November 2, 2006 All Souls

I was watching a nature show last night about a 2,000-year-old tree in England. They recreated its tree biography. It had survived climate changes, wars, plagues, always calling forth some sort of response that allowed it to continue on. But finally, water began collecting between its branches and its heart started to rot.

And it did something it had never done before: a branch began to grow, not upward, but downward. It penetrated into the ancient, rotten core, and began feeding on it as if it were its fertilizer. The branch turned into a root! And a new tree began to grow.

This is what is happening to the Filipinos.