Old Baclaran Church

Where the tortured face of the crucified Christ hovering over devotees lighting candles  (not in the photo; I'm not supposed to photograph scenes like those) remind me of the face of my Pa as he was battling the advanced stage of adenocarcinoma. 

Then, it dawned on me that the Baclaran church was actually the church of the Mother of Perpetual Help, where part of the suffering humanity come to seek help in the midst of desperation. It was among the first churches in the country to speak up against ejk.

 

Like Life Itself

It's the stairway I climb everyday. Just like life itself, it goes round and round and round in a never ending spiral. 
Yet, every time I climb it in the morning, I don't actually see it the way I'm seeing it now.  In the morning, I take it only one step at a time. All I see are the nearest steps before me, and the rails leading me to a slowly curving ascent, so slight and so gradual that I almost could not feel it. It's only upon looking down from the nth floor above that I get a glimpse of its shape below. Just like the series of days and nights that eventually form the seasons, and the seasons that gather into a year and the years that eventually form a lifetime, we hardly perceive them at first until we've gone a long way and we start looking back.