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Letter to a Young Business Journalist

Dear Colleague,

First, let me congratulate you for choosing the path of business journalism.

Many young reporters find it intimidating. After all, the beat deals with numbers, policies, boardroom decisions, and markets that move with dizzying speed.

But behind the data and jargon are stories that shape livelihoods, jobs, and the direction of the economy. Your work, if done well, will help readers understand forces that affect their daily lives.

So instead of writing about my experiences as a journalist (which, I’m sure, narinig niyo na sa yabang kong ito), allow me instead to share some lessons.

1. Learn the basics, then keep learning.

Business reporting rests on a foundation of financial literacy. You need to know how to read balance sheets, central bank reports, and government budgets.

But mastery comes with constant practice and curiosity. When you encounter a term you don’t understand, look it up immediately. When an executive or policymaker speaks in acronyms, ask for clarification.

Never pretend to know more than you do. Your readers will thank you for translating complexity into clarity.

2. Cultivate sources, not just contacts.

Anyone can gather press releases. But a good journalist builds trust with people who matter.

This means showing up consistently, listening more than talking, and protecting confidences when warranted.

Remember that sources range from CEOs to union leaders, from regulators to small entrepreneurs.

Treat them all with respect. Some of the biggest stories I’ve written and some of the most valuable insights I’ve gained came from people who were not on stage but in the audience.

3. Balance access with independence.

When I left the Inquirer at the end of 2023 after working there for almost two decades, my take home pay as business news editor stood at only P70,000 a month (and we had the best pay scale in the print industry back then). Many junior employees in the communications departments of listed companies make more than that.

Everyone knows we don’t make a lot of money. As such, you will be offered favors, early tips, or even outright incentives. Weigh them carefully. Turn down those that put you and your audience at an unacceptable disadvantage.

The value of your byline depends on credibility. Once lost, trust is hard to regain.

Be cordial with your sources, but temper this with the knowledge that they are fallible human beings. They sometimes make mistakes. They are sometimes wrong. And sometimes, they lie.

Our role is to report facts, provide context, and, when needed, ask uncomfortable questions.

4. Deadlines are non-negotiable.

Business stories often break quickly. Markets move in real time, regulators issue policy changes at odd hours, companies disclose earnings late at night.

You must be ready to write fast and accurately. Speed matters, but never sacrifice accuracy for it. A wrong number or misquoted statement can damage reputations and mislead investors.

Develop the discipline of fact-checking even under pressure.

5. Think beyond the daily story.

While you will spend much of your time chasing news, don’t neglect the bigger picture.

Why does a rate hike matter to households? How will a new law affect industries five years from now? What risks lie beneath the optimism of corporate announcements?

Your ability to connect dots — like how Miguel Camus writes — will distinguish you from reporters who simply rewrite press statements.

6. Remember whom you write for.

Business journalism is not just for bankers and CEOs. It is for the commuter who wonders why fares rise, the small entrepreneur seeking credit, the retiree trying to stretch savings.

Always ask: How does this story matter to ordinary people? When you write with them in mind, your stories gain relevance and impact.

Our job is not done as long as there are Filipinos who don’t understand why the economy behaves the way it does, or why the money in their bank accounts evaporates faster than they should.

If more and more Filipinos are unable to improve their lives despite the insights we publish, we are failing in our jobs, and we are failing them.

7. Don’t measure yourself against the past.

Every generation of journalists is told it is less capable or less disciplined than those who came before. Don’t be distracted by this narrative.

You are coming of age in an era of unprecedented change. You already carry skills older generations could only wish for: adaptability to new technology, an instinct to embrace change, and the energy to work at the speed the world now demands.

The task is not to imitate the legends of yesterday, but to build the journalism tomorrow requires. Use your advantages well, and you will find that the so-called weaknesses of your generation are, in truth, its greatest strengths.

Finally, never lose your sense of mission.

Business journalism is about more than numbers; it is about accountability, transparency, and giving citizens the information they need to make decisions.

Do your job well, and you will not only build a career—you will contribute to building a more informed and fair Philippine society.

Yours sincerely,

ChatGPT, with prompts, inputs and editing by

Daxim L. Lucas
Past President
Economic Journalists Association of the Philippines

The basis for the movie ‘Munich’

CURSE OF MUNICH MASSACRE STRIKES AGAIN
By Sammy Ketz

JERUSALEM, June 9 (AFP) – The murder of PLO security chief Atef Bssiso in Paris on Monday leaves only two of Palestinians suspected of the killing of 11 Israeli athletes the at the 1972 Munich Olympics still alive.

Mohammad Daud Audeh, alias Abu Daud, and Amin al-Hindi are the last survivors of the Black September group set up by the PLO in 1971, according to Maariv newspaper’s military correspondent, quoting Israeli intelligence.

It was named after the month of 1970 when Jordan expelled the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

Daud, suspected of coordinating the massacre on the ground, was arrested in Paris in 1977 and released a few days later amid a huge scandal.

He was seriously injured in August 1981 in an attempt on his life at Warsaw and today lives between Baghdad and Damascus, the daily said.

Hindi is the sole survivor among the four men who plotted the Munich bloodshed with Salah Khalaf, nom de guerre Abu Iyad.

Abu Iyad, the founder of Black September, died in a hail of bullets fired by one of his bodyguards in Tunis on January 14, 1991, and which also accounted for his two deputies Hail Abded al-Hamid (Abul Hol) and Abu Mohammad al-Omari.

In “Israel’s Secret History”, Jacques Derogy and Hesi Carmel quote an Israeli intelligence chief telling his agents to wipe all involved in Munich with the words: “Maybe God forgives; Israel never.”

Prime Minister Golda Meir gave the orders for an unending hunt to track down the killers and Mossad head Zvi Zamir set up two hit squads, named Aleph and Beth after the first two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

Between November 1972 and July 1973, 13 Palestinians were assassinated.

On October 16, 1972, Abdem Wael Zwaiter, was gunned down on the doorstep of his Rome flat. December 7, Mahmud Hamshari died when his telephone blew up, and in January 1973, Hussein Beshir Abul Kheir was killed in his Cyprus hotel room.

Three days later, in the most spectacular operation, Israeli commandos stole into Beirut and murdered three Fatah chiefs — Abu Yussef, Kamal Adwan and Kamal Nasser.

Ehud Barak, today Israel’s chief-of-staff, knocked their door disguised as a Palestinian woman and shot them dead.

But on July 21, 1973, things went badly wrong when Mossad agents killed a Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer, Norway, in the belief he was Ali Hassan Salameh, the brain behind Munich.

As six Israeli intelligence operatives were arrested and put on trial in Norway, the hit squads were called off. But on January 22, 1979, a car bomb killed Salameh in Beirut.

Yossi Melman, a journalist with Haaretz and co-author of the book “All Spies are Princes” does not believe Bssisso was killed for his involvement in Munich.

“Twenty to 30 Palestinians were implicated to varying degrees in the Munich operation,” he said. “Most were killed, and the rest spared either because their roles were minor or because they stayed out of reach.

“The message from that time has gone and I can’t see the Mossad taking a risk over something that happened 20 years ago.”

Israel has never officially admitted responsibility for any of the above.

A government spokesman denied any involvement in Monday’s murder and on Tuesday the Fatah Revolutionary Council of Palestinian extremist Abu Nidal claimed it killed Bssiso for having supplied European intelligence services with details of Palestinian figures.

But it was Israel’s Labour Party leader and retired general Yitzhak Rabin, who recalled in February an old Hebrew saying after the army killed Hezbollah fundamentalist leader Sheikh Abbas Mussawi in Lebanon.

“Never leave an address.”

AFP, June 9, 1992

Remembering

By Conrado de Quiros

Published in his column ‘There’s the Rub’ in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, September 10, 2002

FOR DAYS now, the media have been full of exhortations for us to remember 9/11. Well, how can anyone forget the image of those two planes diving into the two gleaming towers of the Manhattan skyline, sending them shuddering and crashing to the ground? It opened whole new doors in the meaning of vulnerability. And fear. And anger.

If you have friends and relatives in New York, you are not likely to forget it. I do. And though none of them ended up being inside the doomed buildings or near them at the time, the what-ifs continue to boggle the mind. Had they been there for whatever reason, they might have been one of those who were trapped in the rubble and never ferreted out. Only candles burning above ground might have been left to mark their having been in this world, before they departed it in this gruesome way.

No, it is not easy to forget 9/11. But it is not easy to sympathize either with the breathtaking self-absorption of many of those who call for remembering it. One Arab woman and a professor of the London School of Economics, also a woman, put it very well in a roundtable discussion in BBC some weeks ago on the aftermath of 9/11 when they said the US frittered the goodwill and compassion of the world far too easily and swiftly by conscripting that tragedy to flex its muscle rather than to examine its conscience. I agree. (Those two were the most brilliant in that discussion, and it is probably not an accident that they were both women. Head and heart are not naturally opposed faculties.)

I myself had thought that event would spark some introspection among American officials, and indeed among American citizens themselves, and cause them to look more closely at what they had done to make the world what it is, in the same way the Vietnam War did for them in the 1980s. Not so. Or at least it hasn’t happened yet (I continue to hope it will). It has only fanned the fires of anger, it has only beaten the drums of war.

My specific problem with the kind of remembering we are being asked to make it is that it asks us as well to indulge in a grand forgetting. At the very least, what that means is that we see no other pain but America’s. Not the pain of other victims of terrorism, not the pain of the victims of unjust wars and occupations, not the pain of the victims of utter devastation, often of America’s making. Indeed, not the members of the Afghan wedding party who fell victims to George W. Bush’s smart bombs. Not the women and children who died in the buildings when the Israeli army razed down whole quarters of Palestine. Not the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, many of them Red Crescent volunteers, who were sent to the bosom of Allah by George Bush Sr.’s smart bombs. Unlike the dead in 9/11, they will forever remain nameless and faceless, Arab names being hard to pronounce and Arab faces even harder to etch in the minds of CNN listeners.

Still more. It asks us to forget that the US not very long ago propped up Idi Amin, Bokassa, Duvalier, Noriega, Van Thieu, Pinochet, our very own Marcos, and a host of other nasty characters in Asia, Africa, and Latin America who unleashed their murderous thugs to keep the world safe for democracy. Every time we recollect them-indeed every time we mention Balangiga and the origins of American presence in these islands-a flood of angry voices comes bursting at us demanding that we see these concerns as unimportant, irrelevant, and insidious. They mean nothing in a world riven into Armageddon, the US charging at the head of the forces of Good, banners flailing in the wind, against the forces of Evil led by the “rogue countries.” It is Armageddon, except that it is not Yahweh or Allah who sits in judgment in these Last Days. America does.

And still more. It asks us to forget that the CIA and American covert operation have been responsible for wholesale slaughter in various parts of the world. Indeed, it does not only ask us to forget that, it asks us to transform them, by the magic dust of Hollywood, bat wings, and the tears of those who grieve for 9/11 into knights in shining armor, Men in Black, and Marvel heroes rolled into one. It asks us to forget America once lamented the folly of the Vietnam War, through elegiac novels and plays and movies, and see that they were right to carpet-bomb it with Agent Orange after all. That is what a spate of movies has been trying to do lately.

Even worse, it asks us to forget, through a neon-lit recruitment ad called “War Against Terror,” that the very people who have signed up for it, who are now being hailed as the staunchest defenders of freedom, are the very thugs in uniform who propped up the rule of the nasty characters in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and made the world ring with the cries of those they tortured and “salvaged” while they played the ukelele and sang “Home on the Range.” Chief of them the American-trained Special Forces of Indonesia, who made the streets of Indonesia run with blood so Suharto could keep his country safe for democracy. But not least our very own West Point- and PMA-trained cutthroats in uniform who along with one Wahab Akbar, formerly of the Abu Sayyaf, now governor of Basilan, are roaming the South to keep this country safe for democracy.

I grieve for those who died in 9/11. But I do not see why that grief, and those of others, should be yoked to a vision of the world that bears little resemblance to how most of us remember it. I cannot see how we honor the dead by turning their bones into separate and saintly relics rather than letting them mingle with the bones of the other dead in recognition of our common humanity.

By all means let us remember 9/11 with all the passion we can muster. But let us not forget everything else.

This article was named ‘Best Opinion Piece’ (Category B) by the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) during its annual awards held in Hong Kong in 2003.

The Calling of Voices

By Fredrick Buechner

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim; each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.”

And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts!”

Then flew one of the seraphim to me, having in his hand a burning coal which he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth, and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin forgiven.” And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” And He said, “Go…”

Isaiah 6:1-9

“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”

Matthew 4:4

The telephone rings late one night, and you jump out of your skin; you try for a while to pretend that it is not ringing, but after a while you answer it because otherwise you will never know who it is, and it might be anybody, anybody. Then a voice says. “Listen, something has happened. Something has got to be done. I know you are busy. I know you have lots on your mind. But you’ve got to come. For God’s sake.”

Or you are walking along an empty beach toward the end of the day, and there is a gray wind blowing, and a seagull with a mussel shell in its beak flaps up and up, and then lets the shell drop to the rock below, and there is something so wild and brave and beautiful about it that you have to write it into a poem or paint it into a picture or sing it into a song; or if you are no good at any of these, you have to live out at least the rest of that day in a way that is somehow true to the little scrap of wonder that you have seen.

Or I think of the school church that I served for a time where the offering each week was given to an institution for retarded children, and when the plate was passed around, some of the students, resentful of having to go to church at all, would drop in their penny or would drop in nothing at all. Then maybe someday a friend would drag one of them down to where the money went, and he would get to know some one of the children a little, and when he went back another day, the child would come running up to him in a way that made him suddenly see, with a kind of panic almost, that for that child, the sight of him was Christmas morning and a rocket to the moon and the no-school whistle on a snowy morning. And then it was like the phone ringing in the night again or the seagull riding the gray wind. It was a summons that he had to answer somehow or, at considerable cost, not answer.

Or in the year that King Uzziah died, or in the year that John F. Kennedy died, or in the year that somebody you loved died, you go into the temple if that is your taste, or you hide your face in the little padded temple of your hands, and a voice says, “Whom shall I send into the pain of a world where people die?” and if you are not careful, you may find yourself answering, “Send me.” You may hear the voice say, “Go.” Just go.

Like “duty,” “law,” “religion,” the word “vocation” has a dull ring to it, but in terms of what it means, it is really not dull at all. Vocare, to call, of course, and a man’s vocation is a man’s calling. It is the work that he is called to in this world, the thing that he is summoned to spend his life doing. We can speak of a man choosing his vocation, but perhaps it is at least as accurate to speak of a vocation choosing the man, of a call being given and a man hearing it, or not hearing it. And maybe that is the place to start: the business of listening and hearing. A man’s life is full of all sorts of voices calling him in all sorts of directions. Some of them are voices from inside and some of them are voices from outside. The more alive and alert we are, the more clamorous our lives are. Which do we listen to? What kind of voice do we listen for?

There is a sad and dangerous little game that people play when they get to be a certain age. It is a form of solitaire. They get out their class yearbook, and look at the pictures of the classmates they knew best and recall the days when they first knew them in school, ten or twenty years ago or whatever it was. They think about all the exciting, crazy, wonderfully characteristic things their classmates used to be interested in and about the kind of dreams they had about what they were going to do when they graduated and about the kind of dreams that maybe they had for some of them. Then they think about what those classmates actually did with their lives, what they are doing with them now ten or twenty years later. I make no claim that the game is always sad or that when it seems to be sad our judgment is always right, but once or twice when I have played it myself, sadness has been a large part of what I have felt. Because in my school, there were students who had a real flair, a real talent, for something. Maybe it was for writing or acting or sports. Maybe it was an interest and a joy in working with people toward some common goal, a sense of responsibility for people who in some way had less than they or were less. Sometimes it was just their capacity for being so alive that made you more alive to be with them. Yet now, a good many years later, I have the feeling that more than just a few of them are spending their lives at work in which none of these gifts are being used, at work they seem to be working at with neither much pleasure nor any sense of accomplishment. This is the sadness of the game, and the danger of it is that maybe we find that in some measure we are among them or that we are too blind to see that we are.

When you are young, I think, your hearing is in some ways better than it is ever going to be again. You hear better than most people the voices that call to you out of your own life to give yourself to this work or that work. When you are young, before you accumulate responsibilities, you are freer than most people to choose among all the voices and to answer the one that speaks most powerfully to who you are and to what you really want to do with your life. But the danger is that there are so many voices, and they all in their way sound so promising. The danger is that you will not listen to the voice that speaks to you through the seagull mounting the gray wind, say, or the vision in the temple, that you do not listen to the voice inside you or to the voice that speaks from outside but specifically to you out of the specific events of your life, but that instead you listen to the great blaring, boring, banal voice of our mass culture, which threatens to deafen us all by blasting forth that the only thing that really matters about your work is how much it will get you in the way of salary and status, and that if it is gladness you are after, you can save that for weekends. In fact one of the grimmer notions that we seem to inherit from our Puritan forebears is that work is not even supposed to be glad but, rather, a kind of penance, a way of working off the guilt that you accumulate during the hours when you are not working.

The world is full of people who seem to have listened to the wrong voice and are now engaged in life-work in which they find no pleasure or purpose and who run the risk of suddenly realizing someday that they have spent the only years that they are ever going to get in this world doing something which could not matter less to themselves or to anyone else. This does not mean, of course, people who are doing work that from the outside looks unglamorous and humdrum, because obviously such work as that may be a crucial form of service and deeply creative. But it means people who are doing work that seems simply irrelevant not only to the great human needs and issues of our time but also to their own need to grow and develop as humans.

In John Marquand’s novel Point of No Return, for instance, after years of apple-polishing and bucking for promotion and dedicating all his energies to a single goal, Charlie Gray finally gets to be vice-president of the fancy little New York bank where he works; and then the terrible moment comes when he realizes that it is really not what he wanted after all, when the prize that he has spent his life trying to win suddenly turns to ashes in his hands. His promotion assures him and his family of all the security and standing that he has always sought, but Marquand leaves you with the feeling that maybe the best way Charlie Gray could have supported his family would have been by giving his life to the kind of work where he could have expressed himself and fulfilled himself in such a way as to become in himself, as a person, the kind of support they really needed.

There is also the moment in the Gospels where Jesus is portrayed as going into the wilderness for forty days and nights and being tempted there by the devil. And one of the ways that the devil tempts him is to wait until Jesus is very hungry from fasting and then to suggest that he simply turn the stones into bread and eat. Jesus answers, “Man shall not live by bread alone,” and this just happens to be, among other things, true, and very close to the same truth that Charlie Gray comes to when he realizes too late that he was not made to live on status and salary alone but that something crucially important was missing from his life even though he was not sure what it was any more than, perhaps, Marquand himself was sure what it was.

There is nothing moralistic or sentimental about this truth. It means for us simply that we must be careful with our lives, for Christ’s sake, because it would seem that they are the only lives we are going to have in this puzzling and perilous world, and so they are very precious and what we do with them matters enormously. Everybody knows that. We need no one to tell it to us. Yet in another way perhaps we do always need to be told, because there is always the temptation to believe that we have all the time in the world, whereas the truth of it is that we do not. We have only a life, and the choice of how we are going to live it must be our own choice, not one that we let the world make for us. Because surely Marquand was right that for each of us there comes a point of no return, a point beyond which we do no longer have enough life left to go back and start all over again.

To Isaiah, the voice said, “Go,” and for each of us there are many voices that say it, but the question is which one will we obey in our lives, which of the voices that call is to be the one that we answer. No one can say, of course, except each for himself, but I believe that it is possible to say at least this in general to all of us: we should go with our lives where we most need to go and where we are most needed.

Where we most need to go. Maybe that means that the voice we should listen to most as we choose a vocation is the voice that we might think we should listen to least, and that is the voice of our gladness. What can we do that makes us gladdest, what can we do that leaves us with the strongest sense of sailing true north and of peace, which is much of what gladness is? Is it making things with our hands out of wood or stone or paint on canvas? Or is it making something we hope like truth out of words? Or making people laugh or weep in a way that cleanses their spirit? I believe that if it is a thing that makes us truly glad, than it is a good thing and it is our thing and it is the calling voice that we were made to answer with our lives.

And also, where we are most needed. In a world where there is so much drudgery, so much grief, so much emptiness and fear and pain, our gladness in our work is as much needed as we ourselves need to be glad. If we keep our eyes and ears open, our hearts open, we will find the place surely. The phone will ring and we will jump not so much out of our skin as into our skin. If we keep our lives open, the right place will find us.

Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God,” and in the end every word that proceeds from the mouth of God is the same word, and the word is Christ himself. And in the end that is the vocation, the calling of all of us, the calling to be Christs. To be Christs in whatever way we are able to be. To be Christs with whatever gladness we have and in whatever place, among whatever brothers we are called to. That is the vocation, the destiny to which we were all of us called even before the foundations of the world.

Prayer

O Thou, who art the God no less of those who know thee not than of those who love thee well, be present with us at the times of choosing when time stands still and all that lies behind and all that lies ahead are caught up in the mystery of a moment. Be present especially with the young who must choose between many voices. Help them know how much an old world needs their youth and gladness. Help them to know that there are words of truth and healing that will never be spoken unless they speak them, and deeds of compassion and courage that will never be done unless they do them. Help them never to mistake success for victory or failure for defeat. Grant that they may never be entirely content with whatever bounty the world may bestow upon them, but that they may know at last that they were created not for happiness but for joy, and that joy is to him alone who, sometimes with tears in his eyes, commits himself in love to Thee and to his brothers. Lead them and all Thy world ever deeper into the knowledge that finally all men are one and that there can never really be joy for any until there is joy for all. In Christ’s name we ask it and for His sake.

Amen.

Defining Resilience

By Dax Lucas

More often than not, the word ‘resilience’ evokes images of strength during a time of adversity.

I asked several friends to tell me what the word meant to them without consulting the dictionary roughly 80 percent defined it as toughness, perseverance, grit, strength or similar concepts.

More than one described a picture of a person standing fast in the middle of a storm, in defiance of the howling winds trying to blow everything down.

Yes, resilience is all that, too.

But what a lot of people are missing in their own understanding of the word is that, in its most faithful definition — not an archaic definition, mind you, because current dictionaries still define it thus (go check) — resilience is the ability to recover from a difficult situation.

This is what I had to remind myself at the beginning of this lockdown which we found ourselves in two and a half months ago, as the COVID-19 crisis exploded into a full blown global pandemic.

Everybody was worried for the future, and I was no exception. In particular, I was worried about the company I worked for. And I was worried about our jobs. Would we have to take pay cuts? Would some of us need to be laid off? Will the company survive?

And then there was the personal aspect. While my wife and I never got to the point of being at each other’s throat while cooped up at home, I missed hanging out with my friends and colleagues. I missed eating out, walking around the shopping mall and driving around the city.

The situation in the early part of the quarantine was, quite frankly, depressing. My knee-jerk reaction was to eat too much, sleep too much, and exercise too little. The 20 pounds that were quickly added to my frame accentuated my general feeling of anxiety.

What helped change that downward trajectory? Surprisingly, it was a very small, mundane thing: I told myself to trim my fingernails. With that done, I moved to trimming my toenails the next day… then organizing the pictures on my phone… then replacing a busted lightbulb in the living room… and sorting the junk in my car’s trunk. One task a day, then two tasks, then three, four and five. 

It worked. Two weeks later, I had a daily self- and home-improvement routine, and I was feeling better. The external environment is still less-than-ideal, of course. The there’s still no vaccine for the virus. The economy is still bad. Our jobs are still under threat. And I still won’t be able to hang out with my friends in the foreseeable future. But my mind is off the anxiety, and is now preoccupied with daily bite-sized tasks and resolving small issues one at a time. One day at a time. 

That is a form of resilience. It’s not the heroic, epic kind which inspire movie screenplays. But it’s the effective, practical kind that can move people out of a slump.

Remember: “Resilience” comes from the Latin word resiliens, meaning “to rebound”. If you want to break it down further into the root words, “re” means “back” and “salire” means “to jump”. Literally, to be resilient means the be able to jump back.

One doesn’t usually jump back from a good place. Ideally, one jumps from a bad situation to a better one. The prerequisite is that we are in a less ideal condition and use that as base from which our coiled leg muscles explode to spring us forward.

Yes, resilience means being strong. But more than that, it also means experiencing a condition of weakness or moving in the wrong direction… and then rebounding toward where we want to be. Where we should be.

When NASA sends a spacecraft to the moon, it first sends it in the “opposite” direction, to slingshot around Earth so that it would gain enough speed to break free of the planet’s gravitational pull. A space probe headed for Jupiter would first have to go 151 million kilometers toward the Sun, and slingshot around it to cover the 774 million kilometers back to the giant gas planet. The farther in the “wrong” way it first goes, the farther in the ideal direction it can travel. That’s resilience.

Originally published on July 8, 2020 in https://www.shetalksasia.com/blog/2020/7/8/defining-resilience?fbclid=IwAR0AIbAlJv5Jw1VrOy3y6A9R1k3j50EozaCxo6ffdy6UZJHQ0l2uLhla4EI.

Love In The Open Hand

By Fr. Joseph Galdon, S.J.

Many years ago when I was in fourth-year high school, our English teacher assigned each of us a research paper on an American poet. I was lucky enough to be assigned the poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay. She was an American poetess of the 1920s and even her name sounded like poetry. I had to read through her published poetry, and one of her poems made a deep impression on me — even then, when I was still very young. The poem was a sonnet. It had no title, it was just called Sonnet LXXX. I’ve used the poem many, many times since then in retreats and talks. I call it “Love In the Open Hand.” Down through the years, it has made an impression on many people, especially the young.

In the first part of the poem, a young girl is talking to the man she loves. She says: “I don’t give you presents the way other girls give presents to the guy they love. I don’t give you my love the way some girls give their love to another person. I don’t give you my love in a very expensive jewel box that’s made out of silver and is covered with expensive pearls. But it’s locked, and the girl never gives the key to the other person. I don’t give you my love that way at all.”

That’s a beautiful picture of how many of us often give our love. We put it in an expensive box that’s all for show. But the love, the real love, is locked inside the box, and we never give anyone the key. We only give them the trappings of love, maybe because we are insecure and afraid to give someone the key to our hearts. It’s much safer to give the jewel box, but not to give the love.

In the second quatrain of the sonnet, the girl goes on to say: “I don’t give you my love in a ring — a beautiful ring that is shaped like a lover’s knot and which has a legend written on the outside of the ring — Semper Fidelis. I will always be faithful.” But the ring has a little secret chamber in it and there is a drop of poison in the chamber. “The ring kennels a drop of mischief in the brain.” I give you the ring, the sign of love, but inside the ring is a thing that hurts. The words on the ring are very clear — “I will always be faithful.” But there’s always a doubt in the middle of it: “Do you really mean it, or will your love turn to hurting some day? If I open my heart to you, will you hurt me?” That’s the way many other girls give their love, she says. But I don’t give you my love that way at all.

In the second part of the sonnet, the girl says: “I give you a very simple thing — I give you love in the open hand, nothing but that.” I don’t give you love that is only half a love — a love locked away — a fancy box, but I keep the key for myself. I don’t give you love that is only for show. I give you love in the open hand. There are no gems around that love. It’s just love all alone, with no decorations at all. It isn’t a love that is hidden away. It’s al there in my open hand. You get what you see: “Love ungemmed, unhidden, wishing not to hurt.”

Psychologists tell us that is a hard thing to do — to put your love in the open hand and hold it out to someone. When you put love the open hand, you’re vulnerable. The other person can reject it. He can say “I don’t want it” and that is a very hurting thing. Most of us keep our love in a clenched hand. We play it safe. Even worse, we keep love clenched in our fist and we hide our fist behind our back. We don’t want to take the risk of offering naked love in the open hand.

T.S. Eliot talks about offering love in coffee spoons. “Here’s your spoonful of love, today. Come back tomorrow and I’ll give you another spoonful.” But real love isn’t like that at all. It’s all there
in the open hand. It’s all yours to take or not. If you take my love, that’s terrific. But if you reject it, that’s OK too. It’s up to you to take or not, but I am offering it all to you.

When you offer love in the open hand, you run the risk of rejection sometimes. People, for one reason or another, wisely or foolishly, will reject it. But if your love is in the open hand, there will be many moments of genuine fulfillment, when people take it all and say: “You’re terrific. I needed that!”

Toward the end of the sonnet, the girl has two beautiful images of love in the open hand. I bring you love, she says, “as one would bring you cowslips in a hat swung from the hand, or apples in her skirt… calling out as children do: Look what I have, and these are all for you.” These are two beautiful images — a little girl bringing you one of those big sun bonnets held upside down but full of flowers, or a girl filling her skirt with apples (those were the days when skirts were really skirts!), running up to you holding out her skirt full of apples, and telling you: “Look what I have and these are all for you!” I’ve often reflected that the position of the Blessed Mother’s hands in all the statues and pictures when she isn’t holding her child, is always like that — hands held out wide open. That’s always the position of the hands in the statue of the Sacred Heart, too. “Look what I have and these are all for you.” The Blessed Mother gives love like that; the Sacred Heart gives love like that; children give love like that. Why can’t we give love like that, too? Because we’re scared. We’re afraid of rejection and so we play it safe. We don’t want to be hurt. We would rather go through life with love clenched in our hands, very cautious about how we will give it and to whom. But we’re only happy when we give love in the open hand.

Go for broke! Take a chance on love. Put it all there in the open hand. Tell everyone, “Look what I have and this is all for you.” I know we will be happier people — and holier ones, too.

SA PAGLAPAG ’91

Talumpati ni Onofre R. Pagsanghan sa Pagtatapos
sa Pamantasang Ateneo de Manila, ika-23 ng Marso, 1991

Pinagpipitaganang Padre Joaquin Bernas, S.J.,
Kagalang-galang na mga Namumuno at Namamahala sa Pamantasang Ateneo de Manila
Mga Kapwa-Guro, Mga Kapwa-Magulang, Mga Kaibigan
Minamahal kong Mangagsisipagtapos,

Ang bilis talaga ng takbo ng relo. Ang bilis talaga ng inog ng mundo.

Paranq kahapon lamang, sa Dulaang Sibol, sa dulang “Paglilitis ni Mang Serapio,” si Cholo Mallillin ang aming patpating Serapio. At ngayo’y naririto, patpatin pa rin, pero magtatapos na sa hapong ito, lalapag na sa mundo.

Parang kahapon lamang, si Happy Tan, hanggang balikat ko lamang, sa klaseng 1-A aking tinuturuan, dulang “Julius Caesar” sinisiran

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

Happy Tan, iyo pa bang natatandaan? At ngayo’y naririto, malinggit pa rin, pero magtatapos na sa hapong ita, lalapag na sa mundo.

Parang kahapon lamang, ako’y gurong baguhang tatanga-tanga, doon sa mga quonset huts sa Padre Faura. Ang pangulo sa klase kong pinakauna ay si Antonio Lopa. Naririto ngayon siya, kasama ang anak niya, ang balediktoryan ninyong si Rhea Lopa.

Paranq kahapon lamanq si Padre Bulatao, S.J., guro ko. Parang kahapon lamang sina Henry Totanes, James Simpas, Bob Guevarra — mga istudyante ko. At ngayon, kaming lahat ay nangaririto, tatlong salin ng mga magkakapwa-guro sa Ateneo.

Parang kahapon lamang, kami ng Misis ko ay nagliligawan. Ngayon naririto, apo na ang inaabangan. Para bagang sandaling tumalikod lang ako; pagharap kong muli sa salamin heto, ubanin na’t kalbo.

Ang bilis talaga ng takbo ng relo. Ang bilis talaga ng inog ng mundo.

At ito ang unang kaisipang imumungkahi kong balik-aralan, bago lumisang tuluyan. Pagdulog sa bukas na gripo ng buhay, matutong itikom ang mga kamay at bugso ng tubig-buhay ay sapuhing tunay. Huwag aksayahin, huwag sayangin. Bawat sandall, namnamin, mahalagahin. Pagka’t panaho’t pagkakataong waldasin, paano pang pababalikin? Sabi nga ng isang batang makata sa klase kong 1-A, sa buhay raw ay “No rewind, no replay.” Kung kaya’t “Live life, while you may.”

Ang ikalawang kaisipang imumungkahi kong balik-tanawan sa inyong paglisan, kay Fr. Dan McNamara ko natutunan. Faculty retreat master namin siya, noong mga limang taon na. “All is gift,” wika niya.

Sa dapit-hapong ito’y sandaling magbalik-gunita, isa-lsahin, himay- mayin ang Kanyang mga pagpapala. Sa pagbabalik-diwa, mamamangha, na lahat nga naman sa buhay ko at sa buhay mo ay biyaya. Pati na yaong mga nangyaring lihis sa ating mga hiniling, sa pagbabalik-tanaw, higit palang magaling. Talaga nga namang tunay, ang Kanyang Kabutiha’y naging kasabay sa bawat araw ng ating buhay. Lalo na marahil, tayong mga Atenista, na dinagsaan Niya ng grasya, paano tayong makapagpapasalamat sa Kanya?

At ito ang ikatlo’t huling kaisipang imumungkahi kong ating pagmunimunihan. Gamitin nating timbulan isang maikling sulating aking natagpuan minsan sa aming faculty bulletin board sa mataas na paaralan.

“On a street, I saw a small girl cold and shivering in a tattered dress with little hope of a decent meal. I became angry and said to God, ‘Why did You permit this? Why do horrible things happen to innocent people? Why don’t You do something about it?

For a while God said nothing. But that night, He replied quite suddenly, ‘I certainly did something about it. I made you.”

Sa dapit-hapon ding ito, maaring sa ating pagtahimik, may mga tanong ding naqhihimagsik. “Bakit, Panginoon, pinayagang buhay ni Lenny Villa ay malapastangan, sa ngalan pa naman ng pagkakapatiran? Bakit, Panginoon, sa Mabini, naglipanan mga street children na napipilitang magbenta ng katawan para lang makapaghapunan? Bakit binayaang gamitin ng bulldozer ang mga tahanan ng mga iskwater nang walang mapaglilipatan? Bakit pinababayaang sa pamahalaan, maghari-harian ang suhulan, lagayan, kurakutan? Bakit wala Kang ginagawa? Bakit nagwawalang-bahala? Bakit ‘di Ka magsalita?”

Sa dapit-hapong ding ito, sandaling tumahimik at pakinggan ang Diyos sa Kanyang marahang pag-imik, “Hindi Ako nagwawalang-bahala. Ako’y may ginawa. Ika’y Aking nilikha. Sa aking Ateneo, ika’y inaruga, talino mo’y hinasa, pinanday ang iyong dila, pananaw mo’y pinagala, diwa mo’y pinalaya, pinuno kita ng biyaya. Hinding-hindi Ako nagwalang-bahala. Ika’y Aking nilikha. Sa mga kakayahan mo, Ako’y nagpunla ng sanlibong himala. Anq mga ibinigay Ko sa iyong mga biyaya, ibinigay Ko para iyong ibigay sa iyong kapwa. Kinakatulong kita sa patuluyan Kong paglikha.”

Noong ika’y musmos pa, tinanganan ng iyong ina ang iyong kamay at winika niya, “Close, open. Close, open.”

Sa paglipad natin sa ating kabataan, close tayo nang close kadalasan. Sunggab nang sunggab sa pakikinabangan. May dahilan. Hungkag na sarili’y dapat munang sidlan. Ngunit sa ating paglapag sa kalakhan ng buhay, dapat ay open na ng open, bigay na ng bigay, hanggang sa unti-unti nating pagdulog sa hukay, unti-unti rin nating naibubukas ang ating mga bisig at kamay, at unti-unti tayong natutulad kay Hesus na sa Krus nakabayubay, bigay-todo, pati buhay.

Sa inyong pagtatapos, samakatuwid, tatlong pabaon ang aking alay. Tatlong paalalang sana’y isabuhay: Una, mahalagahin ang buhay. Ikalawa, magpasalamat nang tunay. lkatlo, mag-alay-buhay.

Kay bilis talaga ng takbo ng relo. Panahon nang magwakas ako sa tagoskaluluwang pasasalamat sa mga Heswita at sa Ateneo. Halos buong buhay ko ay Ateneo — mula pa noong 1941 nang ako’y nagbabagong-tao. Pasasalamat ko’y hindi lamang sa parangal ninyong ito, kundi, lalung-Ialo na sa pagkakahubog ninyo sa aking pagka-AKO, at sa pakikiputol ko sa pangarap Ignaciano na nakapukol sa kapwa at kay Kristo.

Pahimakas ko’y ang katitikan ng awit na ito:

Sa lilim ng 'sang langit, 'sang himig ang inawit.
Tumingala, nagtiwala sa iisang tala.
Salamat, kaibigan, sa talang pinagsaluhan,
At sa oras na ginintuan ng ngiti mo, kaibigan.

Remembering My First Jesuit

By Father James F. Donelan, S.J.

Fifty-two years ago, in the Spring of 1939, at the Jesuit retreat house in Inisfada, New York, I met a Jesuit for the first time. I had graduated from La Salle High School in January and had decided to be a Jesuit, but hadn’t a clue how to go about it. However, my Aunt Helen, a Dominican nun, had a Carmelite friend who had as her confessor a Jesuit, Father John Gilson. It was the Carmelite sister who arranged for me to visit Father Gilson at Inisfada to find how one goes about becoming a Jesuit.

This gives rise to an interesting question: If Father Gilson was my first Jesuit, then who influenced me to want to be a Jesuit? Most Jesuits attribute their vocation to contact with Jesuits. I had no such contact. In fact, through most of my boyhood years, up until around third year high school, I felt no strong calling to the priesthood. It wasn’t excluded, but neither was it preoccupying.

It was mainly flying that attracted my interest. The first book I recall reading is Tom Swift and His Flying Machine. My heroes were World War I aces (René Fonck, Eddie Rickenbacker, the Red Baron). The magazine G-8 and his Battle Aces was my bible. The most unforgettable and earliest memory of my boyhood years is of my father coming over the hill from the train station, waving a newspaper and shouting “Lindy made it!” Lindy was Charles Lindbergh, the first man to fly across the Atlantic, May 1927. I was six years old.

But it wasn’t Lindy who fired up my imagination. He was an international hero. I wanted a hero of my own. And I found him. It was Speed Haslick. (I never found out where the name “Speed” came from. The old red Waco biplane Speed flew hardly merited the adjective “speedy”.) Speed’s home port was a small airfield called Holmes. If, 60 years ago, you were to walk down the street where we lived — 64th Street in Woodside — and headed north, you would, after about three miles, have come to an open field with a barn-like hangar, a dirt runway, a windsock and a red Waco biplane. Holmes Airport. How many happy Sunday afternoons I spent there over the years — sitting on the grass by the side of the runway watching Speed landing and taking off, flying passengers on $3 and $5 rides over Manhattan. Occasionally he would go off barnstorming, and Holmes became a lonely field. Today Holmes Airport is called La Guardia, and DC-9s and 727s blast into the skies from concrete runways where once Speed and his Waco lifted off the soft grass into the quiet miracle of flight.

Those years of grade school and early high school were ordinary, schoolboy years. I made model airplanes, read G-8 and His Battle Aces and, when I could, on Sunday afternoons, when no one seemed to care where I was, I went off to Holmes Airport, to watch Speed do his marvelous side slips. My best laid plans at this point in my life were quite simple: Finish high school, go to college for two years, enter the Army Air Corps, serve the required four years in the Air Corps, and then enter commercial aviation, which was just getting off the ground, literally.

But then in the third year of high school, I was assigned to write a report on a book called Come Rack, Come Rope, a fictional account of the life and death of Edmund Campion, an English Jesuit who was executed by Queen Elizabeth in the latter part of the 16th Century. That simple story changed my life. And Speed Haslick had to move over as another figure came on the stage. The contrast in the two men is startling: One, an Oxford don of the 16th Century, the other, a barnstorming airplane pilot of the 1930s.

Whatever it was — naïve romanticism or amazing grace, or both, whatever — I was strongly attracted to the Oxford don, Edmund Campion. Campion was one of Oxford University’s bright stars. When Queen Elizabeth came to Oxford, it was Campion who welcomed her with a Latin oration, in the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin where, centuries later, John Henry Newman would proclaim the Oxford Movement. Elizabeth replied also in Latin. And she told her aide, Lord Cecil, to keep an eye on this young man. If Campion had played his cards right, he could have been Archbishop of Canterbury.

He didn’t play them right. He threw the deck away. He left Oxford and England, went to Douai, France, where he came under the influence of a Jesuit. After ordination in Rome, he returned to England to minister to the persecuted Catholics. Celebrating Mass was punishable by death. He was finally captured, racked and tortured in the Tower of London near where the two princes had been murdered by Richard III; after that he was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn, near Marble Arch, London. There is a bronze plaque embedded in the pavement in front of Marble Arch which marks the place where Campion was martyred. I was nearly martyred there myself. In an unusual display of piety, I knelt to kiss the bronze plaque and was nearly run over by one of those uniquely English taxicabs, probably driven by a lineal descendant of Oliver Cromwell.

It is a pleasant irony to realize now that my contact with the Society of Jesus came through a Jesuit who lived 400 years ago. And you can see now that it was really Edmund Campion who brought me to Inisfada that day in the Spring of 1939, when I met Father Gilson. So it is really Edmund Campion who is my first Jesuit.

However, it seemed at the time I was chasing a will-o’-the-wisp. Father Gilson directed me to a Father Bleicher at Fordham University, who politely explained to me that the Society had 200 applicants but only 40 places, and for obvious reasons, they preferred graduates of Jesuit schools whom they knew, to strangers from elsewhere. But he didn’t reject me completely. He asked me to come back a year later, in June 1940.

So during the rest of 1939 and the first six months of 1940, I continued my studies at Saint Francis College, a small college in Brooklyn. I also kept up my interest in flying. On Sunday afternoons, I would walk to Holmes Airport. Speed was still there doing his neat slide slips in his red Waco. A flying career was still a possibility. It was Plan B if I failed to get into the Society.

It would have been a good time to start a career in aviation, for this was aviation’s heroic age, 1925-1940. In Europe, Saint-Exupery and his Air France pilots opened air routes across the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean, down the west coast of Africa, across the South Atlantic and up South America’s east coast. Unable in their primitive aircraft to top 20,000-foot mountains, they flew between them without radar. It is all told in Saint-Exupery’s classic book Wind, Sand and Stars. Here with his poetic language he captures the mystic exaltation of the first airline pilots as they faced death in the rigorous performance of their appointed rounds.

Among the heroes of this heroic age were Speed and his fellow barnstormers. Landing their antiquated Jennys in cow pastures and farm fields throughout the land, they taught America how to fly. They opened up the skies the way the cowboys and their covered wagons had opened up the West. They even looked like cowboys — lean, tanned, wrinkled around the eyes. They dressed the same: leather boots, whipcord trousers, leather jacket, leather helmet, goggles and, of course, the white scarf. And like all pioneers, they paid a high price to conquer mountains, cross deadly deserts and merciless seas. Seventy-five percent of the barnstorming pilots of that heroic age died in plane crashes. Looking back now at how those planes were made — fabric and glue and wire — the modern pilot stands aghast and in speechless admiration.

Then in June 1940 came two signs which seemed to indicate quite clearly what path I should take. The first sign was negative. The Society turned me down for the second time. And rightly so. For during the months I had worked at the World’s Fair my grades had slipped badly. I flunked the Latin course. I used to get home from the World’s Fair, where I was a guide, at around 3:00 a.m., rise at 6:00 a.m., serve Mass and go to school. Sleeping in the subways, after class I would head back out to Flushing and the World’s Fair.

The positive sign was that in 1940 Uncle Sam, preparing for World War II, offered flight training to college students who could fulfil the requirements. Standing in front of the school bulletin board and reading the announcement, I couldn’t believe it. It was a dream come true. I could learn to fly — free!

Thus, at the same time the Society shut its door on me, Uncle Sam held his wide open. No one could blame me if I felt God was telling me in no uncertain terms that I was not meant to be a Jesuit. It all could have ended here. Actually, God was merely writing straight in crooked lines.

For — and such is God’s grace — though I applied for the government flying program and had been rejected twice by the Society, I didn’t give up on the hope of being a Jesuit. But I knew I was running out of time and a decision had to be made. I set two goals for myself that year, June 1940-June 1941. I was determined to work for each goal as it it were only one, yet at the same time not let one interfere with the other.

The first goal was academic: To get good grades, especially in Latin. So I left Saint Francis College and entered sophomore year at Fordham. I would have gone earlier but I couldn’t afford it. But now I had the World’s Fair savings plus a working scholarship from Fordham. I gave full time to my studies, with no sleeping in the subway, and in the final Latin Province exam in May of 1941 I scored a 92. Thus my first goal was achieved.

The second goal was to win my pilot’s wings. I didn’t know yet how I would take to flying — if I had the aptitude to be a pilot. I was assigned at Floyd Bennet Naval Air Station for primary training near where John F. Kennedy airport stands today. After seven hours of instruction, I soloed, and after 35 I had my wings. The program began in June so I had three months of vacation to get my wings without interfering with my college classes. After that, during the school year, I would fly only early on Sunday mornings.

I’ll never forget those early sunrise flights. I would taxi out to one of Floyd Bennet’s six runways, and wait there till the red light in the tower turned green, signalling that visibility was now VFR. If the wind was from the west, my take off would pass over the salt flats and swamps where today we find the great runways of John F. Kennedy. The rising sun hitting the windows of Manhattan’s skyscrapers made it seem as if the city were all aflame.

It is hard to put into words the mystical joy of flight, being up there above the ceiling alone in a fantastic world where billowing cumulus clouds form all sorts of weird shapes — Bavarian castles, sailing ships, the faces of giants who look like Bernini’s water gods, and enormous, nuclear mushrooms. A silent world, so peaceful, and yet so dangerous.

Only two writers have been able to put into words the mystical exhilaration that comes from flight: Antoine de Saint-Exupery, who wrote the classic Wind, Sand and Stars — this book describes the heroic efforts and sacrifices made by the men who established the first airmail and passenger routes between Europe, Africa and America — and John Magee, a young American pilot whose sonnet, High Flight, captures, first, the physical rapture of flight:

“I have danced the sky on laughter-silvered wings, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things you have not dreamed of.”

And then flight’s mystical exaltation:

“And while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod the high untrespassed sanctity of space, put out my hand and touched the face of God.”

Both Antoine de Saint-Exupery and John Magee died in World War II. Saint-Exupery was shot down over North Africa; Magee was shot down over Germany.

As the month of May 1941 drew to a close, I tried to establish for myself my priorities. What was it I really wanted most: a career in aviation or a career in the Society of Jesus? For most of the two years — from May of 1939 to May of 1941 — I was somewhat ambivalent. I suppose my attraction to either career was so strong that the loss of one would be softened by the gaining of the other.

But then a strange thing happened. I can only describe it as the grace of vocation. Gradually, my ambivalence was replaced by a clear, strong determination to be a Jesuit. It was not due to any falling off in my love for flying. I loved it — and still do. But not as a life’s work. Why? I would have to say very simply that it was the grace of vocation. God was calling me to serve Him in a special way. Or at least I thought He was. And if He was, I thought to myself, then the Society would accept me the third time. It not, then I would take to the skies.

On a day in mid-May 1941, I told my mother I was going for an interview by Father Bleicher who had shot me down twice. If it happened a third time, I would change my career choice to flying. At Fordham, I got a positive sign that God was finally seeing things my way. Father Bleicher was not there. He had been sent to the Philippines on an inspection trip. My interview was conducted by a kindly old Irish Jesuit who felt I deserved a chance for having tried three times. And so it was that on June 21, 1941 I entered the Jesuit novitiate of St. Andrew-on-Hudson, and began the first of the 50 years that would lead to this day.

In retrospect, one has to marvel at God’s ways, His crooked lines that conceal a hidden truth. In third year high school, He arranges for me to read a book, Come Rack, Come Rope, which introduces me to a man who, though 400 years dead, would become my model and inspiration. Little did I realize then, as I read Campion’s life, that one day I would live for three years in an Oxford college named Campion Hall, that Saint Mary the Virgin’s Church and Saint John College and the streets and fields where Campion walked would be part of my everyday life, that one day I would be like Campion — a Jesuit and an Oxford don.

And what of Speed Haslick? Whatever happened to him? I flew over to Holmes Airport shortly before entering the novitiate hoping to find Speed. But neither he nor his red Waco were there. It was six years before I returned to Long Island again, and by that time La Guardia had taken over and Holmes Airport had ceased to exist.

Years later, I met a pilot who knew Speed. He told me that when the call to arms was sounded, Speed put his Waco in the hangar and put on the uniform of an Army Air Corps pilot. And here he disappears in the mist of time and the smoke of battle. Most probably he is now with Saint-Exupery and John Magee in that Valhalla where heroes go.

Two months ago, I began my journey back to Manila with an early morning flight from La Guardia. Waiting for departure time and looking out from the observation deck I could, by intersecting the radials of various familiar landmarks, pinpoint where Holmes Airport had been. As I looked and remembered, the thunder of jet engines taking off was drowned out by the noise of a single Waco engine, and I could see Speed — leather jacket, helmet, goggles and scarf — striding out to this plane and mounting it like some medieval knight on his charger. And suddenly, the 50 years dropped away and I was a boy again, sitting on the grass along the runway, dreaming my dreams, hoping that one day I, too, would chase the shouting wind along and dance the sky on silvered wings. I would, but in ways I never dreamed of.

And since a homily is supposed to have a moral, what is the moral of all this? Perhaps Shakespeare says it best of all: “There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them though we may.” Readiness is all — not resignation, not passivity, but an active trust in God and His everlasting love.

—————————————–

Father James F. Donelan, S.J. celebrated his Golden Jubilee as a Jesuit on July 25, 1991, attended by friends in a special Mass at the chapel of the Asian Institute of Management in Makati City. His sister, Catherine, also a member of a religious order, flew in from New York City to attend the occasion.

Father Donelan has spent practically all his Jesuit life in the Philippines. He is more of a Filipino, in many ways. On May 24, 1991, he was conferred the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa by the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA.

The conferment citation reads: “Man of letters from Oxford University, professor, dean and president of the Ateneo de Manila, founder and professor of the Asian Institute of Management. You have not allowed your commitment to scholarship and administration blind you to the desperate conditions of the poor. As effective advocate for the thousands of street children in the Philippines, you are fund raiser, sponsor, caretaker and relentless lobbyist on their behalf.”

This publication of the homily he delivered on the celebration of his Golden Jubilee is sponsored by friends.

(Published in August 1991 in The Business Star, Manila, Philippines)