The river moves but never goes away. It moves inexorably to somewhere else yet remains where it is. It is a metaphor for everything but most especially the travel of faith through space and time. Take us, for example.
Now we are mostly Catholic. Once upon a time, we were something else. We believed in spirits and diwata. The greatest of the gods was La-on who lived in the biggest and most active volcano in the Bisayan world, now still called Kanla-on. But he cared nothing for humans and would not be bothered by them. We had spirits for everything, And we had other-worldly entities, wakwak, kikik, multo, abat, agta, Maria Kakaw, etc. These are entities remembered still in this day and age through stories we still tell one another. Although the old ritual practices have become rare, still we remember the entities themselves alongside our adherence to the tenets of Christian faith. We are wonderfully mixed up this way.
The Maker was once asked by his friend Larry if he had a sigbin. In fact, it sounded more like an accusation though obviously well meant. The Maker threw this accusation back at Larry by saying, “Only those who have their own sigbin can see the sigbin of others. Lar,” the Maker said, “I have always suspected the shadow beneath you since the first time we met.” They both ended up laughing.
The sigbin is, of course, a creature of power reminding us of the need to move, to be somewhere else besides where we are now. It is the romantic urge, the desire or gana, the biga for life. It is the power that leads us to do art, to read and, at times, to write.
The river is, of course, the act of writing and reading even as it is us. The text is water cascading down the page. It has banks on both sides. It travels forward, inexorably. Indeed, while the river is never the same because it moves ever forward this way, still it stays where it is. And there it will stay for the foreseeable future. We are rivers. We remain where we are even as our minds move forward with the words. And since the sigbin makes for quite a convenient and powerful aid to the act of moving, we are lucky we have a sigbin below us even if we might be one of those who have forgotten it is there. Not to worry, perhaps we might find it there someday soon. Perhaps someone will come along who will give us one, even if only in the sense of metaphor.
The sigbin is only tinuho-an. This word in the sense of English means “beliefs.” Unlike science, they are not obligated by the conventions of scientific evidence and proof. They might as well carry on their labels this warning: “No Approved Therapeutic Claims.” Nonetheless, they are powerful as all beliefs are powerful. In describing ourselves as a people we often say: “The only Christian (or is it Catholic?) country in Asia.” The label is only half right. We are Christian and/or Catholic Filipinos. We are this by virtue of two systems of constructs: the system of constructs comprised of rituals and tenets that describe us as Christian and/or Catholic, and the constructs of those things we believe in, which are not rooted to our Christianity and/or Catholicism. Minus our myths and belief systems, our tinuho-an, we would not be the complete picture of ourselves.
By a strain of logic, our claim to being the only Christian and/or Catholic country in Asia is easily validated. But the stretch of imagination brings us one step farther than that. We have also the wealth of myths and beliefs. They are a garden from which we might pick and harvest the most wonderful insights into who we are collectively. We are so wonderfully mixed up that way. No other people on the planet are as wonderfully mixed up as we are. We are as mixed up as the river of metaphor from which we began.
Thus, the Maker imagines himself moving down the river to wherever it is going. Will he end up in some sea or some ocean? It does not really matter. The river may become a creek, a smelly estero or dry up entirely somewhere up ahead, as some rivers now tend to do. But even so, all is not lost. The river also evaporates into sky, becomes rain, becomes river once again. Or perhaps, we all do end up in Christian Heaven. Well and good. That, too, is a river.