Christmas star lanterns

“Yes, they should have been up by now. But there are no Christmas parols here yet,” our friend from Loboc in Bohol emailed. The 7.2 magnitude earthquake that hit October 15 reduced their four-century old church to rubble.

“Perhaps, this Christmas, we should look for those star lanterns elsewhere,” he suggested. Where? “In thousands—from students to executives—who responded to needs of those traumatized by typhoon “Yolanda.”

“Never before have I seen our nation come together in such a determined way to face a common task,” Inquirer’s Randy David wrote. “Instead of being paralyzed by the enormity of this calamity, we summoned all our remaining strength—each one of us in his/her own way—to assist our countrymen”.

The gale passed by Iloilo briefly and my parents are fine, emailed Angioline Loredo, a UP mass communication graduate now in the US.  However, some towns in northern Iloilo were slammed. My nieces and nephews are gathering relief assistance for their kasimanwas.

We’re trying, meanwhile, not to add screaming in the social media. Help the victims. “But everyone should just shut up”, she added. Let the government, NGOs, foreign relief assistance, etc. do the best they could.

“If we have to listen to voices amidst the din, let them be voices of calm, and perspective. There is enough blame to spread around—but later.  Really, what good does ranting accomplish at this time?   

The blame game however, is intensifying, Sun Star’s Bong Wenceslao wrote. “Critics of President Noynoy Aquino scour reports on government’s response to the crisis, especially in Yolanda and storm surge-hit Tacloban City. “They feast on every sign of the incompetence that they have long accused him of possessing”.

“All rules of decency are being jettisoned. And profanities are thrown at will (“asshole,” “gago”). Admittedly, government response especially in Tacloban has been inadequate. So there are materials for critics to lambast their pet peeve. But to be PNoy-centric is to distort reality. It smudges the complexity of the events.”

Crisis management experts note disasters hit at the local level. The stress is on the word “local”, Wenceslao adds. That’s the key to an effective disaster response: local governments and voluntary agencies, together with the residents are the first to cope with the damage.

“But we do not live in an ideal world, so some factors hamper its effective use. Among these factors are politicking and incompetence.”

Cut it out, incoming president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines Archbishop Socrates Villegas snapped. “Finger-pointing, and blame-passing will just increase the damage and add to the confusion. This the last thing we need.”

Hunger and sickness cannot wait. Do not wait for government. “Let us not allow the crisis to overwhelm us. Help one at a time. Villegas suggested church groups adopt one parish each. The Diocese of Borongan, Samar, has 32 parishes, and the Archdiocese of Palo, Leyte, 64. “We can directly help them with relief now and rehabilitation later.”

These should not blind us to heartening efforts by ordinary folk. Mother Teresa nuns care for elderly poor and ailing children in hospices in Tacloban and Calbayog. The storm wrecked their place. They ensured safety of everyone—and took in scores of the dazed survivors in the street.

Although short of food, the Calbayog sisters shared with those in Tacloban. That hews to what their foundress Blessed Teresa of Calcutta stressed: “If you can't feed a hundred people, feed just one.” 

The stream of activities at Konsum Technologies, an IT firm based in Cebu City, has no doubt replicated itself countless times in the country. These IT professionals, most only a few years out of college, didn’t wait for government. They sourced funds from a foundation. They then proceeded to identify areas to target.

Software developers and artists morphed into purchasers of food items, packers and logistics experts.  In four days, they churned out and delivered to various barangays in northern Cebu and Leyte 1,200 packets from 120 sacks of rice, 1,200 ten-liter bottles of water, plus countless boxes of sardines and noodles.

These coders and hackers did all this outside of company time. Lost sleep and exhausted muscles were part of the price.” One can pay back the loan of gold”, a Malaysian proverb says. “But one dies forever in debt to those who are kind.” 

 The storm flattened huts of sugarcane workers in mountainside barangays outside Bogo, Cebu. My people were starving, said Father D, a  newly ordained priest just assigned to the remote post early this year. 

Anonymous donors trucked up 100 food packs, plus cash to bridge the gap between starving now and starting life anew tomorrow. “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” Winston Churchill once said.

The Christmas star appears only in the gospel of Matthew. “We saw His star rise in the East and come to honor Him,” travel-weary men of regal bearing told the paranoid Herod: “(Then) the star… went ahead of them and stopped over the place where the Child was… with Mary His mother.”

“Were we led all that way for / Birth or Death?” wonder the magi years later, after they’ve left the Child, the poet TS Eliot wrote in 1927.  Here, they were. “No longer at ease here, in the old dispensation/ with an alien people clutching their gods.”

A 2013 version of the Christmas star could read: The magi offered Him gifts—not of gold, frankincense and myrrh—but rice, medicine and staples. That is where those real star parols are.