I HAD the privilege of meeting Gina Lopez for the first time in the early 90s when her family welcomed her back after being away for a long long time.
She was among the heirs of the late Eugenio (Geny) Lopez Jr. and Chita Lopez – owners of ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation.
You probably knew about her through the amazing programs and advocacies she had founded and spearheaded — Bantay Bata, Sineskwela, and the Rehabilitation of Pasig River in her fight to protect the environment.
Regina Paz La’O Lopez went to be with the Lord on August 19 at the young age of 65, after battling brain cancer. But her life story and all the amazing things she has done for the Philippines, the environment, and for humanity live on.
Gina’s journey reminds me of the life of St. Ignatius, founder of the Jesuit religious order, and whose real name was Iñigo Lopez from the village of Loyola in the Basque Country in Spain.
In my visit to Iñigo’s ancestral home where he was born, raised, and had a conversion, I found out that St. Ignatius was born to a wealthy family. When he almost lost his life when he was gravely injured during a battle in Pamplona, he had a conversion and offered his life to something bigger than himself. From being a knight, he chose to be a pilgrim of God. Like St. Ignatius, Gina was born to a rich, powerful, and loving family, and lived a very comfortable and sheltered life. This was why at the age of 18, the high society of Manila was surprised to find out that the second child and eldest daughter of Geny and Chita left home to be a missionary in Portugal, India and Africa.
In an essay she wrote for Rogue on March 2016, Gina shared her journey and the unconventional life choices she made.
Gina wrote that she went to Newton College of the Sacred Heart in Boston, an all-girls school run by nuns. Even then she intimated that she had an interest in meditation. “My inner self had a thirst that was not being quenched,” she wrote.
“Then I met someone in Harvard who recommended I go to an ashram that taught meditation. When I entered the ashram, apart from the meditation, they had some singing. I had an experience. I felt something deep. Tears rolled down my cheeks, I felt something I had not felt in church or in school. I had a feeling of Divine Love. That changed my life forever.”
Eventually, Gina left home. She wrote that it was not because things were not good, but because she “had this urge to do something”.
“I became a full-fledged yoga missionary. I went to Portugal, India, then Africa. It was in Africa that I spent 11 years and met my now ex-husband with whom I have two sons. The basic responsibilities of an Ananda Marga yoga missionary are to teach yoga-run, pre-primary schools, and children in homes for the underprivileged. The slogan is “Service to humanity is service to God.” I was constantly looking for money to survive and take care of the children I was responsible for.”
“Like all institutions, one has a goal, but often what happens is something else. As I implied earlier, I grew up in a bubble where people were good and loving and true. This results in a naïveté about people and life.”
Gina’s life in Africa was the opposite of the comfortable life she lived in their home in Forbes Park in the Philippines.
“ I lived for six years in Kenya. Two of those years were in a slum area where we had to stand in line for water, and the toilet system was pathetic. It was there that I learned to value water. I had one pail, and that was it: for bathing myself and using the last bit for washing my underwear. When one doesn’t have much, one treasures every little bit. I lived as the poor lived, so I learned how not to be wasteful—a trait I carry to this day where I use every bit of everything. I learned how to value empty containers, because they can be of use eventually.”
“It is in Africa that I learned the quality of persistence. Hardship has its value. What was not good was that the organization insisted on obedience. Blind obedience is not healthy because one gives up the faculty of discernment. It is much better to live according to principle than according to rules, because situations in life change. What is good in one situation may not be so in another. The ability to adapt develops intuition and intelligence. I did not learn this there, but I am learning it while managing the institutions I currently head.”
It was through her experience in Africa that she learned the value of guts and will — qualities she said she had honed further in the Philippines.
After 20 years of being a missionary, Gina went back home to her family in the Philippines. In 1994, she then channeled her love and mission to helping our country through ABS-CBN Foundation, starting Bantay Bata to rescue and help abused kids. She pioneered educational programs like “Sineskwela”.
“I started working with the ABS-CBN Foundation. I am also chair of the Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission. I am well and happy. I discovered a meditation school more than 10 years ago, which has and continues to help greatly in life,” she said. “My passion is to take care of the environment and address the poverty in the country. I remain convinced that we can have a country without poverty if we take care of the environment and institute mechanisms wherein the community around benefits. I have been able to do it in a few sites where the communities are able to send their kids to college in the second year, so I know it can be done.”
It was her passion and mission to take care of the environment that compelled President Rodrigo Duterte to appoint her to be Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources at age 62.
The New York Times wrote: “In moving to halt the operations of 28 of the country’s 41 mining companies, she was taking aim at businesses that accounted for about half of Philippine nickel production, which environmentalists said had left rivers, rice fields and watersheds stained red with nickel laterite.
“I’m going to do the right thing and let the dice fall where it may,” Ms. Lopez said when she canceled the mining permits. “And I am going to hope that maybe these politicians, even if they’re funded by mining money, must have love for God and country in their hearts.”
“But Ms. Lopez’s swift assault on the industry faced stiff opposition from influential mining groups, and she was forced from her job when the Philippine Congress denied her confirmation to the post just 10 months after Mr. Duterte appointed her. While Mr. Duterte is best known for his bloody antidrug campaign, he has spoken out against abuses by the logging industry and mining companies.”
“What a waste,” she said after she was forced out. “Everyone would have benefited from the management and care of the environment.”
But as ABS-CBN News reported, despite losing the job, Gina looked at the experience an opportunity to further her advocacy.
“I got really popular [when I was] rejected from DENR, so I’m riding on a crest and I’m maneuvering all the support into building green models on the ground,” she said in an interview with Earth Island Journal.”
Gina started an organization called I LOVE (Investments in Loving Organizations for Village Economies), which she hoped would facilitate “green models” throughout the country.
The ABS-CBN profile on Gina chronicled that up until her death, “Lopez was active in promoting sustainable development and lifestyles. She hosted the environmental television show “G Diaries” on ABS-CBN and had a social enterprise company under the brand G Stuff that sells organic products.
Gina also wrote columns in the Philippine Star, where she also talked about meditation, having a healthy lifestyle through nutritious food and exercise, and natural remedies.
“One of the biggest mistakes of humanity is to foolishly think we are these physical bodies and life ends when this physical body deteriorates,” she said. “The truth is that we are spirit. Living now gives us the opportunity to ‘hone’ our spirit so that it is more aligned with higher forces of truth and light.”
Three years before she passed, Gina wrote: “Life is what you make of it. The experience of life is how you see it.
You can see it negatively or you can see even the seeming failures as a positive opportunity to grow. If we take on this positive bent, everyone around benefits. My consistent experience in life is that as long as one commits to integrity and service, there are Divine Forces that help. I feel it every day, when I meditate in the morning, as I do my work. Life is a challenge. There are also negative forces that exist, and they are within one’s self. One needs to be keenly aware of them.”
Rest in God’s perfect love and peace, Gina. Thank you for teaching us how to really live.
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Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos
