YESTERDAY AND EVERY DAY

Yesterday 76 members of our seminary community, led by our president, joined the United People's SONA. It was, for many, a liminal moment. A rite of passage. A baptism of fire. Actually, more water than fire... And we were prepared with our umbrellas and raincoats. And boots! Yesterday, 76 members of our community woke up earlier than usual, others did not even sleep, to prepare streamers, banners, rice, hard-boiled egg, and Adobo. Yesterday 76 members of our community waited for our jeepneys to arrive and spent over 4 hours in those jeepneys going to and from Commonwealth Avenue. Yesterday, 76 members of our community walked 6 kilometers to be a part of the thousands who protested against the War on Terror, the War on Drugs, and the War on the Poor that Duterte and his cohorts have declared against the Filipino People. 

Yesterday, individually and corporately, 76 members of our community participated in embodying our core values: prophetic boldness, ecumenical openness, compassionate witness, contextual timeliness, and Christ like faithfulness. Yesterday, Monday, July 23rd 2018, 76 members of our seminary community experienced what majority of our people experience EVERY DAY.

Every day, millions wake up at dawn to ride jeepneys, buses, and trains in order to go to work. Every day they have to line up to get these rides that take up to four to six hours of their lives in traffic. Every day, millions walk 6 or more kilometers a day to go to school or work. Or to get clean water. Every day, countless people spend hours under the sun, without umbrellas, or under the rain, without raincoats, toiling. Farmers, fisher-folk, laborers… Mostly overworked, grossly underpaid. Trying to make ends meet. 

Many surviving, each day, on one meal of rice and hard-boiled egg. No adobo. Struggling against death forces; working for life in its fullness. Do not forget this. Ever! For so many of our sisters and brothers our yesterday is their Every Day! 

Remember our core values? I'm pretty sure all of us know them by heart already. Those values are best embodied, like we did yesterday, in the every day of the masses. Eventually, our yesterday will be a weekend integrating with basic communities. Then two summer exposures of 6 to 7 weeks each. Then a full year. 

In the fullness of time God decided to go on community integration. We call it the incarnation. In the Gospel of Mark, God is always coming out. Out of heaven; out of the home his disciples wanted to be the locus of his healing; out of the tomb! He was a woodworker based in Nazareth most of his life. Then he leaves Nazareth. He started spending a day or two among the fisher-folk by the Sea of Galilee. A weekend with farmers. A year with the masses, displaced, dispossessed, disenfranchised, who protested against the conjugal dictatorship of the Roman Empire and the Judea Elite. 

In the fullness of time, God decided to leave heaven to be with those whose only hope is God. And God is still with them, every day. As they work for life in all its fullness. And God is waiting for us. Yes, for you. And for me.

So that eventually, our yesterday becomes every day. Amen.

[post-People's SONA reflection]