And hearing a familiar refrain
The first time I visited their place was way back nineteen years ago. Their house was small and humid. There were many occupants, too. These people were not alien to a noisy life, located as they were, right at the foot of Del Pan Bridge, Tondo, Manila, where heavy trucks would normally pass by and those omnipresent jeepneys would fill the air with smoke and squalor, impervious and insensitive to poor pedestrians.
One afternoon, a priest-friend invited me to a lazy walk, yes, we were oblivious to passersby and unmindful of where our feet would take us. We would meet countless people who walked like hardworking ants, busy with their loads. In a distance, my priest-friend pointed to the foot of the bridge and, in a few minutes, we found ourselves sitting with the sisters of Mother Teresa. Take some biscuits, the mother superior offered. I was deeply embarrassed to think how in the midst of their poverty they still could offer something to us some imported biscuits at that! A visitor gave these to us, the sister shyly volunteered the information.
We visited their chapel. Written conspicuously on the wall of the altar were two simple words of Christ, I thirst! The chapel was simple. It would have been the most rustic and unadorned, were it not for a flower vase standing in a lonely corner. Then the sister ushered us to the inner sanctum of their convent where lo and behold, those frail little bodies belted out their little cries as though welcoming us visitors perhaps or surely, fortunately or unfortunately, that was the only language they knew as infants lying in their cribs! There I experienced firsthand the meaning of poverty, not as an idea, but poverty with a human face. My priest-friend knew I had a heart for them. Without my knowing it, I found myself joining their community Masses in the next few months.
Then my next assignment was in Antipolo. Again, one lazy walk led us to a house named home of love. After an uphill trek we finally spotted the main gate. Far from the noise of the city, this home of love takes care of orphaned, abandoned or malnourished children. Scenes of my first assignment in Tondo came flashing on my mind: frail bodies, coughing lungs, sweat-drenched toddlers, crying infants’ poverty with a human face, taken care of by loving hands and generous souls, thanks to the sisters of Mother Teresa.
This year, on the eve of my birthday, I visited this house again. I used all that my humble birthday party budget could manage to share with these little angels. The scene was familiar playful toddlers, crying and laughing babies. I flashed my familiar “rabbit’s ears” greeting, easy to do this with children actually, all you need to do is raise your hands on each side of your face with each thumb planted slightly above each of your ears and the remaining fingers moving back and forth together. The children were quick to respond like giggling angels. We brought them some spaghetti, thanks to a generous couple, Edwin and Miriam Ruiz, and left them with some more stuff that would hopefully sustain them for a few more days.
I wanted the visit to be short so as not to instigate, agitate or trigger the religious rebel in me, or so as not to awaken what would have been more appropriately called “sheer prophetic instinct” that would have raised questions like why can’t all the filthy rich in this country not have some little space in their hearts for these vulnerable tiny hearts, whose bodies are so frail, yet whose faces are so ready to smile, and whose hearts are so loving and yet so much in need of a family to belong to!” It’s easy to blame poverty and cry out to high heavens for the need to manage the population! Yet, it’s not so easy to blame unshared wealth, selfish wealth, scandalous wealth, and even to blame society’s thunderous and deafening silence on these kinds of wealth! Yet even as I wanted the visit to be short, every minute of it prodded me to extend a bit, if only a bit more. I obliged. We literally spoon-fed the children, wiped their faces, embraced their frail bodies, soothed their lonely hearts, or just lulled some babies to sleep (the last being the hardest thing to do, by the way!). Little things, yes, but big enough in the eyes and heart of a child.
Then the rain started to fall, as if to signal our time was up. I looked at the children once more then ran to the car for shelter from the cruel rain. I revved the car and took a longer gaze at those eating and running and playful and crying children and then I started my way back home. There were no long goodbyes and tight-hugging farewells, just drops of rain drowning all my sentiments. But who would not be moved by those little creatures singing their lungs out with a “Happy Birthday” on the eve of my birthday? When I heard them, I pretended not to hear them. Not that I was insensitive to their grateful gesture. But who would not feel guilty for not having visited them for the longest time? Yet I knew deep within I never left them. We were just separated by time and distance. Deep within me I knew they were close to me, even if that bond was only buoyed up by some lighthearted rabbit’s ears! Deep within me I promised that they would always find a home in my heart! And as we drove down some laidback muddy roads, I got a feeling I was revisiting a familiar terrain in my heart, and the laughter and cries of children, a familiar refrain, thanks to those little lungs! I could only wish, hope and pray with a sigh … “when will the Lord lead me to the right people so that we can have enough resources to build another orphanage to accommodate more children out there?” For now, dear homeless children, I can give you only my heart, a heart struggling to live the spirit of the Beatitudes, a heart with its rhythmic presence and absence, nearness and distance, beating on an all too familiar terrain and hearing an all too familiar refrain! God bless you, my angels. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, the Kingdom of God is theirs”
