Tag Archives: FEAST

Reaction to the Lecture of Joy Enriquez on the Subanen Festival Called Buklog

I must have been five years old the first time I attended a grand buklog. At that time I did not have any idea what it was all about except that there was much cooking and eating going on, and chanting which to me did not have any meaning at all.  I remember the house moved like a giant trampoline and there was a great mixture of strange sounds of people in jubilation, of the sound of gongs and shields, of voices of chanters and singers and the sonorous sounds of anklets and bronze bells and of the rustling of the  rattan leaves.
Much later, when I was High School in another town and boarding with the distant cousin of my mother, a Chavacano, she told me stories of month-long buklog in the house of my great grandfather, Thumuay Imbing who ruled the Subanos in Baganian Peninsula and what presently makes up the first and second districts of the Province of Zamboanga del Sur. The house of my great-grandfather was in Sung Lupa which was then  the seat of Subanen power. Today Sung Lupa is an eerie and “mesena” place, that is, a forbidden place held sacred by the people for here is found the burial place of Thimuay Imbing and his wives and other relatives.  It was in this place where Thimuay Imbing received Governor General Leonard Wood who was escorted by white and black American soldiers on horseback. As my grandfather, Datu Purohan Imbing tells it, the sight of the strange animals with black men on top of them sent the Subanen running into the forest. Only when the black men alighted from the horse that they realized that the horse and the black man were two separate beings. And that the black men were really black because when they took a bath in the river, the skin color did not wash off. Lola Loleng Domingo, my landlady, during my high school days (she is still alive and living in Zamboanga City has described vividly to me the food, the merrymaking on the khogan (buklog platform) and the whole town across Dumanquilas Bay being fetched in a kumpit and brought to Sung Lupa. This town is Margosatubig and it is the mother-town of all municipalities in Zamboanga del Sur. Margosatubig has been a town since the Spanish times when Pagadian City was not yet on the map. Lola Loleng says that the sound of the buklog can be heard across the bay, its rhythmic cadence melting with the night air, seeming to embrace one with a warm invitation.
Much later, I learned that it was during a buklog in Shelembuyan that my mother, a Chavacano pioneer teacher, was paired off with my father. At that time, my father was only 17 but before that year ended, my dad and mom got married, first in a Catholic ceremony and then later in a Protestant ceremony.

As I was growing up my father used to go on long trips – to distant Subanen communities to attend buklog festivals. The journey was usually done on foot since during those days good roads were rare or non-existent. In 1969, my father’s cousin Guinonghop I. Sia sponsored a buklog but her death the following year was attributed to the non-observance of the complete rituals attendant upon the celebration of the buklog. This particular buklog was held to welcome then Executive Secretary Ernesto Maceda who was proclaimed an adopted brother to the Subanens and conferred the title of Thimuay Lenghap. Then in the early 70’s, my dad’s cousin, Mayor Coco I. Sia was “in charge” of a buklog held in Pagadian City. The occasion was the anniversary of the foundation of the Province and at that time the honored guests was headed by the Australian ambassador. Expenses for the buklog was shouldered by the Governor.
The following year after this buklog, Uncle Coco died, and again the people in Lapuyan pointed to the buklog as the cause of his death. Some people say that the buklog is sacred and it is held in honor of the gods in thanksgiving or supplication and that, there-fore, it is sacrilege to hold it purely for display and entertainment. It is amusing to note here that within the week of Uncle Coco’s death, his cousin Manonggilid Imbing also died, barely a few months after he sponsored a 3-day buklog, the purpose of which was to secure healing of his arthritis.

In 1976, my paternal grandfather, Datu Purohan ordered the excavation of heirloom jars which lay buried for 53 years. The jars were originally a collection of 500 pieces and which were buried often the end of a one-month buklog, celebrating the first death anniversary of Thimuay Imbing. But we unearthed only 59 pieces, 13 of these damaged and broken by robbers. We found out the robbers were excavating under cover of darkness for the last 20 years or so.

The “last” buklog held in the family was that sponsored by Lantay Imbing sometime in 1975(?). It was a 3-day affair held to prove his worth to take on the leadership.

This was the buklog Joy and Tony Enriquez filmed on video. In the history of the Subanens, this was the very first time that a buklog was documented on video, camera and tapes. This is a turning point for the tribe. As I watched the video in this hall, I am overwhelmed with nostalgia and great sadness. The chanter shows on film, Si King Bagutao is one of the last of her kind alive. Perhaps in the years to come, a Subanen with some buklog blood in his veins will raise up anew the “khogan“. Chanters will surely be absent. In their place, will be high-tech equipments. As my Apu Dlibun used to exclaim, “Sugghata!”

Reflection for the Feast of the Assumption “Pista Noon at Ngayon”

As is clear from the theme for this year’s Fiesta, the Ateneo Community is being invited to look back to the past in order to rediscover and reaffirm the significance of the historical and cultural roots of this important event. It is hoped that by so doing, we will attain a better understanding of our present situation and of the challenges we face as we continue to move forward to an uncertain future. This on-going effort of the Ateneo as a Filipino school to promote a deeper awareness and appreciation of our national identity and cultural heritage will focus our attention on a very important but often neglected sector of our community-our brothers and sisters among the tribal minorities, whose own festive traditions remind us of the deep roots we have as a fundamentally religious people.
While many of us may tend to think of fiesta as peculiar to the type of Christianity which we inherited from Spain in the sixteenth century, a study of the culture of pre-Spanish times shows that this is not so. As we have learned from our tribal brothers and sisters, religious celebrations similar to what we now call “fiesta” had been a part of the lives of our ancestors for centuries before the Spaniards set foot on our shores. As a religious people, these forebears of ours acknowledged their basic dependence on “divine beings” and ex pressed this sense of dependence thru rituals of thanksgiving, petition and appeasement at significant moments in their lives. Planting time and harvest time were celebrated thru joyful religious rites whereby they besought “God’s” blessing and gave thanks for a bountiful harvest. Other ritual celebrations met their need to implore divine help in times of widespread sickness and natural calamities while at the same time seeking reconciliation for any offenses the community may have committed Him.
While it is true that each religious ritual had its own specific theme or motif- thanksgiving, petition, appeasement, etc. — as religious rituals, all of them served to deepen the community’s sense of security by maintaining a meaningful relationship with the “spirit world” on which their basic well being depended. One of the main fruits derived from this network of religious beliefs and practices was a corresponding sense of hope based on their experiences of “divine benevolence” throughout their stormy history. And it was this sense of hope, whether conscious or explicit or not, that enabled them to face the uncertainties which the “mystery of Life” held in store for them.
Owing to the basic nature of man as a conscious being, hope has always played a vital role in the fundamental dynamic of living a “meaningful life.” As a being which, as it were, “creates” its own future through the choices and decisions of each day, without hope and a solid basis for that hope the creative energies which propel man forward to his ultimate destiny would remain basically stagnant. The common tendency to withdraw from life’s challenges or to remain passive in times of crisis or even to terminate one’s own life in difficult times are all born of despair. The horrible specter of a “dead end” paralyzes man and renders him impotent. And it is here perhaps, more than any place else that man’s basically religious nature manifests itself. For if hope is to be any thing more than just wishful thinking or self-deception a mature and balanced relationship with God as the ultimate guarantor of a meaningful outcome to a life that often times seems to be going nowhere is absolutely essential.
Living as we do in a highly secularized world, where human achievements  and ingenuity have opened up breathtaking possibilities for progress and development in almost every aspect of life, the readiness of “modern man” to acknowledge and celebrate his utter dependence on God for a meaningful life has diminished considerably. This truth has not left our own historical and cultural development untouched. A rapid overview of the evolution of our fiesta celebrations will show that this is so. More and more our fiestas have become secular celebrations, an escape from our humdrum daily existence, with only a more or less reluctant nod being given to their once basically religious nature. While it is true that certain religious activities have been preserved in this connection, it is likewise true that the secular aspects of our celebrations often receive more of our time and energies.
If this observation is valid and if it is true that religious belief is the basis source of that radical hope every reflective and critical person needs to live a meaningful life, then perhaps the secularization of our fiestas is a sign that many of us have lost, sight of the fundamental basis of our hope for the future. It would be well for us therefore to take time and ask ourselves, just what is the point of this fiesta? What is the significance of the Feast of Our Lady’s Assumption? Where does this apparently irrelevant reality fit into the over all picture of the cares and concerns that constitute the more concrete dimensions of our daily life?
Perhaps we can find the key to the “Mystery” we celebrate at this time and discover its meaning for our lives by reflecting for a moment on a very important passage in Lumen Gentium, Vatican M’s “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church.” There the Fathers of the Council tell us: “In the bodily and spiritual glory which she possesses in heaven, the Mother of Jesus continues in this present world as the image and first flowering of the Church as she (the Church) is to be perfected in the world to come. Likewise, Mary shines forth on earth, until the day of the Lord shall come … .as a sign of sure hope and solace for the pilgrim People of God.” Much of the confusion, uncertainty and insecurity that we experience throughout our earthly lives are manifestations of the reality referred to in the conciliar expression “pilgrim People of God.” For the expression reminds us that “we have not here a lasting city.” We are a people on the move. We are a people with mission. We are a people with a task that has only just begun and which will only be completed at the end of our human history. We are all aware of the fact that we are not yet what we should be, that there is much more for us to do and become both as individuals and as a people. We are also aware that despite all our good intentions and significant talents, the road ahead is very rough and filled with unknown dangers. We have all been tempted at times to just give up for very often the struggle does not seem to be getting us anywhere. Side by side with every victory or step forward, other forces apparently stronger than ourselves seem to divert us from our path and even drive us back a step or two. The resultant fatigue and discouragement are, at, times, almost too much to bear.
As a man very much in touch with the world of our times. Pope John XXIII was very much aware of the fact that the situation described above often leads us to despair. Himself a man, radiant with a joy born of unshakable hope, he once expressed his own belief that the greatest sin of Christians today is to lose hope. For he also believed that we, of all people on the earth, have every reason to hope. We alone, of all the people on the earth, have a concrete basis for hope. We alone know, without doubt, that as a great Christian mystic, Juliana of Nor which once wrote, “all things will be well, all things will be well; every manner of things will be well.” What is this basis for hope? The three basic truths of our Faith: the Incarnation, the Resurrection of Christ and the Assumption of our Lady. For these three truths concertize for us God’s total and irrevocable commitment to the victorious outcome of the various tasks He has entrusted to our care. By becoming man and passing faithfully through the Horrors of His Passion and Death, Jesus has conquered, once and for all, the forces of sin and death in all its forms. In raising Mary to glory in the fullness of her humanity. He gives us every assurance that if we, like Mary, persevere in the task we have received of transforming the earth for the benefit of every man we too shall share in the glory that is hers today. For she is the model of the Church, the symbol of all that we are called and therefore are enabled to be. Her victory is our victory if we, like her, will be not Just “hearers of the word but doers.”
Let us then open up our minds and hearts to the warming, healing life-giving splendor revealed in Mary’s Assumption into Heaven. Let us renew our faith in the promise of glory that this “Mystery” offers to each and everyone of us today in the midst of all the fear and suffering that surrounds us, no matter how difficult and hopeless things may appear at times to be. Strengthened by this hope that has been entrusted to us, let us renew our commitment to the particular task that still lies before us to bring to fulfillment the unforgettable experience of Mary’s maternal love and concern for us as a people that tools place during the “EDSA Revolution”. In this way we will not only be in full harmony with the historical and cultural roots of fiesta tradition, we will actually be contributing to its evolution as we bring to it a new level of human hope. In this way we will be able to bring about that deeper level of understanding and cultural solidarity that we also hope to achieve through our fiesta this year with its very relevant and challenging theme: “Pista Noon at Ngayon.”