All that’s good in June

This week’s dateline brings to mind the opening line of a poem we learned and memorized in grade school that went, “Thirty days hath September, April, June and November …”. After tomorrow, the 30th, we shall be turning to a new month.

Last Sunday, June 24th, was a significant religious holiday that was especially celebrated in our Cebu City’s old Parian district, the Solemnity of the Nativity of their patron, St. John the Baptist. In the Philippines, this was not only a religious holiday but also a day of bathing at the beach … as well as for pranks, and spraying people with water anywhere!

Years ago, I visited Madrid on my way home via Europe from a three-month Smith-Mundt Leader grant in the United States. With a couple of American ladies on the same European trip, we were privileged to have been able to visit the house of St. Johns’ employer, for whom he worked as a farmer. We heard the story of how his employer, concerned that he went to early morning Mass, when he should by then be plowing in the field, checked the field, only to see an angel plowing for St. John while he was at Mass!

Last Tuesday was the feast day of another saint, Jose Maria Escriva, who heroically survived the Spanish Civil War through God’s saving grace. And today, the 29th, we observe the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles.

Here in Texas, as I mentioned last week, June 19th in 1865, was known as Emancipation Day when slavery ended in America, here in Mansfield (in the triangle of Fort Worth and Dallas) where I am staying with my daughter. The annual celebration is referred to as Juneteenth.

June 20th, the longest day of the year, also marked the beginning of summer. I remember our Philippine summer heat started much earlier than the start of our formal summer and we had already been complaining of the heat. The hot temperature reached 37 degrees Centigrade. Here in Mansfield, we have had temperatures in the 70’s Fahrenheit (20’s Centigrade) mornings, 100’s (upper 30’s, almost 40 C) at noon, and 90’s (mid to upper 30’s C) evenings. And it is aggravating dry heat. Actually last Monday, the temperature in our area was reported at 104 F (40 C) and was expected at triple digits this week! AT home we we rely on ceiling and floor fans switched on all day and night.

As I write this, tropical Storm Debby is bound for northern Florida, tornados have been reported in the midwest just north of Texas, and the Colorado forest fires are still burning, now reaching the Rocky Mountains.

Tthe Salvation Army has opened cooling stations in North Texas with cool rooms with water averaging 100 visitors daily.

Summer has also brought out the variety of colorful Texas blooms, perennials as well as flowers of the season. Among them are the purple Texas sage, huge yellow sunflowers grown in vast tracts for their seeds, just as we relish our own water melon (pakwan) seeds; hibiscus or gumamela; lantana, our kanding-kanding; crape myrtle; oleander our adelfa); hydrangea or “million flowers”, gardenia or rosal, periwinkle, azalea, and zinnias, among others. Then the plants we admire for their leaves: elephant ears, colorful caladiums, begonias, and sweet potato or camote vines.

In current events, this being a Presidential election year, politics is the top topic in media, with labor also calling for political attention to its needs in this season of cutbacks in employees and finances. American Airlines pilots and Lockheed Martin mechanics are in negotiations to stall off threatened strikes.

On concerns for life, families, and population, there is a decided strong movement from the U. S. Catholic Bishops in their declaring a Fortnight for Freedom campaign from June 21st through July 4th. The campaign, as reported in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, is “seeking to galvanize formal Catholic opposition to the rule announced in January by the President Obama administration that religiously affiliated institutions like universities and hospitals must soon include free birth control coverage in their employees’ insurance.”

On the first day of the campaign, Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, Maryland, at the daily Mass broadcast internationally by the Catholic TV and radio station EWTN, spoke for “religious liberty in the States for the exercise of faith in a world of secularism … for freedom f conscience”. That particular Mass was broadcast from the Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Baltimore, Maryland.

The Fortnight for Freedom targets the enforcement of birth control subjects of abortion, contraception, and sterilization, as well as same sex marriage. The campaign is also for freedom of religion, of faith, of public service and charity, as well as The campaign for child centeredness as against the world’s secular individualism. The faithful are to preach and evangelize, not only in word, but also in deed. And most importantly, that the family is the true sanctuary of life.

In this campaign, I am reminded of our own studied and discussed, as well as gone- through-the-process-of-reformulation campaign for the proposed RH bill.

So for now, as always, may God continue to bless and enlighten us, one and all!