The Subanens are an indigenous people whose ancestral habitat is in the highlands of western Mindanao in the Philippines. I have worked with Subanen artists for 25 years with the help of the Columban Sisters who have been living and working with the Subanen people since 1983. Over time I came to appreciate just how deeply the Subanen people revere their mountainous homeland and how closely they interact with the forest, streams, and soil of their habitat through their music, dance, and rituals.
For centuries their bountiful habitat provided the Subanens with food, water, herbal medicines, and materials for their household needs. Using resources from their habitat they cleverly shaped wood, grass, rattan, bamboo, and palm leaves into baskets, tools, furniture, mats, hats, musical instruments as well as the walls and roofs of their homes. Impressed by their crafting skill I worked with Subanen artists to form a ministry called Subanen Crafts.
As part of our ministry, we craft Christmas cards whose images link the Nativity story with the life of the Subanen people. We do so by showing Mary and Joseph doing things that Subanen parents do every day for their each other and their families … carrying babies in shoulder slings up steep hills, gathering and cutting firewood, cooking over open fires, fetching water in buckets, washing clothes in basins, sharing food while sitting on the floor, washing their babies and putting them to sleep.
Such ordinary acts of kindness make love visible, especially when people have to do them in dangerous circumstances like those faced by Mary and Joseph, giving birth in the harsh conditions of a stable and then fleeing into a desert to escape a death squad.
Subanen families are accustomed to dangerous situations. Like Mary, Subanen mothers give birth in rudimentary conditions. And, like the Holy Family, Subanen families have had to quickly flee from their homes to escape armed groups during times of conflict.
More recently, Subanens have had to leave their homeland because their habitat has been so degraded by unregulated logging and subsequent soil erosion that it can no longer provide them with adequate water, fuel, building materials and arable land.
Global warming and degraded ecosystems are displacing people worldwide. Columban Fr. Teakare Betero, who works with us here in Mindanao, was born on the island nation of Kiribati. He tells us that whole islands in Kiribati are being engulfed by severe storms and rising sea levels due to climate change. Like the Subanens, families in Kiribati will be forced to seek homes and livelihoods elsewhere.
The islands of Kiribati are vanishing. The forests, rivers, and farmlands of the Subanens are vanishing. The Earth’s tropical forests, coral reefs, wetlands, grasslands, river systems, and arable lands are vanishing. Even desert oases are rapidly disappearing.
These endangered habitats are the wellsprings of the Earth’s beauty and bounty. In our Christmas cards, we framed the caring work of Mary and Joseph within the Earth and its Solar System to show how God’s caring Love embraces and nurtures us within the ecosystems of our graced planet — our tiny oasis in the desert of space.
With the birth of Jesus, God’s Love became flesh and dwelt among us. The caring life and death of Jesus made God’s love visible to His followers. After His Resurrection, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to form His followers into communities that continue to make God’s Love visible to the world. The Christmas Star guided the Magi to Jesus. As followers of Jesus, we need the guidance of the Holy Spirit and so we pray…
“Come, Holy Spirit. Guide us, in our work and prayer, to build communities that care for each other and the wounded Earth, … communities that proclaim tidings of great joy for all people, our caring God is with us.”
Columban Fr. Vincent Busch lives and works in the Philippines.