Arts and Crafts: Incarnations of the Good News

Dr Trish and Vin Hindmarsh with Fr Vinnie Busch (right) and the Subanen Crafters. - Photo: Dr Trish Hindmarsh

In June 2023, I travelled with my husband, Vin, to Ozamiz City, the Philippines, to visit Columban missionary Fr Vinnie Busch. Vinnie arrived at the airport in his 25-year-old but still usable all-road vehicle, sporting one of his colourful “Creation Story” T-shirts and wearing a big grin. We were delighted to have made it to Mindanao.

After lunch in a local eatery, we headed to Vinnie’s home in the compound - a small dwelling that shares the dirt road, dust, energy brown-outs, chickens, cats, dogs and the occasional rat with more than a dozen other dwellers who make up the small, close-knit community.

The first thing Vinnie did was to show us around. He keeps his fridge well stocked with home-cooked meals and fresh produce from his forays into the market. His “library” is a single bookshelf of literary treasures: poetry, philosophy, theology, tribal studies and missiology that have kept him going for fifty years. Alongside his favourite authors (Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme) is Dostoevsky, whose essay “The Grand Inquisitor” forever challenges him to walk with Jesus instead of asking him to go away. After this stopover and a hello to several neighbours, we headed to one of the other dwellings in the compound - a small, simple and cluttered “workshop” where no-one passing would suspect miracles of creativity, artistry, and persistent communal work could be happening. In two small, rented rooms, Subanen women gather each day to work on the latest (2023) Christmas Card collection that is well known to many Catholics and friends of the Columbans, who indeed watch out for the latest batch of cards each year and are proud to send them to family and friends.

Vinnie sees these creations not just as a means of employment and development of talent for these young artists but also as an opportunity for the crafters to work in a warm, generous-hearted community where people give their best to a livelihood project honouring their Indigenous people and culture. For Vinnie, the crafts also provide what he terms “catechetical tools” that celebrate the Christmas Story as Good News for the life of the entire Earth community. For example, the Subanens chose “Oasis" as the theme for their Christmas cards. “Oasis” is a word often used to describe a place where people in need can find shelter and refuge. In Bethlehem, the Holy Family found such a sheltering “oasis” in a stable. The Subanen Christmas cards place the Holy Family within the sheltering “oasis” we all share - our blue-green Earth.

And when The Holy Family fled to Egypt to escape Herod’s soldiers, they literally took refuge on desert oases. In one card, for example, Joseph helps Mary up a rocky ledge so that she can see a distant oasis where they can rest for the night. He carries their belongings in a Subanen-like basket while Mary holds Jesus in a sling, like a Subanen mother. This card also places them within our solar system where the Earth is our shared oasis.

As a catechist, I could imagine a class of students, or their parents and grandparents, delighting in the cards as a way of telling the traditional Gospel story.

Vinnie explained that the packs of ten cards currently find a market mainly in Australia, Ireland and Britain. This was a moment of small pride for me as an Aussie aware of what an influence the Far East magazine has been on Catholics in parishes since my childhood in the 1950s.

The story of the Holy Family’s journey from the stable “oasis” in Bethlehem to the sheltering oases in the desert has deep meanings. The word oasis is a metaphor for all that refreshes and renews the spirit of living beings. Earth itself is the oasis for life amid the cosmos. Oases in deserts everywhere are being affected by climate change, a fact travellers learn firsthand when they cross the Atlas Mountains in southern Morocco. The homeless people found in every country do not have an “oasis” where they can be themselves and feel at home in the world.

Pope Francis wrote in his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si' about the growing effect of desertification on our planet due to the dryness and aridity of our human hearts: The external deserts in the world are growing because the internal deserts have become so vast. The Pope also calls us to a “profound ecological conversion”, living out our “vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork”.

The “Oasis” theme offers rich catechetical opportunities. Vinnie, an artist and mission theologian, is ideally placed to discern each year’s offerings. This year’s designs went through many draft versions before the Subanen crafters were satisfied that their cards showed how the Nativity Story touches the life concerns of the Subanen people.

The most pressing life concern of the Subanens is the destruction of their habitat. Deforestation through unregulated logging has depleted their food, water and housing resources and caused ever-increasing flooding of lowland villages and rice farms. Logging operations did provide some employment for a very few years but, because of logging, both the Subanens and their lowland neighbours now face a future with less food and few local livelihoods. In their time, the Holy Family became refugees to escape pursuing soldiers. Families in Mindanao are becoming refugees because their island oasis is being plundered and can no longer provide them with shelter, healthy food and clean water.

The Subanen workers appreciate the significance of their role as skilled workers, patiently and painstakingly adding colour, texture and dimension to each Christmas card. The cards are completely rendered by hand and packaged in that small workshop for dispatch internationally. This is a unique small business with many layers of intent. One of the Subanen women, Mercy Gawason, now manages the financial side of the enterprise. We look forward with anticipation to this year’s cards.

Before leaving, we enjoyed a shared meal with the Centre staff, with delicious Filipino dishes. A special feature was Vinnie’s Waldorf Salad! Yes, they do have apples at the Ozamiz market! Vinnie asks the vendors to save the damaged apples destined for the garbage bins so he can use them in the salad. He informed us that part of the mission of Columban parishes and ministries in Mindanao is to save its damaged habitats so that these God-given habitats can again feed and shelter all who live there into the future.

Later during our visit to Mindanao, we made our way up into the homeland of the Subanens in the mountainous area called Midsalip, where the Columban Sisters founded the Midsalip Subanen Ministry in 1983. It is a cultural centre for Subanen youth. Dynamic young Columban Sr Ashwena (Winnie) Apao and her colleague Sr Minerva Dangaran, together with a dedicated staff, run the Centre, with its six Indigenous pre-schools scattered across the region for the Subanen children and a boarding program at the Centre for adolescent students. This means they can stay in town during the week and attend the local high school (it is a two-hour walk, one way, from Midsalip to their homes further up the mountains).

A thriving community garden at the convent grows vegetables and nurtures seedlings for the future. Sewing classes produce traditional Subanen costumes for children to wear at school as a way of developing new skills while building pride in their culture. We were blessed to spend some hours with Sr Winnie in the vehicle as she took a lift with us and our driver, Ryan, back to Ozamiz. That time was like gold as she elaborated on the scope and intent of her life and work among the Subanen people.

Indigenous cultures across the Philippine Islands have been weakened and even lost through the layers of exploitation imposed over the centuries on these original peoples, who are the ancestors of all Filipinos.

Dr Trish Hindmarsh has worked as a teacher and leader in Catholic Education across Australia.