So it's Sunday
and we started our day with the mass. We heard it at 8 am and it was almost
time for the homily when we got there just 5 minutes after 8 am. The mass was
supposed to be in English so I was expecting to hear it in full English but
during the homily, the priest was switching from Waray to English and then back
again. I don't really listen to the homilies in our parish primarily because
the sound system is awful and secondarily because the priests are heavily-accented and it is
really hard t decipher what they want to tell us during their sermon. This
time, since it is a new church, I decided to listen and the priest was talking
about Jesus as a good shepherd. We are all called to be shepherds in our lives
- helping people find their way. The priest talked about how the image of a
good shepherd is one who loves. Normally, if we are shepherds and we lose one
sheep, we would negotiate our losses in relation to the amount of effort we
will exert to find that missing sheep and we tend to lean more towards leaving
that one sheep behind. After all, it is just one while the shepherd still has
99. But a good shepherd will search for his lost sheep because he loves that
sheep just as much as the others. Nothing else has the capacity to give life
but love. I think here he means life as being more human. We can make another
person more human by loving them. This entails respecting them and upholding
their dignity. The priest also talked about true love and how it is a
self-emptying. It makes sense because the only way we can love fully is by
giving ourselves up, by recognizing that the self in not for the self. We
should love the way Christ loves - fully and other-centered. Then I got to
thinking about how everybody, myself included, is so afraid to love. It's like
we are opening ourselves to a world of pain, and we don't want to get hurt at
all. It seems as though love is an exercise of letting go and waiting for the
blow to come. People don’t see love as very profound in the sense that the
experience of letting go is the experience of understanding that the self is
not for the self, and that the world does not revolve around the self. In fact,
the self does not own the self. I guess in a way, loving is a way of letting go
of the petty lives we live and giving ourselves a way to experience a life that
is oriented towards Christ.
After the mass, we headed off to DSWD to have a talk with Mr. Resty Maputo who is the assistant regional director for rehabilitations. He explained to us that the scale of the disaster determines the level of support that it receives. When there is a small disaster, the barangay usually handles it. When more than 2 barangays are affected by the disaster, the municipality takes over. When more than 2 municipalities are affected, the province does, then the region, and finally the national government has to intervene. During Yolanda, 6 regions were affected and so the national government had to intervene. The local government units were also wiped out and that means they were completely dysfunctional post-disaster. The DSWD was aware of the scale of the disaster and already prepared relief goods prior to the storm surges. The problem here though is their office is located in Tacloban and it got washed away as well.
Post disaster, the DWSD wants the people not to be dependent on the relief goods anymore. Although, there are people that they still give help to like the vulnerable sectors. They offer an alternative to people who can't find work which is called cash for work. It is helpful so that people can help clean up the environment as well as earn a little money (they get 100% minimum wage). I find it really cool that even though they are affected as well, they don't want the people to be complacent and to keep having that "victim" stigma. I like that the people in power don't really think of themselves as helpless and there is a conviction in their efforts to help others get back up. They know that they can rise from the rubble and they are convincing others that they can as well. Hopefulness is infectious, I think and when something that bad happens to people, that is really beneficial. Hope is a way we show our love and based on what I understood from the homily early, love gives life. For the people here, it is a new life, a new beginning, as they get back up.
After the mass, we headed off to DSWD to have a talk with Mr. Resty Maputo who is the assistant regional director for rehabilitations. He explained to us that the scale of the disaster determines the level of support that it receives. When there is a small disaster, the barangay usually handles it. When more than 2 barangays are affected by the disaster, the municipality takes over. When more than 2 municipalities are affected, the province does, then the region, and finally the national government has to intervene. During Yolanda, 6 regions were affected and so the national government had to intervene. The local government units were also wiped out and that means they were completely dysfunctional post-disaster. The DSWD was aware of the scale of the disaster and already prepared relief goods prior to the storm surges. The problem here though is their office is located in Tacloban and it got washed away as well.
Post disaster, the DWSD wants the people not to be dependent on the relief goods anymore. Although, there are people that they still give help to like the vulnerable sectors. They offer an alternative to people who can't find work which is called cash for work. It is helpful so that people can help clean up the environment as well as earn a little money (they get 100% minimum wage). I find it really cool that even though they are affected as well, they don't want the people to be complacent and to keep having that "victim" stigma. I like that the people in power don't really think of themselves as helpless and there is a conviction in their efforts to help others get back up. They know that they can rise from the rubble and they are convincing others that they can as well. Hopefulness is infectious, I think and when something that bad happens to people, that is really beneficial. Hope is a way we show our love and based on what I understood from the homily early, love gives life. For the people here, it is a new life, a new beginning, as they get back up.
No comments:
Post a Comment