‘Obscure in their labor’

Something profound has come upon this planet. At this moment, Earth is pulsating with new energy. May this permeate and interconnect us all…Mabuhay!

I just had my glass of red wine and I jotted those words on a small scratch paper moments before Pres. Barack Obama took his oath as the 44th president of the United States of America and made his inaugural speech last Tuesday. The TV channels and all modes of media technology were beaming the momentous event to the farthest corners of the world. My TV was on, my computer was on. Suddenly I felt so connected.

Only the cynics and the jaded didn’t have tears welling up in their eyes. I cleared my head of clutter and just stared, ready to taste the man’s every word.



I couldn’t help examining the sheen on Obama’s dark skin. Sure, he’s black, but remember, I told myself, he is also half white. But in America where color is color, Obama is colored. Inebriated, I felt good to be colored, as I’ve always did, even if of a different shade of light yellowish brown.

I was breathing in and breathing out with the lilt of his voice, the cadence of his words. His speech was well constructed, I thought. I put a lot of premium on the way words are strung together to effect a poetic cadence especially if the piece is for oral delivery. Short sentences, great verbs, few adverbs, well-chosen adjectives. Avoid statistics.

As to the meat of Obama’s address, it is there for everyone to digest. Pundits, opinion makers, bloggers must be having a heyday dissecting what he uttered. But an address like that is also something that must be soaked in, tasted, contemplated on, or even just enjoyed for the sound of it. In the quiet of one’s soul. And then it sinks in, not just in the mind but in one’s whole being.

St. Paul’s reminder to the Corinthians rang early in Obama’s address. “The time has come to set aside childish things,” Obama said, paraphrasing a line from 1Cor. 13, one of the most popular chapters in the Bible’s New Testament and perhaps Paul’s own valedictory on love and love of neighbor.

Later, in one of the neighborhood inaugural balls, Obama would speak about neighborhood and neighborliness and recall his stint as a neighborhood organizer.

And then he hailed the little-knowns. “Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted—for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things—some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path toward prosperity and freedom.”

I couldn’t help thinking of the Filipino World War II veterans who had fought alongside the American forces and who had waited so long to be recognized and recompensed, many of them waiting and aging on the cold streets of San Francisco, many of whom have died in vain.

Did Obama think of them when he said: “They have something to tell us today, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service, a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves and yet, at this moment—a moment that will define a generation—it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.”

Today’s column piece was supposed to be for the International Committee of the Red Cross workers who are being held hostage by bandits/terrorists in Sulu. Sorry if I got carried away. But yes, these could very well also be the “men and women obscure in their labor” that Obama referred to.

And so let me leave my humble inaugural day ponderings, let me segue into the realm of “the risk-takers, the doers, the makers”.

Hostaged ICRC workers Mary Jean Lacaba (Filipino), Andreas Notter (Swiss) and Eugenio Vagni (Italian) are still in the hands of their captors. They were in Sulu to look into a water sanitation project when suspected Abu Sayyaf kidnappers seized them.

Bloody fields of battle, disease stricken communities, disasters and myriad scenes of human suffering all over the world form the landscape where the Red Cross thrives. Enduring stories about its volunteers’ heroic and quiet feats are as red as its universal emblem, the red symmetrical cross. (The crescent is used in some Islamic nations.)

No international humanitarian body could match the length and breadth of service of the Red Cross to nations and peoples all over the world in all times, climes and situations both big and small.

Like America’s birth that Obama so dramatically recalled in his inaugural speech, ICRC was also born in the ruins of war in Europe.

After a frenzied battle in Solferino in northern Italy in 1859, Henry Dunant, a Swiss, came upon a bloody scene where French and Italian troops on one side, and Austrians on the other, were killing one another. Imagine thousands of dead and dying without medical care, fair game for looters and predators.

From that battlefield Dunant picked up the bloody seed of what is now known as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) or the mother of the Red Cross and Crescent Societies all over the world. Dunant, along with Guillaume-Henri Dufour, Gustave Moynier, Louis Appia and Theodore Maunoir founded the ICRC. Their work earned them the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901.

HINIVUU--humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary service, unity, universality. These big words are etched in the heart of every Red Cross volunteer anywhere in the world.

We pray for the freedom of Mary Jean, Andreas and Eugenio.