PEOPLE POWER @40: We have the rituals, the photographs, the songs — but no fire
PASIG CITY (MindaNews / 23 Feb) — Anthony de Mello, the Jesuit priest and storyteller, once wrote about a tribe that lost the art of making fire. A…
PEOPLE POWER @40: We have the rituals, the photographs, the songs — but no fire
PASIG CITY (MindaNews / 23 Feb) — Anthony de Mello, the Jesuit priest and storyteller, once wrote about a tribe that lost the art of making fire. A wise man taught them the skill. When he died, the priests preserved his tools — the flint, the sticks, the tinder — and placed them in a shrine. They created rituals around them. Songs. Ceremonies. Annual remembrances. Generations passed. The tribe had everything: the shrine, the rituals, the memory of the firemaker. But no one knew how to make fire anymore. — Every February, the Philippines performs its EDSA ritual. The photographs. The speeches. Cory in yellow. Cardinal Sin on the radio. The tanks that stopped. Ninoy on the tarmac. We sing the songs. We light the candles. We call it remembrance. We have the rituals. We have the shrine. We have everything. But there is no fire. The so-called guardians took it EDSA 1986 was fire. Real fire. Millions of ordinary Filipinos who decided — without being told, without being organized, ...
