From the Philippines to Unitarianism Universalism

From the Philippines to Unitarianism Universalism
– A Cultural and Spiritual Odyssey
Nina F. Elgo
July 30, 2006

As many of you know, Nancy Mandly, a fellow member of our congregation, is one of my dearest friends. When I first invited her to have Easter dinner at my parents’ home many, many years ago, it was with one caveat – that she AVOID, at all costs, revealing how we met. For of course, at that point, I had become a Unitarian and had joined this Meetinghouse and that was how I had met Nancy. My parents, on the other hand, are Filipino and devoutly Roman Catholic. Being conflict avoidant by nature, I hadn’t found that perfect moment, nor the courage to mention – Oh by the way, I’m a Unitarian and for me, that means Jesus, the Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit have virtually nothing to do with my religious and spiritual life…. No, I couldn’t imagine having this issue come up over an Easter ham.

My parents, however, taught me more about being a UU than I could truly appreciate at the time. This is especially so when I consider who they are in the context of their own personal history.

My parents came as young immigrants, in their mid-twenties, meeting each other here in the United States, thousands of miles from their home. As a matter of fact, my father came here, like many Filipinos, by joining the Navy in a program in which Filipinos were “allowed” to join the Navy, although they were restricted to being stewards. In other words, they were allowed to clean and cook for the Americans on Navy ships and in my dad’s case, submarines. Almost twenty years later, in 1973, I believe, this changed, and Filipinos were allowed to be elevated to whatever positions they qualified for. Nevertheless, while my dad doesn’t really like to talk about what it must have been like, I am much in awe of what it took to live under this cloud and maintain one’s sense of dignity.

My mother came here too, also as a single young woman in her mid-twenties, having left 12 brothers and sisters and her mother, and not knowing a soul. She came by ship over the Pacific Ocean, then flew from California to Athens, Georgia where she was to become a resident at the local hospital, working to become a medical technologist. My parents met, incidentally, because my father was also in the Navy School, located coincidentally in Athens, Georgia. My paternal grandfather, who lived in a small and poor village called Gumaca in the Philippines, had seen and cut out a society column in the local paper with a picture of a Filipino woman who, the clipping read, would be a resident at St. Mary’s Hospital in Athens, Georgia. My grandfather sent this column to my dad in Athens, and two days after my mother arrived in Athens, a dashing young Filipino man came knocking at her door. My dad introduced her to the Filipino community in this Navy school and soon enough, my mother found a home in this strange land.

My parents chose to raise us with the idea of assimilating us as Americans in every way possible. To my regret later on and perhaps even to their regret, my sister and I never learned Tagalog, my parents’ dialect, and at the time, lived primarily among a white, middle class community. Both of my parents worked full time, my dad serving on subs, alternating every three months at sea and on shore duty, while my mother worked at the local hospital in Norwich.

In the end, my parents’ own desire to equip us with the values, language and education to make us American, also meant that we would become something very different from them. Bent on assimilation, my parents inadvertently left us without a sense of being Filipina, and so my sister and I struggled with the very subtle shame of being different, eating rice when maybe we were supposed to be eating bread and potatoes. And what about these other dishes which I secretly loved, liked crispy Filipino egg rolls called lumpia, and chicken adobo and fried noodles, like pancit, but my sister openly eschewed. The taunts from playground bullies about my race were thankfully rare, however, while most of my subsequent confrontations with race were more subtle and private, albeit still powerful, experiences of shame.

College and post-graduate exposure to issues of race and identity prompted me to explore and understand the part of me that was Filipina. When I went to the Philippines in my mid-twenties, I was ripe for this discovery. I flew into Manila airport, got off the plane, and my senses went on overdrive. I was immediately blanketed with the heavy, hot and humid climate of the Philippines. Wading through oppressive heat, I scanned a crowd filled with brown skinned people like myself, chattering in the language I had heard for twenty-plus years from my parents and a handful of their friends. Even more extraordinary, I was about the average height of everyone there. It was like walking into a world that I was supposed to know and understand, but didn’t.

To look so the same, and yet to be so different inside was a shocking experience. So too was meeting the members of my extended family. You see my mother’s 12 brothers and sisters had yielded hundreds of cousins and nieces and nephews and so meeting everyone and being welcomed by all was a profound experience as an adult. Most profound was seeing the children – all so different, and so beautiful. For the first time, I realized that I was likely to have a child that would look like them. It’s a little painful to admit but, up until then, I thought the ideal beautiful baby was the Gerber baby. It shocked and pained me that I had been, until then, unable to see the beauty that was a part of my own ethnic heritage.

My parents’ sacrifices and original journey from their homeland, culture and family had the unintended effect of creating some dissonance within me. Who am I? How do I reconcile my racial, cultural and even religious inheritance with an American value system, culture and language in which I clearly felt more at home? Clearly there were issues I had not confronted about my identity and my sense of self. In the end, perhaps ironically, I credit my parents with giving me the tools to reconcile these issues, even though they may not have imagined the choices I would make. Those tools liberated me and gave me the power to more fully accept myself and all that was me, including my race.

Like many immigrant parents, they too had the dream that their daughters would attend and be graduated from college. By emphasizing education, they empowered me to think deeply and question freely, even to the point where I ultimately would question religion, although I can assure you, that was not their intent. Moreover, in the beginning especially, they weren’t entirely tolerant, particularly my dad. When he learned I was studying the Russian language and society, interned for the Physicians for Social Responsibility when I was in Washington and seriously questioned the arms race, he railed against me and sternly rebuked me with “I hope you aren’t becoming a communist!” After all, he spent his career on subs and the Cold War was very real to him!

In the end, this exploration of who I am dovetailed pretty neatly with the other pressing question in my life at the time – which was – what did I plan to do with my life? I ended up doing some very in depth self study to discern what were my values, skills, and gifts. How did my life experiences, modest though they were at the time, shape my perspective and concerns? How did my own, unique experience of race and identity affect my world view? To be sure, my early twenties was a scary time to be searching for my soul and trying to find my self. I really wasn’t sure that taking the time to look deeply into these things wasn’t just a lot of self-indulgent navel-gazing. I was not immune to the skepticism, real or imagined, of friends and acquaintances who all seemed to be in well paying, respectable jobs. Instead, I was journaling, reading “What Color is Your Parachute,” researching careers and doing a variety of temp work to get first hand experience in a number of working environments as well as to pay the bills. I also went to the library and took the Holland occupational test. To my surprise, the results indicated that I should consider a career as a lawyer and judge. And of course, twenty years later, here I am!

My parents’ role in all of this was subtle, but profound. They raised me in a culture and environment where I had the luxury to explore these issues – very very much unlike the decision making process of my parents. My dad was in the Navy because he had only a high school education and it was a pragmatic and secure career choice that would give him the opportunity to be a citizen. After 20+ years, it would also give him a pension which, with his subsequent career in the post office, would keep my parents comfortable in retirement. My mother wanted to be a journalist, and loved English. Instead, she went to the University of the Philippines to become a medical technologist because in those days, that was her ticket here to the United States, given the immigration policies at the time. She retired after nearly 40 years! Think of it, my parents never once suggested that I was wasting my time, or belittled my efforts or even pressured me to get a real job after 1 ½ years of temping, even though I had been graduated from Connecticut College with a pretty expensive liberal arts diploma. They respected my choices and gracefully allowed me to live by them, even if I’m not entirely sure they fully understood them or believed that I would actually find a career this way.

The same is true about my choice to become a UU. In the end, my parents embraced my desire to be married by a Unitarian minister, although Chris and I both were raised Catholic. Of course, it could also be that they were relieved that, at the ripe old age of 34, I was finally getting married!

Yet seriously, they have never questioned my desire to raise Caroline as a Unitarian Universalist and in fact, when I eventually talked with them about why I was a UU, they were enormously respectful and thoughtful about my choices.

But my parents could have easily dragged out a laundry list of their sacrifices all the years of my life – and attempt to guilt us into Catholicism. They could have easily felt insult or somehow communicated their pain that I did not embrace something that is still a vibrant and important part of their lives and their beliefs. Instead, they have not only embraced my marriage by a UU minister, my daughter’s dedication in a UU church, and her being raised with a UU education, but they have on occasion come to this church. It does not escape their notice that nowhere on these walls are there icons of the Virgin Mary, no crosses or figures of Jesus Christ, no stained glass representations of the stations of the cross. And yet, they have come to my church, and they have called it a church and by so doing, recognize it as a place which is sacred and precious to me.

In psychological terms, I suppose my parents have good boundaries, something I definitely do not take for granted. But I think there is something more here that may be a valuable lesson for us all as we live out the challenge of being Unitarian Universalists in our relationships, in own community and in a world that is increasingly complicated. My parents are not UUs of course, and yet, by their example, they have shown me how to affirm

the inherent worth and dignity of every person

acceptance of one another and encouragement of spiritual growth

a free and responsible search for truth and meaning and

respect for the interdependent web of all existence

The reason why I am a UU is because of those principles and sources that have drawn me to this special place – and it is critically important that we come together as a community with these principles to define and challenge us. I think we have something unique and special to offer as a religious community

But I am also a UU because my parents, perhaps inadvertently and unintentionally, laid the groundwork for this choice. More importantly, however, they also honored the many choices I have made, as different as their own choices have been given their own history. As we openly espouse here, my parents have shown, by example, that their way is not the only path to truth and understanding.

Consider how difficult it is truly to believe and to act consistently with that truth. For me, I have come to understand more clearly that my own religious path is fraught with limitations too.

For example, one of the many powerful experiences I have had in this meetinghouse includes the course I took with one of our former ministers, Jon Luopa, called “Building Your own Theology.” I remember struggling with some of the reading assignments; some of it was pretty dense material and my brain hadn’t been exercised like that since my college years when I took a lot of philosophy courses. In the end, we had to write up what we believed and I struggled for weeks (not unlike what it has taken to produce this talk) until finally, my beliefs gushed out in a way that resonated powerfully and authentically to me. In a nutshell, I came to appreciate just how finite and in a very real way, how inconsequential, is my place in this universe. Nevertheless, I understood that I have this life, and that it is a gift to have life at all. The awesome power of this awareness led me to a place of humility, an overwhelming sense of gratitude and a powerful sense of responsibility to give back.

Now I needed to go through that complicated process then and frankly, I still need to be more intentional in regularly finding that place which nourishes my spirit and soul.

But you know something, a very similar message resonates in me just as powerfully - from my mom who said this to me over and again all the years of my life as a child. To those to whom much is given, much is expected in return. It’s a very simple, very powerful message which drives not only my mom but me to this day. And, as many of you may recognize, it is attributed to one of the parables of Jesus.

Like my parents to America, I think many of us are immigrants to this place, seeking a religious community which will embrace the rich diversity of our spiritual paths. Here, I am continually enriched by and even in awe of the caliber and character of the people who make up this community. As we articulate and live out ideals precious to us, we create a living, dynamic and sacred place. But like my parents’ gifts to me, I suspect we are all recipients of a legacy that has shaped each of us and brought us to this place of privilege and hope.

As I read earlier from Albert Schweitzer,

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

We have much to offer because we have been given much. May we be grateful and all the more whole in recognizing those to whom we are indebted, and may we be empowered to give of ourselves more generously for those gifts we have received.

Let us know of any comments, errors and corrections - thanks (revised 07/30/06)