(This book review was published by Tambara, a publication of the Ateneo de Davao University)
* * * * * *
Book Review: Fields of Hope by Fr Roberto
Layson, OMI
…page
2 pa lang tulo’ na akong luha…[1]
I have to shake myself back to my senses while
reading Fr. Bert’s book. I have to
remind myself that no, I’m not listening to a homily. On second thought, with the little that I
know of Fr Bert, he must have shared these stories in his countless sermons
already.
This time, his words are frozen on paper. I can now catch up with his homilies.
When Carol Arguillas of MindaNews invited
me to the book launching of Fields of Hope, I sent my usual regrets. I’m paying through the bank. Send it through courier, or have it
handcarried – I just want the book. Khalas.
Few days later I uploaded a picture of the
book on my Facebook album “Food for the Mind.” Eizel, a friend on FB and real life commented
that it should be labeled “Food for the Soul.”
While I still need to find my own description of “soul”, I say isn’t she
right – reading Fields of Hope just makes me feel undescribably good it must be
feeding something to my soul!
Eizel shared that she reads it to her few
month-old Pablo. Whoa! If that’s not an effective way of “Righting
Mindanao History”, I don’t know what is.
Fields of Hope is a collection of 214 stories
that put faces to the names we just hear of in the news. Places and people that are part of statistics
to drive home a point or quash an argument that Mindanao is misunderstood,
misconstrued, mislabeled, misdirected – all mishaps one can think of. Add to that the Preface, Responses from the
Readers, and a profile of The Author -- you got 217 stories all in all!
MindaNews notes that at least 259 books and
journals on peacebuilding in Mindanao have been published from 2000-2010. Fields of Hope is included in this year’s harvest,
and since the year is not yet over, this is a sign that consciousness towards
the real face of Mindanao is increasing with momentum.
Fr Layson notes that storytelling is a
powerful medium not only in the countryside, but in the metropolis as well. That means storytelling is also a powerful
medium anywhere in between. Each of us
must be in many places within that spectrum, aren’t we?
Page 2 by the way tells a story of a Jolo
tricycle driver who by instinct tried to protect a young girl from kidnappers.
The kidnappers shot him dead in the ensuing struggle. The girl is 7-year old Rachel Ann Gujit, alive
when rescued a few days later, is a Christian; while the driver, unmindful of
his own safety, is 40-year old Iskon Abubakar, a Tausug Muslim. Religion was never a barrier between these
two human beings in the few crucial minutes of their lives together. With this tone, Fr Bert illustrates the interconnectedness
of the people of Mindanao in the entire book.
Written in simple, conversational English,
each story breathes a life of its own in 2-3 pages on the average. It shows distinct images of warm bodies and
hearts full of compassion for each other.
Not that these stories were just told to Fr Bert, but these are stories
that he himself experienced.
Where can you find Muslims guarding the
Christians while they attend dawn masses for Misa de Gallo? Where can you find Christians crawling to the
nearest detachment to inform the soldiers that helicopter guns are pointed at
Muslim and Christian families huddling under coffee trees?
It’s not always that these stories find
their way outside Mindanao, and much less elsewhere. Capturing it in print allows it to be told
and re-told, no different from planting seeds in a field one by precious one. As Fr Bert puts it, while nothing seems to be
happening waiting in God’s goodness and mercy, one day green fields may just carpet
the land.
Let’s take the story of Kali and Pax, named
after the Cebuano Kalinaw, and the
Latin Pax, both meaning peace. They are convent dogs at the time Fr Bert was
Parish Priest of Pikit, North Cotabato.
While Kali was your ordinary critter, Pax was the extraordinary one. He likes to lie on the patio which, during
evenings is visited by frogs whose main purpose was to get all the insects
taking opportunity of the light.
But Pax wants to stretch, too, and the
frogs get in the way. So he carries one gently
in his mouth and drops it on the grassy lawn.
He comes back again for another and goes through the same routine. By the time he’s done a handful others
are already back to the patio! He was
outnumbered but he just continued without hurting them. Somehow he manages to get his little
stretching space.
This is the concept of the Zones of Peace
that Fr Bert built with the communities – an assertion without being
offensive. Take note: he did not do it
alone.
Like many of us, at one point in his life
Fr Bert also could not distinguish tribe from religion: that Tausug,
Maguindanao, Maranaos are tribes; and that Christianity and Islam are
religions. Imagine how much ingrained
knowledge he had to deconstruct upon knowing that one can be Tausug and a
Christian both at the same time! And he had
to learn it from his students at the Notre Dame of Jolo College.
He also showed how Muslim leaders could
also be so pragmatic in the most seemingly mundane situations. When pilots petitioned a Jolo Mayor to
remove the cathedral belfry maybe because it was distracting their view, the
Mayor told them to transfer the airport somewhere else!
At the bottom of the stories are verses
from the Bible and the Q’uran. It seems
to top off ordinary encounters as profound inter-faith experiences: one doesn’t
have to lose his/her faith to be accepted by the other.
With our daily overdose of news on conflict
and misunderstanding, have we ever wondered how four million people must have lived and
survived in the provinces where Fr Bert has served as a missionary priest since
1988? It must not have always been
conflict and misunderstanding, then.
This is the book that will affirm your
belief that the goodness of people always prevails. If you want to be nearer an accurate picture
of Mindanao in your mind, this is for you.
At, kung mababaw ang luha mo,
be prepared.
*****
Cotabato City
September 2011
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