“Gugma ug Pasalig” at Cathedral Museum

CEBU, Philippines - A museum should also be a defender of love, not just a repository of anything archaic, or of tidbits from the past. That’s why Fr. Brian Brigoli opened the doors of the Cebu Cathedral Museum, where he is a curator, to an evening of love poems and music last February 15 dubbed “Gugma ug Pasalig (Love and Promises).”

The promise of that Friday post-Valentine evening was for every participant to fall in love, and for those already in love - to fall in love all over again.

Initiated by members of the Women in Literary Arts (WILA), the poetry reading session interspersed with song performances talked of love and got the audience entangled in the extreme of emotions.

Love poems were delivered in English, Cebuano, and Hiligaynon. It was a potpourri of filial love, platonic love, romantic love, parental love, and even the feel of intensity about things — a bicycle, of all things. A gamut of emotions exploded after each performance, with a tenor that turned from forlorn to happy, happy-sad, comical, angry, and then happy again.

But it was a reading from Chapter 4 of Song of Songs, recited by Fr. Brigoli, which presented the wholeness of love.

“The Lord is our Lover and we his people are the beloved. It is in this exquisite poetic form that the Lord expresses his sublime love for his creation. He likened the beloved to Lebanon, he being charmed of the beloved. If you seek for romance, you can find it here in this part of the Bible,” Fr. Brigoli enthused.

Impressive new talents in Julius Cordero and Chat Pialado gleamed during that night of words. They are students of Dr. Hope Sabanpan Yu of the University of San Carlos. Seeing love in their age, they presented the “doble kara” of love, one affirming, the other doubting, but viewpoints weaving in such a romantic fashion; the way the yin and yang symbolize a struggle of opposing forces that could not have found meaning if it wasn’t connected to the other.

The poetry reading session was initially intended to bring us back to the days of old, when readings took place in a courtyard. But the weather denied us of the opportunity. So it is hoped that the second session come Women’s Month (March) would finally take place at the manicured lawn of the Cathedral Museum near an old well and a church bell, under a canopy of stars, and the twang of a Cebu-made guitar.

The affair was hatched around three weeks prior to Hearts Day, over glasses of wine at a centuries-old fort here in the city, when the night was described to be “crying for poems and music.”

Audrey Dawn Tomada, curator of the Jose R. Gullas Halad Museum, brought in the internationally acclaimed school-based choir: the UV Chorale to score in life to the finale of three sets of readings. (FREEMAN)