Filipinos sing, share festive foods, teach old
ways to young
By LESLIE WIRPSA
NCR Staff Los Angeles
In front of an altar filled with statues of Mary and Jesus and
images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, elderly Filipino women sang the
peoples version of the story of Christs suffering.
The singing began at 11 a.m. on Maundy Thursday and continued
nonstop until the morning of Good Friday with Filipinos from all over this city
arriving to take turns singing the verses.
It was a human, conversational narrative, written by lay people,
that gave an easy informality to the biblical story. The cadence, rhythms and
melodies varied, marking the different regions and cultures of the Philippines
represented by the participants.
This display of Filipino popular religion, which historically
bridged indigenous spirituality and Spanish colonial Catholicism in the
Philippines, is indicative of the kind of popular religion that is now creating
new bonds in multicultural Los Angeles.
Filipino faith is also carving a space here for the 250,000-member
community, the largest concentration of Filipinos outside of Manila, to nourish
its culture and share them with the broader church.
Sunday Filipino services often may be more Roman than the
Romans, in the words of Irma Isip, archdiocesan consultant for religious
education from the Asian-Pacific perspective. But in home worship and
gatherings, in the religious fiestas such as the Christmas Simbang Gabi
or the Easter Salubong dawn celebration, the expressions of the
pageantry and faith rituals of the indigenous cultures of Filipino history are
being revived.
In their culture
The biggest pastoral need of the Filipinos is to
express themselves in their own culture, said Fr. Dan Bugayong, a
priest at St. Philomena Parish in Carson, Calif., a congregation that is 75
percent Filipino. Then they can share this gift ... with other
cultures.
The richness of Filipino culture and faith -- and the values of
family and community -- were evident at the home worship gathering in central
Los Angeles when members of the community gathered to sing, in Tagalog, the
story of the life and Passion of Christ.
The elders were soon joined by a dozen or so members of a
charismatic youth group. Sometimes, Isip said, the youth
rhythms resemble rap! That night, however, the youth concentrated on
learning the patterns sung by their elders, smiling when their teachers chided
them for singing too fast. Its their first time, one woman
said.
For many of these young people, born in the United States, the
singing of the Passion provided a lesson in reading Tagalog as well in the
Catholic faith.
Absent from this celebration were the silence and fasting of a
more Western expression of Catholic Holy Week. Easter is a celebration of
death and life. This is supposed to be a nice quiet time, but we cannot stay
quiet. We continue to sing and dance, and it is not fair to sing and not to
eat, Isip explained, approaching a huge table in the kitchen laden with
food.
As the singers took turns away from the narration to savor big
pots of milkfish with onions, ginger and garlic, spicy catfish in broth, and
spaghetti and garlic bread, a woman burst into the kitchen. Quick! I need
another tone, she said.
The feast stopped until her companions helped her find a new pitch
and rhythm to transmit the ambiguity felt by Pilate and the taunting of his
soldiers.
Another woman stomped rhythmically into the kitchen bearing a huge
tray stacked with saping saping, a thick, gooey rice dessert of three
tiers of color.
We dont want [these customs] to die. This is why we
are trying to teach the youth, said Lola Conching, 74, who is something
of a legend in town.
Naty Jimenez, the host of the gathering, said it is important that
Filipino youth be raised in the Christian life. The children will be
given a good foundation for when they mingle with different people in different
ways. And even if they mix with many kinds of people, they are strong,
she said.
Twenty-two-year-old Cory Abad, a student at Santa Monica College,
said, We want to praise and thank the Lord. This group is really
different and special. We are religious, but we go out together. Its like
a family. These are my brothers and sisters. My other friends just want to have
fun, but here we know whats right and wrong.
Bugayong said such strength of faith and culture has brought many
Filipino Catholics in Los Angeles not only to the point of being aware of
their presence as a community, but to a place of sharing these
gifts so they can help bring in a multicultural parish.
Spirituality is our individual way of experiencing our
relationship with God, he said. We are born in different places at
different times. I dont think God expects us to express our faith in just
one mode. I have my own way, and it depends on my background, what Ive
been through as a [member of a] race, a people, a nation, he said.
You feel much more comfortable in your relationship with God expressing
yourself in that way. Its something natural. Its part of being born
and reared in that culture.
Unity, however, is also needed, especially in Los Angeles,
Bugayong said. And Filipinos are in a special position, because of language and
culture, to be bridge-builders.
Bugayong said Filipinos have a special affinity, for example, with
Mexican Catholics because of history: In 1521, the Spaniards came via Mexico to
the 7,107 islands that make up the Philippines.
The culture of the Spaniards had been transformed in Mexico and
was transformed again in the Philippines. As in the Americas, a wide variety of
tribal indigenous cultures was thriving in the Southeast Asian archipelago at
the time of the Spanish invasion. Filipinos today speak 87 languages and
dialects that survived from ancestral origins of 111 Malay, Indonesian and
mainland Asian cultural and linguistic groups.
A Spanish influence
Filipinos represent the largest Catholic population in Asia; 400
years of Spanish presence in the country rooted Christianity deeply in the
lives of the people. An estimated 85 percent of Los Angeles quarter of a
million Filipinos are Catholic.
Because Spanish and indigenous traditions mixed, Filipino
celebrations share characteristics with Mexican religious traditions -- for
example, the Christmas novena prayers, a strong veneration of Mary and worship
filled with pageantry.
Like the gods of the original inhabitants of the Americas,
indigenous Filipino deities, led by a supreme god, Bathala, were
linked to the basic needs of tribal Filipinos -- rain and nature, agriculture
and harvests, drink and dance and sacrifice. As in the Americas, the church
could not suppress indigenous rituals. Instead, the tribal religions
transformed Christianity.
Bugayong said the shared cultural roots have created a
closeness between Mexicans and Filipinos that becomes evident in a new
environment such as Los Angeles. Many Filipino names are Spanish, and
they learn Spanish in the schools. Its not a big difficulty to get across
the bridge, and I find myself having other affinities with the Mexicans -- the
values, Bugayong said.
Fr. Loreto Mac Gonzales, director of Filipino pastoral
ministry and the first archdiocesan Filipino priest, said that in some
parishes, Filipinos and Hispanics already share celebrations and fiestas. For
example, the Filipino Christmas Simbang Gabi novena celebrations, held
in English and Tagalog in approximately 100 of Los Angeles 289 parishes,
draw many Hispanic Catholics.
Most Filipinos speak English and celebrate their faith in English,
which became the official language of the islands as a result of years of a
second colonization by U.S. military and business interests. Bugayong said
English language proficiency enhances Filipinos ability to serve a
multicultural church. They can be a channel, a bridge to others, to the
blacks because they speak English, to the Spanish-speaking, he said.
Thats a gift the Filipino community can give to the archdiocese, to
the church.
Our Filipino community needs to realize it is needed in this
country. They are shy, not like the Hispanics. They want to be asked and
invited.
Thats the first challenge -- to get them to take a
leadership role in their own parishes, Gonzales said.
He said the transition from life in a homogeneous culture in the
Philippines, where the transmission of faith is easier, to the
multicultural United States is often difficult.
Here, this country is not homogeneous. It is multifaceted,
and the second generation has an opportunity to see other actions. They are
tempted to take on things other than what they hear from their parents or the
first generation. There is not a straight up and down transmission of
values, he said.
Bugayong said Filipinos who experienced unified family life before
coming to the United States experience culture shock when they
arrive here. Both of the parents go to work. Its difficult. They
dont get much support. Over there, at least one of the parents takes care
of the children, he said. The whole structure of society, you know,
the closeness, is there. There is that concept of extended family. In the
neighborhood, you take care of one another.
He said the materialistic values of U.S. society challenge
Filipino culture. Parents want to work and provide for their families,
but there is the price of not attending enough to the growing children,
he said.
Divorce, he said, is also a new challenge. Its now in
their minds. Its an issue because of the atmosphere here to separate. You
see everybody doing it, and it becomes ordinary, Bugayong said. In
the Philippines, if you separate, you carry a big stigma.
Given the stark cultural differences, the church becomes a
significant element, he said, providing Filipinos with that sense of
still being a part of that family, that big spiritual family where they can
draw strength and spiritual energies to keep going.
National Catholic Reporter, August 14,
1998
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