Written after the People Power movement in the Philippines removed Ferdinand Marcos as President and ended a long period of Martial Law
The task before us now, if we would not perish, is to cast aside our ancient prejudices and build the future
This reflection is a personal sharing of my own journey as I have been confronted by life and death, suffering and resurrection, hope and despair, passivity and responsibility, surrender and struggle, defeat and victory … in my experience with the people, specifically the struggling poor.
It is a DRINKING FROM MY OWN WELL and from the well of the people, which is the heart of Peoples’ Power.
It is a search to discover the HIDDEN WEALTH THAT COMES FROM THE PEOPLE AND SHOULD BE A RESOURCE FOR THEM
My Challenge: dig into your own well
- Examine how the people have spoken to you about hope, resurrection and movement toward the kingdom.
- Examine also how you have registered these things in your own life.
I Invite you to CREATE/DISCOVER SYMBOLS OUT OF CONCRETE EXPERIENCES
When we interpret experiences, derive meaning from them, it is a biblical process, a reading of the signs of the times
Our question to answer:
From what side of history do we make our interpretations and derive our meanings:
- From the side of security or
- The side of deprivation and exploitation?
CHILDREN are my predominant symbols
- In children are most faithfully reflected the hopes and aspirations, pain and suffering of a people
- Children are the potential bearers of the Spirit for a New Age
- Children are the criterion for the future: what is their experience now is a prophecy for the future
- If you wish to see a reflection of tomorrow, look into the eyes of children in their innocence and suffering
A boy of 10 in Samar witnesses the beheading of his father by government militia, and his head is used as a football. The boy has not spoken a word since, struck dumb. His mother is being held in detention in a Cebu prison for common criminals because she is a member of a peoples’ organization seeking justice. Look into his eyes and feel the blazing message: about suffering, anger, violence, reconciliation, hope and transformation, about the future. Let his look search like fire among the forest of our theology to discern between what is truth and what is illusion.
On Good Friday I joined a picket at the National Housing Authority office near Smokey Mountain. (That living mountain of garbage from which people made their living) The people attending the picket had been under threat of harassment (think truncheons and arrest) since Tuesday evening.
I was lying on the ground under the stars, one with a group of people including a mother with a young one-year old baby. The baby stirred and cried; spontaneously the mother released her breast and brought the child to suckle. The image shot from the stars of Isaiah 66.13 “… like a son comforted by his mother will I comfort you.” A promise of life in the midst of violence and suffering.
Symbols are integral and crucial for our lives. As church people it is our professional task to preach the Suffering, Death and Resurrection of Jesus. In this task we become the architects, producers and agents of Christian Symbols. Our market, as it were, is the people who have become dependent upon our “products”.
We come to the people with our middleclass consciousness. Can we detect strains or traces of what we might call “Religious Imperialism”?
In producing Christian symbols (forms of prayer, talk of unity, ways of celebration and reconciliation) how much material have we taken from the “other side of history”? How much have we taken on the culture of the dark side of history: the exploitation, deprivation, poverty etc.
How truly do Christian symbols reflect the reality of the poor for whom we produce?
There is a parallel: drug companies through hard sell advertising push expensive imported drugs and make people dependent on them, while seeking to obliterate the practice of natural and herbal medicine which already exist in the people.
When we as church people look at a symbol that arises from the people themselves (e.g. people power at EDSA) what criteria do we use when we assign ourselves the task of judging whether this symbol is sufficiently Christian and therefore can be sacralised (made holy, legitimized)?
Within the peoples’ movement the Church is very selective about which symbols arising from the people it chooses to sacralise or legitimise as Christian.
In the barrio of Jovellar Albay in 1979 a young man of 16 died, a farmer’s son. He cut his foot, it became infected, there was no medicine. Eventually amputated below the knee, poorly, it became infected again and he died a slow and painful death.
He was tortured by the violence of life.
Yet he, his father, mother and brothers worked harder than any church person or Makati executive. He was active in the church. So it was not a simple infection that killed him: his life was pierced through with a murderous shaft released from the bow of an evil system, tipped with the poison of injustice.
Yet his death and suffering were proclaimed in the liturgy as redemptive, held up as a Christian symbol of Life triumphing over death. But I could not approach his coffin in the wake for I saw no triumph of life nor sign of redemption; if his eyes were open they would speak of judgement upon us all
What is the difference between Roberto’s death and that of a Cordillera tribesman tortured to death over three days in the same year because he held a gun in his hand defending his life, his family, his land (Creator’s gift to him) from the greed and avarice of the military-backed government -business corporation? The violators were sanctified by military chaplains and church investments in those companies. There are many ways of symbolic legitimization. Can his suffering and death be sacralised as a legitimate Christian symbol of redemptive suffering? What are the criteria? Who determines the criteria?
One of the deaths we have to die as church people is the death of surrender:
- Surrender our power as producers of Christian symbols, or at least our monopoly, and with great humility receive symbols from the people
- Making ourselves vulnerable to the poor so that our concrete experience with them can shatter our illusions as religious manufacturers:
- Of Christian lifestyle, community, witnessing, peoples’ movements that are legitimised as Christian within parameters established by us without reference to the people who are poor and struggling
Do we sufficiently believe in the Resurrection that we are prepared to undergo such death?
I remember my last mission in the Bicol region from January to April 1982. This is one of the most forsaken barrios I have seen, Pantao on the west coast of Albay. The landscape was beautiful, the situation of people stark. In this place I experienced my own death-of-sorts and it was a shattering experience.
We preached Jesus as Lord and the building of his Kingdom. On Tuesday of Holy Week, I was invited as speaker to the High School graduation. This was held in the open air with the use of gas lamps, there was no hall or room big enough at the school for hold the ceremony indoors. I used the opportunity to deliver the Christian message about death and life and hope and motivating them toward building the Christian community.
There was a stone wall separating the school grounds from the outside road. On this were perched a host of young kids who had come along “for the show”. There was not much other entertainment in Pantao! The weight of the kids suddenly caused the wall to collapse while I was delivering the message. In a moment of pandemonium there were howls and giggles of laughter as the kids ran away into the night. Fortunately, no one was hurt. Then everyone settled and I tried to get on with my speech.
That event was a critical moment in my life as a church person, priest, builder of the Christian community. For the people of Pantao it was a passing moment of some embarrassment for the school leaders. For myself however it was a SYMBOL of the shattering, collapsing of my illusions about myself and the mission of the church. It was as if the children were saying “Don’t take yourself so seriously, for what you are doing will have no lasting good effect upon our life”
My question of myself: “In what concrete ways is Jesus Lord of this place now that it was not before our mission?”
Note well, we really mobilized the people, they responded magnificently and appreciated our presence. However, to what extent were we covering over the reality of death and poverty, how much legitimizing or sacralising the violence of their lives? We were the architects, the directors, the producers. The script was from a foreigner -not as in Australia v Filipino – but someone from outside; a teacher not a listener, a giver not a receiver; we were leading the people to further construct the Kingdom of God without reference to their reality, their agenda and their script.
I would ask you to reflect on the concrete experience of yours with the people that has managed to shatter your illusions about faith, service and community. With its consequent pain and joy.
It was this experience that led me to spend Good Friday and Holy Saturday with the people of Smokey Mountain: to experience and interpret Christian symbols from the other side of history and culture. At that time preparations were being made to evict the people from Smokey Mountain and transfer them to Carmona, to what is called “The field of toilets”, for all that was there were cement slabs and a toilet at one end.
My experience of CALVARY arose not from the action of flagellants who abound around Quiapo during Holy Week, but from the Mountain of Garbage both the source of life for these people as well as the very threat to their life.
The EASTER VIGIL was the NHA picket, with its agenda of preventing the removal of people to Carmona and provision of proper livelihood in Tondo. It had its own liturgy, its own movement. Like the apostles of old, they were afraid, not of the news but of the police, and the people had their own security patrols waiting for the dawn, ensuring no Judas-person entered their space. They waited for the dawn, not just for the next day but for the dawn of a new day. I said no prescribed prayers that night, but it was a journey of faith.
The RESURRECTION. I do not see the Resurrection as a finished product.
I liken it to a fine piece of wood which is given to the artist who then creates out of this wood their own expression of Resurrection. The wood given to us contains a hidden message, power, secret and it is for us to create, to fashion our ongoing Resurrection. This requires planning, attention, care and persistence.
Your lot is very bad if your wood is stolen by an oppressor who uses it for firewood or worse still to shape a truncheon with which to hit you.
Your lot is very bad if your tools are taken from you or you have to rent them from a foreigner at such exorbitant fees that you have to sell your birthright to take them in your hands. Or if you have to sell your carving afterwards in order to live for one more day.
VULNERABILITY
There was a little boy, dirty and in shorts tattered, who came up to me as I wandered around the smoking, smelly mountain. He took my hand. I saw his hand had a terrible open wound, the wound of the Crucified. He kept saying KAIBIGAN KITA TALAGA. (You are truly my friend) I felt such a mixture of joy and anger at that moment. That child became for me the symbol of Christian Vulnerability and Openness. We would not have any part in his Resurrection unless we are prepared to take his hand and go where he leads us.
We would do well to walk naked from time to time, like Francis of Assisi. At least figuratively. That is, to strip ourselves of our many pretensions, prejudices, theologies, great learnings and walk in the filth of life to find the seeds of Christian awakening and resurrection.
