Amy,my cousin who never got tired of my excesses and.... my despair.

My Cousin Amy


Manapla is a very tiny dot on the island of Negros, famous for putomanapla, espesyal pinasugbo, and---and My Cousin Amy.

My Cousin Amy is not really my cousin.
At least, neither I nor anyone else can prove it.

Examining the family tree of our clan, I cannot find exactly where or how we became cousins. But in the convoluted concatenation of Ilonggo consanguinity, Amy and I are, in the jungle thickets of the Miraflores forests, rumored to be cousins.

I first met the grown-up Amy in the house of Manang Thelma Jesena, near Taft Avenue. At that time, Amy was 18, a stunningly-lovely PAL Flight Attendant. Amy was all sunshine and beauty and life. I was all gloom, a thin seminarian , wrestling with my M.A. thesis on Soren Kierkegaard.
But Gary Lewis and the Playboys were in town, and my Cousin Amy had a crush on him, and so we obtained tickets and, with a lot of other excited teenagers, went to watch Gary Lewis perform in the Ateneo’s Loyola Center.


But Amy was disappointed. Gary was too short.


Then my Cousin Amy wanted a stroll in the moonlight at the newly-opened Loyola Memorial Park with our other cousins Nora and Tata. I got to join them as their date and their guide, since I lived right beside the park.

Amy was very beautiful, a sunbeam of perfection and goodness and purity and joy and charm. She was perhaps, with Ruth Tirol, the most beautiful in our clan.

She was the favorite of Manang Thelma and Manong Wiling, Manang Linda and Manong Jolly, yes, she was the favorite of all—even the most saintly and the most criminal among us.
I was just Arsenio Jesena. Not blue-blooded royalty, like Amy. I was just a poor, distant relative. Yet Amy treated me, like her Daddy Daniel treated my Tatay Arce -- WITH RESPECT.


Cousin Amy, with her outstanding good looks and popularity, was often caught up in a whirl of dazzling social activities.

Eventually, from her home in Scout Limbaga Street, she daintily emerged to win and reign as a national beauty queen, much loved throughout the nation for her universal goodness, her chaste beauty, and her unfailing charm.

And then she got married to Macky in Mary the Queen Church, then settled in their new home in Paranaque and waited for two years for the arrival of her baby, Angela, and then Louise.

I was a bit busy too, grappling with theology, the sacadas, injustice, ordination to the Priesthood, and Martial Law.

I was sent to Mindanao, to work with Bishop Claver and Vincent Cullen and Godofredo Alingal for the poor peasant farmers in Bukidnon.



During Martial Law, although we were separated by a long distance, and there was no cell phone or email yet, from her faraway throne in Manila my Cousin Amy did not forget me in faraway Mindanao.

Once she chartered a plane and had coffee with me for half an hour in Malaybalay then went right back home to Manila

At another time she decided to stay longer, and maybe for a month she was there with Sister Lucy Lucine and the RVM Sisters, inviting the rumor among the old and hopeful Nuns that she was discerning about entering their RVM Novitiate.

This was at the height of Martial Law, when two of the most-hated enemies of the dictator Marcos were Ninoy Aquino and Eugenio Lopez. And Cousin Amy, who was a Lopez, never worried for her safety, came back again for a prolonged visit in Mindanao. This time she came with a friend—Cristina, aka Gang, the niece of Ninoy Aquino. In Bobonawan I watched as Chitong and Mayo taught my visitors how to shoot with the M-16 armalite rifle.

One day the visiting Benny Tan was surprised to see Amy strolling in the public market of Malaybalay. “Kumare! What are you doing here? I would not be surprised to see you strolling in Paris or New York or Rome…but what are you doing HERE? In Malaybalay?”

Amy joined us in visiting the farmers’ Cooperative in Buco, Valencia, where Pastor Emmanuel Alkuino asked her, “What can YOU DO for our people?”

A very hard question to answer.
At that time, my Cousin Amy could only pray, and be with, and empathize with the people.

But during these precious moments in Bukidnon Cousin Amy learned suffering, and prayer, and total surrender to God. She began value the Holy Eucharist more deeply, and she learned how to meditate, and to be familiar with Holy Scriptures, and began to learn how to discern, and to keep a spiritual journal… Cousin Amy’s first major steps towards intimacy with The Spirit of Jesus. And every moment from then on was a step deeper into the loving Heart of God.

And then she had to leave us, and go back to her children and her husband in their home in Paranaque.

The Lopezes were not well-liked by Marcos and the hencemen of Martial Law.

Amy left the Philippines, visited Lourdes and Madrid and Rome, and settled in the United States.

In the 80’s I was sent to study how to give the Ignatian Thirty-Day Retreat at the Jesuit Renewal Center in Milford, Ohio. After the course, I met my Cousin Amy in Maui and Waikiki and Las Vegas and New York. Through her I met and became good friends with Niels and Gloria, Nikki and Leif Pearson, then Stan Ebner and Jerry Schaefer and Deacon Jones and Gigi Valeriano, and finally, the world-reknowned psychic, Olof Jonsson of Sweden, who, when he was not busy floating tables and reading minds, and doing ultra-secret projects, was locating precious treasures from land and sea.




All through the years, I had this strange, special intuitive closeness with my cousin Amy. When I was sad, or troubled, she would sense or feel or know it—wherever she was—and she would get in touch, not to advice, but to be with. And when she was sad, or troubled, I would know it—wherever I was—and I would get in touch.

One time I was really sad and depressed, and I was feeling all alone..and nobody knew where I was, because I did not tell anybody where I was going. And then, in the place where I was, the phone rang, and it was my Cousin Amy. I do not know how she did it, but she was able to successfully track me down.. all the way to—NIAGARA FALLS !

Amy lives alone, with her grand piano, in her Makati Condominium. In the same building, she has another condo, which she does not rent out, because she converted it into a Prayer Room, where she does her meditation, her counselling, and her Healing.

Amy has this gift of conversing easily and naturally with God, very much like she did with her own father, Daniel – with all spontaneity , and humor, and trust – and love.

The are little known things about Amy. She is a cancer survivor. She prays before the Blessed Sacrament four hours every day. And she helped me make a pilgrimage to Lourdes and Rome and the Holy Land.


How long have I been close friends with my Cousin Amy? Forty years, at the very least.

A chronicle of our conversations and adventures would take many volumes. There has been a lot of laughter, and a lot of tears. Often, we talk about God’s presence, and action in our lives…and we study options on how to help other people, especially the poor.

She would often share her deep and holy spiritual experiences and insights with me, punctuated by tea and putomanapla and lumpia and a lot of pamasyar and healing, heartfelt laughter.


Forty years as close friends.


Yet I really do not know what my Cousin Amy thinks of me. She appreciates my company she likes my jokes, she consults me for advice, she values my opinion, she shares me with her friends, she tells me what goes on -- in and around her.

We do not always agree, of course, but we have, I think, similar fundamental values. She does not obey me, but she consults me, as she consults Father Green, her Spiritual Director, and Father Francis, who is her real blood cousin.



I cannot think of any good I do for Cousin Amy. From the very start, I am the weak one, the wounded one, often drowning in the ocean of life, and Amy is the one who silently holds my hand until I am once again strong enough to swim on my own, strong enough to search for and help save other drowning men.

I must be precious to my Cousin Amy.
She tries her best to make sure I come to no spiritual harm, either from others, or from myself.

I know she prays a lot for me, and she keeps me busy with good thoughts and good activities and good friends, away from temptation and from harm.

Amy is very deep, very holy, very perceptive.
I do not think anything ever escapes her notice.

Of course she knows when I am depressed—which is very often, and she probably feels my temptations, my sadness and my pain.

Forty long years. And yet, she has never, never told me I was wrong. She has never criticized me. Or given me advice. Never got tired of my excesses and…and my despair.



Not too long ago Amy came out with ‘REMEMBERING’ a wonderful CD of her original compositions, which Priests and Nuns and people from all walks of life really treasure and appreciate as a thing of beauty, a channel of divine grace. In the CD, one of the best-loved meditations is dedicated to her cousin, Father JJ, and is entitled ‘THOU ART A PRIEST FOREVER’.


“Tell me again how you came to compose that,” I asked her yesterday, just to make sure.

‘I was deep in prayer,’ she said, ‘ and I saw you in your Mother’s womb, very much loved…and then… I saw God the Father Himself… holding you in His Hands like a little baby, and lovingly saying to you, “YOU ARE A PRIEST—FOREVER !”



Salamat Gid Kaayo, My Cousin Amy.





Juni Jesena, 30 aug. 2007