She's no economist or political pundit, but leave it to white-robed cult leaders like Carmen Maglambayan to come up with prophetic cries in these trying times.
All she has to do is recall a recent dream.
"I had it last Nov. 5," she started. "There was this ship, looking more like Noah's Ark, cruising not on water but on land, on our highways. More and more people were running after it to get on board before it could head out to sea."
The unbeliever may just smile, leaving her and her meek group in peace, but nevertheless consider them to be practitioners of Filipino folk religion, which survives to this day mostly in remote and impoverished villages.
But she's one of the few people who remembered Nov. 11 as "Filipino Values Month," which then President Fidel V. Ramos proclaimed in 1994.
At the office of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) in Manila, Carmen's group, dubbed the Kapatiran Katipunan Rizalista (KKR) from Rosario town, La Union province, performed a candle-lighting ceremony.
God-centered governance
The group sang hymns invoking the "Pamathalaan" or what it calls the principle of "God-centered governance."
The event was graced by NCCA executive director Cecile Guidote Alvarez, also the presidential adviser on culture, and Commissioner Felipe de Leon Jr., a humanities professor at the University of the Philippines.
With a prophetic tone, she warned the government of a "delubyo" or doomsday unless the people in it practiced the "Pamathalaan," which is a conjunction of the Filipino words "pamahalaan" (government), "Bathala" (God), and the Arabic "mathal" (model or examplary).
As stated in its name, the cult venerates national hero Dr. Jose Rizal as a Christian saint.
Composed of a female leader and eight members, the barefoot devotees lit no ordinary candles at the ritual performed in the lobby of the NCCA building in Intramuros, Manila.
One was the very same candle lit in November 1998 by then President Joseph Estrada during the first National Day of Prayer and Fasting. The second candle was used by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo at the Malacañang grounds on Earth Day in 2001.
Commitments
The two candles were lit using a third one brought by the KKR to represent the "unification" of presidential commitments to the Pamathaalan.
Another object featured in the ritual was a mounted document called the Pamathalaan Charter, which was signed by Ramos in a ceremony held during Holy Week in April 2003 at the historic Pamitinan Cave in Rodriguez (formerly Montalban) town, Rizal province.
The cave, now a heritage site, served as a secret meeting place of the Katipunan movement of Andres Bonifacio during the revolution against Spain.
The two candles and the charter had been in the safekeeping of Dr. Consolacion Alaras, a former NCCA official and English professor at the University of the Philippines, who now supports the KKR.
Expressions of culture
"You may call them a cult today, but they used to be (the expressions of) our culture," Alaras told the Inquirer, when asked how "modern" Filipinos should regard groups such as Maglambayan's.
The NCCA counts them as an example of "ancestral spiritual groups" worthy of recognition even in this day and age, said Alaras, who formerly headed the commission's committee on cultural information and special events.
Alaras, a former Carmelite nun, has given lectures and written three books on the Pamathalaan principle. The concept, according to her, extends to Islam (because of "mathal") and should also be a point of reflection among Muslims as their holy month of Ramadan ends today.
Alaras looked after the KKR members when they were in Manila last week, not only as a scholar of Philippine culture but also as a believer in their "prophetic cries."
"I think I can help them send their messages into the mainstream, otherwise these simple people with prophetic cries won't be heard," she said.
Maglambayan, 44, has been leading the group since 1982, but its acknowledged founder or "lolong spiritual (spiritual grandfather)" was Alfonso Balantac, who lived during the Spanish period and was said to be a member of the Katipunan.
Messages from Virgin Mary
A farmer and mother of six when not presiding over the KKR, Maglambayan claimed that she would go into a trance when receiving messages from the Virgin Mary.
She said her group once knocked on the doors of Malacañang in 1983 to "warn" then President Ferdinand Marcos "that he would lose fragrance" unless he practiced the Pamathalaan. That was how the Virgin worded the message, she said.
As her story went, the cult members walked barefoot from a house in Parañaque City to the Palace "so that we can give Marcos incense and sampaguita flowers." But they failed to get an audience with the dictator.
"That was July. One month later, (opposition leader Benigno) Ninoy Aquino was killed," she said. The assassination sparked unrest and fanned protests against Marcos, which culminated in the 1986 People Power revolt that ousted him.
Maglambayan said she also had a dream of the province of "Tarlac being closed to traffic, with the people running from rocks falling from the sky. One month later, Mt. Pinatubo erupted (in June 1991)."
Asked if she had any message for Ms Arroyo or any vision received of late, Maglambayan spoke of her Nov. 5 "Noah's Ark" dream.
The President, she said, should also start "using the media" to promote spirituality and replace the daily fare of "protests and rallies" in the news. "Otherwise, a great upheaval is coming."