Take Home

I have traveled an unimaginable distance
In economy class
To escape an unkind economy that has given my father cause
To say goodbye to me that day in the airport
With a list of pasalubongs written on the back of a tape receipt.

I have heard the language of a people
Who look at me strangely still
Unless I open my mouth and in front of them
Do an impromptu speech - a sentence or two perfectly accented.
The great performance of my daily life now.

I have eaten meals with so much leftover it can feed a family back home.
(But how do you say take home? Take out? Bring out? To go?)
Back where I am from there are no leftovers.
We eat everything.

We believe everything, too.

We believe in heroes until they tell us they are actually foes.
We detested foes until they are given hero's burials.
We believe in truths about our nation's character
that we will believe to be lies if you tell us to.

A faith like a child's.

We believe in a child-god and we dance on the streets for him.
I have driven the freeways here and you cannot dance on them.
There are many traffic signs but none that say
I can dance for my child-god.

So I obey
Like what my father used to tell me.
Before he died of cancer and was buried as my hero.

I'm wild again, beguiled again
A whimpering, simpering child again
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered, am I

He used to sing that song to me.

[Written in Lake Tahoe, Nov 13 2016, for the Filipino overseas and for Ed]

Mark 6:31

Politics is not new. The Bible says that John the Baptist suffered under the cruel politics of court life. All the elements of a modern-day scandal was there - ambition, sex, power play, and of course, death.

John used to be an ally to King Herod, no doubt enjoyed some favors from the ruler. Until the king wanted to bed his brother's wife Herodias. John warned against it. Of course Herodias hated John. So when the opportunity struck, she asked her own daughter to have John killed. Herod, cornered by his own pride, relented. John the Baptist was killed - his head delivered on a plate.

When the disciples heard what happened, they rushed to Jesus. As the obvious successor to John the Baptist, I'm quite sure they expected some form of retaliation from the Christ. Perhaps at least some public statement denouncing this evil. A protest maybe for the death of a good friend. Any form of political opposition.

Jesus responded with, “Come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest a while.” In the succeeding verses, Jesus proceeded to feed a crowd of five thousand with two loaves and five fish.

 

If you ever feel overwhelmed by the politics of the times, let's heed Jesus' instructions. Seclude, rest a while. Pray, more than ever and focus on what is more important. Because you see friends, politics is like the shifting shapes of sand. But the concerns of the Lord is eternity.

To my beloved friend

You now raise a loud voice
against those you once were.

Make your voice softer,
kinder,
lessen the blows of harsh accusations
that may very well be spoken to you,
to who you once were,
mired in the shame
you shame people for.

If not for Grace,
you would not have been saved
from your own judgments.
Had the measure you now mete
been measured unto you,
you will be found wanting.

(The Lord bless you and keep you:
The Lord make His face to shine upon you,
To shine upon you and be gracious, and be gracious unto you.)

Be gracious.

Give others the chance
at a life you now enjoy.
My friend,
you would not have outrun the loudness
of your own voice.

Father to the fatherless

It's a straw man. The drug menace we face is a symptom of an even bigger issue. It is happening all over the world, and if we are not careful, it will happen in our homes.

Fatherlessness is a problem. Every man must learn that the consequences of his poor decisions not only impacts his own family but society at large. We are sorely missing men who provide for his family responsibly, love his wife, mentor his children - basically, men who keeps the promises he makes.

A society without these fathers is fertile ground for any leader who will act like a dependable tatay. He will fill a vacuum in the hearts of men and women longing for the stability and strength of a loving father. When men abdicates their role to lead, discipline and protect their families, people will appropriate to the government this holy role. Parenting will no longer be a child sitting on her father's lap to be taught, it will be written in laws, implemented in statutes and enforced by state agents legal or otherwise.

And so we go back to the cause. We recognize the straw man for what it is - straws. We go back to the heart of the problem that so often eludes us because it hurts too much to discuss. Where are the fathers?

And then there is God. Who reveals Himself in the poet's words as the "father to the fatherless." The Abba Father. The only hope for the world. Let us know Him for ourselves, this perfect father. He who leads perfectly, loves sacrificially, and protects mightily.

Good morning, Philippines

the blood cries out to you today
of the many dead men and women
sacrificed in the altar of security
  and prosperity
  and comfortable living
  and progress

their blood now seeps into the concrete
flowing down the dark smelly sea
that welcomes your ferry boats and cargo ships
that carries the designer bags of this season
of hate

the rains have come to help
wash away the rusty blood on the gutters
mixing it with dark water
that will be gathered
so garbage pyres may be built and incinerated
so black smoke can rise in the air
a pleasing stench for the god of progress

what of their crying widows, and orphaned children?
hush! drama-drama lang yan.
how inconsiderate of them to exist
while we exist
here enjoying this delicious bloody mary.
(cheers to the good life!)

the blood cries out to you today
of the many dead men and women
you never knew.
Gardo. Michael. Lester. Mac-mac.
Susan. Jennilyn. Tonio. Jay-jay.
Rustom. Lenny. Brian.
An endless humming of names whispered
by the ground that knows them
upon which we will build another mall.

Good morning.

The Dregs of Society

The Watoto Children's Choir is a choir like no other. It is formed by children from all over Uganda who were once orphans. In many places in Uganda, children are left by mothers and fathers who either do not have the resources to raise them or the love. Today in Uganda, a mother rides a bus with a baby in her arms, but would get off the bus alone. Her baby would be left alone where she used to sit. The baby will not know her mother. Forsaken.

Watoto Kids. Credits from Watoto website.

These orphaned children are the dregs of Ugandan society. For a country suffering economically, these children become a societal burden nobody wants to take on, victims of their parents' sin. This is what causes the heart of Watoto's ministry to bleed. Watoto exists to rescue these children, raise them to be leaders, and rebuild the nation. Jesus animates this ministry, and God's promise to look after all orphans and be a father to the fatherless.

This morning, I sat there in Hillsong London at the Dominion Theater listening to the Watoto Children's Choir. They sang about the love of God that rescues and gives hope. I was paralyzed by a singular truth: That this in front of me -  children in colorful costumes, jumping and dancing and shouting songs, unashamed and full of confidence - is exactly what the Church of Christ must look like. Men and women saved by Grace, who will reach out to the dregs of society, hold them in their broken hearts and bring them to a loving Father. It is not a sob story, but a celebration. Anger and resentment have no place in this story, just pure unadulterated love. In a world that cries for justice, this story is the boisterous confident laughter of children who know they are loved.

The Imperial War Museum in London

My thoughts take me to the Holocaust exhibition that I visited the day before in the Imperial War Museum. It was a sobering experience and an education. There in full display were walls upon walls illustrating the atrocities of Adolf Hitler against the Jews. In many ways, German (indeed European) society viewed the Jews during that time as the dregs of society. Politicians attributed to them all that ailed the nation. And thus, removing them must be the solution - the Final Solution - for economic prosperity, peace and order, cultural revival. They all have to be killed, summarily.

Even then, many men and women have objected to this anti-Semitic ideology. They were the intelligentsia who gave dissenting opinions and raised warning flags. But they were all mocked by the political leaders and their followers. They were branded as elitists who did not have the interest of the German nation at heart. Germans all over having been embarrassed by a crushing defeat in World War I have found their dignity and honor in the lies preached by Hitler. Maddened by notions of a great Germany, they believed Hitler's solution. And they mocked anyone who did not share his beliefs.

The radio of course was instrumental in the Nazi propaganda. It broadcasted Hitler's emotionally charged speeches. People everywhere consumed the lies and contributed to it. Teachers singled Jewish children from their classrooms and publicly humiliated them as traitors to the fatherland. As radio stations broadcasted lies upon lies, it began to sound like the truth. In many ways, radio was social media.

The Holocaust Exhibit

And in this atmosphere, Adolf Hitler rose to fame. He once said, "The man who is to become a dictator is not compelled, he wills it." And did he will it. His own private army - the Schutzstaffel (SS, "Protective Squad") carried out the logical outworking of the words he spewed. When he said the Jews must be removed, his death squad searched for them and killed them. Germans looked on from their balcony windows approvingly. When an SS soldier wanted to humiliate an Orthodox Jew by shaving his beard and sideburns, he would only shout for a pair of scissors to be brought to him. And pairs upon pairs of scissors will be thrown out of windows from apartments around him.

Shoes retrieved from exterminated Jews in Aushwitz

In the end, the Nazi atrocities would reach a crescendo in the concentration camps. Auschwitz was the perfect model. Thousands would come in trains never to live again. These Jews, declared subhuman naturally did not have rights at all, not even the right to live. So they were burned. The rest, subjected to horrible medical experimentation of the most demonic nature.

The Archbishop Clemens August's words spoken in 1941 are now emblazoned in the Holocaust museum:

If you establish and apply the principle that you can kill 'unproductive' fellow human beings then woe betide us all when we become old and frail! If one is allowed to kill the unproductive people then woe betide the invalids who have used up, sacrificed and lost their health and strength in the productive process. If one is allowed forcibly to remove one's unproductive fellow human beings then woe betide loyal soldiers who return to the homeland seriously disabled, as cripples, as invalids. If it is once accepted that people have the right to kill 'unproductive' fellow humans--and even if initially it only affects the poor defenseless mentally ill--then as a matter of principle murder is permitted for all unproductive people, in other words for the incurably sick, the people who have become invalids through labor and war, for us all when we become old, frail and therefore unproductive.

Then, it is only necessary for some secret edict to order that the method developed for the mentally ill should be extended to other 'unproductive' people, that it should be applied to those suffering from incurable lung disease, to the elderly who are frail or invalids, to the severely disabled soldiers. Then none of our lives will be safe any more. Some commission can put us on the list of the 'unproductive,' who in their opinion have become worthless life. And no police force will protect us and no court will investigate our murder and give the murderer the punishment he deserves.

Let us learn from the tyranny of the past, my fellow Christians. Who are the dregs of society today? Who are those you feel do not have the same rights as you do? What lies have you believed whose logical outworking is the summary execution of precious lives? Let us not be deceived by the lies of the enemy. May our search for a just and prosperous society not come at the cost of lives who are our responsibility, entrusted to our care by the Great Shepherd Himself.

The words that the Watoto Children's Choir often repeat in their songs and short testimonies are these - "God will never leave me alone." They of course know how it is to be alone, left in a bus. As did the many Jews. And yet they cried for Immanuel, "God with us."

Let us not leave lives alone, my brothers and sisters. Let us reach out to the dregs of society, hold them in our broken hearts and bring them to a loving Father.