THE other day, a friend asked me to bless his new (his 5th) gas station. It’s a no-frill, bare-bones type of outfit, selling cheap diesel and liquefied petroleum gas and catering mainly to taxi and jeepney drivers. It reminded me of a mini people’s park.
Aside from his business partners who were young, looking dynamic and moneyed, those who attended the affair were simple folks. To complete the picture, there was even a vagrant who passed by and immediately felt invited, to the amusement of all.
It’s an environment I always like to be. If I can just escape from my duties and the other things my present station in life brings me to, I think I’ll always find myself in that kind of place.
It’s where I feel the elemental pulse of the people. It’s where I feel I am into something just beginning, a wellspring of possibilities, needing to develop. It’s where I invariably enjoy the home-spun ways of simple folks. It’s like being with children.
Isn’t this a form of regression? It certainly is, if done in obsession and swamped by sentimentalism. But if done in the proper frame of mind, I think it’s a healthy attitude to have.
It gives you an idea of how things were in their original, that is, what their pristine designs and purposes were, since aspects of civilization
often distort them. It gives you a sense of rootedness. I welcome every opportunity to be with simple people.
These occasions not only give me a measure of pure joy. It also fans, quite vigorously, the flames of hope. That’s because you can’t help but take part in their lives, their concerns and aspirations, and you surely would want to give some help.
Simple folks are quite transparent and earnest. In the technical school where I am chaplain of, which caters to students of modest means, I get high just listening to their spontaneous confidences of their situation.
I remember one student who’s living with his uncle, a “trisikad” driver, because his parents abandoned him as a little boy. After classes he would still sideline as a “trisikad” driver just to earn his P30 daily allowance he needs to go to school.
It’s very moving to see him chasing dreams even while certain harsh realities are chasing him too. He has vision, yet he knows how to grapple with his daily struggles. With a sporty attitude, he displays no hang-up of self-pity.
Thanks be to God, I am discovering more and more young people like this. A number of young men, just starting with their career or business, are now providing me with precious, inspiring stories.
I consider them hidden heroes, even saints, because their struggles and sacrifices, keeping the faith and hope in spite of severe trials, must be producing a lot of good to all of us in a hidden way.
Of course, I give them pieces of advice. And how they appreciate them, reinforcing my belief that man has in his heart, no matter how deeply buried in his heart, a genuine yearning for God. We should always be hopeful!
When you give them words of encouragement, when you open horizons or them, when you help them fight against despair, pessimism, self-doubt, bitterness, when you teach them to pray, they can unleash impulses to move on and get focused on the truly necessary in life.
But it’s actually me who learn a lot from them. When I see the initial signs of their faith acting up and witness the blossoming of such faith, I feel greatly blessed.
When you witness the conversion, the purification process, the gradual transformation of a person who tries to identify his will with God’s will, it’s an indescribably beautiful privilege.
They give me the embodiment of spiritual realities known through some spiritual considerations and similar practices. They dramatize things for me, giving flesh and blood to doctrine, principles and theories on spirituality.
We have to thank God for these developments. Hidden and quiet, these stirrings of spiritual life always leave tremendous effects on us all!
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