Loving the poor

THIS is about Angel. She is suffering from premature aging. She will die before she reaches the normal age of puberty.

If you think you can make her illness go away by clicking "Like" below, don't bother. Her illness is not going away nor can your liking make her happy.

How could it? Angel is so dirt poor she can't always afford lunch. It's not seldom she goes hungry the entire day. For those of us who advertise our quest to have the perfect bodies and claim that sleeping hungry is balmy, try telling her that baloney.

At least she is sensible and practical enough not to waste the few cents she gets from begging in paying for a broadband connection, just so she can frequently update her status or post the picture of her maggoty lunch on Facebook for the world to envy.

If you really want to help her, you can find her on the streets leading to the Redemptorist Church.

If you are in Alcoy or Tudela or if you're too far from the Redemptorist church, you may also find her in your town's plaza, piazza, Times Square, The Kremlin, McArthur Park, Gorky Park, Bourbon Street or on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams.

Heck, her real name is not even Angel. Not even Jane, or Angelo. Neither Patty nor Reno. Neither Miklo nor Inting. Neither Lolita nor Roel. Who knows what name what father or mother gave her? And who cares about gender?

And who knows what her real illness could be? Most who are like her go through life without even going through a single clinic or hospital door. Many go straight to the morgue prior to being donated to science for the benefit of some of our sons and daughters in nearby medical schools.

It's ironic how the unschooled has the most to contribute to medical science.

So if you want to help and make the lives of many Angels better, don't launch an airstrike against Malaysia. An offer to edit the English of some hackers might be enough to humiliate them into submission.

Seriously, if you want to change the bat-shit lives many endure, elect into office someone who has spent the good number of his public years in the service of the people, not someone who used his public office in the service of some.

Know that those who have the roadmap for progress are those who usually have built kilometers of roads behind them. Realize that those who are better equipped at bridging the present with the future are those who have built physical bridges for today's people to tread on.

Recognize that those who made health care their daily concern in the entire duration of their public office are the ones who can better formulate programs on health care that really matter.

Accept that he who has the capacity in his heart to send an unnamed child to school is he who has built schools in the farthest barangays so that no schoolchild has to endure what his forebear endured--kilometers of mostly unpaved roads just so he can have formal education.

Beware those who mock the poor by claiming that they were poor and yet have done nothing to alleviate the life of even one poor farmer.

Know in your heart that the one who truly loves the poor hates poverty. He has to vanquish, not stoke it.

And, lastly, vote for me in the conclave if you want more sermons as bummer as this.—Joel Bontuyan