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Inspiring IPAG, inspiring Mindanaoan

I can somehow outfox others in giving an enthralling remark to the Integrated Performing Arts Guild (IPAG), the resident Theater Company of Mindanao State University- Iligan Institute of Technology and the most acclaimed Theater Company of the Philippines with my familiarity.

I was with my classmates on watching the show but one thing would surely differ in the course of admiration and fascination to that, between me and with them. Yes, I will differ in that, for I was once an IPAG applicant. I know how difficult to be a member and the feeling of exhaustion after a bone-cracking warm-up we’ve shared before. I do really appreciate the show then. I admire their perseverance, talents and the forte they have.Just try to imagine that I’m already overtired with a warm-up, how much more to that what they had recently produced? A show which is, I believe, compelling and on the same hand pedagogically aided me as a mindanaoan with the things that I must be aware of. The things about how diverse cultures dwell in my place, how unique to be a mindanaoan and how beautiful is the thought of unity in diversity of the tri-people: the Muslim, Indigenous people and the Christian settlers.

Showcasing the cherished dance stories that seem like a hazy mist in these days is a heroic act done by IPAG to show the well diverse culture orientation of MSU-IIT. Watching the world renowned individuals dancing and Mr. Steven Patrick Fernandez, their amazing director drumming with grace uplift my being. Every number never failed to bring color and coherence to another one. The show also showed the tales of courting of every of the tri-people. A Muslim man would really do anything to his loved one, a Christian that never hides and denies his feeling and a Lumad that undoubtedly respects the quintessence of the women he treasured.

Even on the first sight, I already felt the cultural experience that deserves the hundred of peso I asked from my parents.Their purpose of cultural persuasion and reminding me of what I ought to be reminded was indeed triumphant in one way or another. 

Smiles and Hands of Success. Truly,  IPAG triumph in the success of effective relaying of  message of the show.

Then, I made the point of looking back to the controversial “Enough is enough” post in the bulletin boards of the College of Arts and Social Sciences where my course (AB English) and I belong. I felt pity about the disorientation of that person displaying it. The show is indeed worth to be not paid of a hundred but, a more of that instead. IPAG is truly the one that made CASS higher than any other. IPAG has been the one that made Philippines known to the other parts of the world. IPAG is the one which let IIT embarked on the stream of eminent universities and indeed let it to across beyond the borders. Being exposed with that kind of theatre production made me to view Mindanao in its different angles. I aerially witnessed Mindanao’s copious potentials. Leading Mindanao of abundance in customs was what I saw in using the worm’s eye view.

Heads must be up with delight and pride to have IPAG in MSU-IIT. I am hopeful to await more from IPAG. Kudos IPAG!

Photo Credits:

OFFICIAL Fan Page of the INTEGRATED PERFORMING ARTS GUILD (IPAG)

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=321462157889699&set=a.253607868008462.55527.253607138008535&type=1&theater

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=460930057276241&set=a.336113423091239.70885.253607138008535&type=1&theater

Slight Conversion

                     The more phenomena, the more pious are the people. 

                     Are you with me with this notion?

How could you see in your mind's eye the change that can happen without any rehabilitation? You might imagine a miracle, but for me, I see it like this. I see people transforming their obscene and evil acts into a more appreciable virtue in these days. For we are all now nervous to experience internal and external displacement that other had been through after the Sendong stricken us last year.

                     It brought us to a scenario of glum and nostalgia for our lost. The lost of especial people and of our properties for they were all buried by the natural phenomena we, ourselves had triggered. Blessed are we for we’ve survive from that. And if you are, then, you’d surely felt the feeling of slight conversion. A conversion wherein a half of yourself is tired to restart your voyage again for living a good life. You’re out of the track for your damn motivations are always repeating in the midst of your world. I refer the stimuli to be pious as the phenomena: typhoon, earthquake, tsunami and etc, for these were all regarded as the signs of the end of times. You know, like God accepts U turn, but too much of it will lead you astray. Turning back to God must be sincere and genuine after all.

                   Nowadays, you might also hear how many and much prayers the people are voicing about, for we can’t deny the spirit of being a being. We can’t prohibit ourselves not to appreciate people’s praise about how prayerful and a good person you are. Nonetheless, these are proofs of how we care for our future’s sake, asking God for his pursuance of giving an air for us to breathe.

                    I mind you, if ever this new typhoon Pablo will make its way to devastate us again like what Sendong had done, you’ll just repent and make a remorseful life because of your sins for only a day or a week. You’ll being is just surely a matter of a slight converted soul then.

We can be Saints, if we want

            “Am I doing at this moment what I ought to be doing?”

             I’ve been asking myself with this question for hundreds of time then, after a seminar took that question to stunt my nerves in brain, strummed my vocal chords making a sound redundant to what God has always wanted the mankind to become. “God wishes us all to become saints” as what had St. Alphonsus Maria De Ligoure had hit a chord for his fellow faithful before.

             If that was it, all of us must do things in accord to his will. Let us not end up like those elderly people who had just started to be good in their lives only in their twilight years. Just because they wanted to be saved, just because they repent from all of their sins, they would now go to church every day, attending all the possible masses that will be celebrated. From a vicious youth being they would now turn out to be an angelic old being having a veil as their hope-to-be halo, devoted to perhaps half of the number of saints. Who knows that by those long novenas they recite, somehow their illness will be healed and their humiliating deeds will be atoned.

              How about us, the youth? Would we like to wait for bad lucks to be happened to our lives? How long will we wait then for ourselves to be transformed?

              Oct. 21, 2012 stunned the hearts of every Filipino all over the world and indeed let it to gloriously throbbed having been pumped by the thought of the joyous elevation of Blessed Pedro Calungsod, a native of Cebu, to the rank of Sainthood. Saint Pedro Calungsod is the second saint of the Philippines next to St. Lorenzo Ruiz of Manila. Proud and happy are we having these two saints, recognized by the church, for we shared the same nationality with them; being a pure blooded Filipinos in mind and in soul.

               Individuals think it’s difficult to become saint and yes indeed. It even takes years and decades for you to be canonized, ensuring for your worthiness to be called as such. But, to tell you, in this case, it is not like those of the modern politics for it chooses not by colour or race, may you be a king or a beggar, slave or an average person you can be a saint. This simply proves that it is open for all those ordinary people who do ordinary things extraordinarily well.

                On the face of it, people misunderstand of what really a saint is. In fact, we often even exclaim “How a sinner like me could and would become such a saint?” If we do allow ourselves to be trampled with this wrong conception then we can really hardly achieve the desire of God for us to be perfect. In the bible, Jesus said to his listeners “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48. The servant of God- Frank Duff in his book “Can we be saints?” that also inspires this article, was right when he said that every person that is born is called to be a Saint. If there is verve inside of your heart you will be surely given sufficient help to carry crosses that abides in your way to sainthood.

                 In this era of numerous world disorientations, we must then make a move for a change for ourselves and eventually for the conversion of this generation. Let us try to sanctify our diminutive duties. Even your effort to trash a candy plastic could start for a great change. Maybe by mortification of your wants like watching folly television shows, eating your favourite food, playing computer games and even the thought of making your life unchaste would then conspire to the angels in heaven singing alleluia to the lord. Everything will be fine, if we’ll make it fine. Let’s imitate virtues that ought to be imitated for. Let us just always remember that we can be saints, if we want.

Saecula Saeculorum

(Forever and ever)

For I do hear nothing but shouts of the foe,

For I can see nothing but violence;

These secular endeavors engulf me with horror.

Clamor of cries outburst this pity soul,

Shall this lingering apathy be out of cognizance?

Lest I’ll choose to be dying in agony

Than to commit immorality;

To reciprocate those inhumane deeds,

To repent for my tomfoolery,

To follow instead the divine will

Is my ever, ever reverie

Lest I’ll choose to be wallowing in poverty

Than to curse my circumstance;

To quench thirst of my own dilemmas,

To appease hungriness on my lonesome time,

To not pile burning coals on my head

Is my ever, ever wish

Lest I’ll choose not to sleep anymore

Than to be full of vigor in changing white to black;

To follow not my mind but my heart,

To accept friend that proved to be traitor,

To love them and to care for them

Is my ever, ever want

New dawn will surely sends radiance of light.

Bringing luster and joy shining in my heart,

Making me free from error and sin,

Hope this sun will continue to shimmer

Forever and ever

No More Walls

You would surely come to think that death is better than living a life like mine. If only you know the enormity of being a son of an accused person; if only you can feel how boorish feeling seeped into my veins whenever and wherever I hear those words, I beg you to early adjourn all what you are busy for and take time to comfort me, please. Yes, I’m still young and just a sixteen year old lodger of this world but so what? I can now relate my tears to those of the television dramas.
            My story neither is yet in its climax nor at its peak then, I directed my acts in this world, but, there are a lot of irksome pressures that influenced those. Anxieties that may affect you as well as it is true to me today.
            I came from a simple but happy and simple family but all of us wince to this thought- that my mother is having an affair with my neighbor. Well, I should put an adjective to that (I’m sorry Lord for saying this) ugly and hen-pecked husband. What a world? Can’t they just zipped their mouth and try to scrutinize what causes the impulsion of this hullabaloo? The saddest thing is that my little sister is thought to be the disgraced child born in that adultery. Very sad for in the very first place, my mother couldn’t do an infidelity with my father, wouldn’t even decide things without the consensus of my father. Oh my poor little sister. Only awful people can afford to agree to that frivolous hearsay. Having these hurts that bleeds in my heart are just maybe few of the reasons why many students have gone out of their dreams. How can I, a mediocre individual would study then with these controversies that is being faced by the one who made me exist to this world?
            On the other hand, I know I’m being given a problem, like this by God because He knows I can endure these. I know God is with me. You know what would I survive until now? It is because I always think that my problems were just tiny speck of the wounds that Jesus has suffered here on earth on her way to Calvary.
            And what had happened today? I feel pity for their family that loathed and hated us; They are now not any less than pieces of broken glass on the floor, their house is no longer a home, it is only but a house. A house that if you would compare to facebook, facebook is grateful to have a wall, perhaps, but they? Their souls are now dying and not living in a house of no more walls.

A Salutatory Address that never was

I’m an easy going student in my grade school years; I do pass exams but not enough to be hailed on the top. Being on high school is a more demanding world that requires a lot of courage, but what is my attitude towards studies on my elementary years is exactly incongruent to my secondary toils’ and hustles’ fears. I faced it with the grace of GOD.  Knowing that with God in my heart, it’s not about goodness at all times but the opposite instead. Regardless of that, I had managed to reach the top and ranked advanced when pitted with our elementary class valedictorian. But, it had only true for one year. On the next three years, I was just second to him.

I’m not a late bloomer anyway; it’s just that I didn’t use the most out of my undiscovered skills.

Confident is the right word I can describe to myself in my 4^th year Deliberation of Honors. I know, I somehow deserved the title I did once taken for granted. But what had happened? Again, I seconded him. And what follows in this article is the salutatory address that never was delivered because of some problems.

Yes, in our batch I'm the CLASS SALUTATORIAN. Congratulations to myself! It came out like that not because I'm just second to him in academic ranking which is just a matter of ZERO POINT something. Even though he's first in that,  I still have chance ranking 1st in Extra- Curricular Activities. It happened like that because of this, I'm Top 13 in attitude. Shame on me, shame on me!

And so, being in that rank, I was told to make a salutatory address not knowing that after finishing my piece they will be saying "Aw Ian, Valedictorian raman diay ang mag.ADDRESS" wala man lang sorry? Awtsch! PUTAKTE! WALAY KLARO!

Even it haven’t been heard by my school folks before, I personally thanks for this 21st century new skill of writing which is BLOGGING. With this, I can now present my Salutatory Address that never was.

Please have time reading this. I will be very glad then.