With an eye toward the future

DUMAGUETE CITY – The above is the title of a reflection in the collection of essays and sermons by Dr. Proceso Udarbe, which was launched on his 50th year of service to Silliman University. The collection is entitled, "Pressing on to Fullness of Life". The collection is the ninth book by Udarbe with funding from Silliman alumnus Rolando del Carmen who is recognized as a legal luminary in Texas. Udarbe is a guiding light in the university which turned 104 years old August 28.

Udarbe is now 81 years, and continues to write and inspire his readers and listeners through his sermons. He has been professor and later dean of the Divinity School, vice president for academic affairs, acting president in the first three years of Martial Law, university pastor for 13 years, and commissioned by the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia.

I believe it will help us, in these uncertain times, to read one of his reflections, "With an Eye Towards the Future."

"The future is so clouded in uncertainty and mystery that many of us prefer to love our lives completely in the present. Robert Frost himself in one springtime, when the world was awash with flowers, wrote a lovely poem:

‘O give us pleasure in the flowers today,

And give us not to think so far away

As the uncertain harvest; keep us here

All simply in the springtime of the year.’

"Robert Frost speaks of the future as the uncertain harvest: which we should not think much about.

"But should we not have an eye towards the future? As is so often said in critical times like this we should not forget life’s future tense. One thoughtful person once said:

We must regard the future as our friend, not our enemy;

Otherwise, we shall not be able to cope with life.

Or, as Tennessee Williams, the playwright, said:

‘The future is called ‘perhaps,’ which is the only possible way to call the future. And the important thing is not to allow it to scare you.’

I

"The most astonishing thing about the prophet Jeremiah was his intense faith in the future. And he demonstrated this faith when devastation after devastation, defeat after defeat, were threatening his country of Judah. When Babylon was about to annex Judah, and real estate was to be of no value at all, he did what was regarded as stupid. He bought a piece of land from his cousin who obviously no longer had any use for it. Jeremiah wanted to implant a beautiful vision of the future in the hearts of his people. For he looked beyond the day of calamity towards something better.

"We know it is entirely possible for human beings to completely lose trust in the future. Not only critical situations lead us to a loss of nerve; we can also lost faith in human possibilities.

"It is interesting that in the area of technology a man in 1838 resigned his job in the patent office in the US because he decided that all inventions that would ever be conceived in the human mind had clearly been realized. In 1886 another man declared that all imaginable means of national defense, transportation and communication had already been invented. But in 1886 Thomas Edison (electric bulb) was 39 years old; Henry Ford (automobile) was 29; Orville Wright (airplane), 15; Marconi (telegraph), 12; and Albert Einstein only 7 years old.

"Our national crisis is getting more serious by the day. The present, as Charlie Brown puts it in a Peanuts Cartoon, "drives us crazy"; therefore the future is dim and doomed. One columnist is quite right in describing the Philippine situation as not unlike the Myth of Sisyphus. The mortal man Sisyphus, because he had challenged the gods, was condemned to roll a huge rock up the hill, and down the hill, and up again without let-up. The coup d’etats, the political turmoil, typhoons, volcanic eruptions, and floods visiting the country in rapid Sisyphean succession have left the country devastated, annihilated, and gravely damaged.

"But no matter how discouraging the situation may be, no matter how hopeless, we have a future. Of course we should not talk too glibly about the sufferings of our people. We must do much more to be helpful. Roger Hazelton, one of my favorite theologians was quite right when he said in his book, "Graceful Courage", that there should be "a fine balance between fearing the worst and believing the best."

II

"And the reason why we could have such robust faith in the future, as it impinges upon us, is that God has given us the capability to shape the future – if not for our own immediate good, it could be for the generations yet to come.

"At a time when Judeans had grown weary of their life as exiles in Babylon, Jeremiah wrote to them. He wrote about how they may live in the present as they looked to a future for their exiled nation. He wrote:

‘Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce; take wives for your sons, and give your daughter in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters . . . But seek the welfare of the city where (God) has sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord for its welfare.’

"What Jeremiah does in this letter is to let his readers do ‘imagineering.’ Imagineering is a coined word; it is a blending of thinking and doing vis-à-vis the future. Imagineering is what creative minds do. They see images in their minds that are not conceived by others, and in their minds’ eyes these become a solid reality.

"Silliman University is a wonderful reality because the Founders shaped its future. On August 28, 1901, the philanthropist Horace B. Silliman, the missionary David S. Hibbard, and the provincial governor Demetrio Larena, conspired to shape the future of a school that started with one classroom of 13 boys and one blackboard. Antoine de St. Exupery once wrote: "As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it."

"To sum it all up, let me remind you once again of the misery that is represented by the Mt. Pinatubo tragedy, but there may be silver linings.

"The situation in our land now in 2005 is critical. We could be plunged into some kind of civil war with the kind of leaders we have. Persons we have voted for are failing us because of their personal greed for power; they seem unable to manage their lives without having to be a mayor, a congressman, governor, or even President often with their attendant dishonestly earned benefits.

"But I agree with Jose Rizal that our youth are the hope of the nation. If only they can involve themselves in active imagineering, they will save this nation from decay and total ruin. Jeremiah is right: young people, seek the welfare of your country. Do not imitate the antics of our present leaders who lust for power.

"In other words, however gloomy the outlook may be, however doomed the future, we can still shape it into one unheard-of day for our coming generations. For we should be able to say with St. Paul, even if we say it in terms of a this-worldly future:

"The sufferings of the present time are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed to us (Romans 8:18)."

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