‘Respect for the dead is a deep Filipino culture that has brought together warring families and groups in peaceful truces…’
THE government is not accomplishing anything through its flagrant and sustained efforts to harass detained political dissidents and their families. Breaking the back of the insurgency and its sympathizers now entails scoffing at the grief of a mother mourning for her dead child.
Largely to prevent media coverage of the funeral of the child who died of apparent hospital neglect and whose is a suspected communist rebel, the police scurried off with her remains and hastily buried it. Then MMDA spokesperson Celine Pialago spoke out against the anguished cries of the detainee, who is a mother like GMA radio news anchor and actress Ali Sotto and millions of others. Ali says it all for us while lashing out at Violago: “Empathizing with a grieving mother is the least any human being can do.”
Real-life tragedies are not fit to be teleseryes except for people who do not feel for the suffering. Respect for the dead is a deep Filipino culture that has brought together warring families and groups in peaceful truces but had been banished by the six-decade old scourge of bitter distrust, treachery, murder, salvaging and endless reprisals between the communists and the military.
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Drinking and wild carousing have returned to countless barangays after restrictions were eased, triggering complaints from parents and students engrossed with online classes at home. The DepEd and the DILG have since ordered a ban on videoke singing.
There are probably others wearied by their own drunken voices who have turned to the other dimension of singing, which is in church. Rev. Mookgo S. Kgatie of the Dept of Christian Spirituality, Church History and Misiology at the University of South Africa has done some research on healing, as experienced by Christian worship singers. “In Pentecostal worship, singing is more than a positive experience; it is a spiritual activity that is able to deal with emotional problems. Tsabahala and Patel (2010:76) concur that in Pentecostal worship singing plays a key role in the experience of “renewal” and “connection.” Emotional health benefits may be linked with specific types of worship in which there is singing, shouting and movements that encourage an emotional release.
“In Spirit worship, according to Akpanika (2012:408), the band leads the congregation in such emotional songs to ‘usher in’ the presence of the Holy Spirit and to prepare people for the sermons. It is common to see people crying, falling and displaying strange feelings and pneumatic phenomenon during worship services. At times, preachers are unable to deliver a sermon not because they are unprepared to do so, but because the Spirit of God has taken over the service. I have had many experiences in my own life as a preacher in which I had to stop preaching or not preach at all because God had filled the temple with His power. The Spirit of worship in a way opens up the platform for people to receive therapy for different ailments. This is because of one reason: it is not the preacher that heals people but the Spirit of God and the blood of Jesus.”
