Finding Home

Today I am immensely grateful for the chance to witness beauty beyond words in a world that is somehow bent on making everything unfathomably desperate. That the concert featuring a quartet who, without argument, were the very manifestations of the word 'maestro', was entitled "One Beautiful Night of Music" was certainly germane as everything that transpired, every note played, every stroke and pluck of the strings, every pounding and caressing of keys, every delicate infusion of air to create song was beauty embodied. What is Beauty really?  I define it to be this arresting sense that draws one's attention inward. Inward where the breath is all that exists. Inward where the body is unable to contain such magnanimity and translates it into joyful movement, dance, applause or in my case, tears. Tears that transform into language.  The violin held my heart. The violin that seemed to have a life beyond any incomprehensible reason that sang to the recesses of emotion

In Photo: Ground Zero Barangay Mailhi, Baybay City, Leyte Resilience is a word that is thrown so carelessly these days of surviving catastrophes, miniscule or large-scale. What we fail to see is that resilience, this ability to bounce back from a crisis, depends highly on the quality of mental, emotional and spiritual support we get from those that surround us be it family, friends, community. The particular kind of support as well cannot be just one dimensional. It needs to derive from a holistic perspective and dynamic. The whole person. The whole community. The collective consciousness. The reality we are faced with, however, tells us otherwise as we are so used to just "wing it", barrel through it, summon it. Whatever "it" is to get us through the crisis.   If we are truly to begin the authentic work of healing, transformation, evolution, there is a compelling need to understand that the much needed support to develop real resilience must come from a return to t