Articulations of the Sacred Rooted in Memory by Marjorie Evasco “LAUDATO SI’, Mi’ Signore” – “Praise Be to You, My Lord”

!1 of !12 Articulations of the Sacred Rooted in Memory By Marjorie Evasco “LAUDATO SI’, mi’ Signore” – “Praise be to you, my Lord”. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. —Laudato Si, 2nd Encyclical of Pope Francis 18 June 2015 Sometimes, earth heaves and shakes its big blue body awake and reminds us that she is liquid, and that even the seemingly solid land on which one stands can sway, lurch, split, and drift apart. When it did on October 15, 2013 on a Monday declared a national holiday in celebration of Eid l’Adha, Boholanos felt their island shake and rumble like never before for 34 interminable seconds. They quickly ran out of their houses for safety, even as they beheld their town’s stone church fall to pieces and crumble back to lime dust. It was a time that severely tested the Boholanos’ collective spirit. And in the fallow seasons that ensued, they had to plumb spiritual resources from their own depths of soul, reaching down to the bedrock source of their faith to restore themselves and their communities. Deep down, Boholanos believe in the sentience of the universe and every living thing on earth. It is an enduring practice passed on from the past to the present generation, of elders teaching the young to heed the presences of other-than-human- beings, mga dili ingon nato, embodied in every old tree and forest, rivulet, river, stream, lake and mangrove, anthill and mountain fastness, boulder and cave, and every specie on land, water, and air. It is a belief ingrained in the Boholanos’ primal sense of mutual !2 of !12 obligation, that if one desired to conduct one’s life in great dignity and beauty, then this should be reflected in the way one treated invisible other-than-human beings in the wilderness. This sensibility has survived the violent waves of conquest and colonial miseducation that tried, time and again, to discredit the people’s stories of enchantment as “pagan superstition” born out of ignorance. Their complex life-sustaining worldview still thrives alongside the fully-grown Catholic faith grafted onto their communal lives 500 years ago. In the heart of a Boholano, it is not a contradiction to come to church at dawn to venerate the sacred in the town patron saint’s sculpted image standing on a pedestal, and to go home at twilight through darkening paths and whisper to the invisible ones “tabi palihog, kay moagi ko.” In our time, the living lore of enchantment that undergirds the Boholanos’ spiritual life, particularly in their relationship with the wilderness can be gleaned from the poetry of many Boholano poets, and three of them here can be taken as representatives of their kind: Anthony Incon of Loboc, Clovis Nazareno of Loon, and Ulysses Aparece of Inabanga. Like the wizend balete, these poets have a true sense of place rooted deep in the primal loam of the peoples’ lifeways. They speak as adepts of the Boholanos’ living faith of wonder. *** Incon passed away in 2001 barely in his 30s, but already he spoke in the eloquent Boholano language of spiritual wisdom embodied in the acts of living on this earth. In what has become his signature balak, titled “Sa Imong Pagsuroy sa Lasang,” (On your walk through the forest), Incon’s persona teaches the traveler how to mind his every !3 of !12 step into the forest. The first line of the poem consists entirely of a single word, a terse exhortation to “Stop”: Hunong/ Una ka mosulod sa lasang/ Huboa ang imong sandalyas/ Ang mga lumot na ang mosapnay sa imong mga tiil. (Stop/ Before you enter the forest/ Remove your sandals/ Let the moss now carry your feet.) Without this all-important full stop, the traveler would not be able to mind the hairline fissure between his day-to-day self in the ordinary world and the self he could be transformed into when he communes with the holy. He would be just another trespasser who dashes around the island’s scenic places in a tour van, ignorant of the host culture whose people’s sensibility is fine-tuned to the fragility of their natural world, now being peddled to all and sundry by global eco-tourism. Incon’s poem is replete with verbs of caution and prohibition, to show how the walk in the forest should be conducted: paghinay (be careful), ayaw paga-uyoga (don’t shake), panabi-tabi (say your respects), ayaw pag-ubog (don’t wade into). Slowing down is the attitude that embodies carefulness, which allows the traveler to pay his respects to the living beings, seen or unseen, as he passes by. The probihitive word “ayaw” is meant for the traveler to rein in whatever strong temptation he may have to shake the trees or to wade into the cool fresh waters. In effect, it instructs the traveler to do nothing that would disturb any creature in the forest as he walks through it. The persona also shows the traveler the right way into sacred ground: Sunda na lamang ang mga dalan nga gihimo sa mga agta/ Aron dili mapusgay ang palasyo sa mga hulmigas. (Follow only the paths made by the agta/ So the palaces of the ants will not crumble). The agta lives, a being in the magical world of the Boholano imagination. However, to those who do not know the agta and how they look like, the paths made by !4 of !12 these invisible beings would never be discernible. Any uninformed traveler would not see the path that is right before his culturally-blind eyes as possessing the qualities of the sacred. The persona in the poem does not disclose the marks or signs by which one can know the right paths to take. Only the Boholano initiated to this realm of sacred knowledge, and who could remember what she knows, could proceed on these paths and soon come upon the central human figure in the balak, the miriko, the hermit-sage in the cave, in whom the entire forest is grounded. He is an essential part of it as he keeps the old healing arts alive, seen in the poem’s kinesthetic image of him stirring the wild honey to boil in the pot. Through this image, we also see the hives of the putyukan or honeybees high up in the branches of the primeval trees. In this wondrous natural ecology, the duende, engkanto, and agta live peaceably together with the gangis (cicada), alimokon (mourning dove), and hulmigas (ant). Before the poem ends, the voice of the adept hastens to warn us that our attentiveness to the sacred must be kept a little while longer. On our way back to the world of daily reality, we must continue our vigilance over the ephemeral harmony of life. This is one journey where we cannot pick the flowers growing along the path. Everything in this natural world must be left to bloom, integral, enduring. This is an article of faith born out of the unassailable belief that the island’s natural bounty sustains Boholanos, and that their respect for nature’s gifts in turn sustains the vitality of all life forms. That Boholanos continue to value this intimate relationship with other-than-human beings co-existing with them under the blossoming time-tree is evident in Bohol’s still clean rivers and bodies of water, the undisturbed groves of trees in forests being true to themselves, the mountains and karst hills graceful !5 of !12 where they stand blanketed by gabun (fog) in the early mornings, the maomag (tarsier) with its huge unblinking eyes hopping from one branch to another to catch insects for his evening meal, and the tikarol (kingfisher) swooping low its blue iridescent wings into the stream early in the morning to catch fish for its sustenance. Anthony Incon’s Loboc is largely still intact. It still has its big river which flows out to its mouth in the coastal town of Loay. Emerald clear and still alive with fishes, ducks, and vegetation, Loboc River is now frequented by travelers and tourists whose nature-deprived citified lives find a refreshing green world to enliven the senses. And while an hour’s river cruise would perhaps show them a bit of the culture of the different riverine sitios when its young and old folks dance, sing, and play their musical instruments, it would not reveal to the transient visitor that late in the month of May when their secondary patronness, the Virgin of Guadalupe of Extremadura celebrates her feast, the whole river comes alive in the sambat, a fluvial procession where young musicians mentored by the old musicians of the town band play music on the boat carrying the sacred icon downriver and up again to dock on the left flank of the old stone church. Music is the town’s primary form of prayer on this sunset vispera procession on water. And the next day’s bolibongkingking is also prayer, the dance named onomatopoeically after the three instruments beating the rhythm for the female and male devotees who sway, in the manner of old babaylans, around the Virgin’s statue after the Pontifical Mass, where the angelic voices of the Loboc Children’s Choir had uplifted the entire mystical church to an ecstatic experience of faith. Loboc’s devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe springs from the belief that her power protects the townspeople !6 of !12 from the swelling of the river during the annual season of typhoons.

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