Not Everything Has to Taste Good

Not every day feels good, but it still builds something.

Las Piñas • 119th Founding and 29th Cityhood Anniversary • March 27, 2026

We grow up thinking life should always feel good, but it doesn’t. Some days are light, some are heavy. Same place, same people, different outcome. That’s normal.

Not everything is meant to be exciting, and not everything is meant to be sweet. There are people who just show up and do the work, quiet, repetitive, real. It may look plain, but it builds something.

At some point, we question things. We look for more flavor, more meaning, but not everything needs to feel intense to matter.

And then there’s truth. Once we start bending it, everything becomes unclear, even if nothing around us changes.

So the difference is not the place. It’s what we choose. Life will not always taste the way we want, but it still shapes us.

Years ago, I wrote a song about this—simple, but it stayed with me.

Salts of Las Piñas
July 21, 1989

This is the place where I grew up 
Where most of the people I know 
But there are some bitter ends of life 
And you can’t always taste the spice 

In the blue sky, the birds fly 
But at times dark clouds pass by 
You’ll never see the glory of the kingdom 
If you engage in powerful lies

Las Piñas, just a taste of 
The salts of Las Piñas

In the morning, workers make piles 
Of the crystals for refection 
I used to argue about consumption 
But you can’t always taste the spice 

The Rise and Disappearance of Salt in Las Piñas

Before the 1970s, the salt industry in Las Piñas was active, with salt beds spread across coastal areas, especially near the Zapote–Bacoor side. By the late 1970s into the 1980s, it began to decline as urbanization grew, land was converted, and real estate became more profitable than salt production. By the late 1980s to early 1990s, only the last traces remained, with the industry nearly gone. From the mid-1990s onward, salt production had fully disappeared as Las Piñas shifted into a more residential and commercial area, a change that accelerated after it became a city in 1997. This decline was driven by land conversion, pollution and changing coastlines, cheaper imported salt, and the availability of more stable income from other jobs.

⌨ ᴛʸᵖⁱⁿᵍ ᴏᵘᵗ ᵒᶠ ᵗʰᵉ ʙˡᵘᵉ ᵈᵃʳᵉᵐ ᵐᵘˢⁱᶜ ᵇˡᵒᵍ

The music of Darem Placer

Worship Where Nature Breathes

Mary Immaculate Parish—better known as the Nature Church in Las Piñas—celebrates its 46th founding anniversary this August 22, 2025.

Mary Immaculate Parish—46th Founding Anniversary

When you enter most churches, you notice silence inside four walls. But at Mary Immaculate Parish—our Nature Church in Las Piñas—that silence is different. It’s not empty. It’s alive. You hear the wind, the leaves, the birds. You realize God doesn’t just wait for us inside walls—He meets us in creation itself.

The roof of anahaw, the bamboo, the light breaking through the trees… everything feels like it was meant to remind us that prayer isn’t something separate from life. It’s already here—in the air we breathe and the ground we stand on.

That’s why the Nature Church isn’t just memorable. It’s a mirror of faith. It teaches us that to worship God is also to care for what He made.

And this August 22, 2025, on the Feast of the Queenship of Mary, the parish marks its 46th founding anniversary. Forty-six years of being a community born in faith, growing under the open sky, and learning—year after year—that God’s sanctuary is not only built with wood and stone, but with people who choose to believe together.

Because here at the Nature Church, faith doesn’t just stand on the ground—it grows with it. 🌿

𝚃𝚢𝚙𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝙾𝚞𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝙱𝚕𝚞𝚎
𝚍𝚊𝚛𝚎𝚖𝚙𝚕𝚊𝚌𝚎𝚛.𝚌𝚘𝚖