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Monday, January 09, 2006
Cariño: Sr. Anne Brandeis
By Linda Grace Cariño
SR. ANNE Brandeis, Maryknoll sister and friend, is known far and wide for being the initiator of the Maryknoll Baguio's post-1990 earthquake paradigm shift. It is she who spearheaded turning the Maryknoll (of late, Marishan) school from being about Reading, 'Riting, and 'Rithmetic to being about justice, peace, and the integrity of creation. An ecological sanctuary was born in the old schoolground, and it has served us all very, very enlighteningly for some ten years now.
As an ecological sanctuary, Maryknoll offers a trek with stops along its now famous "cosmic journey," that takes its trekkers through the story of God, Life, evolution, and all of the above in and of oneself. One comes away from the journey somehow renewed, inspired, and more in tune with the earth as life source, an energy that is in proverbial flux, forever changing. One also comes away reminded that all things come from the earth and that we must care for her so that our children, theirs, and their children can be sustained by her as we are.
The sanctuary also houses a gallery, male and female dormitories, a café, classrooms (we still learn in), a playground (that I used to play on as a child) which has a basketball court (that my son knows well). There is also a gift shop that faces the verandah. And of course, there is the auditorium, where a despedida program for Sr. Anne was held last Tuesday.
It was at this program that another earth sister, Mercy Dulawan, thanked Sr. Anne for the many paradigm shifts she had caused in the lives she had touched. For Mercy, who assisted Sr. Anne in taking the old school into the new, the latter caused mind shifts in Mercy's entire thinking process that empowered her, made her skills come to the fore and be better appreciated, processing her into one whole in herself with the earth and God source. Mercy also calls God a She.
At the program, Mercy and other sanctuary staff also gave full credit to Sr. Anne for forcing them to think, act as partners in the organizational setup and, in essence, own their worlds. The show was capped by our own mayor, Braulio Yaranon, himself a dyed-in the-wool environmentalist, who presented Sr. Anne with a plaque of appreciation from the City of Baguio.-(to be concluded)
(January 9, 2006 issue)
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