As I get set to travel to Tolosa with uni students from Warrane - we will be building houses in a cyclone hit area of the Philippines - my mind goes 25 years back to my first work camp there.1989 - the year of Taylor Swifts birth - was my introduction to university and the life of mind. Professor Beaglehole, a pasty white, elderly man had wowed me with his talks on Plato and Aristotle, occasioning a love for philosophy that would never leave me. Fr Max Polak, a MIT scientist who had become chaplain at the University of Waikato, introduced me to St Augustines Confessions and a reasoned approach to the faith. As I slowly increased in knowledge of the Faith into which I had been baptised, I began to frequent the sacrament of confession and speak to God on a personal basis in prayer. It was at the end of the year that my best friend from school wrote to me about making a trip to Surfers Paradise for this Australian thing called schoolies. It sounded like fun but I thought I would ask Dave Bolton about it as he had come from Australia and would know more about it. He didnt seem too keen on the idea but did recommend going on a work camp to the Philippines instead. With a group of 40 others - including David, Monty, Charles Burfitt senior, Expo, Chris-Bernie-Marty Cullen, Damian Sachs, (now Fr) Sam Lynch and many kiwis - we entered a world of jeepneys, coconuts, rice fields and basketball courts. Everyone everywhere greeted us with Hey Joe and Whats your name? It was hard work mixing cement and gravel with shovels. Damian made the journey to the worksite worthwhile, though, with cheerful renditions of Do you know the way to San Jose? - the name of the Barrio. When I was working at the other project, laying foundations to the new basketball court at the Family Farm school in the Batangas, I found that I spoke a lot with Fr Anthony Bernal about the Faith. Monty tried to catch up with me a few times to talk about deeper things but I was a hard nut to crack. My theology at that time would have made the interim report at the Synod of the Family seem tame. On one of our excursions, delighting at the sight of a seasnake swimming among us, running down the side of an (extinct) island volcano and playing animal ball in the Makiling pool, I came across a book about prayer life. It shocked me. At that stage I had been doing 10 minutes of mental prayer a day, sometimes at 1 am or 2 am after getting back from a party. In the book it spoke about doing prayer in the morning and then AGAIN in the afternoon. One would think you had to spend the whole day praying. One of the bishops who visited the San Jose building project also said things I didnt like. He spoke about mortification as a dying to yourself. Doing without sugar in my afternoon tea was really costing me and here was a man suggesting even further denial. I did enjoy helping one of the Philippinos with us set up the oratory for Mass each day and would finish each night with some spiritual reading in bed - using a torch under the blankets so as not to wake up the other fellows sharing that dorm. Coming out from 300 years in a monastery with the Spanish and 50 years of Hollywood with the USA, the Philippines had once been a prosperous country. The Marcos sent it to ruin. As with South America liberation theology was no theory. We came across some members of the New Peoples Army during a forest walk. They told us they were hunting birds but really they were there to extract taxes from the surrounding villages. Cory Aquino may have been president but reading materials for learning English at the local schools still featured propaganda from the Marcos era. When we danced the haka for President Aquino at Malcayang Palace she quipped that we made her feel safe from any possible coup détat. Hundreds of Imelda Marcos shoes and dresses on public display notwithstanding, rumours of an imminent overthrow were strong. Such concerns meant little to 18 year olds. We had found a burger place that made a roaring trade out of us - they waved goodbye very sadly as our bus left Lipa for the last time. My chief preoccupation was the location of a toasted cheese sandwich. Alas the best a shop could manage was cold cheese on some sweet sugary bread that had been cooked. Stray dogs ran away from us in the markets, we sang songs about bears chasing people on our jeepney rides and laughed at Damians manoeuvres to avoid being married off to one of Shauney the carpenters daughters. Little did I think at that time I would be returning MacArthur like as a priest. But that is a story is for another time ...
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 11:45:42 +0000
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