Letter to my Kadkadua, Part 2

Fil Am Observer

Agkabannuag

October Issue

Jeffrey Tangonan Acido

Kenka kadkaduak:

In a year and a half you will have to move to Manila—that big city that is home to homelessness and to dreams that have vanished, the dreams of your people, and the dreams of those who have sacrificed a lot to pursue the grand dreams of a homeland.

In Manila—there, there, you will meet your father for the first time—for the first of the time that you ever remember. You will have to get used to his absence. Forgive him. He is in Mindanao fighting a war he does not believe in but had no other recourse but to go down the road of young men who had nowhere to go beyond the fields of his hometown. You will ask countless times what war is like, but he’ll only respond, “the Muslims are peaceful people.” He will tell you the enchantments of the Moros in Mindanao, even speak the language of the Koran, but will never speak of the horrors of shooting or killing anyone. Try not to force the issue. Life is not easy to talk about, let alone war.

In the currency of your dreams your mother will leave you to make beds and cook the food of other people, never yours. For while, both your mother and father will come in and out of your lives. Though in the end you will all be together the distance between you and your parents will be farther than the distance between Ilocos and Hawaii.

When you have learned to love you will understand that your life will be lived in many terminals—bus terminal, airports, jeepney terminals—a constant leaving and going, arriving in places of comfort and confusion, sometimes delusion. These terminals of life will be places of returning and coming: returning to the Ilocos that is vaguely familiar; coming to Hawaii that you will learn to call as home; coming to California that has lost your people’s history; and then returning again to Hawaii that you have learned to call home. There is beauty in this; there is alienation in this.

You will meet many influential people in your lives; the first will be your Chinese professor who teaches Marx as one of the major religions. Oh, the academe will be a place of flourishing for you. There will also be the activists who, in many ways, will teach you to be humble, to lower yourself from the pretensions of the university so you can see the visions of your people—the vision that make love the catalyst of all that we can ever offer, of all that we are willing to give and share with others; the vision that can only be seen on the ground; and the vision that makes us alive because it is one that is steeped in the lessons of justice and fairness. These activists are only active because they want to learn how to love—like your mother. Your childhood and activist friends will be curious on what moved you to have this fiery mouth of yours (often getting you into trouble) and most will attribute it to the activists and academics that nurtured you.

A few will assume that it stems from the hurt and pain you suffered as a child; all the loneliness and painful separations from your family and friends, the many deaths in the ghettoes of Manila that remind you that life is most precious, the historical and present injustices that your ancestors suffer, or even the trauma of dreaming in another language foreign to yours—all these are true but only partially.

For the truth is you act because of the tremendous and resilient love that you received from your family and community. It is a love that grew in the adversities of life; a love that blossomed in the sharing of meals; and a love that continues to grow in the sacred talk-story circles in Kalihi.

This love is not beyond the realm of fantasy; it is lived and real. It is a love that tells the truth, however ugly the truth may be.

If there is any greater lesson you must take to learn it’s this: Never be cynical of love. It will take you many great years—perhaps all your life—to learn but never forget that love is what breathes life into humanity. Do not forget the answer you gave your student when he asked you, “Why do you care so much?” and you answered: “Because I love.” That should be an answer without explanation: “Because I love.”

LETTER TO MY KADKADUA, PART 1

Mag-anka Jeffrey Dalere Tangonan, my kadkadua:

Agmurmurayka! Breathe the air of your ancestors.

Now you see, now you see: You are not an accident of life. Your mother meant it all, this fact of your birthing, its substance and what it means to her and to you. The facts are wrought in stone, those hardy excess of the mountains and hills that depress into the lukong of your birthday, until that lukong—indeed, the Ilocos—reach out to the vast sea in the west: born July3, 1985, in the days of disquiet of your birthland, some few months before the people rise up in revolution against the dictator with only their rage to callthe shots so he, the dictator, would remember, that he had not the right tostay a second longer in power. So you were a prelude to the newfound birth of people's courage, mind you. You never knew—but now you do.

Like everyone else in your barrio, you were born away from the loneliness of hospitals or clinics. You were with your people, in the very heart of it all: in the warm and smoky kitchen built by your grandfather whohad come to Hawaii to seek his fortune over here, maybe misfortune, but fortunenonetheless.

I could imagine the welcome, my dear kadkadua: our twin cries breaking the silence in that hour of our birth, pacifying the anxiety, and giving calm and balm to the mother of our child's dreams, in the Philippines and in Hawaii, much later on. Our whole neighborhood could havecome to give witness to this birthing, the midwife with her crude but certainways, and the relatives' prayers that went with their frenzied ways of attending to the needs of both mother and midwife—and then us.

Someone could have gathered the leaves: the marunggay tocoax our mother's breast so she would have more of those colostrum, the first of the first milk we would need.

Someone could have put out the basi, the arak, the tobacco,the gaiety could have begun right there and then despite our young father'sabsence.

You see: he had to go away to fight a war he did notunderstand. Perhaps he did not like to wage a war with others, but Ilocos being Ilocos, with each parched earth and broken promises, he did not have to justify his leaving, for leaving he had tofight a war for a dictator who bluffed his way into greatness as empty as the fields lying fallow when the first rains of May fail us.

So we were born without him, coming into this world in war and in chaos, and in the din of what was left of the Philippines in those times with rallies and demonstrations that marked each day that we had to fight it out, with mother finally deciding to let go of the homeland and join her family over here so we can have a chance, one fat chance to be something better, to eke it out somewhere else in the hope that in eking out some life would come to us at last.

And so we left, you remember that. We left the barrio of our birth to get into another barrio—the same poverty we were escaping from—in thebig city, where soldiers like our father were doomed to be poor, were the poor were doomed to be poorer.

In the big city, we waited for the coming of our younger sister, Des, she who had come with smiles on her face, sunny smiles, bright smiles, her charm those of the days that gave out some hope for a land so rendered hopeless.

With us, you my kadkadua, Des, and I, we waited for our parents to come home, our mother from a faraway land she had gone to, and our father from the many wars he had to fight in Mindanao.

Some days, our mother would come, but not long—and Des would not know her, remember? Perhaps I was more understanding, more tolerant of absences? Perhaps I was getting used to it, this life with our neighbors shared day in day out, a life of absence, a life of constant looking for something better, something more redeeming beyond the small piece of meat we would share with equally poor children?

Kadkadua: You realize at a very early age that in the geography of pain and separation your neighbors were closer to you than your family in Hawaii—both in reach and intimacy. And your birthland is the same thing, despite its wretchedness: it is where you wanted to stay longer—and linger on. You remember the ceremonies of arriving and departing from this birthland, the ceremonies in the language you knew: Ilokano. Some night an adult with you tagging along would take the bus, and in the morning sunlight, there you were in Bacarra, in those flat lands of rice and garlic that in the east would reach up to the mountains and in the west would bow to the power of the waters of the sea.

This land of the Ilokos you returned to many times, as if in a ritual. And when it was time for you to leave, you just called out to your name: Umaykan, umaykan, di ka agbatbati! (Come, come, you are not to be left behind!) Of course, you were calling out to yourself.

I was calling out to you, my kadkadua.

The sounds of your first language, you are sure, are the powerful winds of the Ilokos mountains, the clatter of the water buffalo's steps as it pulls the sled that carries the bolo knives and shovels that allow the earth to breath, and the flow of the water of life to the thirsty rice fields of the Ilokos. Do not allow this language to be dead in you, kadkadua. It will be a struggle, yes, but it will be your connection to the gods and goddesses you will search for. There is no shortcut to the redeeming ways of the gods and the goddesses, you see.

Kadkadua: Ilokano word for placenta, twin, companion, to journey with, spirit, soul.

HEALING THE EARTH, HEALING OURSELVES

HEALING THE EARTH, HEALING OURSELVES

During the past several months I realized that I have been falling in love again and again with the majestic mountains of Hawaii. The language of trees and the winds speak to me; it is a language of knowing: the trees knowing the winds—and the winds knowing the trees—even before I existed. It is a language steeped in mystery and magic—as it is a language of a life fully lived.

One moment the wind is warm and the leaves of trees rustle with a soft whisper and in the next it gives you chill on your face, wiping off the sweat on your forehead. During one long and arduous climb to the mountaintop, I realized how heavy is our responsibility to take care of our Mother Earth. I realized how sacred is our relationship with the one that has provided for us the food and water we need to survive. When we talk about the mountains, oceans, and the skies we are necessarily talking about the sacred; when we talk about the sacred we are referring to the mute witnesses of this sacredness: the mountains, the oceans, the skies. And yet, this is one lesson that is not easy to learn. For here we are increasingly in the cloud of unknowing with respect to the care we ought to give Mother Earth and its mountains, oceans, skies. Here is a geography of carelessness. Here is a geography of pain too!

Increasingly and violently the skin of our Mother Earth (the Ina a Daga for the Ilokanos, and the Papahanaumoku for the Hawaiians) is being pierced and poisoned by the United States military. I do not say this lightly nor do I want to engage in a philosophical conversation. This abuse we inflict upon Mother Earth is not a mythology in the Western sense. This pain is real. And Mother Earth is hurting.

The pain is being felt here in Makua Valley and Waiakane Valley, among other places in Hawaii. It is felt in the Gulf of Mexico where thousands of barrels of oil continue to kill life in the waters, sky, and land. It is felt in the Ilokos and Mindanao where trees are being felled and shipped to the West. The largest and most merciless of the culprits is the U.S. military where it continues to bomb the face of our Mother Earth. One needs only to walk in Makua Valley where shrapnel and live bombs have yet to be cleaned up. These mountains and valleys hold in themselves the water of life. Again and again the mountains are drilled and put in pipes that divert unnaturally the water from one place to another, in the end starving the kalo (taro) farms of the natives so the U.S military can wash their laundry and keep those uniforms crisp and clean. This water is also used to keep green the many golf courses built on the living ancestral bones of the indigenous peoples of Hawaii. Can you imagine building a golf course over Punchbowl cemetery in Hawaii and Arlington National Cemetery in Washington D.C? What outrage will follow! To the U.S. Military life is cheap for the people in Hawaii, Okinawa and the Philippines.


The psalm of the Hebrews—a sacred text borrowed by the Christians—reminds us that we are made “intricately woven in the depths of the earth.” That is to say we are made of the same mud and dirt we inflict violence on. We inflict violence in the womb that gave birth to us. What a horrible way to die! Many have taken the popular route of recycling; setting multi-colored bins that separate recyclables and compost, paper, and plastic. I am not against this though the peace movement reminds us that ‘if the U.S. military does not stop polluting our earth it won’t matter how many of us recycle.’ The 10-cent reward will not heal the wounds of the land we live on; we must move beyond the evils of profit motive in dealing with our problems and relationships.

Because we value the land with less and less sacredness we in turn value our selves with less and less sacredness. On the same mountains and hills of Makua Valley you can see human shaped targets to be shot at with the most sophisticated weapons. A slogan like ‘one shot, one kill’ is used as motivation. A shot to the head is perfect, a shot to the heart will do. Soldiers are made to practice on human shaped targets so that life itself becomes a target; life itself is a threat; cardboard cutouts of human beings are made to condition the shooter to think that shooting the ‘enemy’ is like shooting a cardboard. And like the human shaped cardboard the ‘enemy’ has no best friends, no father and mother, no emotions of joy and sadness, no birthday parties to attend, it does not eat food, drink water or sleep to rest, only stand there waiting to be shot.

There are many who say that the U.S. military gives us our freedom. We should then ask what kind of freedom is worth killing other human beings over? What kind of freedom do we achieve by destroying our earth?

The Ilokanos say, Agbiag! as their own way of acknowledging that life as a value is an a priori one. Indeed, it is fitting to say Agbiag! and mean really, Long live! Agbiag! is the Ilokanos’ declaration that life needs to be affirmed, and always so.

Indeed we must always affirm all forms of life. And to affirm life is to practice peace. Peace can never be—can never come about—through the murder of innocent people and the rape of our Mother Earth—the greatest tragedies we have to bear with each day. But despite the horrible atrocities of human beings I continue to believe in the vast possibility of world peace.

In peace, we will have a chance to take care of Mother Earth, to nourish back to life this universe that has sustained human life.

In a conversation about peace, one of my friends remarked, “talk of peace is wonderful but imaginative at best.” The comment was meant to temper my idealism. But it also showed his cynical way of looking at life. That friend has accepted that there will always be war and assumes that it is part of human nature to be engaged in wars. He is wrong about war and he is wrong about our human nature. But he is right about peace—it is wonderful and imaginative. Peace must start from our great ability to imagine a reality that is empty of innocent lives sacrificed and the great earth torched.

Peace is not wishful thinking nor is it an abstruse philosophical treatise meant only for those wishing to be abstract or utopian—for those wishing to remain unengaged with the issues that affect our communities.

To practice peace is to practice what our great wisdom traditions and religions have been striving for—community, love, grieving, sovereignty, sharing, struggling.

To practice peace is to acknowledge that we have the right to our own body and land.

To practice peace is to speak freely the language of our ancestors in our homes, workplaces and schools.

To practice peace is to hold accountable the West in its excessive consumption of 75 percent of the world’s resources.

To practice peace is to first lay down our weapons without waiting for the ‘enemy’ to disarm.

To practice peace is to invoke not just our civil rights but our sovereignty rights—a right that goes beyond the U.S. constitution—a right that calls on the higher principle of love and self-determination for all peoples based on their relationship to the land.

To practice peace is to remember and continue our Ilokano and Hawaiian ancestors—Gabriela Silang, Father Jose Burgos, Jose Rizal, Queen Liliuokalani, Abigail Kuaihelani Maipinepine Campbell, Joseph Nawahi and the Kanaka Maoli nation—and their lived resistance to colonization and occupation.

Indeed we must acknowledge that we cannot be cultural practitioners if we do not continue the spirit of resistance started by our ancestors.

Finally, I say that peace is faith that has taken the leap of optimism into a reality that has yet to be unraveled. In other words, we must move and breath towards a reality that is not based on practicality but with creative, imaginative, and radical love.

Mahatma Ghandi once said, “There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.”

Our responsibility now is to sing the song of freedom and dance the dance of justice.

OUR ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF LIVING HOPE

OUR ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF LIVING HOPE

I had the chance to speak before my fellow graduates at a commencement ceremony of my graduate school of religion in the US continent a couple of years ago. This is what I said:

“Aloha, everyone. As I stand here and look at the proud parents, friends and loved ones, I am reminded of my mother. Right now she is working at a hotel in Waikiki, preparing beds and cleaning toilets for the tourists visiting Hawaii. In about an hour, she will finish her first shift. Right after, she will take an hour-long bus ride to go to her next job, at a local bank. There she will clean office cubicles similar to the offices of our professors who have talked to us about our need to work for democracy and justice and equality. My mother will have access to the bigger offices, too, the offices of the powerful. But that access is not about her power of which she has none, but that she has access to these offices because she needs to clean up the dirt in these offices of the powerful who, unmindful of what my mother does and the countless sacrifices she has to go through to pay for my college education, will turn these offices spic-and-span.

“I stand here before you as a proud son of an Ilokana working-class immigrant mother. It is her dedication to her children that has allowed me to go far—up to this point of my education. And yet at times, I feel that I would willingly trade this position for a moment of rest for my mother. It is her dedication to her children that has fueled my dedication to the struggle for economic, cultural, and linguistic justice in the name of our people.

“It took my family at least one hundred years to come to this point of having someone reach a degree of social mobility through education. My great-grandfather harvested sugar and pineapple in the plantations of occupied-Hawaii. And now my mother, three generations after, is working at a hotel, cleaning up the rooms of guests, and making them feel good so that they will come to Hawaii again.

“These hundred years is too long to wait, indeed. And I am lucky. I am the first beneficiary of those one hundred years of sacrifices.

“The Reverend Joseph Lowery, a civil rights leader, cried out, ‘Wake up, you chaplains of the common good.’ He was, of course, giving the admonition that we people in the seminaries and universities studying God’s Word must begin to let go of our claims to knowledge without our people included in these claims.

“This is a wake up call, indeed, even as we must look beyond the walls of our seminaries and universities and get off the Holy Hill and pay attention to those who cannot read our books. Some days, I am convinced that our ivory towers—our seminaries and universities—deliberately keep people of color out.

“But today, we graduates of color have come a long way. But this long way is never far enough to reach our people. Thus, our work is not over. We are still on that journey to reaching out to our people, to getting to that point where we are with them in that long journey to real freedom, to liberation.”

I spoke these words during our commencement ceremony. I had my professors and classmates before me. And even as I spoke those words, I trembled: I trembled at the thought that here was an occasion, another occasion, of a bundle of contradiction: we declare our good intentions, but we do not know if we ever will have the chance to pursue them, translate them into action. I could not settle within me whether I had learned to live a more ethical, just and compassionate life or just learned how to pretend like I knew what I was talking about; I felt, as if the pretensions and posturing that had gotten me this degree was eating away at the idealisms and the kind of ethics that I learned growing up in Kalihi—an ethic of relationality.

The stories of people and their struggles that I have learned outside of the university and seminary did not make it on to the books and texts that we carefully scrutinized, if it did, it was relegated to mere footnotes or labeled as ‘just’ anecdotal evidence, meaning to say—it doesn’t count as ‘proof’—that is to say someone who lost their home cannot possibly be qualified to comment on the homelessness—quote someone else more learned, someone who has studied and earned the qualifications of the white man.

I am not trying to rob away the importance of the great theories and wisdoms that I learned in the university and seminary—I am deeply in debted of the great scholars that I have worked with and the many great classmates that have taught me—there was value learning in the classroom—I only wish to say that the beginning of learning is the realization that everything learned must be met with a deep sense of humility, involvement, accountability, and returning again to the earth and people that have kept you alive and taught you how to love and relate with other people and the land.

Even as I spoke those words, I had my Kalihi neighborhood in mind, its picture distinct and clear, like a landscape demanding definition, like a land demanding nurturing, salving, saving.

It is the Kalihi neighborhood and what it stands for that I had in mind clearly and distinctly when I challenged myself and the other graduates to get out of our shell—out of our Holy Hill—and be with the people once and for all.

Now I see this: before me is a landscape of stories and sorrows—and a landscape of struggles and challenges as well. I had all those theories in mind, and I needed them to anchor in my talk in that graduation ceremony so it would have some resonance. Yes, resonance, indeed!

But on second thought, I did not need to be reminded that the minimum wage has no ethical meaning when what a family needs to survive—just to survive—is more than that amount.

The ethical burden was too much too bare in that talk—as it does until now, recession or no recession. I see the lines of hungry people. I see the lines of children deprived of warmth because their parents have to take on two jobs that would take their quality hours away from their children.

The wisdom I learned in the streets of Kalihi has taught me how to navigate the streets of Sunnydale projects in San Francisco and the South Central streets of Los Angeles. It has also kept me safe from the dangers of the classrooms. In a more subtle way, I have learned to navigate the subtle institutional violence my Kalihi is prone too.

But now, I have come back to Kalihi, to return to its earth and its bowels and its bosom once more. My mind is clearer now: I have to give my share in transforming my Kalihi earth and make it an earth of all the people of Hawaii once more.

This returning is important, as the Tongan poet Konai Helu Thaman reminds us: “thinking belongs in the depths of the earth/ we simply borrow what we need to know.” Indeed we borrow and the only way we can repay the interest of the borrowed wisdom is to come back, when you are ready, and share it with the land and the people.

And now I return to Kalihi with the interest rate of wisdom ever so high—the responsibility to share this wisdom with those who could not afford to visit and attend the great schools that I sat in; to transform this sacred place so all can have access to its rich resource of lived experience and stories that it may end these symptoms of oppression—high drop out rates, domestic-violence, military dependency, substance abuse, violence against women, no medical care, disregard of elders, and the overlooking of the experiences of the youth—the list goes on.

I have recalled what I told my fellow graduates during our commencement exercises when it was my turn to speak.

And now I challenge the new graduates to look into themselves and ask what they can give back to their own people and their communities.


To the graduates of this generation who choose to leave this sacred Kalihi I say peace be with you. I am delighted that you are leaving. Sometimes leaving is part of loving Kalihi. I hope that Kalihi has nurtured you as it has with me. Though at times it was violent I hope you never overlooked its elusive beauty. Remember that the violence is not intrinsic to Kalihi. I hope too that someday when you are ready, at your own pace and time, that you come back. Though Kalihi is alive it is not well—and so we need you—but only when you have sat in silence and heard the voices of the land and the ancestors call to you—you will know this because you will comeback and help not with the sense of guilt in the privileges that you have inherited but with the sense of urgency, clarity and the foresight to simply return that which is borrowed.

The point here is to move forward and to move on. The point here for our graduates is to make their graduation an occasion for hoping.

(Y)OUR COMING TO VOICE IN (Y)OUR NAME

(Y)OUR COMING TO VOICE IN (Y)OUR NAME



For Rev. Emily Joye McGaughy



You have come to voice in our name

Even as you have sought yours, seeking

Salving sentences and taming thoughts

Where language is absent and our grief,

Present as present can be in our search

For the fullness we shall be, takes flight

And flee to the permanent places of our pains.

In the seeking for meaning is all what we have.

It is solitude, this. It is aloneness of the self

We construct for others, believing in the faith

We have to come to grace to accept the truth

Of our bodies, their topography the distances

In the journeys we need to traverse in between

Commitment for difference, with our loss palpable

This sense of what we can do to make sense

With our wounded words, human and going divine

In the manner we can make a vow to live for,

To die for, everyday in one thousand lifetimes

And one thousand death-times in this ceaseless

Cycle of hoping what is yet to come, cool, collected

And clear, as the logic of alien loves beyond premises

Because peaking in all the warmth of smiles we have

From the cold trajectories of our dreams, young

And younger, always aiming holier and higher than

What the heavens can tell, these dreams of color

And the fullness of voice, fear hidden somewhere

Away from the syllables of music that make us one,

The courage in the verses you tell for us to bring

Home, sanctified lines, paragraphs, chapters

Of stories we write, in clear scripts and vision

To redeem ourselves from this sad longing

We cannot know, we will never know, but here

In this presence we have for each other, here

Is where our petitions will go: our prayers for you

Even as we ask you to raise your hand for us

In the name of the Spirit that will forever keep us.



Nakem Youth

Honolulu, Hawaii, March 27, 2010

KALIHI STREAM COMES ALIVE WITH OUR WORK AND COMMITMENT

KALIHI STREAM COMES ALIVE WITH OUR WORK AND COMMITMENT



Jeffrey Tangonan Acido



I grew up a couple of feet away from the Kalihi stream where there, when my cousins and I were young, we would fish for tilapia.



We didn’t use fishing poles. We waded into the clear water barefoot, in our shorts, and caught with delight with our bare hands, those small and innocent hands that felt what a living tilapia felt.



I didn’t like the taste of tilapia so I gave my catch to my grandfather.



The hardy man of the Ilocos who knew what the savory taste of that fish would stuff each of my catch with garlic, onion, and tomatoes and grilled it.



This was more then a decade or two ago, before the stream was filled with all kinds of contaminants or at least before they started to post signs of contaminations.



That stream was full of life: catfish, turtles, and other fishes whose names we never come to know.



By that bank of that stream, the old men and women—we called them tata and nana—would plant all kinds of vegetables and shrubs and trees that yielded all the greens and fruits we needed, the same greens and fruits that I remember were found in the barrio where my parents come from.



Now the stream is filled with garbage, broken bicycles and parts, toilets seats and parts, push carts from shopping centers.



Now the stream has lost its will to live and give off the fish—the tilapia—that I knew when I was a child, with its murky and oily water flowing with so much uncertainty by the slabs of stones and concrete on its path, with wild plants sprouting on the cracks of its cemented banks and side.



A makeshift house not so far away from the stream, and lonely and menacing and used for the ceaseless ceremony of meth abuse, stands by to guard whatever is left of my Kalihi stream, the stream of my young, the stream of my young memory of how is it to flow life’s currents, like the currents of that stream that came alive some years ago.



I am no expert on how rivers or streams work or how to plant papaya trees. What I see is the parallel stories of the youth in Kalihi to this once mighty Kalihi stream.



Somewhere along the way of my naïve, blissful, and idealistic days I was told to wake up, get a job and start to think like an adult or at least understand how the world works.



This kind of socialization started early. I don’t know when it started but I can remember it vividly during my high school years and on towards my college years.



I don’t know who was pushing us to do the kinds of things that stripped us of all creativity, imagination, and idealisms.



But I remember the many things said: they get stuck up somewhere in my head and they refuse to go away.



They said: “If you want a guaranteed job you must learn the Japanese language.” What they meant was since Hawaii is a tourist economy and most of our tourists are Japanese, we must learn the language of those who can buy ours souvenirs, who stay in our hotels and resorts, and who need pampering. After all, this is one definition of tourism: to bring in the tourists that will bring in the money for the economy to grow.



And then, of course, the bonus for the servitude: the tip from the tourist. The tip that validates our hard work, the tip that we must have done something right--smile bigger, bow lower, hide the emotions that make you want to live like a free person.



So instead of learning the Ilokano language I learned Japanese.



For every Japanese word I learned, I forget three Ilokano words I knew by heart when I was young. Quid pro quo: this is what this exchange was all about in my desire to flow with the currents of tourism. I did not understand that the Kalihi stream had its own natural life, that that life had to be sustained, in much the same that I had to sustained the life of my words, the words that would make me understand who am I as an Ilokano in America, as an Ilokano American in Hawaii.



As my fluency in Japanese got better, my conversations with my Ilokano speaking grandfather became one of pleasantries without substance, one that eventually came close to animal grunts, even as I became aware that I was losing my own language. I did not, of course, sense then, even if I was already feeling uneasy, my sense of self and identity. That feeling would come after, years after I realized I could not bring back the memory of the edible tilapia by the Kalihi Stream.



While my grandfather spoke with the eloquence of Ilokano, I drew in my mind katakana, hiragana and kanji characters; I listened but never heard his stories of hurt and suffering. Now our conversations consist of body language, pointing to the here and there, every once in a while I can describe how i feel to him, on bad days I wait for my mother and father to come home--my private translators.



They said: “If you want a stable job, good vacation time, and health insurance you should go for a state and government job—guaranteed good money—‘das how the Japanese and haole people are rich—they made it.”



So instead of pursing our passions for helping people, for creating a more just and safe society I focused on getting a good job with benefits.



I wanted to be like my Japanese teachers and the haole people at the capitol building. They told me that if they can do it I could do it as well. They told me that if you work hard in America and Hawaii, you would be rewarded. They told me that every body is treated equally. And since they made it, I wanted badly to make it as well.



I learned later that the Japanese people in the U.S. and Hawaii were put into concentration camps during WWII. The U.S. government and citizens made them feel ashamed to speak their language even while they took all their property away from them. They were considered as spies, potential terrorists, responsible for the bombing of Pearl Harbor. There were at least 120,000 Japanese descendants at that time; it did not matter that two thirds of them were American citizens. How could they say that they have ‘made it?’ knowing their history in the United States and Hawaii is filled with that deeply buried trauma? Can material wealth compensate for a damaged spirit and community? How can they say they made it when the same thing is happening to Native Hawaiians, Tongans, Samoans, Filipinos and Micronesians? Concentration camps now come in the form of homestead and housing projects and more subtle the education system.



When I left for graduate school in California I discovered that not all haole folks are rich. In fact there are more working class and poor white folks than rich ones. There are more working class and poor white folks than any other working class and poor racial ethnic minority in the U.S. The face of poverty is also white. That they were white mattered little when it came to poverty. Even rich and middle-class white folks practiced a kind of racism, perhaps classism, towards other poor white folks; that the term ‘white trash’ was used by rich white folks to separate themselves from poor white folks who live in trailer parks and other poverty stricken areas. Was this the idea of making it? Do we need to trample at other peoples humanity in order to make it? Are some people more equal than others? What is the measure of success?



They said: “if you want to get your education paid off while you travel the world, you should join the military—good benefits too!”



Instead of studying for the SAT to get into the university we were encouraged to take the ASVAB, the test administered by the U.S. military, a test that gauged our ability to serve in the armed forces. All we had to do was put in 4 years in the service and we can have all the perks of the U.S. military. I did not follow this path but many of my friends did. It’s been 7 years now since we finished high school and not one person among my friends who joined the military finished a four-year degree. Some did not get the money they were promised; many came home from the war in Iraq and Afghanistan wounded in body and spirit. Like their predecessors in Vietnam and other wars they suffer from PTSD and thus, unable to live the same life prior to their deployment. The recruiter told us that we may have to sacrifice their life for freedom; but it wasn’t said that they might have to take another’s life in the name of national security.



I want to say now to my fellow youth that we are not limited to these narrow paths. There is something peculiar about living a life defined by our ability to accumulate wealth and power. We are not defined by what we can buy or how much power we hold.





Let us rid the Kalihi Stream of the garbage that hinders its mighty path; of the drugs that slows the flow of its cleansing and nurturing waters. In less metaphorical terms—we can no longer be defined and limited by these choices. We cannot succumb to these obstacles that hinder our flowing on in life.



I want to say my fellow youth that we don’t have to lose the language of our ancestors at the expense of learning the language of business—namely English, Japanese and soon Chinese. Our language and our culture are more valuable than a business transaction.



We don’t have to lose our ideals, our visions, and our imagination in our work. We can work as community organizers and cultural practitioners. As community organizers, we can create spaces for other youths to express themselves and cultivate their talents. When the young dream of becoming artists, dancers, musicians, poets, writers, we can make sure that these dreams become a reality and not just empty dreams.



Our duty as cultural workers in Hawaii is to make it sure that the diversity that we are—this diversity that makes us—is maintained, sustained, and respected.



Our duty as cultural workers in Kalihi is to make that Kalihi Stream the stream of youthful vision again—the dream of a cultural plural life, the dream of a community that is sensitive to the culture and language of other people, and the dream of a community that makes it sure that all the streams of our life will flow to the sea forever in order to come—again and again—as a beautiful, living, running stream.

NAKEM YOUTH: STATIONS OF THE CROSS IN KALIHI

CROSSING TO OUR RESURRECTION:
A COMMUNITY MEMORIAL AT KALIHI
(RE)ENACTING THE STATIONS OF THE CROSS
Kalihi, Honolulu, HI, March 27, 2010

A NAKEM YOUTH CEREMONY
FOR COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

By A Solver Agcaoili, written for Nakem Youth

ENTRANCE HYMN
(All members of the community will sing the hymn; they are expected to sing in all the parts with the ALL role as well as the community with the responsorial part marked ALL)

ALL:
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

Introduction: Jeffrey (JA)

Kakabsat--siblings in Christ the Messiah, who came among us, lived in this life in the flesh, become part of our story and history.

Christ, the child of the Namarsua, the Creator, is the child of the God that does not end, the Creator that will continue to sustain us, in suffering, in death, in the coming to life again of our bodies and spirits.

ALL:
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

JA:
Christ said, when two or three are gathered in Christ’s name, there is Christ among us, there is Christ in our midst. Let us honor Christ’s presence among us by this ceremony of breaking of the bread and the sharing of the water of life.

The bread and the water are symbolic of the life we share in our faith, the life lived in earnest based on hope and justice and light.

ALL: (Raise the pandesal/bread and water; lay your hands over them)
Namarsua, the God of our life, confident in your promise of your presence among us, your presence in our midst, bless this bread and water so that they become the source of our nourishment of mind and body, spirit and soul.

CM 1: We offer this bread to those who produced it.

CM 2: We offer this water to the universe.

CM 3: We offer this bread to the hungry and disposed.

CM 4: We offer this to the health of the world and nature.

JA: We ask all this in your name

ALL:
Amen

(All will get a piece of the bread and drink of the cup from the same bottled source; everyone will eat and drink at the same time.)

JA: Let this bread and water nourish our body and spirit.

ALL: Let God bless this water and bread. Amen.

Community Member (CM, with a series of numbers for community participation)

JA: The first station of the cross: Jesus is the midst of suffering in the Garden of Gethsemani

CM 1: Lord, even as you go through suffering in the Garden of Gethsemani and even as we go through the same suffering, we ask you to remember us.

CM 2: We are anguished by the continuing divide, Oh God, between those who have the resources to get by in life and those who do not have enough like us.

CM 3: Even as we suffer, even as we witness all these economic injustices, even as the poor like us and even as the poor among us continue to hope for a better life, dear God, Namarsua iti langit ken daga, Namarsua iti biag, make haste to help us.

CM 4: Come, make haste to help us, heal our community, heal our Kalihi, heal our people, and heal our lives, even as you yourself, Christ the Messiah, suffer in our name.

JA: This we ask of you, our suffering Christ.

All: Amen.

JA: The second station of the cross: Jesus is betrayed by Judas and arrested.

All:
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

CM 1: Everyday, there is betrayal in our midst. We betray ourselves, we betray our God, and we betray our Namarsua, the creator of life, by our decision not to act to correct the injustices around us. With the furlough, we betray our youth. God of justice, come give clarity to our education.

CM 2: Even as you were betrayed, Oh Christ, even as you were arrested, we see all these betrayals in our midst.

CM 3: We pray that you remember us even as you hear condemnation. We pray that even as you were condemned, release us from condemnation of the social inequities in our in communities—our being condemned to hold multiple jobs just to get, to endure the condemnation of selling our labor for the minimum wage that is not even sufficient to make our life decent.

CM 4: We pray that you have us all in mind, your sisters and brothers, even as you were bussed with the kiss that signaled your betrayal. We pray that the 30 pieces of silver is not going to be what our worth will be but our worth will be an eternal life with you.

JA: This we all pray

All: Amen

JA: The third station of the cross: Jesus is condemned to death.

ALL:
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?

CM 1: We pray to you, Oh Christ, we pray that we will be spared of the wages of sin and death, even as we become aware of the many forms of death and sin in our communities.

CM 2: With our life, we are also condemned to death. Because of the unevenness of our access to the resources of our communities, because of disparities in incomes, because of the disparities in our access to the goods of our social life, we are also condemned to death. We pray that those who do not look like us, that those who do not love like us, that those who do not think like us will see hope in you.

CM 3: We are condemned as well, true. But we will not accept this condemnation because we know, our Namarsua, the creator of life, the harbinger of our hope, the promiser of our redemption, that you have been condemned to death because of us.

CM 4: Because of your passion, because of your willingness to go through it all, because of your promise of a new life for us and our condemned communities, we will rise with new hopes again and again, Oh God of life.

JA: This we all ask our brother the Christ to intercede for us so that our hopes will continue to be alive

All: Amen

JA: The fourth station of the cross: Jesus is denied by Peter.

ALL:
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

CM 1: Christ, our brother in faith, we pray for strength

CM 1: Dear Christ, even as Peter denied Christ out of fear and because of fear, because of the threat of persecution, because of the lack of moral courage, with you abiding love, lead us to the light.

CM 2: Lead us to where we should go and keep us with your guidance we are show our solidarity with our people and with other people, as we show our solidarity with the people of Guahan—with the Chamorro people, with those communities that are affected by the build-up of military bases in Hawaii and the Pacific.

CM 3: Give us the strength, Oh Christ, so that we will not lost sight of the need to be just and fair with others, even as we need to fight for justice and fairness everywhere, in communities undergoing repression.

CM 4: We pray for the moral courage not to betray the very causes that make us alive and authentic human beings, the courage to be true to our calling as children of God and your sisters and brothers in faith.

JA: All this we ask of you in the name of the Spirit that nurtures courage

ALL: AMEN

JA: The fifth station of the cross: Jesus is judged by Pilate.

ALL:
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?

CM 1: Acting: Hear, hear you people, this is your Christ!

CM 2: Free Barabbas, not him!

All: We are not going to be Pontious Pilate!

CM 3: Hang him!

ALL: Free Barabbas!

ALL: Hang the Christ!

CM: Hang the bogus, the impostor!

CM 4: Dear Christ, we ask for the forgiveness of our trespasses!

ALL: We ask that we will not forget the sufferings of the native Hawaiian people—the Kanaka Maoli—and the injustice done against them even as they continue to struggle for their sovereignty and freedom.

CM 5: We ask that the struggle of the native Hawaiian people—the Kanaka Maoli—their struggle to make sense of their history, to make sense of their community that has welcomed us in generosity of spirit, will enlighten all other people in the same path to freedom.

JA: We ask all these in the spirit of truth and acceptance, of solidarity and community, of peace based on justice and fairness and non-violence.

ALL: Amen

JA: The sixth station of the cross: Jesus is scourged and crowned with thorns

ALL:
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?

CM 1: Everyday is the crowning of thorns on us as well.

CM 2: This economic meltdown, Oh Christ, is causing a lot of anxieties among.

CM 3: This recession, not of our own doing, is taking hold of our daily lives. It is making our burdens heavier, our days more heady.

CM 4: Remove these from us, Oh Christ; take them away from our shoulders.

JA: Let this crowning of heads with suffering, let this carrying of troubles and burdens be an occasion for your grace, Oh Christ, our kabsat in the faith.

ALL: Amen

JA: The seventh station of the cross: Jesus takes up his cross

ALL:
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

CM 1: We offer this station of the cross to all our social activists present in this gathering. It is through their light that we see better, that we see the road ahead. It is through their walking with us that we feel uplifted.

CM 2: Oh Christ, let this activism be the virtue of our life as people of the Creator. Let this activism be the energy that will make us see more fully in the round our true vocation to the nurturing of each other and our communities.

JA: Let your light shine upon us, Oh Christ.

CM 3: Let us take up our cross as well so we will learn to walk bravely the road to you.

CM 4: Let your light shine upon us so that in our activism, your guidance will continue to be upon us, the light of your justice will keep us, the light of your truth will steady us, and the light of your grace will strengthen our resolve to do more for others and our communities.

ALL: Amen.

JA: The eight station of the cross: Jesus is helped by Simon to carry His cross

ALL:
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?

CM 1: Help us carry your cross, Oh Christ. With your grace and blessing, may we come to a fuller understanding of the mystery of your suffering even as we try to understand the mystery of suffering in our midst.

CM 2: We have come to know the violence in our families and we have not done enough to carry the cross of the victims.

CM 3: We have to know the violence of the social media of which we have become consumers and we delight in them, never seeing our role in the perpetuation of this same cycle of violence.

CM 4: We have not helped carry the cross of the poor. We have allowed the sick alone and deserted. We have not offered our shoulders to the lonely in the hospices and in retirements. We have not addressed the burden of homelessness, the lack of jobs, the lack of alternatives to this misery and poverty that we have to know so well.

JA: Dear Christ, our Namarsua, the creator of that which is us and that which will be, help us see our role as your children who must care for each other, who must show concern for each other, who must keep each other. Teach us the way to you so that we will see that we are each other’s keeper, and so that we will maintain our resolve to make our communities safer.

All these we ask of you

ALL: Amen.

JA: The ninth station of the cross: Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem

ALL:
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

CM 1: Christ, our brother and sister, we dedicate this station of the cross as memorial to all women who succumbed to death because of violence. With this memorial, we pray that women will come to understand that the bigger issues of justice and peace are out there even as we acknowledge that the individual violence that we are remain to be a problem as well.

CM 2: Let this station of the cross be our way of recognizing the unwavering faith of all women, their faith in the Namarsua that nourishes life, the faith in the God that does justice, that faith in the God, all knowing and all fullness, that redeems us from all these ignorance, callousness, apathy, indifference.

CM 3: Even as the women meet you, Oh Christ, show us the way to meet you as well.

CM 4: Show us the way, Oh Christ, to transcend the mundane, even as we are not going to forsake our duty to renew the world. Lead us to a full meeting with you, like the women of Jerusalem, like the women in our communities who have not stopped believing in the power of our love.

JA: All these we pray

ALL: Amen.

JA: The tenth station of the cross: Jesus is crucified

ALL:
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?

CM 1: We offer this memory of this station to all those who have gone before us, those who have died believing that God will reward them with a new life.

CM 2: We offer those who die a thousand deaths so others will have a good life, so that others will have the chance to live, so that others will live in God’s grace.

CM 3: We pray for those among us whose parents, relatives, or family members have departed. We pray for Kat, whose mom passed away without seeing Kat, our dear sister, graduate from college.

CM 4: We pray that Kat will find the courage to keep going in life even as your crucifixion reminds us of the peak of suffering.

JA: (WE ASK KAT TO SAY A LITTLE PRAYER FOR HER MOTHER.)
We ask this of you

ALL: Amen.

JA: The eleventh station of the cross: Jesus promises His kingdom to the repentant thief

Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?

CM 1: Dear Christ, we know of your promise of eternal.

CM 2: Make us see, Oh Christ, that this promise of eternal to the thief is promised the same way to us.

CM 3: We believe in the sanctity of your Word. By your Word, let us come to life, to grace, to voice, to solidarity with others, to a communion with you.

CM 4: Help us, Oh Christ, so that by our deeds, we will become a promise to all others, so that we will become agents of your grace.

JA: We ask this of you

ALL: Amen.


JA: The twelfth station of the cross: Jesus entrusts Mary and John to each other

ALL:
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?

CM 1: By Christ entrusting his mother to John, let us have the courage to entrust our faith with each other.

CM 2: Let us have the grace to accept that our sisters and brothers are entrusted to us.

CM 3: It in the same light that those who are sick and poor, those who are homeless, those who have nowhere to turn to, those young people who need counsel—let them come to us, in the way you have allowed those who need your counsel to come to you.

CM 4: Make us the vessel of the Spirit so that those whom you entrusted to our care will be cared for by us.

JA: All these in your name

ALL: Amen.

JA: The thirteenth stations of the: Jesus dies on the cross

ALL:
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?

CM 1: Even as you died on the cross for our sins, we offer this station to all our young people who need not go through crucifixion and death, who need not go through suffering, who need not suffer more than what they can handle. Let them come to voice, Oh Christ, and let them learn to pave the way to you for us all even as we learn to listen to what they say to us.

CM 2: Our young are our hope. Let them be redeemed by the promise of your death. If they have to go through life, let them carry their cross with grace, with the wisdom of your truth, with the light of your love.

CM 3: Let our young people know that life is the tear on (y)our eyes and the smile on (y)our lips, the smirking on (y)our face, and the laughter of (y)our joy.

CM 4: Let them see that you, our Christ, who has uttered the truth of salvation, is the same Christ that uttered the truth of the heaven that we have to build on earth.

JA: This we all pray

ALL: Amen.

JA: the fourteenth station of the cross: Jesus is laid to the tomb

ALL:
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?

CM 1: We now come to a memorial of your death. We lay you on the tomb and cover your grave with a stone.

CM 1: But we will always remember that we are the community of faith that inherited your good news, the sacred word you revealed to us.

CM 2: By your death, Oh Christ, shall you rise again to reveal to us the fullness of your truth,

CM 3: The light of your glory even as we remember the wars in other lands,

CM 4: The death that happens in our places,

CM 1: The tragedies and natural calamities that visit us,

CM 2: The heavy weight of war industry and militarization and tyranny and hunger in other lands

CM 3: The cross of everyday that we bear to eke out a life,

CM 4: The promise of redemption that we hope as ours in the end.

CONCLUDING PRAYER

JA: You have heard our supplication, Oh Christ, hear the prayer of your people, makes haste to clear our heart and mind in anticipation of your glory.

CM 1: By your death so shall you come back to us again,

CM 2: Rising in glory, rising in glorified body,

CM 3: Rising with the eternal spirit of the Creator,

CM 4: Rising with the full vision of heaven that awaits us, the heaven whose seed we nurture in this life.

JA: We memorialize your death, but we await your resurrection.

CM 1: We remember our suffering, and by your grace, we go through the same death that you go through,

CM 2: But by your promise of redemption, we know we have been saved from us these tragedies.

CM 4: Even as we memorialize the entombing of the tomb of Christ, we remember always that there is that hope for the coming to life of our sibling, our kabsat, in the faith,

CM 1: The child of our Creator who came among us to live like us, in flesh and blood, to live like us in our history and culture and language,

CM 2: The way Christ lived in the history of our faith, in the culture of the Jews, in the language of the Jews.

CM 3: We pray that through this memorializing of our programs for diversity, for cultural pluralism and for the celebration of our various heritages, the Christ of history will be remembered more and more.

CM 4: We pray that with our coming to our language, we come more and more to our voices as various peoples of God, we come to voice, this voice that we are because it is the voice from the Word that is sanctified, made holy with our participation in history and our own cultures and languages.

JA: Dear Christ, our sibling, our kabsat, the Son of God who is God of languages, of histories and cultures, listen to our prayers, and listen to our supplications. We have come here as a community to celebrate your death, a celebration that leads into that hope that is the very reason of our faith: your coming to life again, our coming to life again.

ALL:
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?