It's Pentecost Sunday. The priest who gave the sermon at Mass was fund raising for a Kenyan high school that needs $50,000. Before he got to the "asking" part of his sermon, he talked about being born in Rwanda of a wealthy Tutsi family. In the 1960s when the Tutsi's were being persecuted, his family fled to Uganda. In the refugee camp, because of the harsh conditions, his mother and 2 sisters died within a week.
After several years, a brother who had remained in Rwanda had climbed up in social status and invited the family to return. This priest chose to remain in Uganda because he was in school. The family who returned were all killed during the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. Only the brother survived, missing fingers, with cuts on his body; and this priest said maybe he survived so he could witness his becoming a priest.
Heavy stuff, very heavy... will have to think about that for days. An entire family wiped out, and he has no rancor, no bitterness. Instead of stewing over this big matter, he is taking care of his flock in Kenya - this high school that needs $50,000.
Does that kind of holiness come from the Holy Spirit? How does one keep sane? How does one be productive when one has been through all that?
~~~
On another matter, I've been working on my Facebook site, click here to visit. Facebook has nice photo features, and it's allowed me to connect with some long lost friends/acquaintances. But there's something ephemeral about these internet connections - a sentence thrown out here and there, but no deep exchange. There's a lot of "cutesy" comments posted; and a lot of self-promotion.
By the way, I found out today that Geocities is canceling their free webservice later this year. I almost panicked because my official website was directed to my geocities site. I took care of the matter by redirecting my domain name to my site in palhbooks.com. No change to viewers of my site: they still pop in http://www.ceciliabrainard.com and they go straight to my site in palhbooks.com.
The answer to yesterday's Jack Pot question: Bienvenido Santos.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
And God Shone His Grace on One Rwandan
Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's official website is ceciliabrainarddotcom. She is the award-winning author and editor of 22 books, including When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, The Newspaper Widow, Magdalena, Selected Stories, Vigan and Other Stories, and more. She edited Growing Up Filipino 1, 2, & 3, Fiction by Filipinos in America, Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America, and other books..
Her work has been translated into Finnish and Turkish; and many of her stories and articles have been widely anthologized.
Cecilia has received many awards, including a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Brody Arts Fund Award, a Special Recognition Award for her work dealing with Asian American youths, as well as a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate, 21st District, and the Outstanding Individual Award from her birth city, Cebu, Philippines.
She has lectured and performed at UCLA, USC, University of Connecticut, University of the Philippines, PEN, Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and many others. She has served in the Board of literary arts groups such as PEN, PAWWA (Pacific Asian American Writers West), among others.
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