Isabela State U, Miracles, Dr. Quilang, and the Amianan Question

I am writing this piece from hindsight.

This distance in time gives me some kind of a perspective that is less prone to the personal, even if I can say that this piece remains a highly charged personal reflection on what grace and glory mean.

Between the time that I spent two days with Isabela State University and now, I have learned to love a phrase that captures what happened: "miracle moment".

No, this one does not have anything to do with "oras ng himala"-- on television for the spectacular value of miracle whether with divine intervention or with someone/something else or among the miracle workers down the road. I speak here of miracle you become a witness to in the most unopportune of moments.

It is the miracle moment with Dr Romeo Quilang and his ISU and the Norther Luzon cultural consortium he heads.

By way of thanks, this could be the title of this piece.

And rightly so.

Because I must thank Dr Romeo Quilang for the warm welcome he extended to me during my two-day conference with the Northern Luzon Consortium for Culture and the Arts, a consortium made up of the leading colleges and universities of Region 2.

I had in the audience as participants several university and college presidents including a number of topnotch culture and arts leaders in both the academe and in the local government units.

I had in the audience cultural workers who know the meaning of our cultural work and language struggle, however inchoate the meaning we all understand is and however primal the commitment to such a struggle is.

I feel blessed, many times blessed in the midst of these colleagues, friends, and co-warriors. It is that feeling that is sudden and with one full sweep of a moment of miracle, you realize that you have comrades in the war against that which is socially unjust, and that you realize as well that you need to humble yourself before this altar of cultural and lingustic justice.