Year 2022’s ushering of All Saints Day and All Souls day, forced, by soberness, Daily Laborer to pause momentarily for some time last Sunday to skim, like a buffoon, on death and immortality.
Detached? Separated? Daily laborer thinks there is no separation. Nothing, thus far, was ever forsaken, set aside. But all were, like withered leaves, meshed together with all and borne forward on an infinite, shoreless cataclysm of action and lives through never-ending transformation.
Withered Benguet pine trees- majestic trees that stand sentinels across vast reaches of Cordillera highlands – for example, will not be dead or lost. There are forces in them and around them, though laboring in reversed order; else, they just fade away.
So it is with life. All Saints Day and All Souls Day looming, Daily Laborer is reminded of a song known the world over, popular amongst many in the highlands and the lowlands and sang by schoolchildren. The lyrics go thus: “Old soldiers never die, never die, never die; old soldiers never die, they just fade away.”
It’s for the very reason of the song why you and I always make it a yearly pilgrimage on a hallowed ground simply called “sementeryu,” or cemetery. So it is this November season’s first week.
On any field of sementeryu can be found the common custom and place where those peacefully laid to rest, are. It is no obscure conjecture. And whatever songs or dirges the sirens sing for those sleeping on hallowed grounds are also not beyond conjecture.
What time the persons of these ossuaries entered the nations of the dead are etched in their tombstones, often re-painted diligently with care by kin or friends of those forever sleeping, prior to dawning, or on All Saints or All Souls Day.
Perhaps, there is nothing rigidly immortal, but immortality. The Omnipotent above had said to mankind, “I have no beginning; I have no end.” We understand that to mean, whatever has no beginning, is confident of no end.
All other have a dependent being, peculiar of that necessary essence where, alas, we can never reach immortality. We are not the Omnipotent, and never will be.
During All Saints and All Souls Day, we are reminded of a stark truth that the iniquity of oblivion blindly scatters her symphonic resonance and deals with the memory of humans without distinction to merit of perpetuity.
And when we see and read these tombstone markers, we are often at a loss wondering who knows whether the best of humans be known, or whether there be no more remarkable persons forgotten, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time.
But the sufficiency of Christian immortality frustrates all earthly glory and the quality of either state after death makes posthumous memory a gem left behind for us by those who went before us with equal luster.
Aye, Daily Laborer readers, born we are to subsist in lasting moments, to live in our productions, to exist in our names and even in the predicament of our fantasies with large satisfaction unto expectations and made part of our gracious lives.
To live, indeed, is to be ourselves, which, being not only hope but as evidence of noble believers, ready to be anything in the ecstasy of being ever.
Here in our little highland and lowland world, we find a continual interchange of pleasing and greeting accidence, keeping their succession of times or overtaking each other on several occasions.
No picture of ours can be drawn of the brightest colors nor does harmony consort only of the acute. Sometimes we need shadows in expressing our proportions, a condition here that allows for no un-meddled joy.
Our whole lives are temperate between sweet and sour and as the wise say in living out life, we must all look for a mixture of both.
As the wise also add in going on living, each, may in something or other help or instruct our co-fellow highlander or lowlander, for most of our co-fellows need these. We have a mutual dependence on one another.
There is no one that cannot do some goodness. In living, all are bound to do diligently all the good they can. It is by no means enough to be rightly disposed, to be serious or downright religious.
We must be useful, too. And take care that as we reap numberless benefits in living until to our ultimate step to hallowed grounds, society may the better be for every one of us.
Peace and serenity to all, these All Saints and All Souls Day!
Last Sunday also, by happenstance, after mulling over All Saints and All Souls Day, Daily Laborer bumped into some lawyer friends at downtown Baguio.
Daily Laborer refuses to name them because election fever isn’t around the corner and these lawyers – who nurture dreams of jumping into Baguio’s political turmoil – refuse to be identified.
At the moment, they want to remain happily incognito, their wish a command to Daily Laborer.
One thing Daily Laborer noticed about lawyers is that they are a club that often dines under one roof, er, one restaurant, or one eatery, with a peculiar affinity for steak, steak of all meats, a reason why Daily Laborer happily dubs them “The Sublime Society of Beef-steaks.”
Daily Laborer bets his only cinco that Atty. Ryan James Solano – Atty. Solano was mentioned because he has no dreams (not yet) of joining the political hullabaloo but instead retains a keen sense of humor – will surely be tickled pink uttering the words “Sublime Society of Beef-steaks” for such a lawyer club.
Lawyers are known for their wicked or merciless raillery when together, some have the fondness or peculiarity of telling jokes of which they always forget the point. Chief among the lawyer wits is Atty. Solano.
Daily Laborer also harbors this odd suspicion that the study of law does not seem favorable to purity, elegance of style, exactness of expression or vice versa for the mentioned three styles.
Consider what Daily Laborer heard before from a lawyer defending a client in a Judge’ Sala in Pangasinan, many years ago when the lawyer boomed in court: “ If I may, Your Honor, now we are advancing from the total darkness of circumstantial evidence to the dawning daylight of discovery. The sun of certainty has melted the darkness and we have arrived at the facts admitted by both parties, all who have seen the glimmer of hope in this galaxy of hopelessness. . .”
The sage judge, hearing this, hid his mirth behind a stern scowl at the lawyer who had the temerity to wax poetic in the sala of the judge.
It’s the business of a lawyer to be ready-witted, but not pompous. Many Baguio and La Trinidad residents whisper some lawyers are downright pompous. What say, you?
Another lawyer-friend, who works the La Union legal circuit, during a gathering, his spirit became slightly elevated because the bottle was freely passed around. When the bottle reached him again, it was empty. He retorted to the host, “Here, away with this marine,” (waving the bottle).
A General of the Philippine Marines, who sat near the lawyer, and felt the marine dignity touched, calmly said, “Sir, I don’t understand, Sir, what you mean by likening an empty wine bottle to a marine?”
Daily Laborer’s lawyer-friend, coming to his senses, blinked and said, “Aahh! My dear General, I mean a good fellow who has done his duty to the utmost and is ready to do it again.”
Then there’s this story of a priest (lawyers who told the story swear it happened in Baguio) who spewed a long and winding sermon in church to which most of the male congregation went a-snoring. After the mass, the priest approached one churchgoer – a lawyer – and asked, “Well, how was my beautiful sermon?”
“Oh, most excellently beautiful, indeed!” the lawyer responded, adding, “It was like the peace of God, which passes all understanding. And, like his mercy, I thought it (the sermon) would have endured forever.”
Here’s a tale told by a Baguio lawyer. Two pretty female Baguio lawyers did not see eye-to-eye, in other words, never got along. As to why, don’t ask Daily Laborer. He only heard the tale.
Maybe, if we have a chance to meet another good friend, city councilor Joe Molintas, ask him if he heard about the two female lawyers’ tale, we would be further enlightened. Atty. Molintas has this uncanny knack of remembering forgotten, highlander and lowlander funny episodes, much to the delight of many.
According to the story, one of the lady-lawyer told her co- lady-lawyer she was a “pettifogging scoundrel.” Now, a pettifogger, by Colllins English Dictionary means a “lawyer of inferior status or one who is unscrupulous.” Pretty bad, this Collins English Dictionary, talking bad things.
Now, the other female-lawyer accosted the other female-lawyer who purportedly blurted the “pettifogging scoundrel” statement, saying, “I heard that you have called me a pettifogging scoundrel. Have you done so?”
To which the accused female-lawyer cutely responded by saying, “I never said you were a pettifogger or a scoundrel; but I said you were a Little Else.”
Whether such story occurred or not in Baguio as related, you be the ultimate saintly or ghostly Judge but keep your cheek-by-the-jowl gaiety these All Saints and All Souls Days.