GLIMPSES
Jose Ma. Montelibano
I feel so sad watching many of my fellow Filipinos remain in fantasy land
waiting for the white knight to rescue the damsel in distress. Yes, the
damsel, our beloved motherland, is in grave distress. But there will be no
white knight, no Alexander the Great, no King Arthur. There will only be
politicians, the better ones we call traditional, the worse, *trapos*.
That is the fate of democracy and free elections. Heroes are not voted in,
they rise to the occasion. Elections will not bring the heroes who will
rescue our motherland. Only emergency situations, only revolutions, raise
heroes and saviors. Elections bring politicians. Even reformers, if they
agree to seek office by running, campaigning and hoping to be voted in,
they, too, will become politicians by the day and fade as reformers along
the way.
Heroes make a people strong. By their extraordinary courage and sacrifices,
heroes stir the nobility in others and provoke the heroism in them. Heroes
come from war, from battle, from confronting dragons and great evil. They
are not politicians, but even heroes will become politicians if they submit
to the rules of politics.
Are Filipinos in an emergency? Is the country in grave danger? Is our future
facing serious challenges? Is our collective soul being dragged to hell?
Filipinos must look at their lives, as individuals and as a people.
Filipinos must decide whether our present state is precarious, miserable as
it is and threatened by even more disastrous probabilities. Is the poverty
of tens of millions a horrible condition? Is the dishonesty among those in
the highest positions scandalous and the equivalent of looting public
treasure? Is the arrogance of the powerful disdainful of the people and the
public good? Are killings, for cause or for revenge, in uniform or against
the uniform, drenching the soil of our ancestral domain, the land of our
forefathers?
If the comfort and the luxury of a few outweigh the misery and pain of the
many, is this not a social and religious anomaly that cries for divine
justice? Is there enough moral degradation that can be deduced from the
public acts of our leaders to constitute public sin, and justify righteous
anger and protest action from the Catholic Church? Or is the tolerance of
evil by moral shepherds the greater evil that fouls the sanctity demanded of
positions of power?
It may be that we are not yet in an emergency. It might be that Filipinos
like me and others who see evil strut like peacocks and poor people go
hungry in a land of plenty simply imagine too much. We may see thievery as
wrong when others accept it as the standard of public service. We may see
lies as defiance of sacred truth even when many public officials casually do
so in front of our faces. We may see ethics take a nose dive as proof of the
pollution of our souls when many do not know its meaning anymore.
What, then, are all good men and women supposed to do? What, then, are
citizens supposed to do? We have asked for good governance ever since I
could remember, ever since I was too young to vote but could hear cries for
reform. We have prayed for good leaders, for upright governance; Catholic
masses include these prayers daily yet hardly receive any. All these decades
of advocacy and prayers have resulted in what we are today, in what we have
today. Yet, we do not learn and we still cry good governance and still pray
even more.
There is something missing, not something small, not something
insignificant. For failure to be so glaring, then what is missing is a large
piece of the puzzle. It is not something we should search the heavens and
the ends of the earth for. It must something that is just here, maybe
everywhere.
What is missing is us, the people, the victims who stay victims waiting for
the messiah who will never come. If we do not do what we want our leaders to
do, then our leaders will never feel the pressure to follow our wishes. Only
a people who give much can ask for much. And because we do not give, we
cannot demand.
Heroes have risen from the ground, from the ranks of the ordinary, even more
than from the ranks of the elite. When crisis grips a people and a country,
when threats intensify and reach not just our imagination but our very
homes, we will resist, we will fight back, and we will produce heroes. We
will not be voting them in.
So there will be no heroes come May 2010. Elections will not produce
warriors, reformers, saviors; elections will produce winners among
politicians, many of whom we may like, and maybe just as many who will be
bigger thieves, bigger liars. That is the way of elections. That is the way
May 2010 will be. That is the way governance will be after the elections –
the way it was before.
Unless we say “no more,” unless we say, “tataya ako,” unless we do what we
have never done before – take leadership as a people, adopt integrity as our
standard, seek nobility and honor as our birthright. If we resist evil, not
one by one but together, the white knight will come, the warrior savior will
come, the future we want will come. Good leaders and good governance will
come when we become a strong people, not before, not in a democracy through
elections.
Let us, then, convert the 2010 elections into a revolution. We have one
enemy – evil in many forms, stealing, lying, killing. We must be on people,
one army. We cannot turn against one another or there will be no revolution,
only anarchy and more of bad governance. We must find our strength in our
solidarity, in the common vision of the common good, and common action that
will demand compliance by public servants. That common action is us, the
citizens, giving to country beyond giving to our families, sacrificing for
neighbor beyond sacrificing for our families, and ready to offer not just
time, talent and treasure but life itself.
And hero after hero will rise from among us.
--
"In bayanihan, we will be our brother's keeper and forever shut the door to
hunger among ourselves."
From: emeterio Barcelon
To: Delia
Cc: cris icban
Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2009 5:46:49 AM
Subject: Material and Spiritual Enegy
Our problems include poverty and corruption. We need energy to solve them. Is material energy enough? We are used to petroleum energy but really it does not matter where we get our energy, so long as we get energy to fuel our travel, our communication, and whatever we need to live decently and comfortably. The next few years will see energy from alternative energy sources, most of which will be renewable energy. If we had the energy we can lick the problems of poverty. The most prospective is the energy coming from the sun but also there are alternative energy from water, wind, geothermal and nuclear. And there may even be liquefied energy from wood and other sources. It can help with poverty reduction but will it also help to cure corruption?
We have dreamed of no corruption or at least reduce it to a minimum level. But we have tried laws, moral suasion, commandments, police effort, coercion and encouragement, reminders that God sees all our actions and will reward the good and punish the evil. But corruption persists. We need energy to root out corruption. If we can solve corruption most of our problems of poverty, and human degradation will also be solved. An unusual suggestion is a call to interior spirituality. On the level of existence God already penetrates our being. But we are invited to go beyond that to a consciousness of God’s love. God is inside us as well as outside us just as air surrounds us. What we need is the awareness of this presence and harness the energy that He offers. We need a realization of the power within us and the invitation to be one with Him.
Someone used the figure of two candles. The candles have separate existence but when their flames are joined, they are one fire. One cannot be distinguished from the other. This flame gives light, warmth, and energy. It can burn and purify. It can be a flame that destroys but on the other hand a flame that inflames us with love. The Chinese proverb that it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness comes to mind. This flame can give us light to see what can be done and to see the truth. It can also give the warmth of love and the energy to burn the dross in us and to unite us with our neighbor and the Almighty in love. The fire of awareness of this love can consume us all in a single flame.
Corruption is to take unto ourselves what belongs to others or the community. What is mine is not yours. In corruption we want it only for ourselves. But if united as many different candles burning with the same flame, it becomes only we and us. And there is no different you. We become one in the same flame of love. What is mine is yours and what is yours is mine if we are is burning with same flame of God’s love. We have not been successful with material solutions to our poverty and corruption. May be we can try spiritual solutions of union and awareness of God’s indwelling in us and the energy of His love. We may be able to overcome poverty and corruption. If we are united in the same flame there will be no distinction between I and thou. There will be no need for greed or corruption. With no corruption we can solve our problem of poverty and human degradation. This solution may be unusual but it seems it is the only solution we have not tried. The Filipino people are religious but we have not harnessed it to solve our social problems, It has been individualistic devotions which are good but not good enough. We need awareness of our brotherhood and the source of this brotherhood is the presence of God in us and outside of us. We are not fully conscious of this truth and we need to become more aware. In other words we are invited to an interior spirituality instead of external action. We are invited to let the God who dwells within us to do the work.
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