praying for a taal miracle

i’m actually surprised that there are no prayer brigades storming the heavens for a miracle that would end the volcano’s level 4 eruption, as well as the  earthquakes and fissures that signify magmatic activity that could escalate into a lethal explosion of level 5 proportions.  

but wait, just found this. Cardinal Tagle urges Filipinos to include Taal Volcano eruption victims in prayers. according to a january 13 circular:

In solidarity with our brothers and sisters who are affected by the eruption of Taal Volcano Cardinal Luis Antonio G. Tagle requests that a second collection be taken at all Masses from the evening of Saturday, January 18 and the whole day of Sunday, Janurary 19.

…We also encourage that intention that the eruptions may end and that all may be safe be included in the Prayer of the Faithful of all our Masses.

rather cryptic and hardly inspiring. but thanks na rin for the second collection (sana the first also) for the taal victims, and yes let’s pray for their safety, but how about praying even harder for taal — lord, let the magma subside, the eruptions end — which would take a miracle, yes, and where else to turn for a miracle, who else to lead prayers for a miracle, for maximum effect, before things get worse.

it would take a lot of faith of course, because we know that not all prayers are granted, but let’s give it a shot, why not. we have more to lose than we’ve already lost and continue to lose, across all classes and sectors, including religious orders that have retreat houses in tagaytay and, of course, the altas of forbes and dasma and the new-rich for whom a resthouse or hideaway with a view of the crater lake had become a status symbol.  

but never mind. baka naman everyone’s already praying hard. what’s important is that we’re all on the same page, praying for the same thing: for taal to calm down. hindi na sana mag-level 5, because that would be catastrophic for quite a major chunk of luzon.  

i guess we thought taal volcano would accommodate us forever just because her last eruptions were rather mild and subdued. and so we thoughtlessly fearlessly took over her slopes, and developed developed developed all the way to the top, the more spectacular the view of the lake, the higher the returns, ka-ching!

the babaylans and shamans say that the gods are angry and need placating, perhaps with a promise to show a little more respect for the volcano, keep our distance, so to speak, and perhaps with a living sacrifice tossed in for good measure, why not indeed.

the scientists are more circumspect but saying essentially the same thing, that we have trifled with, messed up, the unique ecology of a killer volcano, we refused to heed warnings of danger to come, and now we pay the price.

New Eruption from Taal, One of the Most Dangerous Volcanoes in the Philippines

Few volcanoes on Earth pose as much of a potential threat to human life as Taal in the Philippines. It’s a caldera volcano that last erupted in 1977 and which has over 24 million people living within ~60 miles (100 km) of it. Taal has the potential for large explosive eruptions that could spread ash across much of the Philippines, including the capital, Manila. Read on…

Sylvia Mayuga (1943-2019)

Maybe if I had known that she was ailing, and in grief, I wouldn’t have been so jolted by her death. But we hadn’t been on speaking terms these last years, but which wasn’t new. Ours was an on-again-off-again relationship — most times we were simply on different wavelengths, she the Libra, me the Virgo, even as we shared the hippie’s faith in the promise of the Age of Aquarius, though we did wonder why its dawning was / is taking forever.

Met her in the late ’70s when I started running around Malate, reading birthcharts. She was one of the first to ask for a reading, and she said after that it was a test, she knew her astrology and was checking me out, as in, was I for real? “Authentic” was the word she used, and I passed with flying colors, it would seem, because she was in and out of my life, took me to my first Metropolitan Theater play, Ang Kiri. Decades later, I took her to Music Museum’s Vagina Monologues. Full circle? With many long conversations along the way, about everything under sun and moon. including why we had these interregnums when we just had to steer clear of each other for the sake of zen and sanity, lol. 

In ’84 I joined her on a roadtrip to Batangas yata iyon, with ATOM’S boycott-elections caravan, and with her usual candor she had asked to be reminded what brought on our last rift, and we got so deep into it, she missed a turn and we were lost for a couple of hours, but she never doubted we would find our way back to the group (Ching Escaler and Butch Abad among them), and to my amazement we did. This was after Ninoy’s killing, when Marcos opened up the Batasan elections to the opposition, and Cory agreed to field candidates but Butz did not, and we found ourselves on Butz’s side, which was so leftist, haha,  

Our last real chat (according to my FB messenger) was in 2011, when she was writing me a review of Revolutionary Routes, the family memoir I wrote, based on my Lola Concha’s Spanish orig that my mom translated into English that Katrina made into a book, and she was curious about, intrigued by, the mother-daughter dynamics across generations, and asked such probing questions, napaisip naman ako.  She had a way of going deep, not to speak of flying high and mystical, and slipping into high-priestess prose, sometimes mahihilo ka sa sudden dramatic shifts.

Not sure anymore why we stopped talking this last time. Politics, malamang, with some personalan isyus thrown in, not helped any by Facebook, which has changed the dynamics of friendship. 

But never mind. What matters is, she leaves behind writings, stories, and shared experiences of very interesting times.  In my book, one of the most colorful, and authentic, characters of the counterculture of the ’60s and ’70s down through martial law — that’s Sylvia Mayuga, pre-Morningstar.

What if Ninoy arrived safely and led the…?

Gerardo P. Sicat 

…  Philippine history would have been very different. He was always preparing for high office – ultimately, that of the presidency. His meteoric rise from intrepid journalist, to town mayor and then governor of Tarlac Province and then to senator of the Republic was designed to lead one day to that final goal of challenging for the presidency.

He was so unlike his wife, Cory, to whom the presidency became a possibility once he was assassinated. This was also the same phenomenon to Noynoy, whose mother’s untimely death months before the presidential elections of 2010 catapulted him to a candidacy that he did not actively seek. These two accidental presidencies would not have happened, And the nation would have been led by one who was preparing for the job almost all his life.

When capable leaders steer a nation, great things could happen. Singapore and Malaysia were guided by leaders with great vision and enormous capability and preparedness. From 1966 through to 1982, Marcos piloted the nation well and forward. And Fidel Ramos, hampered by a short fixed term, solved major problems of the nation that he faced. Suharto, despite his absolute power, steered Indonesia from a greater abyss of the unknown and consolidated what is today a better nation.