The Road Not Taken (Inspired by Robert Frost)

After attending the graduation of Batch 42 of the South East Asia Rural Social Leadership Institute (Searsolin) last Friday, I was looking out to the city from the 3rd floor of Searsolin’s main building and marveled at how much this part of the city has changed so much in so short a time.

But even more remarkable, like waking up after a long sleep, I noted with growing interest and wonder how different and almost diametrically opposite the developments of the lands opposite each other in Masterson Avenue have become.

Riding up the road from the Poblacion and going to Lumbia airport, to your left one finds the “old” portion of this part of town (what my good friend and Pueblo de Oro VP and General Manager Rudy Menes likes to refer to as Cagayan de Oro’s “Uptown.”)

Here lies the Pryce Plaza, for a long time the city’s most luxurious hotel which went by other names in earlier incarnations like “Alta Tierra” and “Hill Top” hotel. After that starts Xavier University’s College of Agriculture (XUCA) campus, more popularly known as Manresa, after the town in Spain where St. Ignatius of Loyola developed his spiritual exercises following a life-changing vision/enlightenment through which he said he learned more on that one occasion than he did for the rest of his life.

The "Aggie College" was founded in 1953 by Fr. William F. Masterson, S.J. the acknowledged “Father” of the XUCA. Eleven years after, Fr. Masterson started SEARSOLIN in 1964 (as an offshoot of XUCA)) with the support of MISEREOR, Germany.

Although there are now newer developments along this portion of the Uptown such as the Xavier Estates, Rosevale School and the low-cost housing project Xavier Heights, for the most part this Northern Section of the emerging Uptown consists of predominantly older developments and improvements.

In contrast, the Southern Portion on the opposite side of Masterson Avenue consists almost exclusively of newer developments dominated by the 360 hectare Pueblo de Oro Township which just turned 11 years old. But within that brief span of time, it would be transformed from what was once mostly rocky, marginal pasture land to now what Rudy calls “ a vibrant, dynamic community” which includes a world-class championship golf course, commercial areas, a mall, an IT Park, residential villages, and an urban rainforest.

Pueblo has bolstered its record as a catalyst for change and development in the city, bringing in SM Mall and Hotel Koresco; established Mindanao’s first IT park and successfully campaigned for the establishment of the first call center in the city, Link2Support.

With the completion of the South Diversion Road near the golf course, and the West Diversion and SM Bypass Roads in the northern portion of the Township, Pueblo now stands in the heart of the new growth area in Uptown Cagayan de Oro.

Such an interesting juxtaposition these two areas just opposite the same road lead to: Old Cagayan de Oro represented by XUCA and Searsolin, dedicated to the earth, agriculture and to what Fr. Masterson said was “to help achieve the fullest human development possible through income generated by increased national, rural production, and to help insure a more equitable return to the primary producer of the added value that enhanced production by means of sound, rural institutions.”

And just across the road, Pueblo de Oro and its global outlook, and direct links across the internet superhighway through its call center locator, its golf course serving as the magnet successfully landed a foreign investor, and now by itself a world class company, being awarded the seal of good housekeeping from SGS (Société Générale de Surveillance) Philippines, Inc. with an ISO 9001:2000 Certification that has made it one among an elite circle of real estate firms in the world with such an accreditation and the first such from this part of the country. It is recognition that Pueblo has the necessary systems and procedures that makes it deliver quality service according to world-class standards.

The City is indeed changing and would continue to change. As the students from the resident schools in Uptown Cagayan de Oro travel down the road to their future: they look right then left, seeing two divergent paths that both open world of opportunities to them:

XUCA and Searsolin, with its multiple objectives and vigorous and comprehensive philosophy of man, a philosophy of the land, and a philosophy of work, focused on “Production Education”, that is the best utilization of one's providential, God-given talents, within and through God's creation, as Searsolin Director Dr. Boy Mercado, no mean wordsmith himself, so lyrically puts it.

Pueblo de Oro Township and its satellite communities and business clusters, founded on the new technologies and trends that seek to bring a global outlook to a globally competitive enterprise, outward looking, seething with boundless potential and promise.

Hopefully, the Jesuit influence of the Xavier University schools which Pueblo also hosts in XU and soon Corpus Christi’s Christian Schools would help guide the students of Rosevale, XUCA and Searsolin similar to what Manresa did for St. Ignatius of Loyola.

He stayed in a cave outside the town, intending to linger only a few days, but he stayed for ten months, spending hours each day in prayer, while working in a hospice. It was during this period in his life that the ideas for his famous Spiritual Exercises began to germinate and he had the vision which he regarded as the most significant in his life. The vision was more of enlightenment, about which he later said that he learned more on that one occasion that he did in the rest of his life.

Ignatius never revealed exactly what the vision was, but it seems to have been an encounter with God as He really is so that all creation was seen in a new light and acquired a new meaning and relevance, and experience that enabled Ignatius to find God in all things. This grace, finding God in all things, is one of the central characteristics of Jesuit spirituality.

By finding God in all things, all times are times of prayer. May our young people, as well as all the people who pass by Masterson’s Avenue, take a similar perspective as they travel down life’s road and weigh the choices they have to make for their future, whichever side of that path they may choose to take.

comments to mike_banos@walla.com

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