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Tuesday, January 21, 2003
Obenieta: Waiting to exhale
By Myke U. Obenieta
SOUND OF MOSAIC
OF breathing space, Virginia Woolf’s character in Michael Cunningham’s novel “The Hours” defines it as a disembodied sensation. Something like inhabiting the breeze, as when “she moves through the park without quite walking; she floats through it, a feather of perception…”
It came close to a whiff of unsullied warmth, the promenade around Lourdes church at Punta Princesa last Sunday night.
Done with the last mass and impervious of the frenzy of the Sinulog downtown, the janitors were sweeping the day’s dust away. Charlotte Church’s recording of Panis Angelicus was wafting from the speaker, as if reaching for the remains of incense and candle smoke. The missus and I, plodding around for her hiking and breathing exercises in anticipation of her impending date with the stork, knew there was so much to mull over the priest’s homily, like a sigh: If only we could learn to trust again like children…
Very Woolfian, I thought, when we both saw this unkempt young woman with her clutter of clothes spilling out of her bag, huddled against the garden fence in front of the church’s rectory. She must have stowed away from home, the missus said. What dark drove her to skulk and seek refuge at the back of the church?
After another round of strolling, we saw one of the church’s guards and a mild-mannered fellow asking her to go somewhere else. “Naa nya’y mahitabo nimo dinhi,” thus the bespectacled fellow coaxed her out. But her retort only stumped them helpless: “Nganong naa may mahitabo nako ngari nga naa may mga pari dinhi?”
Where would derelicts like her go without running into the risk of getting molested somewhere, the missus waxed anxious. And how could I hush her disquiet when some wayward wind also ruffled around my head: How would Woolf have cut her teeth into such a scene? Would the dark stream of Woolf’s consciousness also flow into the undercurrent of despair from a young altar boy who cried foul in the news against a priest who allegedly groped him in the dark?
When we walked out of the church’s gate, night only left a lot of space for shadows instead of certainties. Listening, I could only hear the depth of my own breathing.
***
From Adonis Baquirquir, a behavioral health nurse in the US and a friend from college days, here’s an excerpt from his e-mail:
“It is only the tip of the iceberg,” he wrote of sexual abuse committed by priests. “There are cases that are not brought into the attention of the public. Why? Because of the influence and power of the Church… If the Catholic Church is so critical about the corruption of our government, then it is time to criticize the corruption of our minors especially by those whom we entrusted not our temporal lives but also the eternal salvation of our souls…
How long would it take for our Holy Church to respond? Will we just keep our mouth shut and silence those victims as well? Will we just keep on raising the tide to cover the iceberg?
As Catholics we need to be responsive to those who suffer and least amongst us…”
(Michael U. Obenieta welcomes your comments at his e-mail address: yomyko@yahoo.com)
(January 21, 2003 issue)
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