Gabriela, a Korean lay missionary working with the Columban Fathers in Luzon, shows us that lay mission is also ‘learning’.
No Stairs
Romy has not walked for five years. Since that day the car it him he has been depending on a wheelchairs to get around. That’s easy enough in his own house because it is designed without stairs. That’s the house he shares with eighteen others in wheelchairs. “The house of the Handicapable” – in Novaliches, a Manila suburb, and my first parish assignment as a lay missionary from Korea. It was there that I first met Romy. He and his companions have taught me many things in the past six months.
Suddenly Romy Called out...
Tina and I lived with a Filipino family nearby, and we welcomed a visit from Romy and other wheelchairists’ one afternoon. Sensitive to their being an imposition on our landlady’s space, they insisted that we could chat together in the garden. Tina was fetching the snacks, I was getting a lesson in another Tagalog verb, when suddenly Romy called my attention.
‘Gaby, Gaby, look at the chicken”, he said to me. actually there were six chickens in the coup at the garden wall, but I saw clearly what he meant. One of the chickens had got its foot caught in the wire mesh walling of the coup and was suspended head-down in the cage.
“Gaby, help it, help it, please,” continued Romy, and then, after a pause, added shyly and somewhat sadly, “or it will become like me.”
Afraid
I was afraid of the other chickens flying in my face, but I felt compassion for the bird which was caught, so I went ito the coup and released it. the ten steps over and back to the chicken coup became a journey of deeper discovery for me as I realized that where I had felt compassion, Romy had experienced pain. Where I identified with the helpers, the do-gooders, those who set others free, Romy identified with the victim.
Where we stand
The world looks very different to those who stand in different places and especially to those who like Romy, cannot stand up straight because their legs will not support them anymore.