Perspectives & stairs: a photo essay

Quiet Storm by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, 18 March 2025

While I was processing my many realizations and lessons about perspectives and point of view (POV) following our team-building activities over the weekend, the venue’s architecture fascinated me, particularly its solid design of the staircase. I felt they all conveyed to me the very thoughts percolating in me that day of how our perspectives affect our communications, for better or for worst (https://lordmychef.com/2025/03/17/on-the-road-to-my-60th-perspectives-and-pov/).

Where we stand on the staircase is our POV – above on top, at the middle stop or at the bottom part. But how we look at the staircase reveals our perspectives, either we are looking up from or looking down to the floor that can have different impact with others.

The perspectives and views from that experience in Canyon Woods Resort Club in Batangas remained with me until Monday when I arrived at the Sacred Heart Novitiate in Novaliches where I have been going on my personal retreat since 2016.

It was another lesson in perspectives. They were the same stairs that have been there for almost 75 years with some younger at 30 years which I have seen and walked on the past nine years but it was only now that I have recognized their unique beauty.

And lessons.

Things change greatly when we see them from the top and from below. The same sights can evoke fear and dangers, or joy of being challenged to climb the flight of stairs.

Perspectives also change especially when we use the modern apps in cameras and phone cameras today like the iPhone 16 I am using lately.

One can change perspectives by simply editing a photo to change its “mood” to soften or strengthen its impact. Or, change its color to the traditional Black & White I have always loved.

B&W photos evoke simplicity and mystery at the same time. They converse with viewers as if inviting you to provide the “colors”. See the “ironing board” or plantsahan under the stairs that remind us of home.

Our focus and point-of-view convey different perspectives of the same objects as seen from different angles. In this shot below of the side stairs to the dorms at the second and third floors of the Blessed Faber Building are very inviting as if leading you to light or enlightenment that is primarily the reason of most people going on recollections and retreats here.

There is the sense of openness, of opening to God too not only with emphasis on the light that falls on each step but also in revealing the back or bottom part of the stairs, there is the perspective of courage to bare what’s inside. Or underneath. A sense of sincerity.

What’s in a stairway? There were the stairs that caught my attention in Batangas because it was my first time to be there at Canyon Woods Resort Club.

But, here again in my “happy place”, my “Bethel” where like Jacob I “wrestle” with God in prayers every year? Why my attention?

Blame it partly to my anticipation for the coming Netflix documentary on Led Zeppelin whose masterpiece Stairway to Heaven had made a tremendous impact on me as a child growing up in the 1970’s.

During that time, I have heard older people saying rock music was of the devil but I wondered why, if Led Zeppelin was diabolic, were they singing something about the heaven like Stairway to Heaven?

Later on in Grade 5 and 6 in the late 70’s, I heard our religion teachers that included nuns at St. Paul College-Bocaue spoke about Jacob’s dream of a “stairway to heaven”.

Immediately, I realized rock music isn’t bad at all!

And so, after classes I would come home early enough ahead of my father so that I could listen to DZRJ-AM that played all the classic and modern rock music of that time along with Juan Dela Cruz Band and other Pinoy rakistas.

Good that I did not listen to some aunts who insisted that I could not become a priest if I followed rock music which did not hinder at all my listening to God about my priestly calling. In 1998, I was ordained priest while still rockin and rollin’ with Led Zep, Steely Dan and other rock bands.

As a priest turning sigisty (60) soon and 27 years in the ministry, my perspective on stairs have evolved: as a priest, my job is to lead others to heaven – whatever song they may be singing. God bless everyone!