SINCE this is a weekend issue, allow me to set aside politics and governance and share with you a reflection I had from a recollection I attended way back.
Our facilitator then was Father Jose Magadia, a Jesuit. He talked about good and evil choices and discernment of spirit. What was so nice about him was that he really guided us to reflect on the choices we made as we do our jobs and as we relate with our family and friends. Here are my nuggets of insights:
While I was practically raised from a humble beginning, my job over the years prior to joining media entails that I rub shoulders with the haves and blend with the privileged in the community. On such circle everything shines and glitters; pretty faces, flashy cars, fancy restaurants; at one point I was even taught how to talk with flair. I got to learn to blend in. Blending in isn't much of a problem, I was cultured well by my parents, the bigger challenge I found myself facing was on how to stay grounded and how to keep focused on what’s essential.
Indeed affluence can be blinding, and when one swims in it, it’s so easy for one to lose oneself and submit to the appetite for materialism and beauty.
While I was doing consultancies with politicians and businessmen and even while I was mingling with my affluent students, I found myself in a lot of compromises. Somehow, pure idealism just didn’t cut it. What were one’s black and white while I was younger are already in different shades of grey. I still have my principles though, and I still hold on to them. Those things get me by when the going gets tough.
Bending some of my principles however seems inevitable, sometimes I find myself treading on thin ice. While I thought that this is bad, I find myself reformed in what I see as good. I am not saying one has to be dirty to get cleaned or one has to sin to be merciful but getting stained or committing mistakes somehow makes it easier (at least for me) to be more compassionate and non-judgmental to others.
Poor choices humbled me and taught me to see people as more than the totality of what they do. Compassion this time means no longer just recognizing the suffering of the others but personally relating to the struggle as a common experience.
It made me realize that although the pursuit of righteousness may still be as noble as it can be, there is a higher calling than that, and that is to extend compassion to others on the level of genuine concern without the shades of self-righteousness. Such is a vocation to be bearer of grace.
Compassion is a grace, and it’s just what this world needs now. And somehow, it usually comes easy from those who have sinned more. For when we start measuring others with our own cup, we would always come to realize that we are not quite different from everyone else. We all have our shortcomings and our shares of faults. And I bet, that was the reason why one after another, each man left when Jesus said “let he who has not sinned cast the first stone on this woman.”