PamagCUSA Blog

A Continuing Journey
GLIMPSES
Jose Ma. Montelibano

My frustration is the lack of concern of those who can help for those
who
need help. But since I cannot go around like an insensitive
religious person or an insincere politician, giving sermons and speeches
about what is wrong but a most guilty party himself, I went to work as a
political advocate and then as a Gawad Kalinga volunteer. Political
advocacy
made me realize the extent and depth of exploitation, its long history
and
its lingering dominance in the Philippines. Volunteering in Gawad
Kalinga
allows me to shed off that hypocritical part of me as a Christian and
citizen as I gain intimacy with the daily plight of the poor.

I was born on the right side of the fence, and when I was old enough to
notice the difference, thought that life is simply like that - two
sharply, contrasting sides to a fence. I had gentle parents, my father
who
was a most friendly person and my mother who was always involved in
fund-raising projects for charitable causes. I never saw in them the
harshness and greed usually attributed by activists to members of the
elite.
As I was growing up and going to school in La Salle, then, Ateneo, I
related
to my own kind of people - some very much richer and some less so. For
two
years, though, I was blessed by life with a singular opportunity - being
a
minor seminarian in San Jose Seminary in Quezon City.

Basketball was my game, and I played in the varsity both in high school
and
college. I had little interest in many things outside of
what a teenager growing fast towards manhood would be interested in.
After
school, it was off to work, starting from the proverbial bottom until I
reached corporate heights too early in my lie. In my mid-thirties, I was
confronted with a choice to add more zeroes to my bankbook or do
something
else which I knew nothing about yet. I felt there was more to life than
zeroes, so I developed and lived out an exit plan from conventional
life.

In that transition, I discovered my citizenship and re-discovered my
faith
in God. First, shuttling from the plush offices of Makati to the
mountains of Banahaw, I saw the shocking opposites of Philippine life. I
saw
two Philippines - the exploiter and the exploited. I studied the history
of
warfare, and later, methodologies of control, and understood how a few
thousand dictate to many millions, not just in the Philippines but
everywhere in the world and throughout millennia. I lived with the poor,
the
simple folks along the foothills of a water mountain considered holy and
healing by a Tagalog culture. I had no other way but to question not
just
God but also society for the visible
imbalance, for the horrible unfairness.

Questioning does not always get pat answers; at least, mine did not.
This
pattern of not getting answers just like that from constant
questioning, even during my prayerful moments, simply made me admit
humbly
that I cannot hear God. But mankind is different. The human being is
different. In the world of the mundane, I was capable of getting the
answers
if I made the effort to move towards them. Curiosity opens the door,
wanting
answers pushes us to the room, and determination forces discovery. I was
curious, I wanted answers, and worked to find them.

It did not faze me that I had to know about Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam,
Judaism, even some native beliefs not only of Filipinos but other
cultures as well. Never having had the interest when I was in school to
learn about the great faiths which the majority of human beings believe
in,
I could not be dissuaded from discovering them. And I worked just as
hard to
trace our roots in myths, legends, folk religion, natural healing
through
herbs and * hilot* (native healing massage), and practices manifesting
the
kaleidoscope of Philippine culture.

From study and experimentation, abundantly blessed by the expert sharing
of
all kinds of advocates in faith, community development,
healing, the environment, and objective politics, I stepped out to a
world
of engagement where my new found knowledge and my unfettered curiosity
had
to find expression in human and social relationships.

It has been ten years of active, pro-active and at times, militant
advocacy
work. In the political sphere, I had joined conventional
campaigns and the revolution of the streets in Edsa Dos. Because of that
political advocacy, I went into journalism. In the field of community
development where I could merge my health and environment advocacies, I
found Gawad Kalinga. And, in Gawad Kalinga, I found much more, maybe the
most important factor missing in my faith and in my citizenship. In
Gawad
Kalinga, I found the poor.

This time, it is not anymore the poor of my youth, people who have
always
been there, people who are less than me but not really, or
severely, threatened with death or destruction. The poor as used and
unwanted furniture in the house of Filipino society became, in my new
eyes,
Filipinos and children of God who deserved no less from my faith and my
country. Unfortunately, in discovering the value of the poor, I had to
go
through a painful experience of tearing down an old perspective, a
hypocritical attitude of idealizing equality but giving less importance
to
those who have much less. Even sadder is that I keep seeing this old,
hypocritical mindset so clearly in the actuation of some in the Church
hierarchy in the Philippines, in bishops who truly regard the poor as
manifestly inferior and, thus, cannot think, feel and act in their
defense.

Filipinos now stand at the point of the sword. The monstrous twin evils
of
corruption and poverty have found their young, brave David in
the growing tribe of heroes who dedicate their lives to helping others,
in
the awesome numbers of young Filipinos seeking nobility and rejecting
the
dirty influence that has become part of the environment, and in the
empowerment of the marginalized who are about to discover their powerfor
both growth or destruction. If we choose wrongly, we fall and the sword
impales us. If we choose well, we will alter the course of our history
and
regain for *Inang Bayan* her lost honor.

--
"In bayanihan, we will be our brother's keeper and forever shut the door
to
hunger among ourselves."