'Guideposts for Governance'

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

OFF THE PRESS IS DR. JESUS P. ESTANISLAO’S book “Guideposts for Governance” which moist-eyed candidates hoping to win in the May 10 elections should read and take to heart.

Estanislao is founding chair of the Institute for Solidarity in Asia (ISA) and was finance secretary during the Aquino administration. Early this month, I wrote about the efforts of ISA and other groups helping government agencies and local government units as they go through a process of transformation. ISA is an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit institution that seeks to improve public governance through citizen participation.

“This is a more compelling story than the elections,” Estanislao said then. “Here are government agencies backed by private sector partners saying that governance reforms cannot take a back seat even during an election season.”

In “Guideposts for Governance,” Estanislao reminds that the word “governance” does not apply only to the highest level of a nation’s government. Good governance is for civic groups, corporations, institutions and local government units as well.

But Estanislao also strongly reminds the reader about the role of the individual. Before any group can be effectively governed, he says, the basic unit of any group—the individual—must know how to govern himself or herself. He therefore argues for personal governance which is key to successful governance of groups—big or small, local or global, private or government.

In “Guideposts,” Estanislao argues for the creation of a unique culture driven by four core values: integrity, fairness, courage and orderliness. These values must be nurtured at the personal, organizational and national levels. And always, he goes back to the individual.

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How green is your presidential candidate?

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

A WONDROUS EARTH DAY!

Greenpeace and EcoWaste Coalition released yesterday, as promised, the 2010 Green Electoral Initiative (GEI) survey final results which were based on the presidential candidates’ position on environmental issues.

Of all the many urgent advocacies worthy of presidential attention, it was the environmental advocacy that was able to compel the presidential bets to come out openly with their platforms. The GEI survey enabled the presidential bets to articulate their green agenda. The candidates did so not during debates, forums or miting de abanse, not through 30-second sound bites, but on paper, with their signatures affixed.

So how did they fare?

Noted environmentalist Nicanor Perlas, Senators Jamby Madrigal and Richard Gordon emerge the “greenest,” with the latter two having an almost equal ranking. Trailing them are evangelist Eddie Villanueva, Senators Benigno Aquino III and Manny Villar and councilor JC de los Reyes. Former President Joseph Estrada and former Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro did not respond to the survey. Their scores: Perlas (94.2), Madrigal (78.68), Gordon (78.45), Villanueva (70.87), Aquino (64.94), Villar (62.59), De los Reyes (38.31), Estrada (0), Teodoro (0).

Issues covered were climate change, solid waste, chemical pollution and consumer safety, sustainable agriculture and genetically engineered crops, water, forests, nuclear power and mining. Even problems such as billboards from hell were also tackled.

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Butanding!

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

“WHEN I say jump,” our smiling Butanding Interaction Officer (BIO) named Recto said to the five of us, “you jump into the water. Do not hesitate. Forget everything and jump. And when I say, look down, look down.” He presumed no one was faint of heart and that we believed we were in safe hands.

Our boat was several kilometers from the shore and we were sailing on deep water. It was a great morning. The April sun was ablaze, the water was very calm and with nary a ripple or wave. Azure sky, azure sea.

Please God, I prayed, show us these enormous creatures of the deep.

Then the spotter signaled for us to get ready. We lowered our goggles and bit the snorkel mouthpiece. We all sat side by side on the bamboo ledge on the side of the boat, eager and excited. The boatman turned off the engine and suddenly it was so quiet. With a paddle, he navigated toward a spot.

“Jump!” our BIO hollered and, without hesitation, we all jumped with him into the sea, feet first. It was like a leap of faith. “Relax!” he said, after our heads surfaced. After a few seconds he commanded, “Look down!” We all dipped our heads into the water and gazed into the deep.

There it was, a couple of meters below me, a butanding waiting to be seen. I was beholding a huge grayish blue, speckled whale shark, flaunting its wide back. It didn’t splash or wiggle, it was just there. It was a sight to behold. And then it was gone.

We had several sightings and jumps. For the last one I decided to stay on the boat and view from a distance the butanding gliding near the surface. I saw it as a dark silhouette on a background of blue. And then it lowered itself and vanished from my sight.

I don’t want to say more about my personal experience. You have to experience it for yourself. I was told that some are moved to tears. It’s like seeing the Mayon Volcano or the Grand Canyon for the first time except that the butanding does not stay fixed before your eyes, it decides when to swim away.

The presence of whale sharks (rhincodon typus) in Donsol is not a modern-day phenomenon. The locals had known about them for more than 100 years but it was only in the last decade that they became convinced that these sharks were harmless and not fearsome like their predatory counterparts. The butanding are the world’s biggest fish and could grow up to more than 15 meters. Donsol is now known as the world’s “Whale Shark Capital.” Time magazine called the butanding experience “Best Animal Encounter in Asia”.

For so long the butanding were only fished for their meat. They were not considered an important presence with great ecological significance and eco-tourism potential. Or that their preservation could provide environmental lessons.

According to our info kit, things changed in 1998 when professional divers led by Romir Aglugub discovered their presence and interacted with them. The divers proved that the whale sharks were docile and fed only on krill and other small creatures. Donsol was/is a rich feeding ground for these huge sharks. After that “discovery” one thing led to another and the rest is history.

Interaction with the butanding is strictly regulated by the Department of Tourism. The World Wildlife Fund provides guidelines which includes limited number of interactors (six to a boat), no scuba diving, three-meter distance, no touching, no mobbing by boats or swimmers. The Butanding Interaction Office gives briefings before a trip.

But despite the regulations, the butanding have bad days, such as when one gets hit by a boat propeller, or shot for commercial reasons. It’s a wonder that they have not moved away somewhere else to feed, but continue to return every year, with peak season from February to May. This year, the butanding festival is from April 26 to May 5.

And the fireflies. Included in our Donsol visit was a night cruise on Ogod River. It was a moonless night but a million stars brightened up the sky. I had not seen the heavens that way in a long, long time. The boatmen used flashlights to guide our way to a place downstream where we could find mangrove trees lighted up with fireflies. After gazing at the heavens for some time our eyes turned to the trees that were ablaze and pulsating. To my eyes, the fireflies became a symphony of lights competing with the stars.

Our weekend trip was not all about whale sharks. Our caravan stopped for meals, rest and sights. We rested at the Quezon National Park, had photo shoots in Albay’s Cagsawa ruins with Mayon volcano as backdrop, visited the Camarines Sur’s Watersports Complex famous for wakeboarding.

And so here’s sharing with you our Inquirer summer adventure, with thanks to the Inquirer’s Outdoors Club organizers, fellow adventurers, drivers, photographers, and especially Inquirer Supplements editor Aries Espinosa and Motoring Section’s Tessa Salazar who were on top of the trip and drove like pros. (Photos are featured on their pages.) Thanks to Toyota Motors (for providing the comfy vans, SUVs, pick-up), the resorts, the tourism council and people of Donsol, Sorsogon and all those who helped make this April interlude memorable.

It was a whale of an outing for 60 of us. A great time was had by all.

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Sr. Teresa Joseph Patrick: Former professor, writer, contempaltive

Philippine Daily Inquirer/FEATURES/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

Sr. Teresa at 90/Photo by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

SHE TALKS a mile a minute. She is abreast with the goings-on in the world, perhaps more than most. With fire and frenzy she continues to write as if deadlines were still part of her life. Her erudition and sparkling intellect shine through in conversations. She laughs, she listens, she remembers. She talks about the Philippines with great passion. Through her body of written works, she communicates to the world.

All that, but for more than three decades now, prayer and total commitment to God have been the essence of her life, the defining mark of her vocation.

Josefina D. Constantino, JD or Jo to her countless friends, former colleagues and students, is contemplative nun Sister Teresa Joseph Patrick of Jesus and Mary of the Order of Discalced Carmelites (OCD). Today, Palm Sunday, she turns 90. No celebration, she happily announced, as this Holy Week, Christendom is entering into a greater celebration of the Paschal mystery of Jesus’ passion death and resurrection.

Leaving all

A former professor of literature at the University of the Philippines (UP), and later, a daily columnist of The Manila Chronicle while working at the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP), JD answered the call to the religious life in 1974 at the age of 54 and joined the contemplative, cloistered Carmelite order. This meant leaving all—family, friends, freedom, a flourishing career—in order to live a life of prayer, silence and sacrifice while observing the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

Today, one could say that the world that Sr. Teresa had left behind has not totally left her alone. It is right at her door at the Monastery of St. Therese on Gilmore Ave. in Quezon City.

They continue to come—friends, former colleagues, ideologues, intellectuals, religious, writers, seekers. The learned and the simple of mind, the rich and the poor, the distraught and the joyful, the needy and the thankful, the confused and the enlightened. Many ask for prayers, others just want to commune with her. This is not to say that her life of contemplation has been compromised.

Except for a slight limp, Sr. Teresa is relatively well for her age.  And although she no longer belongs to the rat-race world that is our lot, she, the contemplative, remains in the heart of it. For isn’t contemplation “a long loving gaze at the world”?

World War II

Josefina D. Constantino was born on March 28, 1920 in Tondo, Manila when the Philippines was under American rule. It was during the decade of the ‘20s that the works of Filipino women writers began to flourish.

JD was the fourth of five children. Her parents, Jose and Susana, were not persons of great means but they were persons of great faith. JD attended Torres High School and the University of the Philippines (UP) where she took up BS in Education and graduated cum laude and class valedictorian in 1940. Soon after, her father died.

JD was teaching at the Mapa and Torres High Schools when World War II broke out. “I refused to teach in the Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere program,” she recalled, and instead took a job as a social worker at the Department of Social Welfare.

“The war literally blasted me out into an ‘unreal city’,” she said, borrowing words from T.S. Eliot. “We ministered to all types of emergency needs and to the returning prisoners of war from Capas, and survivors of the Death March.” Daily she walked the streets of Manila beholding suffering, deprivation and death.

After the war, JD joined UP. In 1947 she was sent to Columbia University in the U.S. where she finished her MA in English and Comparative Literature. A favorite professor, Mark van Doren, introduced her to Trappist monk Thomas Merton’s writings and his book “The Seven Storey Mountain.”

‘Truly global’

Upon her return to the Philippines  JD taught Contemporary British and American Literature and other period courses. “My postwar students were sharp and gifted,” she recounted. “My universe was more truly global. I had become cosmic in spirit and more deeply Christian. Literature was once again my life and love.” Journalists Belinda O. Cunanan and Cris Icban Jr. were among her students.

But UP was not a bed of roses. “And then the persecution of the Faith in UP began. I was the finest target, making the trio with Pres. Vidal Tan and Fr. John P. Delaney SJ. That fight made me a national figure overnight, for the alumni who rallied behind me were all over the country. That was my first crucible after the war.”

She was secretary to UP’s president until 1955 when she received a faculty fellowship in Humanities from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was away for a year and upon her return found herself again besieged. In 1960, she resigned.

“It was over the issue of academic freedom and faculty integrity,” she explained. She wrote a searing five-part article about it in the Sunday Times Magazine.  JD moved on but she remained involved in education. She was executive secretary of the Foundation for Assistance for Private Education and special assistant to the chair of DBP. In 1966, the Ateneo de Manila University conferred on her the Ozanam Award to recognize her contribution to society as a lay Catholic educator, writer and civic-minded citizen.

‘Faith and Freedom’

JD’s name became familiar to newspaper readers because of her commentaries. When the Manila Chronicle asked her to write regularly she agreed and wrote the column “Faith and Freedom” five times a week for seven years until 1972 when martial law was imposed and newspapers were shut down.

But during all those years that JD’s career seemed to be taking a certain trajectory, there was something that she was nurturing secretly.  She had a strong desire to offer her life completely to God. The story of her vocation is detailed in her semi-autobiographical book “Cry, Beloved Mother Church, Rejoice!” and “Priest of Fire and Flame”, a collection of essays about Fr. James Moran.

Moran was JD’s confessor for many years starting during her UP days when she had to be instructed in the faith until the ripening of her vocation. “He sent me to the nuns in St. Theresa’s College for catechism lessons,” Sr. Teresa recalled. “He was horrified that at age 22 I had not read a single Catholic book.” Moran would soon learn that his precocious ward was questioning many articles of the faith.

Forlorn hope realized

While the war raged, Fr. Moran remained under house arrest at Carmel in Gilmore where JD would see him for spiritual direction. Soon she found herself drawn to the Carmelites and wanted to join them. But this was not going to happen until 30 years later. As Fr. Moran told her, “You will have to live in the forlorn hope of it.” For she had family duties to fulfill. During those waiting years JD belonged to the Third Order or Carmel. Marriage was never in her mind.

In 1973, JD knew it was time. “The definitive call to Carmel came. Leave all! With Fr. Moran I discerned for a year—the devil or the real call of God.”  On March 25, 1974, JD entered Carmel. At about the hour of her entrance, Fr. Moran breathed his last. Her friends quipped: “Magpapakulong din lang pala, bakit hindi pa sa Crame?” (She wanted to get confined, so why not in Crame?) Camp Crame was where many anti-Marcos activists were jailed.

 “I took to Carmel as fish to water,” Sr. Teresa recounted. “I was finally home, never to leave it. I was enamored and awed interchangeably of what I thought was a medieval but fascinatingly modern habitat, shuttling between Trent and Vatican I and gingerly taking steps to Vatican II. I was interiorly rejoicing over the many hours of prayer and the silence and solitude I had forever so longed for. It was truer now—life as prayer and prayer as life.”

She however soon realized that she was useless in carrying out monastery tasks. She had to be taught everything—cleaning bathrooms, sewing, washing, cooking. “Once,” she recounted laughing, “I put popcorn in the noodles.”  She thought she was being creative.

Vows

In 1979 Sr. Teresa Joseph Patrick of Jesus and Mary pronounced her final vows. Carmel would be forever.

But while immersed in oases of prayer in the monastery, in deserts and through storms that challenged the soul, the writer in her did not die. She wrote unceasingly, but always under obedience. Today, her written works as a Carmelite nun are relatively voluminous. Among the major ones are “Cry, Beloved Mother Church, Rejoice!” and two volumes of “Personalizing Russia” which are reflections on her stay in Russia where she observed contemplative life and the life of the church.

Her “Faith and Freedom” columns have been compiled in a book, her reflections, meditations, recollections, letters, prayers and essays have been printed in pamphlets and booklets and sometimes, even in newspapers, but with Susana Jose as byline. Computer illiterate, Sr. Teresa does everything in longhand that can drive an encoder mad.

A voracious reader, she has a remarkable grasp of literature, philosophy, theology, spirituality and current events which is evident in her writings. She is conversant with the writings of Jewish scholar Edith Stein (Carmelite saint Teresa Benedicta, who was killed by the Nazis), Saints Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross as she is with Rizal, Dante and biggies of literature.

And now the Ateneo Library of Women’s Works is asking Sr. Teresa to please preserve all her written stuff, including drafts, notes and whatever else, for archiving.

Like a dam

And what is writing like in Carmel? What has 36 years in Carmel been like for someone turning 90?

 “Whenever I have to write,” she mused, “I reflect on the subject and I pray double. I have no difficulty at all about ideas because I am easily filled literally, when I switch on the floodgates of God’s gifts and insights. It’s like a dam. I don’t even have to think. I only have to turn the key, or lift the beam and the ideas rush like a roaring tide until they settle as waves gently and constantly oscillating, all in my mind and heart, as praise to God.

“It is because, in nothingness, I find myself immersed in God’s being which is Truth and constant light. Only when I assert my will and intent does the light reveal flaps of luminosity which begin to globe and define themselves as thoughts, which then I am made to perceive.

“My difficulty then comes when I know I can develop any or all of these ideas further yet I don’t know which of them must be shared. Holding them all in my mind as God’s own, I wait for the light. I wait for the signal.”

Writing, she said, is her way of sharing the fruits of her contemplation. “I also want to honor the poor, they of pure faith.”

Union with God

Sr. Teresa’s spiritual journey would require a lengthy narration but she is also able to summarize it in concise words.

“Our contemplative life is an unending desert with surprises long and far between along the way, both ways—in community life and in one’s prayer life. Yet, all the time, one’s union with God is marked by advances towards the very center of our soul. For as our holy father St. John of the Cross tells us: ‘any degree of union brings one already to the center of (the) soul where the King reigns.’

“The cloister makes possible for us God’s gifts of pure joy, from pure wisdom, which basically comes from pure suffering, transformed by the Spirit specially through the crown jewels of Carmel which to me are the Mass, the Divine Office or the prayer of the church, and the hours of adoration or mental and personal prayer.

“These hours of prayer are gloriously free hours, free only for God and which is pure worship, because all else are naturally woven into the daily tapestry of unceasing prayer with vigils far into the night and long before dawn.” Without the contemplatives, she said paraphrasing Merton, this country would have broken apart.

“These pure hours of timeless, spaceless, wordless, imageless being in Being, this pregnant emptiness, Christ fills through the Spirit for the whole humankind and the cosmos.” In the words of St. Teresa of Avila: “Solo Dios basta.” (God alone suffices.)

All these have been purely God’s own work in her soul, Sr. Teresa said as she looked back. “This is what contemplative life has been to me—yielding peace that surpasseth understanding, the ultimate happiness possible on earth.” #

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Columnist-turned-cloistered nun continues ‘life as prayer and prayer as life’

Philippine Daily Inquirer/Feature/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

Columnist, UP prof, cloistered nun, turns 90: The writing continues

SHE TALKS a mile a minute. She is abreast with the goings-on in the world, perhaps more than most. With fire and frenzy she continues to write as if deadlines were still part of her life.

Her erudition and sparkling intellect shine through in conversations. She laughs, she listens, she remembers. She talks about the Philippines with great passion. Through her body of written works, she communicates to the world.

All that, but for more than three decades now, prayer and total commitment to God have been the essence of her life, the defining mark of her vocation.

Josefina D. Constantino, JD or Jo to her countless friends, former colleagues and students, is contemplative nun Sister Teresa Joseph Patrick of Jesus and Mary of the Order of Discalced Carmelites (OCD). On March 28, she turned 90.

Leaving all

A former professor of literature at the University of the Philippines (UP), and later, a daily columnist of The Manila Chronicle while working at the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP), JD answered the call to the religious life in 1974 at the age of 54 and joined the contemplative, cloistered Carmelite order. This meant leaving all—family, friends, freedom, a flourishing career—in order to live a life of prayer, silence and sacrifice while observing the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

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More eco-pledges from presidential bets

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

GREENPEACE AND ECOWASTE COALITION have just released the second and third batches of the Green Electoral Initiatives (GEI) survey results based on the presidential candidates’ position on environmental issues.

I have been privy to the GEI survey since the beginning, during the survey work and the evaluation of the candidates’ responses. A good number of responses are quite impressive and reveal a lot about the candidates’ “greenness,” their knowledge of the issues and the solutions they would implement if elected. The overall ranking will be released on or before Earth Day, April 22.

I must say that just as important as the rankings, which the evaluators gave each candidate for every major issue, is the quality and content of the individual responses. Our hope is that these candidates will stay firm in their positions and be part of the solutions, wherever they will be after the elections, that is, win or lose.

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His priestly calling

Sunday Inquirer Magazine/FEATURE/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

“I HAVE found my real path.”

It took many years and many circuitous paths before Felixberto “Tito” Santos of Baliuag, Bulacan could finally say that he has found his true calling. Tito did not end up in the priesthood, to which he had felt he might be called at some point, but his present life is now spent creating artful priestly raiment for those called to the altar and the service of God’s people.

“Not in my wildest dreams did I imagine myself in this work,” Tito says. “But then God is full of surprises. This is a gift from heaven.” 

Tito is the proprietor and general manager of Chez les Saints (which means house of saints), a thriving enterprise that produces liturgical vestments worn by priests and used in churches for all seasons and occasions.

 A fine arts graduate of the University of Santo Tomas, Tito started off making uniforms for the corporate world and had a flourishing garments business from the 1970s to the early 1990s. He won big contracts and had more than he needed. He worked hard, he played hard. The money was good.

The calling

One day, he just left it all. “I had always felt a calling but I didn’t want to think about it,” Tito confides. “I was about 38 years old then. I thought, could I be a religious brother?” Or a priest?

He sought the advice of the bishop of Malolos who urged him to have an exposure by living and working in a Catholic parish in Bulacan. “I went to Norzagaray but there was no room in the inn,” Tito recounts. “Then I went to Angat. Fr. Domingo “Memeng” Salonga took me in. It was July 21, the feast of St. Elijah.” Tito would stay in Angat for almost three years.

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Tanay folk stuck in calvary 6 months after ‘Ondoy’

Philippine Daily Inquirer/NEWS/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

TANAY, RIZAL—For Elmer Dimarukot, Tanay is a forgotten town in Rizal province. He and other victims of Tropical Storm “Ondoy” have not received any help from the government six months after it struck.

In order for his family to survive, he said, he digs up pieces of wood buried in mud and turns them into charcoal to sell. Many do this to earn a living.

“It has been six months since the disaster,” is the Tanay folks’ constant refrain that evokes memories of the great disaster last September that killed hundreds of people and destroyed many parts of the National Capital Region and neighboring provinces.

About 100 residents of several barangays (villages) in Tanay recently met with local representatives of government agencies to present their needs.

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‘More compelling than elections’

Philippine Daily Inquirer/Opinion/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

EVEN WHILE MANY ELECTED GOVERNMENT officials and bureaucrats are preoccupied with the coming elections, there are agencies and local governments units (LGUs) that have been or are silently going through a process of transformation.

And their best efforts could mean a $500-million grant for anti-corruption reforms.

“This is a more compelling story than the elections,” said Dr. Jesus P. Estanislao, founding chair of the Institute for Solidarity in Asia and trusted finance secretary during the Aquino administration. “Here are government agencies backed by private sector partners saying that governance reforms cannot take a back seat even during an election season.”

The Department of Education, Department of Health, Department of Transportation and Communication, Department of Public Works and Highways and Bureau of Internal Revenue and Philippine National Police have made their performance commitments public at the Public Governance Forum (PGF) held for two days last week. These agencies are undertaking the continuing Performance Governance System (PGS), a local adaptation of the Balance Scorecard System (BSC) applied to the public sector in several countries to track their performance against a set of goals.

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