A quiet and still Cebu

Provincial hustle and bustle are redefined in a space that takes pride in its religiosity. In the province of Cebu, on an otherwise regular weekend, there was nothing special to celebrate. Other than stillness, the kind that’s about being anchored in faith that you might not practice a whole lot of, but which in this space is a ride you’re in by default. After all, where religion is part of history and hysteria, rhyme and reason, the irrational and rational, it feels almost all-encompassing, on the one hand about hopelessness, on the other about the bright light of possibility, both in the face of prayer. And icon upon icon upon icon: there’s one for your every need. You arrive at the church complex of the Basilica del Santo Niño in the center of town, enter the small chapel for Magellan’s Cross, and buy into the idea of candles: a color for your every need, all ten of them not to be lit but to be offered. Leave it at the Cross, bring it to the icons of your choice inside the church, but only after the manang has chanted your name with the rest of her prayer, only after she has promised that your wishes will come true, her prayers will do all the work for you. It is a performance to be sure: she prays with a dance, hands filled with candles gesturing up to the cross, a trance were it not distracted by the rest of the women like her, doing exactly the same thing, only inserting a different name where appropriate. You realize soon enough that many others in the tiny chapel aren’t like you who’s tourist and stranger: they’re in work outfits and school uniforms, their prayers more solemn than the pageantry in yours. You walk through the church and find the same kind of solemnity: it is quiet despite the grandeur, it is filled with people without a mass to attend. The Basilica del Santo Niño’s statuary has icons aplenty, and like the candles in your hand there is an icon for every need. You get lost in the layers of offerings and requests, and realize quickly enough that this is no superficial act of prayer, no easy task of choosing whom to pray to. People’s heads are bowed, hands reaching out to the icons, personal prayer done in such a public space. You leave a candle and say a prayer at the Black Madonna, and do the same at the beautiful Virgin Mary standing to one end of the room. You reach out to the more popular icons here: St. Rita and St. Jude. The former is the patron saint of impossible cases, the latter the patron saint of desperate and lost causes. You leave candles at both. The last time you were here things seemed to be in place. Today you find comfort in a spiral of change. But you are close enough to hope here, and you fall in line for the Santo Niño, the one that’s claimed to have arrived first on Philippine shores, the one that has survived. To your critical mind it is but a vestige of colonized Philippines, and you expect nothing but an overly decorated icon. Which after 30 minutes in line isn’t at all what’s in the tiny room at the center of which the Sto. Niño’s altar stands. Which after another five minutes or so of utter quiet in the room, meant you in solemn prayer, the kind that happens in front of about 30 other people in the room, waiting their turn or lingering after their chance at prayer. You leave the Basilica del Santo Niño with a strange stillness, one that could only be borne of prayer, a calm that you carry as you step out to the church complex and face a Sunday fiesta of sorts, the old colonial plaza coming to life, the quiet within the church seamlessly working with the small-scale local commerce of guitars and balloons and Sto. Niño replicas of every size outside. This quiet resonates as you walk the ruins of Fuerza de San Pedro, where a wishing well stands beside the Virgin of Remedies. Where candles are once again lit, as coins are dropped down the dark dank well. As wishes and prayers, offerings and requests, must live in those high concrete walls, must be about the tall steps that lead to the watchtowers, must hold fort here with a history of struggle. You find comfortable serenity in conversations with Cebuano artists, who listen to each other talk at length about their art, about creativity, about local culture, without the need to outdo each other’s stories, with seniority becoming the louder voice. It cuts across the roads you travel to get to Alegre Guitars, the zipline you hung from in the middle of nowhere, the brightly colored Taoist Temple in a private subdivision, the cat naps you took in the rented car traveling to everywhere. There is an amount of stability in this silence, in the stories that it tells of history and religion -- of belief. Where Lapu Lapu is said to have slain Magellan, you believe the silences to be true. As you walk through the rooms and halls of the Museo Sugbo, you trust it all to be possible: this idea of Cebu as center, with a history as big as the national narrative, its insistence on difference finally making sense. You don’t take offense. There is stability in this sense of identity, intertwined as history and religion are within it, silenced as the contradictions in it are. History is highly subjective, or so we’ve been taught: in a space bound to religion, all you really know is the calm that belief brings. Stable identities are possible. Questions are for non-believers. You talk about the trip to Cebu now, you look at photos and remember places and people and moments, but mostly you remember yourself in that context: where you were certain about who you were, what you were doing, when the noise was too much, why you were quiet. You listened to yourself in the midst of the contradictions made silent, the beliefs suddenly possible. You listened to the quiet and found that shadow of yourself that knows of its value. There is you, and Cebu, still. – GMA News Photos by Katrina Stuart Santiago