Lessons Faith Gleanings.101

By Cosme R. Cagas

Read one or two of these short essays, stories, and anecdotes that sizzle with facts and faith, humor, lessons learned, and jewels of wisdom in a few minutes. They range from the mundane to the philosophical and the divine. You can peruse any of the 101 now, then put away the book to read again in your leisure time. Visual poems delight the eyes and captivate the mind.

Some excerpts of reviews of the author’s WWII novel, “I Shall Return”:


A wonderful piece of literature! In this gripping account, the author gives
real glance into what life was like… during this historic and tumultuous time. – Dustin Dichoso
A great read! A well-researched novel with historical markers and with subplots of love, romance. and family traditions. -Mike Cabelin, MD

Highly recommended. One can sense the overwhelming tide of events … towards the inevitable bittersweet conclusion. - Chris Conner

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9781669863168

Book preview

Foreword

I wish to share the lessons I learned from these short essays, stories, and anecdotes, based on my eighty-six years of life experiences, world events, and readings. They range from the mundane to the philosophical and the divine.

Prayerfully, others may catch an insight, jewels of wisdom, or something new or worthwhile. Many are brief, hardly occupying a page, and others are at most two pages long and in large print.

Categorizations are arbitrary but can serve as rough starting points. Although few articles are related, each can stand alone. Therefore, one may read an item and then put the book away for revisiting in leisure time.

Hopefully, the selected visual poems delight the eyes and captivate the mind.

It is a bonus if the book is also entertaining and a story or two humorous. But, on the other hand, if the reader finds the book useless or a waste of time, he can ask for a refund!

Acknowledgements

I thank my grandniece Chelsea Cagas Fernandez for the artwork on the front cover, Lily Umali Cagas for the picture of the black tomb, and Banlasan Francisco Ray Llanos for the photo of Mt. Apo. The photo on page 19 is reproduced with permission from the UPMASA 25th anniversary commemorative book, Cecilia Cortes-Levich, Geraldine Gomez-Pinder, and Constancia Somera-Uy, editors.

About the Author

Cosme R. Cagas has been an editor and has published several short stories, poems, and a WWII historical novel, I Shall Return.

He founded five foundations:

1.The Association of Filipino Physicians in Southern Illinois (1978) -- annually holds a science quiz show for high school students.

2.The University of the Philippines Medical Society in America (1980) -- has 2,500 life members and 17 regional chapters.

3.The Philippine Economic and Cultural Endowment (1986) --has constructed hundreds of artesian wells and assisted thousands of victims of calamities.

4.DADS (2002) -- based in the Philippines. Funds three school- based feeding centers and provides dental kits.

5.The Christ Philippine Missions (2009) --supports five hundred scholars and ten feeding and dental health centers in the Philippines.

His many awards include the Most Outstanding Alumnus Abroad of the University of the Philippine College of Medicine, a John Wesley church award, and the LINKAPIL, the highest honor given to Filipinos overseas by the president of the Philippines.

Abbreviations

Woman and

Womanhood

1. Finding Eve

Logan Clendening was a professor of Medical History at the University of Kansas. The university considered him the greatest popularizer of medicine in America in the first half of the twentieth century and named its medical library and museum in his honor. He was also a great storyteller.

I read this story in 1963 while a senior resident in pediatrics at the KU Medical Center. I have forgotten the details except for the punchline. With apologies, let me retell it my own way. The oldest woman in heaven, Eve, was missing for months and could not be found despite St. Peter’s best efforts. Finally, in exasperation, the guardian of the heavenly gate announced that there would be a handsome reward for one who could find the matriarch of matriarchs. In a few days, a grizzled man with a beard that reached down to the knees came to St. Peter grinning from ear to ear.

I found Eve for you, dear Saint. Where is the handsome reward?

That quick? Where is Eve? She got tired walking, so I let her rest under an apple tree nearby.

But how did you find her? You remember, of all women, she was the only one created from a man’s rib.

So?

Of all women, she was the only one not born out of a woman.

Stop beating around the bush. So?

Elementary my dear Saint! Of all women in heaven, she is the only one without a navel!"

2. Tribute to Woman

Flower in a crannied wall

I pluck you out from the crannies

I hold you here, root and all in all in my hand,

Little flower—but if I could understand

What you are, root and all, and all in all,

I would know what God and man is.

Of all poetic tributes to woman and womanhood, none could equal the adulation, brevity, and perspicacity, not to mention the literary beauty of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s above poem.

He reduces a woman to a little flower, not in a tilled, watered, and fertilized garden but in a hard place. If you remember that a cranny means a fissure, chink, or crack, you begin to appreciate the seeming degradation. As if that were not enough, the poet wantonly uproots her from the lowly abode completing the utter humiliation.

But of course, the English poet is right—the woman was created for man’s delight—a flower that gives him pleasure for its beauty and fragrance, a love object. She came from the rib of man, therefore a mere part of him, not his peer but a subordinate. Or is she?

If Tennyson cut short his already short poem to the first three lines, then perhaps his real meaning would not be apparent. However, even if we left out the last three lines, some hint of reverence for a woman still surfaces. That the little flower could thrive under challenging circumstances suggests its mystique and indicates its strength. Herein lies the admixture of beauty, humility, and tenacity. The last three lines provide rhythmic balance that unabashedly delivers the ultimate tribute, comparing a woman’s inscrutability to the mystery of man and God. Who could fathom the depth of a woman’s heart that produces tears that man mistakes for weakness or the profundity of her soul whose outward exuberance or lament may mean either joy or sorrow or vice versa? Who could truly understand her fickle maybe that one day means yes and at another time, no? Only a man who has been given the gift of discernment, like poet Alfred Lord Tennyson.

3. Unto Man

Chauvinistic man throughout the ages has not accepted woman as a peer, or equal in worth as a partner. Most societies had been patriarchal. In the bible, genealogy is traced through the male lineage; thus, mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers are mostly forgotten. For a woman to be remembered, she must have done something superb, like Deborah in the Old Testament or the Virgin Mary in the New. Today many women in the Muslim world are heavily confined and restricted.

But man cannot live without woman, by biology, by physical need, and through co-existence in the rough-and-tumble world. Wisely, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow put it succinctly, lyrically, and beautifully in Hiawatha:

As unto the bow, the cord is

So unto man is woman;

Though she bends him, she obeys him

Though she draws him, yet she follows;

Useless each without the other.

Valor

4. Braving the Blade

In 1945, and I was nine years old. The war over, the time had come for the less mundane, like the making of boys into men.

Boys older and younger than I had braved the blade. The question was not whether it would hurt but whether I could withstand the pain. I hesitated for days, postponing it until tomorrow and the next tomorrow. But my younger brother Ruben made the decision for me: he braved the blade ahead of me. I must do it now or lose face.

The cutter would perform the service in seconds for twenty-five centavos or two tobacco leaves and throw in a spittle of chewed lime and betel nut for free.

He made us fall in line, the bravest standing in front. I kneeled with my short pants down. He positioned the knife upon a Y-shaped twig impaled to the ground, the sharp edge facing up and the tapered tip menacingly pointed towards me. He pulled my penis, inserting the knife between the glans and the foreskin. Ready? he asked. Without waiting for my answer, he struck the skin over the blade with a wooden stick. I saw white tissue beneath the cut skin. With another swift stroke, the prepuce was slit at the center. With flair, he spitted thick astringent saliva into the gaping and bleeding wound. My ordeal was over.

Not quite! I nursed the sore and swollen member for two weeks, soaking the red phallus (nangamatis, they called it—meaning looking like a red tomato) each morning at the river. Passersby poked fun at me, but I didn’t mind their jesting, for I knew that, at long last, I had joined the fraternity of the tried, the tested, and the true.

5. Islander Vanquishes