|
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Calling Maryknollers
By Linda Grace Cariño
Paradigm Shift
IF YOU spent your childhood in Maryknoll, read on. This is for you.
The drive up to your old school building is the same. I don't think it has received a fresh coat of gravel in decades. But there is a gate on it now because times have changed, and Baguio places now have to have gates and fences and protective walls.
What were once your classrooms now house a resource center, dormitories, and offices. The corridors you were not allowed to run on are presently protected from the outdoors by glass windows and glass doors that keep the elements out. Thus, there are cozy, pleasant nooks to sit on, where there once was just walking space.
The auditorium is the same, but the stage curtains are threadbare. The bathrooms have received some work, and there are shower stalls now. And there's a new wing on the southeast, a gallery.
The basketball court needs work. The kiddie playground out in back, too. Where you played "soccer" (it wasn't, you know), skip "jumping" rope, tag, and what-have-you is a cemented quad/garden that's landscaped some, and can be used for gatherings of many a sort.
That spread where we used to have field days has been transformed into an ecological sanctuary with the most interesting, ever, stations that tell the story of creation and where you figure in it. It is the site of the Maryknoll Ecological Sanctuary's "Cosmic Journey."
The beautiful convent collapsed during the 1990 earthquake. In its place is what we might call this really intelligent house, skylights, solar panels, and such. Close by is a "hermitage," which can be rented if you just need some peace and quiet.
Yes, the old convent school has morphed into a center that answers to the urgent call of the earth and environment for education and work in their immediate directions, i.e., how to properly address the integrity of creation.
Hnnnh? Precisely. Which is why we've got to come home next weekend - to find out about that.
There'll be a choral concert on the 27th and 28th, "Eco-pella" - the choir's really good, I guarantee. It's a show to raise funds for the sanctuary projects. So come see it, and help out your alma mater, too. Tickets: P75 per.
If you can and are so inclined, add some to the ticket price and lend support to a cause that benefits Mother Earth, and thus, you, too. And if you can and are so inclined, write out a generous check to the place you grew up in. Its mission has become a really big one, and could use your help.
Can't get the threadbare proscenium curtain out of my head, so maybe that's where I'll start, personally. See ya.
(May 21, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor. Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board. Click here. |
|
[return to top]
[home]
[network page]
|
LOCAL NEWS
BUSINESS
OPINION
SPORTS
LIFESTYLE
FEATURE
|
