PARADOXICAL

The faith chronicles

Monday, April 21, 2025

By all accounts, I shouldn't be a devout Catholic, I should've been more of a communist rebel or at least a leftist activist. At young age, I had everything going for me to become a rebel. I came from a poor family but moved in a circle dominated by kids from well-to-do families. I knew first-hand the thousand humiliations of being materially inferior.

Couple this with another sense of inferiority: physical. I was the proverbial ugly duckling. I grew up in a family where being mestizo or mestiza was openly preferred and extolled. Growing up bitter was written in my stars, so to speak.

I also grew up with a father who seemed to me to be distant and also struck me as a disciplinarian, militaristic type. I hardly saw a loving God the father in him. I also developed a lack of self-esteem.

It didn't make sense to believe in a loving God. It didn't make sense to have faith. And yet, despite these twin wounds that ran deep inside me, I became the good boy, the nice guy, the one who wanted to please everyone. It wasn't obvious to me then, but I apparently was hungry for love and acceptance. And aside from that, I became a religious kind of guy, a churchy person. Apparently, I too was trying to win God's love and approval.

I am not sure how or why I ended up being so, so today is perhaps a good time to trace it.

(To be continued)

posted by Resty Odon # 7:04 PM 0 Comments

Saturday, April 19, 2025

Thoughts on an FB Reel

Flooding my FB lately are reels of past artistas visiting the wake of recently departed colleague or their family. Like many others watching those seconds-long videos, I suddenly found myself flooded with thoughts and memories from the past, with the resulting emotions being a mixed bag, a whirlwind.

If not for the captions, I would not be able to guess who those familiar faces were of my childhood: Celia Rodriquez, Daisy Romualdez, Dina Bonnevie, Lotlot de Leon, Ramon Christopher, Azenith Briones, Marissa Delgado, Nova Villa, Helen Gamboa, Perla Bautista... I haven't seen them for an eternity, so I was happy to see them once again in one place, with some still looking good like a well-preserved museum specimen, with others not so much. It reminded me of the fickleness of time and the volatility of fate, how you can be superstar one minute and be 'nobody' really quick the next (in the world's estimation, that is).

Then I wondered how they were all doing, how they were getting by, now that they are all replaced by young ones in an industry that spares no one, offers no social security or security of tenure, ever-ready to discard you like yesterday's underwear the moment you are past your "sell by" date. How do they keep their sense of equilibrium in such an ungrateful, capricious world?

If they were only as good as their last performance, how does their 'center' hold so to speak? Good for them who had the foresight and are able to provide for themselves under the shadow of their charmed existence, but what about the others? What about those who didn't show up?

Then I thought of how growing gray hair, getting bent with your wrinkly bits here and there sagging, obsolescence, and death are inevitable.

Good thing there's such a thing as scrolling past unwanted thoughts on social media.

What was I thinking when I opted to dwell on those moving images? Next reel, please!

posted by Resty Odon # 7:28 PM 0 Comments

Tuesday, April 15, 2025

Slander Season Begins

It's election time once again, and so the mudslinging is expected to pollute the airwaves to 100% saturation. Hey, are you actually expecting a campaign debate about platforms and programs? Don't be ridiculous. What you can expect are slander and defamation galore, not to mention the spreading of lies.

Complementing this reality is our love for showbiz gossip. As of this writing, the word war between comedian-actor Dennis Padilla and his beautiful children with Marjorie Barretto are competing "Trump's tariff tantrum" (as one editor deftly put it) and China's military drill for an impending invasion of Taiwan. The noise generated on social media, I figure, could power solar panels and nuclear reactors enough to avoid outages for 10 years.

If we are not careful, we can easily get caught up in the ensuing maelstrom. After all, who doesn't love to listen to juicy stuff? As one veteran media man once pointed out, "That's why FB reels are most effective as clickbait."

It behooves us, therefore to reminder ourselves of basic do's and don't's. What can we discuss in public and what can we not?

What I learned is that, public matters, including very public acts of public officials concerning matters of public concern are par for the course. Private matters, including private faults or sins, when discussed in public is gossip: malicious and defamatory in nature. In Christian moral terms, gossip, whether true or not, is slander, if uttered inappropriately -- that is, if discussed with a third party who has no business knowing it.

In legal terms, as a former colleague turned lawyer pointed out, there are notable differences. "Truth is a defense to defamation whether as libel (written form of defamation) or slander (non-written form of defamation). If defamation is against a private person, then malicious intent is presumed, but if against a public person, you have to prove negligence."

She explains further that defamation in the Philippines is "more confined to imputing to someone a crime, vice, or defect that tends to put a person in dishonor or discredit him/her. So for example, if you call someone who is indeed bald "kalbo," then this is not considered defamation, but if you call someone "prostitute," then it is a case of defamation."

There are a few exceptions to the rule against gossip and malicious speech.

In the case of persons considered as "public property" like showbiz people and celebrities whose livelihood depends on the public consumption of their professional and personal affairs, their issues may be legally discussed in public by common folk. If a celebrity airs his/her dirty laundry in public, that would be fair game for public, er, interpretation and analysis.

(Personally, I would still be uncomfortable lest I end up judging a person's character especially since I don't know him/her personally and I am not privy to the whole story. (Remember that every story has two sides -- even three sides: the sides of the two antagonists and the side of the one caught in the middle and took a neutral stance like, say, Switzerland).

There are very few other exceptions when it is legitimate or necessary to discuss a person's faults with a third party, like when a sibling reports another sibling's wrongdoing to their parents with aim of correcting a mistake, or when you are confessing your sin to a priest, or when you're in a counseling session when you need to reveal identities, but in confidence and within a safe space, or when you are reporting a crime to the police when a misdeed takes on a public dimension.

Another important exception is when discussing an issue to share a lesson or illustrate one's point, but without revealing identities.

An extreme case is during war or when facing criminals, murderers, torturers. Of course, why would you reveal that you are hiding 1,000 Jews in your basement, or that you are entrusted with the family's jewels in the attic, or that you know the state's secrets? Being overly honest in this case would be plain stupid, even under the pain of torture and death, as long as the aim is to uphold what is right and good and true and protect life and limb and property.

It is sad that, during elections, a lot of people take slander lightly. They think it is okay to spread lies, assume doubtful things as truth, and invent malicious things against fellow candidates when it is, in fact, equivalent to murder, the murder of reputations.

The worst cases are out-and-out cybercrimes, when some people have the gumption to steal other' people's identities to make threats or extort money from the unsuspecting.

In Christianity kasi, when it is none of your business to talk about a person's private faults with a third party (emphasis on private), it is not just uncharitable, it is a serious sin even if the accusation is true because it is impossible to take back what you have released like minute spores or seeds in the four directions of the wind. How much more when the presumption proves to be untrue? -- it becomes a case of bearing false witness against thy neighbor.

Righteous speech is one of the hardest things to obey, of course. But we can't deny its wisdom, especially when we find ourselves on the receiving end of malicious thoughts from a judgmental public.

posted by Resty Odon # 7:59 PM 0 Comments

Sunday, April 13, 2025

Small-town report

Another year-end ritual of going home and keeping my ear plugged to the ground on the offbeat and the newsy among other things hometown. This time around, I plugged off almost entirely; I didn’t bring my laptop, and I refuse to have an Internet-connected smartphone or tablet, and I waited to see what would happen.

First off, the firsts:

For the first time, I didn’t read anything. I repeat – that’s a first, in my history of vacationing. That’s three whole weeks, or almost. I brought Kindle, just in case, but it went right through hibernation.

As in last year, I too had a full-blown country music phase ‘soundtracking’ my ‘staycation’ in the province. The songs I used to despise in my childhood as “adult songs” were now a thing of boundless beauty to me. And I didn’t care what anyone else thought. The set list, at least in my mind:

Ventura Highway - America

Sister Golden Hair America

Dust in the Wind - Kansas

Country Roads, Take Me Home - John Denver

Tin Man - America

A Horse with No Name - America

Sandman - America

Bonus tracks, if only to break the monotony:

Hotel California – Eagles

Stairway to Heaven – Led Zeppelin

And the biggest headline news? There’s a new status symbol in town – actually, since last year: fireworks during New Year’s. The terrible noise of New Year’s eve firecrackers was toned down compared with last year’s, although the pet cat and dog still got traumatized -- the dog wouldn’t eat, while the cat sought the unlikely shelter of kitchen cabinets. In all the four major directions, there was a major fireworks explosion going on competing for little children’s attention. Baby Saimon, my brother Rommel's son, certainly had a good time.

This new trend is less noisy, but far more showy, social status-wise. I don’t know which I prefer, though, because both are terrible air pollutants -- not a good idea if you have household members with asthma and the like.

Next: There are now three malls in town -- three malls! They are mini-malls to be exact, if Manila’s monstrously big malls are to be the standard. But they are malls just the same, one with proper twin escalators, albeit the structures merely have two stories.

Another thing noticeable was the proliferation of Internet shops in certain places, particularly in front of the university, my hometown being a university town. There was a time you could count the Internet shops with the fingers in one hand. The only time I sought the help of Internet connection, however, was when a long-time client (meaning preferred client I couldn’t refuse) sent me some work for editing and proofreading. ASAP, he said, if I didn’t mind. Happy holidays!

This is a carry-over from last year, but this new beef dish remained a hit: pigar-pigar. Originally invented by food stalls in Dagupan City, it has become a town favorite. I should try and experiment with this recipe one of these days. Pigar-pigar, as a verb in Pangasinense, roughly means "to turn over and over." Why pigar-pigar? I surmise it's because the recipe involves marinating the meat in soy overnight, at which span of time the filleted pieces of meat are to be turned over several times to even out the immersion.

What preoccupied my meals, however, was the humble dish of papait or sekan. Sautéed simply in tomatoes and white onion, it was bitters heaven. Speaking of herbs, my mother reminded me again that a kumare of hers (Jeck, Rommel's godmother) who worked in Lebanon as a DH discovered that the Lebanese grilled in olive oil a certain herb we have always considered to be only fit for pigs (no offense to the Lebanese; we are merely being ignorant). We call the grass, or herb, ngalub. My mother also clarified that tulango, another one we consider fit only for pigs, is what they consider in Manila as kulitis or the native spinach.

Other hometown favorites and home-cooked meals I indulged in included: inlubi, round latik ricecake, higado (my father’s recipe), bulalo/nilaga, buridibud, and bulanglang. I missed certain recipes of yore, such as the inkaldit, kulambo, and tapong. Due to allergy or fears of allergy, I avoided touching sinigang na hito, grilled hito, burong dalag, dilis, alamang, and bagoong. I couldn’t resist the pinakbet, however, which unavoidably contained the fish-based reddish brown bagoong. That's a terrible deprivation for a Pangasinense like me.

Nevertheless, I am reminded that, from the perspective of a native, the beauty of Philippine cuisine is that it is done just right. It is not too rich like Chinese cuisine; it is purposefully under-spiced, unlike Thai and Indian cuisines; and to the adventurous, it is endless in its customized variety, in a way that Malcolm Gladwell would approve (chunky tomato theory and all).

As to my neighborhood, amazing is the operative word. No, stupefying, as I was left speechless, even humbled and mortified, because I could only dream about the material achievement of our long-time neighbors. I felt happy for them all, but did I have to feel left out, too?

Thanks to OFW money, most people’s houses are almost like those of exclusive subdivisions in Manila: gated, with tallish fence, car... Make that cars. There is at least a couple of houses with high-end roofing material. Wow.

I was reminded that nothing is indeed impossible these days. Justin Bieber became an international star because of one YouTube video of his that went viral. The same story is repeated locally in the case of, say, Charice Pempengco and Arnel Pineda. To be sure, these three people have something remarkable in them with or without the validation of gazillion YouTube hits. Their excellent talent has always been there. It just so happened that new technology turned things around to their favor.

When I looked around in my little provincial reality, the same prodigious story is happening on a smaller scale. Gone are the days when certain people I know from childhood were just the helpless, sniveling kids that they were. Most of them are gone now, in that they have long left town, but look at their own families and houses today.

J’s house now looks like a grand mansion compared to its old self. R’s house looked already grand then – marble tiles and all. It is even better furnished now, with an air-con for each room.

How on earth did J. possess a car? Or even his younger brother N? Isn’t life unfair? J. couldn’t even pass his subjects in school!

One house even have not one, not two, but three cars! (There was a time all of us only had tricycles or motorbikes, or not even, just bikes.)

As for B’s family – another wow! Everything has now leveled up, starting from the ornamental plants.

L’s house is one of those high-end houses I was talking about earlier. How did he obtain all that? I heard he hit the jackpot with his wife after they got a big break as local fish dealers at the public market.

As to my first cousins on the father’s side, if I recounted their good fortune one by one, I would not have enough space.

Most of my classmates are gone as well. The nurses abroad have especially made it big. They can afford to travel around the world monthly and build palaces that would make the mansions at Ayala Alabang look like tenement or bunkhouses.

The shocker is when I went to B’s house. Also fueled by nursing, I was totally incredulous at the improvement. No, it was a leap, an unbelievable one, from a flimsy nipa hut to richly upholstered and tiled affair! Oh my God! Was I overcome with a kind of envy I didn’t know I had.

I had to blunt the shock by rationalizing. I prayed for the Holy Spirit to open my mind because I couldn’t take what I just witnessed. I couldn’t take the fact that I was left out, that my whole family was left out.

But one day, my anxious prayer was answered. Alone in silence after all the festivities, I sat down with the realization that my neighbors had to pay big time for all of it. They were in for a great trade-off. I just have to list down the cons.

A died of cancer of the colon.

B had to work as DH in Hong Kong when she was a college graduate in Manila, and after that, she contracted breast cancer, although she survived.

C worked for how many years in the UAE as DH. Same story: she’s a UST Commerce grad. How depressing and traumatic is that?

D’s much sought-after baby boy K died. He was not even one year old, I think.

E died after a botched attempt at abortion. That is after the family lost the father, who was not old enough to die.

F lost his father when he was not even 50 yet. Worse, his family discovered that he had a mistress and left her with a daughter, a sister they never had.

G’s husband had long been in coma, and eventually died after having his family endure years of silent suffering.

H’s brother Y died suddenly from a snake bite when he was still in grade school.

I. gained the whole world but left her faith in favor of a new one.

J died of asthma before tasting the fruits of his sacrifice. His children, though, all left their faith, except for one.

K died of lung cancer when she never smoked a cigarette. She suffered for it for years prior to that.

L got divorced from his wife and got separated from his sons. He didn’t see them physically for years.

M lost both his parents, his mother after a long bout of stroke and cancer of the stomach.

N lost her beautiful daughter K to brain tumor at such a tender age.

O lost three babies in a row, the last when she was already two years old. She also had to endure years of abuse as an undocumented worker in the US.
P's mother has been in a wheelchair, and judging from her face, her emotional life doesn't look good.

In almost every family, there was someone who had to sacrifice by going abroad. None of us in my own family had to, and we are complete, so far, thanks be to God.

And I don’t have any idea what else they could be missing, what other pains they have gone through.

But alone with myself, or with God, I had to confront my envies. God, who sees everything, is the provider of all good things – who am I to scream no? who am I to question him as to whom to bless and not bless materially? And for that matter, whom to embarrass or punish with poverty and want, and who to visit with sickness and sudden death?

I appeased myself with this consoling thought: What is success anyway? It’s all relative. Success depends on one’s own definition of success. For me, success is when I am able to do what God wants me to do. Maybe I am not loved less, just different. I was greatly consoled by thoughts like this.

But an unconscious side of me was in disagreement. Obviously, it’s I that’s the problem. I and my own secret impositions on myself. I had a problem with integrating my head knowledge with my ‘heart knowledge.’

And it turns out, all along, my heart has been saying, “I am not satisfied with my lot.” Worse, I suspected that "I am being punished, or my family, for some sins we aren’t aware of, that are living under a curse, or a spell somebody we had hurt cast upon us."

On my way back to the city, inside the bus, I took a peek at the window in the gathering light of day. Down the road I saw a beautiful house, with a well-appointed garage. And in the garage was a sleek car, of recent make. It was such a dreamy image. It was an image directly from my dreams.

Then I began to realize that, ever since I was a child, I have unconsciously vowed to myself that, being born of poverty, I would rescue my family from poverty. And I failed. And it hurt me profoundly, and I had been angry just as profoundly that I failed. That that anger is what has been causing my hypertension lately, not to mention the host of other psychosomatic symptoms I complain about now and then.

In the silence of this realization, I was reduced to wiping rampaging rivers I couldn’t contain. Then long silence between me and my God.

Then I felt good. I felt relieved of a burden worth decades of being bottled up. “It’s okay. I am good as I am.” I give myself a butterfly hug, a kind of self-embrace I learned from trauma counseling. “I am not my failure to deliver the goods.” I added, which was a learning I had from the Landmark Forum seminar.

When I hit the dirty cacophony of grungy Manila, my ultasensitivity to noise was suddenly gone. I ate salty dishes earlier, and I didn’t get hypertensive like before, for some reason.

I have been healed! At least I claim it so.

Alone again, in my room, this time in the city, I would read this message as I randomly opened my Bible:

John 9:1-3: Jesus Heals a Man Born Blind

"As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?'"

"'Neither this man nor his parents sinned,' said Jesus, 'but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.'"

posted by Resty Odon # 5:19 PM 0 Comments