Wordless Wednesday: mystery and splendor...

It is exactly one week now since last Wednesday of the Holy week when I witnessed the Wednesday procession of life-sized statues of famous Catholic Saints as one of the provincial folks' ways of celebrating their Holy Week. I was indeed left wordless with awe and reverence when I saw the statutes of Saints adorned splendidly with flower decorations and bright lightings around them and were processed around the main streets of the town proper with solemn respect and reverence.

Indeed Filipinos have lots of ways of celebrating Holy week and they are really rich in religious pratices. As what I have witnessed, one of them was conducted on Good Friday wherein a group of men, young and old alike, their heads and faces entirely covered with black linen, were parading on the streets with a strange kind of act: hitting and whipping theirselves! I guess, that was their way to celebrate Holy week: Flagellate themselves thru self-inflicting physical pain to the extent of shedding their own blood! I was really groping for words to say and was just left wordless while witnessing these men whip and hit their backs with sharp metalled objects. What a way to celebrate the Holy week!

Wordless Wednesday

I am always left wordless everytime a guest as tall as a giant would come to the giftshop and request for a pictorial session with me and the view of the store, becausse I always look dwarfed beside him taking a pose for a shot!

wordless Wednesday - awesome starfish!

My soulmate dom went to Mactan, Cebu sometime in January of the other year and brought along with him hisAmerican foster brother Jonathan for the Sinulog Festival. He told me that this kind of religious festive celebration is never experienced by the poor guy in Texas, USA. The rationale behind his tagging along with my friend and soulmate Dom, and his foster brother.
Dom told me how he went wordless when Jon went down the sea and when he came back, he had with him in his hands a live starfish which Dom has never seen in his entire life ( he saw dead ones, oh lots of them in the seashore of San Miguel Bay where his hometown is very near).

wordless Wednesday

I am left wordless to see with my own eyes the country's pride: Mayon Volcano in its splendor and beauty. It is the pride of the Bicolanos!

Mayon Volcano is an active volcano in the Philippines on the island of Luzon, in the province of Albay in the Bicol Region. Its almost perfectly-shaped cone is considered by some to be the Philippine equivalent of Mount Fuji in Japan. The volcano is situated 15 kilometres northwest of Legazpi City.

Mayon is classified by volcanologists as a stratovolcano (composite volcano). Its symmetric cone was formed through alternate pyroclastic and lava flows. Mayon is the most active volcano in the country, having erupted over 47 times in the past 400 years. It is located between the Eurasian and the Philippine Plate, at a convergent plate boundary: where a continental plate meets an oceanic plate, the lighter continental plate overrides the oceanic plate, forcing it down; magma is formed where the rock melts. Like other volcanoes located around the rim of the Pacific Ocean, Mayon is a part of the "Pacific Ring of Fire".

Wordless Wednesday: Historical Landmark

The awesome Magellan's Cross!!!... and from the annals of Philippine History, "Magellan's Cross is a large Christian cross planted by Portuguese and Spanish explorers as ordered by Ferdinand Magellan upon arriving in Cebu in the Philippines in 1521.

This cross is housed in a small chapel next to the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño on Magallanes Street (Magallanes being the Spanish name of Magellan), just in front of the city hall of Cebu City. A sign outside claims that the original cross is encased inside the wooden cross that is found in the center of this chapel. This is to protect the original cross from people who chipped away parts of the cross for souvenir purposes or in the belief that the cross possesses miraculous powers. Some people, however, believe that the original cross had been destroyed or had disappeared after Magellan's death, and the cross is a replica that was planted there by the Spaniards after they successfully colonized the Philippines.

Magellan's Cross is a symbol of Cebu City and the chapel's image can be found in its city seal. It is also seen as the symbol of Roman Catholicism in the Philippines."

Wordless Wednesday: an act of piety...or mere popular religiosity

The celebration of the Feast of the Black Nazarene in Quiapo, Manila went well...

People, pilgrims and as well as bystanderss got their piece of what they wanted: to come and join the festivity for personal edification and the like.

But I was wordless to say when I witnessed how the pilgrims would rush, push, and get hurt as the statue of the Miraculous Black Nazarene was processed outside the church and onto the streets. I just really couldn't find the appropriate words to say of what I witnessed this afternoon but wordless!

wordless Wednesday

I was indeed wordless and could not just find any words to say when one of my former pupils in the grade school where i used to teach, sent me this photo of him and his classmates in high school, who happened to be the same group of pupils I had in my grade three class!!!!...
I did not know what to say, I did not know what to react to his email. I am left speechless...

wordless Wednesday...THursday Edition!

an unusual change of weather in Metro Manila from very hot, humid to a rainy stormy one left me wordless!!!!...

wordless Wednesday

I was wordless of what to say to my friend Johnny, who sent me these images of his son Zeik's baptismal day!.... It seems like yesterday when he and Dorie were having a problem about not having one...but now look!..they just had their angel christened!... I am indeed wordless!!!

please click any image to activate the mosaic show.

Wordless Wednesday

I was wordless when a friend of mine invited me to their party with lots and lots and lots of drinks that made me drunk!..

To view other Wordless Wednesday participants, please click HERE