The Nativity and Public Space

by Remmon E. Barbaza

As Christmas nears, many of us feel oppressed by the madness of road traffic, long gift lists, and endless parties and reunions. But we also relish the joy and peace of Christmas in the quiet of our homes. These opposing experiences point to a tension between private and public spaces.

The story of the Nativity is itself a struggle involving private and public spaces. The God who chose to insert Himself in human space and history, who “pitched tent among us”—the same God who made space for the heavens and the earth in loving acts of letting-be (“Let there be…”)—now finds Himself without a space to lay His head. There is no room for Him in the inn.

*image taken from The Biblical World

So there He is to be born, in a manger, marginalized from the very beginning. He knows these margins very well, these edges of human society and history. This God will begin from the margins, live in the margins, and die in the margins of our human spaces. His earthly life is a story of reaching out to those who live in the margins, those who are marginalized, and hence out-cast. We want them out of our spaces. But God wants them back in.

Although not couched in the socio-political language of “private and public spaces,” the teachings of Jesus do point to something that speaks of such distinctions. He would, for example, exhort people to transcend the selfish confines of the family. The family is a kind of private space. We feel at home in it. But Jesus says that we cannot be called children of God if our love was limited to our families. For indeed even the cruelest evildoers among us love their own families.

We Filipinos pride ourselves in having close and tightly knit families, which indeed is a wonderful thing in itself. But as in any other good thing, when corrupted it can degenerate into something destructive.

That our state is run mostly by families and clans—and often with the same names over and over again—tells us not only that the family is stronger than the state, but also that, on the fundamental level, we have not yet learned how to recognize the public space that lies beyond the narrow and often selfish confines of the private space.

The Ampatuan massacre is an extreme example of the violent imposition of the self in public space, where the will was not satisfied with simply marginalizing people who challenged the legitimacy of its power, but went so far as to brutally and physically wipe them out altogether from our shared space.

Violating laws with impunity can thus be seen as an illegitimate appropriation of public space. But before we fall into the illusion that the impunity claimed by the Ampatuans is something extreme and remote from most of us, we would do well to think again. For we might discover that there are degrees of acting with impunity, and that each one of us acts in one degree or another.

Gone may be the wang-wangs, one of the loudest and most disgusting examples of the imposition of the self in public space. But we still get subjected to the tasteless self-promotion of public officials who force the ugly sight of their names and faces upon public space, or car owners who seem to demand entitlement by announcing that they are “LAWYERS” or “PMA CLASS so and so” (yes, in screaming capitals), or doctors who are not necessarily responding to emergency calls but seem to demand special treatment through their “Doctors on Call” stickers or plates (thereby perhaps preventing other doctors from actually responding to life-and-death situations).

How many times did we get stuck in traffic because some selfish driver stopped right at the street corner, totally unmindful of others whose right to unobstructed roads was not respected at all? And when such a thing happens, how many times do we see traffic enforcers look the other way? (One need only observe what happens at the corner of Kamias and EDSA, for instance, on any given weekday, to see how disorder has reached insane levels.)

How many times have we heard of a friend or a relative die in an accident because a couple of buses or trucks engaged in a mad race, or else “encountered brake failure,” indicating that their drivers and operators did not recognize that the right to drive a vehicle is exercised in public space and therefore comes with the serious responsibility of ensuring public safety? Did not the Vatican itself identify reckless driving and road bullying as two of the modern sins?

In gated villages (itself a phenomenon of spatial segregation), we also witness how some supposedly educated, Mass-going and rosary-reciting residents usurp upon the public domain, disregarding common space by blocking fire hydrants, street corners, and driveways, while being the first and loudest ones to complain when their own spaces are blocked by others.

But we need not look further and outside ourselves. The Nativity invites us to enter into that most sacred space, from within which alone we can take a hard look at ourselves, and see to what extent we have violated the common good by unlawfully usurping upon public space, and all because of our illusion of being the center of the world.

Simone Weil tells us that to love is “to give up being the center of the world in imagination, to discern that all the points in the world are equally centers and that the true center is outside the world.” Such love is the love that the Nativity invites us to receive.

Our spiritual life demands that we pass the social and political test of recognizing and safeguarding public space. After all, we pray that His will be done on earth as in heaven. Failing this test will only belie all claims to religiosity and spirituality, and unmask them as nothing but sheer hypocrisy.

And so as we slowly enter into the heart of Christmas, we are invited to behold the unfolding of this wondrous story that is the Nativity. It is the story of this ultimate act of displacement, when God willingly divested Himself of His divine nature, displacing Himself in order to bring everything back to its proper place.

Among the first ones to witness the unfolding of this wondrous story were those who lived in the margins, too. We must learn from them then, these shepherds. Like them we must approach the manger, quietly and without any expectation, with hearts open and ready to wait.

There, in the manger, where the true center is.

Statement Regarding Administrative Matter No. 10-7-17-SC and Its Definition of Plagiarism

On October 15, 2010, the Philippine Supreme Court declared in Administrative Matter No. 10-7-17-SC that Justice del Castillo did not commit plagiarism in his ponencia in Vinuya v. Romula (G. R. No. 162230, April 28, 2010). In the Ethics Committee's decision, the justices mention the argument presented by the petitioners of the case that the question of intent is immaterial in deciding whether or not plagiarism has been committed. They counterargue, however, that "plagiarism is essentially a form of fraud where intent to deceive is inherent."

The justices' description of plagiarism, however, contradicts a widely-accepted understanding of plagiarism in the academe and in the community of researchers. In the conventions of scholarly work, unintentional plagiarism is still labeled "plagiarism." Whether or not the person responsible for the plagiarism intended it, the fact remains that the original source of the ideas or words used in a text was not cited, and the result is that those ideas and words appear to belong to someone else. In some cases, the meaning of the original text is distorted and the reader is not given the chance to verify the plagiarist's reading of that text. Regardless of intent, when a person plagiarizes, a wrong has still been committed against the community of truth-seekers, against the individuals to whom the ideas were not attributed, and to the value of truth as a whole.

To be a researcher, whether in the academe or in any other endeavor of knowledge generation, is precisely to be among a community dedicated to the defense of truth. One of the primary responsibilities, then, of a researcher, scholar, or academic is to safeguard this value by vigilantly, meticulously and honestly paraphrasing source material, crediting one's sources, and representing ideas as original authors intended them.

There is no question that intentional plagiarism is a graver offense than unintentional plagiarism; nonetheless, even without an intention to commit fraud, a person who commits plagiarism might, at the very least, be guilty of irresponsibility or neglect.

The decision fails to acknowledge that an offense is committed as well, even when plagiarism is unintentional. As worded, the decision may be misconstrued to mean that no wrong at all occurs when a researcher fails to deliberately identify the original sources of borrowed words or ideas. In the case involving Justice del Castillo, there must be some acknowledgment, at its simplest, that one did not do what one was supposed to do, and that is something that must be rectified.

It is possible that some in the legal community view the law primarily as prohibitive, where notions of "wrongdoing" and "burden of proof" are limiting principles. We are grateful, however, for Justice Sereno's dissenting opinion that implies that the Supreme Court does not only have a disciplinary authority, but also a moral authority and the ability "to positively educate" the people. Morality is concerned not only with preventing and punishing the commission of wrong, but more importantly with a positive pursuit of the good, and with honing sensibilities of character and virtue.

No one should deny the complexity of the issues involved in the case and thereby the difficulty of making judgments about the rightness and wrongness of the act in question. And indeed complex situations require that finer distinctions be made. But in that case we must also make distinctions about distinctions, for there are distinctions that are legitimate and necessary, and there are others that only serve as an evasion of the issue and thereby of responsibility. The recognition of such complexity and the need to make distinctions should not mean that we should do away with clarity of principles as well as the firmness of our convictions about those principles. What is at stake here is the principle of veracity, and ultimately of truth, which cannot be violated without harming the human community as a whole as it can only be founded on and sustained by that principle. We are therefore unsettled and morally offended by the decision of the Supreme Court whose definition of plagiarism in relation to intention goes against widely accepted norms and standards and, far more seriously, presents a danger to our shared commitment to the principles of veracity and truth. We are hoping that with the presentation of this perspective, the court in its wisdom will better clarify its decision for the community of truth seekers that will be affected by it. The court's decision sends a message to all of us regarding the value of care and integrity in truth seeking. Its demand for accountability too explains to us the value of honorably taking responsibility for whatever mistakes we have committed in order to heal the wounds our acts have inflicted.

Signed,
Individual Faculty Members of the Department of Philosophy, Ateneo de Manila University
Rowena P. Azada-Palacios, MA
Remmon E. Barbaza, PhD
Oscar Bulaong, Jr., PhD
Mark Joseph Calano, PhD
Louis Catalan, SJ, PhD
Manuel B. Dy, Jr., PhD
Jacqueline Jacinto, MA
Michael Ner E. Mariano, PhD Cand
Pamela Joy Mariano, MA Cand
Jesus Deogracias Principe, PhD
Agustin Martin G. Rodriguez, PhD
Andrew K. L. Soh, MA
Roy Allan Tolentino, MA
John Carlo P. Uy, MA Cand

On Why This Catholic is Campaigning for State Support for Reproductive Health

by Agustin Martin Rodriguez

I am one of those professors from Ateneo that the media branded as defying the Church on the issue of the passage of House Bill 5043 on “Reproductive Health and Population Development.” I’m not really sure if by making the stand we made we were defying the Church, for whom were we defying when we were acting out of Christian love and our informed consciences. And if we were defying the Church, we were doing so in order to respond to the call of love’s conscience. Now that the controversy over the Reproductive Health Bill is raging, I would like to explain my position in lobbying for state support for reproductive health. I don’t want to speak on behalf of my colleagues who so carefully crafted our statement or the signatories who supported our statement with passion and conviction. But I would like to explain why I myself stand so firmly behind our call to pass a law like this.

*editorial cartoon courtesy of The Manila Standard Today

Let me begin by saying that I do, as a student of philosophy and as a person who has grappled with the mysteries of parenthood and human sexuality for most of my life, understand the position of those members of the Church who look at this bill with fear and disapproval. I agree that the emergence of artificial contraceptives has made it easier for us to engage in careless sexual activity. The fact that there are contraceptives that minimize unwanted pregnancies and the spread of disease has probably made it easier for many of us to be promiscuous and this has certainly had an effect on how we give meaning to and value the sexual act.

It’s also possible that some of the contraceptives that are being sold have an abortive effect. It is possible that the pill or the IUD allow implantation to occur and might actually cause a fertilized egg to die. I don’t deny that this is possible and tragic.

I also can sympathize with their hesitation to allow a law to pass that will potentially interfere with how their schools will handle sex education. I also understand their distrust of the government officials’ capacity to design an effective and appropriate syllabus for sex-education. We in the education business know how government bureaucrats can impose short sighted and ill-designed programs that tend to be ineffective if not outright harmful in the formation of young people. And in such a delicate matter such as human sexuality and love, it takes a great act of faith and hope to imagine that the bureaucracy will not mis-educate our children.

However, those truths and possibilities aside, we are faced with the hard and terrible tragedy of millions of women and children whose lives are put at risk everyday only because they do not know many of the basic facts of human reproduction and are unable to access existing technologies that can prevent unwanted pregnancies. It is painful to witness how the undoing or further undoing of countless lives continues when proper information or the availability of effective methods of contraception are denied them. I need only to think of the countless children who grow up facing the violence of poverty that is compounded by the lack of care and nutrition imposed by the sheer size of their families; of the violence inflicted on the bodies of women by the unabated proliferation of their children due to the lack of knowledge and the lack of access to methods that could help them decide the number of children best for their family’s welfare; of the countless people whose creativity and joy is sapped by the constant pressure to find the resources to nourish themselves and their children in a world that can no longer sustain their numbers—and thinking all this, I asked myself how we could deny people a chance to rise from tragedy. Because this bill gives them that chance. It will ensure that young people understand the nature of human sexuality and reproduction so that they can make intelligent decisions about the risky behavior to which they are prone. It will give poor women access to contraception that will give them a fighting chance to have families the size of which can sustain love and care. It will give oppressed women a chance to say no to the abuse on their body and psyches of having large families. And it will give children a chance to develop with a chance at health care, education, and focused parental love. So you see, I and my colleagues are calling for the passage of this bill, not as an act of defiance but as a call of love. We know these parents, we know their children, we weep in our hearts to see how their chance at a decent human life is eroded by what society has denied them. We aren’t saying that responsible parenthood will solve poverty. It won’t, justice will. But this law will give them a chance to live more human lives as they wait for the reign of the Kingdom of God.

In my heart, I understand what the Church fears when it thinks of contraceptives and birth control—it is thinking that the contraceptive mentality is a symptom of a mindset that is not open to grace. For the Church it signals a kind of heart that has no hope and cannot trust in the good will of a loving God. I can see how that can be true and how the propagation of the culture of contraceptives might lead to the degradation of our capacity to be people of faith. It can also lead to the degradation of human sexuality as it will permit sex to be used as a drug to ease the ennui of modern life. I see how the reduction of unwanted pregnancies can do that. However, we do live already in a sinful world where the truth of sexuality especially between loving couples is an unfathomable mystery. Why does sex have such a power on our will such that it draws people to act beyond reason and good sense? Why is it that people think that sex could resolve their malaise, give them a higher esteem of themselves, make them happy, and give them a sense of completion? I don’t think there are easy answers to these questions and much of human existence is involved in trying to understand this mystery. In the meantime children are being born to impossible circumstances and women are being made to suffer preventable hardships.

In our broken and sinful world people are looking for answers and may be acting beyond their better wisdom in their search. Until we come to our wholeness and holiness perhaps we can provide ourselves the tools of prudence so that our search for intimacy and fullness does not have to end in sorrow and greater tragedy. State support for reproductive health will provide us these tools. And so with love for those like us who are broken, but unlike us are deprived of the means to regulate the effects of their tragic fate, we propose that some such bill be passed. Perhaps the Church will want it passed with revisions—but we should not touch its capacity to help people control reproduction through the access to knowledge and safe means. We should especially not water down its mandate to provide support for mothers who care for their children.

And as the secular state passes its laws for the secular good of all its citizens, perhaps it is only right for the Church to redouble its efforts in the education of its people’s hearts. For only a profound and effective education of the heart will bring her people to their good. No amount of intervention in state law will teach the people love. Only a Church that acts as a beacon of love can ultimately teach us what our intimacy is about. In the meantime, let us leave the state to its means to save its poor.

Musings on the RH Bill

by Rowena Anthea Azada-Palacios

First of all, let's get two things straight:

(1) Even if this bill gets signed into law, induced abortion will still be illegal.
(2) Even if this bill doesn't get signed into law, artificial contraception will still be legal.

So let's get rid of the straw men crowding the issue. The supporters of the bill are not, in this instance, calling for the legalization of abortion. The critics of the bill are not, in this instance, calling for the banning of artificial contraception.

==========

Yes, this is an issue of choice. I argue, however, that BOTH sides of the debate are arguing for choice.

Those who support the bill argue that the bill is about giving all Filipinos the choice to personally and privately decide for themselves which form of contraception they wish to use, if any. It is a freedom that is currently afforded to the segment of the population that has more access to information--the most educated and most literate--who have wider access to information.

I think many (most?) of those who support the bill are, in effect, saying that the same choice should be made available to everyone in the populace. They are saying that since there are many in the population who do not have access to information in the way that the most educated do, the government ought to fill in that space by mandating that the information be included in the curriculum, through Family Planning offices (to be created by the bill), and through the Commission on Population (also to be created by the bill).

To extend the issue further. While the bill reemphasizes the illegality of induced abortions, some proponents of the bill argue that the bill will actually LOWER the numbers of illegal abortions by lowering the numbers of unwanted pregnancies.

==========

Those who criticize the bill are also arguing for choice. The bill does make very clear value statements: it considers population control and birth spacing to be desirable, and it associates contraception (both natural and artificial) with the goal of lowering the country's population. It prohibits both private and public doctors from refusing to perform voluntary ligations and vasectomies. It also adds artificial contraception--including pills and intrauterine devices--to the list of "essential medicines."

I think many (most?) of those who criticize the bill are arguing that they do not want these values and viewpoints--which they do not hold--to become "official state policy." Those who criticize the bill might disagree with the views expressed therein regarding birth spacing or population control. The critics might also object to many of the kinds of contraception being promoted by the bill, and they may not want their tax money to be used to purchase these forms of contraception for others (which becomes a strong possibility, if these will now be considered "essential medicines").

On the issue of abortion, then. There are those who argue, then, that the passage of the bill will push the State to promote and possibly subsidize potentially abortifacient forms of contraception (such as pills and IUDs), using taxpayers' money.

==========

Note: This is based on HB No. 5403, AN ACT PROVIDING FOR A NATIONAL POLICY ON REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH, RESPONSIBLE PARENTHOOD AND POPULATION DEVELOPMENT, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES.

Oversimplifications

by Rowena Anthea Azada-Palacios

In the aftermath of Monday's hostage-taking tragedy, a TV station asked its viewers the question: should there be a media blackout during hostage crises?

The question grossly oversimplifies the issue. The public outcry is not for a total news blackout, but for media outfits to exercise greater restraint in choosing which details to air and when to air them.

The best way, in fact, for media organizations to avoid further legislated media regulation, is for them to prove to the public that their self-regulatory mechanisms are sufficient.

ABS-CBN's statement, released on Thursday, enumerated ways in which their news team exercised self-restraint. However, of the nine examples they gave, five of them are not examples of self-regulation, but rather, of either complying with the law (e.g., not tampering with police evidence), or following commands from the police. Whether or not news organizations should follow the law and heed police's instructions is not at issue; that should be the minimum expected of all media groups in such situations.

In contrast to ABS-CBN's statement, the Poyner Institute, an American journalism school, published on its website in 1999 a list of self-regulating guidelines for journalists covering a developing law enforcement action, such as a hostage-taking situation. Among the guidelines are for journalists to "always assume that the hostage taker ... has access to the reporting," to avoid releasing information "that could divulge the tactics or positions of SWAT team members," to "strongly resist the temptation to telephone a gunman or hostage taker," and to "have a plan ready for how to respond" should a hostage taker call a newsroom. Links to these guidelines quickly spread online last week.

In response, Maria Ressa, ABS-CBN's head of news and current affairs, argued that the Poynter guidelines are culture-bound, and that our country's context is different from that of the Western audience for which the guidelines were written. Be that is it may, the ethical principle behind the guidelines is universal. In a hostage situation in any culture, the safety of the hostages should be paramount. When lives are at stake, media institutions ought to err on the side of too much rather than too little caution. News organizations can keep the public informed without jeopardizing the safety of the hostages nor aggravating the situation.

Moreover, the culture-boundedness of the Poynter guidelines does not exempt local organizations from the responsibility of making their own guidelines and assuring that these are followed. The argument has been made that in the heat of the moment, it is difficult for journalists and media executives to decide how best to regulate their own coverage. However, this argument simply affirms the need for pre-established protocols. With such guidelines, the journalist and the media executive need not spend too much time in an internal struggle over what to report or what to air. They just have to comply with rules they have already drafted.

It is unclear whether news organizations had definite protocols prior to this incident, but it is clear now, more than ever, that such guidelines are necessary. GMA News has promised to revise their rules for situations where the public or their personnel are at risk. ABS-CBN is inviting its colleagues in the broadcast industry tp undertake an industry review. These steps are welcome, but they are also long overdue. Journalistic behavior during crisis situations was debated in the aftermath of the 1990 earthquake, the 2002 hostage-taking incident at a Pasay bus station, and the Ducat hostage-taking incident in 2007.


Finally, some media practitioners, including opinion columnists, have criticized the public for blaming the media. It is not the media's fault, they argue, but the police's, as it was they who failed to control the media. Again, this is an oversimplification of the issue. No reasonable person is laying the blame entirely on the media. Of course, the PNP and the civil government also made costly missteps. And of course, most of the responsibility rests with Mendoza himself.

The question, however, which all people involved ought to ask themselves is this: what, in my capacity, could I have done at the time to make the situation better? And did I do it?

Only if all of us learn to be accountable for our actions, even when we are only partially responsible for the outcome of a situation, can we prevent a tragedy like this from ever happening again.

Exercising Freedom for a Free Press

by Agustin Martin G. Rodriguez

In the face of the tragedy of the hostage taking last Monday, many Filipinos are quite clearly disappointed with the media’s handling of the matter. It seems clear that the lack of restraint that the television and radio stations exercised contributed to the terrible outcome of this crisis. Many viewers felt that the broadcasting in real time of the dramatic arrest of the hostage taker’s brother and the broadcasting of the movements of the SWAT teams would further disturb an already disturbed hostage taker. Why didn’t the networks go with this instinct? What were the network executives thinking?

The issue is complicated for certain. Television and radio news serve the public as much as they serve big business interests. Their business is not only to report the news and inform the public but to generate enough income to make their vocation viable enterprises. Thus, sometimes their instincts are muddled.

The more thoughtful among us asked why couldn’t they shut off the live feed? Was their desire to fill every second of air time with chatter and video of the crisis really fueled by their awareness of their responsibility to keep the public informed? If they had delayed the reporting on the arrest of the hostage’s brother and the disclosure of the movement of the SWAT teams, would they have deprived the public of vital information? What, aside from the drama and the circus, did the live feed give us? No doubt we were all glued to our television sets because we wanted to know what would happen next. But we really didn’t need to know. Our need for drama did not override the hostages’ right to a safe resolution to this crisis. However, it was vital for the networks to keep airing their live coverage.

From the ABS-CBN statement on their soul searching, they asked their fellow industry members to “…unite and work together to put in place measures to collectively decide when we stop live coverage in the absence of government presence of mind.” This collective decision to stop live coverage is essential because if only one station decided to play it safe and stop the live coverage, then they would have lost in the ratings game. Maria Ressa justified their airing of the hostage drama by saying that if they had stopped the live feed “we would have been criticized by the viewers or what viewers would have done is switch stations.”[1] This is what is so dismaying about their response: after the whole tragedy and the criticism, their justification lie in the ratings.

After all the criticism, there has still been no acceptable expression of culpability from the television and radio networks. Of course we shouldn’t expect a full expression of culpability that is not couched in language that will protect them from lawsuit or criminal liability. However, from their own attempt to explain what they did, it is clear that they didn’t feel that they could on their own decide to control their actions. It was as if their executives were driven by a transcendent machinery with motives beyond their own capacity to discern the good and which kept them from deciding what the best, most compassionate, and responsible thing to do was. Maria Ressa said “When there are no rules, we push for what we can get.”[2] That is true and perhaps it is the most responsible journalistic thing to do, i.e. go for the story. But is it not also their responsibility—they being the head of the news desks who are away from the action and not being driven by the reporter’s instinct to get as much of the story as they can—to decide on their own what was responsible and irresponsible to broadcast in the heat of the unfolding drama?

It is worth looking at ABS CBN’s statement of self examination. In that statement they implied that they were acting responsibly by being this way:
1. After the police tried to arrest the hostage taker’s brother, our team physically stepped back to comply with police request.
2. After the assault began, we tried to limit our shots to avoid showing police movements. We stayed with extreme close-ups or wide shots.
3. We immediately complied when police asked us to turn off our lights explaining the grainy shots viewers complained about.[3]

They did say that these measures taken were not enough but they are implying that nonetheless they were acting quite responsibly given that they were acting according the some instinct within themselves that they could not regulate. And it seems the instinct here is the need to please the viewers, not in order to respond to their right to know but to respond to their need for entertainment. Because they did step back but they still showed the arrest close-up, they limited their shots and took these shots wide but they still showed clearly where the police were, and they did turn out the lights but we all could see what was going on quite clearly. And someone from outside will wonder how essential all these shots were for the public's right to legitimately know the truth and be informed of vital issues—remembering all this while that lives were at stake.

Surely, the government should have acted better in all of this and exercised their police powers to regulate the networks whose concerns are always colored by the need to entertain and provide information to their viewers. But the networks should also remember that they are a public service and should be able to act more responsibly. After all a free press should be able to act with a free will for the good. This means being able to make better decisions for the good of society. And to do this, they must examine what forces drive their instincts to keep the screens filled with images that may have led to tragedy.

*picture courtesy of BBC News

Notes from the End of Life as We Know It 7:

These Are The Fundamental Beliefs That Define Our Lifestyle

by Agustin Martin Rodriguez

Once I was asked by the university to share with the faculty some points about simplicity of lifestyle, I took the occasion to sit down with my wife and articulate the fundamental beliefs we live by. Here I share with you the fundamental beliefs that shape our lifestyle:

1) We believe that there is a being of great Love in the world who governs our existence. This is a fundamental certainty that is grounded on existential experience for us. This just means that we have felt this Love’s presence and cannot but respond to it.
2) This great Love calls us all to share in their act of love for all being.
3) The great suffering in the world caused by human beings is painful for this great Love to see. And if we do participate in their Love, we cannot live without orienting our lives toward the alleviation of this suffering.
4) The task of serving the suffering and the poor is not an incidental task but the very central task of our lives.
5) There are many ways to serve the suffering in every arena of our lives. But our work only becomes an act of service when it is centered on serving the other and not our egos or our need to be needed or our reputations.
6) A life centered on service is the only path to finding yourself and to finding your potential as a person. It is the only way because a life lived only for the self keeps you from recognizing the call of love that calls you to your potential as a person.
7) Our lifestyles—that is the way we consume, entertain ourselves, engage in leisure, and work, or the way we maintain ourselves in existence—must not be exploitative. Although we have a right to maintain ourselves in existence, as workers building the kingdom, we have no right in causing the greater suffering of others in these acts.
8) We must in fact try and build up the lives of others in our acts of self-maintenance. This is perhaps what they refer to today as solidarity economics. Examples of this are acts that affirm the right of the marginalized and deserving to make a living: buying from neighborhood informal sellers rather than big stores, actively supporting alternative or non-mainstream artists, or choosing to pay a just wage for the services of those who help us.
9) We must not focus our lives too much on acquisition, consumption, and luxury for the sustaining of such desires often requires us to engage in the accumulation of wealth which in our world cannot be done without others paying for it. I believe the realities of global warming and worldwide poverty are clear proofs of this. Sadly, those who pay the sins of our excesses are always those who did not even choose to live or desire to live according to these excesses.
10) We are required by Love to make sacrifices in big and small ways for the marginalized—on the level of structural change and on the level of small acts of deliberate affirmation and support. Thus, we are called to live simpler lives or even sacrifice some or much of our own income to empower the disempowered.
11) Ultimately, we are all called to take part in realizing the revolutionary structural changes that will ensure that the suffering of others is ended. I use revolutionary here in the Christian and Marxian but not Marxist sense. The Christian sense still demands the changing of social structures but demands a transformation of self in love and justice.

Of course we don’t live this way of life perfectly, but we try to live it as much as possible. It’s not always easy. It means resisting a consumeristic lifestyle. That for us is the hardest aspect to accomplish because we are in a sense programmed to find consolation for our hard work or for our difficulties in buying things. We also try to find affirmation for our value or self-worth by what we own. So it’s sometimes hard to resist being consumers or even losing sight of our values in trying to engage in activities that will make us earn better in order to live more luxuriously. But we try to live according to our convictions even in simple ways like engaging our neighborhood service sector and paying them more than exploitative wages. We don’t ask for discounts from poor vendors. We buy our supplies from local, informal sector merchants even if it costs more. We consciously buy Filipino as much as possible. We take vacations only in the Philippines. And we have committed to professions that will pay us less than we could potentially earn in order to focus on service.

We have also chosen to raise our children ourselves as much as our professions will allow. In this way I believe we can raise persons of love and service who will themselves grow up to serve. Concretely, this means we have no stay-in yaya. In this way we have raised a 17-year old who I am proud to say is at least aware of the suffering of others and hopes to serve them through her writing. Now we are still raising a 4 year old and I must say it still requires great sacrifice on our part. I find it particularly important to raise my son so that he will grow up to understand how fathers themselves need to be persons of service in very concrete ways. He must understand that men must know how to cook, clean the house, and serve the people around them in order to break the sad tradition of spoiled, useless boys in our country.

On a personal note, it is difficult to continue this lifestyle without any structural support. It is hard to be a just consumer when most businesses are structured unjustly. It is hard to raise one’s own child when there are no day care centers in your work place and when you can be left out of so many things because you did not choose to prioritize your career over your fundamental responsibilities.

Sometimes it’s painful to see the outcome of your own choices. Sometimes it hurts to see others advance in the world who have chosen to live otherwise. It is a little more poignant now as sometimes I watch the world proceed without me as I chase a little boy around our little world. Clearly the successes that the world recognizes are not always for those of us who have chosen to live in service, except perhaps for a few happy exceptions. But the rewards of a life justly lived are found in the living of it. For living such a life keeps us closer to our truth, to our potential as creative human beings, and to the Love that bears us in their heart so that we remain focused on what is most important and find ourselves in the end made whole.