mine is the god of typhoons and volcanos, yours is the god of bake sales
A couple of weeks ago, while in California, I was hanging out with pyrric and she said, "I just learned the most useful Tagalog phrase recently."
"Oh, yeah, what's that?"
"Ay nako"
"You know that's basically our equivalent of "Oh My God", right? Like, it literally translates to that."
"I know and it comes in handy in so many situations. Our nurses use it for frustration or exasperation, positive and negative moments. It's versatile!"
"It is, but it's usually used for situations that are also appropriate for 'WTF'."
"That may be because I hear it in a hospital."
"No, that's just the way it is. You have to remember, our version of God tends to be the judgey Old Testament one. Whenever we invoke His name, it's usually because He's fucking with us."
I still have a fondness for the way lilmissnever once translated Filipino Catholicism to netik: "(Filipinos) are religious in the way that any people who are subjected to volcanic eruptions, typhoons and earthquakes are religious." Where you're used to having no control over your life, and the only thing you can ever do is pray.
Growing up the Philippines, typhoons were a thing like Noreasters in New England. They arrive, you get a day off school, and there's stuff in the news about some people dying, and you move on. And you go back to class the next day and find out that your locker was one of the ones that was flooded out, and all of your books and art projects are ruined. The craft room with our misshapen pottery was swamped, and the janitors are just going to throw it all out. You learn early that you will lose things, and that terrible events happen to many people for no reason at all, and that's just the way life is.
But when one does feel compelled to assign meaning to a random event, a religious person will assign that to God. And when those random events are earthquakes, typhoons and volcanoes, you will see your God as being a stern, cruel force, constantly testing your mettle to see if you can endure through the worst the world has to offer; because that's the only option that makes sense. It was weird for me to leave this and to enroll in Catholic schools in the US, where religious education wasn't focused on Noah's Flood and the plagues of Egypt and the multiple ways God would just ethnically cleanse tribes that He didn't like. We just had The Sermon on the Mount, and The Parable of Talents and bake sales to raise money for a new scoreboard. Because we weren't worried that a fancy electronic scoreboard would just get destroyed with the next hurricane.
It's been interesting to see how different visions of God reflect different circumstances, and the way that 'random' isn't so much arbitrary as it's reflective of certain advantages or truths. It feels like, in a nation where natural resources are bountiful, disasters are dispersed, and a base level of prosperity exists, then God is a force for rewarding you for your hard work, and is a manifestation of success or maintaining prosperity. We are special because we are virtuous. We must maintain our virtue in order to be special. If you deviate from the right path, then you threaten the rewards that we may earn. So we will judge and condemn you as a way of protecting ourselves.
Whereas in a nation that is poor, where everyone is vulnerable and disaster occur frequently, God is a force for punishment. We have these calamities because of our weak nature. We must endure through the face of these woes for we have no other choice. And part of that endurance is accepting the possibility of loss, and not being afraid of it.
More than a few friends have asked me about my family in the wake of Haiyan and while I do genuinely appreciate the concern, and I am grateful that my friends ask, I feel bad about receiving it or that it arrives with this sense that my friends are more worried about my relatives than I am. I don't know if there's a word for the sense that you know someone dear to you is in a perilous situation, but you accept their peril and move past a point of anxiety to just letting life move on. Whatever that word is, I have it now, and that's what's getting me through the reports of a mounting death toll.
There's a new Dirty Dozen trip planned for New York next weekend. That's where I'm putting most of my thoughts right now.
"Oh, yeah, what's that?"
"Ay nako"
"You know that's basically our equivalent of "Oh My God", right? Like, it literally translates to that."
"I know and it comes in handy in so many situations. Our nurses use it for frustration or exasperation, positive and negative moments. It's versatile!"
"It is, but it's usually used for situations that are also appropriate for 'WTF'."
"That may be because I hear it in a hospital."
"No, that's just the way it is. You have to remember, our version of God tends to be the judgey Old Testament one. Whenever we invoke His name, it's usually because He's fucking with us."
I still have a fondness for the way lilmissnever once translated Filipino Catholicism to netik: "(Filipinos) are religious in the way that any people who are subjected to volcanic eruptions, typhoons and earthquakes are religious." Where you're used to having no control over your life, and the only thing you can ever do is pray.
Growing up the Philippines, typhoons were a thing like Noreasters in New England. They arrive, you get a day off school, and there's stuff in the news about some people dying, and you move on. And you go back to class the next day and find out that your locker was one of the ones that was flooded out, and all of your books and art projects are ruined. The craft room with our misshapen pottery was swamped, and the janitors are just going to throw it all out. You learn early that you will lose things, and that terrible events happen to many people for no reason at all, and that's just the way life is.
But when one does feel compelled to assign meaning to a random event, a religious person will assign that to God. And when those random events are earthquakes, typhoons and volcanoes, you will see your God as being a stern, cruel force, constantly testing your mettle to see if you can endure through the worst the world has to offer; because that's the only option that makes sense. It was weird for me to leave this and to enroll in Catholic schools in the US, where religious education wasn't focused on Noah's Flood and the plagues of Egypt and the multiple ways God would just ethnically cleanse tribes that He didn't like. We just had The Sermon on the Mount, and The Parable of Talents and bake sales to raise money for a new scoreboard. Because we weren't worried that a fancy electronic scoreboard would just get destroyed with the next hurricane.
It's been interesting to see how different visions of God reflect different circumstances, and the way that 'random' isn't so much arbitrary as it's reflective of certain advantages or truths. It feels like, in a nation where natural resources are bountiful, disasters are dispersed, and a base level of prosperity exists, then God is a force for rewarding you for your hard work, and is a manifestation of success or maintaining prosperity. We are special because we are virtuous. We must maintain our virtue in order to be special. If you deviate from the right path, then you threaten the rewards that we may earn. So we will judge and condemn you as a way of protecting ourselves.
Whereas in a nation that is poor, where everyone is vulnerable and disaster occur frequently, God is a force for punishment. We have these calamities because of our weak nature. We must endure through the face of these woes for we have no other choice. And part of that endurance is accepting the possibility of loss, and not being afraid of it.
More than a few friends have asked me about my family in the wake of Haiyan and while I do genuinely appreciate the concern, and I am grateful that my friends ask, I feel bad about receiving it or that it arrives with this sense that my friends are more worried about my relatives than I am. I don't know if there's a word for the sense that you know someone dear to you is in a perilous situation, but you accept their peril and move past a point of anxiety to just letting life move on. Whatever that word is, I have it now, and that's what's getting me through the reports of a mounting death toll.
There's a new Dirty Dozen trip planned for New York next weekend. That's where I'm putting most of my thoughts right now.