Healing Waters from Distant Springs

So I was sitting around having a beer with some guys at the Tokyo airport last week (always a good way to start a sermon, don't you think) and of course someone asked me where I was headed from there, "Home, or are you going on?"

"I'm going on," I answered.

"Where from here?"

"Manila."

"That your final destination?"

"No."

"Where you going from Manila?"

"Dumaguete, Negros Island."

"Oh. Never heard of it. Whatcha gonna be doin' there?"

This is always the point at which, I must admit, in conversations at bars or in barber shops, I am tempted to say that I am an insurance salesman. But I pressed on.

"Church work," I answered.

"Oh, you a missionary, huh?"

And I explained, tried to explain, that I was part of a delegation from the Unitarian Universalist Association —ever hear of that? No, well, we are a 400-year-old religious movement which affirms freedom of conscience, the individual search for truth and meaning, and, grounded in the Christian tradition, finds wisdom in many religions and philosophies. We consider our actions to be more important than any statement of belief, and we work for peace and justice.

"OK," the guys said, "so you're a missionary."

And so I had more explaining to do.

"No, we don't have missionaries. But we do make common cause with indigenous groups around the world that share our faith."

I was getting blank stares, so I figured I better cut it short. "Mango farms," I said. "I'm headed for a remote island six degrees above the equator to work on church-owned mango farms."

"Oh," the guys said. "So you're a missionary."

I was thankful for the announcement that my flight was boarding.

And I went forth determined not to be a missionary in any traditional sense, but to be a friend, partner, companion to the 2,000 members of 26 Unitarian Universalist congregations that dot a boot-shaped island about twice the size of one of the larger Finger Lakes.

In telling you how this experience moved me and what I learned, let me move toward something that I know is very much on your minds this morning: War. The near certainty of the United States going to war against Iraq.

First, I need to go back, back to 1987. That year, at an International Association for Religious Freedom conference at Stanford University, I met a delightful man named Toribio Quamada, twinkling eyes, brown leather face, always smiling, laughing, kidding me for my total ignorance of his tiny Universalist religious movement.

Toribio explained how he had been a Pentecostal preacher on Negros Island, but had been excommunicated because, in his study of the Bible, he had concluded that God was a loving God who would condemn no one to hell.

Toribio Quamada, who was so obviously overflowing with goodness, became determined to rescue the people of the island from a religion of threats and guilt and terror, and to bring them into a church of Universal love.

One day, in the 1950's, in some packing material, Toribio discovered in a crumpled American newspaper, an article on Universalism. He was joyful because he was no longer alone! He wrote the Universalist Church in America. No answer. Years later, he wrote again. This time, he did get a response, and so began a relationship with what had become by merger the Unitarian Universalist Association.

In 1988, the Universalist Church of the Philippines became a member, just like us, of the UUA. Toribio Quamada was to be present that year at General Assembly to receive the certificate of membership.

But he never made it. A tireless preacher who roamed the nearly inaccessible mountains of his island home preaching the gospel of universal love and acceptance, Toribio became associated with the justice-making rebellions against the government-supported sugar cane plantation owners who exploited the people, stole their land, and subjected them to near-slavery.

And it was as a consequence of his justice-making ministries on behalf of poor farmers that, on the night of May 23, 1988, less than a month before he was to be honored at our General Assembly, Toribio Quamada was murdered by a paramilitary death squad.

Last week, I visited the village of Nagbinlod, where Toribio was executed, where his house and collection of Universalist papers and writings were burned.

The people of the village were waiting for our little American delegation. Waiting with platters of fruit and freshly opened coconuts from which we would drink.

And the children. Beautiful children, huge brown eyes, always smiling. It should have been a joyful occasion, and I tried to smile as well.

Yet, for me, the specter of violence and of war hung over the occasion. There was something not quite right, something that was haunting me. Part of it might have been the reminder that I was in a place of martyrdom, of the martyrdom of someone I knew and of whom I was fond, a hero of our faith.

But there was more than that. I kept thinking, as we approached the village, as we met the people, I kept thinking: This looks just like Vietnam. But, I reminded myself, I have never been to Vietnam. How would I know?

Because, I realized, every movie ever made about Vietnam was filmed here, in the Philippines. And I looked at these beautiful, innocent, smiling children, at their smiling, welcoming parents, and I knew that my government had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people just like these. And not just in Vietnam, but here in the Philippines as well.

Many lament that the Bush administration is planning the first American war of pure aggression in our history. I'm not sure that is the case. That distinction would probably have to go to the Spanish American War, in which the US took control of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. The Filipinos saw this as an occasion to totally cast off colonial rule, and so fought a long and bloody war against the United States, which was determined to hang onto the islands for the benefit of American business interests, especially those who would come to own sugar cane and pineapple plantations.

In a war that most Americans don't even know ever took place, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos were killed.

As I sat in the village of Nagbinlod and looked at the children, I was filled with a great sadness, and with a great desire for them to live, and with a consciousness that I was in a country still at war.

Ninety miles away, Muslim rebels were, that week, losing 200 mostly adolescent boys in gun battles with US-backed government troops. There had been nearly 200 casualties in an airport bombing the week before.

Here on Negros Island, on the way to visit Unitarian Universalist congregations in the mountains, we passed through military checkpoints set up to intercept the National Peoples Army rebels whose stronghold was nearby.

All this aroused in me a new passion for peace, a heavy heart saddened that other beautiful children would soon be dying by the thousands in Iraq, where thousands have already starved to death because of American sanctions.

As we visited churches all over Negros Island, the poor farmers who make up the congregations always seemed interested in discussions of theology.

We would sit on wooden planks in dirt-floored, palm thatched churches, and they would tell us: We are Unitarians, because we believe in one God, not a trinity. Thus, we believe that Jesus is the great moral teacher, not a deity. This gets us into trouble with our mostly Catholic neighbors.

And, they said, we are Universalists, because we believe that we make our own heaven or hell here on earth. We know that by our actions, we can help create the beloved community, the Kingdom of God on earth-and we can do this by the way we treat each other.

Indeed, I thought, how horrible is the hell that human beings create here on earth. The hell of war, the hell of exploitation of these poor people, robbed of their land, unable, in some churches, to offer us more than yams, virtually their only food, which they gladly shared.

And yet how hopeful are these people, how hopeful to have embraced a faith which proclaims that love is at the center of the universe, that evil should not be repaid with evil, that what is important is not what you profess to believe, but what you actually do, that compassion and forgiveness are essential, and that grace is overflowing.

And yes, they do practice faith healing.

The president of the Unitarian Universalist Church in the Philippines is now the Rev. Rebecca Sienes, daughter of Toribio Quamada. She says this about faith healing:

"If one is a minister or church leader in a society where medical services are expensive, scarce, remote, it is to the advantage of the minister to know beyond what the church theologies say, how to fully address all the people's needs. On the part of the healer, it means a holy connection with the mystery and the power of the Supreme Being and its evolving truth. To the poor, sick persons for whom medical services are too expensive, faith healing means salvation."

And so it is that ministers and some lay leaders in UUA member congregations practice what we might call folk medicine, a kind of healing that integrates mind, body, society and spirit.

A new generation of ministers seems to be a bit embarrassed by faith healing. They have been educated at a prestigious university on the island, where the curriculum does not include use of banana leaves, potions and incantations to cure maladies. But these young ministers, when they are ill or injured, consult both a physician, and a faith healer.

And to the traditional methods of folk healing, they are adding what we would call "alternative medicine," from foot reflexology to herbal medicines.

I assured them that, in the US, we also practice faith healing. We also recognize that mind, body and society must be integrated with the spirit of life to bring total wellness.

That right here at First Unitarian in Rochester this coming Saturday there will be a service of healing at which soothing words will be spoken, and ritual actions performed. That healing is a part of the mission of the church. That sometimes, the touch of someone who cares about you can be restorative, a kind word from an old adversary, a casserole dish or warm meal or fresh baked cookies-those are our healing potions, and they are ever so effective.

Before I left the village of Nagbinlod, where Toribio Quamada was martyred, where the children were so beautiful, I did spend time on the new mango farm, the banana groves, the lime orchard. These are fields of dreams, fields of hope, fields of healing. These new ventures are financed by the UUA, our gift toward self-sufficiency for the church there, our gift toward the day when, as the prophet Isaiah wrote: "They shall build houses and inhabit them; They shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; They shall not plant and another eat...And my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain..."

Sources and Resources

* Maglipay Universalist, A History of the Unitarian Universalist Church in the Philippines, Fredric John Muir, 2001. (Available from the UUA Bookstore) .