empty & open

Many religious or spiritual practices believe that the hand that comes empty, leaves empty. This can either mean, not entering a place of worship empty handed or that we come into this world with nothing and leave it with nothing. 

Advent season 2024 started on December 1 - with the first Sunday of Advent celebrating hope. The first Advent candle symbolizes a shining light in anticipation of the coming of Christ. 

hope shines bright this first Sunday of Advent

It is usually a purple candle called the Prophecy Candle - representing God's forgiveness of humanity's sins. Purple is traditionally the most important of the Advent candle colors - reflected in liturgical garments used for vestments. It is associated with prayer, contemplation, repentance, and hope. 

An apt way to close the year - hope in a time of transformation. How best to manage times of radical change? We find hope through accumulated years of observation and wisdom gathered from times. cultures and people all over the world. 

Through our shared experience we collect tips, timing and tools for navigating life. There is solace in not taking it all too personally - in knowing we are moved and moving with the rhythm and flow of ever spiraling change. 

Inevitable and divinely orchestrated - an eternal dance, an unfolding revelation, an illuminating liberation. At times unsettling - in its release, we are forever changed. 

May we all glide gently through this holiday season - buoyed by hope and comfort in the ebb and flow of that which is so much bigger than ourselves. 

Over and over – always has always will, no matter what. 

passion & drive

Art has always been a powerful tool for social and political change. In our backwater banana republic corruption ruled long before the birth of our nation. For the rest of us not born to the 1% our only recourse is to get creative while working ourselves to the max.  

From the earliest cave paintings to contemporary Street Art, artists have used their work to express their views on society and the world around them. Escape artists that we are, dreaming big, wild, bold was our means of opening up a bigger, wider, braver world than that most of us were born into. 

Giant Picnic at the US-Mexico border wall - Tecate, Mexico & California

Typically created in response to social or political issues, the bane of our brutalized existence - we protest, rebel, revolt. Better to be bathed in blood than buried in deep, dark silence. 

republic vs democracy

November 5 is a double whammy personally. It is voting day in the USA - my alternative homeland. And back in the island of my birth - Cinco de Noviembre marks a defining time in our nationalistic history. 

A golf buddy of my dad once hilariously claimed, "high tech, low tech - basta abtik!" That is the famous Bisaya mindset encapsulated in a nutshell. Blast them with bravado, coated in self-deprecating charm. Abtik is a Bisaya term that means all of these - agile, nimble, spry, quick. 

historical holiday celebration

Alive, agile, active, audacious. Definitely not one to sit back and be passive or invisible in the background. Bold, brazen, blatant, brave. You get the gist - no need to complete our alphabet. 

festival of light & life

As we celebrate All Hallows Eve and the veils between worlds thin - folks around the world, according to varying practices, beliefs and cultures - prepare altars for our ancestors. This is important work that has been passed on through generations. 

Now more than ever, we can all use that supportive energy - as we recall and honor our ancestors who have paved the way and supported our survival. I celebrate an accumulation of 38 years - from when I first started my shamanic practice and apprenticeship all those years ago. 

clay diya lamps - © Uma Shankar sharma

It is also the festival of Diwali (Deepavali) - when myriad little clay lamps (diyas) light the way to remove darkness from the face of the earth. The dharma of fire illuminates wherever it falls - giving light and warmth. 

loss & life

Saviors and superheroes doom us all - by putting all agency on one individual, reinforce how things are, glossing over real problems by taking it all on themselves. It is an unrealistic delusion of comfort and safety - instead of a society that collectively decides what best serves them.   

We need to explore frontiers beyond techno utopias and dystopias more carefully. Discuss a few fundamental aspects around the potential of technology in the world that we believe can enable or disrupt. Crucially this involves imagining and delivering together - so technology is built in collaboration with society. 

working on wholeness & wellbeing

Loss of home or lifestyle, loss of relationship, trust or homeland - these too can cause crippling grief. Loss of health, or a job, or anything integral to our stability, one's heart or connectedness to a sense of identity. 

Grief can be many things, and the processes of grief can be long lasting, very painful and remain similar and even as difficult as experiencing loss in the form of death. 

Defining what utopias and dystopias entail - not just something that's happens in a society. Like anything of value - technology and knowledge can be double-edged swords, depending on who wields it and how it gets applied. 

Author Ted Chiang in addressing technology, intelligence, and life - warns us that we might all be doomed if we don’t listen. It’s a final fling outward and upward to whoever might be listening, and it elevates our human story into beauty. 

His story, The Great Silence explores the search and humanistic need for communication. The parrot says that they don’t blame humans for causing their extinction - They just weren’t paying attention. The bitter truth is human narrators and characters are limited in language and communication by their own issues, beliefs, preferences. 

The Great Silence, a short story by Ted Chiang

Dominant cultures often favor themselves first and foremost, restricting and limiting options and solutions - dooming others to sad realizations and undebatable fates. For example, English being the dominant global language via the internet has caused many other dialects and languages to fall into disuse. 

For the survival of a disappearing minority or unsupported community - looking for a social structure which offers workable ways of addressing problems is imperative. 

Create a way of dealing - one that is consciously healthier and more constructive. And address people's concerns, issues, and complaints with better responsibly and accountably.

masskara mayhem

MassKara 2024, now on its 45th celebration of the festival - is finally ending this October 27. Typhoon season - hard rain, gusty winds, and lots of floods are minor deterrents in its whirling frenzy. 

MassKara means many faces - conceived to uplift residents in the 1980s when the twin tragedy of the sugar industry crisis and the sinking of Negros Navigation's M/V Don Juan almost wiped us all out. 

The local community needed a happy celebration to mark the resilience and perseverance demanded of Bacolodnons and Negrenses. To shift the focus from grief and loss to something brighter and better. 

MassKara 2024 logoelements

Bacolod promotes itself as the City of Smiles yet much of its pomp and festivities are built on a heavy history and heritage marred by gloom and tragedy. Through the decades – as MassKara has grown in activities as well as commercial and tourist draws - the polarity and play of light and shadow grows more extreme. 

interior castles

A rich interior life is a deep well to draw on when things get chaotic or challenging. That's why it is of utmost value that we be surrounded by what sustains and nourishes us. Being under constant threat or barraged by externals wears on us and eventually takes a toll. 

Two years without a home to call my own has been uncomfortable for a home body Cancerian crab of my nature. Moving clear across the globe and uprooting over fifteen years of my independent stake as a resident and citizen elsewhere is a total upheaval hard to prepare for - much less contend with. 

Tintagel Castle, Cornwall, England - Peter Unger/Getty Images

As this tsunami of change swirled within - the outer world squeezed and closed in - tighter, smaller, meaner. Spots of sunshine and delight grew farther apart, dimmed significantly, needed more effort to come by or sustain. 

How to feed that inner core, pour back into it some replenishment? Keep the big picture in focus, see it clearly, not let externals rub or rob it of its shine. Manage flow and progress so momentum is not impeded or halted, derailed or depleted. 

So much more is expended under unfavorable conditions than when there is full, fresh, firm love all around. Soft, tender, allowing grace - not noise, obstacles, judgement. That makes all the difference in the world.

Although we clearly want one and not the other its isn't always the case. Going where the river flows has the ease and expansiveness that struggling against the current does not foster. Seeing oneself through the filter of loving kindness is vastly removed from harsh heavy horridness. 

We love the most the one who loves us the most and we shrivel where love is withheld or absent. That's the truth.