear our lens, reframe and restore that vision.
7
chapter
Good Samaritans with Time
B
enjamin Franklin once said that “time is money.” That statement feels even more true today as we have increasingly inflated the value of our time with a higher price tag. Our time can often feel like one scarce resource. The world of work gauges our worth by our hourly wage and many of us spend several of our awake hours devoted to raising up our worth, our careers, and our success. We call it personal development, but we often do so at the expense of our interpersonal relationships and friendships. In a famous classic study conducted at Princeton Theological Seminary in the 1970s, two behavioral scientists, John Darley and Daniel Batson, examined the question of why people do good things for others.40 The design of their study divided their participants, who were seminary students, into two groups: one was asked to give a talk on career and ministry while the other group was asked to give a talk on the story of the Good Samaritan from the Bible. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells the story of a hapless victim who is stripped of his clothing, beaten, and left half-dead on the side of the road clearly in need of help. The first two men walked by and
96
Good Samaritans with Time
97
ignored him. Finally, the third person, a Samaritan, stopped to help him. As pastors-in-training, the Princeton experiment’s participants should not only have been familiar with the Good Samaritan parable but also with acts of kindness, right? Well, that was just one part of the study because unbeknownst to the participants was an alley with a groaning man in need of help. Would the pastors-in-training stop and help? The study had an additional variable: time. The time variable was based on an urgency manipulation where the pastors-in-training were told one of three things. One group was told they were early and had plenty of time to get to the other building. The second group was told they were just on time. The third was told they were running late, that the audience had been expecting them minutes ago, and that they better hurry! As it turned out, the results of this study found that what mattered the most when it comes to helping another person in need is not so much the influence of the Gospel but whether or not there is time. Only 10 percent of the third group, the group that was told they were running late, stopped and helped the person in need. Among the group that was told they had plenty of time, 63 percent of them stopped and helped. This study reveals our disposition and tendency to trade compassion for convenience and empathy for efficiency. Our society has changed and accelerated dramatically since this 1970s study. We’ve filled our time with more stuff now and so we’re more likely to be always on the go. Today, we have to be even more mindful and more intentional with our time or else our time gets hijacked along with our disposition, leaving much less time on our schedules for compassion and empathy.