Noor Mohammad Saada

The Imagined Bangsamoro. When the Moro secessionist movement erupted in the 1970s, its rallying cry was independence from the Philippine body-politic. The objective was not merely local self-government but the establishment of a sovereign Bangsamoro state. This aspiration was reflected even in the official correspondence of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), whose stationery bore the inscription “Bangsamoro Republik” rather than “Autonomous Region.” This imagined Bangsamoro Republik was to be carved out of Mindanao, the Sulu Archipelago, and Palawan, and specified in the 1976 Tripoli Agreement, including provinces of Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, Zamboanga del Sur, Zamboanga del Norte, North Cotabato, Maguindanao, Sultan Kudarat, Lanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur, Davao del Sur, South Cotabato and Palawan, and such cities as Zamboanga, Davao, General Santos and Cotabato. However, after a series of referendum, the vast Minsupala supra-region that forms the historic Bangsamoro is now reduced to just four provinces and sixty-three barangays carved out of North Cotabato, named as Bangsamoro political entity.

What happened? How did a movement founded upon secession and national liberation arrive at the political destination of autonomy? Why did a revolutionary struggle for statehood gradually redefine itself as a struggle for self-governance within the Philippine state?

Realities of War and Conflict. The conventional answers are familiar. Military realities made outright victory difficult and war has lingered for decades, further marginalizing many already marginalized Moros. Unfortunately, the balance of power favored the Philippine state; and international support for secession weakened as many Muslim states are also confronting their own separatist movements and therefore became reluctant to endorse the partition of existing nation-states. While the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) provided a platform for the internationalization of the Moro struggle and recognized a revolutionary movement as the representative of the Bangsamoro people, the OIC’s mediation efforts ultimately encouraged a negotiated political settlement rather than full independence. Successive Philippine governments likewise offered various autonomy arrangements as frameworks for peace. For many years, these proposals were rejected because the movement’s objective remained independence rather than regional self-government.

Language of Self-Determination. The prior explanations may not be insufficient. The more difficult question is not why the Philippine state preferred autonomy. That is obvious. The more difficult question is why significant sectors of the Moro liberation movement eventually accepted it. Why did the Moro revolutionaries influence the Moro public to accept autonomy as an acceptable option?

Somewhere along the way, a profound ideological shift occurred, the language of independence gradually giving way to the language of self-determination. The discourse of liberation was reformulated into the discourse of governance. The aspiration for a sovereign Bangsamoro state was transformed into the aspiration for meaningful autonomy within the Philippine Republic.

By the late 1990s and early 2000s, the concept of the Right to Self-Determination (RSD) increasingly occupied the center of Moro political discourse. RSD became the new overarching concept through which the struggle was explained, justified, and reinterpreted. In this way, independence became only one possible expression of self-determination rather than its necessary outcome. For many supporters, this represented political maturity and realism. For other revolutionaries who opt out or remain on the peripheries of the politics of autonomy, it marked the beginning of ideological retreat. The revolutionary objective remained rhetorically intact while its practical content was steadily reduced. Self-determination became flexible enough to accommodate autonomy, power-sharing, and participation in the status quo.

From Secession to Autonomy. This raises an uncomfortable dilemma: was autonomy accepted because it was the most achievable form of self-determination? Or was self-determination reinterpreted precisely to justify the acceptance of autonomy? The establishment of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) and later the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) represented the institutional culmination of this transition. President Noynoy Aquino in accepting the new Bangsamoro political entity justified that the regional autonomy model initiated by his mother was a failed experiment.

Whether this evolution should be understood as strategic adaptation or ideological dilution remains contested. Supporters argue that the current autonomy has begun to deliver political space, recognition, and a measure of self-rule previously denied to the Bangsamoro people. Critics contend that it redirected the movement away from its original objective and normalized participation within the very state structure that earlier generations of Moro revolutionaries fought, and sought to leave behind. For these critics, neo-colonialism is an apt description of the new reality.

Performance and Moral Legitimacy. Today, much is expected from this new political experiment. BARMM, with an annual budget that now exceeds one hundred billion pesos, is no longer judged merely by the standards applied to ordinary local governments. The expectations are far higher. The Bangsamoro project was never presented simply as an administrative rearrangement of the Philippine state. It was presented as an alternative based in the historical aspirations of the Bangsamoro people. Consequently, the measure of success cannot be limited to roads, bridges, schools, and other conventional indicators of government performance. The greater challenge lies in demonstrating that Bangsamoro governance embody a higher standard of public service and public morality.

Many regional documents speak not merely of reducing corruption but of advancing “moral governance,” the latter is a far more ambitious claim. Less corruption is not the same as corruption-free governance. Transparency is not the same as integrity. Efficiency is not the same as moral leadership. If moral governance is to mean anything, it must aspire toward a public order in which corruption is not merely minimized but systematically prevented and socially unacceptable. This may ultimately become the defining test of the autonomy experiment. If autonomy was justified as an expression of the Bangsamoro people’s right to self-determination, then BARMM must demonstrate that self-governance can produce not only better administration but better governance; otherwise, autonomy risks becoming merely a change in political structure rather than a transformation in political culture.

Therefore, the ultimate question is no longer whether autonomy replaced independence. The more pressing question of the day is whether autonomy can deliver what independence once promised: dignity, justice, accountability, and a government genuinely reflective of the moral aspirations of the Bangsamoro people.

Aaqilah S. Mangarun

Despite it being five in the morning, the water was a little too lukewarm to wake me up. By the time I stepped out of the bathroom, I barely felt the sleepiness escape me. The takbir echoed from the nearby masjid, filling the background of the otherwise listless dawn. I groggily went back to my room to get dressed.

My fingers ran through the smooth fabric of my abaya, a plain but well-made thing. The loose, black dress-like garment was a size too long for me, and I immediately thought of the two-inch heels I had to pair with it to compensate for my average stature. The textured hem of the sleeves was the only thing that gave it a modicum of personality.

I liked the abaya, but I felt it lacked color, so I wore a blue shimmering hijab to pair with it for Eid al-Adha. To finish the look, I applied sunscreen, a touch of powder and a red lip balm.

Somebody’s looking real mature, I thought as I looked in the mirror. I felt far from it, though.

My mother bought the abaya from someone who supposedly bought it from Saudi Arabia. As a niqabi, my mother’s wardrobe consisted of abayas of all sorts, from plain ones for everyday wear to colored and bejeweled ones for formal occasions, including today’s Eid.

What I hoped no one would notice was that this was the same abaya I had worn a few months ago in Eid al-Fitr. Only I paired it with a pastel green hijab instead, a color I had never worn before. The odd choice made the outfit novel, I told myself, but that did not change the fact that I was repeating it. I was no stranger to abayas or repeating outfits, or the two combined. But there had always been a part of me that hoped that every Eid meant new clothes, new outfits.

It was not like our family could not afford me a more colorful, elaborate getup; I simply wore whatever my mother bought me. Even at my tender age of 22, she still had a habit of choosing my Eid clothes, a small tradition I have come to accept as part of the holiday itself. As much as I wanted to pick my dream Eid outfit (I did not have such a thing yet), I did not have the heart nor the guts to demand anything beyond whatever clothes she provided me.

Breakfast came and went with little fanfare. After a ride to a neighboring town, my family met and sat with my aunt and her kids—my cousins—in the masjid a few steps from their house. We took up the whole front row of the ladies’ section, our row decorated with a medley of prayer mats of different colors and sizes.

Sitting on my legs, I stared at the other women behind our row out of the corner of my eye. They all looked beautiful with their vibrant dresses and sparkling accessories as they chatted away while waiting for the prayer to begin. It was as if the masjid became a mini fashion exhibit for the day. A pang of jealousy and nostalgia hit my heart at the same time. There used to be days when I wore similar clothes, back when I was younger and when my family and I lived in the Middle East during my adolescent years. It was only for a handful of times, however, before my parents decided that I was old enough to wear the classic abaya every other woman wore. Sure, my abaya had some color or decoration, but it was nothing compared to the cute outfits kids my age wore.

During that time, every Eid spent with my family meant eating out after khutbah. Most establishments would close for the first few days after Ramadan, but those that were not would be filled with families going out to half celebrate and half escape the desert heat. Malls and some chain restaurants would remain open, and they would be quite crowded. After a month of fasting and keeping to ourselves in our homes, it was an almost poetic way to break that routine.

Chances are, you’d find me and my family among those celebrating outside. Despite the happy atmosphere all around, a strange quiet befell me each Eid. A yearning for something more. I longed for the kind of holiday that meant homes filled with visitors and endless food, but I barely experienced any of that.

As Filipinos, we are well known for marking holidays or special occasions with some sort of salo-salo or, from a Maranao perspective, a kandori with family and friends. Eid was no exception: big, hearty meals and desserts set out on the family home table, laughter and stories shared, adults handing out Eid money to the young ones.

This was a far cry from when my family lived far away from home for half of my childhood. We barely knew anyone, including fellow kababayans, well enough to get invited or host a party of any sort. Any relatives we did know who were around were too far apart to celebrate. A better livelihood abroad came with the price of losing touch with most of our extended family. For a time, that made it difficult for me to adjust and connect to them once we returned to the homeland for good. It felt like joining a conversation that everyone else had been having for years.

Now, every Eid is quality time spent in the homes of relatives happy enough to host and feed us. After the prayer, we followed my aunt and the others back to their house, where shoes gathered at the doorway and voices overlapped before anyone had even sat down. Someone was always asking who had eaten, who wanted a second serving, who had grown taller, who looked like whose mother and father. I did not suddenly become good at these gatherings. I still found my place near the side, close enough to listen but far enough not to be pulled into every conversation. Still, there was comfort in being there.

For years, I thought I had missed something. Maybe I had. But sitting there, in the same abaya I had worn for a second time, I felt less embarrassed by its repetition. The dress had followed me from one Eid to another, from one version of myself to the next. It was not new, but neither was the ache I carried, and neither was the longing to belong somewhere.

This time, I did belong.

Teng Mangansakan

The legacy of the Jabidah massacre refuses to fade away and sticks with each generation like a name that’s always on the tip of the tongue. It shows up in pieces, slipping between what people say out loud and what they choose to keep hidden. And from those scattered pieces, we try to build a story for ourselves, and sometimes even a future.

As a Moro, I have inherited its legacy too, like someone who hangs around the edges, picking through what’s left unsaid, listening for echoes that travel even to the remotest places. My grandfather, Datu Udtog Matalam, did not have the luxury of such distance. When Jabidah erupted into the national consciousness, he responded not with metaphors as writers are predisposed to invoke but with one sweeping movement. He founded the Muslim Independence Movement, an act that was at once grief and defiance, a declaration that history had reached a point of no return. His revolution was urgent and carved out of outrage. Mine, I have come to understand, is quieter, slower, almost hesitant. It is a revolution in the mind, where memory is both weapon and wound.

For years, I have circled Jabidah without quite entering it, like an island seen from afar, its shores too thick with meaning to approach directly. But in the last two years, I found myself traveling repeatedly to Tawi-Tawi, drawn by a need I could not fully articulate. There is something about islands that insist on isolation, but they also promise a form of clarity. In Simunul, where the story of Jabidah is said to have begun its quiet gestation, I felt the past not as something concluded but as something waiting patiently, like some unresolved business.

It was there that I encountered the story of Sophia Mirkusin. It did not come to me like history from authoritative textbooks or the brittle certainty of archives. Instead, it arrived as a love story told in fragments. Sophia, they said, had loved a man named Eduardo Martelino, a man whose presence in the narrative of Jabidah is often reduced to rank and function, but who, in Sophia’s remembering, existed first as a bearer of promise of everlasting love.

He arrived, as such men do in island stories, with the aura of foreignness. He carried with him the weight of a nation that had not yet learned its own fractures. In Sophia’s telling, he was attentive in ways that suggested he was the right one. He spoke of return as though it were inevitable, as though distance was only a temporary inconvenience. Love, he told her, could easily overcome this. In that fragile space between encounter and departure, she allowed herself to believe in a future that extended beyond the horizon. She dreamed beyond the uncertainties that already hovered over Simunul.

But history, like the tide, does not honor such intimacies. It intrudes, takes what is private, and subjects it to violence in the open. When Martelino left, summoned back into the machinery of a state that was itself unraveling, he carried with him not only his obligations but also the silence that would come to define his absence. He did not return. Or rather, he returned only in stories that contradicted one another, every version clashed with the next, in a history that has never been settled.

Sophia waited.

This waiting, I have realized, is not incidental to the story of Jabidah but is central to it. Because what is Jabidah if not a prolonged act of waiting? Waiting for truth. Waiting for acknowledgment. Waiting for justice that never arrives in the package one desires. Sophia’s vigil became a quiet mirror of the Bangsamoro condition itself, a testament to the endurance required to live with histories that do not resolve easily.

She waited through the slow sedimentation of myth and rumor, through the shifting narratives that alternately obscured and exposed the contours of the massacre. All the while, the man she loved became increasingly drawn into those stories. People kept mentioning his name, making him feel both close and impossibly far away. And then, at some point, no one can say exactly when, she decided to move on, though even that phrase feels inadequate, as though it suggests a clean break where none existed. What does it mean to move on from something that has never properly ended?

In Sophia’s story, I began to see Jabidah not only as a political rupture but as an intimate one, a crack that extends into the most private corners of human experience, reshaping love, memory, and the very possibility of closure. Her waiting was not passive, but an active engagement with absence, a refusal to let the story settle into the neatness that history often demands.

This is perhaps why her story found its way into my own work, why it lingered at the edges of Island Fever, why it haunted the imagined conversation between Lina, a journalist, and Jabidah survivor Jibin Arula, who returned from the Hereafter. Because even in that speculative space, where the dead are allowed to speak, the questions remain unresolved. The journalist seeks answers, but what she encounters instead is a series of echoes, bits and pieces of memory and afterthought that never quite come together.

Writing that story, shaping it through long conversations on the many questions of identity, history, and the burden of memory, I began to understand that my work is not to resolve Jabidah but to inhabit it. To sit with its ambiguities. To allow its contradictions to breathe. This is perhaps the quiet revolution I have chosen, not to simplify and make a chronicle of some sort, but to stick around and allow the tangled stories that make up Bangsamoro identity to unravel.

Because, really, this isn’t just about how we remember Jabidah. It’s about how we see ourselves in its shadow. Are we just carrying old wounds, stuck in this endless cycle of anger and payback? Or are we keepers of memory, holding on to the hard truths of the past without letting them swallow us whole? Sophia’s story doesn’t reconcile any of that. If anything, it makes the questions heavier.

In the end, I keep coming back to the image of the tide. Jabidah always comes back through different faces and voices, even in silence. It keeps shaping Bangsamoro’s future. It keeps shaping the Filipino imagination, too, even if we pretend it is the least of its concerns. And in Sophia’s waiting, in the way she loved a man tied to a history that won’t let him go, I see the tide at its most personal. It’s not just in our politics or our shared memory, but also in our quietest hopes and the things we want most.

And in that, perhaps, lies the real weight of inheritance, knowing that every time we write, every time we remember, we’re still waiting and listening, still trying to figure out a story that has no neat ending.

Raihana K. Lamalan

♬ Eid is joy.. and the most beautiful joy
Reunites the close and the far away
being happy about it… makes it
A beautiful memory, beyond Eid time ♫

I remember this song playing on our favorite channel, our big, fat TV screen showing it in Arabic while we cleaned the table after eating Iftar. It signaled that Ramadan was nearly over and Eid was within our reach. After mouthing the words I didn’t understand back then, my brother and I raced to the bathroom to perform wudhu. Our salah followed, and then we prepared to go to school.

♫ Eid is joy… and the most beautiful joy

I was merely seven years old the first time I practiced fasting. Growing up, it was never an issue for me to endure temptation during Ramadan. The heat was nothing compared to the discipline of hunger. One of the perks of growing up in a Muslim country was that the odds were always in your favor.

Like when we were in high school, our class started at 7:00 p.m. Isha began around 8:20, and taraweeh followed. During this holy month—whether it fell in early August or late July—we were almost free from schoolwork because we were always excused to practice our belief system. It wasn’t challenging; it was an honor to witness Ramadan again.

Dada said that celebrating Ramadan used to be almost as cheerful as Christmas. He told us that apartments and houses were once covered in lights, even the trees, and the phrase “Ramadan Kareem” was written in English and displayed in lights everywhere. He said it was unfortunate that we never witnessed it ourselves, but he promised me that the real joy of Ramadan was always in being close to Heaven. Our wishes, he said, would be heard by the Almighty God, and they would always come true.

So I prayed for a home. A house with a kitchen and a clean toilet.

But I couldn’t help disagreeing with my father sometimes. Considering that our class started at 7:00 p.m., we were often excused to go to the masjid, allowed to arrive late, and our attendance was loosened enough that class ended at ten thirty, even though dismissal was technically at midnight. Because no, we didn’t go home right away.

Jeddah was awake. The city was alive. People swarmed the streets, and Qur’an recitations could be heard almost everywhere. Our day started at Maghrib. During the daytime in Jeddah, it felt almost like a deserted town. Most establishments were closed, and nighttime was the only time they could sell. Not that the government forbade them—no, they were also observing the fast.

Our practices as Muslims were our priority then.

Our male friends followed behind us and carried our bags while we, the girls, walked ahead of them. Men and women were not allowed to be close to each other unless they were married. Otherwise, a mutawa would call you out, sometimes even making you perform salah in the middle of the street.

But our boys were mostly our brothers, classmates, and childhood best friends. We would go to the malls, grab some ice cream, or eat shawarma from our favorite Pakistani, Egyptian, or Jordanian shops, and then go home at three in the morning to prepare for suhoor.

On Palesteen Street, where we lived near our school, the culture was rich enough that everyone seemed almost identical to one another. We could never quite tell who was Arab and who was Masri, not that you should try to do that, but for us, it was never a big deal.

Those were mostly the highlights of my childhood, and whenever Laylat al-Qadr came, I prayed harder. Dahil simple lang ang gusto ko –bahay.

But maybe that was too much to ask, too ambitious, especially for someone like me, who had no resources. The house came true, but maybe I should have been more specific.

One thing that weighed heavily on us when we returned to the Philippines was that people assumed we would never run out of fortune, that we were bound to sustain them indefinitely. To our shock, we arrived at a house with no kitchen. No windows either. Walang pinto, walang kubeta ‘nung pag-uwi namin, samantalang nagkandakuba sa pagkayod sina Mama para maipatayo ito.

It was painful to watch Mama’s hands tremble from labor, her tears soaking the bare walls. There was no evidence of our hardship abroad. We had been deprived even of receipts to justify the cost of the house we had worked so hard to build. May mga bagay na hindi nagtugma, hindi ko alam kung saan napunta ang ilang bahagi ng pangarap at paghihirap nina Mama.

♫ Reunites the close and the far away

Like the essence of the song I used to hear as a child, we let things slide because we knew what was at stake if we spoke out. May mga salitang hindi mo na kayang bawiin. Kapag bagong salta ka at walang karamay, mas pipiliin mong manahimik kaysa mapagtulungan ng marami.

Unlike abroad, I find people more free-willed here. It surprises me that I’ve encountered some who ditch fasting because they are thirsty or because the hunger is unbearable. I have always treated fasting as an honor. Our parents introduced us to Islam at a young age, and in this religion, one of our pillars is to fast—or as we call it in Maguindanaon, puwasa. I guess it is safe to say that I am more culture-shocked here than I ever was abroad, even among our neighboring cultures in Sarangani.

Nostalgia filled my nostrils when I smell the mixed spices from our neighbors cooking sambuza for their bukā. The aroma is rich; my stomach trembles as I endure the last minutes of fasting. I stare closely at the Lucky Me Beef Labuyo that will break my fast. Mama is at the masjid helping prepare food for the townsfolk. Dada is in Marbel, spending Ramadan with his sisters. My kuya, who could no longer bear the weight of our dearth, is in Davao looking for a third job to support my studies.

I have always imagined myself having a house to call my own. Even when we were still in Saudi Arabia, I would watch vlogs and entertainment about houses in which they create spaces to suit the style the owners dream of. And I feel envious, dahil wala kaming sariling bahay. Walang magagamit tuwing bakasyon. Walang lugar para ipagdiwang ang kahit anong uri ng tagumpay, walang lugar para pagsaluhan ang lungkot, walang mapagpahingahan kapag tagatak ang pawis.

This isn’t how things are supposed to be, but this is how it is.

Kaya simple lang ang pakiusap ko. Ang pag-unawa.

While being poor is often taken as a punchline nowadays, it becomes easier for barbed jokes to slip out. I often wonder why I cannot relate to my peers. They ask for something simple and receive it right away. I, on the other hand, learned early how to ask for a rain check. Now I can clearly see it, the subtle lines that divide us: the children who have and the children who cannot. The silence. The exchanged looks. The way they talk behind your back, not to backstab you, not even to exclude you, but because you cannot afford to be part of their world.

I am humanized by grace. And if I’m being honest, all I feel is… guilt.

My presence is more tolerated than welcomed. What I bring simply does not seem to belong in their world. This is something we cannot talk about—money. The wall between us becomes impossible to ignore once it enters the conversation. It is the kind of truth everyone recognizes, yet no one dares to say out loud.

Hindi mo nga nabibili, mas lalong hindi mo rin mahahawakan kung hindi ka maglalabas ng pera.

They say they understand you, but they don’t.

But the right people will understand, and it will feel natural.

Scarcity has followed us across continents. We wear our poverty as if it were a debt we owe to everyone else. Hindi mo man pinili ito, pero parang kailangan mong humingi ng tawad sa mundong hindi kayang makisalo sa kakulangan mo.

And still, I cling to the simplest prayer: bahay.

♫ Being happy about it makes it a beautiful memory—beyond Eid time

Ayokong maging komportable sa kakulangan.

Dito, buo at kampante akong magpapahinga. When the sun sets, I want to hear the call to prayer echo across the streets. Jinn will bask in the glow of sunset, but I don’t mind. I know the malaikat will descend from heaven as the clock strikes to signal Maghrib. I hope they will be kind enough to hear prayers, the same way they listen to our pleas.

Dito, hindi ko na kailangang mag-alala kung saan sila Mama magfu-futūr, dahil may nakahanda nang hapagkainan at may pintuang nag-aantay sa kanila—hindi para makaalis, kundi dahil may uuwian na sila.

Anna L. Mamalampac

When I was a small girl, I thought that the moon was following me.

It was a summer night in the quiet, rustic town of Salvador, Lanao del Norte. My family and relatives had gathered at my Ina’s house for a celebration. The occasion has since slipped my mind, but I vividly remember how happy we all were. I was especially thrilled to finally reunite and play with my cousins, whom Ina –our grandmother— equally loved and cherished.

Given the freedom to roam the neighborhood, we became “partners-in-crime,” letting our carefree and mischievous natures run wild. We spent the night playing with the local children, eventually settling on our favorite traditional game: batir lata. Even in the near-darkness, illuminated only by a sliver of the moon, we could just make out the shape of the tin can as we threw our slippers with all our might to knock it down.

We ran around barefoot, with slippers held tight in our hands, taking turns guarding and throwing at the can. Some of us would hide behind the plants of our Ina, and others behind a coconut tree, waiting for the chance to dash out and kick the can without being caught by the ghakowa. And laughter started to echo as we shouted and teased each one of us. There are times we tripped on the ground but never minded the scratches caused by it because the fun was greater.

The thrill of running in the dark, the sound of slippers hitting the can, and the loud cheers when someone finally kicked it made the night more alive. It was as if the whole neighborhood joined in our joy, with the celebration laughter in the distance blending with our voices.

Right after the game, we would rest on the Bermuda grass outside Ina’s house. Lying there, we looked up at the stars and the moon above us. Childhood questions spilled easily from our mouths. What do stars really look like? Do they have their own light? Are they shaped? How big is the moon?

Soon our thoughts turned fully to the moon. It was very bright that night. It was summer, after all. I remember how proud I felt when I told my cousins that the moon followed wherever I went. That night, I learned it was nothing special. We all had the same experience.

Still, I wondered. Perhaps the moon was a person, I told myself. A being who could see us from above, who followed us, guided us, and kept us from danger.

In those moments on the grass, I did not yet know the weight of the world or the passing of time. Everything felt whole and endless. The night, the laughter, the quiet glow above us. I believed in things easily. I believed the moon could follow me, that it watched over us like a gentle guardian. Childhood made space for such thoughts, where wonder was not questioned but simply held, soft and certain, in the heart.

The following afternoon, I approached Ina. She sat outside in her korsi a tam’lang, sipping her coffee. I asked her about the moon, because after our talk the night before, my curiosity about that heavenly body had only grown.

“God created the universe. He created the moon,” my grandmother told me.

Overwhelmed by the thought of God’s power, I can no longer remember the rest of what she said. But that night I shared her words with my cousins and friends. They listened closely. For a moment, our laughter faded, replaced by a seriousness we had never felt before. Her words gave us something larger to think about.

It was a profound realization for us to know that the moon had been created by God Himself. We began to wonder what God looked like and how powerful He must be to create the universe, especially the moon that shone so brightly above us.

Something shifted in us that night. We were filled with awe, and our belief quietly began to change. Through the simple miracle of the moon, we sensed that there was a God. The prayers we heard from our parents no longer seemed like empty words. Perhaps, as children, we had been content simply to play, without thinking about the world beyond us.

Ina, without my fully realizing it then, was the keeper of answers to questions I had not yet learned how to ask. She spoke with a calm that made everything seem true and steady. When she told me about God and the moon, it was not just information she gave, but a way of seeing the world. Looking back now, I understand that she was quietly shaping something in me, a way of believing, searching, and becoming. Perhaps that is how girlhood slowly leans into womanhood, through small moments, through stories passed down, through the voices of those who came before us, teaching us how to look up and find meaning in the light.

Everything changed for me that summer. As I grew older, I began to understand that everything around me is a sign of God’s grace. The little girl who once believed the moon followed her now sees it differently. The moon has become, for me, like the face of God in the dark—beyond my reach, yet always shining, illuminating my path, a quiet light that keeps me moving forward.