“Tender Fires”: Some notes on sexuality, spirituality, and the ‘sacred erotic’ in the evolving human consciousness (Part 1)

I am as sexual and as capable of loving as any person currently enjoying the pleasures of his/her intimate relationship with his/her partner.  And that will remain so even if, due to circumstances or due to personal choice, I should end up celibate all my life.

That conviction is reaffirmed by the book, Tender Fires: The Spiritual Promise of Sexuality. Written in a prose style that combines philosophical insights with snippets of general knowledge and what may be construed as “commonsensical,” this gem of a book by Franciscan Sister Fran Ferder and Father John Heagle is a delight to read. Thanks to Ate Lourie (Victor), dear friend and a guiding light of our community of practice in the Philippines, for giving me a copy of the book – a very precious gift on Christmas 2008.

I would perhaps consider this text as one of the most provocative readings of my (relatively) young life. Riveting, radical and refreshing, the book, I must hasten to add, does not sensationalize issues about human sexuality and how they have been historically conceptualized in the Judeo-Christian faith traditions, but it definitely invites controversy – which is good. It is through controversy that people start to talk about, and perhaps, redefine their constructed social realities. It is controversy that invites us to see that our definitions are actually nebulous and that further negotiations can or should be made.

The book is certainly not dogmatic. In contextualizing human sexuality in the faith tradition of Christianity, it successfully veers away from providing definitive answers to controversial questions, a common feature of texts and publications steeped in the ways of dogmatism and orthodoxy. Like any good book, Tender Fires invites readers to think and think further, to question what is, and to engage themselves in a dialogue.

A thorough and incisive review of the text would perhaps generate several treatises on human sexuality and its interface with spirituality. I am honestly not ready to do that. So in this entry, I feature only some of the textual extracts which I find very interesting – words over which I have mulled during these past few days and which I intend to use as points of departure for future personal reflections. (The pictures of me and the statues at Haw Par Villa – courtesy of friend Angie Wong – should not be taken as visual interpretations of the book. They’re meant to provide those who dare read this blog a somewhat playful form of respite, especially if s/he gets exhausted by plowing through my usually torturous, convoluted and lengthy prose.)

Sexuality and the questions on love and life-giving

An important point raised by the authors is how sexuality should be understood. Sexuality cannot be merely reduced to “genitality” or “genital expression” or “genital sharing” (that is, in the words of DH Lawrence, “having sex”).

Sexuality, the authors argue, is a relational energy. Genital expression, in all its forms, is just a component of sexuality. “Sexuality is love energy.  It refers to the spiritual, emotional, physical, psychological, social, and cultural aspects of relating to one another as embodied male and female persons” (p. 29)

They add, “Sexuality, a still evolving term, has to do with all the ways we try to reach one another at the level of the heart. It involves our efforts to communicate, our acts of tenderness, and even our struggle to find each other again after an argument.  It is the constantly burning fire within us that compels us to turn toward one another” (Ibid.).

Seen this way, sexuality is something that everyone has a capacity of exercising. Even the religious, who, by choice, are celibate, can be considered sexual beings when they exert effort to relate with other people. Sexuality is present in all aspects of human-to-human relations.

The authors further point out that “[t]he central question regarding our sexuality is not about our gender, ethnic background, age, vocation, sexual orientation, faith tradition, or even religious and moral convictions, though each of these helps define our uniqueness.  But in our heart of hearts – and we believe in God’s eyes – the core issue is not whether we’re married or single, divorced or remarried, celibate or sexually active, gay or straight, wounded or well, old or young, male or female.  The central question is:  How can I – in the unique circumstances of my life and with God’s help and grace – become a more responsible love and life-giver? How can I receive the gift of life more reverently and humbly?  How can I give life more creatively and joyfully? How can I receive love with more trust and mutuality? How can I give love with more freedom and generosity?”  (pp. 21-22).

The book does not offer quick answers to these questions. In the succeeding sections, the authors invite the readers to reflect on their own stories and the embodied experiences of people on ground.

Same-gender love

Perhaps, one of the more controversial issues brought up by the authors is that of sexual diversity, particularly of same-gender love. 

In exploring this issue, the authors raise the question, “Did God create human persons to fall in love outside the confines of heterosexuality?” which they indirectly address with a rather controversial yet convincing point from a member of the faithful on the ground:  “This is the conviction among those who believe that same-gender love expresses acceptable sexual diversity. ‘Love is what is important.  It is the heart of Christian vocation.  God created the universe with diversity in all other areas.  It is difficult to believe that such a God could imagine only one acceptable way in which human love could be expressed sexually.  Same-gender love might even represent a natural way of limiting overpopulation.’ This statement, spoken passionately by an Episcopalian minister whose son is gay, resonates with many in our church communities who find no contradiction between fidelity to Gospel values and faithful, committed love between two persons of the same gender” (p. 76).

The statement from the Episcopalian minister may of course invite strong counter-arguments or counter-propositions. Moreover, his views may be dismissed for apparently being defensive of his gay son. But if sexuality is seen as a relational energy, then any human being should be capable of loving any of his fellow human beings – man or woman, gay or straight.  The position is also warranted by the authors’ conviction that the Creation Story is a “work in progress, an unfinished symphony of God’s desire to be known and be heard.” They concur with contemporary cosmologists that the universe is ever-expanding and that one of the fundamental dynamics at work in this expansion is differentiation.

“Differentiation,” the authors explain, “describes God’s creative energy as it expands outwardly creating time and space. It encompasses the variety and uniqueness of every snowflake, seabird, flower, and agate, all of which reveal a diversity that is as colorful as it is incomprehensible. Each galaxy and person is unique. Apparently our God delights in such profligate variety and invites us also to rejoice in the heavens and the earth ‘with all their array’ (Gn 2:11)” (pp. 82-83).

Viewed from a rather secular perspective, differentiation recognizes the human capacity to undo certain social structures or categories like gender (in this case, heterosexuality) that restrict what Judith Butler calls “greater livability.”  As Butler points out, “The experience of normative restriction becoming undone can undo a prior conception of who one is only to inaugurate a relatively newer one that has greater livability as its aim” (p. 1, Undoing Gender, 2004).

I believe greater livability is the point of embracing the diversity of the world around us and consequently, the uniqueness of every living thing.

The Reader

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Drama

Curious of the love scenes between a fifteen year-old kid and a woman more than twice his age, I watched Academy award-nominated “The Reader” at Vivo on Tuesday afternoon.

The passionate scenes were, to say the least, arresting. They definitely add up to my repertoire of images of intimacy and human touch. What struck me more than the unconventional love affair between the 15 year-old Michael Berg and 30 plus year-old Hannah Schmitz, though, was the film’s portrayal of oral interpretation (oral reading) as “a re-creative art” and of literacy both as an instrument of liberation and oppression especially of the non-literate (or of those still operating in the realm of oral cultures).

Listening to the 15 year-old Michael read stories from great literature out loud to Hannah (as part of their lovemaking ritual) brought to mind memories of one of the courses I taught back in the UP. I taught Oral Interpretation for two semesters in Los Banos and if I were to teach that course again, I would include the film in my list of required audio-visual texts.

Oral interpretation – the study of literature via performance – features the text and makes use of body, voice, and other accoutrements to suggest the life of prose or poetry as understood by the reader after a careful study of the literary piece. Unlike that of acting or impersonating, oral interpretation’s primary goal is for the piece of literature to come alive from the printed page; the performer is merely a vessel through which listeners get a taste of literature as performed – as it should be, that is. (More sophisticated speech departments have renamed this area “performance studies” which has generated a number of advanced theories on text and performance.)

The film’s take on oral interpretation gets more riveting when an older Michael records his oral reading/ interpretation of great – more like “canonical” – literature on tape: from Homer’s epic “Odyssey” to Anton Chekov’s “The Lady with the Little Dog.” He sends these tapes to Hannah in her cell in Germany, who at this time was serving life sentence for war crimes during the Nazi regime.

Ralph Fiennes’ Michael, definitely crispier in his renditions of literary masterpieces, suggests that the performer is a living text. What can be gleaned from the older Michael is a more experienced performer whose life intertwined with the life of the literature he reads out loud re-creates art in a much more mature and more informed fashion compared to how he read them orally when he was a kid with raging hormones.

Then there’s the part on literacy. Hannah Schmitz’s character – ably portrayed by Kate Winslet – is an illiterate tram conductor who later in the film is revealed to have worked as one of the guards for a Nazi satellite. She is later tried and sentenced for life for an act she accepts with full responsibility but for which evidence available to Michael’s character (this time as a law student witnessing the trial) proves otherwise. In this gripping story, Hannah would rather choose to be punished incommensurate to her participation in the war than to experience the shame of being discovered illiterate.

The depiction of Hannah’s debilitating illiteracy has its ups though – at least to me as a viewer. Her appreciation of a book read aloud – of the spoken word – seems rare and distinct from how most of today’s and even the previous generations would find, say, Homer’s “Odyssey” interpreted orally. Thanks to Kate Winslet, Hannah’s character as a non-literate woman but whose mind operates in an oral culture comes very much alive to me.

In his classic book “Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word” (1982), Walter Ong characterizes thought and expression in the primary oral culture as “additive rather than subordinative”; “aggregative rather than analytic” (reliance on formula); “redundant or copious”; “conservative or traditionalist” (premium on old wise men); “close to the human lifeworld” (little concern with abstraction); “agonistically toned”; “empathetic and participatory rather than objectively distanced”; “homeostatic”; and “situational rather than abstract.” Some of these features are evident in Winslet’s characterization of Hannah. Her empathetic reaction towards every story becomes startling because it is something most people trained in written and printed (chirographic and typographic) cultures would not express. For instance, her utter embarrassment at hearing the words from DH Lawrence’s controversial “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” manifests in some way her mental model’s closeness to the human life world. Hannah is also portrayed by Winslet as agonistically toned – argumentative and aggressive – especially in the courtroom scene where Hannah responds to the judge’s questions on her participation in the Nazi regime.

One of Ong’s important insights about the oral mind is that it is most capable of listening intently and appreciatively to every sound it hears; it can also create patterns – mnemonics – to preserve what it deems worth preserving in memory. Hannah, it seemed, held on to the sound of great literature to remember what is beautiful about human nature and the world in order to erase from her memory the horrors of the past. Interestingly, it is the electronic medium (represented by the recorder and the cassette tapes bearing Michael’s recorded oral readings) that ushers her entry into the written/ chirographic world.

Much as I would like to be celebratory about the beauty of the oral mind, it remains a fact that in a world once dominated by the printed word, and now, by the electronic media, the wisdom of orality as demonstrated by non-literate peoples will always be relegated to the sidelines. While the film is outright about its take on (il)literacy – that there is no other way but to promote literacy to liberate the human mind – it also brings to the fore what literacy can do to marginalize or even to disable people.

A text-centric culture relies on, and therefore submits fully to, the primacy of the documented written or printed word. At the time Hannah was on trial, the written documents – a published account of Jewish oppression from a mother and a daughter who survived the Holocaust and a report attested to by Hannah and the other defendants – were supreme. They were the warrants and the back-ups that supported the link between data and claim, between stories of eyewitnesses and the accusations for which the defendants were tried. They constituted a part of the history of the Holocaust and the war.

While there is a lot to celebrate about literacy, it cannot be denied that it can also obliterate that which can be expressed in ways other than writing or print. To some extent, it simplifies the complexity of what has been. It shuns information and insight from that which is unavailable to the silent reader. Admirably, “The Reader” – communicated through a medium that uses visual text and the spoken, written and printed words – subtly poses this problem to its viewers for them to ponder and to think about.

Snippets of UPLB History: The Humanities (Part 3)

DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGES
(Last of three parts)


by Edelwina Cu-Legaspi


Earlier, in 1953, the English courses were revised to give the students as much as was possible and profitable in the few English courses they had to attend. Accordingly, English 1a and 1b, both three-unit courses, gave way to English 1 (two units), English 2 (two units), and English 3 (three units), thereby affording the English instructor additional hours in which to try to develop communication skills, disseminate information, stimulate independent thinking, and mold character. After finishing these three subjects, the honors curriculum students were required to take English 10 (Scientific Reporting); those in the general curriculum, English 4 (Literature in English); and those in agricultural education, English 11 (Public Speaking). To most members of the staff, English 4 has been the most “fulfilling” subject. One of the few courses in the College that are less concerned with technical skills, it seeks to bring out the individual who can live and work healthily and happily with himself and with others.

The extracurricular work of the Department of Languages has increased even though it no longer proofreads for the Philippine Agriculturist. Its members still read for English theses and other manuscripts of students and faculty members. Some are members of college standing committees, others are resource persons on communication skills for the Community Development Training Center . A few are advisers of student organizations and the College organ, Aggie Green and Gold.  Others direct student plays and sit as moderators and judges in student forums and contests. Half a dozen serve during registrations in various capacities. The foreign students who come to the College inadequately prepared to take up work in English attend special tutorial classes held by Languages instructors. For the Department of Agricultural Education, the Language staff edited and proofread high school teaching materials prepared by the Department in collaboration with the Bureau of Public Schools. In addition to this, a couple of English instructors are detailed every now and then to handle high school classes, reversing the situation in the earlier days when the Department of Languages had borrowed from other departments to reinforce its staff.  One instructor handles Philippine Institutions 1, a newly instituted course, while the Department of Agricultural Education searched for a qualified staff to teach it.  Another conducts research for the Philippine Historical Association of which he is a charter member and gives language examinations for prospective candidates for advanced degrees. Another member has been supervisor of the Maquiling School for years. 

The Department is not wanting in “lighter” work either. On various social occasions members of the staff have contributed a number or two to programs; the ladies serve on the Loyalty Day luncheon committee.  In December, 1958, the Department presented Sam and Bella Spewack’s amoral-sentimental comedy My Three Angels, the proceeds from which went into the purchase of badly needed stage curtains for the Baker Hall. To give residents their fill of classical music, the Department formed the Art Appreciation Club which meets every month. In the funding campaign of the College for the Golden Jubilee celebrations, the Languages staff spearheaded the drive by holding a Mardi Gras night which netted a neat amount.

Although the Department has concentrated on the practical use of English to agricultural students all these years, it has not lost sight of three of the major goals of all language arts instruction: “wholesome personal development, growing intellectual curiosity and the capacity for critical thinking, and deeper understanding of the reasons for faith in and allegiance to the basic values of a democratic society."

It is every Languages Instructor's hope to achieve these goals in any subject he handles now and will handle in the future. At the time of the writing of this report, materials for the proposed Speech Clinic, a Rockefeller gift, have started trickling in.  Plans are afoot to include a humanities course in the contemplated revised curriculum. When all these plans materialize, indeed, the Department of Languages, like Bacon, will have taken unto itself a vast province.

Source: Philippine Agriculturist, Volume XLIII, Number 1, June 1959.

Snippets of UPLB History: The Humanities (Part 2)

Below is the second part of the article written by Professor Edelwina C. Legaspi published in the special issue of the Philippine Agriculturist (Volume XLIII, Number 1, June 1959) in honor of the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture’s golden jubilee.

DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGES
(Second of three parts)

by Edelwina Cu-Legaspi

When the Americans returned, it was only natural to expect the reestablishment of English as a separate department. But the heavy toll that the Japanese occupation had taken on the members of the pre-war Department made reorganization a most difficult task. Thus, when the College re-opened on July 26, 1945, three English courses for 95 students were offered under the Department of Languages headed by Dean Uichanco in an acting capacity.  Miss Aurora L. Samonte of the Department of Agricultural Educational was assigned to teach English 1a and 1b; later she became the acting head of the Department and acting librarian of the College. English 1b, a completion course for those whose classes had been disrupted by the Pacific war and the battle for liberation, was handled by Mrs. Guadalupe Fores-Guazon, also of the Department of Agricultural Education. Dr. Gerardo O. Ocfemia, head of the Department of Plant Pathology, was detailed to teach English 10, a thesis-writing course for seniors. English 1 and 10 both aimed at training students in “such written and spoken discourse as will be of practical value to agriculturists in the Philippine Islands.”

 

In June, 1946, English A and B, preparatory courses divided into two-semester work for students who had had only six years of elementary schooling, were introduced. The Department also taught English 1a and 1b (English Composition), English 5 (World Literature), English 10 (Scientific Reporting), English 11 (Public Speaking), English 101 (The Short Story), German and Spanish.  Four faculty members handled these classes; of this number three were detailed from other departments, two from the Department of Agricultural Education and one from the Department of Soils.

 

There was a change of hands in the school year 1948-49. Miss Samonte, a most valuable worker, resigned.  Mrs. Marcela I. Sevilla, instructor at the UP Rural High School, was made in-charge of the Department on January 1, 1949. Professors Nicolas Galvez of Soils, Melanio Gapud of Agricultural Education, and Jose Blando of the College of Forestry were drafted to teach some courses. A couple of years later Miss Nelly Dunglao, just back from abroad, joined the Department staff.

 

In 1952 two additional instructors were appointed. In July of the same year Miss Nelly Dunglao was designated acting head, relieving Mrs. Sevilla as in charge of the Department. During this period the copy editor of the Philippine Agriculturist and the head of the Department of Soils were on detail in the Department.

 

Four instructors, two for English and two for Spanish, joined the staff in 1953. One of the Spanish instructors at once took the initiative of organizing the Circulo Hispanista, an association of the students enrolled in Spanish.

 

Five more came in 1954. When the College enrollment trebled far beyond expectations in 1955, the curriculum and the faculty likewise expanded. The Department acquired the services of nine new members. Miss Dunglao, who became head of the Department in November, 1955, resigned on July 31, 1957, leaving the Department of Languages with a teaching force of nineteen, this included the writer who was appointed head on August 1, 1957, an office clerk, and four student assistants. But even with these the Department still had to count on the services of “borrowed talents.” Dr. Galvez continued to handle the German courses which were attended mostly by graduate students. With the passage of the Magalona bill and later the Rizal law, more courses in Spanish had to be offered.

 

The Department of Languages has travelled a long way since its founding. Of its 19 staff members today, only four have no advanced credits; five have master’s degrees (four from abroad, one from the U.P.). Now housed in a building all its own, the old Agronomy, the Department is quite a contrast to the late Miss Yule’s English office at the Old College Building with its “one straight-backed chair and a deal table with a small drawer.” The interior which underwent a facelifting in the summer of 1958 was painted in varying shades of blue.

 

Before it inherited the old Agronomy building in June, 1954, the Department never stayed put in one place. After the liberation the Languages office was where a little space could be spared. Consequently, before it found its permanent home, the Department had “squatted” in the Departments of Agricultural Education, Agricultural Engineering, Entomology, and Agricultural Economics. For some time, therefore, the students were treated to the sight of Languages instructors scurrying from building to building, lugging along books, notebooks, papers, chalks, and even loose blackboards.

 

It is easy to see that the early post-liberation conditions left much to be desired. The Department especially felt keenly the lack of instructional materials. Just starting to get rehabilitated itself, the library was not much of help. The English teachers, thus handicapped, very often had only their own resources to draw from.  They made up for their youth and lack of experience with their knowledge of the subject matter, diligence, resourcefulness, interest, and personality.  In time they realized that there was no substitute for a well-trained teacher genuinely enthusiastic about his elected calling.

Snippets of UPLB History: The Humanities (Part 1)

Happy Centennial, UPLB! As a way of celebrating LB's 100th year, I wish to highlight snippets of UPLB history in this site.

Below is the first of three parts of an article published almost half a century ago in the Philippine Agriculturist (now the Philippine Agricultural Scientist, an Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) journal based in UP Los Banos). Written by UP Professor Emeritus Edelwina Cu-Legaspi, then assistant professor of the UP College of Agriculture, this piece of work gives the reader a glimpse into the early years of what is now the UPLB Department of Humanities, a degree-granting unit that offers both master’s and undergraduate programs and arguably the cradle of liberal arts in a campus largely known for its trailblazing research in the areas of agriculture, biotechnology, engineering, and the environment. The article was published along with other articles on the various units of the UP College of Agriculture in the special issue of the Philippine Agriculturist (Volume XLIII, Number 1, June 1959) in honor of the College’s golden jubilee.

 

 

DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGES[1]

 

by Edelwina Cu-Legaspi[2]

 

The Department of Languages, which used to be known as the Department of English from its beginnings to the outbreak of the Pacific war, was never formally established. One is inclined to think that it must have earned its title of “department” in the catalogue only after the English work in and out of the classroom had made itself as an entity, not a fraction.[3]  “English Department” first appeared in the masthead of the Philippine Agriculturist in 1919 when Dr. Sam Trelease, a college plant physiologist, was editor, and Miss Yule, who was to become the first head of the Department, was assistant editor.

 

It is noteworthy, though, that despite the lack of recognition of the Department as such, English was among the subjects taught when the College first opened in June, 1909. Among other things, the pioneering students fed their imagination on Longfellow’s Evangeline and Irving’s Alhambra in the home of Mrs. Carrie Stein Ledyard, instructor in modern languages.  Mrs. Ledyard taught German and French as well. In her absence, Artemas Day, a biologist, pitched in.

 

For some time the English subjects offered were of preparatory nature, more or less identical with, if not a continuation of, those given in the public high schools.  The first course on the collegiate level was an elective, English 3, instituted under Mrs. Dorothy Rundles. To this subject, Dean Copeland consigned students he deemed defective in English.

 

In the early years of the College the English Department, aside from teaching English, edited for English, theses and other manuscripts, and copied and proofread for the Philippine Agriculturist. Although there was rarely more than one instructor at a time in those days, the Department could teach and read for English, and still serve as a first-aid station for Filipino faculty members and students not taking English courses but whose knowledge of the language could stand improvement.

 

As a result of the years of “restrained struggle” on Miss Yule’s part, English was made a required subject first in the six-year and later in the four-year curriculum. With revisions and readjustments, three consecutive courses were soon added. One of these courses aimed at giving students “a little training in the translation of science into ordinary speech.” A second dealt with principles of argument, business correspondence, and scientific reporting. A third was a survey course in world literature to help the students partake of “the precious lifeblood of the masters of the spirits.”

 

The Department did its share in enriching the cultural life of the students. Miss E. Gertrude Madison initiated the College Sing. A student pioneer who is now a retired professor of animal husbandry fondly recalls the evenings when he and his classmates, gathered around the lively Miss Madison, would sing all their cares away. These sessions brought out many a talent which came in handy during College programs. Miss Margaret Wilson popularized the Mimics, dumb simulative performances designed to give the student a taste of drama. This literary vehicle helped in spreading new agricultural ideas in rural communities and in training students to direct simple literary plays. It is only fitting to record that the proceeds of the first dramatic performance on the campus, “The Court Scene from the Merchant of Venice,” which was directed by Mrs. Gillis (first semester 1915-1916), were used to buy the first non-technical books for the library.

 

As years rushed by, a number of names, mostly American, appeared in the roster of the English Department. More courses were offered. The services offered by the Department, aside from the regular classroom teaching, were gaining recognition. The future held much promise.

 

And then came the war.

 

Of the two remaining American members of the Department, only Mrs. Harriet Richards was interned at the University of Santo Tomas concentration camp; the other one, Mrs. Ruth Mack, had gone back to the States earlier.

 

With the coming of the Japanese, the Department of English, as such, ceased to exist. The Japanese, determined to efface all vestiges of American tutelage, forbade the teaching of English.  The Department taught German and Spanish instead. Strangely enough, though, Mr. Y. Utiyama, educational adviser of the Japanese Military Administration, ordered that teaching of English, not Spanish or German, should be continued till the faculty and students would have acquired a working knowledge of Nippongo. He made it clear that only English reading was to be taught, no composition and grammar.  Before a student could graduate, he should know Nippongo. Accordingly, a Japanese instructor, Mr. H. Kongsio, was promptly sent to the campus to acquaint College constituents with the conqueror’s tongue. A Filipino national language instructor, Mrs. Josefa Diaz, was made in charge of the Department.  Apparently lying low, English was actually functioning shoulder to shoulder with the Filipino national language. As a precautionary measure, the Department of English sought refuge in the camouflaging title of Department of Languages.

---

[1] General Contribution No. 902.

[2] Assistant Professor and Head of the Department

[3] Emma S. Yule, Philippine Agriculturist, 18, 327-331 (1929)