Principled Leadership

MARCH 22, 2021 – “Trust in the slow work of God,” French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin counsels in his well-known lyrical prayer composition. “We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.” “And yet,” he continues, “it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability — and that it may take a very long time.” 

Resigned but with a sense of hope, he concludes his prayer thus: “Give God the benefit of believing/ That the Divine hand is leading you/ and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself/ in suspense and incomplete.”

Although Teilhard was referring to the spiritual journey, the same attitude of “patient trust” is essential when we reflect on the Philippines’ history of nation-building.  […]

MARCH 29, 2021– (continuation of  Part 1) The second day of the conference “500 Years of Nation-Building: Understanding the Past, Leading Towards a Better Future ” centered on a crucial element that the Spaniards brought with them into our islands five centuries ago: Christianity. An element, one can say, that has shaped and continues to shape the lives of many, if not the majority, of Filipinos, and that consequently has had tremendous effect on the way we live our social and political lives as a people.

How has Christianity influenced the development of Filipino culture and identity? What is Christianity’s place in the overall functioning of Philippine society at present? These are some of the questions that the Foundation posed for the second installment of the webinar series. […]