It was the Castenares twins 11th birthday last Friday, so I had a handful of lunchmates for the day - eight, to be exact. Good thing that all of us managed to fit into my car (which seems to be shrinking a little more every day)!
They'd actually invited us to their birthday photo session at Circle C, but plans had to be quickly readjusted because well, people are people and life is life and sometimes the snow comes down in June... We ended up on an impromptu trip to the UP Campus (lots of green, lots of sights to see, lots of cheap places to eat) instead. 
First stop, the UP Church of the Holy Sacrifice, which fascinated everyone, and a little catechism lesson through a mini-tour of a Catholic church. Surprisingly, their favorite "part" of it all was the face-to-face encounter with Jesus in the Real Presence of the Blessed Sacrament - they listened, and allowed Him to speak into their young hearts. And He had something special to say to most of them.
And then of course, a snack that turned into quite a meal - although they'd eaten before we left, they were still hungry (bottomless stomachs!). To work it all off, I took them to the lagoon and amphitheater area behind Quezon Hall where they had their fill of trees and green grass and nature until, as girls (both big and small) are wont to do, they started to want more, more, and more (more food, more time spent, more food...) At least their intended photo session pushed through, courtesy of the normally photographically-challenged Ate Honey, and I must admit that I had a lot of fun taking their pictures. So much fun that, after taking them back to the Center, I had to lie down and recover from an afternoon of exhaustion before leaving for an out of town trip! Thankfully, I will (probably?) never be mother to eight kids, and thank God I only had to deal with little girls of sugar and spice and everything nice...
Sugar and Spice
Meals On Wheels
Last night, I started writing an entry about yesterday's lunch encounter with the Lord, but a nocturnal friend called me out at 11 p.m. and put a halt to my journalling. That set off a chain reaction of events (late to bed, late to rise!) that effectively frustrated my plans to go to Quiapo this morning or even to attend noontime Mass in UP. After kicking myself several times for being such a flake, I eventually ended up having a very nice lunch today at the Center with the women of the He Cares family. But I'm getting too far ahead of myself.
Yesterday I thought I was going to have an uneventful "lunch" because I felt that the Spirit wasn't really leading me to anyone in particular. I had a quick meal at the UP Coop after Mass, and I didn't really feel like going into the Shopping Center but somehow found myself propelled in that direction. No Mang Lito, J-O-Y, Grace, or Renato around. I'd made it halfway through the SC when I felt like turning on my heel and going back the other way, when I saw the reason why I was brought into the SC in the first place: a law school classmate, all decked out in barong and looking very professional. We exchanged the usual small talk and updates, and when he started asking about my practice, I told him a very abbreviated version of the work I do nowadays and advised him to just buy last month's Marie Claire for more details. Anyway, it was funny to see him again - an old sorority ball date I liked to annoy by smoking too much and insisting that he learn to dance - and I thought that encountering him would be the highlight of my lunch hour.
So I headed back out to my car, and as I was walking towards it, someone sitting on one of the outside benches flashed me a toothless grin. "Kain tayo, Ate?" The magic words. It was the boy who'd "watched" my car earlier at the Chapel. And of course I gladly obliged - I was going to have "lunch with the Lord" after all - and ended up sharing a table with 15-year old Mark ("pero may kasama po ako...") and his 12-year old friend MacMac. Mark turned out to be the younger brother of my regular car-watcher Marvin, who was recently clubbed over the head with a lead pipe and had to get stitches. Marvin lives in a tricycle (go figure)in Balara but Mark sleeps in their little shanty - their mother lives all the way in Pasay. MacMac, who, for a very small boy had the BO of a 6 foot 250-pound man, is the eldest of three boys - they recently lost their mother. His dad used to work as a golf caddy but is now unemployed - but he promised to send his son back to school as soon as he finds a job. MacMac was barefoot...he lost his slippers outside his house; I taught him an old streetkid's trick of using your slippers as a pillow so you don't lose them, and then went out to buy him a new pair (my extra pair of slippers I always carry in the car were much big for him, so you can imagine what a small 12-year old he is!).
Today, I'd planned to do the supermarket donation rounds with Kuya Joe Dean, but, as I found out over lunch, Judith needed me to accompany her to look for and invite several streetkids to a special event this Sunday. We took along several Christmas cookies, which the little ones enjoyed very much, and, at one of our stops, met a man living in his pushcart. His family was homeless because their house was burned down, but apparently he managed to send three of his kids to school nonetheless! Later this evening, loaded with several donated cakes, we continued our street ministry - first along NIA road where we chanced upon more homeless people eating a late dinner on the sidewalk (literally) and dropped off their dessert; next on Timog where a whole troupe of streetkids of various shapes and sizes shared two more cakes and promised to attend the Saturday feeding; and finally back to Quezon Avenue to deliver the last cake to the "pushcart family." They were all smiles, genuinely happy in the moment even under such sordid circumstances, and still a family struggling and doing their best to stay together and better their children despite adversity. I'm certain we'll be sharing more meals with this little family - whom God so very gently holds in the palm of His hand - in the days to come.
I'm tired tonight after such a long day (a long couple of days!). But, as Judith and I agreed on our way home at almost 11 p.m., we don't really mind (sometimes we don't even notice!) when we have to "work overtime." In fact, even after office hours, we still keep looking for "work"! Then again, this kind of work isn't really work after all. Plus, our Boss gives the best bonuses and a retirement plan that's out of this world. :-)
Lunch With The Lord...The Real Deal
This blog really shouldn't be about cooking after all.
There are way too many food blogs that deal with that, and do a far better job at it. There must have been a good reason why I chose to call this journal "Lunch With The Lord," and, just last week, I found out what it was.
Whenever I'm in the throes of an emotional/spiritual crisis, I keep myself from drowning in the flood of my sorrows by ditching all else and hanging on tightly to the Lord. I run - or, more precisely, crawl - into His sheltering arms in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, where He never fails to gives comfort as He gives of Himself. A couple of weeks ago, at a particularly low point of a struggle that had me weakened to the point of total surrender, I allowed God to direct my entire day, beginning from the moment He hauled me out of bed and into the shower to prepare for noonday Mass.
In many of the spiritual talks I've given, I've spoken about the "point of total surrender" - that gloriously momentous occasion where (sometimes for lack of choice!) you finally allow God to take absolute control of your life and therefore lead you exactly where He wants you to go. It's the rare opportunity to witness exactly how His thoughts and ways are far above ours, and how breathtakingly awesome it is to experience His perfect will fulfilled in our lives. Unfortunately, He gives us back the reins soon thereafter and we somehow manage once more to wander off track - some further than others - until the next time He has to coax, pull, lasso, even tranquilize us, just to get us back on the straight and narrow. Well, this was one of those "points" - a necessary growing experience I would never trade for the world, but nonetheless a painful pruning I'd rather not go through too often!
Anyway, in times like these when even my wardrobe choices are dependent on Him, I just allow myself to be Divinely guided, and He's never led me astray. The Mass comforted me enough to feel hungry (always a good sign!) and, since I didn't have either breakfast or lunch and had no other plans for the day, I headed for the nearest place I could get a quick meal. The UP Shopping Center is an especially significant place in my conversion towards mission - I won't go into details because I've previously written about it here - so I shouldn't have been surprised to find God nudging (shoving?!) me further out "into the deep" in the same place. For lack of anything better to do, I'd planned to have my nails done after eating, but even in my raw and disheartened state, I noticed that there were more street urchins than usual at the SC. Much to my surprise, there was even an elderly man who begged money for rice. Without really thinking about it, I bought a couple of bags of cookies at the Coop, gave the old man a couple of packets, handed a couple of more to a few kids selling scoonchies and collecting used plastic bottles - nothing out of the ordinary for me; it's something I normally do. And then I sat down to lunch.
But I wasn't alone. The Lord, my invisible and constant Companion, was unusually talkative and insistent over the course of the meal, so much so that I could hardly eat properly while He pestered me.
"The old man wanted rice. So why in the world did you give him cookies?"
Good point, Lord.
"You're having lunch alone. Why didn't you invite him to eat with you?"
I can't do that! I don't have the courage to chat up a stranger. Besides, I'm almost done and my manicurist is waiting for me.
"What do you mean you can't? You've been feeding streetchildren and streetpeople all this time and you can't share a meal with this one old man? When He Cares goes on vacation, does your mission take a break as well? Will you trust Me to give you whatever 'courage' you think you lack? Are you happy with your 'normal,' comfort zone, non-committal routine of just giving out food without giving your time? Are your unpolished toes more important than his hunger?"
You don't know when to quit, don't you?
"You know I never do."
OK, I'll be brave for You just this once. After my pedicure, if he's still there...
"NOW."
OK, OK, here's the deal. If he's still out there when I walk past, I'm going to ask him to lunch. If not, well, better luck next time, Boss.
"Don't miss this opportunity."
And so, I stepped out in faith, returned to the benches where I'd last seen the old man, and was relieved to find five streetkids instead. So relieved that I gave them each some cookies, and headed back inside the SC towards the beauty parlor. And of course, because God has perfect comedic timing, the first person who crossed my path was...who else.
"Money to buy rice...para sa kanin..."
Itay, halika, kain tayo. The words were out of my mouth before I knew it. God said He would give me courage - I didn't know that it only took my simple act of surrender for it to come so easily!
And so he slowly hobbled on his cane to the tiny eatery I'd just had lunch at, and while he was at it, one of the child vendors I'd earlier given cookies to asked if she and her sister could come eat too. Another boy who was collecting soda cans excitedly said, "Ate, ako din!" and of course Ate soon had the whole troupe at the cramped restaurant, much to the initial dismay of the food servers.
"Pssst!" the waitresses instinctively chorused, to drive away the vagrants.
Kakain sila, I said, after which the ladies realized that these were in fact paying customers, and promptly took their orders.
In almost two years of ministering to the poor, I've found that, more than food, they need affirmation and acknowledgment that they too have dignity, that they too are worthy of time and attention. Their hunger for love and kind human contact is greater and more devastating than physical famine. It took a long time for me to learn this lesson from the Master and to actually put it into practice with the poor people I already know and love, but this was the very first time I actually had lunch with a needy stranger - four needy strangers! - outside of the He Cares mission. And this gave a whole new dimension to having lunch with the Lord. "I was a stranger, and you welcomed me..."
My He Cares "training" (once, when Father Steve called me a missionary, I had to correct him by saying I'm a missionary-in-training, because there is so much more I need to learn!) made it so very easy to relate to these new friends of mine - to ask the right questions and get them to open up, to be comfortable and not feel like charity cases, to accept the little expressions of love directed their way. During the course of this lunch with the Lord, Mang Lito told me that he was all alone in this world - his wife and three of his children had all died from strokes; he lived with his niece in the squatters' area of Luzon and commuted to UP daily to beg his daily keep...I don't see what much else he could do with his weak constitution and advanced age. He only had half a cup of rice and half an order of vegetables - doctor's advice; he doesn't eat much at night because of health reasons. My two packets of cookies were tucked into his breast pocket - he'd eat them later. He left a little earlier than the kids - and thanked me more than a few times with real gratitude in his eyes - and I saw the Lord within their depths.
Joy ("J-O-Y, Ate!") and Grace lost their father early in life; their mother scavenges and sells recyclable garbage for a living, and their grandmother has heart problems. Grace, the younger sister, ate her entire meal, but Joy, after a few bites of hers, asked to have it doggie-bagged to take home to Lola. After all, she said, she had the cookies I'd given her. They make two pesos for every ten-peso scoonchie they sell. Renato had two cups of rice because his binagoongan was a little too spicy - he lives in Balara and goes to school, just like Joy and Grace, making extra money from collecting and selling recyclables to junk shops. Just as he was finishing up his meal, I heard a chorus of little voices behind me - angels, I thought, or perhaps by some other miracle, my kids from He Cares - "si Ate!" And angels they were indeed as I turned to see the gaggle of street urchins I'd given cookies to earlier, all smiling at me from outside the restaurant. "You're too late for the meal," I grinned, but apparently they didn't care (although one of the boys helped Renato to finish his spicy lunch). I suppose that, just like me, they were happy enough to have made a new friend. Even the eatery's food servers seemed to have been converted in the matter of minutes these little ones of the Lord spent in the place - they watched and smiled and served and even encouraged the latecomers to come help polish off the meal.
Right before I went next door to the beauty parlor, the kids said their thank-you's and farewells. But J-O-Y hung around a little longer to ask my name, and when I'd be by again, and about the He Cares kids I'd told them about. And when she said her own thanks and goodbye, she took my hand - just like any of my kids in Project 6 would - and I felt the Lord's touch. He really knows what He's doing in our lives; if only we'd just let Him do it!
I had lunch with the Lord that day. Tomorrow is a rest day from He Cares work, but that doesn't mean that I won't encounter God anywhere else...maybe even over lunch again. What better way to spend an afternoon? What better way to spend one's life?