Straight From Pastor Ey

Image source: Aurora Metropolis Last September 20, 2011, at SM City Pampanga, a 13-year-old boy shot his 16-year-old boyfriend and then shot himself. Both of them already died after a few days. “The shooting was the second in about a week inside one of the country’s biggest mall chains, SM malls, where guards are posted at entrances and bomb-sniffing dogs patrol the premises to deter crime and terrorist threats.” ( Yahoo! News Philippines ) Almost a week before, September 14, at SM City North, a woman fatally shot her estranged husband and a security guard who tried to stop her from killing herself. Now, there’s a public outcry about safety in the malls and gun control. How were they able to sneak in those guns? We are frisked and our bags were scanned with metal detectors whenever we enter the mall. Urgent as they may appear to be, I think we are missing the point. Of course, we need to be and to feel safe whenever we enjoy the national pastime of malling. Yet, there’s not muc...

Image source: NY Daily News That’s part of the title of an article about the  “near misses of 9/11”  posted on the CNN International Edition website.  “Every day, people make thousands of small, forgettable decisions – what to eat, when to take a break, which route to take to work.  But for a handful of people on September 11, 2001,  those seemingly inconsequential decisions… made the difference between living and dying.”   [1] Greer Epstein. Image source: CNN Greer Epstein, an executive director at Morgan Stanley, took a rare cigarette break. She recounted that fateful day,  “I never took a break before noon… It was something that happened that day. And thank God for it. I was safely out of the building when the plane hit. A fireball went through my office. Had I been sitting there, who knows what would've been?”  Jokingly, she said her mother never picked on her about smoking again. But seriously, since that near miss at 9/11, she ne...

Thank you for the privilege of serving you for more than six years. I will not wait for my last Sunday in Makati Gospel Church as one of your associate pastors to express my deep appreciation for all your loving support. I apologize that the news of my resignation shocked you. It was not an easy decision to make. But rest assured that I decided after much thought and prayer. As I sat here behind my desk, I once again read all the “love notes” you gave me through the years. I posted them on my desk underneath its glass top. I felt so affirmed as your pastor. Whenever I felt there’s so much work to be done, whenever I saw that it was so challenging, those notes encouraged me a lot. You were and still are God’s channel of comfort to me and my family. We really felt so loved. Because of your encouragement, I became not just a better pastor but also a better believer. With you, I saw that it really matters who we walk with. We’ve been through a lot. We shared births and deaths, weddin...

Part of the "Poleteismo" exhibi t Was it an expression or a desecration? That’s the fiery debate about “Poleteismo” by artist Mideo Cruz, “an art exhibit that combines religious symbols with phallic objects” at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), where “[a] sculpture showed a penis hanging from a wooden cross while another portrayed Christ as Mickey Mouse.” (Source: www.inquirer.net) As expected, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines condemned the exhibit and the CCP recently withdrew it. Now, I understand the hurt “Poleteismo” inflicted to people who venerate religious images. But, interestingly, it is actually a part of an “exhibit of images and figurines of saints and Jesus Christ titled ‘Kulo’ by a group of 30 artists from the University of Sto. Tomas” (ibid), which all of us know is a Roman Catholic university. Also, it appears that since 2002 the controversial exhibit was already displayed in venues such as the Vargas Museum in the Unive...