Amid Woke and Cancel Culture…

There’s a graver threat to humanity than AI. That is the wide proliferation of woke and cancel culture. Before we clearly understand the meaning of these two terminologies, I believe that I have sensed the advent of such as early as the 90’s. Back then, my life was a hectic juggling of motherhood to two inquisitive toddlers and a daily grind of tutoring achievers and teaching/nurturing preschoolers in my own nursery school. I contend those were the most wondrous years in my life, for the children, in all their innocence, challenged me and made me laugh. My observation sprung from those years when I noticed the fathers dropping off and picking up their children. Where are the mothers, I asked. They were at work. And the fathers were left to tend to the household and the children. A completely different scenario from the family picture, the father being the breadwinner, and the mother cares for the home. The glory was taken away from the fathers.

Simultaneous with that sad truth, the gays dominated the television sitcoms, crossdressing and blatantly asserting their gayness. The viewers absorbed a daily barrage of men displaying exaggerated femininity. Before long, many young teens have come to express their desire to be gay, even if they were not.

I was afraid of my thoughts, that eventually, the homosexuality would become a norm. Back in an exclusive for girls convent school where I had my education, the tomboys or potential lesbians were behaved, though we know that they were probably struggling and questioning their own gender.

The millennium ushered new generations – millennials, Gen Zee, Alpha Gen – who have come to accept the fact that fathers attend to the laundry and it is all right to profess one’s self gay.

Have I qualms about it? Probably. But I always thought that glory will be given back to the fathers, and people would eventually realize their biological gender and embrace it.

To the former, I think the fathers have come to terms with their roles in the family, but as to the latter, I was totally shocked with the LGBTQ waving a rainbow of colors and asserting homosexuality as a culture to contend with. If I know my Bible right, am sure Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed with sulfur and fire.

My daughters were cautious in reminding me that they have gay friends. I have no issue with that. I also had friends who were sexually challenged. And still they remained friends. My issue is with people telling me to accept the fact that a person’s being is his/her private truth, meaning it is simply all right to tamper with one’s body according to his or her own preference. And that the public comfort rooms must be deemed both for male and female, in order not to ostracize the transgenders and the queer. A man having sex change is his own truth, and so with a female changing into a man. Just to clarify, if we accept all these truths, does that mean nothing is false anymore?

Eventually, the world witnessed the Yemeni running on yahoo news in 2008, and the domination of dictators in the key corners of the globe. The Russian presented himself a debonair. Biochemical warfare became the name of the game. Who would not be shocked and distressed by what happened to Aleppo? A people was canceled, just like the Ukrainians are being canceled.

Cancel culture became a terminology, a phrase I only heard post pandemic when the newsmen were quoting it in their reports. I wondered what it was, and later learned that it is an attempt to change the true and the good by eradicating the proponent for morality. Obliterate the culture and exchange it for what the people like to see and hear.

What is woke. I asked. The young people I talked with couldn’t provide me an answer. As I googled through for the definition of terms, the origin of which has reference to a call to be awake regarding racism, eventually, the woke is now used to call for activism on the streets to call for equality and justice.

There lies the threat to humanity, man pitted against each other, as we see now in France, the police versus the people burning the cities, because a teen was shot and killed by the police over traffic. The killing is inexcusable, but would it not be proper to seek justice before committing arson.

By and large, woke and cancel culture are manifestations of godlessness, a deviation from everything that is moral. Correct me if I am wrong.

I posted a picture of The Carpenter and His Son because I still believe that if we get our truth correctly and work together, there might still be hope for the despicable events that must be deleted from the face of the earth.

My Vanity Moment.

My hair has grown shaggy! I normally wouldn’t have cared about my appearance except when my daughter commented, while we were watching Top Gun 1, that my image seemed to have been left behind back circa 1986, like the leading lady’s coiffure in the movie. Perhaps I am onion-skinned and being branded antiquated somehow made me feel sad.

Thus I heeded and accompanied my daughter to the neighborhood parlor where we get our locks cut or trimmed, mine annually, I think. By the way, the term ‘parlor’ is also ancient, the new generations call it salon now. Salon, in my youth, is where cowboys come for beer, alcohol. and draw fights.

Anyways, for this person who believes in the Franciscan way of life, simplicity in every way, this moment of vanity is somehow refreshing. Hay! Yes,, it had been a long time now that my daughters hesitate to introduce me to their friends because of how I look. Oh well, still least of my worries. And nobody can make me dye my silver strands which, after the trimming and the relaxing, even the beauticians conceded my hair looks more glorious than weekly-dyed heads.

Bing, the parlor lady, who sang at the top of her lungs on my deafened auditory nerves, she’s in tune, deserves my gratitude. Thank you. Albeit she didn’t succeed at trimming my brows! Ha ha! Nice try, Bing.

Autophagy In Your Vocabulary?

My High School Batchmates Circa 2015 with Olive somewhere in the middle.

My word for the day, and perhaps for the rest of your life. is AUTOPHAGY. This word was sent to me by my classically beautiful classmate Olive Mendiola, by way of telling me about how Pope Francis defines how reality exists in the family. For that, I thank you deep from my heart, Olive, because this heart has been hurting for as long as it’s been beating.

But I couldn’t define autophagy as clearly as how you, my family and friends must understand. So, please, this copy/paste is a rather long definition, but you must read. And instill in your heart.

“there is no perfect family. We don’t have perfect parents, we are not perfect, we don’t get married with a perfect person nor do we have perfect kids. We have complaints of each other. We are disappointments to each other. Therefore, there is no healthy marriage or healthy family without the exercise of forgiveness. Forgiveness is vital to our emotional health and spiritual survival. Without forgiveness, the family becomes a theatre of conflict and a bastion of grievances. Without forgiveness, the family gets sick. Forgiveness is the sterilization of the soul, the cleaning of the mind and the liberation of the heart. Who does not forgive has no peace of soul nor communion with God. The pain is a poison that intoxicates and kills. Saving a wound of the heart is a self-destructive gesture. It is autophagy. Who does not forgive, sickens physically, emotionally and spiritually. That’s why the family has to be a place of life and not of death; territory of healing and not of disease; stage of forgiveness and not of guilt. Forgiveness

Fourteen Years on Social Media!

Has it been that long? It seemed that it was only yesterday when my younger daughter, then in her first year of college, prompted me to sit in front of the computer and start a blog post. I was hesitant because I knew not the nature of the internet. But as I was already watching yahoo news about ‘Yemeni running’ because of persecution and potential civil war, I felt I could express an opinion or two about the current events. Thus I agreed.

Oh well, it was not as if I turned into a professional writer because I got comfortable with just writing about what preoccupied my mind at the moment, but mostly, I was not really a poet who could write pretty verses and prose, my works were much more like entries in a diary meant only for my own reading pleasure. That is why I was surprised when I learned that there came to be a new literary genre called journaling – that type of writing primarily entered in the internet that is not necessarily par excellence but from the viewpoint of an ordinary blogger.

Hence I could say that even if I have not written a book – a collection of poems or short stories, a novella or a novel, at least I have blogposts to boast about.

Nope, I have not much followers, and very often, when someone clicks like on a post, which is very rare, I am jubilant enough my heart beats at Mach 1 speed to the moon and back. Forever grateful for those who liked my stories. And those who responded positively. You are very kind.

Thank you.

On this beautiful day our Lady was born.

The Christian world celebrates today the nativity of a Woman Who gave birth to the “Son of Man.” The Woman’s Name is Mary. In Hebrew, it is Myriam, in Aramaic, Maryam, and in Greek, Mariam or Maria. The name simply means beloved.

Why is Mary beloved?

Because Her ‘fiat’ provided the human image of the invisible God in the Person of Jesus, our Lord.

Our Lord, according to scientific validation of miracles of the Holy Hosts, has only 23 Chromosomes which, of course, came from His Mother Mary.

And our Lord’s favorite attribute to His Self – “Son of Man.”

Just fitting that we must be grateful to the gentle Woman Who gave birth to our Lord.

Totus Tuus, my Queen, my Mother.