Sister Christine Tan

Four days after Sister Christine Tan died, at the age of 72, this personal story of her life was shown – for the first time – to her brother, Bienvenido Tan. It came to me by E-mail.

"I was a little girl, six years old, when I noticed my mother kneeling by our small altar on the second floor. She had tears on her cheeks. I approached her, asking, ‘Mama, why are you crying?’ She whispered into my ear, ‘Papa lost all our money in the stock market’.

"After a while, Papa came home from his law office. There was the usual pulling off his shoes and handing him slippers, the usual meal, prepared with such care and love, the lively conversation among a family with seven siblings, all of school age. There was no sign of tears, no reproach, no snub.

"I was a little girl, eleven years old. It was World War II. As weeks turned to months to years, we noticed how our family possessions were dwindling. We sold our lands and jewelry, one by one.

"Every meal was skimpy. We never had rice, only rice that looked like soup, extended with corn. Sometimes we had slivers of sausage so thin, I thought it was a special kind of transparent sausage. I noticed that Mama, always the last to eat, was anxious that each child would have her fill. She never said she was hungry.

"I observed how Mama would unearth her elaborate sayas, long kept in trunks, and one by one rip out their seams and sew them into dresses for her six daughters. I also marveled at how my sister could bake cakes over charcoal in an old kerosene can, selling these cakes at nearby cafes to help purchase our basic needs. Overnight, Papa’s hair became snowy white.

"It was in this family where I experienced silent suffering, steeled determination, love poured out. It did not take long to wonder why such gifts poured into my frail hands. It was February 6, 1954.

"I remember the evening I left home to become a nun. Then, we had to take the plane to Los Angeles, California. Then, we just walked to the plane as there were few passengers. My mother was sobbing. The guards kept glan-cing at her. My siblings were crying, my students were weeping with their heads down, while Papa was smoking his cigar. As I was undergoing this trauma, I lost all strength to walk those steps to the plane. I felt I would die. I said I would just stay home, it was all a mistake. But an angel carried me, and I reached the plane without ever looking back. That was the saddest day of my life.

"The first sixteen years of religious life were placid. I cannot recall a single sorrow or problem. It was only when my convent-formed consciousness expanded to national consciousness, when the arena of my vows gave way to the battlefield of injustice and poverty, of oppression and torture, that I had to take a stand, and with this, incurred the ire of those who held power. I therefore think of my religious life as a blaze of colors, shades of suffering and misunderstanding, hues of joy and ecstasy, deep tones of struggle and of search.

"There was perennial search in all waves of my life –the search to find God, the search to be authentic, the search for justice within and outside the Church, the search for true freedom, the search of my people for a taste of a life that is human. This search led to pathways totally unknown and to acts of daring which only God could have planned. It was therefore logical that I would be comfortable in a spirituality that was not Western, in a milieu that was not clean, but dirty, in an apostolate where confrontations were made with heads of state and armed military, in ashrams and Buddhist zendos instead of marble churches, where, when reaching that point of stillness, the whole world would evaporate and all become green.

"It was with the poor that I felt comfortable. In the dirt and foul language, with drunken men, in shattering noise where no one seemed to sleep, it was here that God was at ease. It was here that I found Jesus.

"I remember the day we decided to leave the grounds of our provincialate, to share our lives with the majority of Filipinos, the unwashed. There were five of us, and the only reason we had for changing our mode of life was to find Jesus. We found two rooms, with no floor, and no toilet, in the armpits of Manila, the fifth district.

"While this change of address brought about a change in my priorities, it was my introduction to Asian spiri-tuality that toppled me over, and caught me gasping for God. It was in Saigon, Vietnam, when grace knocked me down.

"I had a Vietnamese friend who had a doctorate from Paris, and who was steeped in Eastern spirituality. We were close friends, sharing the same thirst for political and spiritual liberation. I visited her often on my way to some other destination. In her home, she had a garden with a hammock beside a small pool. One evening we sat there together, when words long smoldering in my heart, tumbled out as I uttered, ‘Anh, teach me to pray’. She responded, ‘Christine, sit on this hammock. Gaze at the stars and keep your mouth closed.’

"That was the beginning of a paradise within me, a world so scintillating that it pierced through my senses into the outer world, transforming my thoughts, plans, deeds, dreams, into a flaming passion for justice and peace.

"But life was not all justice and peace. Now, 71 years old, 48 of which have been spent in religion, 22 of which are spent until now, living in the filth of the urban poor, several years spent atop the pinnacle of power, as provincial, chairperson of the major religious superiors, founder of several religious and human rights organizations but with more years not understood by the majority of religious, I hear nothing but a song in my heart.

"How healthy it was to be misunderstood, especially by those who mattered; how faith filled it was to be the enemy of the dictator, the target of rightists. How liberating it was not to be swept by the tide. There has been no criticism or censure that has not melted into nothingness in the stillness of Asian mediation. There has been no fear that has not vanished while merged with God, partner and lover.

"Thus is my story where ‘I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, to live deeply and suck all the marrow of life, to put to rout all that is not of life, and not when I shall die, to discover that I have not lived at all.’

"They say that we are all drops of water in an ocean, totally lost in its expanse and depths. But some drops sparkle."