By the Filipino, for the Filipino

With a ton of negatives, divinely ordained like the pandemic or man-made like the way health intervention is managed in a pandemic, life suddenly decides to give everyone a break. Not exactly everyone but most of us anyway. As something that is not from a plan of man, the community pantry entered into the scene quietly (that seemed like the plan of man) but then exploded so forcefully that I am sure surprised the one who opened the Maginhawa pantry.

It is most important to discern what man orchestrates and what orchestrates man. If the Maginhawa community pantry were just an effort designed by man, then it could not have happened. Why? Simply because a community pantry such as the original Maginhawa initiative would not have even be a useful effort without the sustained suffering of especially poor people. A decisive context had to be in place, and pinpoint timing had to be applied. Both these were not man-made but made man do it.

If we talk about destiny, we can seldom have a better example than the Maginhawa community pantry and its originator, Ana Patricia Non. Just how grand in form or scope that destiny is will still be played out. I would not like to say that the fuse has been lit and, therefore, it has served its purpose. At the moment, the red-tagging act of an officer of the military is acting like a second rocket propellant for both the Maginhawa community pantry and Ana Patricia Non. Otherwise, even less focus may affected Maginhawa and shifted totally to the nationwide phenomenon of one community pantry after another rising from nowhere.

Yes, there are bursts of protests that have been generated by the kind of treatment one military officer applied to the organizers of the Maginhawa community pantry. I have monitored the expressed outrage of many groups and even high-profile personalities, including from within government. Yet, this unfortunate incident has not blurred the focal point of the people’s interest. The main attention, and thank God that it is, is riveted on the spirit and form of the community pantry. It is a miracle with unbelievable power because it comes from the people and is blessed by destiny.

I have been in the advocacy of helping the poor, a worker of Gawad Kalinga, and specialized ever since the pandemic in the battle against the hunger, as part of the Walang Iwanan Alliance. This month, I actually celebrate my twenty years in the Gawad Kalinga movement. Those twenty years were dedicated by all of us in the movement – workers, volunteers, supporters – to promote the spirit of caring and sharing, or in the Filipino culture, the Bayanihan way.

We in Gawad Kalinga are not alone, not even the first. I can point to the work of the Catholic Church and other Christian churches. They have been around for so long that I will not bother to check when they began. We may have introduced very radical and innovative ways to life the lives of the poor, including a focused feeding program that has been very successful, but other NGOs and People’s Organizations do the best they can with determination and sacrifice as well. And in our collective work, we have carried this muted wish, and frequent frustration, about how the work should be picked up by many other Filipinos.

How is it, then, that with one community pantry initiative, I can safely safe that millions will be involved. Just the thought, the sight, and the feel of one initiative have become like a light bulb that does not have to sell itself. Instead, everyone just wants it, to be part of it, whether to give or to receive, but be with it. In a week’s time, there are hundreds sprouting in the streets and the alleys. With just a little confidence that donations will come, thousands more will be part of the community pantry movement. Not by man’s plan, but by a plan that man cannot resist.

By the Filipino, for the Filipino. We now see the seeds of a revolution whose fruits must be too magnificent to imagine, as of now. If the pandemic had such power to make nations kneel, the community pantry movement has the power to make Filipinos rise. Generosity unleashed, a collective force, seeking only to manifest the good in us, breaking, for the moment at least, the economic and social walls that have sharply separated us. We are now grappling with the novelty of a united energy that unites, when we have been drowning in divisiveness. Even the trolls have been paralyzed by force of the drama upon us today.

How long can this last? How long can this stay beautiful and pure? That is not for me to say, but it is for me to keep alive and strong by the good I can contribute to it. Because if I will not, if you will not, if we will not, then we will lose this gift from the universe, this breathtaking chance to begin again, in friendship, in fraternity, in community.

How radical a change can this phenomenon provoke in our society? Again, I cannot say with my mind. My understanding of the depth and massiveness of our fragmented collective, though, tells me that it will take many more years for substantial and visible transformation. That is good enough. Several years or even a generation of moving steadily towards the best in us is such a short time versus the never that we are stuck in.

I felt we were trapped in a quicksand of conflict and misery, and the more we struggled, the deeper we sank. I should never have had doubted the essence of creation, the nobility of its purpose, and its power to sweep away anything it chooses not to tolerate anymore. As children, we believed in magic. As adults, can we still believe in one another, in miracles?