NOLI ME TANGERE

   Having completed his studies in Europe, young Juan Crisóstomo Ibarra comes back to the Philippines after a 7-year absence. In his honor, Don Santiago de los Santos "Captain Tiago", a family friend, threw a get-together party, which was attended by friars and other prominent figures. One of the guests, former San Diego curate Fray Dámaso Vardolagas belittled and slandered Ibarra. Ibarra brushed off the insults and took no offense; he instead politely excused himself and left the party because of an allegedly important task.

   

   The next day, Ibarra visits María Clara, his betrothed, the beautiful daughter of Captain Tiago and affluent resident of Binondo. Their long-standing love was clearly manifested in this meeting, and María Clara cannot help but reread the letters her sweetheart had written her before he went to Europe. Before Ibarra left for San Diego, Lieutenant Guevara, a Civil Guard, reveals to him the incidents preceding the death of his father, Don Rafael Ibarra, a rich hacendero of the town.

   According to Guevara, Don Rafael was unjustly accused of being a heretic, in addition to being a subservient — an allegation brought forth by Dámaso because of Don Rafael's non-participation in the Sacraments, such as Confession and Mass. Dámaso's animosity against Ibarra's father is aggravated by another incident when Don Rafael helped out on a fight between a tax collector and a child fighting, and the former's death was blamed on him, although it was not deliberate. Suddenly, all of those who thought ill of him surfaced with additional complaints. He was imprisoned, and just when the matter was almost settled, he died of sickness in jail. Still not content with what he had done, Dámaso arranged for Don Rafael's corpse to be dug up from the Catholic Church and brought to a Chinese cemetery, because he thought it inappropriate to allow a heretic a Catholic burial ground. Unfortunately, it was raining and because of the bothersome weight of the body, the undertakers decide to throw the corpse into a nearby lake.

   Revenge was not in Ibarra's plans, instead he carried through his father's plan of putting up a school, since he believed that education would pave the way to his country's progress (all over the novel the author refers to both Spain and the Philippines as two different countries as part of a same nation or family, with Spain seen as the mother and the Philippines as the daughter). During the inauguration of the school, Ibarra would have been killed in a sabotage had Elías — a mysterious man who had warned Ibarra earlier of a plot to assassinate him — not saved him. Instead the hired killer met an unfortunate incident and died. The sequence of events proved to be too traumatic for María Clara who got seriously ill but was luckily cured by the medicine Ibarra sent.

   After the inauguration, Ibarra hosted a luncheon during which Dámaso, gate-crashing the luncheon, again insulted him. Ibarra ignored the priest's insolence, but when the latter slandered the memory of his dead father, he was no longer able to restrain himself and lunged at Dámaso, prepared to stab him for his impudence. As a consequence, Dámaso excommunicated Ibarra, taking this opportunity to persuade the already-hesitant Tiago to forbid his daughter from marrying Ibarra. The friar wished María Clara to marry Linares, a Peninsular who had just arrived from Spain.

  With the help of the Governor-General, Ibarra's excommunication was nullified and the Archbishop decided to accept him as a member of the Church once again. But, as fate would have it, some incident of which Ibarra had known nothing about was blamed on him, and he is wrongly arrested and imprisoned. The accusation against him was then overruled because during the litigation that followed, nobody could testify that he was indeed involved. Unfortunately, his letter to María Clara somehow got into the hands of the jury and is manipulated such that it then became evidence against him by the parish priest, Fray Salví. With Machiavellian precision, Salví framed Ibarra and ruined his life just so he could stop him from marrying María Clara and making the latter his concubine.

   Meanwhile, in Capitan Tiago's residence, a party was being held to announce the upcoming wedding of María Clara and Linares. Ibarra, with the help of Elías, took this opportunity to escape from prison. Before leaving, Ibarra spoke to María Clara and accused her of betraying him, thinking that she gave the letter he wrote her to the jury. María Clara explained that she would never conspire against him, but that she was forced to surrender Ibarra's letter to Father Salvi, in exchange for the letters written by her mother even before she, María Clara, was born. The letters were from her mother, Pía Alba, to Dámaso alluding to their unborn child; and that María Clara was therefore not Captain Tiago's biological daughter, but Dámaso's.

   Afterwards, Ibarra and Elías fled by boat. Elías instructed Ibarra to lie down, covering him with grass to conceal his presence. As luck would have it, they were spotted by their enemies. Elías, thinking he could outsmart them, jumped into the water. The guards rained shots on him, all the while not knowing that they were aiming at the wrong man.

María Clara, thinking that Ibarra had been killed in the shooting incident, was greatly overcome with grief. Robbed of hope and severely disillusioned, she asked Dámaso to confine her into a nunnery. Dámaso reluctantly agreed when she threatened to take her own life, demanding, "the nunnery or death!"[2] Unbeknownst to her, Ibarra was still alive and able to escape. It was Elías who had taken the shots.

   It was Christmas Eve when Elías woke up in the forest fatally wounded, as it is here where he instructed Ibarra to meet him. Instead, Elías found the altar boy Basilio cradling his already-dead mother, Sisa. The latter lost her mind when she learned that her two sons, Crispín and Basilio, were chased out of the convent by the sacristan mayor on suspicions of stealing sacred objects. (The truth is that, it was the sacristan mayor who stole the objects and only pinned the blame on the two boys. The said sacristan mayor actually killed Crispín while interrogating him on the supposed location of the sacred objects. It was implied that the body was never found and the incident was covered-up by Salví).

Elías, convinced that he would die soon, instructs Basilio to build a funeral pyre and burn his and Sisa's bodies to ashes. He tells Basilio that, if nobody reaches the place, he come back later on and digs for he will find gold. He also tells him (Basilio) to take the gold he finds and go to school. In his dying breath, he instructed Basilio to continue dreaming about freedom for his motherland with the words: “   I shall die without seeing the dawn break upon my homeland. You, who shall see it, salute it! Do not forget those who have fallen during the night.        ”

Elías died thereafter.

   In the epilogue, it was explained that Tiago became addicted to opium and was seen to frequent the opium house in Binondo to satiate his addiction. María Clara became a nun where Salví, who has lusted after her from the beginning of the novel, regularly used her to fulfill his lust. One stormy evening, a beautiful crazy woman was seen at the top of the convent crying and cursing the heavens for the fate it has handed her. While the woman was never identified, it is suggested that the said woman was María Clara.

• Noli Me Tangere or touch me not was the most controversial novel of Jose Rizal. He did it to ridicule the friars and let the Filipinos be awaken of the greed and be able learn to fight. It contained all the immoralities of the Spaniards.  We can fight in a peaceful way or manner, fighting doesn't  need to be  violent. We can apply  our intelligence, wit and wisdom by using literature or writings. As a Filipino we should learn to be united in deeds avoiding the policy that the Spaniards brought to us. 
  
  

Letter to Pedro, U.S. Citizen, Also Called Pete

Pete, old friend;

there isn't really much change

in our hometown since you left.

This morning I couldn't find anymore

the grave of Simeona, the cat we buried

at the foot of Miguel's mango tree,

when we were in grade four,

after she was hit by a truck while crossing

the street. The bulldozer has messed it up

while making the feeder road into the mountains

to reach the hearts of the farmers.

The farmers come down every Sunday

to sell their agony and their sweat for

a few pesos, lose in the cockpit or get

drunk on the way home.

A steel bridge named after the congressman's wife

now spans the gray river where Tasyo, the old

goat, had split the skin of our young lizards

to make us a man many years ago.

The long blue hills where we

used to shoot birds with slingshot or spend

the summer afternoons we loved so much doing

nothing in the tall grass have been bought

by the mayor's son. Now there's a barbed wire

fence about them; the birds have gone away.

The mayor owns a big sugar plantation, three

new cars, and a mansion with the gate overhung

with sampaguita. Inside the gate

are guys who carry a rifle and a pistol.

We still go to Konga's store for rice

and sardines and sugar and nails for the coffin.

Still only a handful go to mass on Sundays.

In the church the men talk, sleep; the children play.

The priest is sad.

Last night the storm came and blew away

the cornflowers. The cornfields are full of cries.

Your cousin, Julia, has just become a whore.

She liked good clothes, good food, big money.

• That's why she became a whore.

Now our hometown has seven whores.

Pete, old friend,

every time we have good reason to get drunk

and be carried home in a wheelbarrow

we always remember you. Oh, we miss

both Pete and Pedro.

Remember us to your American wife,

you lucky bastard. Islaw, your cock-eyed

uncle, now calls himself Stanley

after he began wearing the clothes you sent

him last Christmas.

P.S. Tasyo, the old goat,

Sends your lizard his warmest congratulations.

  

• Be proud to be a Filipino in whatever place you will go or destined. Be a responsible citizen; it is our obligation to love our country. 
• Be humble at all times.

  Local color is a technique in writing a story that makes use of description and language that appeal to the senses, and that brings life the surrounding of a particular place and time.

 

    How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife

   She stepped down from the carretela of Ca Celin with a quick, delicate grace. She was lovely. SHe was tall. She looked up to my brother with a smile, and her forehead was on a level with his mouth.

   "You are Baldo," she said and placed her hand lightly on my shoulder. Her nails were long, but they were not painted. She was fragrant like a morning when papayas are in bloom. And a small dimple appeared momently high on her right cheek.  "And this is Labang of whom I have heard so much." She held the wrist of one hand with the other and looked at Labang, and Labang never stopped chewing his cud. He swallowed and brought up to his mouth more cud and the sound of his insides was like a drum.

   I laid a hand on Labang's massive neck and said to her: "You may scratch his forehead now."

   She hesitated and I saw that her eyes were on the long, curving horns. But she came and touched Labang's forehead with her long fingers, and Labang never stopped chewing his cud except that his big eyes half closed. And by and by she was scratching his forehead very daintily.

   My brother Leon put down the two trunks on the grassy side of the road. He paid Ca Celin twice the usual fare from the station to the edge of Nagrebcan. Then he was standing beside us, and she turned to him eagerly. I watched Ca Celin, where he stood in front of his horse, and he ran his fingers through its forelock and could not keep his eyes away from her.

   "Maria---" my brother Leon said.

   He did not say Maring. He did not say Mayang. I knew then that he had always called her Maria and that to us all she would be Maria; and in my mind I said 'Maria' and it was a beautiful name.

   "Yes, Noel."

   Now where did she get that name? I pondered the matter quietly to myself, thinking Father might not like it. But it was only the name of my brother Leon said backward and it sounded much better that way.

   "There is Nagrebcan, Maria," my brother Leon said, gesturing widely toward the west.

   She moved close to him and slipped her arm through his. And after a while she said quietly.

   "You love Nagrebcan, don't you, Noel?"

   Ca Celin drove away hi-yi-ing to his horse loudly. At the bend of the camino real where the big duhat tree grew, he rattled the handle of his braided rattan whip against the spokes of the wheel.

   We stood alone on the roadside.

   The sun was in our eyes, for it was dipping into the bright sea. The sky was wide and deep and very blue above us: but along the saw-tooth rim of the Katayaghan hills to the southwest flamed huge masses of clouds. Before us the fields swam in a golden haze through which floated big purple and red and yellow bubbles when I looked at the sinking sun. Labang's white coat, which I had washed and brushed that morning with coconut husk, glistened like beaten cotton under the lamplight and his horns appeared tipped with fire.

   He faced the sun and from his mouth came a call so loud and vibrant that the earth seemed to tremble underfoot. And far away in the middle of the field a cow lowed softly in answer.

   "Hitch him to the cart, Baldo," my brother Leon said, laughing, and she laughed with him a big uncertainly, and I saw that he had put his arm around her shoulders.

   "Why does he make that sound?" she asked. "I have never heard the like of it."

   "There is not another like it," my brother Leon said. "I have yet to hear another bull call like Labang. In all the world there is no other bull like him."

   She was smiling at him, and I stopped in the act of tying the sinta across Labang's neck to the opposite end of the yoke, because her teeth were very white, her eyes were so full of laughter, and there was the small dimple high up on her right cheek.

   "If you continue to talk about him like that, either I shall fall in love with him or become greatly jealous."

 

   My brother Leon laughed and she laughed and they looked at each other and it seemed to me there was a world of laughter between them and in them.

   I climbed into the cart over the wheel and Labang would have bolted, for he was always like that, but I kept a firm hold on his rope. He was restless and would not stand still, so that my brother Leon had to say "Labang" several times. When he was quiet again, my brother Leon lifted the trunks into the cart, placing the smaller on top.

   She looked down once at her high-heeled shoes, then she gave her left hand to my brother Leon, placed a foot on the hub of the wheel, and in one breath she had swung up into the cart. Oh, the fragrance of her. But Labang was fairly dancing with impatience and it was all I could do to keep him from running away.

   "Give me the rope, Baldo," my brother Leon said. "Maria, sit down on the hay and hold on to anything." Then he put a foot on the left shaft and that instant labang leaped forward. My brother Leon laughed as he drew himself up to the top of the side of the cart and made the slack of the rope hiss above the back of labang. The wind whistled against my cheeks and the rattling of the wheels on the pebbly road echoed in my ears.

   She sat up straight on the bottom of the cart, legs bent together to one side, her skirts spread over them so that only the toes and heels of her shoes were visible. her eyes were on my brother Leon's back; I saw the wind on her hair. When Labang slowed down, my brother Leon handed to me the rope. I knelt on the straw inside the cart and pulled on the rope until Labang was merely shuffling along, then I made him turn around.

   "What is it you have forgotten now, Baldo?" my brother Leon said.

   I did not say anything but tickled with my fingers the rump of Labang; and away we went---back to where I had unhitched and waited for them. The sun had sunk and down from the wooded sides of the Katayaghan hills shadows were stealing into the fields. High up overhead the sky burned with many slow fires.

   When I sent Labang down the deep cut that would take us to the dry bed of the Waig which could be used as a path to our place during the dry season, my brother Leon laid a hand on my shoulder and said sternly:

   "Who told you to drive through the fields tonight?"

   His hand was heavy on my shoulder, but I did not look at him or utter a word until we were on the rocky bottom of the Waig.

   "Baldo, you fool, answer me before I lay the rope of Labang on you. Why do you follow the Wait instead of the camino real?"

   His fingers bit into my shoulder.

   "Father, he told me to follow the Waig tonight, Manong."

   Swiftly, his hand fell away from my shoulder and he reached for the rope of Labang. Then my brother Leon laughed, and he sat back, and laughing still, he said:

   "And I suppose Father also told you to hitch Labang to the cart and meet us with him instead of with Castano and the calesa."

   Without waiting for me to answer, he turned to her and said, "Maria, why do you think Father should do that, now?" He laughed and added, "Have you ever seen so many stars before?"

   I looked back and they were sitting side by side, leaning against the trunks, hands clasped across knees. Seemingly, but a man's height above the tops of the steep banks of the Wait, hung the stars. But in the deep gorge the shadows had fallen heavily, and even the white of Labang's coat was merely a dim, grayish blur. Crickets chirped from their homes in the cracks in the banks. The thick, unpleasant smell of dangla bushes and cooling sun-heated earth mingled with the clean, sharp scent of arrais roots exposed to the night air and of the hay inside the cart.

   "Look, Noel, yonder is our star!" Deep surprise and gladness were in her voice. Very low in the west, almost touching the ragged edge of the bank, was the star, the biggest and brightest in the sky.

   "I have been looking at it," my brother Leon said. "Do you remember how I would tell you that when you want to see stars you must come to Nagrebcan?"

   "Yes, Noel," she said. "Look at it," she murmured, half to herself. "It is so many times bigger and brighter than it was at Ermita beach."

   "The air here is clean, free of dust and smoke."

   "So it is, Noel," she said, drawing a long breath.

   "Making fun of me, Maria?"

   She laughed then and they laughed together and she took my brother Leon's hand and put it against her face.

   I stopped Labang, climbed down, and lighted the lantern that hung from the cart between the wheels.

   "Good boy, Baldo," my brother Leon said as I climbed back into the cart, and my heart sant.

   Now the shadows took fright and did not crowd so near. Clumps of andadasi and arrais flashed into view and quickly disappeared as we passed by. Ahead, the elongated shadow of Labang bobbled up and down and swayed drunkenly from side to side, for the lantern rocked jerkily with the cart.

   "Have we far to go yet, Noel?" she asked.

   "Ask Baldo," my brother Leon said, "we have been neglecting him."

   "I am asking you, Baldo," she said.

   Without looking back, I answered, picking my words slowly:

   "Soon we will get out of the Wait and pass into the fields. After the fields is home---Manong."

   "So near already."

   I did not say anything more because I did not know what to make of the tone of her voice as she said her last words. All the laughter seemed to have gone out of her. I waited for my brother Leon to say something, but he was not saying anything. Suddenly he broke out into song and the song was 'Sky Sown with Stars'---the same that he and Father sang when we cut hay in the fields at night before he went away to study. He must have taught her the song because she joined him, and her voice flowed into his like a gentle stream meeting a stronger one. And each time the wheels encountered a big rock, her voice would catch in her throat, but my brother Leon would sing on, until, laughing softly, she would join him again.

   Then we were climbing out into the fields, and through the spokes of the wheels the light of the lantern mocked the shadows. Labang quickened his steps. The jolting became more frequent and painful as we crossed the low dikes.

   "But it is so very wide here," she said. The light of the stars broke and scattered the darkness so that one could see far on every side, though indistinctly.

   "You miss the houses, and the cars, and the people and the noise, don't you?" My brother Leon stopped singing.

   "Yes, but in a different way. I am glad they are not here."

   With difficulty I turned Labang to the left, for he wanted to go straight on. He was breathing hard, but I knew he was more thirsty than tired. In a little while we drope up the grassy side onto the camino real.

   "---you see," my brother Leon was explaining, "the camino real curves around the foot of the Katayaghan hills and passes by our house. We drove through the fields because---but I'll be asking Father as soon as we get home."

   "Noel," she said.

   "Yes, Maria."

   "I am afraid. He may not like me."

  "Does that worry you still, Maria?" my brother Leon said. "From the way you talk, he might be an ogre, for all the world. Except when his leg that was wounded in the Revolution is troubling him, Father is the mildest-tempered, gentlest man I know."

   We came to the house of Lacay Julian and I spoke to Labang loudly, but Moning did not come to the window, so I surmised she must be eating with the rest of her family. And I thought of the food being made ready at home and my mouth watered. We met the twins, Urong and Celin, and I said "Hoy!" calling them by name. And they shouted back and asked if my brother Leon and his wife were with me. And my brother Leon shouted to them and then told me to make Labang run; their answers were lost in the noise of the wheels.

   I stopped labang on the road before our house and would have gotten down but my brother Leon took the rope and told me to stay in the cart. He turned Labang into the open gate and we dashed into our yard. I thought we would crash into the camachile tree, but my brother Leon reined in Labang in time. There was light downstairs in the kitchen, and Mother stood in the doorway, and I could see her smiling shyly. My brother Leon was helping Maria over the wheel. The first words that fell from his lips after he had kissed Mother's hand were:

   "Father... where is he?"

   "He is in his room upstairs," Mother said, her face becoming serious. "His leg is bothering him again."

 

   I did not hear anything more because I had to go back to the cart to unhitch Labang. But I hardly tied him under the barn when I heard Father calling me. I met my brother Leon going to bring up the trunks. As I passed through the kitchen, there were Mother and my sister Aurelia and Maria and it seemed to me they were crying, all of them.

   There was no light in Father's room. There was no movement. He sat in the big armchair by the western window, and a star shone directly through it. He was smoking, but he removed the roll of tobacco from his mouth when he saw me. He laid it carefully on the windowsill before speaking.

   "Did you meet anybody on the way?" he asked.

   "No, Father," I said. "Nobody passes through the Waig at night."

   He reached for his roll of tobacco and hithced himself up in the chair.

   "She is very beautiful, Father."

   "Was she afraid of Labang?" My father had not raised his voice, but the room seemed to resound with it. And again I saw her eyes on the long curving horns and the arm of my brother Leon around her shoulders.

 

   "No, Father, she was not afraid."

  "On the way---"

  "She looked at the stars, Father. And Manong Leon sang."

  "What did he sing?"

   "---Sky Sown with Stars... She sang with him."

   He was silent again. I could hear the low voices of Mother and my sister Aurelia downstairs. There was also the voice of my brother Leon, and I thought that Father's voice must have been like it when Father was young. He had laid the roll of tobacco on the windowsill once more. I watched the smoke waver faintly upward from the lighted end and vanish slowly into the night outside.

   The door opened and my brother Leon and Maria came in.

   "Have you watered Labang?" Father spoke to me.

   I told him that Labang was resting yet under the barn.

   "It is time you watered him, my son," my father said.

   I looked at Maria and she was lovely. She was tall. Beside my brother Leon, she was tall and very still. Then I went out, and in the darkened hall the fragrance of her was like a morning when papayas are in bloom.

  

• Maria discovered the peculiarities of the life in Nagrebcan as opposed to their life in the city where she  met and fell in love with Leon.
• We should respect and be aware of the culture of everyone. We should accept that we all have different culture and beliefs.
• Respecting elders in the family or in the society is commendable.

  A legend is a type of prose which tells the origin of a thing, a place, location, or a name of a certain place or thing. The events are imaginary and unbelievable. The story came to be and why things are as they are. A legend is a story explaining the origin of things and a world phenomenon.

     The Legend of Mount Kanlaon

    There once lived on the island of Negros a princess who lived a very sheltered life. 

   One day, the princess overheard her father, the king, talking to the kingdom's chief priestess. The priestess was frantic about a report that they could not find a single maiden who was unblemished. 

    Later, the princess asked her father what it was all about, and the king finally broke down. There had long been a seven-headed dragon threatening the kingdom, and the monster could only be appeased if an unblemished maiden was sacrificed to it. 

    In fear, all the women in the kingdom had cut themselves to disqualify themselves from the sacrifice. Parents cut their own baby girls so as to spare the infants from the sacrifice. But the king and the queen couldn't bring themselves to mar their daughter's beauty, and so the princess was the only remaining unscarred female in the kingdom. 
    The princess did not weep. Instead, she willingly offered herself for the sacrifice. Fortuitously, on the day she was to be brought to the mountain where the dragon lived, a man calling himself Khan Laon appeared. (Khan in his language meant a noble lord.) He said he came from a kingdom far away in order to slay the dragon. The king told the stranger that if he killed the dragon, he shall be rewarded with all the gold he can carry and he can marry the princess.

    No one believed the dragon could be killed, but Khan Laon insisted that his ability to talk to animals would help him. He asked the help of the ants, the bees and the eagles.
  
    The ants swarmed over the dragon's body and crept under its scales to bite its soft, unprotected flesh, while the bees stung the fourteen eyes of the dragon till it was blind. But the great God chopped off its head one by one. When it’s largest and ugliest head was cut off, the dragon grew still and died.

    The great god Laon bore the dragons largest head on his shoulder and returned to the valley.There, he was net by the people with great rejoicing. But the happiest of all who met him was the king’s lovely daughter. She and Laon were married; needless to say, they became the ancestors of the present good people of Negros. For the god’s great exploit , the people named the dragon’s mountain Khanlaon or Lord Laon after him. But among of us today who want to say things in great hurry, “Khan Laon” became Kanlaon.

• Laon really showed that he is a god by possessing such bravery and confidence to kill the dragon by himself. We don't need to be a god just to have some courage. We in ourselves can possess such bravery by facing the wrath obstacles in our life. And by his bravery the dragon's mountain was named by his honor.
• Sensitivity to others needs is an act of heroism.  

A folktale is a story that reflects the life of the people of a particular region. Folktales are usually concerned with everyday people who experience typical human situations.

Juan Picas; picas means 'half'.

 

                      JUAN PICAS :

      THE BOY WHO LOOKED FOR GOD

   I am Juan Picas, born half of myself. I had only one eye, one arm, one leg, one half of a body. My mother wept when she saw me, but loved me as I grew up and never regarded me as abnormal. My father, too, must have wept, although he never spoke of this. He also took me as I was and loved me as much as he knew.

   I grew up in their care; I thrived in their love. As far as I knew, I was entire; I thought of myself as whole. Like all babies, I learned first to smile and then coo, to babble and know my mother and father, too. I learned to laugh. My mother taught me laughter, perhaps even before I learned to cry. She showered me with good cheer and constant delight. She taught me how to sing.

   My father taught me how to see. The birds of the sky, the trees, the flowers that grew, the rains that fell and the winds that roared in the night-these my father spoke of and made me see how perfectly they fitted into our world. and made it as lovely as can be.

   My father also spoke of people, saying that they are on this earth and living this life as in a test. All that mattered was a life spent doing good. A man should apply his days in work and by his hands hone his heart in service to God and his fellowmen. Less than this in intent and labor done, a man's days are but in vain. My father said this, and I realized how he directed his days and wished my life to be.

   My father often spoke of God, as did my mother. The Father in Heaven who made us and whose will keep us alive. God orders our days from birth, throughout death and afterlife. He has the world in his hands, rules the beatings of our hearts, knows everything, whether good or ill befalls us. All of life's questions lie in him; the meaning of life is with him. My father and mother taught me this and I learned it.

   So I grew happy as a child and enclosed in kindness. My parents sheltered me and kept me away from prying eyes. I did not know harshness; cruelty even less, until as a frisky boy, I set out to explore the world on my own. When ridicule sprang, I was bewildered, and asked my parents asked why other children laughed and poked, and made fun at me.

   I had no playmates. I could not make friends. The very young fled in fright. Children, as big as I was, would show surprise and address me with questions, to which I could not reply. Some jeered, many laughed and called me, at their kindest, odd. Some even threw stones, which always missed, for they hit my missing part.

   Other people stared, too and would not believe their eyes. They whispered about me or spoke behind their hands. What monster is this? Who sired him and bore him in her womb? They must be accursed.

   I could not bear to hear my parents maligned. Without wishing them pain, I knew I had to ask them; why was I like this and not like the rest; why was I born with just half of me and not one whole as the others are; and where, if they knew, was the other half?

   My mother wept, unable to answer. My father bowed his head held me close. He did not know the answer, either. He never thought to pursue the question, trusting that God knew what he was doing when He made me and gave me to my parents to love. My father said, however, that if I wished I could go by myself and seek out God for the answers I was seeking.

   I knew I was a grown boy and could take care of myself. Certainly I could find the way to God and I was willing to journey where I must, spending days, nights, months---even years---to find in Him my entire self.

   I set out with my parents' blessings. I traveled through strange countries, walked among strange men and creatures. Where are you going? They always asked. I said I was seeking God to ask Him why I was born one half of myself and where is the other half.

   Nearly everyone, when he learned that it was God whom I sought, had a message for Him that was a question---like mine. I met a creature in the shape of a horse that was tied with short rope. He was strong but he wanted to know why his rope was so short. Why wasn't it longer so that he could wander about and graze on greener pastures? He entrusted me to ask this question to God.

   Another creature I met, also shaped like a horse; had a long rope, which he dragged about as he wandered and went wherever he pleased. He was so skinny, his bones showing through. Why is he so thin and ugly? He entrusted me to ask God this question.

   At the crossroads, I met a man who spent his days doing good helping those who were lost, burdened, or tired, feeding the hungry and giving drink to the thirsty, binding the wound of those who were hurt, and comforting those who wept. He condemned those who did not do as he did. What was his reward for such deeds? He entrusted me to ask God this question.

   Finally, beside a waterfall, I met a man who hid among the rocks and from there, robbed the unsuspecting and ignorant. He divested them of their possessions and if they had none, he whipped them in his fury, leaving them weak and wounded and poor. He knew he did wrong. What was his punishment? He entrusted me to ask this question.

   After much traveling day and night, along smooth roads and on rough, running at times or stumbling along, covering miles in a day or going around in circles, my strength often fails me and my heart throbs with fear ; but constant in faith, I , at last, reached God.

   He was not like lightning, nor raging like fire. Neither was he like thunder nor whooshing like the wind. He was not blinding like the sun or distant like the stars. He was gentle as an evening breeze that caresses my sleeping brow. He was certain like the voice I hear about me in my waking, at my work, and play. And he was real as the most ordinary events of everyday life.

   I did not have to go far from where I was. In The most usual circumstance of my life, among those I knew and amid what I always did, there I found God.He was mirrored in my mother's gentleness and in my father's wisdom. I was not afraid to speak Him. First, I asked the questions of the men and creatures I met and then, my own. I learned from His answers that His ways and His thoughts are not of men.

   God said that the horse with the short tether knew best how to make if his situations, and so he was hefty. The horse with the long tether did not profit from his instincts, so he was deprived of them. The robber by the waterfalls knew his wrongdoing and seeking the error of his ways, will make amends and reap his rewards with God. But then the man at the crossroads who worked for a reward, showing off his deeds, judging men and condemning those who did not do as he did, was a vain performer and did not really serve God; he had already reaped his paltry size prize and would see Him.

   And what is to become of me? I asked at last. Will I always be what I am? Do I serve Him, part of myself that I am, the other half not there?

   God seemed to  smile at my way. I heard Him say that He was glad I had come to him at last. I had used my mind well, he said. I had followed my heart well, too.

   Be whole, God said. Be one whole body. So it was. But now, as a reward for seeking God, I was whole at last, I sought and found. I journeyed and arrived.

• More than a story is shared in telling and retelling of the adventures of the half-bodied boy. What binds Juan Picas with all people is his manner of believing and living and, above all, of seeking God for the answers to the enigma that he has.
• Juan's gentleness of character appeals to God and other people.Strong faith in God makes one recognize himself or herself as a gift from the creator.
• Acceptance of one's weakness strengthens self-confidence.