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 power for 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.
--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 power for 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."
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