It was a different kind of weekend I ran into in our
work with the poor through our community Couples for Christ (CFC) many years
ago. I told my wife that particular morning to just stay at home because our
mission site was a high-risk zone according to local authorities and we were notified
to leave the area before dark.
Our group, mostly men with only a handful of female
doctors in our medical team, rode on a dump truck loaded with our construction
materials paid up by CFC members ourselves through voluntary financial contributions.
We made our way over a few kilometers stretch of a rugged road leading to the site.
When we got there, we were a little bit surprised because the cluster of houses
in varying stages of disrepair looked abandoned. We saw no one around. All of a
sudden, an elderly man appeared and talked to our mission head. We got to know that
our Muslim brethren had gotten inside their houses when we arrived. They might
have been caught napping, figuratively speaking, when our group appeared all at
once. We could be the only people, more so Christians, they ever faced that
would do some repair works in their houses at the same time at no cost.
One by one, people started to come out from their houses
when our medical team set things moving with their stethoscopes. In like
manner, the noise of hammers, saws, and brooms resounded around the
neighborhood from our carpentry, painting, and cleaning teams going all out
with their respective repair jobs. Racing against time before sundown, we got
our hands full all day long immersed in all types of repairs.
After listening with a stethoscope to heartbeats on
the final chest, after hammering the last nail, painting the last coat, and
sealing all the roof leaks, we stacked up against our tools, gadgets, and accessories,
and without any closing fanfare for our job well done, we cleared the area just
right before the dreaded nightfall as a precaution for security reason.
What’s it all about? A heart-stirring question, indeed,
that reminds me of this song:
What’s it all about, Alfie?
Is it just for the moment we live?
What’s it all about when you sort it out, Alfie?
Are we meant to take more than we give?
Or are we meant to be kind?
And if only fools are kind, Alfie
Then I guess it’s wise to be cruel
And if life belongs only to the strong, Alfie
What will you lend on an old golden rule?
As sure as I believe there’s a heaven above, Alfie
I know there’s something much more
Something even non-believers can believe in
I believe in love, Alfie
Without true love we just exist
Until you find the love you’ve missed you’re nothing,
Alfie
When you walk let your heart lead the way
And you’ll find love any day, Alfie.
Mark Twain said, “Kindness is a language which the
deaf can hear and the blind can see.” Though the most underrated agent of human
change, “a single act of kindness,” Amelia Earhart said, “throws out roots in
all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees.” Would it still surprise
one to hear somebody, a non-believer of Jesus, from that mission site who would
later wonder, “Who is that Christ?” Printed on with “Couples for Christ” and
its logo, our T-shirts, surely, did catch his eye.
“My description for it is, empathy is like your
spiritual muscle. The more you use that muscle, the more you feel the suffering
experienced by your countrymen,” said Vice President Leni Robredo.
“How can a heart understand the pain of another heart
and still do nothing?” one writer asked: an impassioned question that spells
out the cause-and-effect bond of empathy and kindness. These coupled qualities
in the character of VP Robredo have transcended the detractors’ moniker “Leni Lugaw” to put her down into some
evolving community that in the fullness of time will embrace ultimately without
exception the “Les Miserables” of the
Philippine society that has been spurned for a very long time.
Who are they? Let’s bring into play the LUGAW acronym: L for the lost, the least,
and the last; U for the underdogs, underprivileged, undergraduates, unemployed;
G for the gurangs (aged); A for the
api (oppressed), alanganin (gender), addicts. W for the wretched wanderers in the body
(bums) and mind (mental cases). You may add anyone I missed to the list.
Upton Sinclair prefaced, “So long as there shall
exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation… so long as the three
problems of the age – the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of woman by
starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night – are
not solved; so long as ignorance and misery remain,” Victor Hugo wound up in
his classic novel, “Les Miserables
knocks at the door and says: ‘open up, I am here for you.’”
The beauty of LUGAW
is the quality of its inclusivity of all in our society especially those who
have less in life. In his book “The Different
Drum: Community Making and Peace,” M. Scott Peck, M.D. stressed that we should
not ask, “How can we justify taking this person in?” Instead, we should ask, “Is
it at all justifiable to keep this person out?”
I like the letter W in LUGAW for its Biblical significance: The Widow’s Offering, noting
too that VP Robredo herself is a widow..
“Jesus sat down opposite the Temple treasury watched
the people dropping money into the treasury box, and many rich people put in
large offerings. But a poor widow also came and dropped in two small coins. Then
Jesus called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I say to you, this poor
widow has put in more than all those who gave offerings. For all of them gave
from their plenty, but she gave from her poverty and put in everything she had,
her very living.” (Mark 12:41-44)
Finally, I have no penchant to wind up my article with
alarm bells, but with the statistics standing at 1 in 4 Filipinos still stuck
below the poverty line, I think I should sound the alarm, once and for all,
with this serendipitous Bible reading today.
and the lofty city he brings down;
He tumbles it to the ground,
levels it with the dust.
It is trampled underfoot by the needy,
by the
footsteps of the poor.”
(Isaiah 26:5-6)
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