If I should die before I live
Second part

We could describe our world using the words of a novelist. Let me paraphrase:

Our world is a jumpy, jerky age, shifting like a spotlight. The meaning of life is blurred in the scramble for the means of living and with some lives, for survival, and still small voice of moral integrity is so often drowned in the pell-mell medley of selfish strife.

There is book on my shelf. The title of it describes our world: “How can it be all right when everything is all wrong?” How are we to be responsible in such a world? Edmund Burke said it many years ago: “All that is necessary for the forces of evil to prevail is for good men and women to do nothing.”

We in Silliman have done something; we did some things during Martial Law regime by standing up to the pressures. We can, we can be responsible again. At the door leading to the office of the Student Government are the words boldly written: “Towards Responsible Development” I'm glad that, as far as this year has gone, our student leaders have lived up to their slogan under very responsible leadership.

Another point of emphasis of Paul in his letters, if we are to truly live our lives, has to do with the quality of the way we relate to the world at our doorstep. The world at our doorstep means something specific and definite, not generalized. I recall the words of a character in one of the Peanuts cartoons, Charlie Brown, I think, who says: “Oh, I do love humanity, it is the people I detest.”

Our doctors tell us that of course they cannot generalize in a hospital. For the sick come to them one by one with their specific ailments. Likewise, the great measure of the efficacy of the teaching profession is how each student can be seen as a person in his own right and with his own individual possibilities and need.

In these days of want we usually talk of the poor, the by-passed people, and what is the right thing to do for them. It is Rev. Jesse Jackson who says that, “the one justification for looking down on our fellow human is to lift him up.”

But we do realize, don't we, that all of us are in need of Christian caring love? The bright and the dull, the wealthy and the destitute, the powerful and the week, the young and the old. We know from experience that in terms of who should receive our caring love, you cannot categorize. All are in dire need of it, especially in these days when we are going through not only an economic crunch, but a moral crunch, spiritual crunch as well.

So, the words of Nancy Rose, in her prayer, applies to each of us as givers or recipients of the love that cares:

I need a bridge, Lord, across the chasm separating me from the rest of the human race.

A bridge to open space between the darkness of loneliness and the light of belongingness.* TO BE CONTINUED

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